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Segmentation fault
In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault) or access violation is a fault, or failure condition, raised by hardware with memory protection, notifying an operating system (OS) the software has attempted to access a restricted area of memory (a memory access violation). On standard x86 computers, this is a form of general protection fault. The OS kernel will, in response, usually perform some corrective action, generally passing the fault on to the offending process by sending the process a signal. Processes can in some cases install a custom signal handler, allowing them to recover on their own, but otherwise the OS default signal handler is used, generally causing abnormal termination of the process (a program crash), and sometimes a core dump.
Segmentation faults are a common class of error in programs written in languages like C that provide low-level memory access. They arise primarily due to errors in use of pointers for virtual memory addressing, particularly illegal access. Another type of memory access error is a bus error, which also has various causes, but is today much rarer; these occur primarily due to incorrect "physical" memory addressing, or due to misaligned memory access – these are memory references that the hardware "cannot" address, rather than references that a process is not "allowed" to address.
Many programming languages may employ mechanisms designed to avoid segmentation faults and improve memory safety. For example, the Rust programming language employs an 'Ownership' based model to ensure memory safety. Other languages, such as Lisp and Java, employ garbage collection, which avoids certain classes of memory errors that could lead to segmentation faults.
A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system).
The term "segmentation" has various uses in computing; in the context of "segmentation fault", a term used since the 1950s, it refers to the address space of a "program." With memory protection, only the program's own address space is readable, and of this, only the stack and the read/write portion of the data segment of a program are writable, while read-only data and the code segment are not writable. Thus attempting to read outside of the program's address space, or writing to a read-only segment of the address space, results in a segmentation fault, hence the name.
On systems using hardware memory segmentation to provide virtual memory, a segmentation fault occurs when the hardware detects an attempt to refer to a non-existent segment, or to refer to a location outside the bounds of a segment, or to refer to a location in a fashion not allowed by the permissions granted for that segment. On systems using only paging, an invalid page fault generally leads to a segmentation fault, and segmentation faults and page faults are both faults raised by the virtual memory management system. Segmentation faults can also occur independently of page faults: illegal access to a valid page is a segmentation fault, but not an invalid page fault, and segmentation faults can occur in the middle of a page (hence no page fault), for example in a buffer overflow that stays within a page but illegally overwrites memory.
At the hardware level, the fault is initially raised by the memory management unit (MMU) on illegal access (if the referenced memory exists), as part of its memory protection feature, or an invalid page fault (if the referenced memory does not exist). If the problem is not an invalid logical address but instead an invalid physical address, a bus error is raised instead, though these are not always distinguished.
At the operating system level, this fault is caught and a signal is passed on to the offending process, activating the process's handler for that signal. Different operating systems have different signal names to indicate that a segmentation fault has occurred. On Unix-like operating systems, a signal called SIGSEGV (abbreviated from "segmentation violation") is sent to the offending process. On Microsoft Windows, the offending process receives a STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION exception.
The conditions under which segmentation violations occur and how they manifest themselves are specific to hardware and the operating system: different hardware raises different faults for given conditions, and different operating systems convert these to different signals that are passed on to processes. The proximate cause is a memory access violation, while the underlying cause is generally a software bug of some sort. Determining the root cause – debugging the bug – can be simple in some cases, where the program will consistently cause a segmentation fault (e.g., dereferencing a null pointer), while in other cases the bug can be difficult to reproduce and depend on memory allocation on each run (e.g., dereferencing a dangling pointer).
The following are some typical causes of a segmentation fault:
These in turn are often caused by programming errors that result in invalid memory access:
In C code, segmentation faults most often occur because of errors in pointer use, particularly in C dynamic memory allocation. Dereferencing a null pointer will always result in a segmentation fault, but wild pointers and dangling pointers point to memory that may or may not exist, and may or may not be readable or writable, and thus can result in transient bugs. For example:
char *p1 = NULL; // Null pointer
char *p2; // Wild pointer: not initialized at all.
char *p3 = malloc(10 * sizeof(char)); // Initialized pointer to allocated memory
free(p3); // p3 is now a dangling pointer, as memory has been freed
Now, dereferencing any of these variables could cause a segmentation fault: dereferencing the null pointer generally will cause a segfault, while reading from the wild pointer may instead result in random data but no segfault, and reading from the dangling pointer may result in valid data for a while, and then random data as it is overwritten.
The default action for a segmentation fault or bus error is abnormal termination of the process that triggered it. A core file may be generated to aid debugging, and other platform-dependent actions may also be performed. For example, Linux systems using the grsecurity patch may log SIGSEGV signals in order to monitor for possible intrusion attempts using buffer overflows.
Writing to read-only memory raises a segmentation fault. At the level of code errors, this occurs when the program writes to part of its own code segment or the read-only portion of the data segment, as these are loaded by the OS into read-only memory.
Here is an example of ANSI C code that will generally cause a segmentation fault on platforms with memory protection. It attempts to modify a string literal, which is undefined behavior according to the ANSI C standard. Most compilers will not catch this at compile time, and instead compile this to executable code that will crash:
int main(void)
When the program containing this code is compiled, the string "hello world" is placed in the rodata section of the program executable file: the read-only section of the data segment. When loaded, the operating system places it with other strings and constant data in a read-only segment of memory. When executed, a variable, "s", is set to point to the string's location, and an attempt is made to write an "H" character through the variable into the memory, causing a segmentation fault. Compiling such a program with a compiler that does not check for the assignment of read-only locations at compile time, and running it on a Unix-like operating system produces the following runtime error:
$ gcc segfault.c -g -o segfault
$ ./segfault
Segmentation fault
Backtrace of the core file from GDB:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x1c0005c2 in main () at segfault.c:6
6 *s = 'H';
This code can be corrected by using an array instead of a character pointer, as this allocates memory on stack and initializes it to the value of the string literal:
char s[] = "hello world";
s[0] = 'H'; // equivalently, *s = 'H';
Even though string literals should not be modified (this has undefined behavior in the C standard), in C they are of codice_1 type, so there is no implicit conversion in the original code (which points a codice_2 at that array), while in C++ they are of codice_3 type, and thus there is an implicit conversion, so compilers will generally catch this particular error.
In C and C-like languages, null pointers are used to mean "pointer to no object" and as an error indicator, and dereferencing a null pointer (a read or write through a null pointer) is a very common program error. The C standard does not say that the null pointer is the same as the pointer to memory address 0, though that may be the case in practice. Most operating systems map the null pointer's address such that accessing it causes a segmentation fault. This behavior is not guaranteed by the C standard. Dereferencing a null pointer is undefined behavior in C, and a conforming implementation is allowed to assume that any pointer that is dereferenced is not null.
int *ptr = NULL;
printf("%d", *ptr);
This sample code creates a null pointer, and then tries to access its value (read the value). Doing so causes a segmentation fault at runtime on many operating systems.
Dereferencing a null pointer and then assigning to it (writing a value to a non-existent target) also usually causes a segmentation fault:
int *ptr = NULL;
The following code includes a null pointer dereference, but when compiled will often not result in a segmentation fault, as the value is unused and thus the dereference will often be optimized away by dead code elimination:
int *ptr = NULL;
Another example is recursion without a base case:
int main(void)
which causes the stack to overflow which results in a segmentation fault. Infinite recursion may not necessarily result in a stack overflow depending on the language, optimizations performed by the compiler and the exact structure of a code. In this case, the behavior of unreachable code (the return statement) is undefined, so the compiler can eliminate it and use a tail call optimization that might result in no stack usage. Other optimizations could include translating the recursion into iteration, which given the structure of the example function would result in the program running forever, while probably not overflowing its stack. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28803 |
Signal separation
Source separation, blind signal separation (BSS) or blind source separation, is the separation of a set of source signals from a set of mixed signals, without the aid of information (or with very little information) about the source signals or the mixing process. It is most commonly applied in digital signal processing and involves the analysis of mixtures of signals; the objective is to recover the original component signals from a mixture signal. The classical example of a source separation problem is the cocktail party problem, where a number of people are talking simultaneously in a room (for example, at a cocktail party), and a listener is trying to follow one of the discussions. The human brain can handle this sort of auditory source separation problem, but it is a difficult problem in digital signal processing.
This problem is in general highly underdetermined, but useful solutions can be derived under a surprising variety of conditions. Much of the early literature in this field focuses on the separation of temporal signals such as audio. However, blind signal separation is now routinely performed on multidimensional data, such as images and tensors, which may involve no time dimension whatsoever.
Several approaches have been proposed for the solution of this problem but development is currently still very much in progress. Some of the more successful approaches are principal components analysis and independent component analysis, which work well when there are no delays or echoes present; that is, the problem is simplified a great deal. The field of computational auditory scene analysis attempts to achieve auditory source separation using an approach that is based on human hearing.
The human brain must also solve this problem in real time. In human perception this ability is commonly referred to as auditory scene analysis or the cocktail party effect.
At a cocktail party, there is a group of people talking at the same time. You have multiple microphones picking up mixed signals, but you want to isolate the speech of a single person. BSS can be used to separate the individual sources by using mixed signals. In the presence of noise, dedicated optimization criteria need to be used
Figure 2 shows the basic concept of BSS. The individual source signals are shown as well as the mixed signals which are received signals. BSS is used to separate the mixed signals with only knowing mixed signals and nothing about original signal or how they were mixed. The separated signals are only approximations of the source signals. The separated images, were separated using Python and the Shogun toolbox using Joint Approximation Diagonalization of Eigen-matrices (JADE) algorithm which is based off independent component analysis, ICA. This toolbox method can be used with multi-dimensions but for an easy visual aspect images(2-D) were used.
One of the practical applications being researched in this area is medical imaging of the brain with magnetoencephalography (MEG). This kind of imaging involves careful measurements of magnetic fields outside the head which yield an accurate 3D-picture of the interior of the head. However, external sources of electromagnetic fields, such as a wristwatch on the subject's arm, will significantly degrade the accuracy of the measurement. Applying source separation techniques on the measured signals can help remove undesired artifacts from the signal.
In electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), the interference from muscle activity masks the desired signal from brain activity. BSS, however, can be used to separate the two so an accurate representation of brain activity may be achieved.
Another application is the separation of musical signals. For a stereo mix of relatively simple signals it is now possible to make a fairly accurate separation, although some artifacts remain.
Other applications:
The set of individual source signals, formula_1, is 'mixed' using a matrix, formula_2, to produce a set of 'mixed' signals, formula_3, as follows. Usually, formula_4 is equal to formula_5. If formula_6, then the system of equations is overdetermined and thus can be unmixed using a conventional linear method. If formula_7, the system is underdetermined and a non-linear method must be employed to recover the unmixed signals. The signals themselves can be multidimensional.
formula_8
The above equation is effectively 'inverted' as follows. Blind source separation separates the set of mixed signals, formula_9, through the determination of an 'unmixing' matrix, formula_10, to 'recover' an approximation of the original signals, formula_11.
formula_12
Since the chief difficulty of the problem is its underdetermination, methods for blind source separation generally seek to narrow the set of possible solutions in a way that is unlikely to exclude the desired solution. In one approach, exemplified by principal and independent component analysis, one seeks source signals that are minimally correlated or maximally independent in a probabilistic or information-theoretic sense. A second approach, exemplified by nonnegative matrix factorization, is to impose structural constraints on the source signals. These structural constraints may be derived from a generative model of the signal, but are more commonly heuristics justified by good empirical performance. A common theme in the second approach is to impose some kind of low-complexity constraint on the signal, such as sparsity in some basis for the signal space. This approach can be particularly effective if one requires not the whole signal, but merely its most salient features.
There are different methods of blind signal separation: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28804 |
Stephen Cole Kleene
Stephen Cole Kleene ( ; January 5, 1909 – January 25, 1994) was an American mathematician. One of the students of Alonzo Church, Kleene, along with Rózsa Péter, Alan Turing, Emil Post, and others, is best known as a founder of the branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory, which subsequently helped to provide the foundations of theoretical computer science. Kleene's work grounds the study of computable functions. A number of mathematical concepts are named after him: Kleene hierarchy, Kleene algebra, the Kleene star (Kleene closure), Kleene's recursion theorem and the Kleene fixed-point theorem. He also invented regular expressions in 1951 to describe McCulloch-Pitts neural networks, and made significant contributions to the foundations of mathematical intuitionism.
Kleene was awarded the BA degree from Amherst College in 1930. He was awarded the Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1934. His thesis, entitled "A Theory of Positive Integers in Formal Logic", was supervised by Alonzo Church. In the 1930s, he did important work on Church's lambda calculus. In 1935, he joined the mathematics department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he spent nearly all of his career. After two years as an instructor, he was appointed assistant professor in 1937.
While a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 1939–1940, he laid the foundation for recursion theory, an area that would be his lifelong research interest. In 1941, he returned to Amherst College, where he spent one year as an associate professor of mathematics.
During World War II, Kleene was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. He was an instructor of navigation at the U.S. Naval Reserve's Midshipmen's School in New York, and then a project director at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
In 1946, Kleene returned to Wisconsin, becoming a full professor in 1948 and the Cyrus C. MacDuffee professor of mathematics in 1964. He was chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, 1962–1963, and Dean of the College of Letters and Science from 1969 to 1974. The latter appointment he took on despite the considerable student unrest of the day, stemming from the Vietnam War. He retired from the University of Wisconsin in 1979. In 1999 the mathematics library at the University of Wisconsin was renamed in his honor.
Kleene's teaching at Wisconsin resulted in three texts in mathematical logic, Kleene (1952, 1967) and Kleene and Vesley (1965). The first two are often cited and still in print. Kleene (1952) wrote alternative proofs to the Gödel's incompleteness theorems that enhanced their canonical status and made them easier to teach and understand. Kleene and Vesley (1965) is the classic American introduction to intuitionist logic and mathematics.
Kleene served as president of the Association for Symbolic Logic, 1956–1958, and of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, 1961. The importance of Kleene's work led to Daniel Clement Dennett coining the saying, published in 1978, that "Kleeneness is next to Gödelness." In 1990, he was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Kleene and his wife Nancy Elliott had four children. He had a lifelong devotion to the family farm in Maine. An avid mountain climber, he had a strong interest in nature and the environment, and was active in many conservation causes.
At each conference of the Symposium on Logic in Computer Science the Kleene award, in honour of Stephen Cole Kleene, is given for the best student paper. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28805 |
Shabbat
Shabbat ( or ; , "rest" or "cessation"), Shabbos (, Ashkenazi Hebrew and ), or the Sabbath, is Judaism's day of rest and seventh day of the week. On this day, religious Jews, Samaritans and certain Christians (such as Seventh-day Adventists, the Church of God (Seventh-Day) and Seventh Day Baptists) remember the biblical story describing the creation of the heavens and the earth in six days and look forward to a future Messianic Age.
Shabbat observance entails refraining from work activities, often with great rigor, and engaging in restful activities to honour the day. Judaism's traditional position is that unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people, as their first and most sacred institution, though some suggest other origins. Variations upon Shabbat are widespread in Judaism and, with adaptations, throughout the Abrahamic and many other religions.
According to "halakha" (Jewish religious law), Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. Shabbat is ushered in by lighting candles and reciting a blessing. Traditionally, three festive meals are eaten: The first one is held on Friday evening, the second is traditionally a lunch meal on Saturday and the third being held later in the afternoon. The evening meal and the early afternoon meal typically begin with a blessing called "kiddush" and another blessing recited over two loaves of challah. The third meal does not have the Kiddush recited but all have the two loaves. Shabbat is closed Saturday evening with a "havdalah" blessing.
Shabbat is a festive day when Jews exercise their freedom from the regular labours of everyday life. It offers an opportunity to contemplate the spiritual aspects of life and to spend time with family.
The word "Shabbat" derives from the Hebrew verb "shavat" (). Although frequently translated as "rest" (noun or verb), another accurate translation of these words is "ceasing [from work]", as resting is not necessarily denoted. The related modern Hebrew word "shevita" (labour strike), has the same implication of active rather than passive abstinence from work. The notion of active cessation from labour is also regarded as more consistent with an omnipotent God's activity on the seventh day of Creation according to Genesis. Other significant connotations are to "shevet" (שֶּׁבֶת) which means sitting or staying, and to "sheva" (שֶׁבַע) meaning seven, as Shabbat is the seventh day of the week; the other days of the week do not have names but called by their ordinals.
Sabbath is given special status as a holy day at the very beginning of the Torah in . It is first commanded after the Exodus from Egypt, in (relating to the cessation of manna) and in (relating to the distance one may travel by foot on the Sabbath), as also in (as the fourth of the Ten Commandments). Sabbath is commanded and commended many more times in the Torah and Tanakh; double the normal number of animal sacrifices are to be offered on the day. Sabbath is also described by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, and Nehemiah.
The longstanding traditional Jewish position is that unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people, as their first and most sacred institution. The origins of Shabbat and a seven-day week are not clear to scholars; the Mosaic tradition claims an origin from the Biblical creation.
Seventh-day Shabbat did not originate with the Egyptians, to whom it was unknown; and other origin theories based on the day of Saturn, or on the planets generally, have also been abandoned.
The first non-Biblical reference to Sabbath is in an ostracon found in excavations at Mesad Hashavyahu, which is dated 630 BCE.
For the Babylonian concept of "sapattu" or "sabattu", see here.
Connection to Sabbath observance has been suggested in the designation of the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eight days of a lunar month in an Assyrian religious calendar as a 'holy day', also called ‘evil days’ (meaning "unsuitable" for prohibited activities). The prohibitions on these days, spaced seven days apart, include abstaining from chariot riding, and the avoidance of eating meat by the King. On these days officials were prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to "make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest-day". The "Universal Jewish Encyclopedia" advanced a theory of Assyriologists like Friedrich Delitzsch (and of Marcello Craveri) that Shabbat originally arose from the lunar cycle in the Babylonian calendar containing four weeks ending in Sabbath, plus one or two additional unreckoned days per month. The difficulties of this theory include reconciling the differences between an unbroken week and a lunar week, and explaining the absence of texts naming the lunar week as Sabbath in any language.
The Tanakh and siddur describe Shabbat as having three purposes:
Judaism accords Shabbat the status of a joyous holy day. In many ways, Jewish law gives Shabbat the status of being the most important holy day in the Jewish calendar:
Honoring Shabbat ("kavod Shabbat") on Preparation Day (Friday) includes bathing, having a haircut and cleaning and beautifying the home (with flowers, for example).
According to Jewish law, Shabbat starts a few minutes before sunset. Candles are lit at this time. It is customary in many communities to light the candles 18 minutes before sundown ("tosefet Shabbat", though sometimes 36 minutes), and most printed Jewish calendars adhere to this custom. The Kabbalat Shabbat service is a prayer service welcoming the arrival of Shabbat. Before Friday night dinner, it is customary to sing two songs, one "greeting" two Shabbat angels into the house (Shalom Aleichem -Peace Be Upon You) and the other praising the woman of the house for all the work she has done over the past week (Aishes Chayil - Women Of Valour). After blessings over the wine and challah, a festive meal is served. Singing is traditional at Sabbath meals. In modern times, many composers have written sacred music for use during the Kabbalat Shabbat observance, including Robert Strassburg and Samuel Adler.
According to rabbinic literature, God via the Torah commands Jews to "observe" (refrain from forbidden activity) and "remember" (with words, thoughts, and actions) Shabbat, and these two actions are symbolized by the customary two Shabbat candles. Candles are lit usually by the woman of the house (or else by a man who lives alone). Some families light more candles, sometimes in accordance with the number of children.
Shabbat is a day of celebration as well as prayer. It is customary to eat three festive meals: Dinner on Shabbat eve (Friday night), lunch on Shabbat day (Saturday), and a third meal (a "Seudah Shlishit"/"Shalosh Seudot") in the late afternoon (Saturday). It is also customary to wear nice clothing (different from during the week) on Shabbat to honor the day.
On June 13, 2014, Am Yisrael Foundation’s White City Shabbat organization set the Guinness World Record for the world's largest Shabbat dinner. Held at Hangar 11 at Tel Aviv Port, the event was attended by 2,226 people, including Alan Dershowitz, Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai, Israeli basketball star Tal Brody and former US Ambassador Michael Oren. The event took almost a year of preparation and involved “60 days of crowd-sourced fundraising, 800 bottles of Israeli wine, 80 bottles of vodka, 50 bottles of whiskey, 2,000 challah rolls, 80 long tables, 1,800 pieces of chicken, 1,000 portions of beef and 250 vegetarian meals.” A total of 2,300 diners signed up for the dinner and another 3,000 were placed on the waiting list.
Many Jews attend synagogue services on Shabbat even if they do not do so during the week. Services are held on Shabbat eve (Friday night), Shabbat morning (Saturday morning), and late Shabbat afternoon (Saturday afternoon).
With the exception of Yom Kippur, which is referred to in the Torah (Lev 23:32) as "Shabbat of Shabbatoth", days of public fasting are postponed or advanced if they coincide with Shabbat. Mourners sitting "shivah" (week of mourning subsequent to the death of a spouse or first-degree relative) outwardly conduct themselves normally for the duration of the day and are forbidden to display public signs of mourning.
Although most Shabbat laws are restrictive, the fourth of the Ten Commandments in Exodus is taken by the Talmud and Maimonides to allude to the "positive" commandments of Shabbat. These include:
"Havdalah" (Hebrew: הַבְדָּלָה, "separation") is a Jewish religious ceremony that marks the symbolic end of Shabbat, and ushers in the new week. At the conclusion of Shabbat at nightfall, after the appearance of three stars in the sky, the "havdalah" blessings are recited over a cup of wine, and with the use of fragrant spices and a candle, usually braided. Some communities delay "havdalah" later into the night in order to prolong Shabbat. There are different customs regarding how much time one should wait after the stars have surfaced until the sabbath technically ends. Some people hold by 72 minutes later and other hold longer and shorter than that.
Jewish law (halakha) prohibits doing any form of "melakhah" (מְלָאכָה, plural "melakhoth") on Shabbat, unless an urgent human or medical need is life-threatening. Though "melakhah" is commonly translated as "work" in English, a better definition is "deliberate activity" or "skill and craftmanship". There are 39 categories of prohibited activities ("melakhoth") listed in Mishnah Tractate Shabbat 7:2.
The term "shomer Shabbat" is used for a person (or organization) who adheres to Shabbat laws consistently. The "shomer Shabbat" is an archetype mentioned in Jewish songs (e.g., "Baruch El Elyon") and the intended audience for various treatises on Jewish law and practice for "Shabbat" (e.g., "Shemirat Shabbat ke-Hilkhata").
There are often disagreements between Orthodox Jews and non-Orthodox Jews as to the practical observance of the Sabbath. The (strict) observance of the Sabbath is often seen as a benchmark for orthodoxy and indeed has legal bearing on the way a Jew is seen by an orthodox religious court regarding their affiliation to Judaism. See Yosef Dov Soloveitchik's "Beis HaLevi" commentary on parasha Ki Tissa for further elaboration regarding the legal ramifications.
The 39 categories of "melakhah" are:
The categories of labors prohibited on Shabbat are exegetically derived – on account of Biblical passages juxtaposing Shabbat observance (Ex. 35:1–3) to making the Tabernacle (Ex. 35:4 ff.) – that they are the kinds of work that were necessary for the construction of the Tabernacle. They are not explicitly listed in the Torah; the Mishnah observes that "the laws of Shabbat ... are like mountains hanging by a hair, for they are little Scripture but many laws". Many rabbinic scholars have pointed out that these labors have in common activity that is "creative", or that exercises control or dominion over one's environment.
Different streams of Judaism view the prohibition on work in different ways. Observant Orthodox and Conservative Jews refrain from performing the 39 prohibited categories of activities. Each "melakhah" has derived prohibitions of various kinds. There are, therefore, many more forbidden activities on Shabbat; all are traced back to one of the 39 above principal "melakhoth".
Given the above, the 39 "melakhoth" are not so much activities as "categories of activity". For example, while "winnowing" usually refers exclusively to the separation of chaff from grain, and "selecting" refers exclusively to the separation of debris from grain, they refer in the Talmudic sense to any separation of intermixed materials which renders edible that which was inedible. Thus, filtering undrinkable water to make it drinkable falls under this category, as does picking small bones from fish (gefilte fish is one solution to this problem).
Orthodox and some Conservative authorities rule that turning electric devices on or off is prohibited as a "melakhah"; however, authorities are not in agreement about exactly which one(s). One view is that tiny sparks are created in a switch when the circuit is closed, and this would constitute lighting a fire (category 37). If the appliance is purposed for light or heat (such as an incandescent bulb or electric oven), then the lighting or heating elements may be considered as a type of fire that falls under both lighting a fire (category 37) and cooking (i.e., baking, category 11). Turning lights off would be extinguishing a fire (category 36).
Another view is that a device plugged into an electrical outlet of a wall becomes part of the building, but is nonfunctional while the switch is off; turning it on would then constitute building (category 35) and turning it off would be demolishing (category 34). Some schools of thought consider the use of electricity to be forbidden only by rabbinic injunction, rather than because it violates one of the original categories.
A common solution to the problem of electricity involves preset timers (Shabbat clocks) for electric appliances, to turn them on and off automatically, with no human intervention on Shabbat itself. Some Conservative authorities reject altogether the arguments for prohibiting the use of electricity. Some Orthodox also hire a "Shabbos goy", a Gentile to perform prohibited tasks (like operating light switches) on Shabbat.
Orthodox and many Conservative authorities completely prohibit the use of automobiles on Shabbat as a violation of multiple categories, including lighting a fire, extinguishing a fire, and transferring between domains (category 39). However, the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards permits driving to a synagogue on Shabbat, as an emergency measure, on the grounds that if Jews lost contact with synagogue life they would become lost to the Jewish people.
A halakhically authorized Shabbat mode added to a power-operated mobility scooter may be used on the observance of Shabbat for those with walking limitations, often referred to as a Shabbat scooter. It is intended only for individuals whose limited mobility is dependent on a scooter or automobile consistently throughout the week.
Seemingly "forbidden" acts may be performed by modifying technology such that no law is actually violated. In Sabbath mode, a "Sabbath elevator" will stop automatically at every floor, allowing people to step on and off without anyone having to press any buttons, which would normally be needed to work. (Dynamic braking is also disabled if it is normally used, i.e., shunting energy collected from downward travel, and thus the gravitational potential energy of passengers, into a resistor network.) However, many rabbinical authorities consider the use of such elevators by those who are otherwise capable as a violation of Shabbat, with such workarounds being for the benefit of the frail and handicapped and not being in the spirit of the day.
Many observant Jews avoid the prohibition of carrying by use of an eruv. Others make their keys into a tie bar, part of a belt buckle, or a brooch, because a legitimate article of clothing or jewelry may be worn rather than carried. An elastic band with clips on both ends, and with keys placed between them as integral links, may be considered a belt.
Shabbat lamps have been developed to allow a light in a room to be turned on or off at will while the electricity remains on. A special mechanism blocks out the light when the off position is desired without violating Shabbat.
The Shabbos App is a proposed Android app claimed by its creators to enable Orthodox Jews, and all Jewish Sabbath-observers, to use a smartphone to text on the Jewish Sabbath. It has met with resistance from some authorities.
In the event that a human life is in danger (pikuach nefesh), a Jew is not only allowed, but required, to violate any halakhic law that stands in the way of saving that person (excluding murder, idolatry, and forbidden sexual acts). The concept of life being in danger is interpreted broadly: for example, it is mandated that one violate Shabbat to bring a woman in active labor to a hospital. Lesser rabbinic restrictions are often violated under much less urgent circumstances (a patient who is ill but not critically so).
Various other legal principles closely delineate which activities constitute desecration of Shabbat. Examples of these include the principle of "shinui" ("change" or "deviation"): A violation is not regarded as severe if the prohibited act was performed in a way that would be considered abnormal on a weekday. Examples include writing with one's nondominant hand, according to many rabbinic authorities. This legal principle operates "bedi'avad" ("ex post facto") and does not cause a forbidden activity to be permitted barring extenuating circumstances.
Generally, adherents of Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism believe that the individual Jew determines whether to follow Shabbat prohibitions or not. For example, some Jews might find activities, such as writing or cooking for leisure, to be enjoyable enhancements to Shabbat and its holiness, and therefore may encourage such practices. Many Reform Jews believe that what constitutes "work" is different for each person, and that only what the person considers "work" is forbidden. The radical Reform rabbi Samuel Holdheim advocated moving Sabbath to Sunday for many no longer observed it, a step taken by dozens of congregations in the United States in late 19th century.
More rabbinically traditional Reform and Reconstructionist Jews believe that these "halakhoth" in general may be valid, but that it is up to each individual to decide how and when to apply them. A small fraction of Jews in the Progressive Jewish community accept these laws much the same way as Orthodox Jews.
All Jewish denominations encourage the following activities on Shabbat:
Special Shabbatot are the Shabbatot that precede important Jewish holidays: e.g., "Shabbat HaGadol" (Shabbat preceding Pesach), "Shabbat Zachor" (Shabbat preceding Purim), and "Shabbat Shuvah" (Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).
Most Christians do not observe Saturday Sabbath, but instead observe a weekly day of worship on Sunday, which is often called the "Lord's Day". Several Christian denominations, such as the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Church of God (7th Day), the Seventh Day Baptists, and many others, observe seventh-day Sabbath. This observance is celebrated from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.
The principle of weekly Sabbath also exists in other beliefs. Examples include the Babylonian calendar, the Buddhist "uposatha", and the Unification Church's Ahn Shi Il. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28809 |
Saki
Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered by English teachers and scholars as a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.
Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, "The Watched Pot", in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, "The Rise of the Russian Empire" (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, "The Unbearable Bassington"; the episodic "The Westminster Alice" (a parliamentary parody of "Alice in Wonderland"); and "When William Came", subtitled "A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns", a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.
Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab (now Sittwe), British Burma, which was then part of British India. Saki was the son of Charles Augustus Munro, an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his wife, Mary Frances Mercer (1843–1872), the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer. Her nephew Cecil William Mercer became a novelist under the name Dornford Yates.
In 1872, on a home visit to England, Mary Munro was charged by a cow, and the shock caused her to miscarry. She never recovered and soon died.
After his wife's death Charles Munro sent his children, including two-year-old Hector, home to England. The children were sent to Broadgate Villa, in Pilton near Barnstaple, North Devon, to be raised by their grandmother and paternal maiden aunts, Charlotte and Augusta in a strict and puritanical household. It is said that his aunts were most likely models for some of his characters, notably the aunt in "The Lumber Room" and the guardian in "Sredni Vashtar": Munro's sister Ethel said that the aunt in "The Lumber Room" was an almost perfect portrait of Aunt Augusta. Munro and his siblings led slightly insular lives during their early years and were educated by governesses. At the age of 12 the young Hector Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and then as a boarder at Bedford School.
In 1887, after his retirement, his father returned from Burma and embarked upon a series of European travels with Hector and his siblings.
Hector followed his father in 1893 into the Indian Imperial Police and was posted to Burma, but successive bouts of fever caused his return home after only fifteen months.
In 1896, he decided to move to London to make a living as a writer.
Munro started his writing career as a journalist for newspapers such as "The Westminster Gazette", the "Daily Express", "The Morning Post", and magazines such as the "Bystander" and "Outlook". His first book "The Rise of the Russian Empire", a historical study modelled upon Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", appeared in 1900, under his real name, but proved to be something of a false start.
While writing "The Rise of the Russian Empire", he made his first foray into short story writing and published a piece called 'Dogged' in "St Paul's" in February 1899. He then moved into the world of political satire in 1900 with a collaboration with Francis Carruthers Gould entitled "Alice in Westminster". Gould produced the sketches, and Munro wrote the text accompanying them, using the pen-name "Saki" for the first time. The series lampooned political figures of the day ('Alice in Downing Street' begins with the memorable line, '"Have you ever seen an Ineptitude?"' - referring to a zoomorphised Arthur Balfour), and was published in the Liberal "Westminster Gazette".
In 1902 he moved to "The Morning Post", described as one of the 'organs of intransigence' by Stephen Koss, to work as a foreign correspondent, first in the Balkans, and then in Russia, where he was witness to the 1905 revolution in St Petersburg. He then went on to Paris, before returning to London in 1908, where 'the agreeable life of a man of letters with a brilliant reputation awaited him.' In the intervening period "Reginald" had been published in 1904, the stories having first appeared in "The Westminster Gazette", and all this time he was writing sketches for "The Morning Post", the "Bystander," and "The Westminster Gazette". He kept a place in Mortimer Street, wrote, played bridge at the Cocoa Tree Club, and lived simply. "Reginald in Russia" appeared in 1910, and "The Chronicles of Clovis" was published in 1911, and "Beasts and Super-Beasts" in 1914, along with many other short stories that appeared in newspapers not published in collections in his lifetime.
He also produced two novels, "The Unbearable Bassington" (1912) and "When William Came" (1913).
At the start of the First World War Munro was 43 and officially over-age to enlist, but he refused a commission and joined the 2nd King Edward's Horse as an ordinary trooper. He later transferred to the 22nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, in which he rose to the rank of lance sergeant. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially too sick or injured. In November 1916 he was sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, during the Battle of the Ancre, when he was killed by a German sniper. According to several sources, his last words were "Put that bloody cigarette out!"
Munro has no known grave. He is commemorated on Pier and Face 8C 9A and 16A of the Thiepval Memorial.
In 2003 English Heritage marked Munro's flat at 97 Mortimer Street, in Fitzrovia with a blue plaque.
After his death his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood, which appeared at the beginning of "The Square Egg and Other Sketches" (1924). Rothay Reynolds, a close friend, wrote a relatively lengthy memoir in "The Toys of Peace" (1919), but aside from this, the only other biographies of Munro are "Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro" (1982) by A. J. Langguth, and "The Unbearable Saki" (2007) by Sandie Byrne. All later biographies have had to draw heavily upon Ethel's account of her brother's life.
Munro was homosexual at a time when in Britain sexual activity between men was a crime. The Cleveland Street scandal (1889), followed by the downfall of Oscar Wilde (1895), meant "that side of [Munro's] life had to be secret".
The pen name "Saki" is most commonly assumed to be a reference to the cupbearer in the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam." Both Rothay Reynolds and Ethel Munro confirm this. This reference is stated as fact by Emlyn Williams in his introduction to a Saki anthology published in 1978.
"Saki" may also be a reference to the South American Saki monkey, which at least two commentators, Tom Sharpe and Will Self, have connected to the "small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character in .
Much of Saki's work contrasts the conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of nature. Writing in "The Guardian" to mark the centenary of Saki's death, Stephen Moss noted, "In many of his stories, stuffy authority figures are set against forces of nature – polecats, hyenas, tigers. Even if they are not eaten, the humans rarely have the best of it".
"The Interlopers" is a story about two men, Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz, whose families have fought over a forest in the eastern Carpathian Mountains for generations. Ulrich's family legally owns the land, and so considers Georg an interloper when he hunts in the forest. But Georg, believing that the forest rightfully belongs to his family, hunts there often and believes that Ulrich is the real interloper for trying to stop him. One winter night, Ulrich catches Georg hunting in the forest. Neither man can shoot the other without warning, as they would soil their family's honour, so they hesitate to acknowledge one another. In an "act of God", a tree branch suddenly falls on each of them, trapping them both under a log. Gradually they realize the futility of their quarrel, become friends and end the feud. They then call out for their men's assistance and, after a brief period, Ulrich makes out nine or ten figures approaching over a hill. The story ends with Ulrich's realization that the approaching figures on the hill are actually hungry wolves. The wolves, it seems, are the true owners of the forest, while both humans are interlopers.
"Gabriel-Ernest" starts with a warning: "There is a wild beast in your woods …" Gabriel, a naked boy sunbathing by the river, is "adopted" by well-meaning Townspeople. Lovely and charming, but also rather vague and distant, he seems bemused by his "benefactors." Asked how he managed by himself in the woods, he replies that he hunts "on four legs," which they take to mean that he has a dog. The climax comes when a small child disappears while walking home from Sunday school. A pursuit ensues, but Gabriel and the child disappear near a river. The only items found are Gabriel's clothes, and the two are never seen again. The story includes many of the author's favourite themes: good intentions gone awry, the banality of polite society, the attraction of the sinister, and the allure of the wild and the forbidden. There is also a recognition of basic decency, upheld when the story's protagonist 'flatly refuses' to subscribe to a Gabriel-Ernst memorial, for his supposedly gallant attempt to save a drowning child, and drowning himself, as well. He realises that Gabriel-Ernst was actually a werewolf, who had eaten the child, then run off.
At a railway station an arrogant and overbearing woman, Mrs Quabarl, mistakes the mischievous Lady Carlotta, who has been inadvertently left behind by a train, for the governess, Miss Hope, whom she has been expecting, Miss Hope having erred about the date of her arrival. Lady Carlotta decides not to correct the mistake, acknowledges herself as Miss Hope, a proponent of "the Schartz-Metterklume method" of making children understand history by acting it out themselves, and chooses the Rape of the Sabine Women (exemplified by a washerwoman's two girls) as the first lesson. After creating chaos for two days, she departs, explaining that her delayed luggage will include a leopard cub.
Preferring not to give her young sons toy soldiers or guns, and having taken away their toy depicting the Siege of Adrianople, Eleanor instructs her brother Harvey to give them innovative "peace toys" as an Easter present. When the packages are opened young Bertie shouts "It's a fort!" and is disappointed when his uncle replies "It's a municipal dustbin." The boys are initially baffled as to how to obtain any enjoyment from models of a school of art and a public library, or from little figures of John Stuart Mill, Felicia Hemans and Sir John Herschel. Youthful inventiveness finds a way, however, as the boys combine their history lessons on Louis XIV with a lurid and violent play-story about the invasion of Britain and the storming of the Young Women's Christian Association. The end of the story has Harvey reporting failure to Eleanor, explaining "We have begun too late.", not realising he was doomed to failure whenever he had begun.
An aunt is travelling by train with her two nieces and a nephew. The children are inquisitive and mischievous. A bachelor is also travelling in the same compartment. The aunt starts telling a moralistic story, but is unable to satisfy the children's curiosity. The bachelor butts in and tells a story in which a "good" person ends up being devoured by a wolf, to the children's delight. The bachelor is amused by the thought that in the future the children will embarrass their guardian by begging to be told "an improper story."
Framton Nuttel, a nervous man, has come to stay in the country for his health. His sister, who thinks he should socialise while he is there, has given him letters of introduction to families in the neighbourhood whom she got to know when she was staying there a few years previously. Framton goes to visit Mrs Sappleton and, while he is waiting for her to come down, is entertained by her fifteen-year-old, witty niece. The niece tells him that the French window is kept open, even though it is October, because Mrs Sappleton believes that her husband and her brothers, who were drowned in a bog three years before, will come back one day. When Mrs Sappleton comes down she talks about her husband and her brothers, and how they are going to come back from shooting soon, and Framton, believing that she is deranged, tries to distract her by talking about his health. Then, to his horror, Mrs Sappleton points out that her husband and her brothers are coming, and he sees them walking towards the window with their dog. He thinks he is seeing ghosts and runs away. Mrs Sappleton cannot understand why he has run away and, when her husband and her brothers come in, she tells them about the odd man who has just left. The niece explains that Framton Nuttel ran away because of the spaniel: he is afraid of dogs since he was hunted by a pack of stray dogs in India and had to spend a night in the newly dug grave with creatures grinning and foaming just above him. The last line summarizes the story, saying of the niece, "Romance at short notice was her speciality."
Saki's recurring hero Clovis Sangrail, a clever, mischievous young man, overhears the complacent middle-aged Huddle complaining of his own addiction to routine and aversion to change. Huddle's friend makes the wry suggestion that he needs an "unrest-cure" (the opposite of a rest cure), to be performed, if possible, in the home. Clovis takes it upon himself to "help" the man and his sister by involving them in an invented outrage that will be a "blot on the twentieth century".
A baroness tells Clovis a story about a hyena that she and her friend Constance encountered while out fox hunting. Later, the hyena follows them, stopping briefly to eat a gypsy child. Shortly after this, the hyena is killed by a motorcar. The baroness immediately claims the corpse as her beloved dog Esmé, and the guilty owner of the car gets his chauffeur to bury the animal and later sends her a diamond brooch to make up for her loss.
A sickly child named Conradin is raised by his aunt and guardian, Mrs De Ropp, who "would never... have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him 'for his good' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome". Conradin rebels against his aunt and her choking authority. He invents a religion in which his polecat ferret is imagined as a vengeful deity, and Conradin prays that "Sredni Vashtar" will deliver retribution upon De Ropp. When De Ropp attempts to dispose of the animal, it attacks and kills her. The entire household is shocked and alarmed; Conradin calmly butters another piece of toast.
At a country-house party, one guest, Cornelius Appin, announces to the others that he has perfected a procedure for teaching animals human speech. He demonstrates this on his host's cat, Tobermory. Soon it is clear that animals are permitted to view and listen to many private things on the assumption that they will remain silent, such as the host Sir Wilfred's commentary on one guest's intelligence and the hope that she will buy his car, or the implied sexual activities of some of the other guests. The guests are angered, especially when Tobermory runs away to pursue a rival cat, but plans to poison him fail when Tobermory is instead killed by the rival cat. "An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the Millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than Cornelius Appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement." Appin is killed shortly afterwards when attempting to teach an elephant in a zoo in Dresden to speak German.
His fellow house party guest, Clovis Sangrail (Saki's recurring hero), remarks callously that if he was teaching "the poor beast" irregular German verbs, he deserved no pity.
Tom Yorkfield, a farmer, receives a visit from his half-brother Laurence. Tom has no great liking for Laurence or respect for his profession as a painter of animals. Tom shows Laurence his prize bull and expects him to be impressed, but Laurence nonchalantly tells Tom that he has sold a painting of a different bull, which Tom has seen and does not like, for three hundred pounds. Tom is angry that a mere picture of a bull should be worth more than his real bull. This and Laurence's condescending attitude give him the urge to strike him. Laurence, running away across the field, is attacked by the bull, but is saved by Tom from serious injury. Tom, looking after Laurence as he recovers, feels no more rancour because he knows that, however valuable Laurence's painting might be, only a real bull like his can attack someone.
This is a "rediscovered" short story that was previously cited as a play. A house party is beset by a fire in the middle of the night in the east wing of the house. Begged by their hostess to save "my poor darling Eva – Eva of the golden hair," Lucien demurs, on the grounds that he has never even met her. It is only on discovering that Eva is not a flesh-and-blood daughter but Mrs Gramplain's painting of the daughter she wished that she had had, and which she has faithfully updated with the passing years, that Lucien declares a willingness to forfeit his life to rescue her, since "death in this case is more beautiful," a sentiment endorsed by the Major. As the two men disappear into the blaze, Mrs Gramplain recollects that she "sent Eva to Exeter to be cleaned". The two men have lost their lives for nothing.
Posthumous publications:
The 5th broadcast of Orson Welles' series for CBS Radio, "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", from 8 August 1938, dramatizes three short stories rather than one long story. The second of the three stories is "The Open Window."
"The Open Window" is also adapted (by John Allen) in the 1962 Golden Records release "Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Ghost Stories for Young People", a record album of six ghost stories for children.
A dramatisation of "The Schartz-Metterklume Method" was an episode in the series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in 1960.
"Saki: The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro" (a reference to the ending of "The Story Teller") was an eight-part series produced by Philip Mackie for Granada Television in 1962. Actors involved included Mark Burns as Clovis, Fenella Fielding as Mary Drakmanton, Heather Chasen as Agnes Huddle, Richard Vernon as the Major, Rosamund Greenwood as Veronique and Martita Hunt as Lady Bastable.
A dramatisation of "The Open Window" was an episode in the series "Tales of the Unexpected" in 1984.
"Who Killed Mrs De Ropp?", a BBC TV production in 2007, starring Ben Daniels and Gemma Jones, showcased three of Saki's short stories, "The Storyteller", "The Lumber Room" and "Sredni Vashtar". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28810 |
Static program analysis
Static program analysis is the analysis of computer software that is performed without actually executing programs, in contrast with dynamic analysis, which is analysis performed on programs while they are executing. In most cases the analysis is performed on some version of the source code, and in the other cases, some form of the object code.
The term is usually applied to the analysis performed by an automated tool, with human analysis being called program understanding, program comprehension, or code review. Software inspections and software walkthroughs are also used in the latter case.
The sophistication of the analysis performed by tools varies from those that only consider the behaviour of individual statements and declarations, to those that include the complete source code of a program in their analysis. The uses of the information obtained from the analysis vary from highlighting possible coding errors (e.g., the lint tool) to formal methods that mathematically prove properties about a given program (e.g., its behaviour matches that of its specification).
Software metrics and reverse engineering can be described as forms of static analysis. Deriving software metrics and static analysis are increasingly deployed together, especially in creation of embedded systems, by defining so-called "software quality objectives".
A growing commercial use of static analysis is in the verification of properties of software used in safety-critical computer systems and
locating potentially vulnerable code. For example, the following industries have identified the use of static code analysis as a means of improving the quality of increasingly sophisticated and complex software:
A study in 2012 by VDC Research reports that 28.7% of the embedded software engineers surveyed currently use static analysis tools and 39.7% expect to use them within 2 years.
A study from 2010 found that 60% of the interviewed developers in European research projects made at least use of their basic IDE built-in static analyzers. However, only about 10% employed an additional other (and perhaps more advanced) analysis tool.
In the application security industry the name "Static Application Security Testing" (SAST) is also used. SAST is an important part of Security Development Lifecycles (SDLs) such as the SDL defined by Microsoft and a common practice in software companies.
The OMG (Object Management Group) published a study regarding the types of software analysis required for software quality measurement and assessment. This document on "How to Deliver Resilient, Secure, Efficient, and Easily Changed IT Systems in Line with CISQ Recommendations" describes three levels of software analysis.
A further level of software analysis can be defined.
Formal methods is the term applied to the analysis of software (and computer hardware) whose results are obtained purely through the use of rigorous mathematical methods. The mathematical techniques used include denotational semantics, axiomatic semantics, operational semantics, and abstract interpretation.
By a straightforward reduction to the halting problem, it is possible to prove that (for any Turing complete language), finding all possible run-time errors in an arbitrary program (or more generally any kind of violation of a specification on the final result of a program) is undecidable: there is no mechanical method that can always answer truthfully whether an arbitrary program may or may not exhibit runtime errors. This result dates from the works of Church, Gödel and Turing in the 1930s (see: Halting problem and Rice's theorem). As with many undecidable questions, one can still attempt to give useful approximate solutions.
Some of the implementation techniques of formal static analysis include:
Data-driven static analysis uses large amounts of code to infer coding rules. For instance, one can use all Java open-source packages on GitHub to learn a good analysis strategy. The rule inference can use machine learning techniques. For instance, it has been shown that when one deviates too much in the way one uses an object-oriented API, it is likely to be a bug. It is also possible to learn from a large amount of past fixes and warnings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28811 |
Samuel Mudd
Samuel Alexander Mudd Sr. (December 20, 1833 – January 10, 1883) was an American physician who was imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Mudd worked as a doctor and tobacco farmer in Southern Maryland. The Civil War seriously damaged his business, especially when Maryland abolished slavery in 1864. That year, he first met Booth, who was planning to kidnap Lincoln, and Mudd was seen in company with three of the conspirators. However, his part in the plot, if any, remains unclear.
After mortally wounding Lincoln on April 14, 1865, Booth rode with conspirator David Herold to Mudd's home in the early hours of April 15 for surgery on his fractured leg before he crossed into Virginia. Sometime that day, Mudd must have learned of the assassination but did not report Booth's visit to the authorities for another 24 hours. That appeared to link him to the crime, as did his various changes of story under interrogation. A military commission found him guilty of aiding and conspiring in a murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, escaping the death penalty by a single vote.
Mudd was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. Despite repeated attempts by family members and others to have it expunged, his conviction has not been overturned.
Born in Charles County, Maryland, Mudd was the fourth of 10 children of Henry Lowe and Sarah Ann Reeves Mudd. He grew up on Oak Hill, his father's tobacco plantation of several hundred acres, southeast of Washington, DC, and worked by 89 slaves.
At 15, after several years of home tutoring, Mudd went off to boarding school at St. John's Literary Institute, now known as Saint John's Catholic Prep School in Frederick, Maryland. Two years later, he enrolled at Georgetown College in Washington, DC. He then studied medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, writing his thesis on dysentery.
Upon graduation in 1856, Mudd returned to Charles County to practice medicine, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances (Frankie) Dyer Mudd one year later.
As a wedding present, Mudd's father gave the couple of his best farmland and a new house named St. Catherine. While the house was under construction, the young Mudds lived with Frankie's bachelor brother, Jeremiah Dyer, finally moving into their new home in 1859. They had nine children in all: four before Mudd's arrest and five after his release from prison. To supplement his income from his medical practice, Mudd became a small scale tobacco grower, using five slaves according to the 1860 census. Mudd believed that slavery was divinely ordained and wrote a letter to the theologian Orestes Brownson to that effect.
With the advent of the American Civil War in 1861, the Southern Maryland slave system and the economy that it supported rapidly began to collapse. In 1863, the Union Army established Camp Stanton, just from the Mudd farm to enlist black freedmen and runaway slaves. Six regiments totaling over 8,700 black soldiers, many from Southern Maryland, were trained there. In 1864, Maryland, which was exempt from Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, abolished slavery, making it difficult for growers like Mudd to operate their plantations. As a result, Mudd considered selling his farm and depending on his medical practice. As Mudd pondered his alternatives, he was introduced to someone who said he might be interested in buying his property, a 26-year-old actor, John Wilkes Booth.
Many historians agree that President Abraham Lincoln's future assassin, John Wilkes Booth, visited Bryantown, Maryland, in November and December 1864, claiming to look for real estate investments. Bryantown is about from Washington, DC, and about from Mudd's farm. The real estate story was merely a cover; Booth's true purpose was to plan an escape route as part of a plan to kidnap Lincoln. Booth believed the federal government would ransom Lincoln by releasing a large number of Confederate prisoners of war.
Historians agree that Booth met Mudd at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Bryantown during one of those visits, probably in November. Booth visited Mudd at his farm the next day, and stayed there overnight. The following day, Booth purchased a horse from Mudd's neighbor and returned to Washington. Some historians believe that Booth used his visit to Bryantown to recruit Mudd to his kidnapping plot, but others believe that Mudd would have had no interest in such a scheme.
A short time later, on December 23, 1864, Mudd went to Washington where he met Booth again. Some historians believe the meeting had been arranged, but others disagree. The two men, as well as John Surratt, Jr., and Louis J. Weichmann, had a conversation and drinks together, first at Booth's hotel and later at Mudd's.
According to a statement made by associated conspirator George Atzerodt, found long after his death and taken down while he was in federal custody on May 1, 1865, Mudd knew in advance about Booth's plans; Atzerodt was sure the doctor knew, he said, because Booth had "sent (as he told me) liquors & provisions... about two weeks before the murder to Dr. Mudd's."
Although that is true, some historians believe that there may be other reasons behind Mudd's relationship to Booth. The trial brought forth many theories of Mudd's involvement in the assassination of Lincoln. One theory posits that Mudd was involved in a completely different conspiracy to gain an upper hand for the southern states. Prior to the assassination of Lincoln, Booth originally intended to kidnap the president and hold him and other political affiliates of the Union for a large sum of money. The plan was in effect until the night of the assassination, when Booth met up with Atzerodt, David Herold and Lewis Powell (who gave his name as Lewis Payne when he was arrested at Mary Surratt's house days after the murder) and disclosed the plot to assassinate the president. Following the assassination, Powell came forth by stating that Booth had not told him until the meeting and that the other men did not know about the plot until the night of the assassination. That supports the theory that Mudd may have been an accomplice to the plot to kidnap the president but not a conspirator to the assassination.
After Booth shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, he broke his left fibula while fleeing Ford's Theater. Booth met up with Herold and both made for Virginia, via southern Maryland. They stopped at Mudd's house around 4 a.m. on April 15. Mudd splinted Booth's leg, and gave him a shoe to wear. He also arranged for a carpenter, John Best, to make a pair of crutches for Booth. Booth paid Mudd $25 in greenbacks for his services. He and Herold spent between twelve and fifteen hours at Mudd's house. They slept in the front bedroom on the second floor. It is unclear whether Mudd had yet been informed that Booth had killed Lincoln.
Mudd went to Bryantown during the day on April 15 to run errands; if he did not already know the news of the assassination from Booth, he certainly learned of it on the trip. He returned home that evening, and accounts differ as to whether Booth and Herold had already left, whether Mudd met them as they were leaving, and whether they left at Mudd's urging and with his assistance.
It is certain that Mudd did not immediately contact the authorities. When questioned, he stated that he had not wanted to leave his family alone in the house in case the assassins returned and found him absent and his family unprotected. He waited until Mass the following day, Easter Sunday, when he asked his second cousin, Dr. George Mudd, a resident of Bryantown, to notify the 13th New York Cavalry in Bryantown, under the command of Lieutenant David Dana. The delay in contacting the authorities drew suspicion and was a significant factor in tying Mudd to the conspiracy.
During his initial investigative interview on April 18, Mudd stated that he had never seen either of the parties before. In his sworn statement of April 22, he told about Booth's visit to Bryantown in November 1864
but then said, "I have never seen Booth since that time to my knowledge until last Saturday morning." He hid his meeting with Booth in Washington in December 1864. In prison, Mudd admitted the Washington meeting and said he ran into Booth by chance during a Christmas shopping trip. Mudd's failure to mention the meeting in his interview with detectives was a big mistake. When Weichmann later told the authorities of the meeting, they realized that Mudd had misled them and immediately began to treat him as a suspect, rather than a witness.
During the conspiracy trial, Lieutenant Alexander Lovett testified, "On Friday, the 21st of April, I went to Mudd's again, for the purpose of arresting him. When he found we were going to search the house, he said something to his wife, and she went upstairs and brought down a boot. Mudd said he had cut it off the man's leg. I turned down the top of the boot, and saw the name 'J. Wilkes' written in it."
After Booth's death on April 26, 1865, Mudd was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder Lincoln. Representative Frederick Stone was the senior defense counsel for Mudd.
On May 1, 1865, President Johnson ordered the formation of a nine-man military commission to try the conspirators. Mudd was represented by General Thomas Ewing, Jr.. The trial began on May 10, 1865. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlen, Edmund Spangler and Samuel Arnold were all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. The prosecution called 366 witnesses.
The defense sought to prove that Mudd was a loyal citizen, citing his self-description as a "Union man" and asserting that he was "a deeply religious man, devoted to family, and a kind master to his slaves." The prosecution presented witnesses who testified that he had shot one of his slaves in the leg and threatened to send others to Richmond, Virginia, to assist in the construction of Confederate defenses. The prosecution also contended that he had been a member of a Confederate communications distribution agency and had sheltered Confederate soldiers on his plantation.
On June 29, 1865, Mudd was found guilty with the others. The testimony of Louis J. Weichmann was crucial in obtaining the convictions. According to historian Edward Steers, the testimony presented by former slaves was also crucial, but it faded from public memory. Mudd escaped the death penalty by one vote and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Four of the defendants (Surratt, Powell, Atzerodt and Herold) were hanged at the Old Penitentiary at the Washington Arsenal on July 7, 1865.
Mudd, O'Laughlen, Arnold, and Spangler were imprisoned at Fort Jefferson, in the Dry Tortugas, about west of Key West, Florida. The fort housed Union Army deserters and held about 600 prisoners when Mudd and the others arrived. Prisoners lived on the second tier of the fort, in unfinished, open-air gun rooms called casemates. Mudd and his three companions lived in the casemate directly above the fort's main entrance, called the sally port.
In September 1865, two months after Mudd arrived, the control of Fort Jefferson was transferred from the 161st New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment to the 82nd US Colored Troops. On September 25, 1865, he attempted to escape from Fort Jefferson by stowing away on the transport "Thomas A. Scott".
He was quickly discovered and placed, along with Arnold, O'Laughlen, Spangler, and George St. Leger Grenfell, in a large empty ground-level gunroom that soldiers referred to as "the dungeon." The men were let out of the dungeon every working day for 12 hours and were required to wear leg irons. However, following a December 22 letter from his wife to President Johnson, the War Department ordered the discontinuance of the shackles and the move to better quarters, which was accomplished by January.
After three months in the dungeon, Mudd and the others were returned to the general prison population. However, because of his attempted escape, Mudd lost his privilege of working in the prison hospital and was assigned to work in the prison carpentry shop with Spangler.
There was an outbreak of yellow fever in the fall of 1867 at the fort. O'Laughlen eventually died of it on September 23. The prison doctor died, and Mudd agreed to take over the position. He was able to help stem the spread of the disease. The soldiers in the fort wrote a petition to Johnson in October 1867 stating the degree of Mudd's assistance: "He inspired the hopeless with courage and by his constant presence in the midst of danger and infection... [Many] doubtless owe their lives to the care and treatment they received at his hands." Probably as a reward for his work in the yellow fever epidemic, Mudd was reassigned from the carpentry shop to a clerical job in the Provost Marshal's office, where he remained until his pardon.
The influence of his defense attorney, Thomas Ewing Jr., who was also influential in the President's administration, was one reason why Mudd was pardoned by Johnson on February 8, 1869. He was released from prison on March 8, 1869, and returned to his home in Maryland on March 20, 1869. On March 2, 1869, three weeks after he pardoned Mudd, Johnson also pardoned Spangler and Arnold.
When Mudd returned home, well-wishing friends and strangers, as well as inquiring newspaper reporters, besieged him. Mudd was very reluctant to talk to the press because he felt it had misquoted him in the past. He gave one interview to the "New York Herald" after his release but immediately regretted it and complained that the article had several factual errors and misrepresented his work during the yellow fever epidemic. On the whole, though, Mudd continued to enjoy the support of his friends and neighbors. He resumed his medical practice and slowly brought the family farm back to productivity.
In 1873, Spangler traveled to the Mudd farm, where Mudd and his wife welcomed him. Spangler lived with the Mudd family for about 18 months, earning his keep by doing carpentry, gardening, and other farm chores, until his death on February 7, 1875.
Mudd always had an interest in politics. In prison, he learned about political happenings by reading the newspapers that were sent to him. After his release, he again became active in community affairs. In 1874, he was elected chief officer of the local farmers association, the Bryantown Grange. In 1876, he was elected Vice President of the local Democratic Tilden-Hendricks presidential election committee. Tilden lost that year to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in a hotly-disputed election. The next year, Mudd ran as a Democratic candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates but was defeated by the popular Republican William Mitchell.
Mudd's ninth child, Mary Eleanor "Nettie" Mudd, was born in 1878.
In 1880, the Port Tobacco Times reported that Mudd's barn which contained almost 8000 lb. of tobacco, two horses, a wagon, and farm implements was destroyed by fire.
Mudd was just 49 years old when he died of pneumonia, on January 10, 1883, and was buried in the cemetery at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Bryantown, the same church in which he once met Booth.
The degree of Samuel Mudd's culpability has remained controversial ever since. Some, including Mudd's grandson Richard Mudd, claimed that Mudd was innocent of any wrongdoing and that he had merely been imprisoned for treating a man who came to his house late at night with a fractured leg. Over a century after the assassination, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both wrote letters to Richard Mudd in which they agreed that his grandfather had committed no crime. However, others, including authors Edward Steers, Jr. and James Swanson, assert evidence that Samuel Mudd visited Booth three times in the months before the failed kidnapping attempt. The first time was November 1864 when Booth, who was looking for help in his kidnapping plot, was directed to Mudd by agents of the Confederate Secret Service. In December, Booth again met with Mudd and spent the night at his farm. Later that December, Mudd went to Washington and introduced Booth to a Confederate agent whom he knew: John Surratt. Additionally, George Atzerodt testified that Booth sent supplies to Mudd's house in preparation for the kidnapping plan. Mudd lied to the authorities who came to his house after the assassination, claiming that he did not recognize the man who showed up on his doorstep in need of treatment and giving them false information about where Booth and Herold went. He also hid the monogrammed boot that he had cut off Booth's injured leg behind a panel in his attic, but the thorough search of Mudd's house soon revealed this further piece of evidence which was later used against him. One hypothesis is that Dr. Mudd was originally complicit in the kidnapping plot, likely as the person who the conspirators would have turned to for medical treatment in case Lincoln was injured, and that Booth thus remembered the doctor and went to his house to get help in the early hours of April 15.
Mudd's grandson, Richard Mudd, unsuccessfully tried to clear his grandfather's name from the stigma of aiding Booth. In 1951, he published "The Mudd Family of the United States", an encyclopedic two-volume history of the Mudd family in America, beginning with Thomas Mudd, who arrived from England in 1665. A second edition was published in 1969. Following his death in 2002, his papers, which detailed his attempts to clear his grandfather's name, were donated to Georgetown University's Lauinger Library. They are available to the public in the Special Collections Department.
Richard Mudd petitioned several successive presidents, receiving replies from Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Carter, while sympathetic, responded by stating that he had no authority under law to set aside the conviction; Reagan responded by stating that he had come to believe that Samuel Mudd was innocent of any wrongdoing. In 1992, Representatives Steny Hoyer and Thomas W. Ewing introduced House Bill 1885 to overturn the conviction, but it failed in committee. Mudd then turned to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, which recommended that the conviction be overturned on the basis that Mudd should have been tried by a civilian court. The recommendation was rejected by Acting Army Assistant Secretary William D. Clark.
Several other legal venues were attempted, ending in 2003 when the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case because the deadline for filing it had been missed.
St. Catharine, also known as the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Mudd's life was the subject of a 1936 John Ford-directed film "The Prisoner of Shark Island", based on a script by Nunnally Johnson. A radio adaptation of "The Prisoner of Shark Island" aired, as an episode of the radio series Lux Radio Theater, with Gary Cooper as Dr. Mudd, on May 2, 1938, in which significant dramatic license was used by introducing fictional characters and altering several of the known facts of the case for melodramatic expediency. For example, Fort Jefferson was never called "Shark Island."
Another production, with the same title, aired on the radio series Encore Theatre in 1946. Another film, "The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd", was made in 1980. It starred Dennis Weaver as Mudd. At the end, a written message appears incorrectly stating that President Carter gave Mudd a posthumous pardon. All of these productions espoused the point of view that Mudd was essentially innocent of any conspiracy.
Roger Mudd, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, television host and former CBS, NBC, and PBS news anchor is related to Samuel Mudd, but he is not a descendant, as has mistakenly been reported.
Samuel Mudd's life was also the subject of an episode of the TV western "Laramie", "Time of the Traitor" which aired in 1962.
On the episode "Swiss Diplomacy" on "The West Wing", the First Lady and cardiac surgeon, Dr. Abby Bartlet commented on the duty of a physician to treat an injured patient despite potential legal repercussions. She responded to Mudd's conviction: "So that's the way it goes. You set the leg."
Samuel Mudd's name is sometimes given as the origin of the phrase "your name is mud," as in, for example, the 2007 feature film "". However, according to an online etymology dictionary, the phrase has its earliest known recorded instance in 1823, ten years before Mudd's birth, and it is based on an obsolete sense of the word "mud" meaning "a stupid twaddling fellow." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28812 |
Secure Shell
Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Typical applications include remote command-line, login, and remote command execution, but any network service can be secured with SSH.
SSH provides a secure channel over an unsecured network by using a client–server architecture, connecting an SSH client application with an SSH server. The protocol specification distinguishes between two major versions, referred to as SSH-1 and SSH-2. The standard TCP port for SSH is 22. SSH is generally used to access Unix-like operating systems, but it can also be used on Microsoft Windows. Windows 10 uses OpenSSH as its default SSH client and SSH server.
Despite popular misconception, SSH is not an implementation of Telnet with cryptography provided by the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
SSH was designed as a replacement for Telnet and for unsecured remote shell protocols such as the Berkeley rsh and the related rlogin and rexec protocols. Those protocols send information, notably passwords, in plaintext, rendering them susceptible to interception and disclosure using packet analysis. The encryption used by SSH is intended to provide confidentiality and integrity of data over an unsecured network, such as the Internet, although files leaked by Edward Snowden indicate that the National Security Agency can sometimes decrypt SSH, allowing them to read, modify and selectively suppress the contents of SSH sessions.
SSH can also be run using SCTP rather than TCP as the connection oriented transport layer protocol.
The IANA has assigned TCP port 22, UDP port 22 and SCTP port 22 for this protocol.
SSH uses public-key cryptography to authenticate the remote computer and allow it to authenticate the user, if necessary. There are several ways to use SSH; one is to use automatically generated public-private key pairs to simply encrypt a network connection, and then use password authentication to log on.
Another is to use a manually generated public-private key pair to perform the authentication, allowing users or programs to log in without having to specify a password. In this scenario, anyone can produce a matching pair of different keys (public and private). The public key is placed on all computers that must allow access to the owner of the matching private key (the owner keeps the private key secret). While authentication is based on the private key, the key itself is never transferred through the network during authentication. SSH only verifies whether the same person offering the public key also owns the matching private key. In all versions of SSH it is important to verify unknown public keys, i.e. associate the public keys with identities, before accepting them as valid. Accepting an attacker's public key without validation will authorize an unauthorized attacker as a valid user.
On Unix-like systems, the list of authorized public keys is typically stored in the home directory of the user that is allowed to log in remotely, in the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. This file is respected by SSH only if it is not writable by anything apart from the owner and root. When the public key is present on the remote end and the matching private key is present on the local end, typing in the password is no longer required. However, for additional security the private key itself can be locked with a passphrase.
The private key can also be looked for in standard places, and its full path can be specified as a command line setting (the option "-i" for ssh). The ssh-keygen utility produces the public and private keys, always in pairs.
SSH also supports password-based authentication that is encrypted by automatically generated keys. In this case, the attacker could imitate the legitimate server side, ask for the password, and obtain it (man-in-the-middle attack). However, this is possible only if the two sides have never authenticated before, as SSH remembers the key that the server side previously used. The SSH client raises a warning before accepting the key of a new, previously unknown server. Password authentication can be disabled.
SSH is typically used to log into a remote machine and execute commands, but it also supports tunneling, forwarding TCP ports and X11 connections; it can transfer files using the associated SSH file transfer (SFTP) or secure copy (SCP) protocols. SSH uses the client-server model.
The standard TCP port 22 has been assigned for contacting SSH servers.
An SSH client program is typically used for establishing connections to an SSH daemon accepting remote connections. Both are commonly present on most modern operating systems, including macOS, most distributions of Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and OpenVMS. Notably, versions of Windows prior to Windows 10 version 1709 do not include SSH by default. Proprietary, freeware and open source (e.g. PuTTY, and the version of OpenSSH which is part of Cygwin) versions of various levels of complexity and completeness exist. File managers for UNIX-like systems (e.g. Konqueror) can use the FISH protocol to provide a split-pane GUI with drag-and-drop. The open source Windows program WinSCP provides similar file management (synchronization, copy, remote delete) capability using PuTTY as a back-end. Both WinSCP and PuTTY are available packaged to run directly off a USB drive, without requiring installation on the client machine. Setting up an SSH server in Windows typically involves enabling a feature in Settings app. In Windows 10 version 1709, an official Win32 port of OpenSSH is available.
SSH is important in cloud computing to solve connectivity problems, avoiding the security issues of exposing a cloud-based virtual machine directly on the Internet. An SSH tunnel can provide a secure path over the Internet, through a firewall to a virtual machine.
In 1995, Tatu Ylönen, a researcher at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, designed the first version of the protocol (now called SSH-1) prompted by a password-sniffing attack at his university network. The goal of SSH was to replace the earlier rlogin, TELNET, FTP and rsh protocols, which did not provide strong authentication nor guarantee confidentiality. Ylönen released his implementation as freeware in July 1995, and the tool quickly gained in popularity. Towards the end of 1995, the SSH user base had grown to 20,000 users in fifty countries.
In December 1995, Ylönen founded SSH Communications Security to market and develop SSH. The original version of the SSH software used various pieces of free software, such as GNU libgmp, but later versions released by SSH Communications Security evolved into increasingly proprietary software.
It was estimated that by the year 2000 the number of users had grown to 2 million.
"Secsh" was the official Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) name for the IETF working group responsible for version 2 of the SSH protocol. In 2006, a revised version of the protocol, SSH-2, was adopted as a standard. This version is incompatible with SSH-1. SSH-2 features both security and feature improvements over SSH-1. Better security, for example, comes through Diffie–Hellman key exchange and strong integrity checking via message authentication codes. New features of SSH-2 include the ability to run any number of shell sessions over a single SSH connection. Due to SSH-2's superiority and popularity over SSH-1, some implementations such as libssh (v0.8.0+), Lsh and Dropbear support only the SSH-2 protocol.
In January 2006, well after version 2.1 was established, RFC 4253 specified that an SSH server which supports both 2.0 and prior versions of SSH should identify its protoversion as 1.99. This is not an actual version but a method to identify backward compatibility.
In 1999, developers, wanting a free software version to be available, went back to the older 1.2.12 release of the original SSH program, which was the last released under an open source license. Björn Grönvall's OSSH was subsequently developed from this codebase. Shortly thereafter, OpenBSD developers forked Grönvall's code and did extensive work on it, creating OpenSSH, which shipped with the 2.6 release of OpenBSD. From this version, a "portability" branch was formed to port OpenSSH to other operating systems.
, OpenSSH was the single most popular SSH implementation, coming by default in a large number of operating systems. OSSH meanwhile has become obsolete. OpenSSH continues to be maintained and supports the SSH-2 protocol, having expunged SSH-1 support from the codebase with the OpenSSH 7.6 release.
SSH is a protocol that can be used for many applications across many platforms including most Unix variants (Linux, the BSDs including Apple's macOS, and Solaris), as well as Microsoft Windows. Some of the applications below may require features that are only available or compatible with specific SSH clients or servers. For example, using the SSH protocol to implement a VPN is possible, but presently only with the OpenSSH server and client implementation.
The Secure Shell protocols are used in several file transfer mechanisms.
The SSH-2 protocol has an internal architecture (defined in RFC 4251) with well-separated layers, namely:
This open architecture provides considerable flexibility, allowing the use of SSH for a variety of purposes beyond a secure shell. The functionality of the transport layer alone is comparable to Transport Layer Security (TLS); the user-authentication layer is highly extensible with custom authentication methods; and the connection layer provides the ability to multiplex many secondary sessions into a single SSH connection, a feature comparable to BEEP and not available in TLS.
In 1998, a vulnerability was described in SSH 1.5 which allowed the unauthorized insertion of content into an encrypted SSH stream due to insufficient data integrity protection from CRC-32 used in this version of the protocol. A fix known as SSH Compensation Attack Detector was introduced into most implementations. Many of these updated implementations contained a new integer overflow vulnerability that allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the SSH daemon, typically root.
In January 2001 a vulnerability was discovered that allows attackers to modify the last block of an IDEA-encrypted session. The same month, another vulnerability was discovered that allowed a malicious server to forward a client authentication to another server.
Since SSH-1 has inherent design flaws which make it vulnerable, it is now generally considered obsolete and should be avoided by explicitly disabling fallback to SSH-1. Most modern servers and clients support SSH-2.
In November 2008, a theoretical vulnerability was discovered for all versions of SSH which allowed recovery of up to 32 bits of plaintext from a block of ciphertext that was encrypted using what was then the standard default encryption mode, CBC. The most straightforward solution is to use CTR, counter mode, instead of CBC mode, since this renders SSH resistant to the attack.
On December 28, 2014 Der Spiegel published classified information leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden which suggests that the National Security Agency may be able to decrypt some SSH traffic. The technical details associated with such a process were not disclosed.
An analysis in 2017 of the hacking tools BothanSpy & Gyrfalcon suggested that the SSH protocol itself was not compromised.
The following RFC publications by the IETF "secsh" working group document SSH-2 as a proposed Internet standard.
It was later modified and expanded by the following publications.
In addition, the OpenSSH project includes several vendor protocol specifications/extensions: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28814 |
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" is a catchphrase that originated in 1975 during the first season of "NBC's Saturday Night" (now called "Saturday Night Live", or "SNL") and which mocked the weeks-long media reports of the impending death of Francisco Franco. It was one of the first catchphrases from the series to enter the general lexicon.
The death of Francisco Franco, Spanish Caudillo, during the first season of "NBC's Saturday Night" served as the source of the phrase. Franco lingered near death for weeks before dying. On slow news days, United States network television newscasters sometimes noted that Franco was still alive, or not yet dead. The imminent death of Franco was a headline story on NBC News for a number of weeks prior to his death on November 20, 1975.
After Franco's death, Chevy Chase, reader of the news on "NBC's Saturday Night"'s comedic news segment "Weekend Update", announced Franco's death and read a quotation from Richard Nixon: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United States. He earned worldwide respect for Spain through firmness and fairness." As an ironic counterpoint to this, a picture was displayed behind Chase, showing Franco giving the Roman salute alongside Adolf Hitler.
In subsequent weeks Chase developed the joke into a parody of the earlier news coverage of Franco's illness, treating his death as the top story. "This breaking news just in", Chase would announce – "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is "still" dead!" Occasionally, Chase would change the wording slightly in order to keep the joke fresh, e.g. "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still valiantly holding on in his fight to remain dead." The joke was sometimes combined with another running gag in which, rather than having a sign language interpreter visually presenting the news to aid the deaf, the show would provide assistance from Garrett Morris, "head of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing", whose "aid" involved cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting the news as Chase read it. The gag ran until early 1977, with occasional callbacks in later seasons.
The phrase has remained in use since Franco's death. James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column at OpinionJournal.com uses the phrase as a tag for newspaper headlines that indicate something is still happening when it should be obvious. On February 8, 2007, during Jack Cafferty's segment on CNN's "The Situation Room" on the day of the death of Anna Nicole Smith, he asked of CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer "Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead, Wolf?" It was also used now and then on "NBC News Overnight" in the early 1980s, and Keith Olbermann occasionally used it on "Countdown". In 2013, it experienced a brief resurgence in a different context, when it began appearing on social media a few days after the death of Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco.
"The Wall Street Journal" used the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead – And His Statues Are Next" on its front page March 2, 2009. The newspaper used it once again on its front page in the headline "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead – But for some not dead enough" on August 21, 2015 when it reported about critics calling to enforce a 2007 anti-Franco law in Madrid and to rename streets and plazas, after the last election had ended the 24-year reign of conservatives in the city council.
Although "SNL"s use is perhaps the most widely known, it is predated by the "'John Garfield Still Dead' syndrome," which originated as a result of extensive coverage in the wake of the actor John Garfield's death and funeral in 1952.
After a brief "in memoriam" during "SNL"s 40th Anniversary Special on February 15, 2015, Bill Murray ended the segment with the famous phrase which "just came in from Spain."
The phrase is listed in The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases.
Notes
Citations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28819 |
Sex worker
A sex worker is a person who is employed in the sex industry. The term is used in reference to all those in all areas of the sex industry, including those who provide direct sexual services as well as the staff and management of such industries. Some sex workers are paid to engage in sex acts or sexually explicit behavior which involves varying degrees of physical contact with clients (prostitutes and some but not all professional dominants); pornographic models and actors engage in sexually explicit behavior which is filmed or photographed. Phone sex operators have sexually-oriented conversations with clients, and may do verbal sexual roleplay.
Other sex workers are paid to engage in live sexual performance, such as webcam sex and performers in live sex shows. Some sex workers perform erotic dances and other acts for an audience. These include: striptease, go-go dancing, lap dancing, neo-burlesque, and peep shows. Sexual surrogates work with psychoanalysts to engage in sexual activity as part of therapy with their clients. Thus, although the term "sex worker" is sometimes viewed as a synonym or euphemism for "prostitute", it is more general. "Sex worker" can refer to individuals who do not directly engage in sexual activity such as pole dancers, sex toy testers, and strip club managers. Another example of sex workers that would not fall under the term "prostitute" would be an adult talent manager, who negotiates and secures pornographic roles for clients. There are also erotic photographers who shoot and edit for adult media and porn reviewers who watch and rate adult films.
Some people use the term "sex worker" to avoid invoking the stigma associated with the word "prostitute". Using the term "sex worker" rather than "prostitute" also allows more members of the sex industry to be represented and helps ensure that individuals who are actually prostitutes are not singled out and associated with the negative connotations of "prostitute." In addition, choosing to use the term "sex worker" rather than "prostitute" shows ownership over the individuals' career choice. Some argue that those who prefer the term "sex worker" wish to separate their occupation from their person. Describing someone as a sex worker recognizes that the individual may have many different facets, and are not necessarily defined by their job.
According to one view, sex work is different from sexual exploitation, or the forcing of a person to commit sexual acts, in that sex work is voluntary "and is seen as the commercial exchange of sex for money or goods". In an attempt to further clarify the broad term that "sex work" is, John E. Exner, an American psychologist, worked with his colleagues to create five distinct classes for categorizing sex workers. One scholarly article details the classes as follows: "specifically, the authors articulated Class I, or the upper class of the profession, consisting of call girls; Class II was referred to as the middle class, consisting of 'in-house girls' who typically work in an establishment on a commission basis; Class III, the lower middle class, were 'streetwalkers' whose fees and place of work fluctuate considerably; Class IV sex workers have been known as 'commuter housewives', and they are typically involved in sex work to supplement family income; and Class V consists of 'streetwalker addicts', or 'drugs-for-sex streetwalkers' who are considered the lower class of the profession."
The term "sex worker" was coined in 1978 by sex worker activist Carol Leigh. Its use became popularized after publication of the anthology, "Sex Work: Writings By Women In The Sex Industry" in 1987, edited by Frédérique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander. The term "sex worker" has since spread into much wider use, including in academic publications, by NGOs and labor unions, and by governmental and intergovernmental agencies, such as the World Health Organization. The term is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Dictionary.
The term is strongly opposed, however, by many who are morally opposed to the sex industry, such as social conservatives, anti-prostitution feminists, and other prohibitionists. Such groups view prostitution variously as a crime or as victimization, and see the term "sex work" as legitimizing criminal activity or exploitation as a type of labor.
Sex workers may be any gender and exchange sexual services or favors for money or other gifts. The motives of sex workers vary widely and can include debt, coercion, survival, or simply as a way to earn a living. Sexual empowerment is another possible reasons why people engage in sex work. One Canadian study found that a quarter of the sex workers interviewed started sex work because they found it "appealing". The flexibility to choose hours of work and ability to select their own client base may also contribute the appeal of sex work when compared to other service industry jobs. Sex work may also be a way to fund addiction. This line of work can be fueled by an individual's addiction to illegal substances before entering the industry or being introduced to these substances after entering the industry. These motives also align with varying climates surrounding sex work in different communities and cultures. In some cases, sex work is linked to tourism. Sex work can take the form of prostitution, stripping or lap dancing, performance in pornography, phone or internet sex, or any other exchange of sexual services for financial or material gain. The variety in the tasks encompassed by sex work lead to a large range in both severity and nature of risks that sex workers face in their occupations. Sex workers can act independently as individuals, work for a company or corporation, or work as part of a brothel. All of the above can be undertaken either by free choice or by coercion, or, as some argue, along a continuum between conflict and agency. Sex workers may also be hired to be companions on a trip or to perform sexual services within the context of a trip; either of these can be voluntary or forced labor. Transgender people are more likely than the general population to do sex work, particularly trans women and trans people of color. In a study of female Indian sex workers, illiteracy and lower social status were more prevalent than among the general female population.
Many studies struggle to gain demographic information about the prevalence of sex work, as many countries or cities have laws prohibiting prostitution or other sex work. In addition, sex trafficking, or forced sex work, is also difficult to quantify due to its underground and covert nature. In addition, finding a representative sample of sex workers in a given city can be nearly impossible because the size of the population itself is unknown. Maintaining privacy and confidentiality in research is also difficult because many sex workers may face prosecution and other consequences if their identities are revealed.
While demographic characteristics of sex workers vary by region and are hard to measure, some studies have attempted to estimate the composition of the sex work communities in various places. For example, one study of sex work in Tijuana, Mexico found that the majority of sex workers there are young, female and heterosexual. Many of these studies attempt to use smaller samples of sex workers and pimps in order to extrapolate about larger populations of sex workers. One report on the underground sex trade in the United States used known data on the illegal drug and weapon trades and interviews with sex workers and pimps in order to draw conclusions about the number of sex workers in eight American cities. However, studies like this one can come under scrutiny for a perceived emphasis on the activities and perspectives of pimps and other sex work managers rather than those of sex work providers themselves. Another criticism is that sex trafficking may not be adequately assessed in its relation to sex work in these studies.
Sex workers may be stereotyped as deviant, hypersexual, sexually risky, and substance abusive. Sex workers cope with this stigmatization, or othering, in ways such as hiding their occupation from non-sex workers, social withdrawal, and creating a false self to perform at work. Sex-work-related stigma perpetuates rape culture and leads to slut-shaming.
Globally, sex workers encounter barriers in accessing health care, legislation, legal resources, and labor rights. In a study of U.S sex workers, 43% of interview participants reported exposure to intimate-partner violence, physical violence, armed physical violence, and sexual violence in the forms of sexual coercion and rape. In this same study, a sex worker reported, "in this lifestyle nothing’s safe". Sex workers experience police abuse as well. Police use their authority to intimidate sex workers. Police officers have been reported to exploit street-based sex workers’ fear of incarceration to force them to have sex with the police without payment, sometimes still arresting them after the coerced sex. Police also compromise sex workers safety, often holding sex workers responsible for crimes acted against them because of the stigma attached to their occupation, also known as victim-blaming. The effects of whorephobia impacts sex workers’ agency, safety, and mental health. There is growth in advocacy organizations to reduce and erase prejudice and stigma against sex work, and to provide more support and resources for sex workers.
Depending on local law, sex workers' activities may be regulated, controlled, tolerated, or prohibited. In most countries, even those where sex work is legal, sex workers may be stigmatized and marginalized, which may prevent them from seeking legal redress for discrimination (e.g., racial discrimination by a strip club owner), non-payment by a client, assault or rape. Sex worker advocates have identified this as whorephobia.
The legality of different types of sex work varies within and between regions of the world. For example, while pornography is legal in the United States, prostitution is illegal in most parts of the US. However, in other regions of the world, both pornography and prostitution are illegal; in others, both are legal. One example of a country in which pornography, prostitution, and all professions encompassed under the umbrella of sex work are all legal is New Zealand. Under the Prostitution Reform Act of New Zealand, laws and regulations have been put into place in order to ensure the safety and protection of its sex workers. For example, since the implementation of the Prostitution Reform Act, "any person seeking to open a larger brothel, where more than four sex workers will be working requires a Brothel Operators Certificate, which certifies them as a suitable person to exercise control over sex workers in the workplace. [In addition,] sex workers operating in managed premises have access to labour rights and human rights protection and can pursue claims before the courts, like any other worker or employee." In regions where sex work is illegal, advocates for sex workers' rights argue that the covert nature of illegal prostitution is a barrier to access to legal resources. However, some who oppose the legalization of prostitution argue that sex work is inherently exploitative and can never be legalized or practiced in a way that respects the rights of those who perform it.
There are many arguments against legalizing prostitution/sex work. In one study, women involved in sex work were interviewed and asked if they thought it should be made legal. They answered that they thought it should not, as it would put women at higher risk from violent customers if it were considered legitimate work, and they would not want their friends or family entering the sex industry to earn money. Another argument is that legalizing sex work would increase the demand for it, and women should not be treated as sexual merchandise. A study showed that in countries that have legalized prostitution, there was an increase in child prostitution. An argument against legalizing sex work is to keep children from being involved in this industry. The studies also showed that legalizing sex work lead to an increase in sex trafficking, which is another reason people give for making sex work illegal.
There are also arguments for legalizing prostitution/sex work. One major argument for legalizing prostitution is that women should have a right to do what they want with their own bodies. The government should not have a say in what they do for work, and if they want to sell their bodies it is their own decision. Another common argument for legalizing prostitution is that enforcing prostitution laws is a waste of money. This is because prostitution has always, and will continue to persist despite whatever laws and regulations are implemented against it. In arguing for the decriminalization of sex work, the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands expanded upon this argument in court when stating that, "prostitution has existed for a long time and will continue to do so…Prohibition is not the way to proceed…One should allow for voluntary prostitution. The authorities can then regulate prostitution, [and] it can become healthy, safe, transparent, and cleansed from criminal side-effects." People who wish to legalize prostitution do not see enforcing laws against sex work as effective and think the money is better spent elsewhere. Many people also argue that legalization of prostitution will lead to less harm for the sex workers. They argue that the decriminalization of sex work will decrease the exploitation of sex workers by third parties such as pimps and managers. A final argument for the legalization of sex work is that prostitution laws are unconstitutional. Some argue that these laws go against people's rights to free speech, privacy, etc.
Risk reduction in sex work is a highly debated topic. "Abolitionism" and "nonabolitionism" or "empowerment" are regarded as opposing ways in which risk reduction is approached. While abolitionism would call for an end to all sex work, empowerment would encourage the formation of networks among sex workers and enable them to prevent STIs and other health risks by communicating with each other. Both approaches aim to reduce rates of disease and other negative effects of sex work.
In addition, sex workers themselves have disputed the dichotomous nature of abolitionism and nonabolitionism, advocating instead a focus on sex workers' rights. In 1999, the Network of Sex Worker Projects claimed that "Historically, anti-trafficking measures have been more concerned with protecting 'innocent' women from becoming prostitutes than with ensuring the human rights of those in the sex industry. Penelope Saunders, a sex workers' rights advocate, claims that the sex workers' rights approach considers more of the historical context of sex work than either abolitionism or empowerment. In addition, Jo Doezema has written that the dichotomy of the voluntary and forced approaches to sex work has served to deny sex workers agency.
Sex workers are unlikely to disclose their work to healthcare providers. This can be due to embarrassment, fear of disapproval, or a disbelief that sex work can have effects on their health. The criminalization of sex work in many places can also lead to a reluctance to disclose for fear of being turned in for illegal activities. There are very few legal protections for sex workers due to criminalization; thus, in many cases, a sex worker reporting violence to a healthcare provider may not be able to take legal action against their aggressor.
Health risks of sex work relate primarily to sexually transmitted infections and to drug use. In one study, nearly 40% of sex workers who visited a health center reported illegal drug use. In general, transgender women sex workers have a higher risk of contracting HIV than male and female sex workers and transgender women who are not sex workers.
The reason transgender women are at higher risk for developing HIV is their combination of risk factors. They face biological, personal, relational, and structural risks that all increase their chances of getting HIV. Biological factors include incorrect condom usage because of erectile dysfunction from hormones taken to become more feminine and receptive anal intercourse without a condom which is a high risk for developing HIV. Personal factors include mental health issues that lead to increased sexual risk, such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse provoked through lack of support, violence, etc. Structural risks include involvement in sex work being linked to poverty, substance abuse, and other factors that are more prevalent in transgender women based on their tendency to be socially marginalized and not accepted for challenging gender norms. The largest risk for HIV is unprotected sex with male partners, and studies have been emerging that show men who have sex with transgender women are more likely to use drugs than men that do not.
Condom use is one way to mitigate the risk of contracting an STI. However, negotiating condom use with one's clients and partners is often an obstacle to practicing safer sex. While there is not much data on rates of violence against sex workers, many sex workers do not use condoms due to the fear of resistance and violence from clients. Some countries also have laws prohibiting condom possession; this reduces the likelihood that sex workers will use condoms. Increased organization and networking among sex workers has been shown to increase condom use by increasing access to and education about STI prevention. Brothels with strong workplace health practices, including the availability of condoms, have also increased condom use among their workers.
Health Concerns of Exotic Dancers"Mental Health and Stigma"In order to protect themselves from the stigma of sex work, many dancers resort to othering themselves. Othering involves constructing oneself as superior to one's peers, and the dancer persona provides an internal boundary that separates the "authentic" from the stripper self. This practice creates a lot of stress for the dancers, in turn leading many to resort to using drugs and alcohol to cope. Since it is so widespread, the use of drugs has become normalized in the exotic dance scene.Despite this normalization, passing as nonusers, or covering as users of less maligned drugs, is necessary. This is because strippers concurrently attribute a strong moral constitution to those that resist the drug atmosphere; it is a testament to personal strength and will power. It is also an occasion for dancers to "other" fellow strippers. Valorizing resistance to the drug space discursively positions "good" strippers against such a drug locale and indicates why dancers are motivated to closet hard drug use.Stigma causes strippers to hide their lifestyles from friends and family alienating themselves from a support system. Further, the stress of trying to hide their lifestyles from others due to fear of scrutiny affects the mental health of dancers. Stigma is a difficult area to address because it is more abstract, but it would be helpful to work toward normalizing sex work as a valid way of making a living. This normalization of sex work would relieve the stress many dancers experience increasing the likelihood that they will be open about their work. Being open will allow them access to a viable support system and reduce the othering and drug use so rampant in the sex industry.
Forced sex work is when an individual enters into any sex trade due to coercion rather than by choice. Forced sex work increases the likelihood that a sex worker will contract HIV/AIDS or another sexually transmitted infection, particularly when an individual enters sex work before the age of 18. In addition, even when sex workers do consent to certain sex acts, they are often forced or coerced into others (often anal intercourse) by clients. Sex workers may also experience strong resistance to condom use by their clients, which may extend into a lack of consent by the worker to any sexual act performed in the encounter; this risk is magnified when sex workers are trafficked or forced into sex work.
Forced sex work often involves deception - workers are told that they can make a living and are then not allowed to leave. This deception can cause ill effects on the mental health of many sex workers. In addition, an assessment of studies estimates that between 40% and 70% of sex workers face violence within a year. Currently, there is little support for migrant workers in many countries, including those who have been trafficked to a location for sex.
Sex worker's rights advocates argue that sex workers should have the same basic human and labor rights as other working people. For example, the Canadian Guild for Erotic Labour calls for the legalization of sex work, the elimination of state regulations that are more repressive than those imposed on other workers and businesses, the right to recognition and protection under labour and employment laws, the right to form and join professional associations or unions, and the right to legally cross borders to work. Advocates also want to see changes in legal practices involving sex work, the Red Umbrella Project has pushed for the decriminalization of condoms and changes to New York's sex workers diversion program. Advocacy for the interests of sex workers can come from a variety of sources, including non-governmental organizations, labor rights organizations, governments, or sex workers themselves. Each year in London The Sexual Freedom Awards is held to honor the most notable advocates and pioneers of sexual freedom and sex workers' rights in the UK, where sex work is essentially legal.
The unionization of sex workers is a recent development. The first organization within the contemporary sex workers' rights movement was Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE), founded in 1973 in San Francisco, California. Many organizations in Western countries were established in the decade after the founding of COYOTE. Currently, a small number of sex worker unions exist worldwide. One of the largest is the International Union of Sex Workers, headquartered in the United Kingdom. The IUSW advocates for the rights of all sex workers, whether they chose freely or were coerced to enter the trade, and promotes policies that benefit the interests of sex workers both in the UK and abroad. Many regions are home to sex worker unions, including Latin America, Brazil, Canada, Europe, and Africa.
In unionizing, many sex workers face issues relating to communication and to the legality of sex work. Because sex work is illegal in many places where they wish to organize, it is difficult to communicate with other sex workers in order to organize. There is also concern with the legitimacy of sex work as a career and an activity that merits formal organizing, largely because of the sexism often present in sex work and the devaluation of sex work as not comparable to other paid labor and employment.
A factor affecting the unionization of sex work is that many sex workers belong to populations that historically have not had a strong representation in labor unions. While this unionization can be viewed as a way of empowering sex workers and granting them agency within their profession, it is also criticized as implicitly lending its approval to sexism and power imbalances already present in sex work. Unionization also implies a submission to or operation within the systems of capitalism, which is of concern to some feminists.
"Independent contractor vs Employee"Performers in general are problematic to categorize because they often exercise a high level of control over their work product, one characteristic of an independent contractor. Additionally, their work can be artistic in nature and often done on a freelance basis. Often, the work of performers does not possess the obvious attributes of employees such as regular working hours, places or duties. Consequently, employers misclassify them because they are unsure of their workers' status, or they purposely misclassify them to take advantage of independent contractors' low costs. Exotic dance clubs are one such employer that purposely misclassify their performers as independent contractors.
There are additional hurdles in terms of self-esteem and commitment to unionize. On the most basic level, dancers themselves must have the desire to unionize for collective action. For those who wish not to conform to group activity or want to remain independent, a union may seem as controlling as club management since joining a union would obligate them to pay dues and abide by decisions made through majority vote, with or without their personal approval.
In the "Lusty Lady" case study, this strip club was the first all-woman-managed club to successfully unionize in 1996. Some of the working conditions they were able to address included "protest[ing] racist hiring practices, customers being allowed to videotape dancers without their consent via one-way mirrors, inconsistent disciplinary policies, lack of health benefits, and an overall dearth of job security". Unionizing exotic dancers can certainly bring better work conditions and fair pay, but it is difficult to do at times because of their dubious employee categorization. Also, as is the case with many other unions, dancers are often reluctant to join them. This reluctance can be due to many factors, ranging from the cost of joining a union to the dancers believing they do not need union support because they will not be exotic dancers for a long enough period of time to justify joining a union.
NGOs often play a large role in outreach to sex workers, particularly in HIV and STI prevention efforts. However, NGO outreach to sex workers for HIV prevention is sometimes less coordinated and organized than similar HIV prevention programs targeted at different groups (such as men who have sex with men). This lack of organization may be due to the legal status of prostitution and other sex work in the country in question; in China, many sex work and drug abuse NGOs do not formally register with the government and thus run many of their programs on a small scale and discreetly.
While some NGOs have increased their programming to improve conditions within the context of sex work, these programs are criticized at times due to their failure to dismantle the oppressive structures of prostitution, particularly forced trafficking. Some scholars believe that advocating for rights within the institution of prostitution is not enough; rather, programs that seek to empower sex workers must empower them to leave sex work as well as improve their rights within the context of sex work. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28822 |
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.
Stéphane Mallarmé was born in Paris. He was a boarder at the "Pensionnat des Frères des écoles chrétiennes à Passy" between 6 or 9 October 1852 and March 1855. He worked as an English teacher and spent much of his life in relative poverty but was famed for his "salons", occasional gatherings of intellectuals at his house on the rue de Rome for discussions of poetry, art and philosophy. The group became known as "les Mardistes," because they met on Tuesdays (in French, "mardi"), and through it Mallarmé exerted considerable influence on the work of a generation of writers. For many years, those sessions, where Mallarmé held court as judge, jester, and king, were considered the heart of Paris intellectual life. Regular visitors included W.B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Valéry, Stefan George, Paul Verlaine, and many others.
Along with other members of "La Revue Blanche" such as Jules Renard, Julien Benda and Ioannis Psycharis, Mallarmé was a Dreyfusard.
On 10 August 1863, he married Maria Christina Gerhard. Their daughter, (Stéphanie Françoise) Geneviève Mallarmé, was born on 19 November 1864. Mallarmé died in Valvins (present-day Vulaines-sur-Seine) September 9, 1898.
Mallarmé's earlier work owes a great deal to the style of Charles Baudelaire who was recognised as the forerunner of literary Symbolism. Mallarmé's later "fin de siècle" style, on the other hand, anticipates many of the fusions between poetry and the other arts that were to blossom in the next century. Most of this later work explored the relationship between content and form, between the text and the arrangement of words and spaces on the page. This is particularly evident in his last major poem, "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard" ('A roll of the dice will never abolish chance') of 1897.
Some consider Mallarmé one of the French poets most difficult to translate into English. The difficulty is due in part to the complex, multilayered nature of much of his work, but also to the important role that the sound of the words, rather than their meaning, plays in his poetry. When recited in French, his poems allow alternative meanings which are not evident on reading the work on the page. For example, Mallarmé's "Sonnet en '-yx"' opens with the phrase "ses purs ongles" ('her pure nails'), whose first syllables when spoken aloud sound very similar to the words "c'est pur son" ('it's pure sound'). Indeed, the 'pure sound' aspect of his poetry has been the subject of musical analysis and has inspired musical compositions. These phonetic ambiguities are very difficult to reproduce in a translation which must be faithful to the meaning of the words.
Mallarmé's poetry has been the inspiration for several musical pieces, notably Claude Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" (1894), a free interpretation of Mallarmé's poem "L'après-midi d'un faune" (1876), which creates powerful impressions by the use of striking but isolated phrases. Maurice Ravel set Mallarmé's poetry to music in "Trois poèmes de Mallarmé" (1913). Other composers to use his poetry in song include Darius Milhaud ("Chansons bas de Stéphane Mallarmé", 1917) and Pierre Boulez ("Pli selon pli", 1957–62).
Man Ray's last film, entitled "Les Mystères du Château de Dé (The Mystery of the Chateau of Dice)" (1929), was greatly influenced by Mallarmé's work, prominently featuring the line "A roll of the dice will never abolish chance".
Mallarmé is referred to extensively in the latter section of Joris-Karl Huysmans' "À rebours", where Des Esseintes describes his fervour-infused enthusiasm for the poet: "These were Mallarmé's masterpieces and also ranked among the masterpieces of prose poetry, for they combined a style so magnificently that in itself it was as soothing as a melancholy incantation, an intoxicating melody, with irresistibly suggestive thoughts, the soul-throbs of a sensitive artist whose quivering nerves vibrate with an intensity that fills you with a painful ecstasy." [p. 198, Robert Baldick translation]
The critic and translator Barbara Johnson has emphasized Mallarmé's influence on twentieth-century French criticism and theory: "It was largely by learning the lesson of Mallarmé that critics like Roland Barthes came to speak of 'the death of the author' in the making of literature. Rather than seeing the text as the emanation of an individual author's intentions, structuralists and deconstructors followed the paths and patterns of the linguistic signifier, paying new attention to syntax, spacing, intertextuality, sound, semantics, etymology, and even individual letters. The theoretical styles of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Maurice Blanchot, and especially Jacques Lacan also owe a great deal to Mallarmé's 'critical poem.'"
It has been suggested that "much of Mallarmé's work influenced the conception of hypertext, with his purposeful use of blank space and careful placement of words on the page, allowing multiple non-linear readings of the text. This becomes very apparent in his work "Un coup de dés"."
On the publishing of "Un Coup de Dés" and its mishaps after the death of Mallarmé, consult the notes and commentary of for his edition of the complete works of Mallarmé, Volume 1, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard 1998. To delve more deeply, consult "Igitur, Divagations, Un Coup de Dés," edited by Bertrand Marchal with a preface by Yves Bonnefoy, nfr Poésie/Gallimard.
In 1990, Greenhouse Review Press published D. J. Waldie's American translation of "Un Coup de Dés" in a letterpress edition of 60 copies, its typography and format based on examination of the final (or near final) corrected proofs of the poem in the collection of Harvard's Houghton Library.
Prior to 2004, "Un Coup de Dés" was never published in the typography and format conceived by Mallarmé. In 2004, 90 copies on vellum of a new edition were published by Michel Pierson et Ptyx. This edition reconstructs the typography originally designed by Mallarmé for the projected Vollard edition in 1897 and which was abandoned after the sudden death of the author in 1898. All the pages are printed in the format (38 cm by 28 cm) and in the typography chosen by the author. The reconstruction has been made from the proofs which are kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, taking into account the written corrections and wishes of Mallarmé and correcting certain errors on the part of the printers Firmin-Didot.
A copy of this new edition can be consulted in the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand. Copies have been acquired by the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques-Doucet and University of California - Irvine, as well as by private collectors. A copy has been placed in the Museum Stéphane Mallarmé at Vulaines-sur-Seine, Valvins, where Mallarmé lived and died and where, according to Paul Valéry, he made his final corrections on the proofs prior to the projected printing of the poem.
The poet and visual artist Marcel Broodthaers created a purely graphical version of "Un coup de Dés", using Mallarmé's typographical layout but with the words replaced by black bars.
In 2012, the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux published "The Number and the Siren", a rigorous attempt at 'deciphering' the poem on the basis of a unique interpretation of the phrase 'the unique Number, which cannot be another.'
In 2015, Wave Books published "A Roll of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance", a definitive dual-language edition of the poem, translated by Robert Bononno and Jeff Clark (designer). Readers may also consider Henry Weinfield's translation (in dual-language edition) to merit consideration as "definitive"—or, indeed, each generation will find its own definitive translation.
In 2018, Apple Pie Editions published "un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard: translations" by Eric Zboya, an English edition that transforms the poem not only through erasure, but through graphic imaging software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28824 |
Submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. It is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine and the wet sub. Submarines are referred to as "boats" rather than "ships" irrespective of their size.
Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, and they were adopted by several navies. Submarines were first widely used during World War I (1914–1918), and are now used in many navies large and small. Military uses include attacking enemy surface ships (merchant and military), or other submarines, aircraft carrier protection, blockade running, ballistic missile submarines as part of a nuclear strike force, reconnaissance, conventional land attack (for example using a cruise missile), and covert insertion of special forces. Civilian uses for submarines include marine science, salvage, exploration and facility inspection and maintenance. Submarines can also be modified to perform more specialized functions such as search-and-rescue missions or undersea cable repair. Submarines are also used in tourism and undersea archaeology.
Most large submarines consist of a cylindrical body with hemispherical (or conical) ends and a vertical structure, usually located amidships, which houses communications and sensing devices as well as periscopes. In modern submarines, this structure is the "sail" in American usage and "fin" in European usage. A "conning tower" was a feature of earlier designs: a separate pressure hull above the main body of the boat that allowed the use of shorter periscopes. There is a propeller (or pump jet) at the rear, and various hydrodynamic control fins. Smaller, deep-diving and specialty submarines may deviate significantly from this traditional layout. Submarines use diving planes and also change the amount of water and air in ballast tanks to change buoyancy for submerging and surfacing.
Submarines have one of the widest ranges of types and capabilities of any vessel. They range from small autonomous examples and one- or two-person subs that operate for a few hours to vessels that can remain submerged for six months—such as the Russian , the biggest submarines ever built. Submarines can work at greater depths than are survivable or practical for human divers. Modern deep-diving submarines derive from the bathyscaphe, which in turn evolved from the diving bell.
Whereas the principal meaning of "submarine" is an armed, submersible warship, the more general meaning is for any type of submersible craft. The definition as of 1899 was for any type of "submarine boat". By naval tradition, submarines are still usually referred to as "boats" rather than as "ships", regardless of their size. In other navies with a history of large submarine fleets they are also "boats"; in German it is an or (under-sea boat) and in Russian it is a (underwater boat). Although referred to informally as "boats", U.S. submarines employ the designation USS (United States Ship) at the beginning of their names, such as . In the Royal Navy, submarines continue to be referred to officially as "boats", despite their "Her Majesty's Ship" designations.
According to a report in "Opusculum Taisnieri" published in 1562:
In 1578, the English mathematician William Bourne recorded in his book "Inventions or Devises" one of the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle. A few years later the Scottish mathematician and theologian John Napier wrote in his "Secret Inventions" (1596) that "These inventions besides devises of sayling under water with divers, other devises and strategems for harming of the enemyes by the Grace of God and worke of expert Craftsmen I hope to perform." It's unclear whether he ever carried out his idea.
The first submersible of whose construction there exists reliable information was designed and built in 1620 by Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England. It was propelled by means of oars.
By the mid-18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England. In 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion. His design used leather bags that could fill with water to submerge the craft. A mechanism was used to twist the water out of the bags and cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemen's Magazine reported that a similar design had initially been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. Further design improvement stagnated for over a century, until application of new technologies for propulsion and stability.
The first military submersible was (1775), a hand-powered acorn-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single person. It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion.
In 1800, France built a human-powered submarine designed by American Robert Fulton, . The French eventually gave up on the experiment in 1804, as did the British when they later considered Fulton's submarine design.
In 1864, late in the American Civil War, the Confederate navy's became the first military submarine to sink an enemy vessel, the Union sloop-of-war . In the aftermath of its successful attack against the ship, "H. L. Hunley" also sank, possibly because it was too close to its own exploding torpedo.
In 1866, was the first submarine to successfully dive, cruise underwater, and resurface under the control of the crew. The design by German American Julius H. Kroehl (in German, "Kröhl") incorporated elements that are still used in modern submarines.
In 1866, was built at the request of the Chilean government, by Karl Flach, a German engineer and immigrant. It was the fifth submarine built in the world and, along with a second submarine, was intended to defend the port of Valparaiso against attack by the Spanish Navy during the Chincha Islands War.
The first submarine not relying on human power for propulsion was the French ("Diver"), launched in 1863, which used compressed air at . Narcís Monturiol designed the first air-independent and combustion-powered submarine, , which was launched in Barcelona, Spain in 1864.
The submarine became a potentially viable weapon with the development of the Whitehead torpedo, designed in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead, the first practical self-propelled or 'locomotive' torpedo. The spar torpedo that had been developed earlier by the Confederate States Navy was considered to be impracticable, as it was believed to have sunk both its intended target, and probably "H. L. Hunley", the submarine that deployed it. In 1878, John Philip Holland demonstrated the Holland I prototype.
Discussions between the English clergyman and inventor George Garrett and the Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt led to the first practical steam-powered submarines, armed with torpedoes and ready for military use. The first was "Nordenfelt I", a 56-tonne, vessel similar to Garrett's ill-fated (1879), with a range of , armed with a single torpedo, in 1885.
A reliable means of propulsion for the submerged vessel was only made possible in the 1880s with the advent of the necessary electric battery technology. The first electrically powered boats were built by Isaac Peral y Caballero in Spain (who built ), Dupuy de Lôme (who built ) and Gustave Zédé (who built "Sirène") in France, and James Franklin Waddington (who built "Porpoise") in England. Peral's design featured torpedoes and other systems that later became standard in submarines.
Submarines were not put into service for any widespread or routine use by navies until the early 1900s. This era marked a pivotal time in submarine development, and several important technologies appeared. A number of nations built and used submarines. Diesel electric propulsion became the dominant power system and equipment such as the periscope became standardized. Countries conducted many experiments on effective tactics and weapons for submarines, which led to their large impact in World War I.
The Irish inventor John Philip Holland built a model submarine in 1876 and a full-scale version in 1878, which were followed by a number of unsuccessful ones. In 1896 he designed the Holland Type VI submarine, which used internal combustion engine power on the surface and electric battery power underwater. Launched on 17 May 1897 at Navy Lt. Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey, "Holland VI" was purchased by the United States Navy on 11 April 1900, becoming the Navy's first commissioned submarine, christened .
Commissioned in June 1900, the French steam and electric employed the now typical double-hull design, with a pressure hull inside the outer shell. These 200-ton ships had a range of over underwater. The French submarine "Aigrette" in 1904 further improved the concept by using a diesel rather than a gasoline engine for surface power. Large numbers of these submarines were built, with seventy-six completed before 1914.
The Royal Navy commissioned five s from Vickers, Barrow-in-Furness, under licence from the Holland Torpedo Boat Company from 1901 to 1903. Construction of the boats took longer than anticipated, with the first only ready for a diving trial at sea on 6 April 1902. Although the design had been purchased entirely from the US company, the actual design used was an untested improvement to the original Holland design using a new petrol engine.
These types of submarines were first used during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. Due to the blockade at Port Arthur, the Russians sent their submarines to Vladivostok, where by 1 January 1905 there were seven boats, enough to create the world's first "operational submarine fleet". The new submarine fleet began patrols on 14 February, usually lasting for about 24 hours each. The first confrontation with Japanese warships occurred on 29 April 1905 when the Russian submarine "Som" was fired upon by Japanese torpedo boats, but then withdrew.
Military submarines first made a significant impact in World War I. Forces such as the U-boats of Germany saw action in the First Battle of the Atlantic, and were responsible for sinking , which was sunk as a result of unrestricted submarine warfare and is often cited among the reasons for the entry of the United States into the war.
At the outbreak of the war, Germany had only twenty submarines immediately available for combat, although these included vessels of the diesel-engined "U-19" class, which had a sufficient range of and speed of to allow them to operate effectively around the entire British coast. By contrast the Royal Navy had a total of 74 submarines, though of mixed effectiveness. In August 1914, a flotilla of ten U-boats sailed from their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea in the first submarine war patrol in history.
The U-boats' ability to function as practical war machines relied on new tactics, their numbers, and submarine technologies such as combination diesel-electric power system developed in the preceding years. More submersibles than true submarines, U-boats operated primarily on the surface using regular engines, submerging occasionally to attack under battery power. They were roughly triangular in cross-section, with a distinct keel to control rolling while surfaced, and a distinct bow. During World War I more than 5,000 Allied ships were sunk by U-boats.
The British tried to catch up to the Germans in terms of submarine technology with the creation of the K-class submarines. However, these were extremely large and often collided with each other forcing the British to scrap the K-class design shortly after the war.
During World War II, Germany used submarines to devastating effect in the Battle of the Atlantic, where it attempted to cut Britain's supply routes by sinking more merchant ships than Britain could replace. (Shipping was vital to supply Britain's population with food, industry with raw material, and armed forces with fuel and armaments.) While U-boats destroyed a significant number of ships, the strategy ultimately failed. Although the U-boats had been updated in the interwar years, the major innovation was improved communications, encrypted using the famous Enigma cipher machine. This allowed for mass-attack naval tactics ("Rudeltaktik", commonly known as "wolfpack"), but was also ultimately the U-boats' downfall. By the end of the war, almost 3,000 Allied ships (175 warships, 2,825 merchantmen) had been sunk by U-boats. Although successful early in the war, ultimately Germany's U-boat fleet suffered heavy casualties, losing 793 U-boats and about 28,000 submariners out of 41,000, a casualty rate of about 70%.
The Imperial Japanese Navy operated the most varied fleet of submarines of any navy, including "Kaiten" crewed torpedoes, midget submarines ( and es), medium-range submarines, purpose-built supply submarines and long-range fleet submarines. They also had submarines with the highest submerged speeds during World War II (s) and submarines that could carry multiple aircraft (s). They were also equipped with one of the most advanced torpedoes of the conflict, the oxygen-propelled Type 95. Nevertheless, despite their technical prowess, Japan chose to use its submarines for fleet warfare, and consequently were relatively unsuccessful, as warships were fast, maneuverable and well-defended compared to merchant ships.
The submarine force was the most effective anti-ship weapon in the American arsenal. Submarines, though only about 2 percent of the U.S. Navy, destroyed over 30 percent of the Japanese Navy, including 8 aircraft carriers, 1 battleship and 11 cruisers. US submarines also destroyed over 60 percent of the Japanese merchant fleet, crippling Japan's ability to supply its military forces and industrial war effort. Allied submarines in the Pacific War destroyed more Japanese shipping than all other weapons combined. This feat was considerably aided by the Imperial Japanese Navy's failure to provide adequate escort forces for the nation's merchant fleet.
During World War II, 314 submarines served in the US Navy, of which nearly 260 were deployed to the Pacific. When the Japanese attacked Hawaii in December 1941, 111 boats were in commission; 203 submarines from the , , and es were commissioned during the war. During the war, 52 US submarines were lost to all causes, with 48 directly due to hostilities. US submarines sank 1,560 enemy vessels, a total tonnage of 5.3 million tons (55% of the total sunk).
The Royal Navy Submarine Service was used primarily in the classic Axis blockade. Its major operating areas were around Norway, in the Mediterranean (against the Axis supply routes to North Africa), and in the Far East. In that war, British submarines sank 2 million tons of enemy shipping and 57 major warships, the latter including 35 submarines. Among these is the only documented instance of a submarine sinking another submarine while both were submerged. This occurred when engaged ; the "Venturer" crew manually computed a successful firing solution against a three-dimensionally maneuvering target using techniques which became the basis of modern torpedo computer targeting systems. Seventy-four British submarines were lost, the majority, forty-two, in the Mediterranean.
The first launch of a cruise missile (SSM-N-8 Regulus) from a submarine occurred in July 1953, from the deck of , a World War II fleet boat modified to carry the missile with a nuclear warhead. "Tunny" and its sister boat, , were the United States' first nuclear deterrent patrol submarines. In the 1950s, nuclear power partially replaced diesel-electric propulsion. Equipment was also developed to extract oxygen from sea water. These two innovations gave submarines the ability to remain submerged for weeks or months. Most of the naval submarines built since that time in the US, the Soviet Union/Russian Federation, Britain, and France have been powered by nuclear reactors.
In 1959–1960, the first ballistic missile submarines were put into service by both the United States () and the Soviet Union () as part of the Cold War nuclear deterrent strategy.
During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union maintained large submarine fleets that engaged in cat-and-mouse games. The Soviet Union lost at least four submarines during this period: was lost in 1968 (a part of which the CIA retrieved from the ocean floor with the Howard Hughes-designed ship "Glomar Explorer"), in 1970, in 1986, and in 1989 (which held a depth record among military submarines—). Many other Soviet subs, such as (the first Soviet nuclear submarine, and the first Soviet sub to reach the North Pole) were badly damaged by fire or radiation leaks. The US lost two nuclear submarines during this time: due to equipment failure during a test dive while at its operational limit, and due to unknown causes.
During India's intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Pakistan Navy's sank the Indian frigate . This was the first sinking by a submarine since World War II. During the same war, , a "Tench"-class submarine on loan to Pakistan from the US, was sunk by the Indian Navy. It was the first submarine combat loss since World War II. In 1982 during the Falklands War, the Argentine cruiser was sunk by the British submarine , the first sinking by a nuclear-powered submarine in war.
Before and during World War II, the primary role of the submarine was anti-surface ship warfare. Submarines would attack either on the surface using deck guns, or submerged using torpedoes. They were particularly effective in sinking Allied transatlantic shipping in both World Wars, and in disrupting Japanese supply routes and naval operations in the Pacific in World War II.
Mine-laying submarines were developed in the early part of the 20th century. The facility was used in both World Wars. Submarines were also used for inserting and removing covert agents and military forces in special operations, for intelligence gathering, and to rescue aircrew during air attacks on islands, where the airmen would be told of safe places to crash-land so the submarines could rescue them. Submarines could carry cargo through hostile waters or act as supply vessels for other submarines.
Submarines could usually locate and attack other submarines only on the surface, although managed to sink with a four torpedo spread while both were submerged. The British developed a specialized anti-submarine submarine in WWI, the R class. After WWII, with the development of the homing torpedo, better sonar systems, and nuclear propulsion, submarines also became able to hunt each other effectively.
The development of submarine-launched ballistic missile and submarine-launched cruise missiles gave submarines a substantial and long-ranged ability to attack both land and sea targets with a variety of weapons ranging from cluster bombs to nuclear weapons.
The primary defense of a submarine lies in its ability to remain concealed in the depths of the ocean. Early submarines could be detected by the sound they made. Water is an excellent conductor of sound (much better than air), and submarines can detect and track comparatively noisy surface ships from long distances. Modern submarines are built with an emphasis on stealth. Advanced propeller designs, extensive sound-reducing insulation, and special machinery help a submarine remain as quiet as ambient ocean noise, making them difficult to detect. It takes specialized technology to find and attack modern submarines.
Active sonar uses the reflection of sound emitted from the search equipment to detect submarines. It has been used since WWII by surface ships, submarines and aircraft (via dropped buoys and helicopter "dipping" arrays), but it reveals the emitter's position, and is susceptible to counter-measures.
A concealed military submarine is a real threat, and because of its stealth, can force an enemy navy to waste resources searching large areas of ocean and protecting ships against attack. This advantage was vividly demonstrated in the 1982 Falklands War when the British nuclear-powered submarine sank the Argentine cruiser . After the sinking the Argentine Navy recognized that they had no effective defense against submarine attack, and the Argentine surface fleet withdrew to port for the remainder of the war, though an Argentine submarine remained at sea.
Although the majority of the world's submarines are military, there are some civilian submarines, which are used for tourism, exploration, oil and gas platform inspections, and pipeline surveys. Some are also used in illegal activities.
The Submarine Voyage ride opened at Disneyland in 1959, but although it ran under water it was not a true submarine, as it ran on tracks and was open to the atmosphere. The first tourist submarine was , which went into service in 1964 at Expo64. By 1997 there were 45 tourist submarines operating around the world. Submarines with a crush depth in the range of are operated in several areas worldwide, typically with bottom depths around , with a carrying capacity of 50 to 100 passengers.
In a typical operation a surface vessel carries passengers to an offshore operating area and loads them into the submarine. The submarine then visits underwater points of interest such as natural or artificial reef structures. To surface safely without danger of collision the location of the submarine is marked with an air release and movement to the surface is coordinated by an observer in a support craft.
A recent development is the deployment of so-called narco submarines by South American drug smugglers to evade law enforcement detection. Although they occasionally deploy true submarines, most are self-propelled semi-submersibles, where a portion of the craft remains above water at all times. In September 2011, Colombian authorities seized a 16-meter-long submersible that could hold a crew of 5, costing about $2 million. The vessel belonged to FARC rebels and had the capacity to carry at least 7 tonnes of drugs.
All surface ships, as well as surfaced submarines, are in a positively buoyant condition, weighing less than the volume of water they would displace if fully submerged. To submerge hydrostatically, a ship must have negative buoyancy, either by increasing its own weight or decreasing its displacement of water. To control their displacement, submarines have ballast tanks, which can hold varying amounts of water and air.
For general submersion or surfacing, submarines use the forward and aft tanks, called Main Ballast Tanks (MBT), which are filled with water to submerge or with air to surface. Submerged, MBTs generally remain flooded, which simplifies their design, and on many submarines these tanks are a section of interhull space. For more precise and quick control of depth, submarines use smaller Depth Control Tanks (DCT)—also called hard tanks (due to their ability to withstand higher pressure), or trim tanks. The amount of water in depth control tanks can be controlled to change depth or to maintain a constant depth as outside conditions (chiefly water density) change. Depth control tanks may be located either near the submarine's center of gravity, or separated along the submarine body to prevent affecting trim.
When submerged, the water pressure on a submarine's hull can reach for steel submarines and up to for titanium submarines like , while interior pressure remains relatively unchanged. This difference results in hull compression, which decreases displacement. Water density also marginally increases with depth, as the salinity and pressure are higher. This change in density incompletely compensates for hull compression, so buoyancy decreases as depth increases. A submerged submarine is in an unstable equilibrium, having a tendency to either sink or float to the surface. Keeping a constant depth requires continual operation of either the depth control tanks or control surfaces.
Submarines in a neutral buoyancy condition are not intrinsically trim-stable. To maintain desired trim, submarines use forward and aft trim tanks. Pumps can move water between the tanks, changing weight distribution and pointing the sub up or down. A similar system is sometimes used to maintain stability.
The hydrostatic effect of variable ballast tanks is not the only way to control the submarine underwater. Hydrodynamic maneuvering is done by several control surfaces, collectively known as diving planes or hydroplanes, which can be moved to create hydrodynamic forces when a submarine moves at sufficient speed. In the classic cruciform stern configuration, the horizontal stern planes serve the same purpose as the trim tanks, controlling the trim. Most submarines additionally have forward horizontal planes, normally placed on the bow until the 1960s but often on the sail on later designs. These are closer to the center of gravity and are used to control depth with less effect on the trim.
When a submarine performs an emergency surfacing, all depth and trim methods are used simultaneously, together with propelling the boat upwards. Such surfacing is very quick, so the sub may even partially jump out of the water, potentially damaging submarine systems.
Intuitively, the best way to configure the control surfaces at the stern of a submarine would seem to be to give them the shape of a cross when seen from the rear end of the vessel. In this configuration, which remained for long the dominant one, the horizontal planes are used to control the trim and depth and the vertical planes to control sideways maneuvers, just like the rudder of a surface ship.
Alternatively, however, the rear control surfaces can be combined into what has become known as an x-stern or an x-rudder. Although less intuitive, such a configuration has turned out to have several advantages over the traditional cruciform arrangement. First, it improves maneuvrability, horisontally as well as vertically. Second, the control surfaces are less likely to get damaged when landing on, or departing from, the seabed as well as when mooring and unmooring. Finally, it is safer in that one of the two diagonal lines can counteract the other with respect to vertical as well as horizontal motion if one of them would accidentally get stuck.
The x-stern was first tried in practice in the early 1960s on the USS "Albacore", an experimental submarine of the US Navy. While the arrangement was found to be advantageous, it was nevertheless not used on the US production submarines that followed due to the fact that it requires the use of a computer to manipulate the control surfaces to the desired effect. Instead, the first to use an x-stern operatively was the Swedish Navy with its "Sjöormen" class, the lead submarine of which was launched already in 1967, before the "Albacore" had even finished her test runs. Since it turned out to work very well in practice, all subsequent classes of Swedish submarines ("Näcken", "Västergötland", "Gotland", and "Blekinge" class) have or will come with an x-rudder.
The Kockums shipyard responsible for the design of the x-stern on Swedish submarines eventually exported it to Australia with the "Collins" class as well as to Japan with the "Sōryū" class. With the introduction of the type 212, the German and Italian Navies came to feature it as well. The US Navy with its "Columbia" class, the British Navy with its "Dreadnought" class, and the French Navy with its "Barracuda" class are all about to join the x-stern family. Hence, as judged by the situation in the early 2020s, the x-stern is about to become the dominant technology.
Modern submarines are cigar-shaped. This design, visible in early submarines, is sometimes called a "teardrop hull". It reduces the hydrodynamic drag when submerged, but decreases the sea-keeping capabilities and increases drag while surfaced. Since the limitations of the propulsion systems of early submarines forced them to operate surfaced most of the time, their hull designs were a compromise. Because of the slow submerged speeds of those subs, usually well below 10 kt (18 km/h), the increased drag for underwater travel was acceptable. Late in World War II, when technology allowed faster and longer submerged operation and increased aircraft surveillance forced submarines to stay submerged, hull designs became teardrop shaped again to reduce drag and noise. was a unique research submarine that pioneered the American version of the teardrop hull form (sometimes referred to as an "Albacore hull") of modern submarines. On modern military submarines the outer hull is covered with a layer of sound-absorbing rubber, or anechoic plating, to reduce detection.
The occupied pressure hulls of deep diving submarines such as are spherical instead of cylindrical. This allows a more even distribution of stress at the great depth. A titanium frame is usually affixed to the pressure hull, providing attachment for ballast and trim systems, scientific instrumentation, battery packs, syntactic flotation foam, and lighting.
A raised tower on top of a submarine accommodates the periscope and electronics masts, which can include radio, radar, electronic warfare, and other systems including the snorkel mast. In many early classes of submarines (see history), the control room, or "conn", was located inside this tower, which was known as the "conning tower". Since then, the conn has been located within the hull of the submarine, and the tower is now called the "sail". The conn is distinct from the "bridge", a small open platform in the top of the sail, used for observation during surface operation.
"Bathtubs" are related to conning towers but are used on smaller submarines. The bathtub is a metal cylinder surrounding the hatch that prevents waves from breaking directly into the cabin. It is needed because surfaced submarines have limited freeboard, that is, they lie low in the water. Bathtubs help prevent swamping the vessel.
Modern submarines and submersibles, as well as the oldest ones, usually have a single hull. Large submarines generally have an additional hull or hull sections outside. This external hull, which actually forms the shape of submarine, is called the outer hull ("casing" in the Royal Navy) or light hull, as it does not have to withstand a pressure difference. Inside the outer hull there is a strong hull, or pressure hull, which withstands sea pressure and has normal atmospheric pressure inside.
As early as World War I, it was realized that the optimal shape for withstanding pressure conflicted with the optimal shape for seakeeping and minimal drag, and construction difficulties further complicated the problem. This was solved either by a compromise shape, or by using two hulls: internal for holding pressure, and external for optimal shape. Until the end of World War II, most submarines had an additional partial cover on the top, bow and stern, built of thinner metal, which was flooded when submerged. Germany went further with the Type XXI, a general predecessor of modern submarines, in which the pressure hull was fully enclosed inside the light hull, but optimized for submerged navigation, unlike earlier designs that were optimized for surface operation.
After World War II, approaches split. The Soviet Union changed its designs, basing them on German developments. All post-World War II heavy Soviet and Russian submarines are built with a double hull structure. American and most other Western submarines switched to a primarily single-hull approach. They still have light hull sections in the bow and stern, which house main ballast tanks and provide a hydrodynamically optimized shape, but the main cylindrical hull section has only a single plating layer. Double hulls are being considered for future submarines in the United States to improve payload capacity, stealth and range.
The pressure hull is generally constructed of thick high-strength steel with a complex structure and high strength reserve, and is separated with watertight bulkheads into several compartments. There are also examples of more than two hulls in a submarine, like the , which has two main pressure hulls and three smaller ones for control room, torpedoes and steering gear, with the missile launch system between the main hulls.
The dive depth cannot be increased easily. Simply making the hull thicker increases the weight and requires reduction of onboard equipment weight, ultimately resulting in a "bathyscaphe". This is acceptable for civilian research submersibles, but not military submarines.
WWI submarines had hulls of carbon steel, with a maximum depth. During WWII, high-strength alloyed steel was introduced, allowing depths. High-strength alloy steel remains the primary material for submarines today, with depths, which cannot be exceeded on a military submarine without design compromises. To exceed that limit, a few submarines were built with titanium hulls. Titanium can be stronger than steel, lighter, and is not ferromagnetic, important for stealth. Titanium submarines were built by the Soviet Union, which developed specialized high-strength alloys. It has produced several types of titanium submarines. Titanium alloys allow a major increase in depth, but other systems must be redesigned to cope, so test depth was limited to for the , the deepest-diving combat submarine. An may have successfully operated at , though continuous operation at such depths would produce excessive stress on many submarine systems. Titanium does not flex as readily as steel, and may become brittle after many dive cycles. Despite its benefits, the high cost of titanium construction led to the abandonment of titanium submarine construction as the Cold War ended. Deep-diving civilian submarines have used thick acrylic pressure hulls.
The deepest deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) to date is "Trieste". On 5 October 1959, "Trieste" departed San Diego for Guam aboard the freighter "Santa Maria" to participate in "Project Nekton", a series of very deep dives in the Mariana Trench. On 23 January 1960, "Trieste" reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep (the deepest southern part of the Mariana Trench), carrying Jacques Piccard (son of Auguste) and Lieutenant Don Walsh, USN. This was the first time a vessel, manned or unmanned, had reached the deepest point in the Earth's oceans. The onboard systems indicated a depth of , although this was later revised to and more accurate measurements made in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep slightly shallower, at .
Building a pressure hull is difficult, as it must withstand pressures at its required diving depth. When the hull is perfectly round in cross-section, the pressure is evenly distributed, and causes only hull compression. If the shape is not perfect, the hull is bent, with several points heavily strained. Inevitable minor deviations are resisted by stiffener rings, but even a one-inch (25 mm) deviation from roundness results in over 30 percent decrease of maximal hydrostatic load and consequently dive depth. The hull must therefore be constructed with high precision. All hull parts must be welded without defects, and all joints are checked multiple times with different methods, contributing to the high cost of modern submarines. (For example, each attack submarine costs US$2.6 billion, over US$200,000 per ton of displacement.)
The first submarines were propelled by humans. The first mechanically driven submarine was the 1863 French , which used compressed air for propulsion. Anaerobic propulsion was first employed by the Spanish "Ictineo II" in 1864, which used a solution of zinc, manganese dioxide, and potassium chlorate to generate sufficient heat to power a steam engine, while also providing oxygen for the crew. A similar system was not employed again until 1940 when the German Navy tested a hydrogen peroxide-based system, the Walter turbine, on the experimental V-80 submarine and later on the naval and type XVII submarines; the system was further developed for the British , completed in 1958.
Until the advent of nuclear marine propulsion, most 20th-century submarines used electric motors and batteries for running underwater and combustion engines on the surface, and for battery recharging. Early submarines used gasoline (petrol) engines but this quickly gave way to kerosene (paraffin) and then diesel engines because of reduced flammability and, with diesel, improved fuel-efficiency and thus also greater range. A combination of diesel and electric propulsion became the norm.
Initially, the combustion engine and the electric motor were in most cases connected to the same shaft so that both could directly drive the propeller. The combustion engine was placed at the front end of the stern section with the electric motor behind it followed by the propeller shaft. The engine was connected to the motor by a clutch and the motor in turn connected to the propeller shaft by another clutch.
With only the rear clutch engaged, the electric motor could drive the propeller, as required for fully submerged operation. With both clutches engaged, the combustion engine could drive the propeller, as was possible when operating on the surface or, at a later stage, when snorkeling. The electric motor would in this case serve as a generator to charge the batteries or, if no charging was needed, be allowed to rotate freely. With only the front clutch engaged, the combustion engine could drive the electric motor as a generator for charging the batteries without simultaneously forcing the propeller to move.
The motor could have multiple armatures on the shaft, which could be electrically coupled in series for slow speed and in parallel for high speed (these connections were called "group down" and "group up", respectively).
While most early submarines used a direct mechanical connection between the combustion engine and the propeller, an alternative solution was considered as well as implemented at a very early stage. That solution consists in first converting the work of the combustion engine into electric energy via a dedicated generator. This energy is then used to drive the propeller via the electric motor and, to the extent required, for charging the batteries. In this configuration, the electric motor is thus responsible for driving the propeller at all times, regardless of whether air is available so that the combustion engine can also be used or not.
Among the pioneers of this alternative solution was the very first submarine of the Swedish Navy, (later renamed "Ub no 1"), launched in 1904. While its design was generally inspired by the first submarine commissioned by the US Navy, USS "Holland", it deviated from the latter in at least three significant ways: by adding a periscope, by replacing the gasoline engine by a semidiesel engine (a hot-bulb engine primarily meant to be fueled by kerosene, later replaced by a true diesel engine) and by severing the mechanical link between the combustion engine and the propeller by instead letting the former drive a dedicated generator. By so doing, it took three significant steps toward what was eventually to become the dominant technology for conventional (i.e., non-nuclear) submarines.
In the following years, the Swedish Navy added another seven submarines in three different classes (, , and ) using the same propulsion technology but fitted with true diesel engines rather than semidiesels from the outset. Since by that time, the technology was usually based on the diesel engine rather than some other type of combustion engine, it eventually came to be known as diesel-electric transmission.
Like many other early submarines, those initially designed in Sweden were quite small (less than 200 tonnes) and thus confined to littoral operation. When the Swedish Navy wanted to add larger vessels, capable of operating further from the shore, their designs were purchased from companies abroad that already had the required experience: first Italian (Fiat-Laurenti) and later German (A.G. Weser and IvS). As a side-effect, the diesel-electric transmission was temporarily abandoned.
However, diesel-electric transmission was immediately reintroduced when Sweden began designing its own submarines again in the mid 1930s. From that point onwards, it has been consistently used for all new classes of Swedish submarines, albeit supplemented by air-independent propulsion (AIP) as provided by Stirling engines beginning with HMS "Näcken" in 1988.
Another early adopter of diesel-electric transmission was the US Navy, whose Bureau of Engineering proposed its use in 1928. It was subsequently tried in the S-class submarines , , and before being put into production with the "Porpoise" class of the 1930s. From that point onwards, it continued to be used on most US conventional submarines.
Apart from the British U-class and some submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy that used separate diesel generators for low speed running, few navies other than those of Sweden and the US made much use of diesel-electric transmission before 1945. After World War II, by contrast, it gradually became the dominant mode of propulsion for conventional submarines. However, its adoption was not always swift. Notably, the Soviet Navy did not introduce diesel-electric transmission on its conventional submarines until 1980 with its "Paltus" class.
If diesel-electric transmission had only brought advantages and no disadvantages in comparison with a system that mechanically connects the diesel engine to the propeller, it would undoubtedly have become dominant much earlier. The disadvantages include the following:
The reason why diesel-electric transmission has become the dominant alternative in spite of these disadvantages is of course that it also comes with many advantages and that, on balance, these have eventually been found to be more important. The advantages include the following:
During World War II the Germans experimented with the idea of the "schnorchel" (snorkel) from captured Dutch submarines but did not see the need for them until rather late in the war. The "schnorchel" is a retractable pipe that supplies air to the diesel engines while submerged at periscope depth, allowing the boat to cruise and recharge its batteries while maintaining a degree of stealth.
Especially as first implemented however, it turned out to be far from a perfect solution. There were problems with the device's valve sticking shut or closing as it dunked in rough weather. Since the system used the entire pressure hull as a buffer, the diesels would instantaneously suck huge volumes of air from the boat's compartments, and the crew often suffered painful ear injuries. Speed was limited to , lest the device snap from stress. The "schnorchel" also created noise that made the boat easier to detect with sonar, yet more difficult for the on-board sonar to detect signals from other vessels. Finally, allied radar eventually became sufficiently advanced that the "schnorchel" mast could be detected beyond visual range.
While the snorkel renders a submarine far less detectable, it is thus not perfect. In clear weather, diesel exhausts can be seen on the surface to a distance of about three miles, while "periscope feather" (the wave created by the snorkel or periscope moving through the water) is visible from far off in calm sea conditions. Modern radar is also capable of detecting a snorkel in calm sea conditions.
The problem of the diesels causing a vacuum in the submarine when the head valve is submerged still exists in later model diesel submarines but is mitigated by high-vacuum cut-off sensors that shut down the engines when the vacuum in the ship reaches a pre-set point. Modern snorkel induction masts have a fail-safe design using compressed air, controlled by a simple electrical circuit, to hold the "head valve" open against the pull of a powerful spring. Seawater washing over the mast shorts out exposed electrodes on top, breaking the control, and shutting the "head valve" while it is submerged. US submarines did not adopt the use of snorkels until after WWII.
During World War II, German Type XXI submarines (also known as ""Elektroboote"") were the first submarines designed to operate submerged for extended periods. Initially they were to carry hydrogen peroxide for long-term, fast air-independent propulsion, but were ultimately built with very large batteries instead. At the end of the War, the British and Soviets experimented with hydrogen peroxide/kerosene (paraffin) engines that could run surfaced and submerged. The results were not encouraging. Though the Soviet Union deployed a class of submarines with this engine type (codenamed by NATO), they were considered unsuccessful.
The United States also used hydrogen peroxide in an experimental midget submarine, X-1. It was originally powered by a hydrogen peroxide/diesel engine and battery system until an explosion of her hydrogen peroxide supply on 20 May 1957. X-1 was later converted to use diesel-electric drive.
Today several navies use air-independent propulsion. Notably Sweden uses Stirling technology on the and s. The Stirling engine is heated by burning diesel fuel with liquid oxygen from cryogenic tanks. A newer development in air-independent propulsion is hydrogen fuel cells, first used on the German Type 212 submarine, with nine 34 kW or two 120 kW cells. Fuel cells are also used in the new Spanish s although with the fuel stored as ethanol and then converted into hydrogen before use.
One new technology that is being introduced starting with the Japanese Navy's eleventh "Sōryū"-class submarine (JS "Ōryū") is a more modern battery, the lithium-ion battery. These batteries have about double the electric storage of traditional batteries, and by changing out the lead-acid batteries in their normal storage areas plus filling up the large hull space normally devoted to AIP engine and fuel tanks with many tons of lithium-ion batteries, modern submarines can actually return to a "pure" diesel-electric configuration yet have the added underwater range and power normally associated with AIP equipped submarines.
Steam power was resurrected in the 1950s with a nuclear-powered steam turbine driving a generator. By eliminating the need for atmospheric oxygen, the time that a submarine could remain submerged was limited only by its food stores, as breathing air was recycled and fresh water distilled from seawater. More importantly, a nuclear submarine has unlimited range at top speed. This allows it to travel from its operating base to the combat zone in a much shorter time and makes it a far more difficult target for most anti-submarine weapons. Nuclear-powered submarines have a relatively small battery and diesel engine/generator powerplant for emergency use if the reactors must be shut down.
Nuclear power is now used in all large submarines, but due to the high cost and large size of nuclear reactors, smaller submarines still use diesel-electric propulsion. The ratio of larger to smaller submarines depends on strategic needs. The US Navy, French Navy, and the British Royal Navy operate only nuclear submarines, which is explained by the need for distant operations. Other major operators rely on a mix of nuclear submarines for strategic purposes and diesel-electric submarines for defense. Most fleets have no nuclear submarines, due to the limited availability of nuclear power and submarine technology.
Diesel-electric submarines have a stealth advantage over their nuclear counterparts. Nuclear submarines generate noise from coolant pumps and turbo-machinery needed to operate the reactor, even at low power levels. Some nuclear submarines such as the American can operate with their reactor coolant pumps secured, making them quieter than electric subs. A conventional submarine operating on batteries is almost completely silent, the only noise coming from the shaft bearings, propeller, and flow noise around the hull, all of which stops when the sub hovers in mid-water to listen, leaving only the noise from crew activity. Commercial submarines usually rely only on batteries, since they operate in conjunction with a mother ship.
Several serious nuclear and radiation accidents have involved nuclear submarine mishaps. The reactor accident in 1961 resulted in 8 deaths and more than 30 other people were over-exposed to radiation. The reactor accident in 1968 resulted in 9 fatalities and 83 other injuries. The accident in 1985 resulted in 10 fatalities and 49 other radiation injuries.
Oil-fired steam turbines powered the British K-class submarines, built during World War I and later, to give them the surface speed to keep up with the battle fleet. The K-class subs were not very successful, however.
Toward the end of the 20th century, some submarines—such as the British "Vanguard" class—began to be fitted with pump-jet propulsors instead of propellers. Though these are heavier, more expensive, and less efficient than a propeller, they are significantly quieter, providing an important tactical advantage.
The success of the submarine is inextricably linked to the development of the torpedo, invented by Robert Whitehead in 1866. His invention is essentially the same now as it was 140 years ago. Only with self-propelled torpedoes could the submarine make the leap from novelty to a weapon of war. Until the perfection of the guided torpedo, multiple "straight-running" torpedoes were required to attack a target. With at most 20 to 25 torpedoes stored on board, the number of attacks was limited. To increase combat endurance most World War I submarines functioned as submersible gunboats, using their deck guns against unarmed targets, and diving to escape and engage enemy warships. The importance of guns encouraged the development of the unsuccessful Submarine Cruiser such as the French and the Royal Navy's and M-class submarines. With the arrival of Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, guns became more for defense than attack. A more practical method of increasing combat endurance was the external torpedo tube, loaded only in port.
The ability of submarines to approach enemy harbours covertly led to their use as minelayers. Minelaying submarines of World War I and World War II were specially built for that purpose. Modern submarine-laid mines, such as the British Mark 5 Stonefish and Mark 6 Sea Urchin, can be deployed from a submarine's torpedo tubes.
After World War II, both the US and the USSR experimented with submarine-launched cruise missiles such as the SSM-N-8 Regulus and P-5 Pyatyorka. Such missiles required the submarine to surface to fire its missiles. They were the forerunners of modern submarine-launched cruise missiles, which can be fired from the torpedo tubes of submerged submarines, for example the US BGM-109 Tomahawk and Russian RPK-2 Viyuga and versions of surface-to-surface anti-ship missiles such as the Exocet and Harpoon, encapsulated for submarine launch. Ballistic missiles can also be fired from a submarine's torpedo tubes, for example missiles such as the anti-submarine SUBROC. With internal volume as limited as ever and the desire to carry heavier warloads, the idea of the external launch tube was revived, usually for encapsulated missiles, with such tubes being placed between the internal pressure and outer streamlined hulls.
The strategic mission of the SSM-N-8 and the P-5 was taken up by submarine-launched ballistic missile beginning with the US Navy's Polaris missile, and subsequently the Poseidon and Trident missiles.
Germany is working on the torpedo tube-launched short-range IDAS missile, which can be used against ASW helicopters, as well as surface ships and coastal targets.
A submarine can have a variety of sensors, depending on its missions. Modern military submarines rely almost entirely on a suite of passive and active sonars to locate targets. Active sonar relies on an audible "ping" to generate echoes to reveal objects around the submarine. Active systems are rarely used, as doing so reveals the sub's presence. Passive sonar is a set of sensitive hydrophones set into the hull or trailed in a towed array, normally trailing several hundred feet behind the sub. The towed array is the mainstay of NATO submarine detection systems, as it reduces the flow noise heard by operators. Hull mounted sonar is employed in addition to the towed array, as the towed array can't work in shallow depth and during maneuvering. In addition, sonar has a blind spot "through" the submarine, so a system on both the front and back works to eliminate that problem. As the towed array trails behind and below the submarine, it also allows the submarine to have a system both above and below the thermocline at the proper depth; sound passing through the thermocline is distorted resulting in a lower detection range.
Submarines also carry radar equipment to detect surface ships and aircraft. Submarine captains are more likely to use radar detection gear than active radar to detect targets, as radar can be detected far beyond its own return range, revealing the submarine. Periscopes are rarely used, except for position fixes and to verify a contact's identity.
Civilian submarines, such as the or the Russian "Mir" submersibles, rely on small active sonar sets and viewing ports to navigate. The human eye cannot detect sunlight below about underwater, so high intensity lights are used to illuminate the viewing area.
Early submarines had few navigation aids, but modern subs have a variety of navigation systems. Modern military submarines use an inertial guidance system for navigation while submerged, but drift error unavoidably builds over time. To counter this, the crew occasionally uses the Global Positioning System to obtain an accurate position. The periscope—a retractable tube with a prism system that provides a view of the surface—is only used occasionally in modern submarines, since the visibility range is short. The and s use photonics masts rather than hull-penetrating optical periscopes. These masts must still be deployed above the surface, and use electronic sensors for visible light, infrared, laser range-finding, and electromagnetic surveillance. One benefit to hoisting the mast above the surface is that while the mast is above the water the entire sub is still below the water and is much harder to detect visually or by radar.
Military submarines use several systems to communicate with distant command centers or other ships. One is VLF (very low frequency) radio, which can reach a submarine either on the surface or submerged to a fairly shallow depth, usually less than . ELF (extremely low frequency) can reach a submarine at greater depths, but has a very low bandwidth and is generally used to call a submerged sub to a shallower depth where VLF signals can reach. A submarine also has the option of floating a long, buoyant wire antenna to a shallower depth, allowing VLF transmissions by a deeply submerged boat.
By extending a radio mast, a submarine can also use a "burst transmission" technique. A burst transmission takes only a fraction of a second, minimizing a submarine's risk of detection.
To communicate with other submarines, a system known as Gertrude is used. Gertrude is basically a sonar telephone. Voice communication from one submarine is transmitted by low power speakers into the water, where it is detected by passive sonars on the receiving submarine. The range of this system is probably very short, and using it radiates sound into the water, which can be heard by the enemy.
Civilian submarines can use similar, albeit less powerful systems to communicate with support ships or other submersibles in the area.
With nuclear power or air-independent propulsion, submarines can remain submerged for months at a time. Conventional diesel submarines must periodically resurface or run on snorkel to recharge their batteries. Most modern military submarines generate breathing oxygen by electrolysis of water (using a device called an "Electrolytic Oxygen Generator"). Atmosphere control equipment includes a CO2 scrubber, which uses an amine absorbent to remove the gas from air and diffuse it into waste pumped overboard. A machine that uses a catalyst to convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide (removed by the CO2 scrubber) and bonds hydrogen produced from the ship's storage battery with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce water, is also used. An atmosphere monitoring system samples the air from different areas of the ship for nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, R-12 and R-114 refrigerants, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other gases. Poisonous gases are removed, and oxygen is replenished by use of an oxygen bank located in a main ballast tank. Some heavier submarines have two oxygen bleed stations (forward and aft). The oxygen in the air is sometimes kept a few percent less than atmospheric concentration to reduce fire risk.
Fresh water is produced by either an evaporator or a reverse osmosis unit. The primary use for fresh water is to provide feedwater for the reactor and steam propulsion plants. It is also available for showers, sinks, cooking and cleaning once propulsion plant needs have been met. Seawater is used to flush toilets, and the resulting "black water" is stored in a sanitary tank until it is blown overboard using pressurized air or pumped overboard by using a special sanitary pump. The blackwater-discharge system is difficult to operate, and the German Type VIIC boat was lost with casualties because of human error while using this system. Water from showers and sinks is stored separately in "grey water" tanks and discharged overboard using drain pumps.
Trash on modern large submarines is usually disposed of using a tube called a Trash Disposal Unit (TDU), where it is compacted into a galvanized steel can. At the bottom of the TDU is a large ball valve. An ice plug is set on top of the ball valve to protect it, the cans atop the ice plug. The top breech door is shut, and the TDU is flooded and equalized with sea pressure, the ball valve is opened and the cans fall out assisted by scrap iron weights in the cans. The TDU is also flushed with seawater to ensure it is completely empty and the ball valve is clear before closing the valve.
A typical nuclear submarine has a crew of over 80; conventional boats typically have fewer than 40. The conditions on a submarine can be difficult because crew members must work in isolation for long periods of time, without family contact. Submarines normally maintain radio silence to avoid detection. Operating a submarine is dangerous, even in peacetime, and many submarines have been lost in accidents.
Most navies prohibited women from serving on submarines, even after they had been permitted to serve on surface warships. The Royal Norwegian Navy became the first navy to allow women on its submarine crews in 1985. The Royal Danish Navy allowed female submariners in 1988. Others followed suit including the Swedish Navy (1989), the Royal Australian Navy (1998), the Spanish Navy (1999), the German Navy (2001) and the Canadian Navy (2002). In 1995, Solveig Krey of the Royal Norwegian Navy became the first female officer to assume command on a military submarine, HNoMS "Kobben".
On 8 December 2011, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond announced that the UK's ban on women in submarines was to be lifted from 2013. Previously there were fears that women were more at risk from a build-up of carbon dioxide in the submarine. But a study showed no medical reason to exclude women, though pregnant women would still be excluded. Similar dangers to the pregnant woman and her fetus barred women from submarine service in Sweden in 1983, when all other positions were made available for them in the Swedish Navy. Today, pregnant women are still not allowed to serve on submarines in Sweden. However, the policymakers thought that it was discriminatory with a general ban and demanded that women should be tried on their individual merits and have their suitability evaluated and compared to other candidates. Further, they noted that a woman complying with such high demands is unlikely to become pregnant. In May 2014, three women became the RN's first female submariners.
Women have served on US Navy surface ships since 1993, and , began serving on submarines for the first time. Until presently, the Navy allowed only three exceptions to women being on board military submarines: female civilian technicians for a few days at most, women midshipmen on an overnight during summer training for Navy ROTC and Naval Academy, and family members for one-day dependent cruises. In 2009, senior officials, including then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead, began the process of finding a way to implement women on submarines. The US Navy rescinded its "no women on subs" policy in 2010.
Both the US and British navies operate nuclear-powered submarines that deploy for periods of six months or longer. Other navies that permit women to serve on submarines operate conventionally powered submarines, which deploy for much shorter periods—usually only for a few months. Prior to the change by the US, no nation using nuclear submarines permitted women to serve on board.
In 2011, the first class of female submarine officers graduated from Naval Submarine School's Submarine Officer Basic Course (SOBC) at the Naval Submarine Base New London. Additionally, more senior ranking and experienced female supply officers from the surface warfare specialty attended SOBC as well, proceeding to fleet Ballistic Missile (SSBN) and Guided Missile (SSGN) submarines along with the new female submarine line officers beginning in late 2011. By late 2011, several women were assigned to the "Ohio"-class ballistic missile submarine . On 15 October 2013, the US Navy announced that two of the smaller "Virginia"-class attack submarines, and , would have female crew-members by January 2015.
In an emergency, submarines can transmit a signal to other ships. The crew can use Submarine Escape Immersion Equipment to abandon the submarine. The crew can prevent a lung injury from the pressure change known as pulmonary barotrauma by exhaling during the ascent. Following escape from a pressurized submarine, the crew is at risk of developing decompression sickness. An alternative escape means is via a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle that can dock onto the disabled submarine.
General history
Culture
Submarines before 1914
1900/Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905
World War II
Cold War | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28825 |
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, commonly referred to as Second Thessalonians or 2 Thessalonians is a book from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle, with Timothy as a co-author. Modern biblical scholarship is divided on whether the epistle was written by Paul; many scholars reject its authenticity based on what they see as differences in style and theology between this and the First Epistle to the Thessalonians.
Scholars who support its authenticity view it as having been written around 51–52 AD, shortly after the First Epistle. Those who see it as a later composition assign a date of around 80–115 AD.
The authenticity of this epistle is still in widespread dispute. As Professor Ernest Best, New Testament scholar, explains the problem;
The structures of the two letters (to which Best refers) include opening greetings ("1 Thess." 1:1, "2 Thess." 1:1–2) and closing benedictions ("1 Thess." 5:28, "2 Thess." 3:16d–18) which frame two, balancing, sections (AA'). In "2 Thessalonians" these begin with similar successions of nine Greek words, at 1:3 and 2:13. The opening letter section (1:3–2:12) itself comprises two halves, 1:3–12 (where the introductory piece, A, is 1:3–5; the first development, B, is 1:6–10; and the paralleling and concluding development, B', is 1:11–12) and 2:1–12 (with pieces: A 2:1–4, B 2:5–7, B' 2:8–12).
The second, balancing, letter section (2:13–3:16c) also comprises two halves: 2:13–3:5 (with pieces: A 2:13–14, B 2:15–17, B' 3:1–5) and 3:6–16c (with pieces: A 3:6–9, B 3:10–12, B' 3:13-16c). Of the twelve pieces in "2 Thessalonians" seven begin with 'brother' introductions. Of the eighteen pieces in "1 Thessalonians" fourteen begin with 'brother' introductions. In both letters, the sections balance in size and focus, and in many details. In "2 Thessalonians", in 2:5 and 3:10, for example, there is a structural balance of the use of 'when I was with you...' and 'when we were with you...'.
One piece of evidence for the authenticity of the epistle is that it was included in Marcion's canon and the Muratorian fragment. It was also mentioned by name by Irenaeus, and quoted by Ignatius, Justin, and Polycarp.
G. Milligan argued that a church which possessed an authentic letter of Paul would be unlikely to accept a fake addressed to them. So also Colin Nicholl who has put forward a substantial argument for the authenticity of Second Thessalonians. He points out that 'the pseudonymous view is ... more vulnerable than most of its advocates conceded. ... The lack of consensus regarding a date and destination ... reflects a dilemma for this position: on the one hand, the date needs to be early enough for the letter to be have been accepted as Pauline ... [on] the other hand, the date and destination need to be such that the author could be confident that no contemporary of 1 Thessalonians ... could have exposed 2 Thessalonians as a ... forgery.'. pp. 5–6
Another scholar who argues for the authenticity of this letter is Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. Admitting that there are stylistic problems between "Second Thessalonians" and "First Thessalonians", he argues that part of the problem is due to the composite nature of "First Thessalonians" (Murphy-O'Connor is only one of many scholars who argue that the current text of "Second Thessalonians" is the product of merging two or more authentic letters of Paul). Once the text of this interpolated letter is removed and the two letters compared, Murphy-O'Connor asserts that this objection is "drastically weakened", and concludes, "The arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians are so weak that it is preferable to accept the traditional ascription of the letter to Paul."
Those who believe Paul was the author of "Second Thessalonians" also note how Paul drew attention to the authenticity of the letter by signing it himself: "I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, which is how I write in every letter.". Bruce Metzger writes, "Paul calls attention to his signature, which was added by his own hand as a token of genuineness to every letter of his (3:17)."
Other scholars who hold to authenticity include Beale, Green, Jones, Morris, Witherington, and Kretzmann. According to Leon Moris in 1986, the majority of current scholars at that time still held to Paul's authorship of 2 Thessalonians.
At least as early as 1798, when J.E.C. Schmidt published his opinion, Paul's authorship of this epistle was questioned. More recent challenges to this traditional belief came from scholars such as William Wrede in 1903 and Alfred Loisy in 1933, who challenged the traditional view of the authorship.
In his book "Forged", New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman puts forward some of the most common arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians. For example, he argues that the views concerning the Second Coming of Christ expressed in 2 Thessalonians differ so strikingly from those found in 1 Thessalonians that they cannot be written by the same author:
Ehrman also argues that the self-referencing signature at the end of 2 Thessalonians was likely used by the forger of the epistle to authenticate what he had written. If Paul had actually written the letter, Ehrman reasons, he would not have needed to include such an autograph:
Many modern scholars agree with Ehrman that 2 Thessalonians was not written by Paul but by an associate or disciple after his death. See, for example, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Vincent Smiles, Udo Schnelle, Eugene Boring, and Joseph Kelly. Norman Perrin observes, "The best understanding of 2 Thessalonians… is to see it as a deliberate imitation of 1 Thessalonians, updating the apostle's thought." Perrin bases this claim on his hypothesis that prayer at the time usually treated God the Father as ultimate judge, rather than Jesus.
Thessalonica was the second city in Europe where Paul helped to create an organized Christian community. At some point after the first letter was sent, probably soon, some of the Thessalonicans grew concerned over whether those who had died would share in the parousia. This letter was written in response to this concern. The problem then arises, as Raymond Brown points out, whether this letter is an authentic writing of Paul written by one of his followers in his name.
If this letter is authentic, then it might have been written soon after Paul's first letter to this community—or possibly years later. Brown notes that Paul "most likely visited Thessalonica several times in his journeys to Macedonia". However, if the letter is not authentic, Brown notes that "in some ways interpretation becomes more complex." Brown believes that the majority of scholars who advocate pseudonymity would place it towards the end of the first century, the same time that Revelation was written. These scholars emphasize the appearance of "man of sin" in the second chapter of this letter, whether this personage is identified with the Antichrist of 1 John and Revelation, or with a historical person like Caligula.
The traditional view is that the second epistle to the Thessalonians was probably written from Corinth not many months after the first.
Biblical commentator and pastor John Macarthur writes, "The emphasis is on how to maintain a church with an effective testimony in proper response to sound eschatology and obedience to the truth."
Paul opens the letter praising this church for their faithfulness and perseverance in the face of persecution:
"We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater; therefore, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure" (2 Thess 1:3–5 [NASB]).
The letter contains a whole chapter regarding the second advent of Christ, among other themes and instructions.
From the inference of 2:1–2, the Thessalonians were faced with a false teaching, saying that Christ had already returned. This error is corrected in chapter 2 (2:1–12), where Paul tells the Thessalonians that a great tribulation must occur before Christ's return. Seeing as how this series of events has not yet happened, his argument reads, Christ cannot have returned yet. He then expresses thanks that his readers were the elect of God, chosen for salvation and saved by His grace through faith, and thus not susceptible to the deception of the "Great Apostasy," (2 Thess 2:13–14) first mentioned here as is the "Katechon" (2 Thess 2:6–7).
In 2 Thess 2:15, Paul instructs his readers to "[h]old fast to the traditions (, ) which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by our letter." Quoting this verse, in his "On the Holy Spirit", Basil the Great writes, "These [traditions] have been passed on by word of mouth from Paul or from the other apostles, without necessarily being written down," and mentions the Trinitarian confession of faith as an example of "unwritten tradition". Cyril of Jerusalem shares a similar view in his "Catechetical Lectures", argues that the traditions stated by Paul should be preserved and memorized, at a minimum in the form of the Creed. In his homily on this verse, John Chrysostom differentiates oral tradition from written tradition. At that time, the oral tradition has been defined as the "tradition" and the written tradition as "Scripture", united together in "the authenticity of their apostolic origin". Everett Ferguson says Paul's reference to tradition implicates that "what was delivered was from the Lord", and John Stott calls the tradition (, "paradosis") "apostolic 'tradition.
The letter continues by encouraging the Thessalonian church to stand firm in their faith, and to "keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us... do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother" (2 Thess 3:6–7, 14–15).
Paul ends this letter by saying, "I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter; this is the way I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all" (2 Thess 3:17–18). Macarthur writes, "Paul added an identifying signature (cf. 1 Cor. 16:21; Col. 4:18) so his readers could be sure he was truly the author."
A passage from this book reading "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat", (2 Thess. 3:10), was later adapted by Vladimir Lenin as an adage of the Soviet Union, He who does not work, neither shall he eat.
Online translations of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians:
Exegetical Papers on Second Thessalonians: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28827 |
Poetry slam
A poetry slam is a competition arts event, in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. Culturally, poetry slams are a break with the past image of poetry as an elitist or rigid art form. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery. Hip-hop music and urban culture are strong influences, and backgrounds of participants tend to be diverse.
Poetry slams began in Chicago in 1984, with the first slam competition designed to move poetry recitals from academia to a popular audience. American poet Marc Smith, believing the poetry scene at the time was "too structured and stuffy", began experimenting by attending open microphone poetry readings, and then turning them into slams by introducing the element of competition.
The performances at a poetry slam are judged as much on enthusiasm and style as content, and poets may compete as individuals or in teams. The judging is often handled by a panel of judges, typically five, who are usually selected from the audience. Sometimes the poets are judged by audience response.
American poet Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago in November 1984. In July 1986, the original slam moved to its permanent home, the Green Mill Jazz Club. In 1987 the Ann Arbor Poetry Slam was founded by Vince Keuter and eventually made its home at the Heidelberg (moving later 2010, 2013, and 2015 to its new home at Espresso Royale). In August 1988, the first poetry slam held in New York City was hosted by Bob Holman at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place at Fort Mason, San Francisco. This slam included teams from Chicago and San Francisco, and an individual poet from New York. Soon afterward, poetry slam increased popularity allowed some poets to make full-time careers in performance and competition, touring the United States and eventually the world.
In 1999, National Poetry Slam, held in major cities each year, was in Chicago. The event was covered nationally by The New York Times and 60 Minutes (CBS). 60 Minutes taped a 20 segment on Slam Poetry with live poetry scenes at Chopin Theatre.
In 2001, the grounding of aircraft following the September 11 attacks left a number of performers stranded in cities they had been performing in. After the attacks, a new wave of poetry slam started within New York City with a community focus on poets coming together to speak about the terrorist attacks.
, the National Poetry Slam featured 72 certified teams, culminating in five days of competition.
Today, there are poetry slam competitions in a number of countries around the globe.
Poetry Slam Inc. sanctions three major annual poetry competitions (for poets 18+) on a national and international scale: the National Poetry Slam (NPS), the individual World Poetry Slam (iWPS), and the Women of the World Poetry Slam (WoWPS)
In a poetry slam, members of the audience are chosen by an emcee or host to act as judges for the event. In the national slam, there are five judges, but smaller slams generally have three. After each poet performs, each judge awards a score to that poem. Scores generally range between zero and ten. The highest and lowest score are dropped, giving each performance a rating between zero and thirty points.
Before the competition begins, the host will often bring up a "sacrificial" poet, whom the judges will score in order to calibrate their judging.
A single round at a standard slam consists of performances by all eligible poets. Most slams last multiple rounds, and many involve the elimination of lower-scoring poets in successive rounds. An elimination rubric might run 8-4-2; eight poets in the first round, four in the second, and two in the last. Some slams do not eliminate poets at all. The Green Mill usually runs its slams with 6 poets in the first round. At the end of the slam, the poet with the highest number of points earned is the winner.
The Boston Poetry Slam takes a different approach; it uses the 8-4-2 three-round rubric, but the poets go head-to-head in separate bouts within the round.
Props, costumes, and music are forbidden in slams, which differs greatly from its immediate predecessor, performance poetry. Hedwig Gorski, the founder of performance poetry as a distinct genre, saw props, costumes, and music as essential for a complete theatrical experience while also following theorist Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theater by blurring lines between the real person, actor, and speakers in scripted literary art. Other rules for slams enforce a time limit of three minutes (and a grace period of ten seconds), after which a poet's score may be docked according to how long the poem exceeded the limit. Many youth slams, however, allow the poets up to three and a half minutes on stage.
In an "Open Slam", the most common slam type, competition is open to all who wish to compete, given the number of slots available. In an "Invitational Slam", only those invited to do so may compete.
Poetry Slam, Inc. holds several national and international competitions, including the Individual World Poetry Slam, the National Poetry Slam and The Women of the World Poetry Slam. The current (2013) IWPS champion is Ed Mabrey. Ed Mabrey is the only three-time IWPS champion in the history of the event. The current (2013) National Poetry Slam Team champions are Slam New Orleans (SNO), who have won the competition for the second year in a row. The current (2014) Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion is Dominique Christina.
From 10–11 December 2016 Salzburg, Austria held a world-record poetry slam competition (28 hours of classic slam poetry) and broke the so-far-record of Nuremberg, Germany (25 hours) by Michl Jakob. The winner of the competition (Friedrich Herrmann) scored one point better in the finals than the second ranked (Darryl Kiermeier). The event was organized by Lukas Wagner (Slamlabor) and took place in the SN-Saal of the Salzburger Nachrichten.
A "Theme Slam" is one in which all performances must conform to a specified theme, genre, or formal constraint. Themes may include Nerd, Erotica, Queer, Improv, or other conceptual limitations. In theme slams, poets can sometimes be allowed to break "traditional" slam rules. For instance, they sometimes allow performance of work by another poet (e.g. the "Dead Poet Slam", in which all work must be by a deceased poet). They can also allow changes on the restrictions on costumes or props (e.g. the Swedish "Triathlon" slams that allow for a poet, musician, and dancer to all take the stage at the same time), changing the judging structure (e.g. having a specific guest judge), or changing the time limits (e.g. a "1-2-3" slam with three rounds of one minute, two minutes, and three minutes, respectively).
Although theme slams may seem restricting in nature, slam venues frequently use them to advocate participation by particular and perhaps underrepresented demographics (which vary from slam to slam), like younger poets and women.
Poetry slams can feature a broad range of voices, styles, cultural traditions, and approaches to writing and performance. The originator of performance poetry, Hedwig Gorski, credits slam poetry for carrying on the poetics of ancient oral poetry designed to grab attention in barrooms and public squares.
Some poets are closely associated with the vocal delivery style found in hip-hop music and draw heavily on the tradition of dub poetry, a rhythmic and politicized genre belonging to black and particularly West Indian culture. Others employ an unrhyming narrative formula. Some use traditional theatrical devices including shifting voices and tones, while others may recite an entire poem in ironic monotone. Some poets use nothing but their words to deliver a poem, while others stretch the boundaries of the format, tap-dancing or beatboxing or using highly choreographed movements.
What is a dominant / successful style one year may not be passed to the next. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, slam poet and author of "Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam", was quoted in an interview on the Best American Poetry blog as saying:
One of the more interesting end products (to me, at least) of this constant shifting is that poets in the slam always worry that something—a style, a project, a poet—will become so dominant that it will kill the scene, but it never does. Ranting hipsters, freestyle rappers, bohemian drifters, proto-comedians, mystical shamans and gothy punks have all had their time at the top of the slam food chain, but in the end, something different always comes along and challenges the poets to try something new.
One of the goals of a poetry slam is to challenge the authority of anyone who claims absolute authority over literary value. No poet is beyond critique, as everyone is dependent upon the goodwill of the audience. Since only the poets with the best cumulative scores advance to the final round of the night, the structure assures that the audience gets to choose from whom they will hear more poetry. Audience members furthermore become part of each poem's presence, thus breaking down the barriers between poet/performer, critic, and audience.
Bob Holman, a poetry activist and former slammaster of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, once called the movement "the democratization of verse". In 2005, Holman was also quoted as saying: "The spoken word revolution is led a lot by women and by poets of color. It gives a depth to the nation's dialogue that you don't hear on the floor of Congress. I want a floor of Congress to look more like a National Poetry Slam. That would make me happy."
At the 1993 National Poetry Slam in San Francisco, a participating team from Canada (Kedrick James, Alex Ferguson and John Sobol) wrote, printed and circulated an instant broadside titled "Like Lambs to the Slammer", that criticized what they perceived as the complacency, conformity, and calculated tear-jerking endemic to the poetry slam scene.
In an interview in the "Paris Review," literary critic Harold Bloom said about slamming:
I can't bear these accounts I read in the "Times" and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and women in various late-spots are declaiming rant and nonsense at each other. The whole thing is judged by an applause meter which is actually not there, but might as well be. This isn't even silly; it is the death of art.
Poet and lead singer of King Missile, John S. Hall has also long been a vocal opponent, taking issue with such factors as its inherently competitive nature and what he considers its lack of stylistic diversity. In his 2005 interview in "Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam," he recalls seeing his first slam, at the Nuyorican Poets Café: "...I hated it. And it made me really uncomfortable and ... it was very much like a sport, and I was interested in poetry in large part because it was like the antithesis of sports. ... [I]t seemed to me like a very macho, masculine form of poetry and not at all what I was interested in."
The poet Tim Clare offers a "for and against" account of the phenomenon in "Slam: A Poetic Dialogue".
Ironically, slam poetry movement founder Marc Smith has been critical of the commercially successful Def Poetry television and Broadway live stage shows produced by Russell Simmons, decrying it as "an exploitive entertainment [program that] diminished the value and aesthetic of performance poetry".
As of 2011, four poets who have competed at National Poetry Slam have won National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Fellowships for Literature:
As of 2017, one poet who has competed at National Poetry Slam has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry:
A number of poets belong to both academia and slam:
Some renowned poets have competed in slams, with less successful results. Henry Taylor, winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, competed in the 1997 National Poetry Slam as an individual and placed 75th out of 150.
While slam poetry has often been ignored in traditional higher learning institutions, it slowly is finding its way into courses and programs of study. For example, at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, slam poetry is now available as a Minor course of study.
Slam poetry has found popularity as a form of self-expression among many teenagers. Young Chicago Authors (YCA) provides workshops, mentoring, and competition opportunities to youth in the Chicago area. Every year YCA presents Louder Than a Bomb, the world's largest team-based youth slam and subject of a documentary by the same name. The youth poetry slam movement was the focus of a documentary film series produced by HBO and released in 2009. It featured poets from Youth Speaks, Urban Word, Louder than a Bomb and other related youth poetry slam organizations.
In a 2005 interview, one of slam's best known poets Saul Williams praised the youth poetry slam movement, explaining:
In 2012, more than 12,000 young people took part in an England-wide youth slam "Shake the Dust", organised by Apples and Snakes as part of the London 2012 Festival.
An Open Letter to Honey Singh, a rap video featuring Rene Sharanya Verma performing at Delhi Poetry Slam, went viral on YouTube receiving over 1.5 million hits.
Slam Poetry has been in Egypt since the twentieth century and was introduced by Hussain Shafiq al-Misry; who was the editor of a sarcastic magazine. According to al-Misry, having different jobs gave him the experience to understand the struggles of Egyptian people in different classes of life. He had good knowledge of Arabic literature, grammar and some commonly used foreign words as well as slang; which he used to form Halamantishi poetry. Muhammad Ragab Bayyoumi in 1986 wrote an article entitled Hussein Shafiq al-Misry: Ustaz la Tilmeeth lah" (Hussein Shafiq al-Misry: A Teacher with No Student of His) in which he introduced al-Misry's poems and explained al-Misry's literary poetry techniques. In Egypt Performance Poetry is new in popularity, the term "Ash-Shi'r al-Mu'adda" was recently introduced as the term for performance poetry. Poets such as Bayram At-Tunisi, Ahmad Rami, and Kamel Ash-Shennawy paved the way after al-Misry with lyrical slam poems that use a melodic rhythm to attract the audience.
In Japan, Professor Katsunori Kusunoki, a professor of communications at Toyo University found a way to incorporate slam poetry into his students lives; allowing them to showcase their competitiveness and love of poetry by putting together “poetry boxing” matches. Professor Kusunoki created annual “poetry boxing” tournaments in order to provide an medium for expression and social interaction . The rules are “16 boxers face off in pairs in competitions of stand-up verse that last for three minutes. Winners compete in series of challenges such as timed presentation and a round of improvised jousting.” A MC adds to the event by providing nicknames for the competitors. Professor Kusunoki's goal was to try to get his students to open up by breaking language barriers and allowing them to express themselves through Slam Poetry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28828 |
Sestina
A sestina (Italian: "sestina", from "sesto", sixth; Old Occitan: "cledisat" ; also known as "sestine", "sextine", "sextain") is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
The invention of the form is usually attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of 12th-century Provence, and the first sestinas were written in the Occitan language of that region. The form was cultivated by his fellow troubadours, then by other poets across Continental Europe in the subsequent centuries; they contributed to what would become the "standard form" of the sestina. The earliest example of the form in English appeared in 1579, though they were rarely written in Britain until the end of the 19th century. The sestina remains a popular poetic form, and many sestinas continue to be written by contemporary poets.
The oldest-known sestina is "Lo ferm voler qu'el cor m'intra", written around 1200 by Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of Aquitanian origin; he refers to it as "cledisat", meaning, more or less, "interlock". Hence, Daniel is generally considered the form's inventor, though it has been suggested that he may only have innovated an already existing form. Nevertheless, two other original troubadouric sestinas are known, the best known being "Eras, pus vey mon benastruc" by Guilhem Peire Cazals de Caortz; there are also two contrafacta built on the same end-words, the best known being "Ben gran avoleza intra" by Bertran de Born. These early sestinas were written in Old Occitan; the form started spilling into Italian with Dante in the 13th century; by the 15th, it was used in Portuguese by Luís de Camões.
The involvement of Dante and Petrarch in establishing the sestina form, together with the contributions of others in the country, account for its classification as an Italian verse form—despite not originating there. The result was that the sestina was re-imported into France from Italy in the 16th century. Pontus de Tyard was the first poet to attempt the form in French, and the only one to do so prior to the 19th century; he introduced a partial rhyme scheme in his sestina.
The first appearance of the sestina in English print is "Ye wastefull woodes", comprising lines 151–89 of the August Æglogue in Edmund Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar", published in 1579. It is in unrhymed iambic pentameter, but the order of end-words in each stanza is non-standard – ending 123456, 612345, etc. – each stanza promoting the previous final end-word to the first line, but otherwise leaving the order intact; the envoi order is (1) 2 / (3) 4 / (5) 6. This scheme was set by the Spaniard Gutierre de Cetina.
Although they appeared in print later, Philip Sidney's three sestinas may have been written earlier, and are often credited as the first in English. The first published (toward the end of Book I of "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia", 1590) is the double sestina "Ye Goatherd Gods". In this variant the standard end-word pattern is repeated for twelve stanzas, ending with a three-line envoi, resulting in a poem of 75 lines. Two others were published in subsequent editions of the "Arcadia". The second, "Since wailing is a bud of causeful sorrow", is in the "standard" form. Like "Ye Goatherd Gods" it is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and uses exclusively feminine endings, reflecting the Italian "endecasillabo". The third, "Farewell, O sun, Arcadia's clearest light", is the first rhyming sestina in English: it is in iambic pentameters and follows the standard end-word scheme, but rhymes ABABCC in the first stanza (the rhyme scheme necessarily changes in each subsequent stanza, a consequence of which is that the 6th stanza is in rhyming couplets). Sidney uses the same envoi structure as Spenser. William Drummond of Hawthornden published two sestinas (which he called "sextains") in 1616, which copy the form of Sidney's rhyming sestina. After this, there is an absence of notable sestinas for over 250 years, with John Frederick Nims noting that, "... there is not a single sestina in the three volumes of the Oxford anthologies that cover the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."
In the 1870s, there was a revival of interest in French forms, led by Andrew Lang, Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, John Payne, and others. The earliest sestina of this period is Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Sestina". It is in iambic pentameter rhyming ABABAB in the first stanza; each stanza begins by repeating the previous end-words 6 then 1, but the following 4 lines repeat the remaining end-words "ad lib"; the envoi is (1) 4 / (2) 3 / (5) 6. In the same volume ("Poems and Ballads, Second Series", 1878) Swinburne introduces a "double sestina" ("The Complaint of Lisa") that is unlike Sidney's: it comprises 12 stanzas of 12 iambic pentameter lines each, the first stanza rhyming ABCABDCEFEDF. Similar to his "Sestina", each stanza first repeats end-words 12 then 1 of the previous stanza; the rest are "ad lib". The envoi is (12) 10 / (8) 9 / (7) 4 / (3) 6 / (2) 1 / (11) 5.
From the 1930s, a revival of the form took place across the English-speaking world, led by poets such as W. H. Auden, and the 1950s were described as the "age of the sestina" by James E. B. Breslin. "Sestina: Altaforte" by Ezra Pound and "Paysage moralisé" by W. H. Auden are distinguished modern examples of the sestina. The sestina remains a popular closed verse form, and many sestinas continue to be written by contemporary poets; notable examples include "The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People" by David Ferry and "IVF" by Kona Macphee.
Although the sestina has been subject to many revisions throughout its development, there remain several features that define the form. The sestina is composed of six stanzas of six lines (sixains), followed by a stanza of three lines (a tercet). There is no rhyme within the stanzas; instead the sestina is structured through a recurrent pattern of the words that end each line, a technique known as "lexical repetition".
In the original form composed by Daniel, each line is of ten syllables, except the first of each stanza which are of seven. The established form, as developed by Petrarch and Dante, was in hendecasyllables. Since then, changes to the line length have been a relatively common variant, such that Stephanie Burt has written: "sestinas, as the form exists today, [do not] require expertise with inherited meter ...".
The pattern that the line-ending words follow is often explained if the numbers 1 to 6 are allowed to stand for the end-words of the first stanza. Each successive stanza takes its pattern based upon a bottom-up pairing of the lines of the preceding stanza (i.e., last and first, then second-from-last and second, then third-from-last and third). Given that the pattern for the first stanza is 123456, this produces 615243 in the second stanza.
Another way of visualising the pattern of line-ending words for each stanza is by the procedure known as "retrogradatio cruciata", which may be rendered as "backward crossing". The second stanza can be seen to have been formed from three sets of pairs (6–1, 5–2, 4–3), or two triads (1–2–3, 4–5–6). The 1–2–3 triad appears in its original order, but the 4–5–6 triad is reversed and superimposed upon it.
The pattern of the line-ending words in a sestina is represented both numerically and alphabetically in the following table:
The sixth stanza is followed by a tercet that is known variably by the French term envoi, the Occitan term tornada, or, with reference to its size in relation to the preceding stanzas, a "half-stanza". It consists of three lines that include all six of the line-endings words of the preceding stanzas. This should take the pattern of 2–5, 4–3, 6–1 (numbers relative to the first stanza); the first end-word of each pair can occur anywhere in the line, while the second must end the line. However, the end-word order of the envoi is no longer strictly enforced.
The sestina has been subject to some variations, with changes being made to both the size and number of stanzas, and also to individual line length. A "double sestina" is the name given to either: two sets of six six-line stanzas, with a three-line envoy (for a total of 75 lines), or twelve twelve-line stanzas, with a six-line envoy (for a total of 150 lines). Examples of either variation are rare; "Ye Goatherd Gods" by Philip Sidney is a notable example of the former variation, while "The Complaint of Lisa" by Algernon Charles Swinburne is a notable example of the latter variation. In the former variation, the original pattern of line-ending words, i.e. that of the first stanza, recurs in the seventh stanza, and thus the entire change of pattern occurs twice throughout. In the second variation, the pattern of line-ending words returns to the starting sequence in the eleventh stanza; thus it does not, unlike the "single" sestina, allow for every end-word to occupy each of the stanza ends; end-words 5 and 10 fail to couple between stanzas.
The structure of the sestina, which demands adherence to a strict and arbitrary order, produces several effects within a poem. Stephanie Burt notes that, "The sestina has served, historically, as a complaint", its harsh demands acting as "signs for deprivation or duress". The structure can enhance the subject matter that it orders; in reference to Elizabeth Bishop's "A Miracle for Breakfast", David Caplan suggests that the form's "harshly arbitrary demands echo its subject's". Nevertheless, the form's structure has been criticised; Paul Fussell considers the sestina to be of "dubious structural expressiveness" when composed in English and, irrespective of how it is used, "would seem to be [a form] that gives more structural pleasure to the contriver than to the apprehender."
Margaret Spanos highlights "a number of corresponding levels of tension and resolution" resulting from the structural form, including: structural, semantic and aesthetic tensions. She believes that the aesthetic tension, which results from the ""conception" of its mathematical completeness and perfection", set against the ""experiences" of its labyrinthine complexities" can be resolved in the apprehension of the "harmony of the whole."
The strength of the sestina, according to Stephen Fry, is the "repetition and recycling of elusive patterns that cannot be quite held in the mind all at once". For Shanna Compton, these patterns are easily discernible by newcomers to the form; she says that: "Even someone unfamiliar with the form's rules can tell by the end of the second stanza ... what's going on ...".
The 1972 television play "Between Time and Timbuktu", based on the writings of Kurt Vonnegut, was about a poet-astronaut who wanted to compose a sestina in outer space. Vonnegut wrote a sestina for the production. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28829 |
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English: "Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt") is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess. It remains popular in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.
It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight's castle.
The poem survives in one manuscript, "Cotton Nero A.x.", which also includes three religious narrative poems: "Pearl", "Purity" and "Patience". All are thought to have been written by the same author, dubbed the "Pearl Poet" or "Gawain Poet", since all four are written in a North West Midland dialect of Middle English.
In Camelot on New Year's Day, King Arthur's court is exchanging gifts and waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks to see or hear of an exciting adventure. A gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other. Refusing to fight anyone there on the grounds that they are all too weak to take him on, he insists he has come for a friendly christmas game: someone is to strike him once with his axe on the condition that the Green Knight may return the blow in a year and a day. The splendid axe will belong to whoever accepts this deal. Arthur himself is prepared to accept the challenge when it appears no other knight will dare, but Sir Gawain, youngest of Arthur's knights and his nephew, asks for the honour instead. The giant bends and bares his neck before him and Gawain neatly beheads him in one stroke. However, the Green Knight neither falls nor falters, but instead reaches out, picks up his severed head and remounts, holding up his bleeding head to Queen Guinevere while its writhing lips remind Gawain that the two must meet again at the Green Chapel. He then rides away. Gawain and Arthur admire the axe, hang it up as a trophy and encourage Guinevere to treat the whole matter lightly.
As the date approaches, Sir Gawain sets off to find the Green Chapel and keep his side of the bargain. Many adventures and battles are alluded to (but not described) until Gawain comes across a splendid castle where he meets Bertilak de Hautdesert, the lord of the castle, and his beautiful wife, who are pleased to have such a renowned guest. Also present is an old and ugly lady, unnamed but treated with great honour by all. Gawain tells them of his New Year's appointment at the Green Chapel and that he only has a few days remaining. Bertilak laughs, explaining that there is a path that will take him to there less than two miles away, and proposes that Gawain rest at the castle until then. Relieved and grateful, Gawain agrees.
Before going hunting the next day, Bertilak proposes a bargain: he will give Gawain whatever he catches on the condition that Gawain give him whatever he might gain during the day. Gawain accepts. After Bertilak leaves, Lady Bertilak visits Gawain's bedroom and behaves seductively, but despite her best efforts he yields nothing but a single kiss in his unwillingness to offend her. When Bertilak returns and gives Gawain the deer he has killed, his guest gives a kiss to Bertilak without divulging its source. The next day the lady comes again, Gawain again courteously foils her advances, and later that day there is a similar exchange of a hunted boar for two kisses. She comes once more on the third morning, but once her advances are denied, she offers Gawain a gold ring as a keepsake. He gently but steadfastly refuses but she pleads that he at least take her belt, a girdle of green and gold silk. The belt, the lady assures him, is charmed and will keep him from all physical harm. Tempted, as he may otherwise die the next day, Gawain accepts it, and they exchange three kisses. The lady has Gawain swear that he will keep the gift secret from Bertilak. That evening, Bertilak returns with a fox, which he exchanges with Gawain for the three kisses – but Gawain says nothing of the girdle.
The next day, Gawain binds the belt twice around his waist. He finds the Green Knight sharpening an axe and, as promised, Gawain bends his bared neck to receive his blow. At the first swing, Gawain flinches slightly and the Green Knight belittles him for it. Ashamed of himself, Gawain doesn't flinch with the second swing; but again the Green Knight withholds the full force of his blow. The knight explains he was testing Gawain's nerve. Angrily Gawain tells him to deliver his blow and so the knight does, causing only a slight wound on Gawain's neck. The game is over. Gawain seizes his sword, helmet and shield, but the Green Knight, laughing, reveals himself to be the lord of the castle, Bertilak de Hautdesert, transformed by magic. He explains that the entire adventure was a trick of the "elderly lady" Gawain saw at the castle, who is actually the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur's sister, who intended to test Arthur's knights and frighten Guinevere to death. Gawain is ashamed to have behaved deceitfully but the Green Knight laughs and professes him the most blameless knight in all the land. The two part on cordial terms. Gawain returns to Camelot wearing the girdle as a token of his failure to keep his promise. The Knights of the Round Table absolve him of blame and decide that henceforth each will wear a green sash in recognition of Gawain's adventure and as a reminder to be always honest.
Though the real name of "The "Gawain" Poet" (or poets) is unknown, some inferences about him can be drawn from an informed reading of his works. The manuscript of "Gawain" is known in academic circles as "Cotton Nero A.x.", following a naming system used by one of its owners, the sixteenth century Robert Bruce Cotton, a collector of Medieval English texts. Before the "Gawain" manuscript came into Cotton's possession, it was in the library of Henry Savile in Yorkshire. Little is known about its previous ownership, and until 1824, when the manuscript was introduced to the academic community in a second edition of Thomas Warton's "History" edited by Richard Price, it was almost entirely unknown. Even then, the "Gawain" poem was not published in its entirety until 1839. Now held in the British Library, it has been dated to the late 14th century, meaning the poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, author of "The Canterbury Tales", though it is unlikely that they ever met, and the Gawain Poet's English is considerably different from Chaucer's. The three other works found in the same manuscript as "Gawain" (commonly known as "Pearl", "Patience", and "Purity" or "Cleanliness") are often considered to be written by the same author. However, the manuscript containing these poems was transcribed by a copyist and not by the original poet. Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single authorship.
What is known today about the poet is largely general. As J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, after reviewing the text's allusions, style, and themes, concluded in 1925:
The most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire. He is known to have lived in the dialect region of the Gawain Poet and is thought to have written the poem "St. Erkenwald", which some scholars argue bears stylistic similarities to "Gawain". "St. Erkenwald", however, has been dated by some scholars to a time outside the Gawain Poet's era. Thus, ascribing authorship to John Massey is still controversial and most critics consider the Gawain Poet an unknown.
The 2,530 lines and 101 stanzas that make up "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" are written in what linguists call the "Alliterative Revival" style typical of the 14th century. Instead of focusing on a metrical syllabic count and rhyme, the alliterative form of this period usually relied on the agreement of a pair of stressed syllables at the beginning of the line and another pair at the end. Each line always includes a pause, called a "caesura", at some point after the first two stresses, dividing it into two half-lines. Although he largely follows the form of his day, the Gawain poet was somewhat freer with convention than his or her predecessors. The poet broke the alliterative lines into variable-length groups and ended these nominal stanzas with a rhyming section of five lines known as the "bob and wheel", in which the "bob" is a very short line, sometimes of only two syllables, followed by the "wheel," longer lines with internal rhyme.
The earliest known story to feature a beheading game is the 8th-century Middle Irish tale "Bricriu's Feast". This story parallels "Gawain" in that, like the Green Knight, Cú Chulainn's antagonist feints three blows with the axe before letting his target depart without injury. A beheading exchange also appears in the late 12th-century "Life of Caradoc", a Middle French narrative embedded in the anonymous First Continuation of Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval, the Story of the Grail". A notable difference in this story is that Caradoc's challenger is his father in disguise, come to test his honour. Lancelot is given a beheading challenge in the early 13th-century "Perlesvaus", in which a knight begs him to chop off his head or else put his own in jeopardy. Lancelot reluctantly cuts it off, agreeing to come to the same place in a year to put his head in the same danger. When Lancelot arrives, the people of the town celebrate and announce that they have finally found a true knight, because many others had failed this test of chivalry.
The stories "The Girl with the Mule" (alternately titled "The Mule Without a Bridle") and "Hunbaut" feature Gawain in beheading game situations. In "Hunbaut," Gawain cuts off a man's head and, before he can replace it, removes the magic cloak keeping the man alive, thus killing him. Several stories tell of knights who struggle to stave off the advances of women sent by their lords as a test; these stories include "Yder", the Lancelot-Grail, "Hunbaut", and "The Knight of the Sword". The last two involve Gawain specifically. Usually the temptress is the daughter or wife of a lord to whom the knight owes respect, and the knight is tested to see whether or not he will remain chaste in trying circumstances.
In the first branch of the medieval Welsh collection of tales known as The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Pwyll exchanges places for a year with Arawn, the lord of Annwn (the Otherworld). Despite having his appearance changed to resemble Arawn exactly, Pwyll does not have sexual relations with Arawn's wife during this time, thus establishing a lasting friendship between the two men. This story may, then, provide a background to Gawain's attempts to resist the wife of the Green Knight; thus, the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may be seen as a tale which combines elements of the Celtic beheading game and seduction test stories. Additionally, in both stories a year passes before the completion of the conclusion of the challenge or exchange. Some scholars disagree with this interpretation, however, as Arawn seems to have accepted the notion that Pwyll may reciprocate with his wife, making it less of a "seduction test" per se, as seduction tests typically involve a Lord and Lady conspiring to seduce a knight, seemingly "against" the wishes of the Lord.
After the writing of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", several similar stories followed. "The Greene Knight" (15th–17th century) is a rhymed retelling of nearly the same tale. In it, the plot is simplified, motives are more fully explained, and some names are changed. Another story, "The Turke and Gowin" (15th century), begins with a Turk entering Arthur's court and asking, "Is there any will, as a brother, To give a buffett and take another?" At the end of this poem the Turk, rather than buffeting Gawain back, asks the knight to cut off his head, which Gawain does. The Turk then praises Gawain and showers him with gifts. "The Carle of Carlisle" (17th century) also resembles "Gawain" in a scene in which the Carle (Churl), a lord, takes Sir Gawain to a chamber where two swords are hanging and orders Gawain to cut off his head or suffer his own to be cut off. Gawain obliges and strikes, but the Carle rises, laughing and unharmed. Unlike the "Gawain" poem, no return blow is demanded or given.
At the heart of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is the test of Gawain's adherence to the code of chivalry. The typical temptation fable of medieval literature presents a series of tribulations assembled as tests or "proofs" of moral virtue. The stories often describe several individuals' failures after which the main character is tested. Success in the proofs will often bring immunity or good fortune. Gawain's ability to pass the tests of his host are of utmost importance to his survival, though he does not know it. It is only by fortuity or "instinctive-courtesy" that Sir Gawain is able to pass his test. Gawain does not realize, however, that these tests are all orchestrated by Sir Bertilak.
In addition to the laws of chivalry, Gawain must respect another set of laws concerning courtly love. The knight's code of honour requires him to do whatever a damsel asks. Gawain must accept the girdle from the Lady, but he must also keep the promise he has made to his host that he will give whatever he gains that day. Gawain chooses to keep the girdle out of fear of death, thus breaking his promise to the host but honouring the lady. Upon learning that the Green Knight is actually his host (Bertilak), he realises that although he has completed his quest, he has failed to be virtuous. This test demonstrates the conflict between honour and knightly duties. In breaking his promise, Gawain believes he has lost his honour and failed in his duties.
Scholars have frequently noted the parallels between the three hunting scenes and the three seduction scenes in "Gawain". They are generally agreed that the fox chase has significant parallels to the third seduction scene, in which Gawain accepts the girdle from Bertilak's wife. Gawain, like the fox, fears for his life and is looking for a way to avoid death from the Green Knight's axe. Like his counterpart, he resorts to trickery in order to save his skin. The fox uses tactics so unlike the first two animals, and so unexpectedly, that Bertilak has the hardest time hunting it. Similarly, Gawain finds the Lady's advances in the third seduction scene more unpredictable and challenging to resist than her previous attempts. She changes her evasive language, typical of courtly love relationships, to a more assertive style. Her dress, relatively modest in earlier scenes, is suddenly voluptuous and revealing.
The deer- and boar-hunting scenes are less clearly connected, although scholars have attempted to link each animal to Gawain's reactions in the parallel seduction scene. Attempts to connect the deer hunt with the first seduction scene have unearthed a few parallels. Deer hunts of the time, like courtship, had to be done according to established rules. Women often favoured suitors who hunted well and skinned their animals, sometimes even watching while a deer was cleaned. The sequence describing the deer hunt is relatively unspecific and nonviolent, with an air of relaxation and exhilaration. The first seduction scene follows in a similar vein, with no overt physical advances and no apparent danger; the entire exchange is humorously portrayed.
The boar-hunting scene is, in contrast, laden with detail. Boars were (and are) much more difficult to hunt than deer; approaching one with only a sword was akin to challenging a knight to single combat. In the hunting sequence, the boar flees but is cornered before a ravine. He turns to face Bertilak with his back to the ravine, prepared to fight. Bertilak dismounts and in the ensuing fight kills the boar. He removes its head and displays it on a pike. In the seduction scene, Bertilak's wife, like the boar, is more forward, insisting that Gawain has a romantic reputation and that he must not disappoint her. Gawain, however, is successful in parrying her attacks, saying that surely she knows more than he about love. Both the boar hunt and the seduction scene can be seen as depictions of a moral victory: both Gawain and Bertilak face struggles alone and emerge triumphant.
Masculinity has also been associated with hunting. The theme of masculinity is present throughout. In an article by Vern L. Bullough, "Being a Male in the Middle Ages," he discusses Sir Gawain and how normally, masculinity is often viewed in terms of being sexually active. He notes that Sir Gawain is not part of this normalcy.
Some argue that nature represents a chaotic, lawless order which is in direct confrontation with the civilisation of Camelot throughout "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". The green horse and rider that first invade Arthur's peaceful halls are iconic representations of nature's disturbance. Nature is presented throughout the poem as rough and indifferent, constantly threatening the order of men and courtly life. Nature invades and disrupts order in the major events of the narrative, both symbolically and through the inner nature of humanity. This element appears first with the disruption caused by the Green Knight, later when Gawain must fight off his natural lust for Bertilak's wife, and again when Gawain breaks his vow to Bertilak by choosing to keep the green girdle, valuing survival over virtue. Represented by the sin-stained girdle, nature is an underlying force, forever within man and keeping him imperfect (in a chivalric sense). In this view, Gawain is part of a wider conflict between nature and chivalry, an examination of the ability of man's order to overcome the chaos of nature.
Several critics have made exactly the opposite interpretation, reading the poem as a comic critique of the Christianity of the time, particularly as embodied in the Christian chivalry of Arthur's court. In its zeal to extirpate all traces of paganism, Christianity had cut itself off from the sources of life in nature and the female. The green girdle represents all the pentangle lacks. The Arthurian enterprise is doomed unless it can acknowledge the unattainability of the ideals of the Round Table, and, for the sake of realism and wholeness, recognize and incorporate the pagan values represented by the Green Knight.
The chivalry that is represented within 'Gawain' is one which was constructed by court nobility. The violence that is part of this chivalry is steeply contrasted by the fact that King Arthur's court is Christian and the initial beheading event takes place while celebrating Christmas. The violence of an act of beheading seems to be counterintuitive to chivalric and Christian ideals, and yet it is seen as part of knighthood.
The question of politeness and chivalry is a main theme during Gawain's interactions with Bertilak's wife. He cannot accept her advances or else lose his honour, and yet he cannot utterly refuse her advances or else risk upsetting his hostess. Gawain plays a very fine line and the only part where he appears to fail is when he conceals the green girdle from Bertilak.
The word "gomen" (game) is found 18 times in "Gawain". Its similarity to the word "gome" (man), which appears 21 times, has led some scholars to see men and games as centrally linked. Games at this time were seen as tests of worthiness, as when the Green Knight challenges the court's right to its good name in a "Christmas game". The "game" of exchanging gifts was common in Germanic cultures. If a man received a gift, he was obliged to provide the giver with a better gift or risk losing his honour, almost like an exchange of blows in a fight (or in a "beheading game"). The poem revolves around two games: an exchange of beheading and an exchange of winnings. These appear at first to be unconnected. However, a victory in the first game will lead to a victory in the second. Elements of both games appear in other stories; however, the linkage of outcomes is unique to "Gawain".
Times, dates, seasons, and cycles within "Gawain" are often noted by scholars because of their symbolic nature. The story starts on New Year's Eve with a beheading and culminates on the next New Year's Day. Gawain leaves Camelot on All Saints Day and arrives at Bertilak's castle on Christmas Eve. Furthermore, the Green Knight tells Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in "a year and a day"—a period of time seen often in medieval literature. Some scholars interpret the yearly cycles, each beginning and ending in winter, as the poet's attempt to convey the inevitable fall of all things good and noble in the world. Such a theme is strengthened by the image of Troy, a powerful nation once thought to be invincible which, according to the "Aeneid", fell to the Greeks due to pride and ignorance. The Trojan connection shows itself in the presence of two virtually identical descriptions of Troy's destruction. The poem's first line reads: "Since the siege and the assault were ceased at Troy" and the final stanzaic line (before the bob and wheel) is "After the siege and the assault were ceased at Troy".
The entire 'Gawain' poem follows one individual experiencing highly emotional situations. He participates in the beheading contest, watches as a man he has beheaded walks away unscathed, prepares for a journey where he will then also receive a blow that will behead him, is tempted by the sexual advances of Sir Bertilak's wife, decides what to do with the moral conundrum that is the girdle, suffering humiliation, and returning to court to retell his entire adventure. These events invite the reader to empathize with Gawain, the flawed hero, and understand that he is also human.
Humans experience an emotional contagion, which was defined by psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson as 'the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person, and, consequently, to converge emotionally.' Amy Coplan explains that emotional contagion is something that happens so quickly and automatically that we are typically unaware of it happening. The poet capitalized on this emotional reaction and thus has the reader empathizing with Sir Gawain almost without realizing it.
Given the varied and even contradictory interpretations of the colour green, its precise meaning in the poem remains ambiguous. In English folklore and literature, green was traditionally used to symbolise nature and its associated attributes: fertility and rebirth. Stories of the medieval period also used it to allude to love and the base desires of man. Because of its connection with faeries and spirits in early English folklore, green also signified witchcraft, devilry and evil. It can also represent decay and toxicity. When combined with gold, as with the Green Knight and the girdle, green was often seen as representing youth's passing. In Celtic mythology, green was associated with misfortune and death, and therefore avoided in clothing. The green girdle, originally worn for protection, became a symbol of shame and cowardice; it is finally adopted as a symbol of honour by the knights of Camelot, signifying a transformation from good to evil and back again; this displays both the spoiling and regenerative connotations of the colour green. Ovid's Metamorphoses interprets Gawain poet's association of green with envy. Morgan envies Queen Guinevere's good fortune at Arthur's court and furious about her own expulsion from the court engineered by the queen, who transforms Bertilak into her instrument of jealousy, the Green Knight. The Lady's green girdle is also a device used to test Gawain's own envy, tempting him to sin.
Scholars have puzzled over the Green Knight's symbolism since the discovery of the poem. British medievalist C. S. Lewis said the character was "as vivid and concrete as any image in literature" and J. R. R. Tolkien said he was the "most difficult character" to interpret in "Sir Gawain". His major role in Arthurian literature is that of a judge and tester of knights, thus he is at once terrifying, friendly, and mysterious. He appears in only two other poems: "The Greene Knight" and "King Arthur and King Cornwall". Scholars have attempted to connect him to other mythical characters, such as Jack in the green of English tradition and to Al-Khidr, but no definitive connection has yet been established.
However, there is a possibility, as Alice Buchanan has argued, that the colour green is erroneously attributed to the Green Knight due to the poet's mistranslation or misunderstanding of the Irish word "glas", which could either mean grey or green. In the Death of Curoi (one of the Irish stories from Bricriu's Feast), Curoi stands in for Bertilak, and is often called "the man of the grey mantle". Though the words usually used for grey in the Death of Curoi are "lachtna" or "odar", roughly meaning milk-coloured and shadowy respectively, in later works featuring a green knight, the word "glas" is used and may have been the basis of misunderstanding.
The girdle's symbolic meaning, in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", has been construed in a variety of ways. Interpretations range from sexual to spiritual. Those who argue for the sexual inference view the girdle as a "trophy". It is not entirely clear if the "winner" is Sir Gawain or Lady Bertilak. The girdle is given to Gawain by Lady Bertilak to keep him safe when he confronts the Green Knight. When Lord Bertilak comes home from his hunting trip, Gawain does not reveal the girdle to his host, instead he hides it. This introduces the spiritual interpretation, that Gawain's acceptance of the girdle is a sign of his faltering faith in God, at least in the face of death. To some, the Green Knight is Christ, who overcomes death, while Gawain is the Every Christian, who in his struggles to follow Christ faithfully, chooses the easier path. In "Sir Gawain", the easier choice is the girdle, which promises what Gawain most desires. Faith in God, alternatively, requires one's acceptance that what one most desires does not always coincide with what God has planned. It is arguably best to view the girdle not as an either–or situation, but as a complex, multi-faceted symbol that acts to test Gawain in more ways than one. While Gawain is able to resist Bertilak's wife's sexual advances, he is unable to resist the powers of the girdle. Gawain is operating under the laws of chivalry which, evidently, have rules that can contradict each other. In the story of "Sir Gawain", Gawain finds himself torn between doing what a damsel asks (accepting the girdle) and keeping his promise (returning anything given to him while his host is away).
The poem contains the first recorded use of the word "pentangle" in English. It contains the only representation of such a symbol on Gawain's shield in the Gawain literature. What is more, the poet uses a total of 46 lines in order to describe the meaning of the pentangle; no other symbol in the poem receives as much attention or is described in such detail. The poem describes the pentangle as a symbol of faithfulness and an "endless knot". From lines 640 to 654, the five points of the pentangle relate directly to Gawain in five ways: five senses, his five fingers, his faith found in the five wounds of Christ, the five joys of Mary (whose face was on the inside of the shield) and finally friendship, fraternity, purity, politeness and pity (traits that Gawain possessed around others). In line 625, it is described as "a sign by Solomon". Solomon, the third king of Israel, in the 10th century BC, was said to have the mark of the pentagram on his ring, which he received from the archangel Michael. The pentagram seal on this ring was said to give Solomon power over demons.
Along these lines, some academics link the Gawain pentangle to magical traditions. In Germany, the symbol was called a "Drudenfuß" and was placed on household objects to keep out evil. The symbol was also associated with magical charms that, if recited or written on a weapon, would call forth magical forces. However, concrete evidence tying the magical pentagram to Gawain's pentangle is scarce.
Gawain's pentangle also symbolises the "phenomenon of physically endless objects signifying a temporally endless quality." Many poets use the symbol of the circle to show infinity or endlessness, but Gawain's poet insisted on using something more complex. In medieval number theory, the number five is considered a "circular number", since it "reproduces itself in its last digit when raised to its powers". Furthermore, it replicates itself geometrically; that is, every pentangle has a smaller pentagon that allows a pentangle to be embedded in it and this "process may be repeated forever with decreasing pentangles". Thus, by reproducing the number five, which in medieval number symbolism signified incorruptibility, Gawain's pentangle represents his eternal incorruptibility.
Gawain's refusal of the Lady Bertilak's ring has major implications for the remainder of the story. While the modern student may tend to pay more attention to the girdle as the eminent object offered by the lady, readers in the time of Gawain would have noticed the significance of the offer of the ring as they believed that rings, and especially the embedded gems, had talismanic properties similarly done by the Gawain-poet in "Pearl". This is especially true of the lady's ring as scholars believe it to be a ruby or carbuncle, indicated when the Gawain-Poet describes it as a "brygt sunne" (line 1819), a "fiery sun." This red colour can be seen as symbolizing royalty, divinity, and the Passion of the Christ, something that Gawain as a knight of the Round Table would strive for, but this colour could also represent the negative qualities of temptation and covetousness. Given the importance of magic rings in Arthurian romance, this remarkable ring would also have been believed to protect the wearer from harm just as Lady Bertilak claims the girdle will.
The poet highlights number symbolism to add symmetry and meaning to the poem. For example, three kisses are exchanged between Gawain and Bertilak's wife; Gawain is tempted by her on three separate days; Bertilak goes hunting three times, and the Green Knight swings at Gawain three times with his axe. The number two also appears repeatedly, as in the two beheading scenes, two confession scenes, and two castles. The five points of the pentangle, the poet adds, represent Gawain's virtues, for he is "faithful five ways and five times each". The poet goes on to list the ways in which Gawain is virtuous: all five of his senses are without fault; his five fingers never fail him, and he always remembers the five wounds of Christ, as well as the five joys of the Virgin Mary. The fifth five is Gawain himself, who embodies the five moral virtues of the code of chivalry: "friendship, generosity, chastity, courtesy, and piety". All of these virtues reside, as the poet says, in the "Endless Knot" of the pentangle, which forever interlinks and is never broken. This intimate relationship between symbol and faith allows for rigorous allegorical interpretation, especially in the physical role that the shield plays in Gawain's quest. Thus, the poet makes Gawain the epitome of perfection in knighthood through number symbolism.
The number five is also found in the structure of the poem itself. "Sir Gawain" is 101 stanzas long, traditionally organised into four 'Fits' of 21, 24, 34, and 22 stanzas. These divisions, however, have since been disputed; scholars have begun to believe that they are the work of the copyist and not of the poet. The surviving manuscript features a series of capital letters added after the fact by another scribe, and some scholars argue that these additions were an attempt to restore the original divisions. These letters divide the manuscript into nine parts. The first and last parts are 22 stanzas long. The second and second-to-last parts are only one stanza long, and the middle five parts are eleven stanzas long. The number eleven is associated with transgression in other medieval literature (being one more than ten, a number associated with the Ten Commandments). Thus, this set of five elevens (55 stanzas) creates the perfect mix of transgression and incorruption, suggesting that Gawain is faultless in his faults.
At the story's climax, Gawain is wounded superficially in the neck by the Green Knight's axe. During the medieval period, the body and the soul were believed to be so intimately connected that wounds were considered an outward sign of inward sin. The neck, specifically, was believed to correlate with the part of the soul related to will, connecting the reasoning part (the head) and the courageous part (the heart). Gawain's sin resulted from using his will to separate reasoning from courage. By accepting the girdle from the lady, he employs reason to do something less than courageous—evade death in a dishonest way. Gawain's wound is thus an outward sign of an internal wound. The Green Knight's series of tests shows Gawain the weakness that has been in him all along: the desire to use his will pridefully for personal gain, rather than submitting his will in humility to God. The Green Knight, by engaging with the greatest knight of Camelot, also reveals the moral weakness of pride in all of Camelot, and therefore all of humanity. However, the wounds of Christ, believed to offer healing to wounded souls and bodies, are mentioned throughout the poem in the hope that this sin of prideful "stiffneckedness" will be healed among fallen mortals.
Many critics argue that "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" should be viewed, above all, as a romance. Medieval romances typically recount the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who abides by chivalry's strict codes of honour and demeanour, embarks upon a quest and defeats monsters, thereby winning the favour of a lady. Thus, medieval romances focus not on love and sentiment (as the term "romance" implies today), but on adventure.
Gawain's function, as medieval scholar Alan Markman says, "is the function of the romance hero … to stand as the champion of the human race, and by submitting to strange and severe tests, to demonstrate human capabilities for good or bad action." Through Gawain's adventure, it becomes clear that he is merely human. The reader becomes attached to this human view in the midst of the poem's romanticism, relating to Gawain's humanity while respecting his knightly qualities. Gawain "shows us what moral conduct is. We shall probably not equal his behaviour, but we admire him for pointing out the way."
In viewing the poem as a medieval romance, many scholars see it as intertwining chivalric and courtly love laws under the English Order of the Garter. The group's motto, 'honi soit qui mal y pense', or "Shamed be he who finds evil here," is written at the end of the poem. Some critics describe Gawain's peers wearing girdles of their own as evidence of the origin of the Order of the Garter. However, in the parallel poem "The Greene Knight", the lace is white, not green, and is considered the origin of the collar worn by the knights of the Bath, not the Order of the Garter. The motto on the poem was probably written by a copyist and not by the original author. Still, the connection made by the copyist to the Order is not extraordinary.
The poem is in many ways deeply Christian, with frequent references to the fall of Adam and Eve and to Jesus Christ. Scholars have debated the depth of the Christian elements within the poem by looking at it in the context of the age in which it was written, coming up with varying views as to what represents a Christian element of the poem and what does not. For example, some critics compare "Sir Gawain" to the other three poems of the "Gawain" manuscript. Each has a heavily Christian theme, causing scholars to interpret "Gawain" similarly. Comparing it to the poem "Cleanness" (also known as "Purity"), for example, they see it as a story of the apocalyptic fall of a civilisation, in "Gawain's" case, Camelot. In this interpretation, Sir Gawain is like Noah, separated from his society and warned by the Green Knight (who is seen as God's representative) of the coming doom of Camelot. Gawain, judged worthy through his test, is spared the doom of the rest of Camelot. King Arthur and his knights, however, misunderstand Gawain's experience and wear garters themselves. In "Cleanness" the men who are saved are similarly helpless in warning their society of impending destruction.
One of the key points stressed in this interpretation is that salvation is an individual experience difficult to communicate to outsiders. In his depiction of Camelot, the poet reveals a concern for his society, whose inevitable fall will bring about the ultimate destruction intended by God. "Gawain" was written around the time of the Black Death and Peasants' Revolt, events which convinced many people that their world was coming to an apocalyptic end and this belief was reflected in literature and culture. However, other critics see weaknesses in this view, since the Green Knight is ultimately under the control of Morgan le Fay, often viewed as a figure of evil in Camelot tales. This makes the knight's presence as a representative of God problematic.
While the character of the Green Knight is usually not viewed as a representation of Christ in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", critics do acknowledge a parallel. Lawrence Besserman, a specialist in medieval literature, explains that "the Green Knight is not a figurative representative of Christ. But the idea of Christ's divine/human nature provides a medieval conceptual framework that supports the poet's serious/comic account of the Green Knight's supernatural/human qualities and actions." This duality exemplifies the influence and importance of Christian teachings and views of Christ in the era of the Gawain Poet.
Furthermore, critics note the Christian reference to Christ's crown of thorns at the conclusion of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". After Gawain returns to Camelot and tells his story regarding the newly acquired green sash, the poem concludes with a brief prayer and a reference to "the thorn-crowned God". Besserman theorises that "with these final words the poet redirects our attention from the circular girdle-turned-sash (a double image of Gawain's "yntrawpe/renoun") to the circular Crown of Thorns (a double image of Christ's humiliation turned triumph)."
Throughout the poem, Gawain encounters numerous trials testing his devotion and faith in Christianity. When Gawain sets out on his journey to find the Green Chapel, he finds himself lost, and only after praying to the Virgin Mary does he find his way. As he continues his journey, Gawain once again faces anguish regarding his inevitable encounter with the Green Knight. Instead of praying to Mary, as before, Gawain places his faith in the girdle given to him by Bertilak's wife. From the Christian perspective, this leads to disastrous and embarrassing consequences for Gawain as he is forced to reevaluate his faith when the Green Knight points out his betrayal. Another interpretation sees the work in terms of the perfection of virtue, with the pentangle representing the moral perfection of the connected virtues, the Green Knight as Christ exhibiting perfect fortitude, and Gawain as slightly imperfect in fortitude by virtue of flinching when under the threat of death.
An analogy is also made between Gawain's trial and the Biblical test that Adam encounters in the Garden of Eden. Adam succumbs to Eve just as Gawain surrenders to Bertilak's wife by accepting the girdle. Although Gawain sins by putting his faith in the girdle and not confessing when he is caught, the Green Knight pardons him, thereby allowing him to become a better Christian by learning from his mistakes. Through the various games played and hardships endured, Gawain finds his place within the Christian world.
Feminist literary critics see the poem as portraying women's ultimate power over men. Morgan le Fay and Bertilak's wife, for example, are the most powerful characters in the poem—Morgan especially, as she begins the game by enchanting the Green Knight. The girdle and Gawain's scar can be seen as symbols of feminine power, each of them diminishing Gawain's masculinity. Gawain's misogynist passage, in which he blames all of his troubles on women and lists the many men who have fallen prey to women's wiles, further supports the feminist view of ultimate female power in the poem.
In contrast, others argue that the poem focuses mostly on the opinions, actions, and abilities of men. For example, on the surface, it appears that Bertilak's wife is a strong leading character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28833 |
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood ("SI") (;) born 1940; is a Pakistani nuclear engineer and a scholar of Islamic studies. He was the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) over unauthorized travel in Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Having spent a distinguished career in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), he founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) in 1999– a right-wing organization that was banned and sanctioned by the United States in 2001. Mahmood was among those who were listed and sanctioned by the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee in December 2001. Having been cleared by the FIA, he has been living in anonymity in Islamabad, authoring books on the relationship between Islam and science.
Mahmood was born in Amritsar, Punjab, British India to a Punjabi family. There are conflicting reports concerning his date of birth; his personal admission noted the birth year as 1940, while the UN reports estimated as 1938. His father, Chaudhry Muhammad Sharif, was a local "Zamindar" (lit. feudal lord). His family emigrated from India to Pakistan following religious violence in India in 1947; the family settled in Lahore, Punjab.
After graduating with distinctions from a local high school standing at top of his class, Mahmood was awarded a scholarship and enrolled at the Government College University to study electrical engineering. After spending a semester, he transferred to the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with honors in 1960. His credentials led him to join the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) where he gained another scholarship to study in the United Kingdom.
In 1962, Mahmood went to attend the University of Manchester where he studied for a double master's degree. First completing a masters' program in control systems in 1965, he then received another master's degree in nuclear engineering in 1969 from the University of Manchester. While in Manchester, Mahmood was an expert on the Manhattan Project and was reportedly in contact with South African scientists in discussing the jet-nozzle method for uranium enrichment. However, it remains unclear how much interaction was taken place during that time.
Mahmood joined the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) in 1968, joining the Nuclear Physics Division at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) working under Dr. Naeem Ahmad Khan. His collaboration took place with Samar Mubarakmand, Hafeez Qureshi, and he was a vital member of the group before it was discontinued in 1970. Mahmood was one of the foremost experts on civilian reactor technology and was a senior engineer at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP I)— the first commercial nuclear power plant in Pakistan. He gained notability and publicity in the Pakistan Physics Society for inventing a scientific instrument, the 'SBM probe', to detect leaks in steam pipes, a problem that was affecting nuclear plants all over the world and is still used worldwide.
After witnessing the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which saw the unconditional surrender of Pakistan in 1971, Mahmood attended the winter seminar at Multan and delivered a speech on atomic science. On 20 January 1972, the President of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, approved a crash atomic weapon program, under Munir Ahmad Khan, for the sake of "national survivor." Though, he continued his work at the KANUPP I engineering division.
In the aftermath of 'Smiling Buddha', a surprise nuclear test conducted by India in May 1974, Munir Ahmad appointed Mahmood as the director of the enrichment division at PAEC, where the majority of calculations were conducted by Dr. Khalil Qureshi– a physical chemist. Mahmood analyzed the gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuge, jet-nozzle and molecular laser isotope separation method for uranium-enrichment; recommending the gas centrifuge method as economical. After submitting the report, Mahmood was asked to depart to the Netherlands to interview Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan on behalf of President Bhutto in 1974. In 1975, his proposal was approved and the work on uranium enrichment started with Mahmood as its director, a move that irked the more qualified but more difficult to manage Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had coveted the job for himself. His relations with Dr. Khan remains extremely tense and the pairs disagreed with each other and developed differences at great height. In private meetings with Munir Ahmad, Mahmood often complained and pictured him as "egomaniac". In 1976, Mahmood was removed from the enrichment division, Project-706, by Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Khan moved the enrichment division at the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) under military control.
Eventually, Munir Ahmad removed Mahmood from other classified works and posted him back to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP-I) with no reason given. In the 1980s, Munir Ahmad secured Mahmood a job as project manager for the construction of the Khushab Reactor (Khushab-I) where he served as chief engineer and aided with designing the coolant systems. In 1998, he was promoted as a director of the nuclear power division and held that position until 1999.
After the reactor went critical in April 1998, Mahmood said in an interview: ""This reactor (can produce enough plutonium for two to three nuclear weapons per year) Pakistan had "acquired the capability to produce... boosted thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs"." In 1998, Mahmood was honored with the Sitara-e-Imtiaz award in a ceremony by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
In 1998, he was promoted as a director of the nuclear power division and held that position until 1999.
Though publicly endorsing the 1988 decision to carry out the Chagai-I nuclear tests by Prime Minister Sharif, Mahmood began appearing on news channels as an outspoken opponent of Sharif, as Mahmood vehemently opposed Pakistan becoming a signatory state of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). In Pakistan's popular news channels and newspapers, Mahmood gave numerous interviews, wrote articles, and lobbied against Sharif when learning that the Prime Minister had been willing to sign anti-nuclear weapon treaties, prompting the Pakistan Government to forcefully transfer Mahmood to a non-technical position at PAEC.
Seeking premature retirement from PAEC in 1999, Mahmood moved towards publishing books and articles involving the relationship between Islam and science. Mahmood founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN)– a right-wing organization– with his close associates. In 2000, he began attending lectures and religious sessions with Dr. Israr Ahmed who would later influence his political views and philosophy. Through UTN, Mahmood stepped into more radical politics, and began visiting Afghanistan where he wanted to be focused on rebuilding educational institutions, hospitals, and relief work.
In August 2001, Mahmood and his colleague Chaudhry Abdul Majeed at the UTN met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Describing the meeting, the "New York Times" editorial quoted:""There is little doubt that Mahmood talked to the two al-Qaeda leaders about nuclear weapons, or that Al Qaeda desperately wanted the bomb"".
Since 1999 and 2000 onwards, Pakistan's intelligence community had been tracking and monitoring Mahmood whose bushy beard advertised his deep attachment to the Afghan Taliban. After the September 11 attacks in the United States, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) launched a criminal investigation against him, leveling charges of unauthorized travel to Afghanistan. Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, later described intelligence reports of his meeting with Al Qaeda as ""frustratingly vague"." When asked by Pakistani and American investigators about the nature of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau's (UTN) work and discussions, Mahmood said that he had nothing to do with the al-Qaeda and was only working on humanitarian issues like food, health and education. Investigators from Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were astonished and surprised when finding out that Mahmood knew nothing of nuclear weapons as
During his debriefing, his son Dr. Asim Mahmood, a family medicine doctor, told ISI officials that: "My father [Mahmood] did meet with Osama bin Laden and Osama Bin Laden seemed interested in that matter but my father showed no interest in the matter as he met him for food, water and healthcare matters on which his charity was working".
The FIA criminal probe continued for four months and yielded no concrete results. Pressure from Pakistani society and court inquiries against the FIA's criminal probe led to Mahmood's release in 2001. His family did confirm his release but had been constantly under surveillance by the FIA; his name was placed on the "Exit Control Lists" so he is not allowed to travel out of Pakistan. Since his release, Mahmood has been out of the public eye and lives a quiet life in Islamabad, devoting most of his time to writing books and doing research work on Islam and science.
Dr. Bashir Syed, former president of the Association of Pakistani Scientists and Engineers of North America (APSENA), said: "I know both of these persons and can tell you there is not an iota of truth that both these respected scientists and friends will do anything to harm the interest of their own country."
Mahmood has written over fifteen books, the most well-known being ""The Mechanics of Doomsday and Life After Death"", which is an analysis of the events leading to doomsday in light of scientific theories and Quranic knowledge. However, his scientific arguments and theories have been challenged by some prominent scientists in Pakistan. His religiosity and eccentricity began troubling the Pakistan Physics Society; his peers often quoted him as "a rather strange man".
In 1988, Mahmood was invited to the University of Islamabad to deliver a lecture on science. During his lecture at the university's 'Physics Hall' he and several other academcians debated his book. While debating, a well known Pakistani nuclear physicist, Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, and Mahmood, had an acrimonious public debate. Hoodbhoy had severely criticised Mahmood's theories and the notion of Islamic science in general, calling it "ludicrous science." Mahmood protested that Dr. Hoodbhoy misrepresented his views, quoting: "This is crossing all limits of decency," he wrote. "But should one expect any honesty or decency from anti-Islamic sources?"
In his writings and speeches, Mahmood has advocated for nuclear sharing with other Islamic nations which he believed would give rise to Muslim dominance in the world. He has also written a tafseer of the Quran in English.
Mahmood is reported to be fascinated "with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anti-colonial uprisings." According to his book ""Cosmology and Human Destiny"", Mahmood argued that sunspots have influenced major human events, including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World War II. He concluded that governments across the world ""are already being subjected to great emotional aggression under the catalytic effect of the abnormally high sunspot activity under which they are most likely to adapt aggression as the natural solution for their problems"". In this book, first published in 1998, he predicted that the period from 2007 to 2014 would be of great turmoil and destruction in the world. Other books written by him include a biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad titled ""First and the Last"", while his other books are focused more on the relation between Islam and science like "Miraculous Quran", "Life After Death and Doomsday", and "Kitab-e-Zindagi" (in Urdu).
One passage of the book reportedly states: ""At the international level, terrorism will rule; and in this scenario use of mass destruction weapons cannot be ruled out. Millions, by 2020, may die through mass destruction weapons, hunger, disease, street violence, terrorist attacks, and suicide.""
Mahmood's lifelong friend, Member of Parliament Farhatullah Babar, who is currently serving as a spokesperson for the President of Pakistan, while talking to media, said: "Mahmood predicted in "Cosmology and Human Destiny" that "the year 2002 was likely to be a year of maximum sunspot activity. It means upheaval, particularly on the South Asia, with the possibility of nuclear exchanges"."
Mahmood has published papers concerning djinni, which are described in the Quran as beings made of fire. He has proposed that djinni could be tapped to solve the energy crisis. "I think that if we develop our souls, we can develop communication with them," Mahmood said about djinni in "The Wall Street Journal" in an interview in 1988: "Every new idea has its opponents," he added. "But there is no reason for this controversy over Islam and science because there is no conflict between Islam and science."
The New York Times has described Mahmood as "an autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations," and noted that "his fellow scientists at PAEC began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound." Mahmood made it clear that he believed Pakistan's bomb was "the property of the whole Ummah," referring to the worldwide Muslim community. "This guy was our ultimate nightmare," an American intelligence official told the Times in late 2001. He has been awarded a Gold Medal by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28834 |
Siege tower
A siege tower or breaching tower (or in the Middle Ages, a belfry) is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders while approaching the defensive walls of a fortification. The tower was often rectangular with four wheels with its height roughly equal to that of the wall or sometimes higher to allow archers to stand on top of the tower and shoot arrows into the fortification. Because the towers were wooden and thus flammable, they had to have some non-flammable covering of iron or fresh animal skins.
Used since the 11th century BC by the Babylonians and Assyrians in the ancient Near East, the 4th century BC in Europe and also in antiquity in the Far East, siege towers were of unwieldy dimensions and, like trebuchets, were therefore mostly constructed on site of the siege. Taking considerable time to construct, siege towers were mainly built if the defense of the opposing fortification could not be overcome by ladder assault ("escalade"), by mining or by breaking walls or gates.
The siege tower sometimes housed spearmen, pikemen, swordsmen, archers or crossbowmen who shot arrows and quarrels at the defenders. Because of the size of the tower it would often be the first target of large stone catapults but it had its own projectiles with which to retaliate.
Siege towers were used to get troops over an enemy curtain wall. When a siege tower was near a wall, it would drop a gangplank between it and the wall. Troops could then rush onto the walls and into the castle or city.
The oldest known siege towers were used by the armies of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II (r. 884 BC – 859 BC). Reliefs from his reign, and subsequent reigns, depict siege towers in use with a number of other siege works, including ramps and battering rams.
Centuries after they were employed in Assyria, the use of the siege tower spread throughout the Mediterranean. The biggest siege towers of antiquity, such as the "Helepolis" (meaning ""The Taker of Cities"") of the siege of Rhodes in 305 BC, could be as high as 135 feet and as wide as 67.5 feet. Such large engines would require a rack and pinion to be moved effectively. It was manned by 200 soldiers and was divided into nine stories; the different levels housed various types of catapults and ballistae. Subsequent siege towers down through the centuries often had similar engines.
But this huge tower was defeated by the defenders by flooding the ground in front of the wall, creating a moat that caused the tower to get bogged in the mud. The siege of Rhodes illustrates the important point that the larger siege towers needed level ground. Many castles and hill-top towns and forts were virtually invulnerable to siege tower attack simply due to topography. Smaller siege towers might be used on top of siege-mounds, made of earth, rubble and timber mounds in order to overtop a defensive wall. The remains of such a siege-ramp at Masada, for example, has survived almost 2,000 years and can still be seen today.
On the other hand, almost all the largest cities were on large rivers, or the coast, and so did have part of their circuit wall vulnerable to these towers. Furthermore, the tower for such a target might be prefabricated elsewhere and brought dismantled to the target city by water. In some rare circumstances, such towers were mounted on ships to assault the coastal wall of a city: at the siege of Cyzicus during the Third Mithridatic War, for example, towers were used in conjunction with more conventional siege weapons.
One of the oldest references to the mobile siege tower in Ancient China was a written dialogue primarily discussing naval warfare. In the Chinese "Yuejueshu" (Lost Records of the State of Yue) written by the later Han Dynasty author Yuan Kang in the year 52 AD, Wu Zixu (526 BC – 484 BC) purportedly discussed different ship types with King Helü of Wu (r. 514 BC – 496 BC) while explaining military preparedness. Before labeling the types of warships used, Zixu said:
With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West into independent states, and the Eastern Roman Empire on the defensive, the use of siege towers reached its height during the medieval period. Siege towers were used when the Avars laid siege unsuccessfully to Constantinople in 626, as the "Chronicon Paschale" recounts:
At this siege the attackers also made use of "sows" – mobile armoured shelters which were used throughout the medieval period, and allowed workers to fill in moats with protection from the defenders (thus levelling the ground for the siege towers to be moved to the walls). However, the construction of a sloping talus at the base of a castle wall (as was common in Crusader fortification) could have reduced the effectiveness of this tactic to an extent.
Siege towers also became more elaborate during the medieval period; at the Siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266, for example, 200 archers and 11 catapults operated from a single tower. Even then, the siege lasted almost a year, making it the longest siege in all of English history. They were not invulnerable either, as during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman siege towers were sprayed by the defenders with Greek fire.
Siege towers became vulnerable and obsolete with the development of large cannon. They had only ever existed to get assaulting troops over high walls and towers and large cannon also made high walls obsolete as fortification took a new direction. However, later constructions known as battery-towers took on a similar role in the gunpowder age; like siege-towers, these were built out of wood on-site for mounting siege artillery. One of these was built by the Russian military engineer Ivan Vyrodkov during the siege of Kazan in 1552 (as part of the Russo-Kazan Wars), and could hold ten large-calibre cannon and 50 lighter cannons. Likely, it was a development of the gulyay-gorod (that is a mobile fortification assembled on wagons or sleds from prefabricated wall-sized shields with holes for cannons). Later battery towers were often used by the Ukrainian Cossacks.
On 1 March 2007, police officers entered Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Denmark by being lifted to the upper levels of an illegally occupied structure using small boom cranes for a purpose similar to that for which siege towers were constructed. The officers were placed in containers that crane operators raised and placed against the structure's windows, enabling the officers to gain access to the structure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28837 |
Sharia
Sharia (, ), Islamic law, or redundantly Sharia law is a religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the hadith. In Arabic, the term "sharīʿah" refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with "fiqh", which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim fundamentalists and modernists.
Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of Sharia: the Quran, "sunnah" (authentic hadith), "qiyas" (analogical reasoning), and "ijma" (juridical consensus). Different legal schools—of which the most prominent are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Jafari—developed methodologies for deriving Sharia rulings from scriptural sources using a process known as "ijtihad". Traditional jurisprudence ("fiqh") distinguishes two principal branches of law, "ʿibādāt" (rituals) and "muʿāmalāt" (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics. Its rulings are concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, assigning actions to one of five categories: mandatory, recommended, neutral, abhorred, and prohibited. Thus, some areas of Sharia overlap with the Western notion of law while others correspond more broadly to living life in accordance with God's will.
Classical jurisprudence was elaborated by private religious scholars, largely through legal opinions (fatwas) issued by qualified jurists (muftis). It was historically applied in Sharia courts by ruler-appointed judges, who dealt mainly with civil disputes and community affairs. Sultanic courts, the police and market inspectors administered criminal justice, which was influenced by Sharia but not bound by its rules. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) communities had legal autonomy to adjudicate their internal affairs. Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, and fiqh was complemented by various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by Muslim rulers. The Ottoman civil code of 1869–1876 was the first partial attempt to codify Sharia.
In the modern era, traditional laws in the Muslim world have been widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models. Judicial procedures and legal education were likewise brought in line with European practice. While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to Sharia, its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws. Legislators who codified these laws sought to modernize them without abandoning their foundations in traditional jurisprudence. The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for full implementation of Sharia, including "hudud" corporal punishments, such as stoning. In some cases, this resulted in traditionalist legal reform, while other countries witnessed juridical reinterpretation of Sharia advocated by progressive reformers. Some Muslim-minority countries recognize the use of Sharia-based family laws for their Muslim populations. Sharia also continues to influence other aspects of private and public life.
The role of Sharia has become a contested topic around the world. Introduction of Sharia-based laws sparked intercommunal violence in Nigeria and may have contributed to the breakup of Sudan. Some jurisdictions in North America have passed bans on use of Sharia, framed as restrictions on religious or foreign laws. There are ongoing debates as to whether Sharia is compatible with democracy, human rights, freedom of thought, women's rights, LGBT rights, and banking.
The word "sharīʿah" is used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the Middle East to designate a prophetic religion in its totality. For example, "sharīʿat Mūsā" means law or religion of Moses and "sharīʿatu-nā" can mean "our religion" in reference to any monotheistic faith. Within Islamic discourse, "šarīʿah" refers to religious regulations governing the lives of Muslims. For many Muslims, the word means simply "justice," and they will consider any law that promotes justice and social welfare to conform to Sharia.
Jan Michiel Otto distinguishes four senses conveyed by the term "sharia" in religious, legal and political discourse:
A related term "" (, Islamic law), which was borrowed from European usage in the late 19th century, is used in the Muslim world to refer to a legal system in the context of a modern state.
The primary range of meanings of the Arabic word "šarīʿah", derived from the root "š-r-ʕ", is related to religion and religious law. The lexicographical tradition records two major areas of use where the word "šarīʿah" can appear without religious connotation. In texts evoking a pastoral or nomadic environment, the word, and its derivatives refer to watering animals at a permanent water-hole or to the seashore, with special reference to animals who come there. Another area of use relates to notions of stretched or lengthy. This range of meanings is cognate with the Hebrew "saraʿ" and is likely to be the origin of the meaning "way" or "path". Both these areas have been claimed to have given rise to aspects of the religious meaning.
Some scholars describe the word "šarīʿah" as an archaic Arabic word denoting "pathway to be followed" (analogous to the Hebrew term Halakhah ["The Way to Go"]), or "path to the water hole" and argue that its adoption as a metaphor for a divinely ordained way of life arises from the importance of water in an arid desert environment.
In the Quran, "šarīʿah" and its cognate "širʿah" occur once each, with the meaning "way" or "path". The word "šarīʿah" was widely used by Arabic-speaking Jews during the Middle Ages, being the most common translation for the word "torah" in the 10th-century Arabic translation of the Torah by Saʿadya Gaon. A similar use of the term can be found in Christian writers. The Arabic expression "Sharīʿat Allāh" (شريعة الله "God’s Law") is a common translation for תורת אלוהים (‘God’s Law’ in Hebrew) and νόμος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘God’s Law’ in Greek in the New Testament [Rom. 7: 22]). In Muslim literature, "šarīʿah" designates the laws or message of a prophet or God, in contrast to "fiqh", which refers to a scholar's interpretation thereof.
In older English-language law-related works in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the word used for Sharia was sheri. It, along with the French variant "chéri", was used during the time of the Ottoman Empire, and is from the Turkish "şer’"("i").
According to the traditional Muslim view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet Muhammad without "historical development," and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence ("fiqh") also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad. In this view, his companions and followers took what he did and approved of as a model (sunnah) and transmitted this information to the succeeding generations in the form of hadith. These reports led first to informal discussion and then systematic legal thought, articulated with greatest success in the eighth and ninth centuries by the master jurists Abu Hanifah, Malik ibn Anas, Al-Shafi‘i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who are viewed as the founders of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʿi, and Hanbali legal schools ("madhhabs") of Sunni jurisprudence.
Modern historians have presented alternative theories of the formation of fiqh. At first Western scholars accepted the general outlines of the traditional account. In the late 19th century, an influential revisionist hypothesis was advanced by Ignac Goldziher and elaborated by Joseph Schacht in the mid-20th century. Schacht and other scholars argued that having conquered much more populous agricultural and urban societies with already existing laws and legal needs unknown to the desert-dwelling conquerors,
the initial Muslim efforts to formulate legal norms
regarded the Quran and Muhammad's hadiths as just one sources of law, with jurist personal opinions, the legal practice of conquered peoples, and the decrees and decisions of the caliphs also being valid sources. At least one source (historian Tom Holland) has argued that the strong scholarly tradition of Mobad among the conquered Zoroastrians of Persia and rabbis among the conquered Jews influenced the law of their largely illiterate warrior conquerors; and that this can explain such issues as why the Quran mentions only three prayers (24:58) while Muslims pray five times a day (Zoroastrians prayed five times a day) and why the Quran commands adulterers be lashed, while Sharia calls for their execution by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:21 of the Jewish Torah calls for stoning to death of women who have been found to have had sex before marriage).
According to this theory, most canonical hadiths did not originate with Muhammad but were actually created at a later date, despite the efforts of hadith scholars to weed out fabrications.
After it became accepted that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources, proponents of rules of jurisprudence supported by the hadith would extend the chains of transmission of the hadith back to Muhammad's companions. In his view, the real architect of Islamic jurisprudence was Al-Shafi‘i (d. 820 CE/204 AH), who formulated this idea (that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources) and other elements of classical legal theory in his work "al-risala", but who was preceded by a body of Islamic law not based on primacy of Muhammad's hadiths.
While the origin of hadith remains a subject of scholarly controversy, this theory (of Goldziher and Schacht) has given rise to objections, and modern historians generally adopt more cautious, intermediate positions,
and it is generally accepted that early Islamic jurisprudence developed out of a combination of administrative and popular practices shaped by the religious and ethical precepts of Islam. It continued some aspects of pre-Islamic laws and customs of the lands that fell under Muslim rule in the aftermath of the early conquests and modified other aspects, aiming to meet the practical need of establishing Islamic norms of behavior and adjudicating disputes arising in the early Muslim communities. Juristic thought gradually developed in study circles, where independent scholars met to learn from a local master and discuss religious topics. At first, these circles were fluid in their membership, but with time distinct regional legal schools crystallized around shared sets of methodological principles. As the boundaries of the schools became clearly delineated, the authority of their doctrinal tenets came to be vested in a master jurist from earlier times, who was henceforth identified as the school's founder. In the course of the first three centuries of Islam, all legal schools came to accept the broad outlines of classical legal theory, according to which Islamic law had to be firmly rooted in the Quran and hadith.
Fiqh is traditionally divided into the fields of "uṣūl al-fiqh" (lit. the roots of fiqh), which studies the theoretical principles of jurisprudence, and "furūʿ al-fiqh" (lit. the branches of fiqh), which is devoted to elaboration of rulings on the basis of these principles.
Classical jurists held that human reason is a gift from God which should be exercised to its fullest capacity. However, they believed that use of reason alone is insufficient to distinguish right from wrong, and that rational argumentation must draw its content from the body of transcendental knowledge revealed in the Quran and through the sunnah of Muhammad.
Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence elaborates how scriptures should be interpreted from the standpoint of linguistics and rhetoric. It also comprises methods for establishing authenticity of hadith and for determining when the legal force of a scriptural passage is abrogated by a passage revealed at a later date. In addition to the Quran and sunnah, the classical theory of Sunni fiqh recognizes two other sources of law: juristic consensus ("ijmaʿ") and analogical reasoning ("qiyas"). It therefore studies the application and limits of analogy, as well as the value and limits of consensus, along with other methodological principles, some of which are accepted by only certain legal schools. This interpretive apparatus is brought together under the rubric of ijtihad, which refers to a jurist's exertion in an attempt to arrive at a ruling on a particular question. The theory of Twelver Shia jurisprudence parallels that of Sunni schools with some differences, such as recognition of reason ("ʿaql") as a source of law in place of "qiyas" and extension of the notion of sunnah to include traditions of the imams.
The classical process of ijtihad combined these generally recognized principles with other methods, which were not adopted by all legal schools, such as "istihsan" (juristic preference), "istislah" (consideration of public interest) and "istishab" (presumption of continuity). A jurist who is qualified to practice ijtihad is known as a "mujtahid". The use of independent reasoning to arrive at a ruling is contrasted with "taqlid" (imitation), which refers to following the rulings of a mujtahid. By the beginning of the 10th century, development of Sunni jurisprudence prompted leading jurists to state that the main legal questions had been addressed and the scope of ijtihad was gradually restricted. From the 18th century on, leading Muslim reformers began calling for abandonment of taqlid and renewed emphasis on ijtihad, which they saw as a return to the vitality of early Islamic jurisprudence.
Fiqh is concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, seeking to establish not only what is and is not legal, but also what is morally right and wrong. Sharia rulings fall into one of five categories known as “the five decisions” ("al-aḥkām al-khamsa"): mandatory ("farḍ" or "wājib"), recommended ("mandūb" or "mustaḥabb"), neutral ("mubāḥ"), reprehensible ("makrūh"), and forbidden ("ḥarām"). It is a sin or a crime to perform a forbidden action or not to perform a mandatory action. Reprehensible acts should be avoided, but they are not considered to be sinful or punishable in court. Avoiding reprehensible acts and performing recommended acts is held to be subject of reward in the afterlife, while neutral actions entail no judgement from God. Jurists disagree on whether the term "ḥalāl" covers the first three or the first four categories. The legal and moral verdict depends on whether the action is committed out of necessity ("ḍarūra") and on the underlying intention ("niyya"), as expressed in the legal maxim "acts are [evaluated according] to intention."
"Maqāṣid" (aims or purposes) of Sharia and "maṣlaḥa" (welfare or public interest) are two related classical doctrines which have come to play an increasingly prominent role in modern times. They were first clearly articulated by al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who argued that "maslaha" was God's general purpose in revealing the divine law, and that its specific aim was preservation of five essentials of human well-being: religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property. Although most classical-era jurists recognized "maslaha" and "maqasid" as important legal principles, they held different views regarding the role they should play in Islamic law. Some jurists viewed them as auxiliary rationales constrained by scriptural sources and analogical reasoning. Others regarded them as an independent source of law, whose general principles could override specific inferences based on the letter of scripture. While the latter view was held by a minority of classical jurists, in modern times it came to be championed in different forms by prominent scholars who sought to adapt Islamic law to changing social conditions by drawing on the intellectual heritage of traditional jurisprudence. These scholars expanded the inventory of "maqasid" to include such aims of Sharia as reform and women's rights (Rashid Rida); justice and freedom (Mohammed al-Ghazali); and human dignity and rights (Yusuf al-Qaradawi).
The domain of "furūʿ al-fiqh" (lit. branches of fiqh) is traditionally divided into "ʿibādāt" (rituals or acts of worship) and "muʿāmalāt" (social relations). Many jurists further divided the body of substantive jurisprudence into "the four quarters", called rituals, sales, marriage and injuries. Each of these terms figuratively stood for a variety of subjects. For example, the quarter of sales would encompass partnerships, guaranty, gifts, and bequests, among other topics. Juristic works were arranged as a sequence of such smaller topics, each called a "book" ("kitab"). The special significance of ritual was marked by always placing its discussion at the start of the work.
Some historians distinguish a field of Islamic criminal law, which combines several traditional categories. Several crimes with scripturally prescribed punishments are known as "hudud". Jurists developed various restrictions which in many cases made them virtually impossible to apply. Other crimes involving intentional bodily harm are judged according to a version of "lex talionis" that prescribes a punishment analogous to the crime ("qisas"), but the victims or their heirs may accept a monetary compensation ("diya") or pardon the perpetrator instead; only "diya" is imposed for non-intentional harm. Other criminal cases belong to the category of "taʿzīr", where the goal of punishment is correction or rehabilitation of the culprit and its form is largely left to the judge's discretion. In practice, since early on in Islamic history, criminal cases were usually handled by ruler-administered courts or local police using procedures which were only loosely related to Sharia.
The two major genres of "furūʿ" literature are the "mukhtasar" (concise summary of law) and the "mabsut" (extensive commentary). "Mukhtasars" were short specialized treatises or general overviews that could be used in a classroom or consulted by judges. A "mabsut", which usually provided a commentary on a "mukhtasar" and could stretch to dozens of large volumes, recorded alternative rulings with their justifications, often accompanied by a proliferation of cases and conceptual distinctions. The terminology of juristic literature was conservative and tended to preserve notions which had lost their practical relevance. At the same time, the cycle of abridgement and commentary allowed jurists of each generation to articulate a modified body of law to meet changing social conditions. Other juristic genres include the "qawāʿid" (succinct formulas meant to aid the student remember general principles) and collections of fatwas by a particular scholar.
Classical jurisprudence has been described as "one of the major intellectual achievements of Islam" and its importance in Islam has been compared to that of theology in Christianity.
The main Sunni schools of law ("madhhabs") are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali madhhabs. They emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries and by the twelfth century almost all jurists aligned themselves with a particular madhhab. These four schools recognize each other's validity and they have interacted in legal debate over the centuries. Rulings of these schools are followed across the Muslim world without exclusive regional restrictions, but they each came to dominate in different parts of the world. For example, the Maliki school is predominant in North and West Africa; the Hanafi school in South and Central Asia; the Shafi'i school in Lower Egypt, East Africa, and Southeast Asia; and the Hanbali school in North and Central Arabia. The first centuries of Islam also witnessed a number of short-lived Sunni madhhabs. The Zahiri school, which is commonly identified as extinct, continues to exert influence over legal thought. The development of Shia legal schools occurred along the lines of theological differences and resulted in formation of the Twelver, Zaidi and Ismaili madhhabs, whose differences from Sunni legal schools are roughly of the same order as the differences among Sunni schools. The Ibadi legal school, distinct from Sunni and Shia madhhabs, is predominant in Oman.
The transformations of Islamic legal institutions in the modern era have had profound implications for the madhhab system. Legal practice in most of the Muslim world has come to be controlled by government policy and state law, so that the influence of the madhhabs beyond personal ritual practice depends on the status accorded to them within the national legal system. State law codification commonly utilized the methods of "takhayyur" (selection of rulings without restriction to a particular madhhab) and "talfiq" (combining parts of different rulings on the same question). Legal professionals trained in modern law schools have largely replaced traditional ulema as interpreters of the resulting laws. Global Islamic movements have at times drawn on different madhhabs and at other times placed greater focus on the scriptural sources rather than classical jurisprudence. The Hanbali school, with its particularly strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, has inspired conservative currents of direct scriptural interpretation by the Salafi and Wahhabi movements. Other currents, such as networks of Indonesian ulema and Islamic scholars residing in Muslim-minority countries, have advanced liberal interpretations of Islamic law without focusing on traditions of a particular madhhab.
Sharia was traditionally interpreted by muftis. During the first few centuries of Islam, muftis were private legal specialists who normally also held other jobs. They issued fatwas (legal opinions), generally free of charge, in response to questions from laypersons or requests for consultation coming from judges, which would be stated in general terms. Fatwas were regularly upheld in courts, and when they were not, it was usually because the fatwa was contradicted by a more authoritative legal opinion. The stature of jurists was determined by their scholarly reputation. The majority of classical legal works, written by author-jurists, were based in large part on fatwas of distinguished muftis. These fatwas functioned as a form of legal precedent, unlike court verdicts, which were valid only for the given case. Although independent muftis never disappeared, from the 12th century onward Muslim rulers began to appoint salaried muftis to answer questions from the public. Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, while Shia jurists in Iran progressively asserted an autonomous authority starting from the early modern era.
Islamic law was initially taught in study circles that gathered in mosques and private homes. The teacher, assisted by advanced students, provided commentary on concise treatises of law and examined the students' understanding of the text. This tradition continued to be practiced in "madrasas", which spread during the 10th and 11th centuries. Madrasas were institutions of higher learning devoted principally to study of law, but also offering other subjects such as theology, medicine, and mathematics. The madrasa complex usually consisted of a mosque, boarding house, and a library. It was maintained by a "waqf" (charitable endowment), which paid salaries of professors, stipends of students, and defrayed the costs of construction and maintenance. At the end of a course, the professor granted a license ("ijaza") certifying a student's competence in its subject matter. Students specializing in law would complete a curriculum consisting of preparatory studies, the doctrines of a particular madhhab, and training in legal disputation, and finally write a dissertation, which earned them a license to teach and issue fatwas.
A judge (qadi) was in charge of the qadi's court ("mahkama"), also called the Sharia court. Qadis were trained in Islamic law, though not necessarily to a level required to issue fatwas. Court personnel also included a number of assistants performing various roles. Judges were theoretically independent in their decisions, though they were appointed by the ruler and often experienced pressure from members of the ruling elite where their interests were at play. The role of qadis was to evaluate the evidence, establish the facts of the case, and issue a verdict based on the applicable rulings of Islamic jurisprudence. The qadi was supposed to solicit a fatwa from a mufti if it was unclear how the law should be applied to the case. Since Islamic legal theory does not recognize the distinction between private and public law, court procedures were identical for civil and criminal cases, and required a private plaintiff to produce evidence against the defendant. The main type of evidence was oral witness testimony. The standards of evidence for criminal cases were so strict that a conviction was often difficult to obtain even for apparently clear-cut cases. Most historians believe that because of these stringent procedural norms, qadi's courts at an early date lost their jurisdiction over criminal cases, which were instead handled in other types of courts.
If an accusation did not result in a verdict in a qadi's court, the plaintiff could often pursue it in another type of court called the "mazalim" court, administered by the ruler's council. The rationale for "mazalim" (lit. wrongs, grievances) courts was to address the wrongs that Sharia courts were unable to address, including complaints against government officials. Islamic jurists were commonly in attendance and a judge often presided over the court as a deputy of the ruler. "Mazalim" verdicts were supposed to conform to the spirit of Sharia, but they were not bound by the letter of the law or the procedural restrictions of qadi's courts.
The police ("shurta"), which took initiative in preventing and investigating crime, operated its own courts. Like the mazalim courts, police courts were not bound by the rules of Sharia and had the powers to inflict discretionary punishments. Another office for maintaining public order was the "muhtasib" (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud in economic transactions and infractions against public morality. The "muhtasib" took an active role in pursuing these types of offenses and meted out punishments based on local custom.
The social fabric of pre-modern Islamic societies was largely defined by close-knit communities organized around kinship groups and local neighborhoods. Conflicts between individuals had the potential to escalate into a conflict between their supporting groups and disrupt the life of the entire community. Court litigation was seen as a last resort for cases where informal mediation had failed. This attitude was reflected in the legal maxim "amicable settlement is the best verdict" ("al-sulh sayyid al-ahkam"). In court disputes, qadis were generally less concerned with legal theory than with achieving an outcome that enabled the disputants to resume their previous social relationships. This could be accomplished by avoiding a total loss for the losing side or simply giving them a chance to articulate their position in public and obtain a measure of psychological vindication. Islamic law required judges to be familiar with local customs, and they exercised a number of other public functions in the community, including mediation and arbitration, supervision of public works, auditing waqf finances, and looking after the interests of orphans.
Unlike pre-modern cultures where the ruling dynasty promulgated the law, Islamic law was formulated by religious scholars without involvement of the rulers. The law derived its authority not from political control, but rather from the collective doctrinal positions of the legal schools (madhhabs) in their capacity as interpreters of the scriptures. The ulema (religious scholars) were involved in management of communal affairs and acted as representatives of the Muslim population vis-à-vis the ruling dynasties, who before the modern era had limited capacity for direct governance. Military elites relied on the ulema for religious legitimation, with financial support for religious institutions being one of the principal means through which these elites established their legitimacy. In turn, the ulema depended on the support of the ruling elites for the continuing operation of religious institutions. Although the relationship between secular rulers and religious scholars underwent a number of shifts and transformations in different times and places, this mutual dependence characterized Islamic history until the start of the modern era. Additionally, since Sharia contained few provisions in several areas of public law, Muslim rulers were able to legislate various collections of economic, criminal and administrative laws outside the jurisdiction of Islamic jurists, the most famous of which is the "qanun" promulgated by Ottoman sultans beginning from the 15th century. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) issued a hybrid body of law known as Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, based on Hanafi fatwas as well as decisions of Islamic courts, and made it applicable to all religious communities on the Indian subcontinent. This early attempt to turn Islamic law into semi-codified state legislation sparked rebellions against Mughal rule.
In both the rules of civil disputes and application of penal law, classical Sharia distinguishes between men and women, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between free persons and slaves.
Traditional Islamic law assumes a patriarchal society with a man at the head of the household. Different legal schools formulated a variety of legal norms which could be manipulated to the advantage of men or women, but women were generally at a disadvantage with respect to the rules of inheritance, blood money ("diya"), and witness testimony, where a woman's value is effectively treated as half of that of a man. In economic terms women enjoyed greater advantages under Islamic law than under other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern legal systems, including the right to own personal property and dispose of it freely, which women in the West did not possess until "quite recently". Various financial obligations imposed on the husband acted as a deterrent against unilateral divorce and commonly gave the wife financial leverage in divorce proceedings. Women were active in Sharia courts as both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of cases, though some opted to be represented by a male relative.
Sharia was intended to regulate affairs of the Muslim community. Non-Muslims residing under Islamic rule had the legal status of dhimmi, which entailed a number of protections, restrictions, freedoms and legal inequalities, including payment of the jizya tax. Dhimmi communities had legal autonomy to adjudicate their internal affairs. Cases involving litigants from two different religious groups fell under jurisdiction of Sharia courts, where (unlike in secular courts) testimony of non-Muslim witnesses against a Muslim was inadmissible in criminal cases or at all. This legal framework was implemented with varying degree of rigor. In some periods or towns, all inhabitants apparently used the same court without regard for their religious affiliation. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb imposed Islamic law on all his subjects, including provisions traditionally applicable only to Muslims, while some of his predecessors and successors are said to have abolished jizya. According to Ottoman records, non-Muslim women took their cases to a Sharia court when they expected a more favorable outcome on marital, divorce and property questions than in Christian and Jewish courts.
Classical fiqh acknowledges and regulates slavery as a legitimate institution. It granted slaves certain rights and protections, improving their status relative to Greek and Roman law, and restricted the scenarios under which people could be enslaved. However, slaves could not inherit or enter into a contract, and were subject to their master's will in a number of ways. The labor and property of slaves were owned by the master, who was also entitled to sexual submission of his unmarried slaves.
Formal legal disabilities for some groups coexisted with a legal culture that viewed Sharia as a reflection of universal principles of justice, which involved protection of the weak against injustices committed by the strong. This conception was reinforced by the historical practice of Sharia courts, where peasants "almost always" won cases against oppressive landowners, and non-Muslims often prevailed in disputes against Muslims, including such powerful figures as the governor of their province. In family matters the Sharia court was seen as a place where the rights of women could be asserted against their husband's transgressions.
Starting from the 17th century, European powers began to extend political influence over lands ruled by Muslim dynasties, and by the end of the 19th century, much of the Muslim world came under colonial domination. The first areas of Islamic law to be impacted were usually commercial and criminal laws, which impeded colonial administration and were soon replaced by European regulations. Islamic commercial laws were also replaced by European (mostly French) laws in Muslim states which retained formal independence, because these states increasingly came to rely on Western capital and could not afford to lose the business of foreign merchants who refused to submit to Islamic regulations.
The first significant changes to the legal system of British India were initiated in the late 18th century by the governor of Bengal Warren Hastings. Hastings' plan of legal reform envisioned a multi-tiered court system for the Muslim population, with a middle tier of British judges advised by local Islamic jurists, and a lower tier of courts operated by qadis. Hastings also commissioned a translation of the classic manual of Hanafi fiqh, "Al-Hidayah", from Arabic into Persian and then English, later complemented by other texts. These translations enabled British judges to pass verdicts in the name of Islamic law based on a combination of Sharia rules and common law doctrines, and eliminated the need to rely on consultation by local ulema, whom they mistrusted. In the traditional Islamic context, a concise text like "Al-Hidayah" would be used as a basis for classroom commentary by a professor, and the doctrines thus learned would be mediated in court by judicial discretion, consideration of local customs and availability of different legal opinions that could fit the facts of the case. The British use of "Al-Hidayah", which amounted to an inadvertent codification of Sharia, and its interpretation by judges trained in Western legal traditions anticipated later legal reforms in the Muslim world.
British administrators felt that Sharia rules too often allowed criminals to escape punishment, as exemplified by Hastings' complaint that Islamic law was "founded on the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed". In the course of the 19th century, criminal laws and other aspects of the Islamic legal system in India were supplanted by British law, with the exception of Sharia rules retained in family laws and some property transactions. Among other changes, these reforms brought about abolition of slavery, prohibition of child marriage, and a much more frequent use of capital punishment. The resulting legal system, known as "Anglo-Muhammadan law", was treated by the British as a model for legal reforms in their other colonies. Like the British in India, colonial administrations typically sought to obtain precise and authoritative information about indigenous laws, which prompted them to prefer classical Islamic legal texts over local judicial practice. This, together with their conception of Islamic law as a collection of inflexible rules, led to an emphasis on traditionalist forms of Sharia that were not rigorously applied in the pre-colonial period and served as a formative influence on the modern identity politics of the Muslim world.
During the colonial era, Muslim rulers concluded that they could not resist European pressure unless they modernized their armies and built centrally administered states along the lines of Western models. In the Ottoman empire, the first such changes in the legal sphere involved placing the formerly independent waqfs under state control. This reform, passed in 1826, enriched the public treasury at the expense of the waqfs, thereby depleting the financial support for traditional Islamic legal education. Over the second half of the 19th century, a new hierarchical system of secular courts was established to supplement and eventually replace most religious courts. Students hoping to pursue legal careers in the new court system increasingly preferred attending secular schools over the traditional path of legal education with its dimming financial prospects. The Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century saw reorganization of both Islamic civil law and sultanic criminal law after the model of the Napoleonic Code. In the 1870s, a codification of civil law and procedure (excepting marriage and divorce), called the "Mecelle", was produced for use in both Sharia and secular courts. It adopted the Turkish language for the benefit of the new legal class who no longer possessed competence in the Arabic idiom of traditional jurisprudence. The code was based on Hanafi law, and its authors selected minority opinions over authoritative ones when they were felt to better "suit the present conditions". The Mecelle was promulgated as a "qanun" (sultanic code), which represented an unprecedented assertion of the state's authority over Islamic civil law, traditionally the preserve of the ulema. The 1917 Ottoman Law of Family Rights adopted an innovative approach of drawing rules from minority and majority opinions of all Sunni madhhabs with a modernizing intent. The Republic of Turkey, which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, abolished its Sharia courts and replaced Ottoman civil laws with the Swiss Civil Code, but Ottoman civil laws remained in force for several decades in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.
Westernization of legal institutions and expansion of state control in all areas of law, which began during the colonial era, continued in nation-states of the Muslim world. Sharia courts at first continued to exist alongside state courts as in earlier times, but the doctrine that sultanic courts should implement the ideals of Sharia was gradually replaced by legal norms imported from Europe. Court procedures were also brought in line with European practice. Though the Islamic terms "qadi" and "mahkama" (qadi's/Sharia court) were preserved, they generally came to mean judge and court in the Western sense. While in the traditional Sharia court all parties represented themselves, in modern courts they are represented by professional lawyers educated in Western-style law schools, and the verdicts are subject to review in an appeals court. In the 20th century, most countries abolished a parallel system of Sharia courts and brought all cases under a national civil court system.
In most Muslim-majority countries, traditional rules of classical fiqh have been largely preserved only in family law. In some countries religious minorities such as Christians or Shia Muslims have been subject to separate systems of family laws. Many Muslims today believe that contemporary Sharia-based laws are an authentic representation of the pre-modern legal tradition. In reality, they generally represent the result of extensive legal reforms made in the modern era. As traditional Islamic jurists lost their role as authoritative interpreters of the laws applied in courts, these laws were codified by legislators and administered by state systems which employed a number of devices to effect changes, including:
The most powerful influence on liberal reformist thought came from the work of the Egyptian Islamic scholar Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). Abduh viewed only Sharia rules pertaining to religious rituals as inflexible, and argued that the other Islamic laws should be adapted based on changing circumstances in consideration of social well-being. Following precedents of earlier Islamic thinkers, he advocated restoring Islam to its original purity by returning to the Quran and the sunna instead of following the medieval schools of jurisprudence. He championed a creative approach to ijtihad that involved direct interpretation of scriptures as well as the methods of "takhayyur" and "talfiq".
One of the most influential figures in modern legal reforms was the Egyptian legal scholar Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri (1895–1971), who possessed expertise in both Islamic and Western law. Sanhuri argued that reviving Islamic legal heritage in a way that served the needs of contemporary society required its analysis in light of the modern science of comparative law. He drafted the civil codes of Egypt (1949) and Iraq (1951) based on a variety of sources, including classical fiqh, European laws, existing Arab and Turkish codes, and the history of local court decisions. Sanhuri's Egyptian code incorporated few classical Sharia rules, but he drew on traditional jurisprudence more frequently for the Iraqi code. Sanhuri's codes were subsequently adopted in some form by most Arab countries.
Aside from the radical reforms of Islamic family law carried out in Tunisia (1956) and Iran (1967), governments often preferred to make changes that made a clear break from traditional Sharia rules by imposing administrative hurdles rather than changing the rules themselves, in order to minimize objections from religious conservatives. Various procedural changes have been made in a number of countries to restrict polygamy, give women greater rights in divorce, and eliminate child marriage. Inheritance has been the legal domain least susceptible to reform, as legislators have been generally reluctant to tamper with the highly technical system of Quranic shares. Some reforms have faced strong conservative opposition. For example, the 1979 reform of Egyptian family law, promulgated by Anwar Sadat through presidential decree, provoked an outcry and was annulled in 1985 by the supreme court on procedural grounds, to be later replaced by a compromise version. The 2003 reform of Moroccan family law, which sought to reconcile universal human rights norms and the country's Islamic heritage, was drafted by a commission that included parliamentarians, religious scholars and feminist activists, and the result has been praised by international rights groups as an example of progressive legislation achieved within an Islamic framework.
The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought the topic of Sharia to international attention in the form of numerous political campaigns in the Muslim world calling for full implementation of Sharia. A number of factors have contributed to the rise of these movements, classified under the rubric of Islamism or political Islam, including the failure of authoritarian secular regimes to meet the expectations of their citizens, and a desire of Muslim populations to return to more culturally authentic forms of socio-political organization in the face of a perceived cultural invasion from the West. Islamist leaders such as Ayatollah Khomeini drew on leftist anticolonialist rhetoric by framing their call for Sharia as a resistance struggle. They accused secular leaders of corruption and predatory behavior, and claimed that a return to Sharia would replace despotic rulers with pious leaders striving for social and economic justice. In the Arab world these positions are often encapsulated in the slogan "Islam is the solution" ("al-Islam huwa al-hall").
Full implementation of Sharia theoretically refers to expanding its scope to all fields of law and all areas of public life. In practice, Islamization campaigns have focused on a few highly visible issues associated with the conservative Muslim identity, particularly women's hijab and the "hudud" criminal punishments (whipping, stoning and amputation) prescribed for certain crimes. For many Islamists, "hudud" punishments are at the core of the divine Sharia because they are specified by the letter of scripture rather than by human interpreters. Modern Islamists have often rejected, at least in theory, the stringent procedural constraints developed by classical jurists to restrict their application. To the broader Muslim public, the calls for Sharia often represent, even more than any specific demands, a vague vision of their current economic and political situation being replaced by a "just utopia".
A number of legal reforms have been made under the influence of these movements, starting from the 1970s when Egypt and Syria amended their constitutions to specify Sharia as the basis of legislation. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 represented a watershed for Islamization advocates, demonstrating that it was possible to replace a secular regime with a theocracy. Several countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and some Nigerian states have incorporated hudud rules into their criminal justice systems, which, however, retained fundamental influences of earlier Westernizing reforms. In practice, these changes were largely symbolic, and aside from some cases brought to trial to demonstrate that the new rules were being enforced, hudud punishments tended to fall into disuse, sometimes to be revived depending on the local political climate. The supreme courts of Sudan and Iran have rarely approved verdicts of stoning or amputation, and the supreme courts of Pakistan and Nigeria have never done so. Nonetheless, Islamization campaigns have also had repercussions in several other areas of law, leading to curtailment of rights of women and religious minorities, and in the case of Sudan contributing to the breakout of a civil war.
Advocates of Islamization have often been more concerned with ideology than traditional jurisprudence and there is no agreement among them as to what form a modern Sharia-based "Islamic state" should take. This is particularly the case for the theorists of Islamic economics and Islamic finance, who have advocated both free-market and socialist economic models. The notion of "Sharia-compliant" finance has become an active area of doctrinal innovation and its development has had a major impact on business operations around the world.
The legal systems of most Muslim-majority countries can be classified as either secular or mixed. Sharia plays no role in secular legal systems. In mixed legal systems, Sharia rules are allowed to influence some national laws, which are codified and may be based on European or Indian models, and the central legislative role is played by politicians and modern jurists rather than the ulema (traditional Islamic scholars). Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states possess what may be called classical Sharia systems, where national law is largely uncodified and formally equated with Sharia, with ulema playing a decisive role in its interpretation. Iran has adopted some features of classical Sharia systems, while also maintaining characteristics of mixed systems, like codified laws and a parliament.
Constitutions of many Muslim-majority countries refer to Sharia as a source or the main source of law, though these references are not in themselves indicative of how much the legal system is influenced by Sharia, and whether the influence has a traditionalist or modernist character. The same constitutions usually also refer to universal principles such as democracy and human rights, leaving it up to legislators and the judiciary to work out how these norms are to be reconciled in practice. Conversely, some countries (e.g., Algeria), whose constitution does not mention Sharia, possess Sharia-based family laws. Nisrine Abiad identifies Bahrain, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as states with "strong constitutional consequences" of Sharia "on the organization and functioning of power".
Except for secular systems, Muslim-majority countries possess Sharia-based laws dealing with family matters (marriage, inheritance, etc.). These laws generally reflect influence of various modern-era reforms and tend to be characterized by ambiguity, with traditional and modernist interpretations often manifesting themselves in the same country, both in legislation and court decisions. In some countries (e.g., parts of Nigeria and Greece), people can choose whether to pursue a case in a Sharia or secular court.
Countries in the Muslim world generally have criminal codes influenced by French law or common law, and in some cases a combination of Western legal traditions. Saudi Arabia has never adopted a criminal code and Saudi judges still follow traditional Hanbali jurisprudence. In the course of Islamization campaigns, several countries (Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Mauritania, and Yemen) inserted Islamic criminal laws into their penal codes, which were otherwise based on Western models. In some countries only "hudud" penalties were added, while others also enacted provisions for "qisas" (law of retaliation) and "diya" (monetary compensation). Iran subsequently issued a new "Islamic Penal Code". The criminal codes of Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates contain a general provision that certain crimes are to be punished according to Islamic law, without specifying the penalties. Some Nigerian states have also enacted Islamic criminal laws. Laws in the Indonesian province of Aceh provide for application of discretionary ("ta'zir") punishments for violation of Islamic norms, but explicitly exclude "hudud" and "qisas". Brunei has been implementing a "Sharia Penal Code", which includes provisions for stoning and amputation, in stages since 2014. The countries where "hudud" penalties are legal do not use stoning and amputation routinely, and generally apply other punishments instead.
Sharia also plays a role beyond religious rituals and personal ethics in some countries with Muslim minorities. For example, in Israel Sharia-based family laws are administered for the Muslim population by the Ministry of Justice through the Sharia Courts. In India, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act provides for the use of Islamic law for Muslims in several areas, mainly related to family law. In England, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal makes use of Sharia family law to settle disputes, though this limited adoption of Sharia is controversial.
Sharia courts traditionally do not rely on lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have preserved traditional procedure in Sharia courts, trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trial discovery process, and no cross-examination of witnesses. Unlike common law, judges' verdicts do not set binding precedents under the principle of "stare decisis", and unlike civil law, Sharia is left to the interpretation in each case and has no formally codified universal statutes.
The rules of evidence in Sharia courts traditionally prioritize oral testimony, and witnesses must be Muslim. Male Muslim witnesses are deemed more reliable than female Muslim witnesses, and non-Muslim witnesses considered unreliable and receive no priority in a Sharia court. In civil cases in some countries, a Muslim woman witness is considered half the worth and reliability than a Muslim man witness. In criminal cases, women witnesses are unacceptable in stricter, traditional interpretations of Sharia, such as those found in Hanbali jurisprudence, which forms the basis of law in Saudi Arabia.
A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of Muslim witnesses are the main evidence admissible in traditional sharia courts for hudud crimes, i.e., the religious crimes of adultery, fornication, rape, accusing someone of illicit sex but failing to prove it, apostasy, drinking intoxicants and theft. According to classical jurisprudence, testimony must be from at least two free Muslim male witnesses, or one Muslim male and two Muslim females, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character. Testimony to establish the crime of adultery, fornication or rape must be from four Muslim male witnesses, with some fiqhs allowing substitution of up to three male with six female witnesses; however, at least one must be a Muslim male. Forensic evidence ("i.e.", fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and other circumstantial evidence may likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses in some modern interpretations. In the case of regulations that were part of local Malaysian legislation that did not go into effect, this could cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases. In Pakistan, DNA evidence is rejected in paternity cases on the basis of legislation that favors the presumption of children's legitimacy, while in sexual assault cases DNA evidence is regarded as equivalent to expert opinion and evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
recommends written financial contracts with reliable witnesses, although there is dispute about equality of female testimony.
Marriage is solemnized as a written financial contract, in the presence of two Muslim male witnesses, and it includes a brideprice (Mahr) payable from a Muslim man to a Muslim woman. The brideprice is considered by a Sharia court as a form of debt. Written contracts were traditionally considered paramount in Sharia courts in the matters of dispute that are debt-related, which includes marriage contracts. Written contracts in debt-related cases, when notarized by a judge, is deemed more reliable.
In commercial and civil contracts, such as those relating to exchange of merchandise, agreement to supply or purchase goods or property, and others, oral contracts and the testimony of Muslim witnesses historically triumphed over written contracts. Islamic jurists traditionally held that written commercial contracts may be forged. Timur Kuran states that the treatment of written evidence in religious courts in Islamic regions created an incentive for opaque transactions, and the avoidance of written contracts in economic relations. This led to a continuation of a "largely oral contracting culture" in Muslim-majority nations and communities.
In lieu of written evidence, oaths are traditionally accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff. Taking an oath for Muslims can be a grave act; one study of courts in Morocco found that lying litigants would often "maintain their testimony right up to the moment of oath-taking and then to stop, refuse the oath, and surrender the case." Accordingly, defendants are not routinely required to swear before testifying, which would risk casually profaning the Quran should the defendant commit perjury; instead oaths are a solemn procedure performed as a final part of the evidence process.
In classical jurisprudence monetary compensation for bodily harm ("diya" or blood money) is assessed differently for different classes of victims. For example, for Muslim women the amount was half that assessed for a Muslim man. "Diya" for the death of a free Muslim man is twice as high as for Jewish and Christian victims according to the Maliki and Hanbali madhhabs and three times as high according to Shafi'i rules. Several legal schools assessed "diya" for Magians ("majus") at one-fifteenth the value of a free Muslim male.
Modern countries which incorporate classical "diya" rules into their legal system treat them in different ways. The Pakistan Penal Code modernized the Hanafi doctrine by eliminating distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims. In Iran, "diya" for non-Muslim victims professing one of the faiths protected under the constitution (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) was made equal to "diya" for Muslims in 2004, though according to a 2006 US State Department report, the penal code still discriminates against other religious minorities and women. According to Human Rights Watch and the US State Department, in Saudi Arabia Jewish or Christian male plaintiffs are entitled to half the amount a Muslim male would receive, while for all other non-Muslim males the proportion is one-sixteenth.
The spread of codified state laws and Western-style legal education in the modern Muslim world has displaced traditional muftis from their historical role of clarifying and elaborating the laws applied in courts. Instead, fatwas have increasingly served to advise the general public on other aspects of Sharia, particularly questions regarding religious rituals and everyday life. Modern fatwas deal with topics as diverse as insurance, sex-change operations, moon exploration and beer drinking. Most Muslim-majority states have established national organizations devoted to issuing fatwas, and these organizations to a considerable extent replaced independent muftis as religious guides for the general population. State-employed muftis generally promote a vision of Islam that is compatible with state law of their country.
Modern public and political fatwas have addressed and sometimes sparked controversies in the Muslim world and beyond. Ayatollah Khomeini's proclamation condemning Salman Rushdie to death for his novel "The Satanic Verses" is credited with bringing the notion of fatwa to world's attention, although some scholars have argued that it did not qualify as one. Together with later militant fatwas, it has contributed to the popular misconception of the fatwa as a religious death warrant.
Modern fatwas have been marked by an increased reliance on the process of "ijtihad", i.e. deriving legal rulings based on an independent analysis rather than conformity with the opinions of earlier legal authorities ("taqlid"), and some of them are issued by individuals who do not possess the qualifications traditionally required of a mufti. The most notorious examples are the fatwas of militant extremists. When Osama Bin Laden and his associates issued a fatwa in 1998 proclaiming "jihad against Jews and Crusaders", many Islamic jurists, in addition to denouncing its content, stressed that bin Laden was not qualified to either issue a fatwa or proclaim a jihad. New forms of ijtihad have also given rise to fatwas that support such notions as gender equality and banking interest, which are at variance with classical jurisprudence.
In the internet age, a large number of websites provide fatwas in response to queries from around the world, in addition to radio shows and satellite television programs offering call-in fatwas. Erroneous and sometimes bizarre fatwas issued by unqualified or eccentric individuals in recent times have sometimes given rise to complaints about a "chaos" in the modern practice of issuing fatwas. There exists no international Islamic authority to settle differences in interpretation of Islamic law. An International Islamic Fiqh Academy was created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, but its legal opinions are not binding. The vast amount of fatwas produced in the modern world attests to the importance of Islamic authenticity to many Muslims. However, there is little research available to indicate to what extent Muslims acknowledge the authority of different muftis or heed their rulings in real life.
The classical doctrine of "hisba", associated with the Quranic injunction of "enjoining good and forbidding wrong", refers to the duty of Muslims to promote moral rectitude and intervene when another Muslim is acting wrongly. Historically, its legal implementation was entrusted to a public official called "muhtasib" (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud, disturbance of public order and infractions against public morality. This office disappeared in the modern era everywhere in the Muslim world, but it was revived in Arabia by the first Saudi state, and later instituted as a government committee responsible for supervising markets and public order. It has been aided by volunteers enforcing attendance of daily prayers, gender segregation in public places, and a conservative notion of hijab. Committee officers were authorized to detain violators before a 2016 reform. With the rising international influence of Wahhabism, the conception of "hisba" as an individual obligation to police religious observance has become more widespread, which led to the appearance of activists around the world who urge fellow Muslims to observe Islamic rituals, dress code, and other aspects of Sharia.
In Iran, "hisba" was enshrined in the constitution after the 1979 Revolution as a "universal and reciprocal duty", incumbent upon both the government and the people. Its implementation has been carried out by official committees as well as volunteer forces ("basij"). Elsewhere, policing of various interpretations of Sharia-based public morality has been carried out by the Kano State Hisbah Corps in the Nigerian state of Kano, by "Polisi Perda Syariah Islam" in the Aceh province of Indonesia, by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in the Gaza Strip, and by the Taleban during their 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan. Religious police organizations tend to have support from conservative currents of public opinion, but their activities are often disliked by other segments of the population, especially liberals, urban women, and younger people.
In Egypt, a law based on the doctrine of hisba had for a time allowed a Muslim to sue another Muslim over beliefs that may harm society, though because of abuses it has been amended so that only the state prosecutor may bring suit based on private requests. Before the amendment was passed, a hisba suit brought by a group of Islamists against the liberal theologian Nasr Abu Zayd on charges of apostasy led to annulment of his marriage. The law was also invoked in an unsuccessful blasphemy suit against the feminist author Nawal El Saadawi. Hisba has also been invoked in several Muslim-majority countries as rationale for blocking pornographic content on the internet and for other forms of faith-based censorship.
A 2013 survey based on interviews of 38,000 Muslims, randomly selected from urban and rural parts in 39 countries using area probability designs, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that a majority—in some cases "overwhelming" majority—of Muslims in a number of countries support making "Sharia" or "Islamic law" the law of the land, including Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), Niger (86%), Malaysia (86%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Bangladesh (82%), Egypt (74%), Indonesia (72%), Jordan (71%), Uganda (66%), Ethiopia (65%), Mali (63%), Ghana (58%), and Tunisia (56%). In Muslim regions of Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the support is less than 50%: Russia (42%), Kyrgyzstan (35%), Tajikistan (27%), Kosovo (20%), Albania (12%), Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%), Azerbaijan (8%). Regional averages of support were 84% in South Asia, 77% in Southeast Asia, 74% in the Middle-East/North Africa, 64%, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 18% in Southern-Eastern Europe, and 12% in Central Asia .
However, while most of those who support implementation of Sharia favor using it in family and property disputes, fewer supported application of severe punishments such as whippings and cutting off hands, and interpretations of some aspects differed widely. According to the Pew poll, among Muslims who support making Sharia the law of the land, most do not believe that it should be applied to non-Muslims. In the Muslim-majority countries surveyed this proportion varied between 74% (of 74% in Egypt) and 19% (of 10% in Kazakhstan), as percentage of those who favored making Sharia the law of the land.
In all of the countries surveyed, respondents were more likely to define Sharia as "the revealed word of God" rather than as "a body of law developed by men based on the word of God". In analyzing the poll, Amaney Jamal has argued that there is no single, shared understanding of the notions "Sharia" and "Islamic law" among the respondents. In particular, in countries where Muslim citizens have little experience with rigid application of Sharia-based state laws, these notions tend to be more associated with Islamic ideals like equality and social justice than with prohibitions. Other polls have indicated that for Egyptians, the word "Sharia" is associated with notions of political, social and gender justice.
In 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has suggested that Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts should be integrated into the British legal system alongside ecclesiastical courts to handle marriage and divorce, subject to agreement of all parties and strict requirements for protection of equal rights for women. His reference to the sharia sparked a controversy. Later that year, Nicholas Phillips, then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, stated that there was "no reason why sharia principles [...] should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution." A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed supported the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims. Michael Broyde, professor of law at Emory University specializing in alternative dispute resolution and Jewish law, has argued that sharia courts can be integrated into the American religious arbitration system, provided that they adopt appropriate institutional requirements as American rabbinical courts have done.
In the Western world, Sharia has been called a source of "hysteria", "more controversial than ever", the one aspect of Islam that inspires "particular dread". On the Internet, "dozens of self-styled counter-jihadis" emerged to campaign against Sharia law, describing it in strict interpretations resembling those of Salafi Muslims. Also, fear of Sharia law and of the ideology of extremism among Muslims as well as certain congregations donating money to terrorist organizations within the Muslim community reportedly spread to mainstream conservative Republicans in the United States. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won ovations calling for a federal ban on Sharia law.
The issue of "liberty versus Sharia" was called a "momentous civilisational debate" by right-wing pundit Diana West.
In 2008 in Britain, the future Prime Minister (David Cameron) declared his opposition to "any expansion of Sharia law in the UK." In Germany, in 2014, the Interior Minister (Thomas de Maizière) told a newspaper ("Bild"), "Sharia law is not tolerated on German soil."
Some countries and jurisdictions have explicit bans on sharia law. In Canada, for example, sharia law has been explicitly banned in Quebec by a 2005 unanimous vote of the National Assembly, while the province of Ontario allows family law disputes to be arbitrated only under Ontario law. In the U.S., opponents of Sharia have sought to ban it from being considered in courts, where it has been routinely used alongside traditional Jewish and Catholic laws to decide legal, business, and family disputes subject to contracts drafted with reference to such laws, as long as they do not violate secular law or the U.S. constitution. After failing to gather support for a federal law making observing Sharia a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, anti-Sharia activists have focused on state legislatures. By 2014, bills aimed against use of Sharia have been introduced in 34 states and passed in 11. These bills have generally referred to banning foreign or religious law in order to thwart legal challenges.
According to Jan Michiel Otto, Professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries at Leiden University, "[a]nthropological research shows that people in local communities often do not distinguish clearly whether and to what extent their norms and practices are based on local tradition, tribal custom, or religion. Those who adhere to a confrontational view of Sharia tend to ascribe many undesirable practices to Sharia and religion overlooking custom and culture, even if high-ranking religious authorities have stated the opposite."
It has been argued that the extent to which Sharia is compatible with democracy depends on how it is culturally interpreted, with a cultural position that Sharia represents the human attempt to interpret God’s message associated with a greater preference for democracy than an islamist interpretation that Sharia law is the literal word of God .
Esposito and DeLong-Bas distinguish four attitudes toward Sharia and democracy prominent among Muslims today:
Polls conducted by Gallup and PEW in Muslim-majority countries indicate that most Muslims see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles, desiring neither a theocracy, nor a secular democracy, but rather a political model where democratic institutions and values can coexist with the values and principles of Sharia.
Muslih and Browers identify three major perspectives on democracy among prominent Muslims thinkers who have sought to develop modern, distinctly Islamic theories of socio-political organization conforming to Islamic values and law:
In 1998 the Constitutional Court of Turkey banned and dissolved Turkey's Refah Party over its announced intention to introduce Sharia-based laws, ruling that it would change Turkey's secular order and undermine democracy. On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human Rights determined that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy". Refah's Sharia-based notion of a "plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion" was ruled to contravene the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was determined that it would "do away with the State's role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms" and "infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy". In an analysis, Maurits S. Berger found the ruling to be "nebulous" and surprising from a legal point of view, since the Court neglected to define what it meant by "Sharia" and would not, for example, be expected to regard Sharia rules for Islamic rituals as contravening European human rights values. Kevin Boyle also criticized the decision for not distinguishing between extremist and mainstream interpretations of Islam and implying that peaceful advocacy of Islamic doctrines ("an attitude which fails to respect [the principle of secularism]") is not protected by the European Convention provisions for freedom of religion.
Governments of several predominantly Muslim countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. Iran declared in the UN assembly that UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Islamic scholars and Islamist political parties consider 'universal human rights' arguments as imposition of a non-Muslim culture on Muslim people, a disrespect of customary cultural practices and of Islam. In 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a group representing all Muslim-majority nations, met in Cairo to respond to the UDHR, then adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
Ann Elizabeth Mayer points to notable absences from the Cairo Declaration: provisions for democratic principles, protection for religious freedom, freedom of association and freedom of the press, as well as equality in rights and equal protection under the law. Article 24 of the Cairo declaration states that "all the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic "shari'a"".
In 2009, the journal "Free Inquiry" summarized the criticism of the Cairo Declaration in an editorial: "We are deeply concerned with the changes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a coalition of Islamic states within the United Nations that wishes to prohibit any criticism of religion and would thus protect Islam's limited view of human rights. In view of the conditions inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we should expect that at the top of their human rights agenda would be to rectify the legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters – in short, protecting their citizens from egregious human rights violations. Instead, they are worrying about protecting Islam."
H. Patrick Glenn states that Sharia is structured around the concept of mutual obligations of a collective, and it considers individual human rights as potentially disruptive and unnecessary to its revealed code of mutual obligations. In giving priority to this religious collective rather than individual liberty, the Islamic law justifies the formal inequality of individuals (women, non-Islamic people). Bassam Tibi states that Sharia framework and human rights are incompatible. Abdel al-Hakeem Carney, in contrast, states that Sharia is misunderstood from a failure to distinguish "Sharia" from "siyasah" (politics).
In classical fiqh, blasphemy refers to any form of cursing, questioning or annoying God, Muhammad or anything considered sacred in Islam, including denying one of the Islamic prophets or scriptures, insulting an angel or refusing to accept a religious commandment. Jurists of different schools prescribed different punishment for blasphemy against Islam, by Muslims and non-Muslims, ranging from imprisonment or fines to the death penalty. In some cases, sharia allows non-Muslims to escape death by converting and becoming a devout follower of Islam. In the modern Muslim world, the laws pertaining to blasphemy vary by country, and some countries prescribe punishments consisting of fines, imprisonment, flogging, hanging, or beheading. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28840 |
Sunnah
Sunnah (, , plural ), also sunna or sunnat, is the Arabic word for traditional customs and practices; in the Islamic community it refers to the traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad, that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. According to classical Islamic theories of Sunnah they are documented by "hadith" (the verbally transmitted record of the teachings, deeds and sayings, silent permissions or disapprovals of Muhammad), and along with the Quran (the holy book of Islam), are the divine revelation ("Wahy") delivered through the Prophet that make up the primary sources of Islamic law and belief/theology. Differing from Sunni classical Islamic theories are those of Shia Muslims, who hold that the Twelve Imams interpret the sunnah, and Sufi who hold that Muhammad transmitted the values of Sunnah "through a series of Sufi teachers."
According to Muslim belief, Muhammad was the best exemplar for Muslims, and several verses in the Quran declare his conduct exemplary, and enjoin his followers to obey him. Sunnah provides a basis not only for major laws and rituals in Islam like how to pray salat, but for "even the most mundane activities", such as the order in which to cut fingernails or the proper length of a beard.
In the pre-Islamic period, "sunnah" was used to mean "manner of acting", whether good or bad. During the early Islamic period, the term referred to any good precedent set by people of the past, including both Muhammad, and his companions. In addition, the Sunnah of the Prophet was not necessarily associated with hadith.
The classical meaning that now prevails was introduced later in the late second century of Islam, when under the influence of the scholar Al-Shafi‘i, Muhammad's example as recorded in hadith was given priority of over all other precedents set by other authorities. The term "al-sunnah" then eventually came to be viewed as synonymous with the "sunnah" of Muhammad, based on hadith reports. Recording the "sunnah" was also an Arabian tradition and once they converted to Islam, Arabians brought this custom to their religion.
The "sunnah" of Muhammad as based on hadith includes his specific words ("Sunnah Qawliyyah"), habits, practices ("Sunnah Fiiliyyah"), and silent approvals ("Sunnah Taqririyyah").
In Islam, the word ""sunnah"" is also used to refer to religious duties that are optional, such as "Sunnah salat".
' ( , plural ' ) is an Arabic word that means
Its religious definition can be:
Islam Web gives two slightly different definitions:
It was first used with the meaning of "law" in the Syro-Roman law book before it became widely used in Islamic jurisprudence.
Sunnah and hadith (the words, actions or approval that are narrated about Muhammad and which are believed to document Sunnah) are sometimes used synonymously, but not always.
In addition to being "the way" of Islam or the traditional social and legal custom and practice of the Islamic community, sunnah is often used as a synonym for "mustahabb" (encouraged) rather than "wajib"/"fard" (obligatory), regarding some commendable action (usually the saying of a prayer).
Sunni Muslims are also referred to as "Ahl as-Sunnah wa'l-Jamā'ah" ("people of the tradition and the community (of Muhammad)") or "Ahl as-Sunnah" for short. Some early Sunnî Muslim scholars (such as Abu Hanifa, al-Humaydî, Ibn Abî `Âsim, Abû Dâwûd, and Abû Nasr al-Marwazî) reportedly used the term "the sunnah" narrowly to refer to Sunni Doctrine as opposed to the creeds of Shia and other non-Sunni Islamic sects. Sunnah literally means face, nature, lifestyle, etc. In the time of prophet Muhammad's companion, newly converted muslims accepted and rejected some set of creed by using reason. So many early muslim scholars started writing books on creed entitled as 'sunnah'.
The word “Sunna” appears several times in the Qur’an, but there is no specific mention of sunnah of the messenger or prophet ("sunnat al-rasool", "sunnat al-nabi" or "sunna al-nabawiyyah"), i.e. the way/practice of Prophet Muhammad. (There "are" several verses calling on Muslims to obey Muhammad—see below.) Four verses (8.38, 15.13, 18.55) use the expression “"sunnat al-awwalin"”, which is thought to mean “the way or practice of the ancients.” It is described as something "that has passed away" or prevented unbelievers from accepting God. “"Sunnat Allah"” (the “way of God”) appears eight times in five verses. In addition, verse 17.77 talks of both the way of other, earlier Muslim messengers (Ibrahim, Musa, etc.), and of "our way", i.e. God's way.
[This is] the way ("sunna") of those whom we sent [as messengers] before you, and you will not find any change in Our way ("sunnatuna").
This indicates to some scholars (such as Javed Ahmad Ghamidi) that sunnah predates both the Quran and Muhammad, and is actually the tradition of the prophets of God, specifically the tradition of Abraham. Christians, Jews and the Arab descendants of Ishmael, the Arabized Arabs or Ishmaelites, when Muhammad reinstituted this practice as an integral part of Islam.
According to historians (particularly Daniel W. Brown), the classical Islamic definition of Sunnah as the customs and practices of Muhammad (only) was not the original one.
Prior to the "golden age of classical Islamic jurisprudence", the "ancient schools" of law prevailed.
The golden age, starting with the creation of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, etc. schools of fiqh in the second century of Islam, limited sunnah to “traditions traced back to the Prophet Muhammad himself” ("sunna al-nabawiyyah"). But the ancient "regional" schools of law, located in several major cities of the new Arab empire of Islam -- Mecca, Kufa, Basra, Syria, etc., -- had a more flexible definition of sunnah than is now commonly used. This being the "acceptable norms" or "custom", which included examples of the Prophet's Companions, the rulings of the Caliphs, and practices that “had gained general acceptance among the jurists of that school”.
Examples of the use of non-Muhammadan sunnahs at this time is found in a (non-Muhammadan) tradition/hadith comment
In al-Ṭabarī's history of early Islam, the term "Sunnah of the Prophet" is not only used "surprisingly infrequently", but used to refer to "political oaths or slogans used by rebels", or "a general standard of justice and right conduct", and not "to specific precedents set by Muhammad", let alone hadith. An early theological writing by Hasan al-Basri ("Risala fi'l Qadar") also is "empty of references to specific cases" when mentioning Sunnah of the Prophet.
Daniel Brown states that the first extant writings of Islamic legal reasoning were "virtually hadith-free" and argues that other examples of a lack of connection between sunnah and hadith" can be found in:
According to one source (Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi and Karim Douglas Crow), early Sunni scholars often considered "sunnah" equivalent to the biography of Muhammed ("sira"). As the "hadith" came to be better documented and the scholars who validated them gained prestige, the "sunnah" came often to be known mostly through the "hadith", especially as variant or fictional biographies of Muhammad spread.
Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (150-204 AH), known as al-Shafi'i, argued against flexible sunnah and the use of precedents from multiple sources, emphasizing the final authority of a hadith of Muhammad, so that even the Qur'an was "to be interpreted in the light of traditions (i.e. hadith), and not vice versa." While the sunnah has often been called "second to the Quran", hadith has also been said to "rule over and interpret the Quran".
Al-Shafiʿi "forcefully argued" that the sunnah stands "on equal footing with the Quran", (according to scholar Daniel Brown) both being divine revelation. As Al-Shafi'i put it, “the command of the Prophet is the command of God.” (Notwithstanding the triumph of this theory, in practice the schools of fiqh resisted the thorough application of hadith and fiqh was little changed from the days before Al-Shafi'i.)
Sunnah of Muhammad outranked all other, and "broad agreement" developed that "hadith must be the basis for authentication of any Sunnah," (according to M.O. Farooq). Al-Shafiʿi's success was such that later writers “hardly ever thought of sunnah as comprising anything but that of the Prophet”, and sunnah was often considered synonymous with hadith.
While the earliest Muslim lawyers "felt no obligation" to provide documentation of hadith when arguing their case, and the Sunnah was not recorded and written during the Prophet's lifetime, (according to scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl), all this changed with the triumph of Al-Shafi‘i and a "broad agreement" that Hadith should be used to authenticate Sunnah, (according to M.O. Farooq), over the course of the second century, when legal works began incorporated Prophetic hadith.
Hadith was now systematically collected and documented, but several generations having passed since the time of its occurrence meant that "many of the reports attributed to the Prophet are apocryphal or at least are of dubious historical authenticity," (according to Abou El Fadl). "In fact, one of the most complex disciplines in Islamic jurisprudence is one which attempts to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic traditions."
Islam jurists divide sunnah into that which has no legal consequences --"al-sunna al-ʿādīyah" -- (the "personal habits and preferences" of Muhammad); and that which is binding on Muslims -- "al-sunna al-hudā". The literalist Zāhirī school disagrees holding that there was no sunnah whose fulfillment is not rewarded or neglect punished, while classical Islam holds that following non-binding "al-sunna al-ʿādīyah" is meritorious but not obligatory.
Sufis see the "division between binding and non-binding" sunnah as "meaningless". Muhammad is "al-insān al-kāmil", the perfect man, "labib-Allah" beloved of God, an intercessor, a "channel of divine light". Imitating his every action is "the ultimate expression" of piety. or in the words of Al-Ghazālī:
Know that the key to joy is following the sunnah and imitating the Prophet in all his comings and goings, words and deeds, extending to his manner of eating, rising, sleeping and speaking. I do not say this only in relation to requirements of religion ["ʿibādāt"], for there is no escaping these; rather, this includes every area of behavior ["ʿādāt"].
In the 19th century, "social and political turmoil" starting with the decline of the Moghal empire, caused some Muslims to seek a more humanized figure of Muhammad. The miracle-performing "larger than life" prophetic figure was de-emphasized in favor of "a practical model for restoration of the Muslim community," a virtuous, progressive social reformer. Nasserist Egypt, for example, celebrated the "imam of socialism" rather than the cosmic "perfect man". One who argued against the idea of sunnah as divine revelation, and for the idea that Muhammad's mission was simply to transmit the Quran was Ghulam Ahmed Perwez (1903–1985). He quoted the Quranic verse "The messenger has no duty except to proclaim [the message]," (Q.5:99) and pointed out several other verses where God corrects something Muhammad has done or said (8:67),(9:43), (66:1), thus demonstrating Muhammad's lack of supernatural knowledge.
This era of rapid social and technological change, decline of Muslim power, and replacement of classical madhhab by Western-inspired legal codes in Muslim lands, also suggested a turn away from the "detailed precedents in civil and political affairs," called for by traditional Hadith, "for if worldly matters require detailed prophetic guidance, then every age will require a new prophet to accommodate changing circumstances".
With de-colonialization in the late 20th century, a new Islamic revival emerged. Activists rather than theorists, they sought "to restore Islam to ascendency", and in particular to restore Sharia to the law of the lands of Islam it had been before being replaced by "secular, Western inspired law codes" of colonialism and modernity. Like modernists, revivalists "vehemently rejected" "taqlid" and were not particularly interested in the classical schools of law ("madhhab"). But revivalists like Abul A'la Maududi and Mustafa al-Siba'i support for "the authority of Sunnah and the authenticity of Hadith in general" was "unwavering", as was their opposition to "Hadith denialism". At the same time they agreed that restoring "relevant" Sharia required "some reformulation" of the law, which would require a return to sources, which required agreement on how the sources were be to be "interpreted and understand" and reassessment of hadith. This involved examining hadith content ("matn") for its spirit and relevance "within the context of the Sharia as a whole" according to the method of scholars of Islamic law ("fuqaha") and weeding out corrupted hadith inconsistent with "reason, with human nature, and with historical conditions". Shibli Nomani, Abul A'la Maududi, Rashid Rida, and Mohammed al-Ghazali being proponents of this effort.
Although "most writers agree", including skeptics, that "sunnah and hadith must stand or fall together", some (Fazlur Rahman Malik, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi) have attempted to "establish a basis for sunnah independent of hadith", working around problem of hadith authenticity raised by modernist and Western critics, while reaching back to pre-al-Shafiʿi meaning of Sunnah.
In the 1960s, Fazlur Rahman Malik, an Islamic modernist and former head of Pakistan's Central Institute for Islamic Research, advanced another idea for how the (Prophetic) sunnah -- the normative example of the Prophet -- should be understood: as "a general umbrella concept" but not one "filled with absolutely specific content", or that was static over the centuries. He argued that Muhammad had come as a "moral reformer" and not a "pan-legit", and that the specifics of the sunnah would be agreed upon community of his followers, evolving with changing times as a "living and on-going process". He accepted the criticism of Western and Muslim scholars that the content of many hadith and isnad (chain of transmitters) had been tampered with by Muslims trying to prove the Muhammad had made a specific statement -- but this did not make them fraudulent or forgeries, because if "Hadith verbally speaking does not go back to the Prophet, its spirit certainly does". Instead these collections of ahadith of al-Bukhari and al-Muslim's were "ijma" (consensus or agreement of the Muslim scholars -- which is another classical source of Islamic law). Doing so they follow the spirit of the Prophet's mission, and "resurrect" the legal methodology of the pre-Shafi'i "Ancient schools". But just as second and third century Muslims could re-formulate hadith and law around a prophetic spirit, so csn modern Muslims -- redefining "riba" and replacing medieval laws against bank interest with measures that help the poor without harming economic productivity.
Some of the most basic and important features of the sunnah — worship rituals like "salat" (ritual prayer), "zakat" (ritual tithing), "hajj" (pilgrimage to Mecca), "sawm" (dawn to dusk fasting during Ramadan) — are known to Muslim from being passed down `from the many to the many` (according to scholars of fiqh such as Al-Shafi'i), bypassing books of hadith, (which were more often consulted for answers to details not agreed upon or not frequently practiced) and issues of authenticity.
Modernist Rashid Rida thought this "the only source of sunnah that is beyond dispute". S.M. Yusuf argued "practice is best transmitted through practice", and a more reliable way to establish Sunnah than hadith. He also believed that the passing down of practice from generation to generation independent of hadith explained why early schools of law did not differentiate between sunnah of the caliphate and sunnah of the prophet.
According to Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, another Modernist, this passing down by continuous practice of the Muslim community (which also indicates consensus, "ijma") was similar to how the Qur’ān has been "received by the "ummah"" (Muslim community) through the consensus of the Prophet's Companions and through their perpetual recitation. Consequently, Ghamidi sees this more limited Sunnah of continuous practice as the true sunnah — equally authentic to the Quran, but shedding orthodox sunnah and avoiding problematic basis of the hadith.
Sufi thinkers "emphasized personal spirituality and piety rather than the details of fiqh".
According to the view of some Sufi Muslims who incorporate both the outer and inner reality of Muhammad, the deeper and true sunnah are the noble characteristics and inner state of Muhammad -- "Khuluqin Azim" or 'Exalted Character'. To them Muhammad's attitude, his piety, the quality of his character constitute the truer and deeper aspect of what it means by sunnah in Islam, rather than the external aspects alone. They argue that the external customs of Muhammad loses its meaning without the inner attitude and also many hadiths are simply custom of the Arabs, not something that is unique to Muhammad.
The Qur'an contains numerous commands to follow the Prophet. Among the Quranic verses quoted as demonstrating the importance of hadith/sunnah to Muslims are
Say: Obey Allah and obey the Messenger,
Which appears in several verses: , , ,
Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination or desire.
"A similar (favour have ye already received) in that We have sent among you a Messenger of your own, rehearsing to you Our Signs, and sanctifying you, and instructing you in Scripture and Wisdom, and in new knowledge.
"Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah."
The teachings of "wisdom" ("hikma") have been declared to be a function of Muhammad along with the teachings of the scripture. Several Quranic verses mention "wisdom" ("hikmah") coupled with "scripture" or "the book" (i.e. the Quran) -- "al-kitāb wa al-ḥikma". Mainstream scholars starting with al-Shafi'i believe "hikma" refers to the Sunnah, and this connection between Sunnah and the Quran is evidence of the Sunnah's divinity and authority.
Therefore, along with the Quran, the "sunnah" was revealed. Modern Sunni scholars have examined both the "sira" and the "hadith" in order to justify modifications to jurisprudence ("fiqh").
Hense, the imitation of Muhammad helps Muslims to know and be loved by God.
Another piece of evidence for the divinity of the Sunnah -- according to its supporters -- are verses in the Quran that refer to revelations not found "in" the Quran. For example, there is no verse mentioning the original direction of prayer (the "qibla") in the Quran, but God in the Quran does say He appointed the original qibla (). Other events mentioned in the Quran that already happened without Quranic command or description include a dream in which Muhammad would enter Mecca (); Muhammad's marriage to Zayd's ex-wife (); and the dispute over the division of spoils after the Battle of Badr (); all "definitive proof that besides the Quran other commands came to the Prophet by the agency of waḥy," according to revivalist Abul A'la Maududi.
The minority argument against the Sunnah of the prophet being divine revelation ("waḥy") goes back to the "ahl al-Kalam" who al-Shāfiʿī argued against in the second century of Islam. Their modern "Quranists", the modern successors of the "ahl al-Kalam", argue that the sunnah falls short of the standard of the Quran in divinity. Specifically because
According to John Burton, paraphrasing Al-Shafi'i, "it must be remembered that the Quran text are couched in very general terms which it is the function of the sunnah to expand and elucidate, to make God's meaning absolutely clear."
There are a number of verses in the Quran where "to understand the context, as well as the meaning", Muslims need to refer to the record of the life and example of the Prophet.
It is thought that verses 16:44 and 64 indicate that Muhammed's mission "is not merely that of a deliveryman who simply delivers the revelation from Allah to us, rather, he has been entrusted with the most important task of explaining and illustrating" the Quran.
And We have also sent down unto you (O Muhammad) the reminder and the advice (the Quran), that you may explain clearly to men what is sent down to them, and that they may give thought.
And We have not sent down the Book (the Quran) to you (O Muhammad), except that you may explain clearly unto them those things in which they differ, and (as) a guidance and a mercy for a folk who believe. [Quran 16:64]
For example, while the Quran presents the general principles of praying, fasting, paying zakat, or making pilgrimage, they are presented "without the illustration found in Hadith, for these acts of worship remain as abstract imperatives in the Qur’an".
Sunnah upon which "fiqh" is based may be divided into:
It may be also divided into sunnah that is binding for Muslims and that which is not. Ibn Qutaybah (213-276 AH) distinguished between:
In the terminology of "fiqh" (Islamic jurisprudence), sunnah denotes whatever though not obligatory, is "firmly established ("thabata") as called for ("matlub")" in Islam "on the basis of a legal proof ("dalîl shar`î").
According to scholar Gibril Fouad Haddad, the "sciences of the Sunnah" ("`ulûm as-Sunna") refer to:
the biography of the Prophet ("as-sîra"), the chronicle of his battles ("al-maghâzî"), his everyday sayings and acts or "ways" ("sunan"), his personal and moral qualities ("ash-shamâ'il"), and the host of the ancillary hadîth sciences such as the circumstances of occurrence ("asbâb al-wurûd"), knowledge of the abrogating and abrogated hadîth, difficult words ("gharîb al-hadîth"), narrator criticism ("al-jarh wat-ta`dîl"), narrator biographies ("al-rijâl"), etc., as discussed in great detail in the authoritative books of al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî.
Shia Islam does not use the "Kutub al-Sittah" (six major "hadith" collections) followed by Sunni Islam, therefore the Sunnah of Shia Islam and the Sunnah of Sunni Islam refer to different collections of religious canonical literature.
The primary collections of Sunnah of Shia Islam were written by three authors known as the 'Three Muhammads', and they are:
Unlike Akhbari Twelver Shiites, Usuli Twelver Shiite scholars do not believe that everything in the four major books of the Sunnah of Shia Islam is authentic.
In Shia "hadees" one often finds sermons attributed to Ali in The Four Books or in the Nahj al-Balagha. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28841 |
Safe sex
Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or devices (such as condoms) to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer sex or protected sex to indicate that some safe sex practices do not completely eliminate STI risks. It is also sometimes used colloquially to describe methods aimed at preventing pregnancy that may or may not also lower STI risks.
The concept of "safe sex" emerged in the 1980s as a response to the global AIDS epidemic, and possibly more specifically to the AIDS crisis in the US. Promoting safe sex is now one of the main aims of sex education and STI prevention, especially reducing new HIV infections. Safe sex is regarded as a harm reduction strategy aimed at reducing the risk of STI transmission.
Although some safe sex practices (like condoms) can also be used as birth control ("contraception"), most forms of contraception do not protect against STIs. Likewise, some safe sex practices, such as partner selection and low-risk sex behavior, might not be effective forms of contraception.
Although strategies for avoiding STIs like syphilis and gonorrhea have existed for centuries and the term "safe sex" existed in English as early as the 1930s, the use of the term to refer to STI-risk reduction dates to the mid-1980s in the United States. It emerged in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
A year before the HIV virus was isolated and named, the San Francisco chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence published a small pamphlet titled "Play Fair!" out of concern over widespread STIs among the city's gay male population. It specifically named illnesses (Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia) that would later be understood as symptoms of advanced HIV disease (or AIDS). The pamphlet advocated a range of safe-sex practices, including abstinence, condoms, personal hygiene, use of personal lubricants, and STI testing/treatment. It took a casual, sex-positive approach while also emphasizing personal and social responsibility. In May 1983—the same month HIV was isolated and named in France—the New York City-based HIV/AIDS activists Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen published similar advice in their booklet, "". Neither publication used the term "safe sex" but both included recommendations that are now standard advice for reducing STI (including HIV) risks.
Safe sex as a form of STI risk reduction appeared in journalism as early as 1984, in the British publication 'The Intelligencer': ""The goal is to reach about 50 million people with messages about safe sex and AIDS education."
Although "safe sex" is used by individuals to refer to protection against both pregnancy and HIV/AIDS or other STI transmissions, the term was born in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is believed that the term "safe sex" was used in the professional literature in 1984, in the content of a paper on the psychological effect that HIV/AIDS may have on gay and bisexual men.
A year later, the same term appeared in an article in "The New York Times." This article emphasized that most specialists advised their AIDS patients to practice safe sex. The concept included limiting the number of sexual partners, using prophylactics, avoiding bodily fluid exchange, and resisting the use of drugs that reduced inhibitions for high-risk sexual behavior. Moreover, in 1985, the first safe sex guidelines were established by the 'Coalition for Sexual Responsibilities'. According to these guidelines, safe sex was practiced by using condoms also when engaging in anal or oral sex.
Although the term "safe sex" was primarily used in reference to sexual activity between men, in 1986 the concept was spread to the general population. Various programs were developed with the aim of promoting safe sex practices among college students. These programs were focused on promoting the use of the condom, a better knowledge about the partner's sexual history and limiting the number of sexual partners. The first book on this subject appeared in the same year. The book was entitled "Safe Sex in the Age of AIDS", it had 88 pages and it described both positive and negative approaches to sexual life. Sexual behavior could be either safe (kissing, hugging, massage, body-to-body rubbing, mutual masturbation, exhibitionism, phone sex, and use of separate sex toys); possibly safe (use of condoms); and unsafe.
In 1997, specialists in this matter promoted the use of condoms as the most accessible safe sex method (besides abstinence) and they called for TV commercials featuring condoms. During the same year, the Catholic Church in the United States issued their own "safer sex" guidelines on which condoms were listed, though two years later the Vatican urged chastity and heterosexual marriage, attacking the American Catholic bishops' guidelines.
A study carried out in 2006 by Californian specialists showed that the most common definitions of safe sex are condom use (68% of the interviewed subjects), abstinence (31.1% of the interviewed subjects), monogamy (28.4% of the interviewed subjects) and safe partner (18.7% of the interviewed subjects).
The term "safer sex" in Canada and the United States has gained greater use by health workers, reflecting that risk of transmission of sexually transmitted infections in various sexual activities is a continuum. The term "safe sex" is still in common use in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
"Safer sex" is thought to be a more aggressive term which may make it more obvious to individuals that any type of sexual activity carries a certain degree of risk.
The term "safe love" has also been used, notably by the French Sidaction in the promotion of men's underpants incorporating a condom pocket and including the red ribbon symbol in the design, which were sold to support the charity.
A range of safe-sex practices are commonly recommended by sexual health educators and public health agencies. Many of these practices can reduce (but not completely eliminate) risk of transmitting or acquiring STIs.
Sexual activities, such as phone sex, cybersex, and sexting, that do not include direct contact with the skin or bodily fluids of sexual partners, carry no STI risks and, thus, are forms of safe sex.
A range of sex acts called "non-penetrative sex" or "outercourse" can significantly reduce STI risks. Non-penetrative sex includes practices such as kissing, mutual masturbation, rubbing or stroking. According to the Health Department of Western Australia, this sexual practice may prevent pregnancy and most STIs. However, non-penetrative sex may not protect against infections that can be transmitted via skin-to-skin contact, such as herpes and human papilloma virus. Mutual or partnered masturbation carries some STI risk, especially if there is skin contact or shared bodily fluids with sexual partners, although the risks are significantly lower than many other sexual activities.
Barriers, such as condoms, dental dams, and medical gloves can prevent contact with body fluids (such as blood, vaginal fluid, semen, rectal mucus), and other means of transmitting STIs (like skin, hair and shared objects) during sexual activity.
Oil-based lubrication can break down the structure of latex condoms, dental dams or gloves, reducing their effectiveness for STI protection.
While use of external condoms can reduce STI risks during sexual activity, they are not 100% effective. One study has suggested condoms might reduce HIV transmission by 85% to 95%; effectiveness beyond 95% was deemed unlikely because of slippage, breakage, and incorrect use. It also said, "In practice, inconsistent use may reduce the overall effectiveness of condoms to as low as 60–70%".p. 40.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (often abbreviated as "PrEP") is the use of prescription drugs by those who do not have HIV to prevent HIV infection. PrEP drugs are taken "prior" to HIV exposure to prevent the transmission of the virus, usually between sexual partners. PrEP drugs do not prevent other STI infections or pregnancy.
As of 2018, the most-widely approved form of "PrEP" combines two drugs (tenofovir and emtricitabine) in one pill. That drug combination is sold under the brand name Truvada by Gilead Sciences. It is also sold in generic formulations worldwide. Other drugs are also being studied for use as PrEP.
Different countries have approved different protocols for using the tenofovir/emtricitabine-combination drug as "PrEP". That two-drug combination has been shown to prevent HIV infection in different populations when taken daily, intermittently, and on demand. Numerous studies have found the tenofovir/emtricitabine combination to be over 90% effective at preventing HIV transmission between sexual partners.
Treatment as Prevention (often abbreviated as "TasP") is the practice of testing for and treating HIV infection as a way to prevent further spread of the virus. Those having knowledge of their HIV-positive status can use safe-sex practices to protect themselves and their partners (such as using condoms, sero-sorting partners, or choosing less-risky sexual activities). And, because HIV-positive people with durably suppressed or undetectable amounts of HIV in their blood "cannot transmit HIV to sexual partners", sexual activity with HIV-positive partners on effective treatment is a form of safe sex (to prevent HIV infection). This fact has given rise to the concept of "U=U" ("Undetectable = Untransmittable").
Other methods proven effective at reducing STI risks during sexual activity are:
Most methods of contraception are not effective at preventing the spread of STIs. This includes birth control pills, vasectomy, tubal ligation, periodic abstinence, IUDs and many non-barrier methods of pregnancy prevention. However, condoms are highly effective for birth control and STI prevention.
The spermicide Nonoxynol-9 has been claimed to reduce the likelihood of STI transmission. However, a technical report by the World Health Organization has shown that Nonoxynol-9 is an irritant and can produce tiny tears in mucous membranes, which may increase the risk of transmission by offering pathogens more easy points of entry into the system. They reported that Nonoxynol-9 lubricant do not have enough spermicide to increase contraceptive effectiveness cautioned they should not be promoted. There is no evidence that spermicidal condoms are better at preventing STD transmission compared to condoms that do not have spermicide. If used properly, spermicidal condoms can prevent pregnancy, but there is still an increased risk that nonoxynyl-9 can irritate the skin, making it more susceptible for infections.
The use of a diaphragm or contraceptive sponge provides some women with better protection against certain sexually transmitted diseases, but they are not effective for all STIs.
Hormonal methods of preventing pregnancy (such as oral contraceptives [i.e. 'The pill'], depoprogesterone, hormonal IUDs, the vaginal ring, and the patch) offer no protection against STIs. The copper intrauterine device and the hormonal intrauterine device provide an up to 99% protection against pregnancies but no protection against STIs. Women with copper intrauterine device "may" be subject to greater risk of infection from bacterial infectious such as gonorrhea or chlamydia, although this is debated.
Coitus interruptus (or "pulling out"), in which the penis is removed from the vagina, anus, or mouth before ejaculation, may reduce transmission of STIs but still carries significant risk. This is because pre-ejaculate, a fluid that oozes from the penile urethra before ejaculation, may contain STI pathogens. Additionally, the microbes responsible for some diseases, including genital warts and syphilis, can be transmitted through skin-to-skin or mucous membrane contact.
Unprotected anal penetration is considered a high-risk sexual activity because the thin tissues of the anus and rectum can be easily damaged. Slight injuries can allow the passage of bacteria and viruses, including HIV. This includes penetration of the anus by fingers, hands, or sex toys such as dildos. Also, condoms may be more likely to break during anal sex than during vaginal sex, increasing the risk of STI transmission.
The main risk which individuals are exposed to when performing anal sex is the transmission of HIV. Other possible infections include Hepatitis A, B and C; intestinal parasite infections like "Giardia"; and bacterial infections such as "Escherichia coli."
Anal sex should be avoided by couples in which one of the partners has been diagnosed with an STI until the treatment has proven to be effective.
In order to make anal sex safer, the couple must ensure that the anal area is clean and the bowel empty and the partner on whom anal penetration occurs should be able to relax. Regardless of whether anal penetration occurs by using a finger or the penis, the condom is the best barrier method to prevent transmission of STI. Enemas should not be used as they can increase the risk of HIV infection and lymphogranuloma venereum proctitis.
Since the rectum can be easily damaged, the use of lubricants is highly recommended even when penetration occurs by using the finger. Especially for beginners, using a condom on the finger is both a protection measure against STI and a lubricant source. Most condoms are lubricated and they allow less painful and easier penetration. Oil-based lubricants damage latex and should not be used with condoms; water-based and silicone-based lubricants are available instead. Non-latex condoms are available for people who are allergic to latex made out of polyurethane or polyisoprene. Polyurethane condoms can safely be used with oil-based lubricant. The "female condom" may also be used effectively by the anal receiving partner.
Anal stimulation with a sex toy requires similar safety measures to anal penetration with a penis, in this case using a condom on the sex toy in a similar way.
It is important that the man washes and cleans his penis after anal intercourse if he intends to penetrate the vagina. Bacteria from the rectum are easily transferred to the vagina, which may cause vaginal and urinary tract infections.
When anal-oral contact occurs, protection is required since this is a risky sexual behavior in which illnesses as Hepatitis A or STIs can be easily transmitted, as well as enteric infections. The dental dam or the plastic wrap are effective protection means whenever anilingus is performed.
Putting a condom on a sex toy provides better sexual hygiene and can help to prevent transmission of infections if the sex toy is shared, provided the condom is replaced when used by a different partner. Some sex toys are made of porous materials, and pores retain viruses and bacteria, which makes it necessary to clean sex toys thoroughly, preferably with use of cleaners specifically for sex toys. Glass is non-porous and medical grade glass sex toys more easily sterilized between uses.
In cases in which one of the partners is treated for an STI, it is recommended that the couple not use sex toys until the treatment has proved to be effective.
All sex toys have to be properly cleaned after use. The way in which a sex toy is cleaned varies on the type of material it is made of. Some sex toys can be boiled or cleaned in a dishwasher. Most of the sex toys come with advice on the best way to clean and store them and these instructions should be carefully followed. A sex toy should be cleaned not only when it is shared with other individuals but also when it is used on different parts of the body (such as mouth, vagina or anus).
A sex toy should regularly be checked for scratches or breaks that can be breeding ground for bacteria. It is best if the damaged sex toy is replaced by a new undamaged one. Even more hygiene protection should be considered by pregnant women when using sex toys. Sharing any type of sex toy that may draw blood, like whips or needles, is not recommended, and is not safe.
When using sex toys in the anus, sex toys "...can easily get lost" as "rectal muscles contract and can suck an object up and up, potentially obstructing the colon"; to prevent this serious problem, sex toy users are advised to use sex "...toys with a flared base or a string".
Sexual abstinence reduces STIs and pregnancy risks associated with sexual contact, but STIs may also be transmitted through non-sexual means, or by rape. HIV may be transmitted through contaminated needles used in tattooing, body piercing, or injections. Medical or dental procedures using contaminated instruments can also spread HIV, while some health-care workers have acquired HIV through occupational exposure to accidental injuries with needles. Evidence does not support the use of abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only sex education programs have been found to be ineffective in decreasing rates of HIV infection in the developed world and unplanned pregnancy. Abstinence-only sex education primarily relies on the consequences of character and morality while health care professionals are concerned about matters regarding health outcomes and behaviors. Though abstinence is the best course to prevent pregnancy and STIs, in reality, it is unrealistic so intentions to abstain from sexual activity are often unsuccessful. It leaves young people without the information and skills they need to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STIs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28845 |
Scabies
Scabies, also known as the seven-year itch, is a contagious skin infestation by the mite "Sarcoptes scabiei". The most common symptoms are severe itchiness and a pimple-like rash. Occasionally, tiny burrows may be seen in the skin. In a first-ever infection a person will usually develop symptoms in between two and six weeks. During a second infection symptoms may begin in as little as 24 hours. These symptoms can be present across most of the body or just certain areas such as the wrists, between fingers, or along the waistline. The head may be affected, but this is typically only in young children. The itch is often worse at night. Scratching may cause skin breakdown and an additional bacterial infection of the skin.
Scabies is caused by infection with the female mite "Sarcoptes scabiei "var." hominis", an ectoparasite. The mites burrow into the skin to live and deposit eggs. The symptoms of scabies are due to an allergic reaction to the mites. Often, only between 10 and 15 mites are involved in an infection. Scabies is most often spread during a relatively long period of direct skin contact with an infected person (at least 10 minutes) such as that which may occur during sex or living together. Spread of disease may occur even if the person has not developed symptoms yet. Crowded living conditions, such as those found in child-care facilities, group homes, and prisons, increase the risk of spread. Areas with a lack of access to water also have higher rates of disease. Crusted scabies is a more severe form of the disease. It typically only occurs in those with a poor immune system and people may have millions of mites, making them much more contagious. In these cases, spread of infection may occur during brief contact or by contaminated objects. The mite is very small and usually not directly visible. Diagnosis is based on the signs and symptoms.
A number of medications are available to treat those infected, including permethrin, crotamiton, and lindane creams and ivermectin pills. Sexual contacts within the last month and people who live in the same house should also be treated at the same time. Bedding and clothing used in the last three days should be washed in hot water and dried in a hot dryer. As the mite does not live for more than three days away from human skin, more washing is not needed. Symptoms may continue for two to four weeks following treatment. If after this time symptoms continue, retreatment may be needed.
Scabies is one of the three most common skin disorders in children, along with ringworm and bacterial skin infections. As of 2015, it affects about 204 million people (2.8% of the world population). It is equally common in both sexes. The young and the old are more commonly affected. It also occurs more commonly in the developing world and tropical climates. The word scabies is from "", "to scratch". Other animals do not spread human scabies. Infection in other animals is typically caused by slightly different but related mites and is known as sarcoptic mange.
The characteristic symptoms of a scabies infection include intense itching and superficial burrows. The burrow tracks are often linear, to the point that a neat "line" of four or more closely placed and equally developed mosquito-like "bites" is almost diagnostic of the disease. Because the host develops the symptoms as a reaction to the mites' presence over time, typically a delay of four to six weeks occurs between the onset of infestation and the onset of itching. Similarly, symptoms often persist for one to several weeks after successful eradication of the mites. As noted, those re-exposed to scabies after successful treatment may exhibit symptoms of the new infestation in a much shorter period—as little as one to four days.
In the classic scenario, the itch is made worse by warmth, and is usually experienced as being worse at night, possibly because distractions are fewer. As a symptom, it is less common in the elderly.
The superficial burrows of scabies usually occur in the area of the finger webs, feet, ventral wrists, elbows, back, buttocks, and external genitals. Except in infants and the immunosuppressed, infection generally does not occur in the skin of the face or scalp. The burrows are created by excavation of the adult mite in the epidermis.
In most people, the trails of the burrowing mites are linear or S-shaped tracks in the skin often accompanied by rows of small, pimple-like mosquito or insect bites. These signs are often found in crevices of the body, such as on the webs of fingers and toes, around the genital area, in stomach folds of the skin, and under the breasts of women.
Symptoms typically appear two to six weeks after infestation for individuals never before exposed to scabies. For those having been previously exposed, the symptoms can appear within several days after infestation. However, symptoms may appear after several months or years. Acropustulosis, or blisters and pustules on the palms and soles of the feet, are characteristic symptoms of scabies in infants.
The elderly, disabled, and people with an impaired immune system, such as those with HIV, cancer, or those on immunosuppressive medications, are susceptible to crusted scabies (also called Norwegian scabies). On those with weaker immune systems, the host becomes a more fertile breeding ground for the mites, which spread over the host's body, except the face. The mites in crusted scabies are not more virulent than in noncrusted scabies; however, they are much more numerous (up to two million). People with crusted scabies exhibit scaly rashes, slight itching, and thick crusts of skin that contain large numbers of scabies mites. For this reason, persons with crusted scabies are more contagious to others than those with typical scabies. Such areas make eradication of mites particularly difficult, as the crusts protect the mites from topical miticides/scabicides, necessitating prolonged treatment of these areas.
In the 18th century, Italian biologists Giovanni Cosimo Bonomo and Diacinto Cestoni (1637–1718) described the mite now called "Sarcoptes scabiei", variety "hominis", as the cause of scabies. "Sarcoptes" is a genus of skin parasites and part of the larger family of mites collectively known as scab mites. These organisms have eight legs as adults, and are placed in the same phylogenetic class (Arachnida) as spiders and ticks.
"S. scabiei" mites are under 0.5 mm in size, but are sometimes visible as pinpoints of white. Gravid females tunnel into the dead, outermost layer (stratum corneum) of a host's skin and deposit eggs in the shallow burrows. The eggs hatch into larvae in three to ten days. These young mites move about on the skin and molt into a "nymphal" stage, before maturing as adults, which live three to four weeks in the host's skin. Males roam on top of the skin, occasionally burrowing into the skin. In general, the total number of adult mites infesting a healthy hygienic person with noncrusted scabies is small, about 11 females in burrows, on average.
The movement of mites within and on the skin produces an intense itch, which has the characteristics of a delayed cell-mediated inflammatory response to allergens. IgE antibodies are present in the serum and the site of infection, which react to multiple protein allergens in the body of the mite. Some of these cross-react to allergens from house dust mites. Immediate antibody-mediated allergic reactions (wheals) have been elicited in infected persons, but not in healthy persons; immediate hypersensitivity of this type is thought to explain the observed far more rapid allergic skin response to reinfection seen in persons having been previously infected (especially having been infected within the previous year or two).
Scabies is contagious and can be contracted through prolonged physical contact with an infested person. This includes sexual intercourse, although a majority of cases are acquired through other forms of skin-to-skin contact. Less commonly, scabies infestation can happen through the sharing of clothes, towels, and bedding, but this is not a major mode of transmission; individual mites can survive for only two to three days, at most, away from human skin at room temperature. As with lice, a latex condom is ineffective against scabies transmission during intercourse, because mites typically migrate from one individual to the next at sites other than the sex organs.
Healthcare workers are at risk of contracting scabies from patients, because they may be in extended contact with them.
The symptoms are caused by an allergic reaction of the host's body to mite proteins, though exactly which proteins remains a topic of study. The mite proteins are also present from the gut, in mite feces, which are deposited under the skin. The allergic reaction is both of the delayed (cell-mediated) and immediate (antibody-mediated) type, and involves IgE (antibodies are presumed to mediate the very rapid symptoms on reinfection). The allergy-type symptoms (itching) continue for some days, and even several weeks, after all mites are killed. New lesions may appear for a few days after mites are eradicated. Nodular lesions from scabies may continue to be symptomatic for weeks after the mites have been killed.
Rates of scabies are negatively related to temperature and positively related to humidity.
Scabies may be diagnosed clinically in geographical areas where it is common when diffuse itching presents along with either lesions in two typical spots or itchiness is present in another household member. The classical sign of scabies is the burrow made by a mite within the skin. To detect the burrow, the suspected area is rubbed with ink from a fountain pen or a topical tetracycline solution, which glows under a special light. The skin is then wiped with an alcohol pad. If the person is infected with scabies, the characteristic zigzag or S pattern of the burrow will appear across the skin; however, interpreting this test may be difficult, as the burrows are scarce and may be obscured by scratch marks. A definitive diagnosis is made by finding either the scabies mites or their eggs and fecal pellets. Searches for these signs involve either scraping a suspected area, mounting the sample in potassium hydroxide and examining it under a microscope, or using dermoscopy to examine the skin directly.
Symptoms of early scabies infestation mirror other skin diseases, including dermatitis, syphilis, erythema multiforme, various urticaria-related syndromes, allergic reactions, ringworm-related diseases, and other ectoparasites such as lice and fleas.
Mass-treatment programs that use topical permethrin or oral ivermectin have been effective in reducing the prevalence of scabies in a number of populations. No vaccine is available for scabies. The simultaneous treatment of all close contacts is recommended, even if they show no symptoms of infection (asymptomatic), to reduce rates of recurrence. Since mites can survive for only two to three days without a host, other objects in the environment pose little risk of transmission except in the case of crusted scabies. Therefore cleaning is of little importance. Rooms used by those with crusted scabies require thorough cleaning.
A number of medications are effective in treating scabies. Treatment should involve the entire household, and any others who have had recent, prolonged contact with the infested individual. Options to control itchiness include antihistamines and prescription anti-inflammatory agents. Bedding, clothing and towels used during the previous three days should be washed in hot water and dried in a hot dryer.
Permethrin, a pyrethroid insecticide, is the most effective treatment for scabies, and remains the treatment of choice. It is applied from the neck down, usually before sleep, and left on for about eight to 14 hours, then washed off in the morning. Care should be taken to coat the entire skin surface, not just symptomatic areas; any patch of skin left untreated can provide a "safe haven" for one or more mites to survive. One application is normally sufficient, as permethrin kills eggs and hatchlings, as well as adult mites, though many physicians recommend a second application three to seven days later as a precaution. Crusted scabies may require multiple applications, or supplemental treatment with oral ivermectin (below). Permethrin may cause slight irritation of the skin that is usually tolerable.
Oral ivermectin is effective in eradicating scabies, often in a single dose. It is the treatment of choice for crusted scabies, and is sometimes prescribed in combination with a topical agent. It has not been tested on infants, and is not recommended for children under six years of age.
Topical ivermectin preparations have been shown to be effective for scabies in adults, though only one such formulation is available in the United States at present, and it is not FDA-approved as a scabies treatment. It has also been useful for sarcoptic mange (the veterinary analog of human scabies). conditions.
Other treatments include lindane, benzyl benzoate, crotamiton, malathion, and sulfur preparations. Lindane is effective, but concerns over potential neurotoxicity have limited its availability in many countries. It is banned in California, but may be used in other states as a second-line treatment. Sulfur ointments or benzyl benzoate are often used in the developing world due to their low cost; Some 10% sulfur solutions have been shown to be effective, and sulfur ointments are typically used for at least a week, though many people find the odor of sulfur products unpleasant. Crotamiton has been found to be less effective than permethrin in limited studies. Crotamiton or sulfur preparations are sometimes recommended instead of permethrin for children, due to concerns over dermal absorption of permethrin.
Scabies is endemic in many developing countries, where it tends to be particularly problematic in rural and remote areas. In such settings, community-wide control strategies are required to reduce the rate of disease, as treatment of only individuals is ineffective due to the high rate of reinfection. Large-scale mass drug administration strategies may be required where coordinated interventions aim to treat whole communities in one concerted effort. Although such strategies have shown to be able to reduce the burden of scabies in these kinds of communities, debate remains about the best strategy to adopt, including the choice of drug.
The resources required to implement such large-scale interventions in a cost-effective and sustainable way are significant. Furthermore, since endemic scabies is largely restricted to poor and remote areas, it is a public health issue that has not attracted much attention from policy makers and international donors.
Scabies is one of the three most common skin disorders in children, along with tinea and pyoderma. As of 2010, it affects about 100 million people (1.5% of the population) and its frequency is not related to gender. The mites are distributed around the world and equally infect all ages, races, and socioeconomic classes in different climates. Scabies is more often seen in crowded areas with unhygienic living conditions. Globally as of 2009, an estimated 300 million cases of scabies occur each year, although various parties claim the figure is either over- or underestimated. About 1–10% of the global population is estimated to be infected with scabies, but in certain populations, the infection rate may be as high as 50–80%.
Scabies has been observed in humans since ancient times. Archeological evidence from Egypt and the Middle East suggests scabies was present as early as 494 BC. In the fourth century BC, Aristotle reported on "lice" that "escape from little pimples if they are pricked" – a description consistent with scabies. Arab physician, Ibn Zuhr is believed to have been the first to discover the scabies mites.
The Roman encyclopedist and medical writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC – 50 AD) is credited with naming the disease "scabies" and describing its characteristic features. The parasitic etiology of scabies was documented by the Italian physician Giovanni Cosimo Bonomo (1663–1696) in his 1687 letter, "Observations concerning the fleshworms of the human body". Bonomo's description established scabies as one of the first human diseases with a well-understood cause.
In Europe in the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, a sulfur-bearing ointment called by the medical eponym of Wilkinson's ointment was widely used for topical treatment of scabies. The contents and origins of several versions of the ointment were detailed in correspondence published in the "British Medical Journal" in 1945.
The International Alliance for the Control of Scabies was started in 2012, and brings together over 150 researchers, clinicians, and public-health experts from more than 15 different countries. It has managed to bring the global health implications of scabies to the attention of the World Health Organization. Consequently, the WHO has included scabies on its official list of neglected tropical diseases and other neglected conditions.
Scabies may occur in a number of domestic and wild animals; the mites that cause these infestations are of different subspecies from the one typically causing the human form. These subspecies can infest animals that are not their usual hosts, but such infections do not last long. Scabies-infected animals suffer severe itching and secondary skin infections. They often lose weight and become frail.
The most frequently diagnosed form of scabies in domestic animals is sarcoptic mange, caused by the subspecies "Sarcoptes scabiei canis", most commonly in dogs and cats. Sarcoptic mange is transmissible to humans who come into prolonged contact with infested animals, and is distinguished from human scabies by its distribution on skin surfaces covered by clothing. Scabies-infected domestic fowl suffer what is known as "scaly leg". Domestic animals that have gone feral and have no veterinary care are frequently afflicted with scabies and a host of other ailments. Nondomestic animals have also been observed to suffer from scabies. Gorillas, for instance, are known to be susceptible to infection by contact with items used by humans.
Moxidectin is being evaluated as a treatment for scabies. It is established in veterinary medicine to treat a range of parasites, including sarcoptic mange. Its advantage over ivermectin is its longer half life in humans and, thus, potential duration of action. Tea tree oil appears to be effective in the laboratory setting. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28848 |
Shiva
Shiva (; , ISO: , ), also known as Mahadeva (), is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Shaivism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism.
Shiva is known as "The Destroyer" within the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity that includes Brahma and Vishnu. In Shaivism tradition, Shiva is one of the supreme beings who creates, protects and transforms the universe. In the Shaktism tradition, the Goddess, or Devi, is described as one of the supreme, yet Shiva is revered along with Vishnu and Brahma. A goddess is stated to be the energy and creative power (Shakti) of each, with Parvati (Sati) the equal complementary partner of Shiva. He is one of the five equivalent deities in Panchayatana puja of the Smarta tradition of Hinduism.
According to the Shaivism sect, the highest form of Ishvar is formless, limitless, transcendent and unchanging absolute Brahman, and the primal Atman (soul, self) of the universe. There are many both benevolent and fearsome depictions of Shiva. In benevolent aspects, he is depicted as an omniscient Yogi who lives an ascetic life on Mount Kailash as well as a householder with wife Parvati and his two children, Ganesha and Kartikeya. In his fierce aspects, he is often depicted slaying demons. Shiva is also known as Adiyogi Shiva, regarded as the patron god of yoga, meditation and arts.
The iconographical attributes of Shiva are the serpent around his neck, the adorning crescent moon, the holy river Ganga flowing from his matted hair, the third eye on his forehead, the trishula or trident, as his weapon, and the damaru drum. He is usually worshipped in the aniconic form of lingam. Shiva is a pan-Hindu deity, revered widely by Hindus, in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
In the earliest of the vedic texts, the word "Shiva" means Auspicious, Sacred. It does not relate to any deity, but refers to the quality of being sacred and auspicious.
In later vedic texts, Shiva becomes a deity. Shiva is also called as "Brahman", the supreme universal consciousness. The word "shivo'ham" translates as "I am Shiva", conveying that one's consciousness is where the lord resides, uniting it with the supreme "transcendence". In Tamil, he was called by different names other than Sivan. Nataraja (Dancing form of Shiva), Rudra (Enraged form of Shiva), and Dhakshinamoorthy (Yoga form of Shiva). Nataraja is the only form of Shiva worshipped in a human figure format. Elsewhere he is worshipped in Lingam figure. Pancha Bootha temples are located in south India. Pancha Bhoota Stalam refers to five temples dedicated to Shiva. Tamil literature is enriched by Shiva devotees called 63 Nayanmars (Nayanars).
The Sanskrit word "" (, also transliterated as "shiva") means, states Monier Monier-Williams, "auspicious, propitious, gracious, benign, kind, benevolent, friendly". The roots of in folk etymology are "śī" which means "in whom all things lie, pervasiveness" and "va" which means "embodiment of grace".
The word Shiva is used as an adjective in the Rig Veda (approximately 1700–1100 BC), as an epithet for several Rigvedic deities, including Rudra. The term Shiva also connotes "liberation, final emancipation" and "the auspicious one", this adjective sense of usage is addressed to many deities in Vedic layers of literature. The term evolved from the Vedic "Rudra-Shiva" to the noun "Shiva" in the Epics and the Puranas, as an auspicious deity who is the "creator, reproducer and dissolver".
Sharva, sharabha presents another etymology with the Sanskrit root "-", which means "to injure" or "to kill", interprets the name to connote "one who can kill the forces of darkness".
The Sanskrit word ' means "relating to the god Shiva", and this term is the Sanskrit name both for one of the principal sects of Hinduism and for a member of that sect. It is used as an adjective to characterize certain beliefs and practices, such as Shaivism.
The "Vishnu sahasranama" interprets "Shiva" to have multiple meanings: "The Pure One", and "the One who is not affected by three Guṇas of Prakṛti (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas)".
Shiva is known by many names such as Viswanatha (lord of the universe), Mahadeva, Mahandeo, Mahasu, Mahesha, Maheshvara, Shankara, Shambhu, Rudra, Hara, Trilochana, Devendra (chief of the gods), Neelakanta, Subhankara, Trilokinatha (lord of the three realms), and Ghrneshwar (lord of compassion). The highest reverence for Shiva in Shaivism is reflected in his epithets ' ("Great god"; ' "Great" and "deva" "god"), ' ("Great Lord"; ' "great" and "" "lord"), and "" ("Supreme Lord").
Sahasranama are medieval Indian texts that list a thousand names derived from aspects and epithets of a deity. There are at least eight different versions of the "Shiva Sahasranama", devotional hymns ("stotras") listing many names of Shiva. The version appearing in Book 13 () of the "Mahabharata" provides one such list. Shiva also has "Dasha-Sahasranamas" (10,000 names) that are found in the "Mahanyasa". The "Shri Rudram Chamakam", also known as the "Śatarudriya", is a devotional hymn to Shiva hailing him by many names.
The Shiva-related tradition is a major part of Hinduism, found all over the Indian subcontinent, such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, such as Bali, Indonesia. Scholars have interpreted early prehistoric paintings at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, carbon dated to be from pre-10,000 BCE period, as Shiva dancing, Shiva's trident, and his mount Nandi. Rock paintings from Bhimbetka, depicting a figure with a trishul, have been described as Nataraja by Erwin Neumayer, who dates them to the mesolithic.
Of several Indus valley seals that show animals, one seal that has attracted attention shows a large central figure, either horned or wearing a horned headdress and possibly ithyphallic, seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position, surrounded by animals. This figure was named by early excavators of Mohenjo-daro as "Pashupati" (Lord of Animals, Sanskrit '), an epithet of the later Hindu deities Shiva and Rudra.
Sir John Marshall and others suggested that this figure is a prototype of Shiva, with three faces, seated in a "yoga posture" with the knees out and feet joined. Semi-circular shapes on the head were interpreted as two horns. Scholars such as Gavin Flood, John Keay and Doris Meth Srinivasan have expressed doubts about this suggestion.
Gavin Flood states that it is not clear from the seal that the figure has three faces, is seated in a yoga posture, or even that the shape is intended to represent a human figure. He characterizes these views as "speculative", but adds that it is nevertheless possible that there are echoes of Shaiva iconographic themes, such as half-moon shapes resembling the horns of a bull. John Keay writes that "he may indeed be an early manifestation of Lord Shiva as Pashu-pati", but a couple of his specialties of this figure does not match with Rudra. Writing in 1997, Srinivasan interprets what John Marshall interpreted as facial as not human but more bovine, possibly a divine buffalo-man.
The interpretation of the seal continues to be disputed. McEvilley, for example, states that it is not possible to "account for this posture outside the yogic account". Asko Parpola states that other archaeological finds such as the early Elamite seals dated to 3000-2750 BCE show similar figures and these have been interpreted as "seated bull" and not a yogi, and the bovine interpretation is likely more accurate. Gregory L. Possehl in 2002, associated it with the water buffalo, and concluded that while it would be appropriate to recognize the figure as a deity, and its posture as one of ritual discipline, regarding it as a proto-Shiva would "go too far".
The Vedic literature refers to a minor atmospheric deity, with fearsome powers called Rudra. The Rigveda, for example, has 3 out of 1,028 hymns dedicated to Rudra, and he finds occasional mention in other hymns of the same text. The term Shiva also appears in the Rigveda, but simply as an epithet, that means "kind, auspicious", one of the adjectives used to describe many different Vedic deities. While fierce ruthless natural phenomenon and storm-related Rudra is feared in the hymns of the Rigveda, the beneficial rains he brings are welcomed as Shiva aspect of him. This healing, nurturing, life-enabling aspect emerges in the Vedas as Rudra-Shiva, and in post-Vedic literature ultimately as Shiva who combines the destructive and constructive powers, the terrific and the gentle, as the ultimate recycler and rejuvenator of all existence.
The similarities between the iconography and theologies of Shiva with Greek and European deities have led to proposals for an Indo-European link for Shiva, or lateral exchanges with ancient central Asian cultures. His contrasting aspects such as being terrifying or blissful depending on the situation, are similar to those of the Greek god Dionysus, as are their iconic associations with bull, snakes, anger, bravery, dancing and carefree life. The ancient Greek texts of the time of Alexander the Great call Shiva as "Indian Dionysus", or alternatively call Dionysus as ""god of the Orient"". Similarly, the use of phallic symbol as an icon for Shiva is also found for Irish, Nordic, Greek (Dionysus) and Roman deities, as was the idea of this aniconic column linking heaven and earth among early Indo-Aryans, states Roger Woodward. Others contest such proposals, and suggest Shiva to have emerged from indigenous pre-Aryan tribal origins.
Shiva as we know him today shares many features with the Vedic god Rudra, and both Shiva and Rudra are viewed as the same personality in Hindu scriptures. The two names are used synonymously. Rudra, the god of the roaring storm, is usually portrayed in accordance with the element he represents as a fierce, destructive deity.
The oldest surviving text of Hinduism is the Rig Veda, which is dated to between 1700 and 1100 BC based on linguistic and philological evidence. A god named Rudra is mentioned in the Rig Veda. The name Rudra is still used as a name for Shiva. In RV 2.33, he is described as the "Father of the Rudras", a group of storm gods.
The hymn 10.92 of the Rigveda states that deity Rudra has two natures, one wild and cruel (Rudra), another that is kind and tranquil (Shiva). The Vedic texts do not mention bull or any animal as the transport vehicle ("vahana") of Rudra or other deities. However, post-Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata and the Puranas state the Nandi bull, the Indian zebu, in particular, as the vehicle of Rudra and of Shiva, thereby unmistakably linking them as same.
Rudra and Agni have a close relationship. The identification between Agni and Rudra in the Vedic literature was an important factor in the process of Rudra's gradual development into the later character as Rudra-Shiva. The identification of Agni with Rudra is explicitly noted in the "Nirukta", an important early text on etymology, which says, "Agni is also called Rudra." The interconnections between the two deities are complex, and according to Stella Kramrisch:
In the "Śatarudrīya", some epithets of Rudra, such as ("Of golden red hue as of flame") and ("Flaming bright"), suggest a fusing of the two deities. Agni is said to be a bull, and Lord Shiva possesses a bull as his vehicle, Nandi. The horns of Agni, who is sometimes characterized as a bull, are mentioned. In medieval sculpture, both Agni and the form of Shiva known as Bhairava have flaming hair as a special feature.
According to Wendy Doniger, the Puranic Shiva is a continuation of the Vedic Indra. Doniger gives several reasons for her hypothesis. Both are associated with mountains, rivers, male fertility, fierceness, fearlessness, warfare, the transgression of established mores, the Aum sound, the Supreme Self. In the Rig Veda the term "" is used to refer to Indra. (2.20.3, 6.45.17, and 8.93.3.) Indra, like Shiva, is likened to a bull. In the Rig Veda, Rudra is the father of the Maruts, but he is never associated with their warlike exploits as is Indra.
The Vedic beliefs and practices of the pre-classical era were closely related to the hypothesised Proto-Indo-European religion, and the pre-Islamic Indo-Iranian religion. The earliest iconic artworks of Shiva may be from Gandhara and northwest parts of ancient India. There is some uncertainty as the artwork that has survived is damaged and they show some overlap with meditative Buddha-related artwork, but the presence of Shiva's trident and phallic symbolism in this art suggests it was likely Shiva. Numismatics research suggests that numerous coins of the ancient Kushan Empire that have survived, were images of a god who is probably Shiva. The Shiva in Kushan coins is referred to as Oesho of unclear etymology and origins, but the simultaneous presence of Indra and Shiva in the Kushan era artwork suggest that they were revered deities by the start of the Kushan Empire.
The texts and artwork of Jainism show Indra as a dancer, although not identical generally resembling the dancing Shiva artwork found in Hinduism, particularly in their respective mudras. For example, in the Jain caves at Ellora, extensive carvings show dancing Indra next to the images of Tirthankaras in a manner similar to Shiva Nataraja. The similarities in the dance iconography suggests that there may be a link between ancient Indra and Shiva.
Rudra's evolution from a minor Vedic deity to a supreme being is first evidenced in the "Shvetashvatara Upanishad" (400–200 BC), according to Gavin Flood. Prior to it, the Upanishadic literature is monistic, and the "Shvetashvatara" text presents the earliest seeds of theistic devotion to Rudra-Shiva. Here Rudra-Shiva is identified as the creator of the cosmos and liberator of souls from the birth-rebirth cycle. The period of 200 BC to 100 AD also marks the beginning of the Shaiva tradition focused on the worship of Shiva as evidenced in other literature of this period. Shaiva devotees and ascetics are mentioned in Patanjali's "Mahābhāṣya" (2nd-century BC) and in the "Mahabharata". Other scholars such as Robert Hume and Doris Srinivasan state that the "Shvetashvatara Upanishad" presents pluralism, pantheism, or henotheism, rather than being a text just on Shiva theism.
The Shaiva Upanishads are a group of 14 minor Upanishads of Hinduism variously dated from the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE through the 17th century. These extol Shiva as the metaphysical unchanging reality Brahman and the Atman (soul, self), and include sections about rites and symbolisms related to Shiva.
A few texts such as "Atharvashiras Upanishad" mention Rudra, and assert all gods are Rudra, everyone and everything is Rudra, and Rudra is the principle found in all things, their highest goal, the innermost essence of all reality that is visible or invisible. The "Kaivalya Upanishad" similarly, states Paul Deussen – a German Indologist and professor of Philosophy, describes the self-realized man as who "feels himself only as the one divine essence that lives in all", who feels identity of his and everyone's consciousness with Shiva (highest Atman), who has found this highest Atman within, in the depths of his heart.
The Shaiva Puranas, particularly the Shiva Purana and the Linga Purana, present the various aspects of Shiva, mythologies, cosmology and pilgrimage ("Tirtha") associated with him. The Shiva-related Tantra literature, composed between the 8th and 11th centuries, are regarded in devotional dualistic Shaivism as Sruti. Dualistic Shaiva Agamas which consider soul within each living being and Shiva as two separate realities (dualism, "dvaita"), are the foundational texts for Shaiva Siddhanta. Other Shaiva Agamas teach that these are one reality (monism, "advaita"), and that Shiva is the soul, the perfection and truth within each living being. In Shiva related sub-traditions, there are ten dualistic Agama texts, eighteen qualified monism-cum-dualism Agama texts and sixty-four monism Agama texts.
Shiva-related literature developed extensively across India in the 1st millennium CE and through the 13th century, particularly in Kashmir and Tamil Shaiva traditions. The monist Shiva literature posit absolute oneness, that is Shiva is within every man and woman, Shiva is within every living being, Shiva is present everywhere in the world including all non-living being, and there is no spiritual difference between life, matter, man and Shiva. The various dualistic and monist Shiva-related ideas were welcomed in medieval southeast Asia, inspiring numerous Shiva-related temples, artwork and texts in Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, with syncretic integration of local pre-existing theologies.
The figure of Shiva as we know him today may be an amalgamation of various older deities into a single figure. How the persona of Shiva converged as a composite deity is not understood, a challenge to trace and has attracted much speculation. According to Vijay Nath, for example:
An example of assimilation took place in Maharashtra, where a regional deity named Khandoba is a patron deity of farming and herding castes. The foremost center of worship of Khandoba in Maharashtra is in Jejuri. Khandoba has been assimilated as a form of Shiva himself, in which case he is worshipped in the form of a lingam. Khandoba's varied associations also include an identification with Surya and Karttikeya.
Shaivism is one of the four major sects of Hinduism, the others being Vaishnavism, Shaktism and the Smarta Tradition. Followers of Shaivism, called "Shaivas", revere Shiva as the Supreme Being. Shaivas believe that Shiva is All and in all, the creator, preserver, destroyer, revealer and concealer of all that is. He is not only the creator in Shaivism, but he is also the creation that results from him, he is everything and everywhere. Shiva is the primal soul, the pure consciousness and Absolute Reality in the Shaiva traditions.
The Shaivism theology is broadly grouped into two: the popular theology influenced by Shiva-Rudra in the Vedas, Epics and the Puranas; and the esoteric theology influenced by the Shiva and Shakti-related Tantra texts. The Vedic-Brahmanic Shiva theology includes both monist ("Advaita") and devotional traditions ("Dvaita") such as Tamil Shaiva Siddhanta and Lingayatism with temples featuring items such as linga, Shiva-Parvati iconography, bull Nandi within the premises, relief artwork showing mythologies and aspects of Shiva.
The Tantric Shiva tradition ignored the mythologies and Puranas related to Shiva, and depending on the sub-school developed a variety of practices. For example, historical records suggest the tantric Kapalikas (literally, the 'skull-men') co-existed with and shared many Vajrayana Buddhist rituals, engaged in esoteric practices that revered Shiva and Shakti wearing skulls, begged with empty skulls, used meat, alcohol, and sexuality as a part of ritual. In contrast, the esoteric tradition within Kashmir Shaivism has featured the "Krama" and "Trika" sub-traditions. The Krama sub-tradition focussed on esoteric rituals around Shiva-Kali pair. The Trika sub-tradition developed a theology of triads involving Shiva, combined it with an ascetic lifestyle focusing on personal Shiva in the pursuit of monistic self liberation.
The Vaishnava (Vishnu-oriented) literature acknowledges and discusses Shiva. Like Shaiva literature that presents Shiva as supreme, the Vaishnava literature presents Vishnu as supreme. However, both traditions are pluralistic and revere both Shiva and Vishnu (along with Devi), their texts do not show exclusivism, and Vaishnava texts such as the "Bhagavata Purana" while praising Krishna as the Ultimate Reality, also present Shiva and Shakti as a personalized form an equivalent to the same Ultimate Reality. The texts of Shaivism tradition similarly praise Vishnu. The Skanda Purana, for example, states:
Mythologies of both traditions include legends about who is superior, about Shiva paying homage to Vishnu, and Vishnu paying homage to Shiva. However, in texts and artwork of either tradition, the mutual salutes are symbolism for complementarity. The Mahabharata declares the unchanging Ultimate Reality (Brahman) to be identical to Shiva and to Vishnu, that Vishnu is the highest manifestation of Shiva, and Shiva is the highest manifestation of Vishnu.
The goddess-oriented Shakti tradition of Hinduism is based on the premise that the Supreme Principle and the Ultimate Reality called Brahman is female (Devi), but it treats the male as her equal and complementary partner. This partner is Shiva.
The earliest evidence of the tradition of reverence for the feminine with Rudra-Shiva context, is found in the Hindu scripture "Rigveda", in a hymn called the Devi Sukta:
The "Devi Upanishad" in its explanation of the theology of Shaktism, mentions and praises Shiva such as in its verse 19. Shiva, along with Vishnu, is a revered god in the "Devi Mahatmya", a text of Shaktism considered by the tradition to be as important as the "Bhagavad Gita". The Ardhanarisvara concept co-mingles god Shiva and goddess Shakti by presenting an icon that is half man and half woman, a representation and theme of union found in many Hindu texts and temples.
In the Smarta tradition of Hinduism, Shiva is a part of its Panchayatana puja. This practice consists of the use of icons or anicons of five deities considered equivalent, set in a quincunx pattern. Shiva is one of the five deities, others being Vishnu, Devi (such as Parvati), Surya and Ganesha or Skanda or any personal god of devotee's preference (Ishta Devata).
Philosophically, the Smarta tradition emphasizes that all idols (murti) are icons to help focus on and visualize aspects of Brahman, rather than distinct beings. The ultimate goal in this practice is to transition past the use of icons, recognize the Absolute symbolized by the icons, on the path to realizing the nondual identity of one's Atman (soul, self) and the Brahman. Popularized by Adi Shankara, many Panchayatana mandalas and temples have been uncovered that are from the Gupta Empire period, and one Panchayatana set from the village of Nand (about 24 kilometers from Ajmer) has been dated to belong to the Kushan Empire era (pre-300 CE). The Kushan period set includes Shiva, Vishnu, Surya, Brahma and one deity whose identity is unclear.
Shiva is considered the Great Yogi who is totally absorbed in himself – the transcendental reality. He is the Lord of Yogis, and the teacher of Yoga to sages. As Shiva Dakshinamurthi, states Stella Kramrisch, he is the supreme guru who "teaches in silence the oneness of one's innermost self ("atman") with the ultimate reality ("brahman")."
The theory and practice of Yoga, in different styles, has been a part of all major traditions of Hinduism, and Shiva has been the patron or spokesperson in numerous Hindu Yoga texts. These contain the philosophy and techniques for Yoga. These ideas are estimated to be from or after the late centuries of the 1st millennium CE, and have survived as Yoga texts such as the "Isvara Gita" (literally, 'Shiva's song'), which Andrew Nicholson – a professor of Hinduism and Indian Intellectual History – states have had "a profound and lasting influence on the development of Hinduism".
Other famed Shiva-related texts influenced Hatha Yoga, integrated monistic ("Advaita Vedanta") ideas with Yoga philosophy and inspired the theoretical development of Indian classical dance. These include the "Shiva Sutras", the "Shiva Samhita", and those by the scholars of Kashmir Shaivism such as the 10th-century scholar Abhinavagupta. Abhinavagupta writes in his notes on the relevance of ideas related to Shiva and Yoga, by stating that "people, occupied as they are with their own affairs, normally do nothing for others", and Shiva and Yoga spirituality helps one look beyond, understand interconnectedness, and thus benefit both the individual and the world towards a more blissful state of existence.
The Trimurti is a concept in Hinduism in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. These three deities have been called "the Hindu triad" or the "Great Trinity". However, the ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism feature many triads of gods and goddesses, some of which do not include Shiva.
According to Gavin Flood, "Shiva is a god of ambiguity and paradox," whose attributes include opposing themes. The ambivalent nature of this deity is apparent in some of his names and the stories told about him.
In Yajurveda, two contrary sets of attributes for both malignant or terrifying (Sanskrit: ') and benign or auspicious (Sanskrit: ') forms can be found, leading Chakravarti to conclude that "all the basic elements which created the complex Rudra-Śiva sect of later ages are to be found here". In the Mahabharata, Shiva is depicted as "the standard of invincibility, might, and terror", as well as a figure of honor, delight, and brilliance.
The duality of Shiva's fearful and auspicious attributes appears in contrasted names. The name Rudra reflects Shiva's fearsome aspects. According to traditional etymologies, the Sanskrit name "Rudra" is derived from the root "rud-", which means "to cry, howl". Stella Kramrisch notes a different etymology connected with the adjectival form "raudra", which means "wild, of "rudra" nature", and translates the name "Rudra" as "the wild one" or "the fierce god". R. K. Sharma follows this alternate etymology and translates the name as "terrible". Hara is an important name that occurs three times in the Anushasanaparvan version of the "Shiva sahasranama", where it is translated in different ways each time it occurs, following a commentorial tradition of not repeating an interpretation. Sharma translates the three as "one who captivates", "one who consolidates", and "one who destroys". Kramrisch translates it as "the ravisher". Another of Shiva's fearsome forms is as "time" and "great time", which ultimately destroys all things. The name appears in the "Shiva Sahasranama", where it is translated by Ram Karan Sharma as "(the Supreme Lord of) Time". Bhairava "terrible" or "frightful" is a fierce form associated with annihilation. In contrast, the name , "beneficent" or "conferring happiness" reflects his benign form. This name was adopted by the great Vedanta philosopher Adi Shankara (c. 788–820), who is also known as Shankaracharya. The name (Sanskrit: swam-on its own; bhu-burn/shine) "self-shining/ shining on its own", also reflects this benign aspect.
Shiva is depicted as both an ascetic yogi and as a householder (grihasta), roles which have been traditionally mutually exclusive in Hindu society. When depicted as a yogi, he may be shown sitting and meditating. His epithet Mahāyogi ("the great Yogi: "" = "great", "Yogi" = "one who practices Yoga") refers to his association with yoga. While Vedic religion was conceived mainly in terms of sacrifice, it was during the Epic period that the concepts of tapas, yoga, and asceticism became more important, and the depiction of Shiva as an ascetic sitting in philosophical isolation reflects these later concepts.
As a family man and householder, he has a wife, Parvati and two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya. His epithet ("The husband of ") refers to this idea, and Sharma notes that two other variants of this name that mean the same thing, and , also appear in the "sahasranama". in epic literature is known by many names, including the benign . She is identified with Devi, the Divine Mother; Shakti (divine energy) as well as goddesses like Tripura Sundari, Durga, Kali, Kamakshi and Minakshi. The consorts of Shiva are the source of his creative energy. They represent the dynamic extension of Shiva onto this universe. His son Ganesha is worshipped throughout India and Nepal as the Remover of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles. Kartikeya is worshipped in South India (especially in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka) by the names Subrahmanya, Subrahmanyan, Shanmughan, Swaminathan and Murugan, and in Northern India by the names Skanda, Kumara, or Karttikeya.
Some regional deities are also identified as Shiva's children. As one story goes, Shiva is enticed by the beauty and charm of Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar, and procreates with her. As a result of this union, Shasta – identified with regional deities Ayyappan and Aiyanar – is born. In outskirts of Ernakulam in Kerala, a deity named Vishnumaya is stated to be offspring of Shiva and invoked in local exorcism rites, but this deity is not traceable in Hindu pantheon and is possibly a local tradition with "vaguely Chinese" style rituals, states Saletore. In some traditions, Shiva has daughters like the serpent-goddess Manasa and Ashokasundari. According to Doniger, two regional stories depict demons Andhaka and Jalandhara as the children of Shiva who war with him, and are later destroyed by Shiva.
The depiction of Shiva as Nataraja (Sanskrit: ', "Lord of Dance") is popular. The names Nartaka ("dancer") and Nityanarta ("eternal dancer") appear in the Shiva Sahasranama. His association with dance and also with music is prominent in the Puranic period. In addition to the specific iconographic form known as Nataraja, various other types of dancing forms (Sanskrit: ') are found in all parts of India, with many well-defined varieties in Tamil Nadu in particular. The two most common forms of the dance are the Tandava, which later came to denote the powerful and masculine dance as Kala-Mahakala associated with the destruction of the world. When it requires the world or universe to be destroyed, Shiva does it by the Tandava, and Lasya, which is graceful and delicate and expresses emotions on a gentle level and is considered the feminine dance attributed to the goddess Parvati. "Lasya" is regarded as the female counterpart of "Tandava". The "Tandava"-"Lasya" dances are associated with the destruction-creation of the world.
Dakshinamurthy "()" literally describes a form (') of Shiva facing south ('). This form represents Shiva in his aspect as a teacher of yoga, music, and wisdom and giving exposition on the "shastras". This iconographic form for depicting Shiva in Indian art is mostly from Tamil Nadu. Elements of this motif can include Shiva seated upon a deer-throne and surrounded by sages who are receiving his instruction.
An iconographic representation of Shiva called Ardhanarishvara ("") shows him with one half of the body as male and the other half as female. According to Ellen Goldberg, the traditional Sanskrit name for this form is best translated as "the lord who is half woman", not as "half-man, half-woman".
Shiva is often depicted as an archer in the act of destroying the triple fortresses, "Tripura", of the Asuras. Shiva's name Tripurantaka ( ""), "ender of Tripura", refers to this important story.
Apart from anthropomorphic images of Shiva, he is also represented in aniconic form of a lingam. These are depicted in various designs. One common form is the shape of a vertical rounded column in the centre of a lipped, disk-shaped object, the "yoni", symbolism for the goddess Shakti. In Shiva temples, the "linga" is typically present in its sanctum sanctorum and is the focus of votary offerings such as milk, water, flower petals, fruit, fresh leaves, and rice. According to Monier Williams and Yudit Greenberg, "linga" literally means 'mark, sign or emblem', and also refers to a "mark or sign from which the existence of something else can be reliably inferred". It implies the regenerative divine energy innate in nature, symbolized by Shiva. Some scholars, such as Wendy Doniger, view "linga" merely as an erotic phallic symbol, although this interpretation is criticized by others, including Swami Vivekananda, Sivananda Saraswati, and S. N. Balagangadhara. According to Moriz Winternitz, the "linga" in the Shiva tradition is "only a symbol of the productive and creative principle of nature as embodied in Shiva", and it has no historical trace in any obscene phallic cult.
The worship of the lingam originated from the famous hymn in the "Atharva-Veda Samhitâ" sung in praise of the "Yupa-Stambha", the sacrificial post. In that hymn, a description is found of the beginningless and endless "Stambha" or "Skambha", and it is shown that the said "Skambha" is put in place of the eternal Brahman. Just as the Yajna (sacrificial) fire, its smoke, ashes, and flames, the "Soma" plant, and the ox that used to carry on its back the wood for the Vedic sacrifice gave place to the conceptions of the brightness of Shiva's body, his tawny matted hair, his blue throat, and the riding on the bull of the Shiva, the "Yupa-Skambha" gave place in time to the "Shiva-Linga". In the text "Linga Purana", the same hymn is expanded in the shape of stories, meant to establish the glory of the great Stambha and the superiority of Shiva as Mahadeva.
The oldest known archaeological "linga" as an icon of Shiva is the Gudimallam lingam from 3rd-century BCE. In Shaivism pilgrimage tradition, twelve major temples of Shiva are called Jyotirlinga, which means "linga of light", and these are located across India.
Five is a sacred number for Shiva. One of his most important mantras has five syllables ().
Shiva's body is said to consist of five mantras, called the . As forms of God, each of these have their own names and distinct iconography:
These are represented as the five faces of Shiva and are associated in various texts with the five elements, the five senses, the five organs of perception, and the five organs of action. Doctrinal differences and, possibly, errors in transmission, have resulted in some differences between texts in details of how these five forms are linked with various attributes. The overall meaning of these associations is summarized by Stella Kramrisch:
According to the "Pañcabrahma Upanishad":
Puranic scriptures contain occasional references to "ansh" – literally 'portion, or avatars of Shiva', but the idea of Shiva avatars is not universally accepted in Saivism. The Linga Purana mentions twenty-eight forms of Shiva which are sometimes seen as avatars, however such mention is unusual and the avatars of Shiva is relatively rare in Shaivism compared to the well emphasized concept of Vishnu avatars in Vaishnavism.
Some Vaishnava literature reverentially link Shiva to characters in its mythologies. For example, in the "Hanuman Chalisa", Hanuman is identified as the eleventh avatar of Shiva. The "Bhagavata Purana" and the "Vishnu Purana" claim sage Durvasa to be a portion of Shiva. Some medieval era writers have called the Advaita Vedanta philosopher Adi Shankara an incarnation of Shiva.
There is a "Shivaratri" in every lunar month on its 13th night/14th day, but once a year in late winter (February/March) and before the arrival of spring, marks "Maha Shivaratri" which means "the Great Night of Shiva".
Maha Shivaratri is a major Hindu festival, but one that is solemn and theologically marks a remembrance of "overcoming darkness and ignorance" in life and the world, and meditation about the polarities of existence, of Shiva and a devotion to humankind. It is observed by reciting Shiva-related poems, chanting prayers, remembering Shiva, fasting, doing Yoga and meditating on ethics and virtues such as self-restraint, honesty, noninjury to others, forgiveness, introspection, self-repentance and the discovery of Shiva. The ardent devotees keep awake all night. Others visit one of the Shiva temples or go on pilgrimage to Jyotirlingam shrines. Those who visit temples, offer milk, fruits, flowers, fresh leaves and sweets to the lingam. Some communities organize special dance events, to mark Shiva as the lord of dance, with individual and group performances. According to Jones and Ryan, Maha Sivaratri is an ancient Hindu festival which probably originated around the 5th-century.
Another major festival involving Shiva worship is Kartik Purnima, commemorating Shiva's victory on the demons Tripurasura. Across India, various Shiva temples are illuminated throughout the night. Shiva icons are carried in procession in some places.
Thiruvathira is a festival observed in Kerala dedicated to Shiva.It is believed that on this day, Parvathi met Lord Shiva after her long penance and Lord Shiva took
her as his wife. On this day Hindu women performs the Thiruvathirakali accompaned by Thiruvathira paattu(folk songs about Parvati and her longing and penance for Lord Shiva's affection).
Regional festivals dedicated to Shiva include the Chittirai festival in Madurai around April/May, one of the largest festivals in South India, celebrating the wedding of Minakshi (Parvati) and Shiva. The festival is one where both the Vaishnava and Shaiva communities join the celebrations, because Vishnu gives away his sister Minakshi in marriage to Shiva.
Some Shaktism-related festivals revere Shiva along with the goddess considered primary and Supreme. These include festivals dedicated to Annapurna such as "Annakuta" and those related to Durga. In Himalayan regions such as Nepal, as well as in northern, central and western India, the festival of Teej is celebrated by girls and women in the monsoon season, in honor of goddess Parvati, with group singing, dancing and by offering prayers in Parvati-Shiva temples.
The ascetic, Vedic and Tantric sub-traditions related to Shiva, such as those that became ascetic warriors during the Islamic rule period of India, celebrate the Kumbha Mela festival. This festival cycles every 12 years, in four pilgrimage sites within India, with the event moving to the next site after a gap of three years. The biggest is in Prayaga (renamed Allahabad during the Mughal rule era), where millions of Hindus of different traditions gather at the confluence of rivers Ganges and Yamuna. In the Hindu tradition, the Shiva-linked ascetic warriors ("Nagas") get the honor of starting the event by entering the "Sangam" first for bathing and prayers.
In Shaivism of Indonesia, the popular name for Shiva has been "Batara Guru", which is derived from Sanskrit "Bhattaraka" which means “noble lord". He is conceptualized as a kind spiritual teacher, the first of all Gurus in Indonesian Hindu texts, mirroring the Dakshinamurti aspect of Shiva in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Batara Guru has more aspects than the Indian Shiva, as the Indonesian Hindus blended their spirits and heroes with him. Batara Guru's wife in southeast Asia is the same Hindu deity Durga, who has been popular since ancient times, and she too has a complex character with benevolent and fierce manifestations, each visualized with different names such as Uma, Sri, Kali and others. Shiva has been called Sadasiva, Paramasiva, Mahadeva in benevolent forms, and Kala, Bhairava, Mahakala in his fierce forms. The Indonesian Hindu texts present the same philosophical diversity of Shaivism traditions found on the subcontinent. However, among the texts that have survived into the contemporary era, the more common are of those of Shaiva Siddhanta (locally also called Siwa Siddhanta, Sridanta).
In the pre-Islamic period on the island of Java, Shaivism and Buddhism were considered very close and allied religions, though not identical religions. The medieval era Indonesian literature equates Buddha with Siwa (Shiva) and Janardana (Vishnu). This tradition continues in predominantly Hindu Bali Indonesia in the modern era, where Buddha is considered the younger brother of Shiva.
The worship of Shiva became popular in Central Asia through the Hephthalite Empire, and Kushan Empire. Shaivism was also popular in Sogdia and the Kingdom of Yutian as found from the wall painting from Penjikent on the river Zervashan. In this depiction, Shiva is portrayed with a sacred halo and a sacred thread ("Yajnopavita"). He is clad in tiger skin while his attendants are wearing Sogdian dress. A panel from Dandan Oilik shows Shiva in His Trimurti form with Shakti kneeling on her right thigh. Another site in the Taklamakan Desert depicts him with four legs, seated cross-legged on a cushioned seat supported by two bulls. It is also noted that Zoroastrian wind god Vayu-Vata took on the iconographic appearance of Shiva.
Daikokuten, one of the Seven Lucky Gods in Japan, is considered to be evolved from Shiva. The god enjoys an exalted position as a household deity in Japan and is worshipped as the god of wealth and fortune. The name is the Japanese equivalent of Mahākāla, the Buddhist name for Shiva. Shiva is also mentioned in Buddhist Tantra. Shiva as "Upaya" and Shakti as "Prajna". In cosmologies of Buddhist tantra, Shiva is depicted as passive, with Shakti being his active counterpart. In Mahayana Buddhist cosmology, Shiva resides in Akaniṣṭha, highest of Śuddhāvāsa (Pure Abodes) where Anāgāmi ("Non-returners") who are already on the path to Arhat-hood and who will attain enlightenment are born in.
The Japuji Sahib of the Guru Granth Sahib says, "The Guru is Shiva, the Guru is Vishnu and Brahma; the Guru is Paarvati and Lakhshmi." In the same chapter, it also says, "Shiva speaks, and the Siddhas listen." In Dasam Granth, Guru Gobind Singh has mentioned two avtars of Rudra: Dattatreya Avtar and Parasnath Avtar.
In contemporary culture, Shiva is depicted in films, books, tattoos and art. He has been referred to as "the god of cool things" and a "bonafide rock hero".
Popular films include the Gujarati language movie "Har Har Mahadev", the Kannada movie "Gange Gowri" and well-known books include Amish Tripathi's "Shiva Trilogy", which has sold over a million copies. On television, "Devon Ke Dev...Mahadev", a television serial about Lord Shiva on the Life OK channel was among the most watched shows at its peak popularity. A 90's television series of DD National titled Om Namah Shivay was also based on legends of Lord Shiva.
In the "Final Fantasy" videogame series, Shiva is often depicted as a benevolent ancient being of Ice Element who frequently aids the heroes against mighty foes (via summoning). Shiva is also a character in the video game "Dark Souls", with the name Shiva of the East. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28849 |
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium "Treponema pallidum" subspecies "pallidum". The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary). The primary stage classically presents with a single chancre (a firm, painless, non-itchy skin ulceration usually between 1 cm and 2 cm in diameter) though there may be multiple sores. In secondary syphilis, a diffuse rash occurs, which frequently involves the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. There may also be sores in the mouth or vagina. In latent syphilis, which can last for years, there are few or no symptoms. In tertiary syphilis, there are gummas (soft, non-cancerous growths), neurological problems, or heart symptoms. Syphilis has been known as "the great imitator" as it may cause symptoms similar to many other diseases.
Syphilis is most commonly spread through sexual activity. It may also be transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. Other diseases caused by the "Treponema" bacteria include yaws (subspecies "pertenue"), pinta (subspecies "carateum"), and nonvenereal endemic syphilis (subspecies "endemicum"). These three diseases are not typically sexually transmitted. Diagnosis is usually made by using blood tests; the bacteria can also be detected using dark field microscopy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.) recommend all pregnant women be tested.
The risk of sexual transmission of syphilis can be reduced by using a latex or polyurethane condom. Syphilis can be effectively treated with antibiotics. The preferred antibiotic for most cases is benzathine benzylpenicillin injected into a muscle. In those who have a severe penicillin allergy, doxycycline or tetracycline may be used. In those with neurosyphilis, intravenous benzylpenicillin or ceftriaxone is recommended. During treatment people may develop fever, headache, and muscle pains, a reaction known as Jarisch–Herxheimer.
In 2015, about 45.4 million people were infected with syphilis, with six million new cases. During 2015, it caused about 107,000 deaths, down from 202,000 in 1990. After decreasing dramatically with the availability of penicillin in the 1940s, rates of infection have increased since the turn of the millennium in many countries, often in combination with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is believed to be partly due to increased promiscuity, prostitution, decreasing use of condoms, and unsafe sexual practices among men who have sex with men.
Syphilis can present in one of four different stages: primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary, and may also occur congenitally. It was referred to as "the great imitator" by Sir William Osler due to its varied presentations.
Primary syphilis is typically acquired by direct sexual contact with the infectious lesions of another person. Approximately 2–6 weeks after contact (with a range of 10–90 days) a skin lesion, called a chancre, appears at the site and this contains infectious spirochetes. This is classically (40% of the time) a single, firm, painless, non-itchy skin ulceration with a clean base and sharp borders approximately 0.3–3.0 cm in size. The lesion may take on almost any form. In the classic form, it evolves from a macule to a papule and finally to an erosion or ulcer. Occasionally, multiple lesions may be present (~40%), with multiple lesions being more common when coinfected with HIV. Lesions may be painful or tender (30%), and they may occur in places other than the genitals (2–7%). The most common location in women is the cervix (44%), the penis in heterosexual men (99%), and anally and rectally in men who have sex with men (34%). Lymph node enlargement frequently (80%) occurs around the area of infection, occurring seven to 10 days after chancre formation. The lesion may persist for three to six weeks if left untreated.
Secondary syphilis occurs approximately four to ten weeks after the primary infection. While secondary disease is known for the many different ways it can manifest, symptoms most commonly involve the skin, mucous membranes, and lymph nodes. There may be a symmetrical, reddish-pink, non-itchy rash on the trunk and extremities, including the palms and soles. The rash may become maculopapular or pustular. It may form flat, broad, whitish, wart-like lesions on mucous membranes, known as condyloma latum. All of these lesions harbor bacteria and are infectious. Other symptoms may include fever, sore throat, malaise, weight loss, hair loss, and headache. Rare manifestations include liver inflammation, kidney disease, joint inflammation, periostitis, inflammation of the optic nerve, uveitis, and interstitial keratitis. The acute symptoms usually resolve after three to six weeks; about 25% of people may present with a recurrence of secondary symptoms. Many people who present with secondary syphilis (40–85% of women, 20–65% of men) do not report previously having had the classical chancre of primary syphilis.
Latent syphilis is defined as having serologic proof of infection without symptoms of disease. It develops after secondary syphilis and is divided into early latent and late latent stages. Early latent syphilis is defined by the World Health Organization as less than 2 years after original infection. Early latent syphilis is infectious as up to 25% of people can develop a recurrent secondary infection (during which spirochetes are actively replicating and are infectious). Two years after the original infection the person will enter late latent syphilis and is not as infectious as the early phase. The latent phase of syphilis can last many years after which, without treatment, approximately 15-40% of people can develop tertiary syphilis.
Tertiary syphilis may occur approximately 3 to 15 years after the initial infection, and may be divided into three different forms: gummatous syphilis (15%), late neurosyphilis (6.5%), and cardiovascular syphilis (10%). Without treatment, a third of infected people develop tertiary disease. People with tertiary syphilis are not infectious.
Gummatous syphilis or late benign syphilis usually occurs 1 to 46 years after the initial infection, with an average of 15 years. This stage is characterized by the formation of chronic gummas, which are soft, tumor-like balls of inflammation which may vary considerably in size. They typically affect the skin, bone, and liver, but can occur anywhere.
Cardiovascular syphilis usually occurs 10–30 years after the initial infection. The most common complication is syphilitic aortitis, which may result in aortic aneurysm formation.
Neurosyphilis refers to an infection involving the central nervous system. Involvement of the central nervous system in syphilis (either asymptomatic or symptomatic) can occur at any stage of the infection. It may occur early, being either asymptomatic or in the form of syphilitic meningitis, or late as meningovascular syphilis, general paresis, or tabes dorsalis.
Meningovascular syphilis involves inflammation of the small and medium arteries of the central nervous system. It can present between 1–10 years after the initial infection. Meningovascular syphilis is characterized by stroke, cranial nerve palsis and spinal cord inflammation. Late symptomatic neurosyphilis can develop decades after the original infection and includes 2 types; general paresis and tabes dorsalis. General paresis presents with dementia, personality changes, delusions, seizures, psychosis and depression. Tabes dorsalis is characterized by gait instability, sharp pains in the trunk and limbs, impaired positional sensation of the limbs as well as having a positive Romberg's sign. Both tabes dorsalis and general paresis may present with Argyll Robertson pupil which are pupils that constrict when the person focuses on near objects (accommodation reflex) but do not constrict when exposed to bright light (pupillary reflex).
Congenital syphilis is that which is transmitted during pregnancy or during birth. Two-thirds of syphilitic infants are born without symptoms. Common symptoms that develop over the first couple of years of life include enlargement of the liver and spleen (70%), rash (70%), fever (40%), neurosyphilis (20%), and lung inflammation (20%). If untreated, late congenital syphilis may occur in 40%, including saddle nose deformation, Higouménakis' sign, saber shin, or Clutton's joints among others. Infection during pregnancy is also associated with miscarriage. The three main dental defects in congenital syphilis are Hutchinson's incisors (screwdriver shaped incisors), Moon's molars or bud molars, and Fournier's molars or mulberry molars (molars with abnormal occlusal anatomy resembling a mulberry).
"Treponema pallidum" subspecies" pallidum" is a spiral-shaped, Gram-negative, highly mobile bacterium. Three other human diseases are caused by related "Treponema pallidum" subspecies, including yaws (subspecies "pertenue"), pinta (subspecies "carateum") and bejel (subspecies "endemicum"). Unlike subspecies "pallidum", they do not cause neurological disease. Humans are the only known natural reservoir for subspecies "pallidum". It is unable to survive more than a few days without a host. This is due to its small genome (1.14Mbp) failing to encode the metabolic pathways necessary to make most of its macronutrients. It has a slow doubling time of greater than 30 hours. The bacterium is known for its ability to evade the immune system and its invasiveness.
Syphilis is transmitted primarily by sexual contact or during pregnancy from a mother to her baby; the spirochete is able to pass through intact mucous membranes or compromised skin. It is thus transmissible by kissing near a lesion, as well as oral, vaginal, and anal sex. Approximately 30% to 60% of those exposed to primary or secondary syphilis will get the disease. Its infectivity is exemplified by the fact that an individual inoculated with only 57 organisms has a 50% chance of being infected. Most new cases in the United States (60%) occur in men who have sex with men; and in this population 20% of syphilis cases were due to oral sex alone. Syphilis can be transmitted by blood products, but the risk is low due to screening of donated blood in many countries. The risk of transmission from sharing needles appears to be limited.
It is not generally possible to contract syphilis through toilet seats, daily activities, hot tubs, or sharing eating utensils or clothing. This is mainly because the bacteria die very quickly outside of the body, making transmission by objects extremely difficult.
Syphilis is difficult to diagnose clinically during early infection. Confirmation is either via blood tests or direct visual inspection using dark field microscopy. Blood tests are more commonly used, as they are easier to perform. Diagnostic tests are unable to distinguish between the stages of the disease.
Blood tests are divided into nontreponemal and treponemal tests.
Nontreponemal tests are used initially, and include venereal disease research laboratory (VDRL) and rapid plasma reagin (RPR) tests. False positives on the nontreponemal tests can occur with some viral infections, such as varicella (chickenpox) and measles. False positives can also occur with lymphoma, tuberculosis, malaria, endocarditis, connective tissue disease, and pregnancy.
Because of the possibility of false positives with nontreponemal tests, confirmation is required with a treponemal test, such as treponemal pallidum particle agglutination (TPHA) or fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test (FTA-Abs). Treponemal antibody tests usually become positive two to five weeks after the initial infection. Neurosyphilis is diagnosed by finding high numbers of leukocytes (predominately lymphocytes) and high protein levels in the cerebrospinal fluid in the setting of a known syphilis infection.
Dark field microscopy of serous fluid from a chancre may be used to make an immediate diagnosis. Hospitals do not always have equipment or experienced staff members, and testing must be done within 10 minutes of acquiring the sample. Two other tests can be carried out on a sample from the chancre: direct fluorescent antibody (DFA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. DFA uses antibodies tagged with fluorescein, which attach to specific syphilis proteins, while PCR uses techniques to detect the presence of specific syphilis genes. These tests are not as time-sensitive, as they do not require living bacteria to make the diagnosis.
, there is no vaccine effective for prevention. Several vaccines based on treponemal proteins reduce lesion development in an animal model but research continues.
Condom use reduces the likelihood of transmission during sex, but does not completely eliminate the risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, "Correct and consistent use of latex condoms can reduce the risk of syphilis only when the infected area or site of potential exposure is protected. However, a syphilis sore outside of the area covered by a latex condom can still allow transmission, so caution should be exercised even when using a condom."
Abstinence from intimate physical contact with an infected person is effective at reducing the transmission of syphilis. The CDC states, "The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, is to abstain from sexual contact or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and is known to be uninfected."
Congenital syphilis in the newborn can be prevented by screening mothers during early pregnancy and treating those who are infected. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) strongly recommends universal screening of all pregnant women, while the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends all women be tested at their first antenatal visit and again in the third trimester. If they are positive, it is recommended their partners also be treated. Congenital syphilis is still common in the developing world, as many women do not receive antenatal care at all, and the antenatal care others receive does not include screening. It still occasionally occurs in the developed world, as those most likely to acquire syphilis are least likely to receive care during pregnancy. Several measures to increase access to testing appear effective at reducing rates of congenital syphilis in low- to middle-income countries. Point-of-care testing to detect syphilis appeared to be reliable although more research is needed to assess its effectiveness and into improving outcomes in mothers and babies.
The CDC recommends that sexually active men who have sex with men be tested at least yearly. The USPSTF also recommends screening among those at high risk.
Syphilis is a notifiable disease in many countries, including Canada the European Union, and the United States. This means health care providers are required to notify public health authorities, which will then ideally provide partner notification to the person's partners. Physicians may also encourage patients to send their partners to seek care. Several strategies have been found to improve follow-up for STI testing, including email and text messaging of reminders for appointments.
The first-line treatment for uncomplicated syphilis (primary or secondary stages) remains a single dose of intramuscular benzathine benzylpenicillin. Doxycycline and tetracycline are alternative choices for those allergic to penicillin; due to the risk of birth defects, these are not recommended for pregnant women. Resistance to macrolides, rifampicin, and clindamycin is often present. Ceftriaxone, a third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic, may be as effective as penicillin-based treatment. It is recommended that a treated person avoid sex until the sores are healed.
For neurosyphilis, due to the poor penetration of benzathine penicillin into the central nervous system, those affected are given large doses of intravenous penicillin G for a minimum of 10 days. If a person is allergic to penicillin, ceftriaxone may be used or penicillin desensitization attempted. Other late presentations may be treated with once-weekly intramuscular benzathine penicillin for three weeks. Treatment at this stage solely limits further progression of the disease and has a limited effect on damage which has already occurred. Serologic cure can be measured when the non-treponemal titers decline by a factor of 4 or more in 6–12 months in early syphilis or 12–24 months in late syphilis.
One of the potential side effects of treatment is the Jarisch–Herxheimer reaction. It frequently starts within one hour and lasts for 24 hours, with symptoms of fever, muscle pains, headache, and a fast heart rate. It is caused by cytokines released by the immune system in response to lipoproteins released from rupturing syphilis bacteria.
Penicillin is an effective treatment for syphilis in pregnancy but there is no agreement on which dose or route of delivery is most effective.
In 2012, about 0.5% of adults were infected with syphilis, with 6 million new cases. In 1999, it is believed to have infected 12 million additional people, with greater than 90% of cases in the developing world. It affects between 700,000 and 1.6 million pregnancies a year, resulting in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and congenital syphilis. During 2015, it caused about 107,000 deaths, down from 202,000 in 1990. In sub-Saharan Africa, syphilis contributes to approximately 20% of perinatal deaths. Rates are proportionally higher among intravenous drug users, those who are infected with HIV, and men who have sex with men. In the United States about 55,400 people are newly infected each year. In the United States as of 2020, rates of syphilis have increased by more than threefold; in 2018 approximately 86% of all cases of syphilis in the United States were in men. African Americans accounted for almost half of all cases in 2010. As of 2014, syphilis infections continue to increase in the United States.
Syphilis was very common in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. Flaubert found it universal among nineteenth-century Egyptian prostitutes. In the developed world during the early 20th century, infections declined rapidly with the widespread use of antibiotics, until the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2000, rates of syphilis have been increasing in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe, primarily among men who have sex with men. Rates of syphilis among US women have remained stable during this time, while rates among UK women have increased, but at a rate less than that of men. Increased rates among heterosexuals have occurred in China and Russia since the 1990s. This has been attributed to unsafe sexual practices, such as sexual promiscuity, prostitution, and decreasing use of barrier protection.
Left untreated, it has a mortality rate of 8% to 58%, with a greater death rate among males. The symptoms of syphilis have become less severe over the 19th and 20th centuries, in part due to widespread availability of effective treatment, and partly due to virulence of the bacteria. With early treatment, few complications result. Syphilis increases the risk of HIV transmission by two to five times, and coinfection is common (30–60% in some urban centers). In 2015, Cuba became the first country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of syphilis.
The origin of syphilis is disputed. Syphilis was present in the Americas before European contact, and it may have been carried from the Americas to Europe by the returning crewmen from Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas, or it may have existed in Europe previously but gone unrecognized until shortly after Columbus's return. These are the "Columbian" and "pre-Columbian" hypotheses, respectively, with the "Columbian" hypothesis better supported by the evidence.
The first written records of an outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494 or 1495 in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion (Italian War of 1494–98). Since it was claimed to have been spread by French troops, it was initially called the "French disease" by the people of Naples. In 1530, the pastoral name "syphilis" (the name of a character) was first used by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro as the title of his Latin poem in dactylic hexameter describing the ravages of the disease in Italy. It was also called the "Great Pox".
In the 16th through 19th centuries, syphilis was one of the largest public health burdens in prevalence, symptoms, and disability, although records of its true prevalence were generally not kept because of the fearsome and sordid status of sexually transmitted diseases in those centuries. At the time the causative agent was unknown but it was well known that it was spread sexually and also often from mother to child. Its association with sex, especially sexual promiscuity and prostitution, made it an object of fear and revulsion and a taboo. The magnitude of its morbidity and mortality in those centuries reflected that, unlike today, there was no adequate understanding of its pathogenesis and no truly effective treatments. Its damage was caused not so much by great sickness or death early in the course of the disease but rather by its gruesome effects decades after infection as it progressed to neurosyphilis with tabes dorsalis. Mercury compounds and isolation were commonly used, with treatments often worse than the disease.
The causative organism, "Treponema pallidum", was first identified by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann, in 1905. The first effective treatment for syphilis was Arsphenamine, discovered by Sahachiro Hata in 1909, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds led by Paul Ehrlich. It was manufactured and marketed from 1910 under the trade name Salvarsan by Hoechst AG. This organoarsenic compound was the first modern chemotherapeutic agent.
During the 20th century, as both microbiology and pharmacology advanced greatly, syphilis, like many other infectious diseases, became more of a manageable burden than a scary and disfiguring mystery, at least in developed countries among those people who could afford to pay for timely diagnosis and treatment. Penicillin was discovered in 1928, and effectiveness of treatment with penicillin was confirmed in trials in 1943, at which time it became the main treatment.
Many famous historical figures, including Franz Schubert, Arthur Schopenhauer, Édouard Manet, Charles Baudelaire, and Guy de Maupassant are believed to have had the disease. Friedrich Nietzsche was long believed to have gone mad as a result of tertiary syphilis, but that diagnosis has recently come into question. It has been proposed that this was a posthumous smear campaign by anti-Nazis.
The earliest known depiction of an individual with syphilis is Albrecht Dürer's "Syphilitic Man", a woodcut believed to represent a Landsknecht, a Northern European mercenary. The myth of the "femme fatale" or "poison women" of the 19th century is believed to be partly derived from the devastation of syphilis, with classic examples in literature including John Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci".
The Flemish artist Stradanus designed a print called "Preparation and Use of Guayaco for Treating Syphilis", a scene of a wealthy man receiving treatment for syphilis with the tropical wood guaiacum sometime around 1590.
The "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" was an infamous, unethical, and racist clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service. Whereas the purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis; the African-American men in the study were told they were receiving free treatment for "bad blood" from the United States government.
The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically black college in Alabama. Researchers enrolled 600 poor, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama in the study. Of these men, 399 had contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease. Medical care, hot meals, and free burial insurance were given to those who participated. The men were told that the study would last six months, but in the end it continued for 40 years. After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they were only being studied and would not be treated. Facing insufficient participation, the Macon County Health Department nevertheless wrote to subjects to offer them a "last chance" to get a special "treatment", which was not a treatment at all, but a spinal tap administered exclusively for diagnostic purposes. None of the men infected were ever told that they had the disease, and none were treated with penicillin even after the antibiotic had been proven to successfully treat syphilis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for "bad blood"—a colloquialism describing various conditions such as fatigue, anemia, and syphilis—which was a leading cause of death among southern African-American men.
The 40-year study became a textbook example of poor medical ethics because researchers had knowingly withheld treatment with penicillin and because the subjects had been misled concerning the purposes of the study. The revelation in 1972 of these study failures by a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent, communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results.
Similar experiments were carried out in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. It was done during the administration of American President Harry S. Truman and Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo with the cooperation of some Guatemalan health ministries and officials. Doctors infected soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, without the informed consent of the subjects, and treated most subjects with antibiotics. The experiment resulted in at least 83 deaths. In October 2010, the U.S. formally apologized to Guatemala for the ethical violations that took place. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices." The experiments were led by physician John Charles Cutler who also participated in the late stages of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
First called "grande verole" or the "great pox" by the French. Other historical names have included "button scurvy", sibbens, frenga and dichuchwa, among others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28852 |
Smiling Buddha
Smiling Buddha (MEA designation: Pokhran-I) was the assigned code name of India's first successful nuclear bomb test on 18 May 1974. The bomb was detonated on the Pokhran Test Range (PTR), in Rajasthan, by the Indian Army under the supervision of several key .
"Pokhran-I" was also the first confirmed nuclear weapons test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Officially, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) characterised this test as a "peaceful nuclear explosion". A series of nuclear tests was carried out in 1998 under the name Pokhran-II.
India started its own nuclear programme in 1944 when Homi Jehangir Bhabha founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Physicist Raja Ramanna played an essential role in nuclear weapons technology research; he expanded and supervised scientific research on nuclear weapons and was the first directing officer of the small team of scientists that supervised and carried out the test.
After Indian independence from the British Empire, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru authorised the development of a nuclear programme headed by Homi Bhabha. The "Atomic Energy Act" of 1948 focused on peaceful development. India was heavily involved in the development of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but ultimately opted not to sign it.
In 1954, Homi Jehangir Bhabha steered the nuclear programme in the direction of weapons design and production. Two important infrastructure projects were commissioned. The first established Trombay Atomic Energy Establishment at Mumbai (Bombay). The other created a governmental secretariat, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), of which Bhabha was the first secretary. From 1954 to 1959, the nuclear programme grew swiftly. By 1958, the DAE had one-third of the defence budget for research purposes. In 1954, India reached a verbal understanding with Canada and the United States under the Atoms for Peace programme; Canada and the United States ultimately agreed to provide and establish the CIRUS research reactor also at Trombay. The acquisition of CIRUS was a watershed event in nuclear proliferation with the understanding between India and the United States that the reactor would be used for peaceful purposes only. CIRUS was an ideal facility to develop a plutonium device, and therefore Nehru refused to accept nuclear fuel from Canada and started the programme to develop an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.
In July 1958, Nehru authorised "Project Phoenix" to build a reprocessing plant with a capacity of 20 tons of fuel a year – a size to match the production capacity of CIRUS. The plant used the PUREX process and was designed by the Vitro Corporation of America. Construction of the plutonium plant began at Trombay on 27 March 1961, and it was commissioned in mid-1964.
The nuclear programme continued to mature, and by 1960, Nehru made the critical decision to move the programme into production. At about the same time, Nehru held discussions with the American firm Westinghouse Electric to construct India's first nuclear power plant in Tarapur, Maharashtra. Kenneth Nichols, a US Army engineer, recalls from a meeting with Nehru, "it was that time when Nehru turned to Bhabha and asked Bhabha for the timeline of the development of a nuclear weapon". Bhabha estimated he would need about a year to accomplish the task.
By 1962, the nuclear programme was still developing, but at a slow rate. Nehru was distracted by the Sino-Indian War, during which India lost territory to China. Nehru turned to the Soviet Union for help, but the Soviet Union was preoccupied with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Politburo turned down Nehru's request for arms and continued backing the Chinese. India concluded that the Soviet Union was an unreliable ally, and this conclusion strengthened India's determination to create a nuclear deterrent. Design work began in 1965 under Bhabha and proceeded under Raja Ramanna who took over the programme after the former's death.
Bhabha was now aggressively lobbying for nuclear weapons and made several speeches on Indian radio. In 1964, Bhabha told the Indian public via radio that "such nuclear weapons are remarkably cheap" and supported his arguments by referring to the economic cost of the American nuclear testing programme "Project Plowshare". Bhabha stated to the politicians that a 10 kt device would cost around $350,000, and $600,000 for a 2 mt. From this, he estimated that "a stockpile" of around 50 atomic bombs would cost under $21 million and a stockpile of 50 two-megaton hydrogen bombs would cost around $31.5 million." Bhabha did not realise, however, that the U.S. "Plowshare" cost-figures were produced by a vast industrial complex costing tens of billions of dollars, which had already manufactured nuclear weapons numbering in the tens of thousands. The delivery systems for nuclear weapons typically cost several times as much as the weapons themselves.
The nuclear programme was partially slowed when Lal Bahadur Shastri became the prime minister. Shastri faced the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. He appointed physicist Vikram Sarabhai as the head of the nuclear programme but, because of his non-violent Gandhian beliefs, Sarabhai directed it toward peaceful purposes rather than military development.
In 1967, Indira Gandhi became the prime minister and work on the nuclear programme resumed with renewed vigour. Homi Sethna, a chemical engineer, played a significant role in the development of weapon-grade plutonium, while Ramanna designed and manufactured the whole nuclear device. The first nuclear bomb project did not employ more than 75 scientists because of its sensitivity. The weapons programme was now directed towards the production of plutonium rather than uranium.
In 1968–69, P. K. Iyengar visited the Soviet Union with three colleagues and toured the nuclear research facilities at Dubna, Russia. During his visit, Iyengar was impressed by the plutonium-fueled pulsed fast reactor. Upon his return to India, Iyengar set about developing plutonium reactors approved by the Indian political leadership in January 1969. The secret plutonium plant was known as "Purnima", and construction began in March 1969. The plant's leadership included Iyengar, Ramanna, Homi Sethna, and Sarabhai. Sarabhai's presence indicates that, with or without formal approval, the work on nuclear weapons at Trombay had been commenced.
India continued to harbour ambivalent feelings about nuclear weapons, and accorded low priority to their production until the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. In December 1971, Richard Nixon sent a carrier battle group led by the into the Bay of Bengal in an attempt to intimidate India. The Soviet Union responded by sending a submarine armed with nuclear missiles from Vladivostok to trail the US task force. The Soviet response demonstrated the deterrent value and significance of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile submarines to Indira Gandhi. India gained the military and political initiative over Pakistan after acceding to the treaty that divided Pakistan into two different political entities.
On 7 September 1972, near the peak of her post-war popularity, Indira Gandhi authorised the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to manufacture a nuclear device and prepare it for a test. Although the Indian Army was not fully involved in the nuclear testing, the army's highest command was kept fully informed of the test preparations. The preparations were carried out under the watchful eyes of the Indian political leadership, with civilian scientists assisting the Indian Army.
The device was formally called the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive", but it was usually referred to as the "Smiling Buddha". The device was detonated on 18 May 1974, Buddha Jayanti (a festival day in India marking the birth of Gautama Buddha). Indira Gandhi maintained tight control of all aspects of the preparations of the "Smiling Buddha" test, which was conducted in extreme secrecy; besides Gandhi, only advisers Parmeshwar Haksar and Durga Dhar were kept informed. Scholar Raj Chengappa asserts the Indian Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram was not provided with any knowledge of this test and came to learn of it only after it was conducted. Swaran Singh, the Minister of External Affairs, was given 48 hours advance notice. The Indira Gandhi administration employed no more than 75 civilian scientists while General G. G. Bewoor, Indian army chief, and the commander of Indian Western Command were the only military commanders kept informed.
The head of this entire nuclear bomb project was the director of the BARC, Raja Ramanna. In later years, his role in the nuclear programme would be more deeply integrated as he remained head of the nuclear programme most of his life. The designer and creator of the bomb was P. K. Iyengar, who was the second in command of this project. Iyengar's work was further assisted by the chief metallurgist, R. Chidambaram, and by Nagapattinam Sambasiva Venkatesan of the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory, who developed and manufactured the high explosive implosion system. The explosive materials and the detonation system were developed by Waman Dattatreya Patwardhan of the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory.
The overall project was supervised by chemical engineer Homi Sethna, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India. Chidambaram, who would later coordinate work on the Pokhran-II tests, began work on the equation of state of plutonium in late 1967 or early 1968. To preserve secrecy, the project employed no more than 75 scientists and engineers from 1967–74. Abdul Kalam also arrived at the test site as the representative of the DRDO.
A. K. Ganguly, of the BARC, was the "Test" Project chief of health and safety, as well as, chief of post "Test" scientific investigations programme. As early as 1956, Ganguly was selected by Homi J. Bhabha, from his academic perch, at the University of Notre Dame, USA, where he had originated the Ganguly-Magee theory in Radiation Chemistry. During Ganguly’s career, in the BARC, Vikram A. Sarabhai selected him to lead the process of formation of the Ministry of Environment.
The device was of the implosion-type design and had a close resemblance to the American nuclear bomb called the "Fat Man". The implosion system was assembled at the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL) of the DRDO in Chandigarh. The detonation system was developed at the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) of the DRDO in Pune, Maharashtra State. The 6 kg of plutonium came from the CIRUS reactor at BARC. The neutron initiator was of the polonium–beryllium type and code-named "Flower". The complete nuclear bomb was engineered and finally assembled by Indian engineers at Trombay before transportation to the test site.
The fully assembled device had a hexagonal cross section, 1.25 metres in diameter, and weighed 1400 kg. The device was mounted on a hexagonal metal tripod, and was transported to the shaft on rails which the army kept covered with sand. The device was detonated when Dr Pranab R. Dastidar pushed the firing button at 8.05 a.m.; it was in a shaft 107 m under the army Pokhran test range in the Thar Desert (or Great Indian Desert), Rajasthan.
The nuclear yield of this test still remains controversial, with unclear data provided by Indian sources, although Indian politicians have given the country's press a range from 2 kt to 20 kt. The official yield was initially set at 12 kt; post-Operation Shakti claims have raised it to 13 kt. Independent seismic data from outside and analysis of the crater features indicate a lower figure. Analysts usually estimate the yield at 4 to 6 kt, using conventional seismic magnitude-to-yield conversion formulas. In recent years, both Homi Sethna and P. K. Iyengar have conceded the official yield to be an exaggeration.
Iyengar has variously stated that the yield was 8–10 kt, that the device was designed to yield 10 kt, and that the yield was 8 kt "exactly as predicted". Although seismic scaling laws lead to an estimated yield range between 3.2 kt and 21 kt, an analysis of hard rock cratering effects suggests a narrow range of around 8 kt for the yield, which is within the uncertainties of the seismic yield estimate.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had already gained much popularity and publicity after her successful military campaign against Pakistan in the 1971 war. The test caused an immediate revival of Indira Gandhi's popularity, which had flagged considerably from its height after the 1971 war. The overall popularity and image of the Congress Party was enhanced and the Congress Party was well received in the Indian Parliament. In 1975, Homi Sethna, a chemical engineer and the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (AECI), Raja Ramanna of BARC, and Basanti Nagchaudhuri of DRDO, all were honoured with the "Padma Vibhushan", India's second highest civilian award. Five other project members received the "Padma Shri", India's fourth highest civilian award. India consistently maintained that this was a peaceful nuclear bomb test and that it had no intentions of militarising its nuclear programme. However, according to independent monitors, this test was part of an accelerated Indian nuclear programme.
In 1997 Raja Ramanna, speaking to the "Press Trust of India", maintained:
While India continued to state that the test was for peaceful purposes, it encountered opposition from many quarters. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was formed in reaction to the Indian tests to check international nuclear proliferation. The NSG decided in 1992 to require full-scope IAEA safeguards for any new nuclear export deals, which effectively ruled out nuclear exports to India, but in 2008 it waived this restriction on nuclear trade with India as part of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.
Pakistan did not view the test as a "peaceful nuclear explosion", and cancelled talks scheduled for 10 June on normalisation of relations. Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto vowed in June 1974 that he would never succumb to "nuclear blackmail" or accept "Indian hegemony or domination over the subcontinent". The chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Munir Ahmed Khan, said that the test would force Pakistan to test its own nuclear bomb. Pakistan's leading nuclear physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, stated in 2011 that he believed the test "pushed [Pakistan] further into the nuclear arena".
The plutonium used in the test was created in the CIRUS reactor supplied by Canada and using heavy water supplied by the United States. Both countries reacted negatively, especially in light of then ongoing negotiations on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the economic aid both countries had provided to India. Canada concluded that the test violated a 1971 understanding between the two states, and froze nuclear energy assistance for the two heavy water reactors then under construction. The United States concluded that the test did not violate any agreement and proceeded with a June 1974 shipment of enriched uranium for the Tarapur reactor.
France sent a congratulatory telegram to India but later withdrew it.
Despite many proposals, India did not carry out further nuclear tests until 1998. After the 1998 general elections, Operation Shakti (also known as Pokhran-II) was carried out at the Pokhran test site, using devices designed and built over the preceding two decades. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28853 |
Shea Stadium
Shea Stadium (; formally known as William A. Shea Municipal Stadium) was a stadium in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City. Built as a multi-purpose stadium, it was the home park of Major League Baseball's New York Mets for 45 seasons as well as the New York Jets football team from 1964 to 1983.
The venue was named in honor of William A. Shea, the man who was most responsible for bringing National League baseball back to New York after the Dodgers and Giants left for California in 1957. It was demolished in 2009 to create additional parking for the adjacent Citi Field, Shea's replacement and the current home of the Mets.
The origins of Shea Stadium go back to the Brooklyn Dodgers' and the New York Giants' relocations to the U.S. west coast in 1958, which left New York without a National League baseball team for the next four years.
Prior to the Dodgers' departure, New York City official Robert Moses tried to interest owner Walter O'Malley in the site as the location for a new stadium, but O'Malley refused, unable to agree on location, ownership, and lease terms. O'Malley preferred to pay construction costs himself so he could own the stadium outright. He wanted total control over revenue from parking, concessions, and other events.
New York City, in contrast, wanted to build the stadium, rent it, and retain the ancillary revenue rights to pay off its construction bonds. Additionally, O'Malley wanted to build his new stadium in Brooklyn, while Moses insisted on Flushing Meadows. When Los Angeles offered O'Malley what the City of New York wouldn't—complete ownership of the facility—he left for southern California in a preemptive bid to install the Dodgers there before a new or existing major league franchise could beat him to it. At the same time, Horace Stoneham moved his New York Giants to San Francisco (although he originally considered moving them to Minneapolis), ensuring that there would be two National League teams in California, and preserving the longstanding rivalry with the Dodgers that continues to this day.
In , the National League agreed to grant an expansion franchise to the owners of the New York franchise in the abortive Continental League, provided that a new stadium be built. Mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. had to personally wire all National League owners and assure them that the city would build a stadium.
On October 6, 1961, the Mets signed a 30-year stadium lease, with an option for a 10-year renewal. Rent for what was originally budgeted as a $9 million facility was set at $450,000 annually, with a reduction of $20,000 each year until it reached $300,000 annually.
In their inaugural season in 1962, the expansion Mets played in the Polo Grounds, with original plans to move to a new stadium in 1963. In October 1962, Mets official Tom Meany said, "Only a series of blizzards or some other unforeseen trouble might hamper construction." That unforeseen trouble surfaced in a number of ways: the severe winter of 1962–1963, along with the bankruptcies of two subcontractors and labor issues. The end result was that both the Mets and Jets played at the Polo Grounds for one more year.
It was originally to be called "Flushing Meadow Park Municipal Stadium" – the name of the public park within which it was built – but an ultimately successful movement was launched to name it in honor of William Shea, the New York attorney who brought National League baseball back to New York.
After 29 months of construction and $28.5 million spent, Shea Stadium opened on April 17, 1964, with the Pittsburgh Pirates beating the Mets before a crowd of There were no prior exhibition games or events, and the stadium was barely finished in time for the home opener. Because of a jurisdictional dispute between Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Local 1106 of the Communications Workers of America, the telephone and telegraph wiring was not finished in time for opening day. The stadium opened five days before the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, across Roosevelt Avenue. Although not officially part of the fair grounds, the stadium sported steel panels on its exterior in the blue-and-orange colors of the Fair, the same team colors of the Mets. The panels were removed in 1980.
In accordance with New York City law, in 2009 Shea Stadium was dismantled, rather than imploded. The company with the rights to sell memorabilia was given two weeks after the final game to remove seats, signage and other potentially saleable and collectable items before demolition was to begin. The seats were the first ($869 per pair plus tax, a combination of '86 and '69, the team's two World Series championship years), followed by other memorabilia such as the foul poles, dugouts, stadium signage, and the giant letters that spelled out "SHEA" at the front of the building.
After salvaging operations concluded, demolition of the ballpark began on October 14, 2008. On October 18, the scoreboard in right field was demolished, with the bleachers, batter's eye and bullpens shortly thereafter.
By November 10, the field, dugouts and the rest of the field level seats had been demolished.
On January 31, Mets fans all over New York came to Shea Stadium for one final farewell. Fans took a tour of the site, told stories, and sang songs. The last remaining section of seats was demolished on February 18. Fans stood in awe as the remaining structure of Shea Stadium (one section of ramps) was torn down at 11:22 am.
The locations of Shea's home plate, pitcher's mound, and bases are marked in Citi Field's parking lot. The plaques feature engravings of the neon baseball players that graced the exterior of the stadium from 1988 onward.
On October 9, 2013, the New York City Council approved a plan to build a mall and entertainment center called Willets West in the Citi Field parking lot where Shea Stadium stood, as part of an effort by the city to redevelop the nearby neighborhood of Willets Point. However, in 2015, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court ruled that the site, considered parkland, could not be used for commercial development without permission from the New York state government.
Shea Stadium was the home of the New York Mets starting in 1964, and it hosted what would be its only All-Star Game that first year, with Johnny Callison of the Philadelphia Phillies hitting a home run in the ninth inning to win the only Mid-Summer Classic held in the Queens ballpark. A month earlier, on Father's Day, Callison's teammate, future Hall of Fame member and U.S. Senator Jim Bunning, pitched a perfect game against the Mets.
The stadium was often criticized by baseball purists for many reasons, even though it was retrofitted to be a baseball-only stadium after the Jets left. The upper deck was one of the highest in the majors. The lower boxes were farther from the field than similar seats in other parks because they were still on the rails that had swiveled them into position for football. Outfield seating was sparse, in part because the stadium was designed to be fully enclosed.
At one time, Shea's foul territory was one of the most expansive in the majors. This was very common for ballparks built during the 1960s, in part due to the need to accommodate the larger football field. This was also because the stadium was designed to be fully enclosed. However, seats added over the years in the lower level greatly reduced the size of foul territory by the dawn of the 21st century. On the plus side, Shea always used a natural grass surface, in contrast to other multi-purpose stadiums such as Three Rivers Stadium, Veterans Stadium, and Riverfront Stadium, which were built in the same era and style and had artificial turf.
Shea Stadium hosted postseason baseball in 1969, 1973, 1986, 1988, 1999, 2000, and 2006; it hosted the World Series in , , , and . It had the distinction of being the home of the 1969 "Miracle Mets"— led by former Brooklyn Dodger Gil Hodges that defied 100–1 odds and won the World Series, after seven straight seasons in last or next-to-last place. Shea became famous for the bedlam that took place after the Mets won the decisive Game 5 of the World Series, as fans stormed the field in celebration. Similar scenes took place a few weeks earlier after the Mets clinched the National League East title, and then defeated the Atlanta Braves in the first National League Championship Series to win the pennant.
Tommie Agee, Lenny Dykstra, Todd Pratt, Robin Ventura, and Benny Agbayani hit post-season, walk-off home runs at Shea (although, while the ball hit by Ventura over the fence may have been the most famous of the postseason walk off hits, it was famously called "the grand slam single", because when he hit the game winning ball over the fence, he was mobbed by his teammates before he could reach second base, and never wound up touching second base, third base and home plate. It was not ruled a home run as he never circled the bases completely. It probably made Ventura, known for his penchant for hitting Grand slam home runs, even more famous, and the hit itself more famous, because of the very fact that he never circled the bases fully, technically not making it a homer).
Agee was the only player in the history of the ballpark to hit a fair ball into the upper deck in left field. The spot was marked with a sign featuring Agee's number 20 and the date, which was April 10, 1969. Teammate Cleon Jones said the ball was still rising when it hit the seats, so it very likely could have been the longest home run ever hit at Shea. It came in the second inning, and Agee hit another in the seventh over the center field wall; both solo shots were off of Montreal Expos starter Larry Jaster, and the Mets
In 1971, Dave Kingman – then with the San Francisco Giants and later to play for the Mets on two occasions – hit a home run that smashed off the windshield of the Giants' team bus, parked behind the left field bullpen.
For many years, the Mets' theme song, "Meet the Mets", was played at Shea before every home game. Jane Jarvis, a local jazz artist, played the popular songs on the Thomas organ at Mets games for many years at the stadium.
On October 3, 2004, it was the venue for the last game in the history of the Montreal Expos, and the Mets won Montreal's major league story ended where it had started 35 years earlier: at Shea Stadium. The following year, the Expos relocated to Washington, D.C. and became the Nationals.
The last game played at Shea Stadium was a loss to the Florida Marlins on September 28, 2008. However, the Mets were in the thick of the playoff chase until the last day. A win would have meant another game for Shea as the Mets were scheduled to play the Milwaukee Brewers in a one-game playoff for the National League Wild Card berth. Following the game, there was a "Shea Goodbye" tribute in which many players from the Mets' glory years entered the stadium and touched home plate one final time so that fans could pay their last respects to the players and the stadium the Mets called home for 45 years. The ceremony ended with Tom Seaver throwing a final pitch to Mike Piazza, then, as the Beatles' "In My Life" played on the stadium speakers the two former Met stars walked out of the centerfield gate and closed it behind them, followed by a display of blue and orange fireworks.
Three National League Division Series were played at Shea Stadium. The Mets won all three, and never lost a Division Series game at Shea.
Seven National League Championship Series were played at Shea Stadium.
The decisive seventh game of this series was played at Shea Stadium, marking the only time that the Mets ever lost the deciding game of a National League Championship Series at Shea.
Four World Series were played in Shea Stadium.
The Yankees' World Series win in 2000 was the only time that a visiting team won a World Series at Shea Stadium. The Mets won both their World Series titles at Shea Stadium (in Game 5 in 1969, and Game 7 in 1986).
The New York Yankees played their home games in Shea Stadium during the 1974 and 1975 seasons while Yankee Stadium was being renovated. The move to Shea had been proposed earlier in the decade, but the Mets, as Shea's primary tenants, refused to sign off on the deal. However, when the city stepped in to pay for renovating Yankee Stadium, the Mets had little choice but to agree to share Shea with the Yankees.
On the afternoon of April 15, 1998, the Yankees also played one home game at Shea, against the Anaheim Angels after a beam collapsed at Yankee Stadium two days before, destroying several rows of seats. With the Mets playing a game at Shea that evening against the Chicago Cubs, the Yankees used the visitor's locker room and dugout and the Angels used the home dugout and old locker room of the New York Jets. Former Mets star Darryl Strawberry, then playing for the Yankees, hit a home run during the game. Stadium operators partially raised the Mets' home run apple signal before lowering it back down, to the delight of the crowd.
Shea Stadium also hosted the first extra-inning regular season baseball opener ever played in New York, on March 31, 1998, when the Mets opened their season against their rival Philadelphia Phillies, playing the longest scoreless opening day game in the National League and the longest one in Major League Baseball since . The Mets won the game 1–0 in the bottom of the 14th inning.
During the 1977 New York City blackout the stadium was plunged into darkness at approximately 9:30 p.m. during a game between the Mets and the Chicago Cubs. It occurred during the bottom of the sixth inning, with the Mets losing 2–1 and Lenny Randle at bat. Jane Jarvis, Shea's organist (affectionately known as Shea's "Queen of Melody") played "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas". The game was eventually completed on September 16, with the Cubs winning 5–2.
Shea Stadium held boxing matches in the mid-1960s.
The New York Jets of the American Football League and later, the National Football League played at Shea for 20 seasons, from 1964 through 1983 (excluding their first home game in 1977, played at Giants Stadium). The stadium hosted three Jets playoff games: the American Football League Championship in 1968 (defeating the Oakland Raiders, 27–23), an AFL Divisional Playoff in 1969 (a 13–6 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs) and the 1981 AFC Wild Card Playoff game (lost 31–27 to the Buffalo Bills).
For most of the Jets' tenure at Shea, they were burdened by onerous lease terms imposed at the insistence of the Mets. Until 1978, the Jets could not play their first home game until the Mets' season was finished. For instance, in 1969, the defending Super Bowl champion Jets didn't play a home game until October 20 due to the Mets advancing to (and winning) the World Series. As a result, the 1969 Jets opened with five consecutive road games, and then played all seven home games in consecutive weeks before closing with two road games. Even after 1978, the Mets' status as Shea's primary tenants would require the Jets to go on long road trips (switching Shea from baseball to football configuration was a complex process involving electrical, plumbing, field, and other similar work). The stadium was also not well maintained in the 1970s. The Jets moved to Giants Stadium for the 1984 season, enticed by the more than 15,000 additional seats there. Fans ripped apart Shea after the last game of the 1983 season, which also was the last game for Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who threw two touchdown passes to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 34–7 victory. Even the scoreboard operator had a field day, displaying the home team as the "N.J. Jets".
It was at Shea Stadium on December 16, 1973 that O.J. Simpson became the first running back to gain 2,000 yards in a single season (and, to date, the only player to do it in 14 games or fewer). In the 1983 season, a Jets game against the Los Angeles Rams featured an 85-yard touchdown run by rookie Eric Dickerson, as well as a brawl between Rams offensive tackle Jackie Slater and Jets defensive end Mark Gastineau when Slater blindsided Gastineau after the Jet performed his infamous "Sack Dance" over fallen Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo.
The NFL's New York Giants played their 1975 season at Shea while Giants Stadium was being built. The Giants were that year (2–5 at Shea). Their coach was Bill Arnsparger and their quarterback was Craig Morton. The Giants played their final five home games of 1973 and all seven in 1974 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut; Yankee Stadium was closed in October 1973 for a massive renovation, which was completed in time for the 1976 baseball season.
On the night of October 9, 1965, Shea Stadium hosted the football rivalry between Army and Notre Dame for the first and only time. The Fighting Irish blanked the Cadets, 17–0, beginning a 15-game winning streak for Notre Dame in the storied series.
In 1966, the Brooklyn Dodgers of the minor Continental Football League unsuccessfully sued the Jets in an attempt to use the stadium; the team wound up playing on Randall's Island and soon folded. In 1974, the New York Stars of the nascent World Football League also made inquiries to play at Shea, whose schedule was already overcrowded by the Mets, Jets and Yankees (and the following year, the Giants; see below). The Stars also moved out to Randall's Island, playing only a handful of games before shifting to Charlotte.
The football field at Shea extended from around home plate to centerfield, with the baseline seating rotating out to fill left and right fields.
The first soccer game at Shea Stadium occurred during International Soccer League tournament play on June 17, 1965.
The original New York Cosmos beat the Washington Diplomats, 2–0, in an NASL playoff game at Shea on August 17, 1976.
New York United of the American Soccer League called Shea home in 1980.
On Sunday, August 15, 1965, The Beatles opened their 1965 North American tour there to a record audience of 55,600. "Beatlemania" was at one of its peaks at their Shea concert. Film footage shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as the Beatles entered the field. The sound of the crowd was so deafening that none of the Beatles (or anyone else) could hear what they were playing. Nevertheless, it was the first concert to be held at a major stadium and set records for attendance and revenue generation, demonstrating that outdoor concerts on a large scale could be successful and profitable, and led the Beatles to return to Shea for a successful encore on August 23, 1966. The attendance record stood until 1973 when it was broken by Led Zeppelin with 56,800 fans at Tampa Stadium.
The next major music event to play Shea Stadium after the Beatles successful appearances was the Summer Festival for Peace on August 6, 1970. It was a day-long fundraiser, which featured many of the era's biggest selling and seminal rock, folk, blues and jazz performers including: Janis Joplin, Paul Simon, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf, The James Gang, Miles Davis, Tom Paxton, John Sebastian, and others.
The next music show at Shea Stadium was the historic concert by Grand Funk Railroad in 1971, which broke the Beatles' then-record for fastest ticket sales. Humble Pie was the opening band. The same filmmakers for the documentary of the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont were commissioned to film it, but to date, a final film has not been released.
The stadium subsequently hosted numerous concerts, including Jethro Tull with opening act Robin Trower in July 1976 (billed as Tull v. Boeing because of the proximity to LaGuardia Airport), The Who with opening act The Clash in October 1982, and Simon & Garfunkel in August 1983. On August 18, 1983, The Police played in front of 70,000 fans at Shea, a concert that the band's singer and bassist Sting described as "like playing the top of Everest", and announced near the end of the concert: "We'd like to thank the Beatles for lending us their stadium." The Rolling Stones performed at Shea for a six-night run in October 1989, and Elton John & Eric Clapton played a concert in August 1992. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ended The Rising Tour with three concerts at Shea in early October 2003, with Bob Dylan making a special guest appearance at the final show to perform "Forever Young" with Springsteen.
The last concert event was a two-night engagement by Billy Joel on July 16 and July 18, 2008. The concert was dubbed "The Last Play at Shea", and featured many special guest appearances, including former Beatle Paul McCartney who closed the second show with an emotional rendition of the Beatles classic "Let It Be". Other artists that joined Joel on stage for the shows were former Shea performer Roger Daltrey of The Who, Tony Bennett, Don Henley, John Mayer, John Mellencamp, Garth Brooks, and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. The concert was the subject of a documentary film of the same name, which is used along with Shea's history to tell the story of changes in American suburban life.
The 1978 International Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses was held at Shea Stadium from July 12 to July 16, 1978.
Grand Funk Railroad played a sold out show at Shea in 1971.
During his tour of America in October 1979, Pope John Paul II was also among those hosted by Shea Stadium. On the morning of the Pontiff's visit, Shea Stadium was awash in torrential rain, causing ankle-deep mud puddles, and threatened to ruin the event. But as the Popemobile entered the stadium, the rain stopped although the deep mud remained.
On December 9, 1979, as part of the halftime show of a National Football League game between the New York Jets and New England Patriots, a model airplane group put on a remote control airplane display. The grand finale was a remote control airplane, weighing 40 lbs, made to look like a red flying lawnmower. The pilot lost control of the airplane, and it crashed into the stands, hitting Kevin Rourke, of Lynn, Massachusetts and John Bowen of Nashua, New Hampshire. Both suffered serious head injuries; Rourke survived but Bowen died four days later.
Between 1972 and 1980, Shea also hosted a Showdown at Shea event three separate times, by the then World Wrestling Federation. In 1980, it hosted a simulcast of the first fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, won by Duran.
From 1970 to 1987, the Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL) played its annual all-star game at various major league stadiums. The games were interleague contests between the CCBL and the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League (ACBL). The 1982 and 1986 games were played at Shea. The 1986 contest starred game MVP and future Cincinnati Reds all-star pitcher Jack Armstrong.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the stadium became a staging area for rescuers, its parking lots filled with food, water, medical supplies, even makeshift shelters where relief workers could sleep. Ten days later Shea reopened for the first post-attack sporting event in New York where the Mets beat the Braves, behind a dramatic home run by Mets catcher Mike Piazza.
In the television serial drama "Mad Men", the main character, Don Draper, has his secretary buy a pair of tickets for the Beatles' concert at Shea Stadium in 1965. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28855 |
Signal transduction
Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a series of molecular events, most commonly protein phosphorylation catalyzed by protein kinases, which ultimately results in a cellular response. Proteins responsible for detecting stimuli are generally termed receptors, although in some cases the term sensor is used. The changes elicited by ligand binding (or signal sensing) in a receptor give rise to a biochemical cascade, which is a chain of biochemical events known as a signaling pathway.
When signaling pathways interact with one another they form networks, which allow cellular responses to be coordinated, often by combinatorial signaling events. At the molecular level, such responses include changes in the transcription or translation of genes, and post-translational and conformational changes in proteins, as well as changes in their location. These molecular events are the basic mechanisms controlling cell growth, proliferation, metabolism and many other processes. In multicellular organisms, signal transduction pathways regulate cell communication in a wide variety of ways.
Each component (or node) of a signaling pathway is classified according to the role it plays with respect to the initial stimulus. Ligands are termed "first messengers", while receptors are the "signal transducers", which then activate "primary effectors". Such effectors are often linked to second messengers, which can activate "secondary effectors", and so on. Depending on the efficiency of the nodes, a signal can be amplified (a concept known as signal gain), so that one signaling molecule can generate a response involving hundreds to millions of molecules. As with other signals, the transduction of biological signals is characterised by delay, noise, signal feedback and feedforward and interference, which can range from negligible to pathological. With the advent of computational biology, the analysis of signaling pathways and networks has become an essential tool to understand cellular functions and disease, including signaling rewiring mechanisms underlying responses to acquired drug resistance.
The basis for signal transduction is the transformation of a certain stimulus into a biochemical signal. The nature of such stimuli can vary widely, ranging from extracellular cues, such as the presence of EGF, to intracellular events, such as the DNA damage resulting from replicative telomere attrition. Traditionally, signals that reach the central nervous system are classified as senses. These are transmitted from neuron to neuron in a process called synaptic transmission. Many other intercellular signal relay mechanisms exist in multicellular organisms, such as those that govern embryonic development.
The majority of signal transduction pathways involve the binding of signaling molecules, known as ligands, to receptors that trigger events inside the cell. The binding of a signaling molecule with a receptor causes a change in the conformation of the receptor, known as "receptor activation". Most ligands are soluble molecules from the extracellular medium which bind to cell surface receptors. These include growth factors, cytokines and neurotransmitters. Components of the extracellular matrix such as fibronectin and hyaluronan can also bind to such receptors (integrins and CD44, respectively). In addition, some molecules such as steroid hormones are lipid-soluble and thus cross the plasma membrane to reach nuclear receptors. In the case of steroid hormone receptors, their stimulation leads to binding to the promoter region of steroid-responsive genes.
Not all classifications of signaling molecules take into account the molecular nature of each class member. For example, odorants belong to a wide range of molecular classes, as do neurotransmitters, which range in size from small molecules such as dopamine to neuropeptides such as endorphins. Moreover, some molecules may fit into more than one class, e.g. epinephrine is a neurotransmitter when secreted by the central nervous system and a hormone when secreted by the adrenal medulla.
Some receptors such as HER2 are capable of ligand-independent activation when overexpressed or mutated. This leads to constituitive activation of the pathway, which may or may not be overturned by compensation mechanisms. In the case of HER2, which acts as a dimerization partner of other EGFRs, constituitive activation leads to hyperproliferation and cancer.
The prevalence of basement membranes in the tissues of Eumetazoans means that most cell types require attachment to survive. This requirement has led to the development of complex mechanotransduction pathways, allowing cells to sense the stiffness of the substratum. Such signaling is mainly orchestrated in focal adhesions, regions where the integrin-bound actin cytoskeleton detects changes and transmits them downstream through YAP1. Calcium-dependent cell adhesion molecules such as cadherins and selectins can also mediate mechanotransduction. Specialised forms of mechanotransduction within the nervous system are responsible for mechanosensation: hearing, touch, proprioception and balance.
Cellular and systemic control of osmotic pressure (the difference in osmolarity between the cytosol and the extracellular medium) is critical for homeostasis. There are three ways in which cells can detect osmotic stimuli: as changes in macromolecular crowding, ionic strength, and changes in the properties of the plasma membrane or cytoskeleton (the latter being a form of mechanotransduction). These changes are detected by proteins known as osmosensors or osmoreceptors. In humans, the best characterised osmosensors are transient receptor potential channels present in the primary cilium of human cells. In yeast, the HOG pathway has been extensively characterised.
The sensing of temperature in cells is known as thermoception and is primarily mediated by transient receptor potential channels. Additionally, animal cells contain a conserved mechanism to prevent high temperatures from causing cellular damage, the heat-shock response. Such response is triggered when high temperatures cause the dissociation of inactive HSF1 from complexes with heat shock proteins Hsp40/Hsp70 and Hsp90. With help from the ncRNA "hsr1", HSF1 then trimerizes, becoming active and upregulating the expression of its target genes. Many other thermosensory mechanisms exist in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
In mammals, light controls the sense of sight and the circadian clock by activating light-sensitive proteins in photoreceptor cells in the eye's retina. In the case of vision, light is detected by rhodopsin in rod and cone cells. In the case of the circadian clock, a different photopigment, melanopsin, is responsible for detecting light in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells.
Receptors can be roughly divided into two major classes: intracellular and extracellular receptors.
Extracellular receptors are integral transmembrane proteins and make up most receptors. They span the plasma membrane of the cell, with one part of the receptor on the outside of the cell and the other on the inside. Signal transduction occurs as a result of a ligand binding to the outside region of the receptor (the ligand does not pass through the membrane). Ligand-receptor binding induces a change in the conformation of the inside part of the receptor, a process sometimes called "receptor activation". This results in either the activation of an enzyme domain of the receptor or the exposure of a binding site for other intracellular signaling proteins within the cell, eventually propagating the signal through the cytoplasm.
In eukaryotic cells, most intracellular proteins activated by a ligand/receptor interaction possess an enzymatic activity; examples include tyrosine kinase and phosphatases. Often such enzymes are covalently linked to the receptor. Some of them create second messengers such as cyclic AMP and IP3, the latter controlling the release of intracellular calcium stores into the cytoplasm. Other activated proteins interact with adaptor proteins that facilitate signaling protein interactions and coordination of signaling complexes necessary to respond to a particular stimulus. Enzymes and adaptor proteins are both responsive to various second messenger molecules.
Many adaptor proteins and enzymes activated as part of signal transduction possess specialized protein domains that bind to specific secondary messenger molecules. For example, calcium ions bind to the EF hand domains of calmodulin, allowing it to bind and activate calmodulin-dependent kinase. PIP3 and other phosphoinositides do the same thing to the Pleckstrin homology domains of proteins such as the kinase protein AKT.
G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a family of integral transmembrane proteins that possess seven transmembrane domains and are linked to a heterotrimeric G protein. With nearly 800 members, this is the largest family of membrane proteins and receptors in mammals. Counting all animal species, they add up to over 5000. Mammalian GPCRs are classified into 5 major families: rhodopsin-like, secretin-like, metabotropic glutamate, adhesion and frizzled/smoothened, with a few GPCR groups being difficult to classify due to low sequence similarity, e.g. vomeronasal receptors. Other classes exist in eukaryotes, such as the "Dictyostelium" cyclic AMP receptors and fungal mating pheromone receptors.
Signal transduction by a GPCR begins with an inactive G protein coupled to the receptor; the G protein exists as a heterotrimer consisting of Gα, Gβ, and Gγ subunits. Once the GPCR recognizes a ligand, the conformation of the receptor changes to activate the G protein, causing Gα to bind a molecule of GTP and dissociate from the other two G-protein subunits. The dissociation exposes sites on the subunits that can interact with other molecules. The activated G protein subunits detach from the receptor and initiate signaling from many downstream effector proteins such as phospholipases and ion channels, the latter permitting the release of second messenger molecules. The total strength of signal amplification by a GPCR is determined by the lifetimes of the ligand-receptor complex and receptor-effector protein complex and the deactivation time of the activated receptor and effectors through intrinsic enzymatic activity; e.g. via protein kinase phosphorylation or b-arrestin-dependent internalization.
A study was conducted where a point mutation was inserted into the gene encoding the chemokine receptor CXCR2; mutated cells underwent a malignant transformation due to the expression of CXCR2 in an active conformation despite the absence of chemokine-binding. This meant that chemokine receptors can contribute to cancer development.
Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are transmembrane proteins with an intracellular kinase domain and an extracellular domain that binds ligands; examples include growth factor receptors such as the insulin receptor. To perform signal transduction, RTKs need to form dimers in the plasma membrane; the dimer is stabilized by ligands binding to the receptor. The interaction between the cytoplasmic domains stimulates the autophosphorylation of tyrosine residues within the intracellular kinase domains of the RTKs, causing conformational changes. Subsequent to this, the receptors' kinase domains are activated, initiating phosphorylation signaling cascades of downstream cytoplasmic molecules that facilitate various cellular processes such as cell differentiation and metabolism. Many Ser/Thr and dual-specificity protein kinases are important for signal transduction, either acting downstream of [receptor tyrosine kinases], or as membrane-embedded or cell-soluble versions in their own right. The process of signal transduction involves around 560 known protein kinases and pseudokinases, encoded by the human kinome
As is the case with GPCRs, proteins that bind GTP play a major role in signal transduction from the activated RTK into the cell. In this case, the G proteins are members of the Ras, Rho, and Raf families, referred to collectively as small G proteins. They act as molecular switches usually tethered to membranes by isoprenyl groups linked to their carboxyl ends. Upon activation, they assign proteins to specific membrane subdomains where they participate in signaling. Activated RTKs in turn activate small G proteins that activate guanine nucleotide exchange factors such as SOS1. Once activated, these exchange factors can activate more small G proteins, thus amplifying the receptor's initial signal. The mutation of certain RTK genes, as with that of GPCRs, can result in the expression of receptors that exist in a constitutively activated state; such mutated genes may act as oncogenes.
Histidine-specific protein kinases are structurally distinct from other protein kinases and are found in prokaryotes, fungi, and plants as part of a two-component signal transduction mechanism: a phosphate group from ATP is first added to a histidine residue within the kinase, then transferred to an aspartate residue on a receiver domain on a different protein or the kinase itself, thus activating the aspartate residue.
Integrins are produced by a wide variety of cells; they play a role in cell attachment to other cells and the extracellular matrix and in the transduction of signals from extracellular matrix components such as fibronectin and collagen. Ligand binding to the extracellular domain of integrins changes the protein's conformation, clustering it at the cell membrane to initiate signal transduction. Integrins lack kinase activity; hence, integrin-mediated signal transduction is achieved through a variety of intracellular protein kinases and adaptor molecules, the main coordinator being integrin-linked kinase. As shown in the adjacent picture, cooperative integrin-RTK signaling determines the timing of cellular survival, apoptosis, proliferation, and differentiation.
Important differences exist between integrin-signaling in circulating blood cells and non-circulating cells such as epithelial cells; integrins of circulating cells are normally inactive. For example, cell membrane integrins on circulating leukocytes are maintained in an inactive state to avoid epithelial cell attachment; they are activated only in response to stimuli such as those received at the site of an inflammatory response. In a similar manner, integrins at the cell membrane of circulating platelets are normally kept inactive to avoid thrombosis. Epithelial cells (which are non-circulating) normally have active integrins at their cell membrane, helping maintain their stable adhesion to underlying stromal cells that provide signals to maintain normal functioning.
In plants, there are no bona fide integrin receptors identified to date; nevertheless, several integrin-like proteins were proposed based on structural homology with the metazoan receptors. Plants contain integrin-linked kinases that are very similar in their primary structure with the animal ILKs. In the experimental model plant "Arabidopsis thaliana", one of the integrin-linked kinase genes, "ILK1", has been shown to be a critical element in the plant immune response to signal molecules from bacterial pathogens and plant sensitivity to salt and osmotic stress. ILK1 protein interacts with the high-affinity potassium transporter HAK5 and with the calcium sensor CML9.
When activated, toll-like receptors (TLRs) take adapter molecules within the cytoplasm of cells in order to propagate a signal. Four adaptor molecules are known to be involved in signaling, which are Myd88, TIRAP, TRIF, and TRAM. These adapters activate other intracellular molecules such as IRAK1, IRAK4, TBK1, and IKKi that amplify the signal, eventually leading to the induction or suppression of genes that cause certain responses. Thousands of genes are activated by TLR signaling, implying that this method constitutes an important gateway for gene modulation.
A ligand-gated ion channel, upon binding with a ligand, changes conformation to open a channel in the cell membrane through which ions relaying signals can pass. An example of this mechanism is found in the receiving cell of a neural synapse. The influx of ions that occurs in response to the opening of these channels induces action potentials, such as those that travel along nerves, by depolarizing the membrane of post-synaptic cells, resulting in the opening of voltage-gated ion channels.
An example of an ion allowed into the cell during a ligand-gated ion channel opening is Ca2+; it acts as a second messenger initiating signal transduction cascades and altering the physiology of the responding cell. This results in amplification of the synapse response between synaptic cells by remodelling the dendritic spines involved in the synapse.
Intracellular receptors, such as nuclear receptors and cytoplasmic receptors, are soluble proteins localized within their respective areas. The typical ligands for nuclear receptors are non-polar hormones like the steroid hormones testosterone and progesterone and derivatives of vitamins A and D. To initiate signal transduction, the ligand must pass through the plasma membrane by passive diffusion. On binding with the receptor, the ligands pass through the nuclear membrane into the nucleus, altering gene expression.
Activated nuclear receptors attach to the DNA at receptor-specific hormone-responsive element (HRE) sequences, located in the promoter region of the genes activated by the hormone-receptor complex. Due to their enabling gene transcription, they are alternatively called inductors of gene expression. All hormones that act by regulation of gene expression have two consequences in their mechanism of action; their effects are produced after a characteristically long period of time and their effects persist for another long period of time, even after their concentration has been reduced to zero, due to a relatively slow turnover of most enzymes and proteins that would either deactivate or terminate ligand binding onto the receptor.
Nucleic receptors have DNA-binding domains containing zinc fingers and a ligand-binding domain; the zinc fingers stabilize DNA binding by holding its phosphate backbone. DNA sequences that match the receptor are usually hexameric repeats of any kind; the sequences are similar but their orientation and distance differentiate them. The ligand-binding domain is additionally responsible for dimerization of nucleic receptors prior to binding and providing structures for transactivation used for communication with the translational apparatus.
Steroid receptors are a subclass of nuclear receptors located primarily within the cytosol. In the absence of steroids, they associate in an aporeceptor complex containing chaperone or heatshock proteins (HSPs). The HSPs are necessary to activate the receptor by assisting the protein to fold in a way such that the signal sequence enabling its passage into the nucleus is accessible. Steroid receptors, on the other hand, may be repressive on gene expression when their transactivation domain is hidden. Receptor activity can be enhanced by phosphorylation of serine residues at their N-terminal as a result of another signal transduction pathway, a process called crosstalk.
Retinoic acid receptors are another subset of nuclear receptors. They can be activated by an endocrine-synthesized ligand that entered the cell by diffusion, a ligand synthesised from a precursor like retinol brought to the cell through the bloodstream or a completely intracellularly synthesised ligand like prostaglandin. These receptors are located in the nucleus and are not accompanied by HSPs. They repress their gene by binding to their specific DNA sequence when no ligand binds to them, and vice versa.
Certain intracellular receptors of the immune system are cytoplasmic receptors; recently identified NOD-like receptors (NLRs) reside in the cytoplasm of some eukaryotic cells and interact with ligands using a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) motif similar to TLRs. Some of these molecules like NOD2 interact with RIP2 kinase that activates NF-κB signaling, whereas others like NALP3 interact with inflammatory caspases and initiate processing of particular cytokines like interleukin-1β.
First messengers are the signaling molecules (hormones, neurotransmitters, and paracrine/autocrine agents) that reach the cell from the extracellular fluid and bind to their specific receptors. Second messengers are the substances that enter the cytoplasm and act within the cell to trigger a response. In essence, second messengers serve as chemical relays from the plasma membrane to the cytoplasm, thus carrying out intracellular signal transduction.
The release of calcium ions from the endoplasmic reticulum into the cytosol results in its binding to signaling proteins that are then activated; it is then sequestered in the smooth endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondria. Two combined receptor/ion channel proteins control the transport of calcium: the InsP3-receptor that transports calcium upon interaction with inositol triphosphate on its cytosolic side; and the ryanodine receptor named after the alkaloid ryanodine, similar to the InsP3 receptor but having a feedback mechanism that releases more calcium upon binding with it. The nature of calcium in the cytosol means that it is active for only a very short time, meaning its free state concentration is very low and is mostly bound to organelle molecules like calreticulin when inactive.
Calcium is used in many processes including muscle contraction, neurotransmitter release from nerve endings, and cell migration. The three main pathways that lead to its activation are GPCR pathways, RTK pathways, and gated ion channels; it regulates proteins either directly or by binding to an enzyme.
Lipophilic second messenger molecules are derived from lipids residing in cellular membranes; enzymes stimulated by activated receptors activate the lipids by modifying them. Examples include diacylglycerol and ceramide, the former required for the activation of protein kinase C.
Nitric oxide (NO) acts as a second messenger because it is a free radical that can diffuse through the plasma membrane and affect nearby cells. It is synthesised from arginine and oxygen by the NO synthase and works through activation of soluble guanylyl cyclase, which when activated produces another second messenger, cGMP. NO can also act through covalent modification of proteins or their metal co-factors; some have a redox mechanism and are reversible. It is toxic in high concentrations and causes damage during stroke, but is the cause of many other functions like relaxation of blood vessels, apoptosis, and penile erections.
In addition to nitric oxide, other electronically activated species are also signal-transducing agents in a process called redox signaling. Examples include superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide. Redox signaling also includes active modulation of electronic flows in semiconductive biological macromolecules.
Gene activations and metabolism alterations are examples of cellular responses to extracellular stimulation that require signal transduction. Gene activation leads to further cellular effects, since the products of responding genes include instigators of activation; transcription factors produced as a result of a signal transduction cascade can activate even more genes. Hence, an initial stimulus can trigger the expression of a large number of genes, leading to physiological events like the increased uptake of glucose from the blood stream and the migration of neutrophils to sites of infection. The set of genes and their activation order to certain stimuli is referred to as a genetic program.
Mammalian cells require stimulation for cell division and survival; in the absence of growth factor, apoptosis ensues. Such requirements for extracellular stimulation are necessary for controlling cell behavior in unicellular and multicellular organisms; signal transduction pathways are perceived to be so central to biological processes that a large number of diseases are attributed to their disregulation.
Three basic signals determine cellular growth:
The combination of these signals are integrated in an altered cytoplasmic machinery which leads to altered cell behaviour.
Following are some major signaling pathways, demonstrating how ligands binding to their receptors can affect second messengers and eventually result in altered cellular responses.
The earliest notion of signal transduction can be traced back to 1855, when Claude Bernard proposed that ductless glands such as the spleen, the thyroid and adrenal glands, were responsible for the release of "internal secretions" with physiological effects. Bernard's "secretions" were later named "hormones" by Ernest Starling in 1905. Together with William Bayliss, Starling had discovered secretin in 1902. Although many other hormones, most notably insulin, were discovered in the following years, the mechanisms remained largely unknown.
The discovery of nerve growth factor by Rita Levi-Montalcini in 1954, and epidermal growth factor by Stanley Cohen in 1962, led to more detailed insights into the molecular basis of cell signaling, in particular growth factors. Their work, together with Earl Wilbur Sutherland's discovery of cyclic AMP in 1956, prompted the redefinition of endocrine signaling to include only signaling from glands, while the terms autocrine and paracrine began to be used. Sutherland was awarded the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, while Levi-Montalcini and Cohen shared it in 1986.
In 1970, Martin Rodbell examined the effects of glucagon on a rat's liver cell membrane receptor. He noted that guanosine triphosphate disassociated glucagon from this receptor and stimulated the G-protein, which strongly influenced the cell's metabolism. Thus, he deduced that the G-protein is a transducer that accepts glucagon molecules and affects the cell. For this, he shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alfred G. Gilman. Thus, the characterization of RTKs and GPCRs led to the formulation of the concept of "signal transduction", a word first used in 1972. Some early articles used the terms "signal transmission" and "sensory transduction". In 2007, a total of 48,377 scientific papers—including 11,211 review papers—were published on the subject. The term first appeared in a paper's title in 1979. Widespread use of the term has been traced to a 1980 review article by Rodbell: Research papers focusing on signal transduction first appeared in large numbers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28857 |
Stone–Weierstrass theorem
In mathematical analysis, the Weierstrass approximation theorem states that every continuous function defined on a closed interval can be uniformly approximated as closely as desired by a polynomial function. Because polynomials are among the simplest functions, and because computers can directly evaluate polynomials, this theorem has both practical and theoretical relevance, especially in polynomial interpolation. The original version of this result was established by Karl Weierstrass in 1885 using the Weierstrass transform.
Marshall H. Stone considerably generalized the theorem and simplified the proof . His result is known as the Stone–Weierstrass theorem. The Stone–Weierstrass theorem generalizes the Weierstrass approximation theorem in two directions: instead of the real interval , an arbitrary compact Hausdorff space is considered, and instead of the algebra of polynomial functions, approximation with elements from more general subalgebras of is investigated. The Stone–Weierstrass theorem is a vital result in the study of the algebra of continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space.
Further, there is a generalization of the Stone–Weierstrass theorem to noncompact Tychonoff spaces, namely, any continuous function on a Tychonoff space is approximated uniformly on compact sets by algebras of the type appearing in the Stone–Weierstrass theorem and described below.
A different generalization of Weierstrass' original theorem is Mergelyan's theorem, which generalizes it to functions defined on certain subsets of the complex plane.
The statement of the approximation theorem as originally discovered by Weierstrass is as follows:
A constructive proof of this theorem using Bernstein polynomials is outlined on that page.
As a consequence of the Weierstrass approximation theorem, one can show that the space is separable: the polynomial functions are dense, and each polynomial function can be uniformly approximated by one with rational coefficients; there are only countably many polynomials with rational coefficients. Since is metrizable and separable it follows that has cardinality at most . (Remark: This cardinality result also follows from the fact that a continuous function on the reals is uniquely determined by its restriction to the rationals.)
The set of continuous real-valued functions on , together with the supremum norm , is a Banach algebra, (that is, an associative algebra and a Banach space such that for all ). The set of all polynomial functions forms a subalgebra of (that is, a vector subspace of that is closed under multiplication of functions), and the content of the Weierstrass approximation theorem is that this subalgebra is dense in .
Stone starts with an arbitrary compact Hausdorff space and considers the algebra of real-valued continuous functions on , with the topology of uniform convergence. He wants to find subalgebras of which are dense. It turns out that the crucial property that a subalgebra must satisfy is that it "separates points": a set of functions defined on is said to separate points if, for every two different points and in there exists a function in with . Now we may state:
This implies Weierstrass’ original statement since the polynomials on form a subalgebra of which contains the constants and separates points.
A version of the Stone–Weierstrass theorem is also true when is only locally compact. Let be the space of real-valued continuous functions on which vanish at infinity; that is, a continuous function is in if, for every , there exists a compact set such that on . Again, is a Banach algebra with the supremum norm. A subalgebra of is said to vanish nowhere if not all of the elements of simultaneously vanish at a point; that is, for every in , there is some in such that . The theorem generalizes as follows:
This version clearly implies the previous version in the case when is compact, since in that case . There are also more general versions of the Stone–Weierstrass that weaken the assumption of local compactness.
The Stone–Weierstrass theorem can be used to prove the following two statements which go beyond Weierstrass's result.
The theorem has many other applications to analysis, including:
Slightly more general is the following theorem, where we consider the algebra formula_1 of complex-valued continuous functions on the compact space formula_2, again with the topology of uniform convergence. This is a C*-algebra with the *-operation given by pointwise complex conjugation.
The complex unital *-algebra generated by formula_4 consists of all those functions that can be obtained from the elements of formula_4 by throwing in the constant function and adding them, multiplying them, conjugating them, or multiplying them with complex scalars, and repeating finitely many times.
This theorem implies the real version, because if a sequence of complex-valued functions uniformly approximate a given function formula_10, then the real parts of those functions uniformly approximate the real part of formula_10. As in the real case, an analog of this theorem is true for locally compact Hausdorff spaces.
Following : consider the algebra of quaternion-valued continuous functions on the compact space , again with the topology of uniform convergence. If a quaternion "q" is written in the form "q" = "a" + "ib";+ "jc" + "kd" then the scalar part a is the real number ("q" − "iqi" − "jqj" − "kqk")/4. Likewise being the scalar part of −"qi", −"qj" and −"qk" : b,c and d are respectively the real numbers (−"qi" − "iq" + "jqk" − "kqj")/4,
(−"qj" − "iqk" − "jq" + "kqi")/4 and (−"qk" + "iqj" − "jqk" − "kq")/4. Then we may state :
The space of complex-valued continuous functions on a compact Hausdorff space formula_2 i.e. formula_1 is the canonical example of a unital commutative C*-algebra formula_14. The space "X" may be viewed as the space of pure states on formula_14, with the weak-* topology. Following the above cue, a non-commutative extension of the Stone–Weierstrass theorem, which has remain unsolved, is as follows:
In 1960, Jim Glimm proved a weaker version of the above conjecture.
Let be a compact Hausdorff space. Stone's original proof of the theorem used the idea of lattices in . A subset of is called a lattice if for any two elements , the functions also belong to . The lattice version of the Stone–Weierstrass theorem states:
The above versions of Stone–Weierstrass can be proven from this version once one realizes that the lattice property can also be formulated using the absolute value which in turn can be approximated by polynomials in . A variant of the theorem applies to linear subspaces of closed under max :
More precise information is available:
Another generalization of the Stone–Weierstrass theorem is due to Errett Bishop. Bishop's theorem is as follows :
Nachbin's theorem gives an analog for Stone–Weierstrass theorem for algebras of complex valued smooth functions on a smooth manifold . Nachbin's theorem is as follows :
The historical publication of Weierstrass (in German language) is freely available from the digital online archive of the "Berlin Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften":
Important historical works of Stone include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28858 |
Serengeti
The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa, spanning northern Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game reserves. The Serengeti hosts the second largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world, which helps secure it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, and as one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world.
The Serengeti is also renowned for its large lion population and is one of the best places to observe prides in their natural environment. Approximately 70 large mammal and 500 bird species are found there. This high diversity is a function of diverse habitats, including riverine forests, swamps, kopjes, grasslands, and woodlands. Blue wildebeest, gazelles, zebras, and buffalos are some of the commonly found large mammals in the region.
The Serengeti also contains the Serengeti District of Tanzania. There has been controversy about a proposal to build a road through the Serengeti.
The name "Serengeti" is often said to be derived from the word from "seringit" in the Maasai language, Maa, meaning "endless plains". However, this etymology does not appear in Maa dictionaries.
Much of the Serengeti was known to outsiders as Maasailand. The Maasai are known as fierce warriors and live alongside most wild animals with an aversion to eating game and birds, subsisting exclusively on their cattle. Historically, their strength and reputation kept the newly arrived Europeans from exploiting the animals and resources of most of their land. A rinderpest epidemic and drought during the 1890s greatly reduced the numbers of both Maasai and animal populations. The Tanzanian government later in the 20th century re-settled the Maasai around the Ngorongoro Crater. Poaching and the absence of fires, which had been the result of human activity, set the stage for the development of dense woodlands and thickets over the next 30–50 years. Tsetse fly populations now prevented any significant human settlement in the area.
By the mid-1970s, wildebeest and the Cape buffalo populations had recovered and were increasingly cropping the grass, reducing the amount of fuel available for fires. The reduced intensity of fires has allowed acacia to once again become established.
In the 21st century, mass rabies vaccination programmes for domestic dogs in the Serengeti have not only indirectly prevented hundreds of human deaths, but also protected wildlife species such as the endangered African wild dog.
Each year around the same time, the circular great wildebeest migration begins in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area of the southern Serengeti in Tanzania and loops in a clockwise direction through the Serengeti National Park and north towards the Masai Mara reserve in Kenya. This migration is a natural phenomenon determined by the availability of grazing. The initial phase lasts from approximately January to March, when the calving season begins – a time when there is plenty of rain-ripened grass available for the 260,000 zebra that precede 1.7 million wildebeest and the following hundreds of thousands of other plains game, including around 470,000 gazelles.
During February, the wildebeest spend their time on the short grass plains of the southeastern part of the ecosystem, grazing and giving birth to approximately 500,000 calves within a 2 to 3-week period. Few calves are born ahead of time and of these, hardly any survive. The main reason is that very young calves are more noticeable to predators when mixed with older calves from the previous year. As the rains end in May, the animals start moving northwest into the areas around the Grumeti River, where they typically remain until late June. The crossings of the Grumeti and Mara rivers beginning in July are a popular safari attraction because crocodiles are lying in wait. The herds arrive in Kenya in late July / August, where they stay for the remainder of the dry season, except that the Thomson's and Grant's gazelles move only east/west. In early November, with the start of the short rains the migration starts moving south again, to the short grass plains of the southeast, usually arriving in December in plenty of time for calving in February.
About 250,000 wildebeest die during the journey from Tanzania to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya, a total of . Death is usually from thirst, hunger, exhaustion, or predation.
The Serengeti has some of East Africa's finest game areas. Besides being known for the great migration, the Serengeti is also famous for its abundant large predators. The ecosystem is home to over 3,000 lions ("Panthera leo"), 1,000 leopards ("Panthera pardus"), and 7,700 to 8,700 spotted hyenas ("Crocuta crocuta).".The East African cheetah are also present in Serengeti.
Wild dogs are relatively scarce in much of the Serengeti. This is particularly true in places such as Serengeti National Park (where they became extinct in 1992), in which lions and spotted hyenas, predators that steal wild dog kills and are a direct cause of wild dog mortality, are abundant.
The Serengeti is also home to a diversity of grazers, including Cape buffalo, warthogs, Grant's gazelle, eland, waterbuck, and topi. The Serengeti can support this remarkable variety of grazers only because each species, even those that are closely related, has a different diet. For example, wildebeests prefer to consume shorter grasses, while zebras prefer taller ones. Similarly, dik-diks eat the lowest leaves of a tree, impalas eat the leaves that are higher up, and giraffes eat leaves that are even higher.The governments of Tanzania and Kenya maintain a number of protected areas, including national parks, conservation areas, and game reserves, that give legal protection to over 80 percent of the Serengeti.
The southeastern area lies in the rain shadow of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area's highlands and is composed of shortgrass treeless plains with abundant small dicots. Soils are high in nutrients, overlying a shallow calcareous hardpan due to natrocarbonatite eruptions from Ol Doinyo Lengai. A gradient of soil depth northwestward across the plains results in changes in the herbaceous community and taller grass. About west, acacia woodlands appear suddenly and stretch west to Lake Victoria and north to the Loita Plains, north of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The sixteen acacia species vary over this range, their distribution determined by edaphic conditions. Near Lake Victoria, floodplains have developed from ancient lakebeds.
In the far northwest, acacia woodlands are replaced by broadleaved Terminalia-Combretum woodlands, caused by a change in geology. This area has the highest rainfall in the system and forms a refuge for the migrating ungulates at the end of the dry season.Altitudes in the Serengeti range from with mean temperatures varying from . Although the climate is usually warm and dry, rainfall occurs in two rainy seasons: March to May, and a shorter season in October and November. Rainfall amounts vary from a low of in the lee of the Ngorongoro highlands to a high of on the shores of Lake Victoria. The highlands, which are considerably cooler than the plains and are covered by montane forest, mark the eastern border of the basin in which the Serengeti lies.
The Serengeti plain is punctuated by granite and gneiss outcroppings known as kopjes. These outcroppings are the result of volcanic activity. Kopjes provide a microhabitat for non-plains wildlife. One kopje likely to be seen by visitors to the Serengeti is the Simba Kopje (Lion Kopje).
The area is also home to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which contains Ngorongoro Crater and the Olduvai Gorge, where some of the oldest hominin fossils have been found. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28861 |
Saint John, New Brunswick
Saint John is a seaport city of the Atlantic Ocean located on the Bay of Fundy in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. Saint John is the oldest incorporated city in Canada, established by royal charter on May 18, 1785, during the reign of King George III. The port is Canada's third largest port by tonnage with a cargo base that includes dry and liquid bulk, break bulk, containers, and cruise. Historically New Brunswick's largest city, in 2016 the city fell to second place, with a population of 67,575 over an area of . Greater Saint John covers a land area of across the Caledonia Highlands, with a growing population of 126,202 (as of 2016).
French colonist Samuel de Champlain landed at Saint John Harbour on June 24, 1604 (the feast of St. John the Baptist) and is where the Saint John River gets its name although Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples lived in the region for thousands of years prior calling the river Wolastoq. The Saint John area was an important area for trade and defence for Acadia during the French colonial era and Fort La Tour, in the city's harbour, was a pivotal battleground during the Acadian Civil War.
After over a century of ownership disputes over the land surrounding Saint John between the French and English, the English deported the French colonists in 1755 and constructed Fort Howe above the harbour in 1779. In 1785, the City of Saint John was established by uniting the two towns of Parrtown and Carleton on each side of the harbour after the arrival of thousands of refugees from the American Revolution who wished to remain British and were forced to leave their U.S. homes. Over the next century, waves of immigration via Partridge Island, especially during the Great Famine, would fundamentally change the city's demographics and culture.
Predated by the Maritime Archaic Indian civilization, the northwestern coastal region of the Bay of Fundy is believed to have been inhabited by the Passamaquoddy Nation several thousand years ago, while the Saint John River valley north of the bay became the domain of the Maliseet Nation. The Mi'kmaq also ventured into the territory and named the area "Měnagwĕs", which means "where they collect the dead seals."
Samuel de Champlain landed at Saint John Harbour in 1604, though he did not settle the area. Saint John was a key area for trade and defence for Acadia during the French colonial era. Moreover, Fort La Tour in the city's harbour, was a pivotal battleground during the Acadian Civil War. The region was conquered by the British by the end of the Seven Years' War. After being incorporated as a city in 1785 with an influx of British Loyalists from the northern of the former Thirteen Colonies and immigrants from Ireland, the city grew as a global hub for shipping and shipbuilding. After the partitioning of the colony of Nova Scotia in 1784, the new colony of New Brunswick was thought to be named 'New Ireland' with the capital to be in Saint John before being vetoed by George III. In 1851 the city cemented itself as a global shipbuilding hub when the , built from a Saint John yard, became the fastest in the world.
However, the city would also struggle with its success. From 1840 to 1860 sectarian violence was rampant in Saint John resulting in some of the worst urban riots in Canadian history. The city experienced a cholera outbreak in 1854 with the death of over 1,500 people, as well as a great fire in 1877 that destroyed 40% of the city and left 20,000 people homeless.
Situated in the south-central portion of the province, along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the Saint John River, the city is split by the south-flowing river and the east side is bordered on the north by the Kennebecasis River where it meets the Saint John River at Grand Bay. Saint John Harbour, where the two rivers meet the Bay of Fundy, is a deep water port and ice-free all year long. Partridge Island is in the harbour.
Stonehammer UNESCO Geopark, the first Geopark in North America, is centred around Saint John. The Geopark has been recognized by UNESCO as having exceptional geological significance. The park contains rock formations throughout the Saint John region ranging billions of years.
The Saint John River itself flows into the Bay of Fundy through a narrow gorge several hundred metres wide at the centre of the city. It contains a unique phenomenon called the Reversing Falls where the diurnal tides of the bay reverse the water flow of the river for several kilometres. A series of underwater ledges at the narrowest point of this gorge also create a series of rapids.
The topography surrounding Saint John is hilly; a result of the influence of two coastal mountain ranges which run along the Bay of Fundy – the "St. Croix Highlands" and the "Caledonia Highlands". The soil throughout the region is extremely rocky with frequent granite outcrops. The coastal plain hosts numerous freshwater lakes in the eastern, western and northern parts of the city.
In Saint John the height difference from low to high tide is approximately 8 metres (28 ft) due to the funnelling effect of the Bay of Fundy as it narrows. The Reversing Falls in Saint John, actually an area of strong rapids, provides one example of the power of these tides; at every high tide, ocean water is pushed through a narrow gorge in the middle of the city and forces the Saint John River to reverse its flow for several hours.
The climate of Saint John is humid continental (Köppen climate classification ""). The Bay of Fundy never fully freezes, thus moderating the winter temperatures compared with inland locations. Even so, with the prevailing wind blowing from the west (from land to sea), the average January temperature is about . Summers are usually warm to hot, and daytime temperatures often exceed . The highest temperature recorded in a given year is usually . The confluence of cold Bay of Fundy air and inland warmer temperatures often creates onshore winds that bring periods of fog and cooler temperatures during the summer months.
Precipitation in Saint John totals about annually and is well distributed throughout the year, although the late autumn and early winter are typically the wettest time of year. Snowfalls can often be heavy, but rain is as common as snow in winter, and it is not unusual for the ground to be snow-free even in mid-winter.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Saint John was on June 22, 1941, August 15, 1944, and August 22, 1976. The coldest temperature ever recorded was on February 11, 1948.
The population of the city declined from the 1970s to the early 21st century. This trend reversed itself and the city's population increased in the 2011 census, but then declined again by 2016. Saint John was New Brunswick's largest city until 2016.
In 2011, the population of the Greater Saint John area was 127,761, of whom 49% were male and 51% female. Children under fifteen accounted for approximately 16% of the population. People 65 and over accounted for approximately 15% of the population. When the census was taken in May 2011 the population of the Saint John metropolitan area was 127,761 compared with 122,389 in 2006.
Historically, as one of Canada's main ports, Saint John has been a centre for immigration from all over the world. The city was incorporated in the late 1700s after more than 3,300 Black Loyalist refugees came to Saint John along with more than 10,000 white refugees after the American Revolution. In the years between 1815 and 1867, when immigration of that era passed its peak, more than 150,000 immigrants from Ireland came to Saint John dramatically changing the city.
Those who came in the earlier period were largely tradesmen, and many stayed in Saint John, becoming the backbone of its builders. But when the Great Irish Potato Famine raged between 1845 and 1852, huge waves of famine refugees flooded the city's shores. It is estimated that between 1845 and 1847, some 30,000 arrived, more people than were living in the city at the time. In 1847, dubbed "Black 47", one of the worst years of the famine, some 16,000 immigrants, most of them from Ireland, arrived at Partridge Island, the immigration and quarantine station at the mouth of Saint John Harbour.
As of the 2016 census, approximately 87.7% of the residents were white, while 7% were visible minorities and 5.3% were aboriginal. The largest visible minority groups were Black (2.1%), Chinese (1.4%), Arab (0.9%), and South Asian (0.7%). 5% of Saint Johners are francophone.
With regard to religion, 89.2% identify as Christian (47.6% Protestant, 40.3% Roman Catholic, and 1.3% other Christian, mostly Orthodox and independent churches). 10.1% state no religious affiliation, and other religions including Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism together comprise less than 1%.
Saint John is one of five chartered cities in Canada, giving it unique legislative powers.
Saint John is governed by a body of elected officials, referred to as "Common Council", whose responsibilities include:
The Common Council consists of:
One is elected by the council to serve as Deputy Mayor.
As of 2017, the Council's members are:
In the October 9, 2007 Plebiscite, it was decided that as of the May 2008 quadrennial municipal elections, the city will be divided into four wards of approximately equal population, with two councillors to be elected by the voters in that ward, and two councillors to be elected at large.
Saint John derived its economy from maritime industries such as shipping, fishing and shipbuilding. Saint John has a long history of shipbuilding at the city's dry dock, which is one of the largest in the world. Since 2003 shipbuilding has ended on the scale it once was, forcing the city to adopt a new economic strategy. The University of New Brunswick, the New Brunswick Museum and the New Brunswick Community College are important institutions, and along with Radian6, Horizon Health Network and many others, they are a part of Saint John's fast-growing research and information-technology sectors. As the city moves away from its industrial past it now begins to capitalize on the growing sector of tourism, hosting over 1.5 million visitors a year and 200,000 cruise ship visitors a year, creating a renaissance in the city's historic downtown (locally known as uptown). Many small businesses have moved into Uptown and large scale waterfront developments are underway, such as the Fundy Quay (condo, hotel and office space), Saint John Law Courts, and the Three Sisters Harbourfront condos.
The arts and culture sector plays a large role in Saint John's economy. The Imperial Theatre is home to the highly acclaimed Saint John Theatre Company, and the Symphony New Brunswick and hosts a large collection of plays, concerts and other stage productions year-round. Harbour Station entertainment complex is home to the Saint John Sea Dogs of the QMJHL and the Saint John Riptide of the NBL.
Art galleries in Saint John cover the uptown, more than any other Atlantic Canadian city. Artists like Miller Brittain and Fred Ross have made Uptown Saint John their home, and now the torch has been passed to artists like Gerard Collins, Cliff Turner and Peter Salmon and their respective galleries. Uptown art galleries also include the Trinity Galleries, Citadel Gallery, Handworks Gallery and the Saint John Arts Centre (SJAC). The SJAC in the Carnegie Building hosts art exhibits, workshops, local songwriters' circles and other shows too small to be featured at the grand Imperial Theatre.
Saint John maintains industrial infrastructure in the city's East side such as Canada's largest oil refinery as well as the country's largest dry dock. Capitalist K.C. Irving and his family built his unfettered industrial conglomerate in the city by buying up mills, shipyards, media outlets, and other industrial infrastructure during the 20th century, and still continue to this day. Today Irving dominates the city and province with stakes in oil, forestry, shipbuilding, media and transportation. Irving companies remain dominant employers in the region with North America's first deepwater oil terminal, a pulp mill, a paper mill and a tissue paper plant.
Other important economic activity in the city is generated by the Port of Saint John.
Saint John has a long history of brewers, such as Simeon Jones, The Olands, and James Ready. The city is now home to Moosehead Breweries, James Ready Brewing Co., Big Tide Brewing Co., Picaroon's and other craft brewers. The Moosehead Brewery (established in 1867, is Canada's only nationally distributed independent brewery [M. Nicholson]), James Ready Brewing Co., the New Brunswick Power Corporation which operates three electrical generating stations in the region including the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, Bell Aliant which operates out of the former New Brunswick Telephone headquarters, the Horizon Health Network, which operates 5 hospitals in the Saint John area, and numerous information technology companies. There are also a number of call centres which were established in the 1990s under provincial government incentives.
Until the first decade of the 21st century, Canada's largest shipyard (Irving Shipbuilding) had been an important employer in the city. During the 1980s-early 1990s the shipyard was responsible for building 9 of the 12 multi-purpose patrol frigates for the Canadian Navy. However, the Irvings closed the shipyard in 2003 and centralized in Halifax.
Prior to the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the Port of Saint John functioned as the winter port for Montreal, Quebec when shipping was unable to traverse the sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence River. The Canadian Pacific Railway opened a line to Saint John from Montreal in 1889 across the state of Maine and transferred the majority of its trans-Atlantic passenger and cargo shipping to the port during the winter months. The port fell into decline following the seaway opening and the start of year-round icebreaker services in the 1960s. In 1994 CPR left Saint John when it sold the line to shortline operator New Brunswick Southern Railway. The Canadian National Railway still services Saint John with a secondary mainline from Moncton. Despite these setbacks, Port Saint John is the largest port by volume in Eastern Canada, at about 28 million metric tonnes of cargo per year, including containers and bulk cargo.
Besides being the location of several historical forts, such as Fort Howe, Fort Dufferin, Fort Latour, and the Carleton Martello Tower, Saint John is the location of a number of reserve units of the Canadian Forces.
Saint John is often described as the birthplace of unionism in Canada and is one of the few pre-capitalist colonial settlements in North America. The city has a history of labour achievements and sparked the Canadian labour movement with Canada's first trade union, the Labourers' Benevolent Association (now International Longshoremen's Association Local 273). In 1849 the union was formed when Saint John's longshoremen banded together to lobby for regular pay and a shorter workday. One of their first resolutions was to apply to the city council for permission to erect the bell, which would announce the beginning and end of the labourers' 10-hour workday. As the bell shears were hardly finished when capitalists and merchants in the city objected to the bell and successfully lobbied city hall to keep the bell from being put up. But then, citizens and longshoremen defied the order and erected a larger bell and merchants withdrew their opposition to the "Labourers' Bell". ILA Local 273 remain one of the city's strongest trade unions to this day.
The 1914 Saint John street railway strike (sometimes called the "Saint John street railwaymen's strike") was a strike by workers on the street railway system in the city which lasted from July 22 to 24, 1914, with rioting by Saint John inhabitants occurring on July 23 and 24. The strike was important for shattering the image of Saint John as a conservative town dominated primarily by ethnic and religious (rather than class) divisions, and highlighting tensions between railway industrialists and the local working population.
The Saint John General Strike of 1976 was a result of the Bill C-73 passed by Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the House of Commons in Ottawa on October 14, 1975. This bill limited wage increases to 8% the first year, 6% the second year, and 4% the third year after its enactment. Most provinces of Canada accepted the bill by spring of 1976, but within eighteen months they began to withdraw from the program. After its introduction in 1975, it was not until 1976 that the Anti-Inflation Board (AIB) began to roll back workers' wages. The employees of Irving Pulp and Paper, members of the Canadian Paper Workers Union, were among the first to experience the roll backs implemented by the AIB. The paper workers were required to give back to the employer 9.8% of their previous wage increase the first year, and 11% the second year. The Atlantic Sugar Refinery workers of the Bakery and Confectionary Workers International Union of America soon felt the burden as well. The majority of workers within Saint John were influenced by the AIB by January 1976. On February 5, 1976, the Saint John District and the Labour Council held a conference to plan an organized opposition to the AIB. Fifty-two people came to the meeting as representatives of twenty-six unions in Saint John. The council was led by the Labour Council president, George Vair. They began by educating those present on wage control legislation, but swiftly transitioned into rallying and demonstrating in opposition throughout the city. Five thousand marched from numerous ends of the town to King Square. All major industries in Saint John were shut down.
On May 12, 1994, at 4:30 pm, members of Local 691 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union at the Irving Oil Ltd. Refinery went on strike. At this time the refinery's management took over its operations. Irving had argued the refinery might have to shut down and had to bring in a bevy of rollbacks to the workers’ pay and benefits and other changes to the collective agreement. Local 691 argued Irving simply wished to lengthen the work week without paying workers overtime rates. The strike lasted 27 months and was based on Irving’s demands for flexibility of the workers to ensure the refinery was competitive. The strike is seen as symbolic of a rollback of labour and democratic collective bargaining rights that have been in decline across North America.
Air service into Saint John is provided by the Saint John Airport/Aéroport de Saint-Jean, near Loch Lomond east northeast of the central business district or approximately by road northeast of the city centre. Flights are offered by Sunwing Airlines (seasonal) and Air Canada (Air Canada Express and Air Canada Rouge). In 2011, WestJet decided to withdraw from the Saint John Airport. Quebec-based Pascan Aviation announced its expansion into Saint John in late 2012, with direct flights from Saint John to Quebec City, Newfoundland, and other destinations beginning in September 2012. Porter Airlines flies once daily from Saint John, to Ottawa and Toronto Island Airport.
The main highway in the city is the Saint John Throughway (Route 1). Route 1 extends west to the United States border, and northeast towards both Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. A second major highway, Route 7, connects Saint John with Fredericton. There are two main road crossings over the Saint John River: the Harbour Bridge and the Reversing Falls Bridge, approximately upstream.
The Reversing Falls Railway Bridge carries rail traffic for the New Brunswick Southern Railway on the route from Saint John to Maine. Saint John was serviced by the "Atlantic" Line of Via Rail passenger service. Passenger rail service in Saint John was discontinued in December 1994, although the Canadian National Railway and New Brunswick Southern Railway continue to provide freight service.
Port Saint John is located where the Saint John River meets the Atlantic Ocean. Thus both the ocean and the river system is navigable from Saint John docks.Bay Ferries operates a ferry service, , across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, Nova Scotia. The Summerville to Millidgeville Ferry, a free propeller (as opposed to cable) ferry service operated by the New Brunswick Department of Transportation, connects the Millidgeville neighbourhood with Summerville, New Brunswick, across the Kennebecasis River on the Kingston Peninsula.
Saint John Transit is the largest transit system in New Brunswick in both area coverage and ridership. Bus service is provided by Saint John Transit (Greater Saint John Area) and Maritime Bus (Inter-city). Acadian Lines used to operate regular inter-city bus services between New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Bangor, as well as Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec (connecting with Orléans Express). Maritime Bus has since replaced Acadian Lines as the regional bus service.
The city has always been a traditional hub for the arts on the east coast, boasting many notable artists, actors and musicians, including Walter Pidgeon, Donald Sutherland, Louis B. Mayer, and Miller Brittain.
What is considered the golden age of the Saint John arts community was during the post-war era from 1940 to 1970 when the city produced renowned artists and writers such as poet Kay Smith, painters Jack Humphrey, Miller Brittain, Bruno Bobak, Fred Ross, and sculptor John Hooper and folk-singer Tom Connors. Poet Bliss Carman once wrote about Saint John, "All the beauty and mystery Of life were there, adventure bold, Youth, and the glamour of the sea, And all its sorrows old."
Early settlers influenced music in Saint John from the time the area had been a series of forts for the English and French colonists. Working class fishers, labourers and shipbuilders carried Maritime traditions and folk songs with kitchen parties and outdoor gatherings. But musical high culture was captured by the wealthy. New Brunswick's solicitor-general 1784–1808, Ward Chipman Sr was known to have fancy soirées at his home with all the latest songs from London. A notable Loyalist musician, Stephen Humbert, moved in 1783 from New Jersey to Saint John and opened a Sacred Vocal Music School. In 1801 Humbert published Union Harmony, the first Canadian music book in English. The Mechanics' Institute, built in 1840, was the first large-scale platform for comic opera and concerts. In 1950 The Saint John Symphony was founded by Kelsey Jones; by 1983 the organization became Symphony New Brunswick. Some musicians from Saint John include Berkley Chadwick, Stompin' Tom Connors, Ken Tobias, Blank Banshee, Stevedore Steve, Jane Coop, Bruce Holder, Frances James, the songwriter Michael F. Kelly, Ned Landry, the composer and teacher Edward Betts Manning, Paul Murray, Catherine McKinnon, Patricia Rideout, Philip Thomson, and the tenor and choir conductor Gordon Wry.
Music festivals have long been a part of the city's cultural scene. New Brunswick's Music Festival was held in Saint John every Spring in the early- to mid-20th century. As the city's music changed with the times, so did its festivals. Other popular festivals include the now defunct Festival By The Sea and Salty Jam catering to various genres of pop music.
The Area 506 music festival is held every New Brunswick Day long-weekend at Long Wharf on Saint John Harbour. The festival is set up with shipping containers from the port with vendors from New Brunswick companies to promote local business. A main stage area is also set up for night time shows with local acts as well as major groups. Major bands to have played Area 506 include Tegan and Sara, Stars, Bahamas, Interpol, and Arkells. Each year the festival also includes a bevy of bands coming out of the Saint John music scene. Quality Block Party music festival hosts independent New Brunswick musicians in smaller venues throughout uptown Saint John. The festival gets its name from the old quality block on Germain Street.
The following teams are based in Saint John:
The following sporting events have been held here:
In 1964, the University of New Brunswick created UNB Saint John in buildings throughout the uptown CBD. In 1968, UNBSJ opened a new campus in the city's Tucker Park neighbourhood. This campus has undergone expansion over the years and is the fastest-growing component of the UNB system, with many new buildings constructed from the 1970s to the first decade of the 21st century. A trend in recent years has been a growth in the number of international students. The city also hosts a New Brunswick Community College campus in the East End of the city. There has also been a satellite campus of Dalhousie Medical School added within the UNBSJ campus in 2010, instructing 30 medical students each year.
In the fall of 2007, a report commissioned by the provincial government recommended UNBSJ and the NBCC be reformed and consolidated into a new polytechnic post-secondary institute. The proposal immediately came under heavy criticism and led to the organizing of several protests in the uptown area, citing the diminishment of UNB as a nationally accredited university, the reduction in accessibility to receive degrees – and these are only a couple of the reasons why the community was enraged by the recommendation. Support for keeping UNBSJ as it was, and expanding the university under its current structure, fell slightly below 90%. Seeing too much political capital would be lost, and several Saint John MPs were likely not to support the initiative if the policies recommended by the report were legislated, the government abandoned the commission's report and created an intra-provincial post-secondary commission.
Saint John is served by two school boards: Anglophone South School District schools and Francophone Sud School District (based out of Dieppe, New Brunswick) for the city's only Francophone school, Centre-Scolaire-Communautaire Samuel-de-Champlain. Saint John is also home to Canada's oldest publicly funded school, Saint John High School. The other high schools in the city are Harbour View High School, St. Malachy's High School, and Simonds High School. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28866 |
Sigyn
In Norse mythology, Sigyn (Old Norse "victorious girl-friend") is a goddess and is the wife of Loki. Sigyn is attested in the "Poetic Edda", compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the "Prose Edda", written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the "Poetic Edda", little information is provided about Sigyn other than her role in assisting Loki during his captivity. In the "Prose Edda", her role in helping her husband through his time spent in bondage is stated again, she appears in various kennings, and her status as a goddess is mentioned twice. Sigyn may appear on the Gosforth Cross and has been the subject of an amount of theory and cultural references.
Sigyn is attested in the following works:
In stanza 35 of the "Poetic Edda" poem "Völuspá", a völva tells Odin that, amongst many other things, she sees Sigyn sitting very unhappily with her bound husband, Loki, under a "grove of hot springs". Sigyn is mentioned a second (and final) time in the ending prose section of the poem "Lokasenna". In the prose, Loki has been bound by the gods with the guts of his son Nari, his son Váli is described as having been turned into a wolf, and the goddess Skaði fastens a venomous snake over Loki's face, from which venom drips. Sigyn, again described as Loki's wife, holds a basin under the dripping venom. The basin grows full, and she pulls it away, during which time venom drops on Loki, causing him to writhe so violently that earthquakes occur that shake the entire earth.
Sigyn appears in the books "Gylfaginning" and "Skáldskaparmál" in the "Prose Edda". In "Gylfaginning", Sigyn is introduced in chapter 31. There, she is introduced as the wife of Loki, and that they have a son by the name of "Nari or Narfi". Sigyn is mentioned again in "Gylfaginning" in chapter 50, where events are described differently than in "Lokasenna". Here, the gods have captured Loki and his two sons, who are stated as Váli, described as a son of Loki, and "Nari or Narfi", the latter earlier described as also a son of Sigyn. Váli is changed into a wolf by the gods, and rips apart his brother "Nari or Narfi". The guts of "Nari or Narfi" are then used to tie Loki to three stones, after which the guts turn to iron, and Skaði places a snake above Loki. Sigyn places herself beside him, where she holds out a bowl to catch the dripping venom. However, when the bowl becomes full she leaves to pour out the venom. As a result, Loki is again described as shaking so violently that the planet shakes, and this process repeats until he breaks free, setting Ragnarök into motion.
Sigyn is introduced as a goddess, an ásynja, in the "Prose Edda" book "Skáldskaparmál", where the gods are holding a grand feast for the visiting Ægir, and in kennings for Loki: "husband of Sigyn", "cargo [Loki] of incantation-fetter's [Sigyn's] arms", and in a passage quoted from the 9th-century "Haustlöng", "the burden of Sigyn's arms". The final mention of Sigyn in "Skáldskaparmál" is in the list of ásynjur in the appended Nafnaþulur section, chapter 75.
The mid-11th century Gosforth Cross located in Cumbria, England, has been interpreted as featuring various figures from Norse mythology. The bottom portion of the west side of the cross features a depiction of a long-haired female, kneeling figure holding an object above another prostrate, bound figure. Above and to their left is a knotted serpent. This has been interpreted as Sigyn soothing the bound Loki.
While the name "Sigyn" is found as a female personal name in Old Norse sources (Old Norse "sigr" meaning 'victory' and "vina" meaning 'girl-friend'), and though in surviving sources she is largely restricted to a single role, she appears in the 9th century skaldic poem "Haustlöng" from pagan times, written by the skald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir. Due to this early connection with Loki, Sigyn has been theorized as being a goddess dating back to an older form of Germanic paganism.
The scene of Sigyn Loki has been depicted on a number of paintings, including "Loke och Sigyn" (1850) by Nils Blommér, "Loke och Sigyn" (1863) by Mårten Eskil Winge, "Loki och Sigyn (1879) by Oscar Wergeland, and the illustration "Loki und Sigyn; Hel mit dem Hunde Garm" (1883) by K. Ehrenberg. Various objects and places have been named after Sigyn in modern times, including the Norwegian stiff-straw winter wheat varieties "Sigyn I" and "Sigyn II", a Marvel Comics character (1978) of the same name, the Swedish vessel MS Sigyn, which transports spent nuclear fuel in an allusion to Sigyn holding a bowl beneath the venom to spare Loki, and the antarctic Sigyn Glacier. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28867 |
Solidarity (Polish trade union)
Solidarity (, ; full name: Independent Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarity"—"Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy "Solidarność"" ) is a trade union founded in August–September 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state. The union's membership peaked at 10 million in September 1981, representing one-third of the country's working-age population. Solidarity's leader, Lech Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and the union is widely recognised as having played a central role in the end of communist rule in Poland.
In the 1980s, Solidarity was a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement, using methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of workers' rights and social change. Government attempts in the early 1980s to destroy the union through the imposition of martial law in Poland and the use of political repression failed. Operating underground, with significant financial support from the Vatican and the United States, estimated to be as much as US$50 million, the union survived and by the latter 1980s had entered into negotiations with the government.
The 1989 round table talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition produced agreement for the 1989 legislative elections, the country's first pluralistic election since 1947. By the end of August, a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December 1990, Wałęsa was elected President of Poland.
Following Poland's transition to liberal capitalism in the 1990s and the extensive privatization of state assets, Solidarity's membership and influence declined significantly; by 2010, 30 years after being founded, the union had lost more than 90% of its original membership.
In the 1970s Poland's government raised food prices while wages were stagnant. This and other stresses led to protests in 1976 and a subsequent government crackdown on dissent. The KOR, the ROPCIO and other groups began to form underground networks to monitor and oppose the government's behavior. Labour unions formed an important part of this network. In 1979, the Polish economy shrank for the first time since World War II, by 2 percent. Foreign debt reached around $18 billion by 1980.
Anna Walentynowicz was fired from the Gdańsk Shipyard on 7 August 1980, five months before she was due to retire, for participation in the illegal trade union. This management decision enraged the workers of the shipyard, who staged a strike action on 14 August defending Anna Walentynowicz and demanding her return. She and Alina Pienkowska transformed a strike over bread and butter issues into a solidarity strike in sympathy with strikes on other establishments.
Solidarity emerged on 31 August 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard when the communist government of Poland signed the agreement allowing for its existence. On 17 September 1980, over twenty Inter-factory Founding Committees of free trade unions merged at the congress into one national organization NSZZ Solidarity. It officially registered on 10 November 1980.
Lech Wałęsa and others formed a broad anti-Soviet social movement ranging from people associated with the Catholic Church to members of the anti-Soviet left. Polish nationalism, together with pro-American liberalism, played an important part in the development of Solidarity in the 1980s. Solidarity advocated non-violence in its members' activities. In September 1981, Solidarity's first national congress elected Wałęsa as a president and adopted a republican program, the "Self-governing Republic". The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repression, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union.
Roundtable Talks between the government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed, and in December Tadeusz Mazowiecki was elected Prime Minister. Since 1989, Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union, and had relatively little impact on the political scene of Poland in the early 1990s. A political arm founded in 1996 as Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) won the parliamentary election in 1997, but lost the following 2001 election. Currently, as a political party "Solidarity" has little influence on modern Polish politics.
In the year leading up to martial law, Reagan Administration policies supported the Solidarity movement, waging a public relations campaign to deter what the Carter administration had seen as "an imminent move by large Soviet military forces into Poland." Michael Reisman from Yale Law School named operations in Poland as one of the covert regime change actions of the CIA during the Cold War. Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff, was secretly sending reports to CIA officer David Forden. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) transferred around $2 million yearly in cash to Solidarity, for a total of $10 million over five years. There were no direct links between the CIA and Solidarnosc, and all money was channeled through third parties. CIA officers were barred from meeting Solidarity leaders, and the CIA's contacts with Solidarnosc activists were weaker than those of the AFL-CIO, which raised $300,000 from its members, which were used to provide material and cash directly to Solidarity, with no control of Solidarity's use of it. The U.S. Congress authorized the National Endowment for Democracy to promote democracy, and the NED allocated $10 million to Solidarity.
The Polish government enacted martial law in December 1981, however, Solidarity was not alerted. Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention." CIA support for Solidarity included money, equipment and training, which was coordinated by Special Operations. Henry Hyde, U.S. House intelligence committee member, stated that the USA provided "supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice". Initial funds for covert actions by CIA were $2 million, but soon after authorization were increased and by 1985 CIA successfully infiltrated Poland.
In 2017, Solidarity backed a proposal to implement blue laws to prohibit Sunday shopping, a move supported by Polish bishops. A 2018 new Polish law banning almost all trade on Sundays has taken effect, with large supermarkets and most other retailers closed for the first time since liberal shopping laws were introduced in the 1990s. The Law and Justice party passed the legislation with the support of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Although Leszek Kołakowski's works were officially banned in Poland, and he lived outside the country from the late 1960s, the philosopher's ideas nonetheless exerted an influence on the Solidarity movement. Underground copies of his books and essays shaped the opinions of the Polish intellectual opposition. His 1971 essay "Theses on Hope and Hopelessness", which suggested that self-organized social groups could gradually expand the spheres of civil society in a totalitarian state, helped inspire the dissident movements of the 1970s that led to the creation of Solidarity and provided a philosophical underpinning for the movement.
Kołakowski later described Solidarity as "perhaps [the] closest to the working class revolution" that Karl Marx had predicted in the mid-1800s. Ironically, however, Solidarity featured many elements contrary to socialism as conceived by Marx: "[workers organized] against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope."
The survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, a satellite state of the USSR ruled (in practice) by a one-party Communist regime, but the whole of the Eastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the communist Polish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine-gun fire (killing over thirty and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet communist government in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions.
Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their communist governments. As a result of the Round Table Agreement between the Polish government and the Solidarity-led opposition, elections were held in Poland on 4 June 1989, in which the opposition was allowed to field candidates against the Communist Party—the first free elections in any Soviet bloc country. A new upper chamber (the Senate) was created in the Polish parliament and all of its 100 seats were contestable in the election, as well as one-third of the seats in the more important lower chamber (the Sejm). Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and all 161 contestable seats in the Sejm—a victory that also triggered a chain reaction across the Soviet Union's satellite states, leading to almost entirely peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe known as the Revolutions of 1989 ("Jesień Ludów" or "Wiosna Obywatelów"), which ended in the overthrow of each Moscow-imposed regime, and ultimately to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Given the union's support from many western governments, relations with trade unions in capitalist countries could be complicated. For example, during the UK miners' strike of 1984–85, Wałęsa said that "The miners should fight, but with common sense—not with destruction" and said of Margaret Thatcher "With such a wise and brave woman, Britain will find a solution to the strike." However, David Jastrzębski, the president of Upper Silesia Solidarity, voiced his support of the striking miners: "Neither the British government's mounted police charges nor its truncheon blows, any more than the Polish junta's tanks or rifle fire, can break our common will to struggle for a better future for the working class." This was despite the fact that Arthur Scargill, president of the British National Union of Mineworkers had been highly critical of Solidarity, condemning it as an "anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state".
In 2005, the trade union Solidarity – The Union for British Workers was created in honour of the original Polish union by the far-right British National Party.
In late 2008, several democratic opposition groups in the Russian Federation formed a Solidarity movement.
In the United States, the American Solidarity Party (formerly the Christian Democratic Party USA), a Christian democratic political party, attributes its namesake to Solidarity.
In a 2011 essay "The Jacobin Spirit" in the American magazine Jacobin, philosopher Slavoj Zizek called Solidarnosc' one of the "free spaces at a distance from state power" that used "defensive violence" to protect itself from state control. The notion of "defensive violence" runs in the vein of ideas postulated by Alain Badiou.
The union was officially founded on 17 September 1980, the union's supreme powers were vested in a legislative body, the "Convention of Delegates" ("Zjazd Delegatów"). The executive branch was the National Coordinating Commission ("Krajowa Komisja Porozumiewawcza"), later renamed the National Commission ("Komisja Krajowa"). The Union had a regional structure, comprising 38 regions ("region") and two districts ("okręg"). At its highest, the Union had over 10 million members, which became the largest union membership in the world. During the communist era the 38 regional delegates were arrested and jailed when martial law came into effect on 13 December 1981 under General Wojciech Jaruzelski. After a one-year prison term the high-ranking members of the union were offered one way trips to any country accepting them (including Canada, the United States, and nations in the Middle East).
Solidarity was organized as an industrial union, or more specifically according to the One Big Union principle, along the lines of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (workers in every trade were organized by region, rather than by craft).
In 2010, Solidarity had more than 400,000 members. National Commission of Independent Self-Governing Trade Union is located in Gdańsk and is composed of Delegates from Regional General Congresses.
Solidarity is divided into 37 regions, and the territorial structure to a large degree reflects the shape of Polish voivodeships, established in 1975 and annulled in 1998 (see: Administrative division of People's Republic of Poland). The regions are:
The network of Solidarity branches of the key factories of Poland was created on 14 April 1981 in Gdańsk. It was made of representatives of seventeen factories; each stood for the most important factory of every voivodeship of the pre-1975 Poland (see: Administrative division of People's Republic of Poland). However, there were two exceptions. There was no representative of the Koszalin Voivodeship, and the Katowice Voivodeship was represented by two factories: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28869 |
Surtsey
Surtsey ("Surtr's island" in Icelandic, ) is a volcanic island located in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off the southern coast of Iceland. At , Surtsey is the southernmost point of Iceland. It was formed in a volcanic eruption which began below sea level, and reached the surface on 14 November 1963. The eruption lasted until 5 June 1967, when the island reached its maximum size of . Since then, wave erosion has caused the island to steadily diminish in size: , its surface area was . The most recent survey (2007) shows the island's maximum elevation at above sea level.
The new island was named after "Surtr", a fire "jötunn" or giant from Norse mythology. It was intensively studied by volcanologists during its eruption, and afterwards by botanists and other biologists as life forms gradually colonised the originally barren island. The undersea vents that produced Surtsey are part of the "Vestmannaeyjar" submarine volcanic system, part of the fissure of the sea floor called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Vestmannaeyjar also produced the famous eruption of "Eldfell" on the island of Heimaey in 1973. The eruption that created Surtsey also created a few other small islands along this volcanic chain, such as "Jólnir" and other unnamed peaks. Most of these eroded away fairly quickly. It is estimated that Surtsey will remain above sea level for another 100 years.
The eruption was unexpected, and almost certainly began some days before it became apparent at the surface. The sea floor at the eruption site is below sea level, and at this depth volcanic emissions and explosions would be suppressed, quenched and dissipated by the water pressure and density. Gradually, as repeated flows built up a mound of material that approached sea level, the explosions could no longer be contained, and activity broke the surface.
The first noticeable indications of volcanic activity were recorded at the seismic station in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, Iceland from 6 to 8 November, which detected weak tremors emanating from an epicentre approximately west-south-west at a distance of , the location of Surtsey. Another station in Reykjavík recorded even weaker tremors for ten hours on 12 November at an undetermined location, when seismic activity ceased until 21 November. That same day, people in the coastal town of Vík away noticed a smell of hydrogen sulphide. On 13 November, a fishing vessel in search of herring, equipped with sensitive thermometers, noted sea temperatures SW of the eruption center were higher than surrounding waters.
At 07:15 UTC on 14 November 1963, the cook of "Ísleifur II", a trawler sailing these same waters, spotted a rising column of dark smoke southwest of the boat. The captain thought it might have been a boat on fire, and ordered his crew to investigate. Instead, they encountered explosive eruptions giving off black columns of ash, indicating that a volcanic eruption had begun to penetrate the surface of the sea. By 11:00 the same day, the eruption column had reached several kilometres in height. At first the eruptions took place at three separate vents along a northeast by southwest trending fissure, but by the afternoon the separate eruption columns had merged into one along the erupting fissure. Over the next week, explosions were continuous, and after just a few days the new island, formed mainly of scoria, measured over in length and had reached a height of .
As the eruptions continued, they became concentrated at one vent along the fissure and began to build the island into a more circular shape. By 24 November, the island measured about . The violent explosions caused by the meeting of lava and sea water meant that the island consisted of a loose pile of volcanic rock (scoria), which was eroded rapidly by North Atlantic storms during the winter. However, eruptions more than kept pace with wave erosion, and by February 1964, the island had a maximum diameter of over .
The explosive phreatomagmatic eruptions caused by the easy access of water to the erupting vents threw rocks up to a kilometre (0.6 mi) away from the island, and sent ash clouds as high as up into the atmosphere. The loose pile of unconsolidated tephra would quickly have been washed away had the supply of fresh magma dwindled, and large clouds of dust were often seen blowing away from the island during this stage of the eruption.
The new island was named after the fire jötunn Surtur from Norse mythology ("Surts" is the genitive case of "Surtur", plus -ey, "island"). Three French journalists representing the magazine "Paris Match" notably landed there on 6 December 1963, staying for about 15 minutes before violent explosions encouraged them to leave. The journalists jokingly claimed French sovereignty over the island, but Iceland quickly asserted that the new island belonged to it.
By early 1964, though, the continuing eruptions had built the island to such a size that sea water could no longer easily reach the vents, and the volcanic activity became much less explosive. Instead, lava fountains and flows became the main form of activity. These resulted in a hard cap of extremely erosion-resistant rock being laid down on top of much of the loose volcanic pile, which prevented the island from being washed away rapidly. Effusive eruptions continued until 1965, by which time the island had a surface area of .
On 28 December 1963, submarine activity to the northeast of Surtsey caused the formation of a ridge high on the sea floor. This seamount was named Surtla, but never reached sea level. Eruptions at Surtla ended on 6 January 1964, and it has since been eroded from its minimum depth of below sea level.
In 1965, the activity on the main island diminished, but at the end of May that year an eruption began at a vent off the northern shore. By 28 May, an island had appeared, and was named Syrtlingur (Little Surtsey). The new island was washed away during early June, but reappeared on 14 June. Eruptions at Syrtlingur were much smaller in scale than those that had built Surtsey, with the average rate of emission of volcanic materials being about a tenth of the rate at the main vent. Activity was short-lived, continuing until the beginning of October 1965, by which time the islet had an area of . Once the eruptions had ceased, wave erosion rapidly wore the island away, and it disappeared beneath the waves on 24 October.
During December 1965, more submarine activity occurred southwest of Surtsey, and another island was formed. It was named Jólnir, and over the following eight months it appeared and disappeared several times, as wave erosion and volcanic activity alternated in dominance. Activity at Jólnir was much weaker than the activity at the main vent, and even weaker than that seen at Syrtlingur, but the island eventually grew to a maximum size of in height, covering an area of , during July and early August 1966. Like Syrtlingur, though, after activity ceased on 8 August 1966, it was rapidly eroded, and dropped below sea level during October 1966.
Effusive eruptions on the main island returned on 19 August 1966, with fresh lava flows giving it further resistance to erosion. The eruption rate diminished steadily, though, and on 5 June 1967, the eruption ended. The volcano has been dormant ever since. The total volume of lava emitted during the three-and-a-half-year eruption was about one cubic kilometre (0.24 cu mi), and the island's highest point was above sea level at that time.
Since the end of the eruption, erosion has seen the island diminish in size. A large area on the southeast side has been eroded away completely, while a sand spit called "Norðurtangi" (north point) has grown on the north side of the island. It is estimated that about of material has been lost due to erosion—this represents about a quarter of the original above-sea-level volume of the island. Its maximum elevation has diminished to .
Following the end of the eruption, scientists established a grid of benchmarks against which they measured the change in the shape of the island. In the 20 years following the end of the eruption, measurements revealed that the island was steadily subsiding and had lost about one metre in height. The rate of subsidence was initially about per year but slowed to a year by the 1990s. It had several causes: settling of the loose tephra forming the bulk of the volcano, compaction of sea floor sediments underlying the island, and downward warping of the lithosphere due to the weight of the volcano.
Volcanoes in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago are typically monogenetic, and so the island is unlikely to be enlarged in the future by further eruptions. The heavy seas around the island have been eroding it ever since the island appeared, and since the end of the eruption almost half of its original area has been lost. The island currently loses about of its surface area each year.
As a suspected part of the Iceland plume, this island is unlikely to disappear entirely in the near future. The eroded area consisted mostly of loose tephra, easily washed away. Most of the remaining area is capped by hard lava flows, which are much more resistant to erosion. In addition, complex chemical reactions within the loose tephra within the island have gradually formed highly erosion resistant tuff material, in a process known as palagonitization. On Surtsey this process has happened quite rapidly, due to high temperatures not far below the surface.
Estimates of how long Surtsey will survive are based on the rate of erosion seen up to the present day. Assuming that the current rate does not change, the island will be mostly at or below sea level by 2100. However, the rate of erosion is likely to slow as the tougher core of the island is exposed: an assessment assuming that the rate of erosion will slow exponentially suggests that the island will survive for many centuries. An idea of what it will look like in the future is given by the other small islands in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, which formed in the same way as Surtsey several thousand years ago, and have eroded away substantially since they were formed.
A classic site for the study of biocolonisation from founder populations that arrive from outside ("allochthonous"), Surtsey was declared a nature reserve in 1965, while the eruption was still in active progress. Today only a few scientists are permitted to land on Surtsey; the only way anyone else can see it closely is from a small plane. This allows the natural ecological succession for the island to proceed without outside interference. In 2008, UNESCO declared the island a World Heritage Site, in recognition of its great scientific value.
In the spring of 1965, the first vascular plant was found growing on the northern shore of Surtsey, mosses became visible in 1967, and lichens were first found on the Surtsey lava in 1970. Plant colonisation on Surtsey has been closely studied, the vascular plants in particular as they have been of far greater significance than mosses, lichens and fungi in the development of vegetation.
Mosses and lichens now cover much of the island. During the island's first 20 years, 20 species of plants were observed at one time or another, but only 10 became established in the nutrient-poor sandy soil. As birds began nesting on the island, soil conditions improved, and more vascular plant species were able to survive. In 1998, the first bush was found on the island—a tea-leaved willow ("Salix phylicifolia"), which can grow to heights of up to . By 2008, 69 species of plant had been found on Surtsey, of which about 30 had become established. This compares to the approximately 490 species found on mainland Iceland. More species continue to arrive, at a typical rate of roughly 2–5 new species per year.
The expansion of bird life on the island has both relied on and helped to advance the spread of plant life. Birds use the plants for nesting material, but also continue to assist in the spreading of seeds, and fertilize the soil with their guano. Birds first began nesting on Surtsey three years after the eruptions ended, with fulmar and guillemot the first species to set up home. Twelve species are now regularly found on the island.
A gull colony has been present since 1984, although gulls were seen briefly on the shores of the new island only weeks after it first appeared. The gull colony has been particularly important in developing the plant life on Surtsey, and the gulls have had much more of an impact on plant colonisation than other breeding species due to their abundance. An expedition in 2004 found the first evidence of nesting Atlantic puffins, which are extremely common in the rest of the archipelago.
As well as providing a home for some species of birds, Surtsey has also been used as a stopping-off point for migrating birds, particularly those en route between Europe and Iceland. Species that have been seen briefly on the island include whooper swans, various species of geese, and common ravens. Although Surtsey lies to the west of the main migration routes to Iceland, it has become a more common stopping point as its vegetation has improved. In 2008, the 14th bird species was detected with the discovery of a common raven's nest.
According to a 30 May 2009 report, a golden plover was nesting on the island with four eggs.
Soon after the island's formation, seals were seen around the island. They soon began basking there, particularly on the northern spit, which grew as the waves eroded the island. Seals were found to be breeding on the island in 1983, and a group of up to 70 made the island their breeding spot. Grey seals are more common on the island than harbour seals, but both are now well established. The presence of seals attracts orcas, which are frequently seen in the waters around the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago and now frequent the waters around Surtsey.
On the submarine portion of the island, many marine species are found. Starfish are abundant, as are sea urchins and limpets. The rocks are covered in algae, and seaweed covers much of the submarine slopes of the volcano, with its densest cover between below sea level.
Insects arrived on Surtsey soon after its formation, and were first detected in 1964. The original arrivals were flying insects, carried to the island by winds and their own power. Some were believed to have been blown across from as far away as mainland Europe. Later insect life arrived on floating driftwood, and both live animals and carcasses washed up on the island. When a large, grass-covered tussock was washed ashore in 1974, scientists took half of it for analysis and discovered 663 land invertebrates, mostly mites and springtails, the great majority of which had survived the crossing.
The establishment of insect life provided some food for birds, and birds in turn helped many species to become established on the island. The bodies of dead birds provide sustenance for carnivorous insects, while the fertilisation of the soil and resulting promotion of plant life provides a viable habitat for herbivorous insects.
Some higher forms of land life are now colonising the soil of Surtsey. The first earthworm was found in a soil sample in 1993, probably carried over from Heimaey by a bird. However, the next year earthworms were not found. Slugs were found in 1998, and appeared to be similar to varieties found in the southern Icelandic mainland. Spiders and beetles have also become established.
The only significant human impact is a small prefabricated hut which is used by researchers while staying on the island. The hut includes a few bunk beds and a solar power source to drive an emergency radio and other key electronics. There is also an abandoned lighthouse foundation. All visitors check themselves and belongings to ensure no seeds are accidentally introduced by humans to this ecosystem. It is believed that some young boys tried to introduce potatoes, which were promptly dug up once discovered. An improperly handled human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root which was also destroyed.
In 2009 a weather station for weather observations and a webcam were installed on Surtsey. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28876 |
Software Engineering Body of Knowledge
The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) is an international standard ISO/IEC TR 19759:2005 specifying a guide to the generally accepted Software Engineering Body of Knowledge.
The Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK Guide) has been created through cooperation among several professional bodies and members of industry and is published by the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE). The standard can be accessed freely from the IEEE Computer Society. In late 2013, SWEBOK V3 was approved for publication and released. In 2016, the IEEE Computer Society kicked off the SWEBoK Evolution effort to develop future iterations of the body of knowledge.
The published version of SWEBOK V3 has the following 15 knowledge areas (KAs) within the field of software engineering:
It also recognized, but did not define, these related disciplines:
The 2004 edition of the SWEBOK guide defined ten knowledge areas (KAs) within the field of software engineering:
The SWEBOK also defines disciplines related to software engineering:
A similar effort to define a body of knowledge for software engineering is the "Computing Curriculum Software Engineering (CCSE)," officially named Software Engineering 2004 (SE2004). The curriculum largely overlaps with the 2004 SWEBOK V2 because the SWEBOK has been used as one of its sources; however, it is more directed towards academia. Whereas the SWEBOK Guide defines the software engineering knowledge that practitioners should have after four years of practice, SE2004 defines the knowledge that an undergraduate software engineering student should possess upon graduation (including knowledge of mathematics, general engineering principles, and other related areas). SWEBOK V3 aims to address these intersections. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28878 |
Scottish National Party
The Scottish National Party (SNP; , ) is a Scottish nationalist, social-democratic political party in Scotland. The SNP supports and campaigns for Scottish independence within the European Union, with a platform based on civic nationalism. The SNP is the third-largest political party by membership in the United Kingdom, behind the Labour Party and the Conservative Party and it is the largest political party in Scotland, where it has the most seats in the Scottish Parliament and 48 out of the 59 Scottish seats in the British House of Commons at Westminster. The current Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has served as First Minister of Scotland since November 2014.
Founded in 1934 with the amalgamation of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party, the party has had continuous parliamentary representation in Westminster since Winnie Ewing won the 1967 Hamilton by-election. With the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999, the SNP became the second-largest party, serving two terms as the opposition. The SNP gained power at the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, forming a minority government, before going on to win the 2011 Parliament election, after which it formed Holyrood's first majority government. It was reduced back to being a minority government at the 2016 election.
The SNP is the largest political party in Scotland in terms of both seats in the Westminster and Holyrood parliaments, and membership, reaching 125,482 members as of December 2019, 48 MPs, 61 MSPs and over 400 local councillors. The SNP is a member of the European Free Alliance (EFA). The party does not have any members of the House of Lords, as it has always maintained a position of objecting to an unelected upper house.
The SNP was formed in 1934 through the merger of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party, with The Duke of Montrose and Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham as its first, joint, president. Sir Alexander MacEwen was its first chairman. Professor Douglas Young, who was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942 to 1945 campaigned for the Scottish people to refuse conscription and his activities were popularly vilified as undermining the British war effort against the Axis powers. Young was imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted.
The party suffered its first split during this period with John MacCormick leaving the party in 1942, owing to his failure to change the party's policy from supporting all out independence to Home Rule at that year's conference in Glasgow. McCormick went on to form the Scottish Covenant Association, a non-partisan political organisation campaigning for the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly.
However, wartime conditions also enabled the SNP's first parliamentary success at the Motherwell by-election in 1945, but Robert McIntyre MP lost the seat at the general election three months later. The 1950s were characterised by similarly low levels of support, and this made it difficult for the party to advance. Indeed, in most general elections they were unable to put up more than a handful of candidates.
The 1960s, however, offered more electoral successes, with candidates polling credibly at Glasgow Bridgeton in 1961, West Lothian in 1962 and Glasgow Pollok in 1967. Indeed, this foreshadowed Winnie Ewing's surprise victory in a by-election at the previously safe Labour seat of Hamilton. This brought the SNP to national prominence, leading to the establishment of the Kilbrandon Commission.
Despite this breakthrough, the 1970 general election was to prove a disappointment for the party as despite an increase in vote share, Ewing failed to retain her seat in Hamilton. The party did receive some consolation with the capture of the Western Isles, making Donald Stewart the party's only MP. This was to be the case until the 1973 by-election at Glasgow Govan where a hitherto safe Labour seat was claimed by Margo MacDonald.
1974 was to prove something of an "annus mirabilis" for the party as it deployed its highly effective "It's Scotland's oil" campaign. The SNP gained 6 seats at the February general election before hitting a high point in the October re-run, polling almost a third of all votes in Scotland and returning 11 MPs to Westminster. Furthermore, during that year's local elections the party claimed overall control of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth.
This success was to continue for much of the decade, and at the 1977 district elections the SNP saw victories at councils including East Kilbride and Falkirk and held the balance of power in Glasgow. However, this level of support was not to last and by 1978 Labour revival was evident at three by-elections (Glasgow Garscadden, Hamilton and Berwick and East Lothian) as well as the regional elections.
This was to culminate when the party experienced a large drop in its support at the 1979 general election, precipitated by the party bringing down the incumbent Labour minority government following the controversial failure of that year's devolution referendum. Reduced to just 2 MPs, the successes of October 1974 were not to be surpassed until the 2015 general election.
Following this defeat, a period of internal strife occurred within the party, culminating with the formation of two internal groups: the proto-fascist Siol nan Gaidheal and left-wing 79 Group. Traditionalists within the party, centred around Winnie Ewing, by this time an MEP, responded by establishing the Campaign for Nationalism in Scotland which sought to ensure that the primary objective of the SNP was campaigning for independence outwith a traditional left-right orientation, despite the fact that this would have undone the work of figures such as William Wolfe, who developed a clearly social democratic policy platform throughout the 1970s.
These events ensured the success of a leadership motion at the party's annual conference of 1982, in Ayr, despite the 79 Group being bolstered by the merger of Jim Sillars' Scottish Labour Party (SLP) although this influx of ex-SLP members further shifted the characteristics of the party leftwards. Despite this, traditionalist figure Gordon Wilson remained party leader through the electoral disappointments of 1983 and 1987, where he lost his own Dundee East seat won 13 years prior.
Through this period, Sillars grew influence in the party, developing a clear socio-economic platform including "Independence in Europe," reversing the SNP's previous opposition to membership of the then-EEC which had been unsuccessful in a 1975 referendum. This position was enhanced further by Sillars reclaiming Glasgow Govan in a by-election in 1988.
Despite this moderation, the party did not join Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens as well as civil society in the Scottish Constitutional Convention which developed a blueprint for a devolved Scottish Parliament due to the unwillingness of the convention to discuss independence as a constitutional option.
Alex Salmond had been elected MP for Banff and Buchan in 1987, after the re-admittance of 79 Group members, and was able to seize the party leadership after Wilson's resignation in 1990 after a contest with Margaret Ewing. This was a surprise victory as Ewing had the backing of much of the party establishment, including Sillars and then-Party Secretary John Swinney. The defection of Labour MP Dick Douglas further evidenced the party's clear left-wing positioning, particularly regarding opposition to the poll tax. Despite this, Salmond's leadership was unable to avert a fourth successive general election disappointment in 1992 with the party reduced back from 5 to 3 MPs.
The mid-90s offered some successes for the party, with North East Scotland being gained at the 1994 European elections and the party securing a by-election at Perth and Kinross in 1995 after a near miss at Monklands East the previous year.
1997 offered the party's most successful general election for 23 years, although in the face of the Labour landslide the party was unable to match either 1974 election. That September, the party joined with the other members of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the successful Yes-Yes campaign in the devolution referendum which lead to the establishment of a Scottish Parliament with tax-varying powers.
By 1999, the first elections to the parliament were being held, although the party suffered a disappointing result, gaining just 35 MSPs in the face of Salmond's unpopular 'Kosovo Broadcast' which opposed NATO intervention in the country.
This meant that the party began as the official opposition in the parliament to a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government. Salmond found the move to a more consensual politics difficult and sought a return to Westminster, resigning the leadership in 2000 with John Swinney, like Salmond a gradualist, victorious in the ensuring leadership election. Swinney's leadership proved ineffectual, with a loss of one MP in 2001 and a further reduction to 27 MSPs in 2003 despite the Officegate scandal unseating previous First Minister Henry McLeish. However, the only parties to gain seats in that election where the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) which like the SNP support independence.
After an unsuccessful coup attempt in 2003, Swinney stepped down following disappointing results in the European elections of 2004 with Salmond victorious in the subsequent leadership contest despite initially refusing to be candidate. Nicola Sturgeon was elected Depute Leader and became the party's leader in the Scottish Parliament until Salmond was able to return at the next parliamentary election.
In 2007, the SNP emerged as the largest party in the Scottish Parliament with 47 of 129 seats, narrowly ousting the Scottish Labour Party with 46 seats and Alex Salmond becoming First Minister after ousting the Liberal Democrats in Gordon. The Scottish Green Party supported Salmond's election as First Minister, and his subsequent appointments of ministers, in return for early tabling of the climate change bill and the SNP nominating a Green MSP to chair a parliamentary committee. Despite this, Salmond's minority government tended to strike budget deals with the Conservatives to stay in office.
In May 2011, the SNP won an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament with 69 seats. This was a significant feat as the additional member system used for Scottish Parliament elections was specifically designed to prevent one party from winning an outright majority. This was followed by a reverse in the party's previous opposition to NATO membership at the party's annual conference in 2012 despite Salmond's refusal to apologise for the Kosovo broadcast on the occasion of the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.
This majority enabled the SNP government to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. The "No" vote prevailed in a close-fought campaign, prompting the resignation of First Minister Alex Salmond. Forty-five percent of Scottish voters cast their ballots for independence, with the "Yes" side receiving less support than late polling predicted. This was suggested as due to Salmond's unpopularity among women and Nicola Sturgeon won that year's leadership election unopposed.
The SNP rebounded from the loss in the independence referendum at the 2015 UK general election, led by Nicola Sturgeon. The party went from holding six seats in the House of Commons to 56, mostly at the expense of the Labour Party. All but three of the fifty-nine constituencies in the country elected an SNP candidate in the party's most comprehensive electoral victory at any level.
At the 2016 Scottish election, the SNP lost a net total of 6 seats, losing its overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, but returning for a third consecutive term as a minority government despite gaining an additional 1.1% of the constituency vote, for the party's best ever result, from the 2011 election however 2.3% of the regional list vote. On the constituency vote, the SNP gained 11 seats from Labour, but lost the Edinburgh Southern constituency to the party. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats each gained two constituency seats from the SNP on 2011 (Aberdeenshire West and Edinburgh Central for the Conservatives and Edinburgh Western and North East Fife for the Liberal Democrats).
This election was followed by the 2016 European Union referendum after which the SNP joined with the Liberal Democrats and Greens to call for continued membership of the EU. Despite a consequential increase in the Conservative vote at the 2017 local elections the SNP for the first time became the largest party in each of Scotland's four city councils: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, where a Labour administration was ousted after 37 years.
At the 2017 UK general election the SNP underperformed compared to polling expectations, losing 21 seats to bring their number of Westminster MPs down to 35 – however this was still the party's third best result ever. This was largely attributed by many, including former Deputy First Minister John Swinney, to their stance on holding a second Scottish independence referendum and saw a swing to the Unionist parties, with seats being picked up by the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats and a reduction in their majorities in the other seats. Stephen Gethins, MP for North East Fife, came out of this election with a majority of just 2 to the Liberal Democrat candidate. High-profile losses included SNP Commons leader Angus Robertson in Moray and former party leader and First Minister Alex Salmond in Gordon.
The SNP went on to achieve its best ever European Parliament result in the final election before Brexit, the party taking its MEP total to 3 or half of Scottish seats and achieving a record vote share for the party. This was also the best performance of any party in the era of proportional elections to the European Parliament in Scotland. This was suggested as being due to the party's europhile sentiment during what amounted to a single issue election, with parties hat lacked a clear message performing poorly, such as Labour finishing in 5th place and losing all of their Scottish MEPs for the first time.
Later that year the SNP experienced a surge in the 2019 general election, winning 45.0% of the vote and 48 seats, its second best result ever. Although the party suffered a loss to the Liberal Democrats, it gained the seat of its then UK leader Jo Swinson, along with 7 from the Conservatives and 6 from Labour. This victory was generally attributed to Sturgeon's cautious approach regarding holding a second independence referendum and strong emphasis on EU membership during the election. Despite this, the UK-wide Conservative majority ensured that the UK left the EU the following January.
The local Branches are the primary level of organisation in the SNP. All of the Branches within each Scottish Parliament constituency form a Constituency Association, which coordinates the work of the Branches within the constituency, coordinates the activities of the party in the constituency, and acts as a point of liaison between an MSP or MP and the party. Constituency Associations are composed of delegates from all of the Branches within the constituency.
The annual National Conference is the supreme governing body of the SNP, and is responsible for determining party policy and electing the National Executive Committee. The National Conference is composed of:
The National Council serves as the SNP's governing body between National Conferences, and its decisions are binding, unless rescinded or modified by the National Conference. There are also regular meetings of the National Assembly, which provides a forum for detailed discussion of party policy by party members.
The party has an active youth wing, the Young Scots for Independence, as well as a student wing, the Federation of Student Nationalists. There is also an SNP Trade Union Group. There is an independently owned monthly newspaper, "The Scots Independent", which is highly supportive of the party.
The SNP's leadership is vested in its National Executive Committee (NEC), which is made up of the party's elected office bearers and six elected members (voted for at conference). The SNP parliamentarians (Holyrood and Westminster) and councillors have representation on the NEC, as do the Trade Union Group, the youth wing and the student wing.
The National Executive Committee is composed of:
Since 18 September 2014 (the day of the Scottish independence referendum), party membership has more than quadrupled (from 25,642), surpassing the Liberal Democrats and, briefly, Conservatives to become the second-largest political party in the United Kingdom in terms of membership. As of August 2018, the Party has 125,482 members.
The SNP retains close links with Plaid Cymru, its counterpart in Wales. MPs from both parties co-operate closely with each other and work as a single parliamentary group within the House of Commons. Both the SNP and Plaid Cymru are members of the European Free Alliance (EFA), a European political party comprising regionalist political parties. The EFA co-operates with the larger European Green Party to form The Greens–European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) group in the European Parliament.
Prior to its affiliation with The Greens–European Free Alliance, the SNP had previously been allied with the European Progressive Democrats (1979–1984), Rainbow Group (1989–1994) and European Radical Alliance (1994–1999).
As the UK is no longer a member of the EU, the SNP has no MEPs.
The Scottish National Party did not have a clear ideological position until the 1970s, when it sought to explicitly present itself as a social democratic party in terms of party policy and publicity. During the period from its foundation until the 1960s, the SNP was essentially a moderate centrist party. Debate within the party focused more on the SNP being distinct as an all-Scotland national movement, with it being neither of the left nor the right, but constituting a new politics that sought to put Scotland first.
The SNP was formed through the merger of the centre-left National Party of Scotland (NPS) and the centre-right Scottish Party. The SNP's founders were united over self-determination in principle, though not its exact nature, or the best strategic means to achieve self-government. From the mid-1940s onwards, SNP policy was radical and redistributionist in relation to land and in favour of ‘the diffusion of economic power’, including the decentralisation of industries such as coal to include the involvement of local authorities and regional planning bodies to control industrial structure and development. Party policies supported the economic and social policy status quo of the post-war welfare state.
By the 1960s, the SNP was starting to become defined ideologically, with a social democratic tradition emerging as the party grew in urban, industrial Scotland, and its membership experienced an influx of social democrats from the Labour Party, the trade unions and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The emergence of Billy Wolfe as a leading figure in the SNP also contributed to the leftwards shift. By this period, the Labour Party were also the dominant party in Scotland, in terms of electoral support and representation. Targeting Labour through emphasising left-of-centre policies and values was therefore electorally logical for the SNP, as well as tying in with the ideological preferences of many new party members. In 1961, the SNP conference expressed the party's opposition to the siting of the US Polaris submarine base at the Holy Loch. This policy was followed in 1963 by a motion opposed to nuclear weapons: a policy that has remained in place ever since. The 1964 policy document, "SNP & You", contained a clear centre-left policy platform, including commitments to full employment, government intervention in fuel, power and transport, a state bank to guide economic development, encouragement of cooperatives and credit unions, extensive building of council houses (social housing) by central and local government, pensions adjusted to cost of living, a minimum wage and an improved national health service.
The 1960s also saw the beginnings of the SNP's efforts to establish an industrial organisation and mobilise amongst trade unionists in Scotland, with the establishment of the SNP Trade Union Group, and identifying the SNP with industrial campaigns, such as the Upper-Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in and the attempt of the workers at the Scottish "Daily Express" to run as a co-operative. For the party manifestos for the two 1974 general elections, the SNP finally self-identified as a social democratic party, and proposed a range of social democratic policies. There was also an unsuccessful proposal at the 1975 party conference to rename the party as the "Scottish National Party (Social Democrats)". In the UK wide referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the same year as the aforementioned attempted name change, the SNP campaigned for Britain to leave the EEC.
There were further ideological and internal struggles after 1979, with the 79 Group attempting to move the SNP further to the left, away from being what could be described a "social-democratic" party, to an expressly "socialist" party. Members of the 79 Group - including future party leader and First Minister Alex Salmond - were expelled from the party. This produced a response in the shape of the Campaign for Nationalism in Scotland from those who wanted the SNP to remain a "broad church", apart from arguments of left vs. right. The 1980s saw the SNP further define itself as a party of the political left, such as campaigning against the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland in 1989; one year before the tax was imposed on the rest of the UK.
Ideological tensions inside the SNP are further complicated by arguments between the so-called SNP gradualists and SNP fundamentalists. In essence, gradualists seek to advance Scotland to independence through further devolution, in a "step-by-step" strategy. They tend to be in the moderate left grouping, though much of the 79 Group was gradualist in approach. However, this 79 Group gradualism was as much a reaction against the fundamentalists of the day, many of whom believed the SNP should not take a clear left or right position.
With the SNP's policy base being mostly in the mainstream Western European social democratic tradition, the party is committed to policies such as progressive personal taxation. This vision was achieved by the Sturgeon Government in 2017, reducing income tax rates for a slight majority of the population by shifting the tax burden to the wealthier. Previously the party had replaced the flat rate Stamp Duty with the LBTT, which is founded on progressive principles. Whilst in government, the party was also responsible for the establishment of Revenue Scotland to administer devolved taxation.
Having previously defined itself in opposition to the poll tax the SNP has also championed progressive taxation at a local level. Despite pledging to introduce a local income tax the Salmond Government found itself unable to replace the council tax and the party has, particularly since the ending of the council tax freeze under Nicola Sturgeon's leadership, committing to increasing the graduated nature of the tax. Conversely, the party has also supported capping and reducing Business Rates in an attempt to support small businesses.
The SNP can be seen to be at the heart of the secularisation and liberalisation of Scotland with the party achieving the legalisation of same sex marriage in 2014, indeed under Sturgeon's leadership Scotland was twice in succession named the best country in Europe for LGBTI legal equality. Party policy aims to introduce gender self-identification to allow an easier process of gender recognition for transgender community. This is in stark contrast to Scotland's recent history as a deeply socially conservative country although this transformation can be seen to have taken place in the country's other main political parties largely simultaneously.
Particularly since Nicola Sturgeon's elevation to First Minister the party has highlighted its commitments to gender equality - with her first act being to appoint a gender balanced cabinet. The SNP have also taken steps to implement all-women shortlists whilst Stugeon has introduced a mentoring scheme to encourage women's political engagement.
Stressing that their brand of nationalism is civic nationalism, the SNP are keen to show their support for multiculturalism with Scotland receiving thousands of refugees from the Syrian Civil War. To this end it has been claimed that refugees in Scotland are better supported than those in England. More generally, the SNP take a liberal stance on immigration, seeking to increase numbers to combat a declining population and calling for a separate Scottish visa even within the UK.
Despite traditionally supporting military neutrality the SNP's policy has in recent years moved to support both the Atlanticist and Europeanist traditions. This is particularly evident in the conclusion of the NATO debate within the party in favour of those who support membership of the military alliance. This is despite the party's continuing opposition to Scotland hosting nuclear weapons and then-leader Salmond's criticism of both the Kosovo intervention and the Iraq War. The party has placed an emphasis on developing positive relations with the United States in recent years despite a lukewarm reaction to the election of Scottish American Donald Trump as President due to long running legal disputes.
Having opposed membership in the 1975 referendum, the party has supported membership of the European Union since the adoption of the Independence in Europe policy during the 1980s. Consequentially, the SNP supported remaining within the EU during the 2016 referendum where every Scottish council area backed this position. Consequently, the party opposed Brexit and sought a people's vote on the withdrawal agreement, ultimately unsuccessfully. Indeed, the SNP would like to see an independent Scotland as a member of the European Union and NATO and has left open the prospect of an independent Scotland joining the Euro.
The SNP have also taken a stance against Russian interference abroad, the party supporting the enlargement of the EU and NATO to areas such as the Western Balkans and Ukraine to counter this influence. Indeed, the party has called for repercussions regarding the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and has criticised former leader Alex Salmond for broadcasting a chat show on Kremlin-backed network RT. Consequently, party representatives have expressed support for movements such as Euromaidan that support the independence of countries across Eastern Europe.
The party have supported measures including foreign aid which seek to facilitate international development through various charitable orginisations. In recognition of Scotland's historic links to the country, these programmes are mostly focused in Malawi in common with previous Scottish governments. With local authorities across the country, including Glasgow City Council being involved in this partnership since before the SNP took office in 2007.
The SNP have pledged to uphold the public service nature of NHS Scotland and are consequently opposed to any attempts at privatisation of the health service, including any inclusion in a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States. The party has been fond of increasing provision under the NHS with the introduction of universal baby boxes based on the Finnish scheme. This supported child development alongside other commitments including the expansion of free childcare for children younger than school age and the introduction of universal free school meals in the first three years of school.
Previously, SNP governments have abolished hospital parking charges as well as prescription charges in efforts to promote enhanced public health outcomes by increasing access to care and treatment. Furthermore, during Sturgeon's premiership, Scotland became the first country in the world to introduce alcohol minimum unit pricing to counter alcohol problems. Recently, the party has also committed to providing universal access to sanitary products and the liberalisation of drugs policy through devolution, in an effort to increase access to treatment and improve public health outcomes.
The party also promotes universal access to education, with one of the first acts of the Salmond government being to abolish tuition fees. More cently, the party has turned its attention to widening access to higher education with Nicola Sturgeon stating that education is her number one priority. At school level, the Curriculum for Excellence is currently undergoing a review.
The foundations of the SNP are a belief that Scotland would be more prosperous by being governed independently from the United Kingdom, although the party was defeated in the 2014 referendum on this issue. The party has since sought to hold a second referendum at some point in the future, perhaps related to the outcome of Brexit, as the party sees a referendum as the only route to independence. The party is constitutionalist and as such rejects holding such a referendum unilaterally or any course of actions that could lead to comparisons with cases such as Catalonia with the party seeing independence as a process that should be undertaken through a consensual process alongside the UK Government. As part of this process towards independence, the party supports increased devolution to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, particularly in areas such as welfare and immigration.
Official SNP policy is supportive of the monarchy however members are divided on the issue. The party does propose reducing the funds spent on the royal family. Separately, the SNP has always opposed the UK's unelected upper house and would like to see both it and the House of Commons elected by a form of proportional representation. The party also supports the introduction of a written constitution, either for an independent Scotland or the UK as a whole, going as far as producing a proposed interim constitution for Scotland during the independence referendum campaign.
In relation to how to achieve independence the party was traditionally split between fundamentalists and gradualists.
The SNP leadership generally subscribe to the gradualist viewpoint, that being the idea that Scottish independence can be won by the accumulation by the Scottish Parliament of powers that the UK Parliament currently has over a protracted period of time. It is also a philosophy that emphasises the election of an SNP government should bring about trust in the Scottish people in the ability of Scotland to govern herself, thus bringing increased support for independence.
Fundamentalism stands in opposition to the so-called gradualist point of view, which believes that the SNP should emphasise independence more widely in order to achieve it. The argument goes that if the SNP is unprepared to argue for its central policy then it is unlikely ever to persuade the public of its worthiness.
, the Cabinet of the Scottish Government is as follows:
As of January 2020, the Shadow Cabinet of the SNP in Westminster was as follows.
The SNP had 431 councillors in Local Government elected from the 2017 Scottish local elections. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28887 |
Snowy Mountains
The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", is an IBRA subregion and the highest mountain range on the continent of mainland Australia. It contains the Australian mainland's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, which reaches to a height of above sea level. The range also contains the five highest peaks on the Australian mainland (including Mount Kosciuszko), all of which are above . They are located in southern New South Wales and are part of the larger Australian Alps and Great Dividing Range. Unusual for Australia, the mountain range experiences large natural snowfalls every winter. Snow normally falls during June, July, August and early September, with the snow cover melting by late spring. The Tasmanian highlands makes up the other (major) alpine region present in Australia.
The range is host to the mountain plum-pine, a low-lying type of conifer. It is considered to be one of the centres of the Australian ski industry during the winter months, with all four snow resorts in New South Wales being located in the region.
The Alpine Way and Snowy Mountains Highway are the major roads through the Snowy Mountains region.
The mountain range is thought to have had Aboriginal occupation for 20,000 years. Large scale intertribal gatherings were held in the High Country during summer for collective feasting on the Bogong moth. This practice continued until around 1865.
The area was first explored by Europeans in 1835, and in 1840, Edmund Strzelecki ascended Mount Kosciuszko and named it after the Polish patriot. High country stockmen followed who used the Snowy Mountains for grazing during the summer months. Banjo Paterson's famous poem The Man From Snowy River recalls this era. The cattle graziers have left a legacy of mountain huts scattered across the area. Today these huts are maintained by the National Parks and Wildlife Service or volunteer organisations like the Kosciuszko Huts Association.
In the 19th century gold was mined on the high plains near Kiandra. At its height this community had a population of about 4,000 people, and ran 14 hotels. Since the last resident left in 1974, Kiandra has become a ghost town of ruins and abandoned diggings.
The Kosciuszko National Park came into existence as the National Chase Snowy Mountains on 5 December 1906. In 1944 this became the Kosciuszko State Park, and then the Kosciuszko National Park in 1967.
Recreational skiing began at Kiandra in the 1860s and experienced a boom in the 20th century following the commencement of the construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme between 1949 and 1976 which brought many European workers to the district and opened up access to the ranges.
The discovery of gold at Kiandra (elevation ), in 1859, briefly enticed a population of thousands above the snowline and saw the introduction of recreational skiing to the Snowy Mountains around 1861. The Kiandra Goldrush was short-lived, but the township remained a service centre for recreational and survival skiing for over a century. Australia's first T-Bar was installed at Kiandra in 1957, but the ski facilities were finally shifted up the hill to Selwyn Snowfields in 1978. Steeper slopes and more reliable snows lie further to the south and in the 20th Century, the focus of recreational skiing in New South Wales shifted southward, to the Mount Kosciuszko region.
The Kosciuszko Chalet was built at Charlotte Pass in 1930, giving relatively comfortable access to Australia's highest terrain. In 1964, Australia briefly boasted the "World's Longest Chairlift", designed to carry skiers from the Thredbo Valley to Charlotte Pass, but technical difficulties soon closed the facility. At , Charlotte Pass has the highest village base elevation of any Australia ski resort and can only be accessed via over-snow transport in winter. The growing number of ski enthusiasts heading to Charlotte Pass led to the establishment of a cafe at Smiggin Holes around 1939, where horse-drawn sleighs would deliver skiers to begin the arduous ski to the Kosciusko Chalet. It was the construction of the vast Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme from 1949 that really opened up the Snowy Mountains for large scale development of a ski industry and led to the establishment of Thredbo and Perisher as leading Australian resorts. The Construction of Guthega Dam brought skiers to the isolated Guthega district and a rope tow was installed there in 1957.
Skifields up by Kosciusko's side were also established during this period, though their existence is now little realised. The Australian Alpine Club was founded in 1950 by Charles Anton. Huts were constructed in the "Backcountry" close to Mount Kosciusko, including Kunama Hut, which opened for the 1953 season. A rope tow was installed on Mount Northcote at the site and opened in 1954. The site proved excellent for speed skiing, but the hut was destroyed in an avalanche, which also killed one person, in 1956.
Anton also recognised the potential of the Thredbo Valley for construction of a major resort and village, with good vertical terrain. Construction began in 1957. Today, Thredbo has 14 ski-lifts and possesses Australia's longest ski resort run, the 5.9 km from Karel's T-Bar to Friday Flat; Australia's greatest vertical drop of 672 m; and the highest lifted point in Australia at 2037 m.
The last establishment of a major skifield in NSW came with the development of Mount Blue Cow in the 1980s. In 1987 the Swiss designed Skitube Alpine Railway opened to deliver skiers from Bullocks Flat, on the Alpine Way, to Perisher Valley and to Blue Cow, which also opened in 1987. The operators of Blue Cow purchased Guthega in 1991, and the new combined resort later merged with Perisher-Smiggins to become the largest ski resort in the Southern Hemisphere. In 2009 Perisher had 48 lifts covering 1,245 hectares and four village base areas: Perisher Valley, Blue Cow, Smiggin Holes and Guthega.
The Snowy Mountains also feed the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers from the Tooma River, Whites River and Yarrangobilly River. The range is perhaps best known for the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a project to dam the Snowy River, providing both water for irrigation and hydroelectricity.
The project began in 1949 employing 100,000 men, two-thirds of whom came from thirty other countries during the post-World War II years. Socially this project symbolises a period during which Australia became an ethnic "melting pot" of the twentieth century but which also changed Australia's character and increased its appreciation for a wide range of cultural diversity.
The Scheme built several temporary towns for its construction workers, several of which have become permanent: Cabramurra (the highest town in Australia); and Khancoban. Additionally, the economy of Cooma has been sustained by the Scheme. Townships at Adaminaby, Jindabyne and Talbingo were inundated by the construction of Lakes Eucumbene, Jindabyne and Talbingo. Improved vehicular access to the High Country enabled ski-resort villages to be constructed at Thredbo and Guthega in the 1950s by ex-Snowy Scheme workers who realised the potential for expansion of the Australian ski industry.
By 1974, of tunnels and of aqueducts connected the sixteen dams, seven power stations (two underground), and one pumping station. The American Society of Civil Engineers has rated the Snowy Scheme as "a world-class civil engineering project".
The principal lakes created by the scheme include: Lake Eucumbene, Blowering Dam, Talbingo Dam, Lake Jindabyne and Tantangara Dam.
The higher regions of the park experience an alpine climate which is unusual on mainland Australia. However, only the peaks of the main range are subject to consistent heavy winter snow. The climate station at Charlotte Pass recorded Australia's lowest temperature of -23.0 °C on 28 June 1994.
Part of the mountains known as Main Range contains mainland Australia's five glacial lakes. The largest of these lakes is Blue Lake, one of the headwaters of the Snowy River. The other four glacial lakes are Lake Albina, Lake Cootapatamba, Club Lake and Headley Tarn.
During the last ice age, which peaked about 20,000 years ago in the Pleistocene epoch, the highest peaks of the main range near Mount Kosciuszko experienced a climate which favoured the formation of glaciers, evidence of which can still be seen today. Cirques moraines, tarn lakes, roche moutonnées and other glacial features can all be seen in the area. Lake Cootapatamba, which was formed by an ice spilling from Mount Kosciuszko's southern flank, is the highest lake on the Australian mainland. Lake Albina, Club Lake, Blue Lake, and Hedley Tarn also have glacial origins.
There is some disagreement as to exactly how widespread Pleistocene glaciation was on the main range, and little or no evidence from earlier glacial periods exists. The 'David Moraine', a one kilometre long ridge running across Spencers Creek valley seems to indicate a larger glacier existed in this area at some time, however the glacial origin of this feature is disputed.
There is evidence of periglacial activity in the area. Solifluction appears to have created terraces on the north west flank of Mount Northcote. Frost heave is also a significant agent of soil erosion in the Kosciuszko Area.
The Snowy Mountains cover a variety of climatic regions which support several distinct ecosystems. The alpine area above the tree line is one of the most fragile and covers the smallest area. This area is a patchwork of alpine heaths, herbfields, feldmarks, bogs and fens. The windswept feldmark ecotope is endemic to the alpine region, and covers a mere . It is most vulnerable to the wandering footsteps of unmindful tourists.
Many rare or threatened plant and animal species occur within the Snowy Mountains. The Kosciuszko National Park is home to one of Australia's most threatened species (the corroboree frog). The endangered mountain pygmy possum and the more common dusky antechinus are located in the high country of the park.
By 2008, wild horse numbers in the National Park had reached 1,700 with that figure growing by 300 each year, resulting in park authorities coordinating their culling and relocation.
The high country is dominated by alpine woodlands, characterised by the snow gum. Montane and wet sclerophyll forests also occur across the ranges, supporting large stands of alpine ash and mountain gum. In the southern Byadbo wilderness area, dry sclerophyll and wattle forests predominate. Amongst the many different native trees in the park, the large Chinese elm has become naturalised.
In summer 2003, the Australian Alps experienced their largest bushfires for over 60 years with an estimated 1.73 million hectares burning. The bushfires burnt across Victoria, New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) during a drought that ranks as one of the worst in 103 years of official Australian weather records. Fires are a natural feature of the park's ecosystem, but it will take some time for the region to return to its pre-2003 condition.
In November 2004, a committee "The Snowy Mountains Bushfire Recovery Taskforce" was set up by the NSW State Premier's Department to help residents in the region recover from the fires. The Taskforce commissioned Louise Darmody from Sound Memories to produce a documentary involving 26 people from the Snowy Mountains to talk about their experiences. The interviewees included farmers, school children, volunteers and employees from the NSW Rural Fire Service and National Park Snowy Hydro.
Again in 2020, there was a big bushfire in the Snowy Mountains. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28891 |
Skara Brae
Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. Consisting of eight clustered houses, it was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney". Older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids, it has been called the "Scottish Pompeii" because of its excellent preservation.
In the winter of 1850 a severe storm hit Scotland causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll known as "Skerrabra". When the storm cleared local villagers found the outline of a village consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the local laird, began an amateur excavation of the site but after four houses were uncovered the work was abandoned in 1868. The site remained undisturbed until 1913 when during a single weekend the site was plundered by a party with shovels who took away an unknown quantity of artefacts. In 1924 another storm swept away part of one of the houses and it was determined the site should be secured and properly investigated. The job was given to the University of Edinburgh’s Professor V. Gordon Childe, who travelled to Skara Brae for the first time in mid-1927.
The inhabitants of Skara Brae were makers and users of grooved ware, a distinctive style of pottery that had recently appeared in northern Scotland. The houses used earth sheltering, being sunk into the ground. They were sunk into mounds of pre-existing prehistoric domestic waste known as middens. This provided the houses with a stability and also acted as insulation against Orkney's harsh winter climate. On average, each house measures with a large square room containing a stone hearth used for heating and cooking. Given the number of homes, it seems likely that no more than fifty people lived in Skara Brae at any given time.
It is not clear what material the inhabitants burned in their hearths. Childe was sure that the fuel was peat, but a detailed analysis of vegetation patterns and trends suggests that climatic conditions conducive to the development of thick beds of peat did not develop in this part of Orkney until after Skara Brae was abandoned. Other possible fuels include driftwood and animal dung. There is evidence that dried seaweed may have been used significantly. At some sites in Orkney, investigators have found a glassy, slag-like material called "kelp" or "cramp" that may be residual burnt seaweed.
The dwellings contain a number of stone-built pieces of furniture, including cupboards, dressers, seats, and storage boxes. Each dwelling was entered through a low doorway that had a stone slab door that could be closed "by a bar that slid in bar-holes cut in the stone door jambs". A number of dwellings offered a small connected antechamber, offering access to a partially covered stone drain leading away from the village. It is suggested that these chambers served as indoor privies.
Seven of the houses have similar furniture, with the beds and dresser in the same places in each house. The dresser stands against the wall opposite the door, and was the first thing seen by anyone entering the dwelling. Each of these houses had the larger bed on the right side of the doorway and the smaller on the left. Lloyd Laing noted that this pattern accorded with Hebrides custom up to the early 20th century suggesting that the husband's bed was the larger and the wife's was the smaller. The discovery of beads and paint-pots in some of the smaller beds may support this interpretation. Additional support may come from the recognition that stone boxes lie to the left of most doorways, forcing the person entering the house to turn to the right-hand, "male", side of the dwelling. At the front of each bed lie the stumps of stone pillars that may have supported a canopy of fur; another link with recent Hebridean style.
House 8 has no storage boxes or dresser and has been divided into something resembling small cubicles. Fragments of stone, bone and antler were excavated suggesting the house may have been used to make tools such as bone needles or flint axes. The presence of heat-damaged volcanic rocks and what appears to be a flue, support this interpretation. House 8 is distinctive in other ways as well: it is a stand-alone structure not surrounded by midden; instead it is above ground with walls over thick and has a "porch" protecting the entrance.
The site provided the earliest known record of the human flea ("Pulex irritans") in Europe.
The Grooved Ware People who built Skara Brae were primarily pastoralists who raised cattle and sheep. Childe originally believed that the inhabitants did not practice agriculture, but excavations in 1972 unearthed seed grains from a midden suggesting that barley was cultivated. Fish bones and shells are common in the middens indicating that dwellers ate seafood. Limpet shells are common and may have been fish-bait that was kept in stone boxes in the homes. The boxes were formed from thin slabs with joints carefully sealed with clay to render them waterproof.
This pastoral lifestyle is in sharp contrast to some of the more exotic interpretations of the culture of the Skara Brae people. Euan MacKie suggested that Skara Brae might be the home of a privileged theocratic class of wise men who engaged in astronomical and magical ceremonies at nearby Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. Graham and Anna Ritchie cast doubt on this interpretation noting that there is no archaeological evidence for this claim, although a Neolithic "low road" that goes from Skara Brae passes near both these sites and ends at the chambered tomb of Maeshowe. Low roads connect Neolithic ceremonial sites throughout Britain.
Originally, Childe believed that the settlement dated from around 500 BC. This interpretation was coming under increasing challenge by the time new excavations in 1972–73 settled the question. Radiocarbon results obtained from samples collected during these excavations indicate that occupation of Skara Brae began about 3180 BC with occupation continuing for about six hundred years. Around 2500 BC, after the climate changed, becoming much colder and wetter, the settlement may have been abandoned by its inhabitants. There are many theories as to why the people of Skara Brae left; particularly popular interpretations involve a major storm. Evan Hadingham combined evidence from found objects with the storm scenario to imagine a dramatic end to the settlement:
Anna Ritchie strongly disagrees with catastrophic interpretations of the village's abandonment:
The site was farther from the sea than it is today, and it is possible that Skara Brae was built adjacent to a fresh water lagoon protected by dunes. Although the visible buildings give an impression of an organic whole, it is certain that an unknown quantity of additional structures had already been lost to sea erosion before the site's rediscovery and subsequent protection by a seawall. Uncovered remains are known to exist immediately adjacent to the ancient monument in areas presently covered by fields, and others, of uncertain date, can be seen eroding out of the cliff edge a little to the south of the enclosed area.
A number of enigmatic carved stone balls have been found at the site and some are on display in the museum. Similar objects have been found throughout northern Scotland. The spiral ornamentation on some of these "balls" has been stylistically linked to objects found in the Boyne Valley in Ireland. Similar symbols have been found carved into stone lintels and bed posts. These symbols, sometimes referred to as "runic writings", have been subjected to controversial translations. For example, Castleden suggested that "colons" found punctuating vertical and diagonal symbols may represent separations between words.
Lumps of red ochre found here and at other Neolithic sites have been interpreted as evidence that body painting may have been practised. Nodules of haematite with highly polished surfaces have been found as well; the shiny surfaces suggest that the nodules were used to finish leather.
Other artefacts excavated on site made of animal, fish, bird, and whalebone, whale and walrus ivory, and killer whale teeth included awls, needles, knives, beads, adzes, shovels, small bowls and, most remarkably, ivory pins up to long. These pins are very similar to examples found in passage graves in the Boyne Valley, another piece of evidence suggesting a linkage between the two cultures. So-called Skaill knives were commonly used tools in Skara Brae; these consist of large flakes knocked off sandstone cobbles. Skaill knives have been found throughout Orkney and Shetland.
The 1972 excavations reached layers that had remained waterlogged and had preserved items that otherwise would have been destroyed. These include a twisted skein of Heather, one of a very few known examples of Neolithic rope, and a wooden handle.
A comparable, though smaller, site exists at Rinyo on Rousay. Unusually, no Maeshowe-type tombs have been found on Rousay and although there are a large number of Orkney–Cromarty chambered cairns, these were built by Unstan ware people.
Knap of Howar, on the Orkney island of Papa Westray, is a well-preserved Neolithic farmstead. Dating from 3500 BC to 3100 BC, it is similar in design to Skara Brae, but from an earlier period, and it is thought to be the oldest preserved standing building in northern Europe.
There is also a site currently under excavation at Links of Noltland on Westray that appears to have similarities to Skara Brae.
"The Heart of Neolithic Orkney" was inscribed as a World Heritage site in December 1999. In addition to Skara Brae the site includes Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness and other nearby sites. It is managed by Historic Environment Scotland, whose "Statement of Significance" for the site begins:
In 2019, a risk assessment was performed to assess the site's vulnerability to climate change. The report by Historic Environment Scotland, the Orkney Islands Council and others concludes that the entire Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, and in particular Skara Brae, is "extremely vulnerable" to climate change due to rising sea levels, increased rainfall and other factors; it also highlights the risk that Skara Brae could be partially destroyed by one unusually severe storm.
where he gives the date as "3100 B.C." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28892 |
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is a sermon written by British Colonial Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards, preached to his own congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts, to unknown effect, and again on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut. Like Edwards' other works, it combines vivid imagery of Hell with observations of the world and citations of the scripture. It is Edwards' most famous written work, is a fitting representation of his preaching style, and is widely studied by Christians and historians, providing a glimpse into the theology of the First Great Awakening of c. 1730–1755.
This is a typical sermon of the Great Awakening, emphasizing the teaching that Hell is real—a place that actually exists. Edwards hoped that the imagery and language of his sermon would awaken audiences to the horrific reality of hell that awaits them should they continue living without calling on Christ to be saved. The underlying point is that God has given humans a chance to confess their sins. Edwards said that it is the mere will of God that keeps wicked men from the depths of Hell. This act of restraint has given humans a chance to believe and trust in Christ.
""There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.""
Most of the sermon's text consists of ten "considerations":
One church in Enfield, Connecticut, had been largely unaffected during the First Great Awakening of New England. Edwards was invited by the pastor of the church to preach to them. Edwards's aim was to teach his listeners about the horrors of hell, the dangers of sin, and the terrors of being lost. Edwards described the position of those who do not follow Christ's urgent call to receive forgiveness. Edwards scholar John E. Smith notes that despite the apparent pessimism of the notion of an angry God, that pessimism is "overcome by the comforting hope of salvation through a triumphant, loving savior. Whenever Edwards preached terror, it was part of a larger campaign to turn sinners from their disastrous path and to the rightful object of their affections, Jesus Christ."
In the final section of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards shows that his theological argument holds throughout scripture and biblical history. He invokes stories and examples throughout the whole Bible. Edwards ends the sermon with one final appeal: "Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come." According to Edwards, only by returning to Christ can one escape the stark fate he outlines.
Edwards was interrupted many times during the sermon by people moaning and crying out, "What shall I do to be saved?". Although the sermon has received criticism, Edwards' words have endured and are still read to this day. Edwards' sermon continues to be the leading example of a First Great Awakening sermon and is still used in religious and academic studies.
Since the 1950s, a number of critical perspectives were used to analyse the sermon. The first comprehensive academic analysis of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was published by Edwin Cady in 1949, who comments on the imagery of the sermon and distinguishes between the "cliché" and "fresh" figurative images, stressing how the former related to the colonial life. Lee Stuart questions that the message of the sermon was solely negative and attributes its success to the final passages in which the sinners are actually "comforted". Rosemary Hearn argues that it is the logical structure of the sermon that constitutes its most important persuasive element. Lemay looks into the changes in the syntactic categories, like grammatical tenses, in the text of the sermon. Lukasik stresses how in the sermon Edwards appropriates Newtonian physics, especially the image of the gravitational pull that would relentlessly bring the sinners down. Gallagher focuses on the "beat" of the sermon, and on how the consecutive structural elements of the sermon serve different persuasive aims. Choiński suggests that the rhetorical success of the sermon consists in the use of the "deictic shift" that transported the hearers mentally into the figurative images of hell.
Ironically, Jonathan Edwards wrote and spoke a great deal on heaven and angels writes John Gerstner in "Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell,1998"and those theme are less remembered, namely "Heaven is a World of Love". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28893 |
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands (; , 'the place of the Gaels') is a historic region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of "" literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole, comparable with that of Bolivia, Chad and Russia.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the "", because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region. Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, whilst their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League.
Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War under way at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to "Visit Scotland", Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides.
The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, loyal to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other Scottish cities. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch Whisky industry. Highland Single Malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. "Highlands" is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in "Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service". "Northern", as in "Northern Constabulary", is also used to refer to the area covered by the fire and rescue service. This area consists of the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Highland Council signs in the Pass of Drumochter, between Glen Garry and Dalwhinnie, say "Welcome to the Highlands".
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called "Highlands and Islands" is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. "Highlands and Islands" has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in "Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service". "Northern", as in "Northern Constabulary", refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. Whilst the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28894 |
Scotch whisky
Scotch whisky (; often simply called whisky or Scotch) is malt whisky or grain whisky (or a blend of the two), made in Scotland. Scotch whisky must be made in a manner specified by law. As of 2018, there were 133 Scotch whisky distilleries operating in Scotland.
All Scotch whisky was originally made from malted barley. Commercial distilleries began introducing whisky made from wheat and rye in the late 18th century. Scotch whisky is divided into five distinct categories: single malt Scotch whisky, single grain Scotch whisky, blended malt Scotch whisky (formerly called "vatted malt" or "pure malt"), blended grain Scotch whisky, and blended Scotch whisky.
All Scotch whisky must be aged in oak barrels for at least three years. Any age statement on a bottle of Scotch whisky, expressed in numerical form, must reflect the age of the youngest whisky used to produce that product. A whisky with an age statement is known as guaranteed-age whisky. A whisky without an age statement is known as a no age statement (NAS) whisky, the only guarantee being that all whisky contained in that bottle is at least three years old. The minimum bottling strength according to the regulation is 40% alcohol by volume.
The first known written mention of Scotch whisky is in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 1494. Scotch whisky was known as "aqua vitae", Latin for "water of life."
Many Scotch whisky drinkers refer to a unit for drinking as a dram.
As of 23 November 2009, the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (SWR) define and regulate the production, labelling, packaging as well as the advertising of Scotch whisky in the United Kingdom. They replace previous regulations that focussed solely on production, including the Scotch Whisky Act 1988.
Since the previous act focussed primarily on production standards, it was repealed and superseded by the 2009 Regulations. The SWR includes broader definitions and requirements for the crafting, bottling, labelling, branding, and selling of "Scotch Whisky". International trade agreements have the effect of making some provisions of the SWR apply in various other countries as well as in the UK. The SWR define "Scotch whisky" as whisky that is:
A Scotch whisky label comprises several elements that indicate aspects of production, age, bottling, and ownership. Some of these elements are regulated by the SWR, and some reflect tradition and marketing. The spelling of the term "whisky" is often debated by journalists and consumers. Scottish, English, Welsh, Australian and Canadian whiskies use "whisky", Irish whiskies use "whiskey", while American and other styles vary in their spelling of the term.
The label always features a declaration of the malt or grain whiskies used. A single malt Scotch whisky is one that is entirely produced from malt in one distillery. One may also encounter the term "single cask", signifying the bottling comes entirely from one cask. The term "blended malt" signifies that single malt whisky from different distilleries are blended in the bottle. The Cardhu distillery also began using the term "pure malt" for the same purpose, causing a controversy in the process over clarity in labelling—the Glenfiddich distillery was using the term to describe some single malt bottlings. As a result, the Scotch Whisky Association declared that a mixture of single malt whiskies must be labelled a "blended malt". The use of the former terms "vatted malt" and "pure malt" is prohibited. The term "blended malt" is still debated, as some bottlers maintain that consumers confuse the term with "blended Scotch whisky", which contains some proportion of grain whisky.
The brand name featured on the label is usually the same as the distillery name (for example, the Talisker distillery labels its whiskies with the Talisker name). Indeed, the SWR prohibit bottlers from using a distillery name when the whisky was not made there. A bottler name may also be listed, sometimes independent of the distillery. In addition to requiring that Scotch whisky be distilled in Scotland, the SWR require that it also be bottled and labelled in Scotland. Labels may also indicate the region of the distillery (for example, Islay or Speyside).
Alcoholic strength is expressed on the label with "Alcohol By Volume" ("ABV") or sometimes simply "Vol". Typically, bottled whisky is between 40% and 46% ABV. Whisky is considerably stronger when first emerging from the cask—normally 60–63% ABV. Water is then added to create the desired bottling strength. If the whisky is not diluted before bottling, it can be labelled as cask strength.
A whisky's age may be listed on the bottle providing a guarantee of the youngest whisky used. An age statement on the bottle, in the form of a number, must reflect the age of the youngest whisky used to produce that product. A whisky with an age statement is known as guaranteed age whisky. Scotch whisky without an age statement may, by law, be as young as three years old. In the early 21st century, such "No age statement" whiskies have become more common, as distilleries respond to the depletion of aged stocks caused by improved sales. A label may carry a distillation date or a bottling date. Whisky does not mature once bottled, so if no age statement is provided, one may calculate the age of the whisky if both the distillation date and bottling date are given.
Labels may also carry various declarations of filtration techniques or final maturation processes. A Scotch whisky labelled as "natural" or "non-chill-filtered" has not been through a filtration process during bottling that removes compounds that some consumers see as desirable. Whisky is aged in various types of casks—and often in used sherry or port casks—during distinct portions of the maturation process, and will take on characteristics, flavour and aromas from such casks. Special casks are sometimes used at the end of the maturation process, and such whiskies may be labelled as "wood finished", "sherry/port finished", and so on.
According to the Scotch Whisky Association, the word whisky comes from the Gaelic "uisge beatha" or "usquebaugh", which means "water of life". The earliest record of distillation in Scotland occurred as long ago as 1494 at Lindores Abbey a monastery in Fife, as documented in the "Exchequer Rolls", which were records of royal income and expenditure. The quote above records eight bolls of malt given to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae (Latin for "water of life," = "uisge beatha") over the previous year. This would be enough for 1,500 bottles, which suggests that distillation was well-established by the late 15th century.
Aqua vitae (in the form of wine or spirits) was used when making gunpowder to moisten the slurry of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. As a drink, Scotch whisky was a favourite of King James IV of Scotland but after he was defeated in 1513, the monasteries were dissolved by King Henry VIII of England. Some monks with distillery experience moved to other locations where they continued producing the spirit. At the time, that endeavour was considered to be illegal under British rule. Nonetheless, the Crown imposed a tax on malt in the early 1700s in order to generate income.
Whisky production was first taxed in 1644, causing a rise in illicit whisky distilling in the country. Between the 1760s and the 1830s a substantial unlicensed trade originated from the Highlands, forming a significant part of the region's export economy. In 1782, more than 1,000 illegal stills were seized in the Highlands: these can only have been a fraction of those in operation. The Lowland distillers, who had no opportunity to avoid taxation, complained that un-taxed Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The heavy taxation during the Napoleonic Wars gave the illicit trade a big advantage, but their product was also considered better quality, commanding a higher price in the Lowlands. This was due to the method of taxation: malt was subject to tax (at a rate that climbed substantially between the 1790s and 1822). The licensed distillers therefore used more raw grain in an effort to reduce their tax bill.
The Highland magistrates, themselves members of the landowning classes, had a lenient attitude to unlicensed distillers—all of whom would be tenants in the local area. They understood that the trade supported the rents paid. Imprisoned tenants would not be able to pay any rent.
In 1823, Parliament eased restrictions on licensed distilleries with the "Excise Act", while at the same time making it harder for the illegal stills to operate. Magistrates found counsel for the Crown appearing in their courts, so forcing the maximum penalties to be applied, with some cases removed to the Court of Exchequer in Edinburgh for tougher sentences. Highland landowners were now happy to remove tenants who were distillers in clearances on their estates. These changes ushered in the modern era of Scotch production: in 1823 2,232,000 gallons of whisky had duty paid on it; in 1824 this increased to 4,350,000 gallons.
A farmer, George Smith, working under landlord the Duke of Gordon, was the first person in Scotland to take out a licence for a distillery under the new Act, founding the Glenlivet Distillery in 1824, to make single malt Scotch. Some of the distilleries which started legal operations in the next few years included Bowmore, Strathisla, Balblair, and Glenmorangie; all remain in business today.
Two events helped to increase whisky's popularity: first, the introduction in 1831 of the column still. Aeneas Coffey patented a refined version of a design originally created by Robert Stein, based on early innovations by Sir Anthony Perrier, for the new type of still which produced whisky much more efficiently than the traditional pot stills. The column still allowed for continuous distillation, without the need for cleaning after each batch was made. This process made manufacturing more affordable by performing the equivalent of multiple distillation steps. The new still dramatically increased production; the whisky was less intense and smoother making it more popular.
Second, there was a shortage of wine, brandy and cognac in France, significant by 1880, due to the "phylloxera" bug, a parasitic insect, destroying many of the wine vines; that shortage increased the demand for whisky. By the 1890s, almost forty new distilleries had opened in Scotland. The boom years continued until the industry was significantly affected by World War I and later, by the Great Depression; many of the companies closed and never re-opened.
The Scotch Whisky Association estimated that Scotland's whisky industry supported 40,000 jobs and accounted for £4.37 billion in exports in 2017. Of that total, single malt Scotch accounted for £1.17 billion in exports, a 14% increase over 2016.
The industry's contribution to the economy of the UK was estimated as £5.5 billion in 2018; the industry provided £3.8 billion in direct GVA (gross value added) to Scotland. Whisky tourism has also become significant and accounts for £68.3 million per year. One factor negatively affected sales, an extra 3.9% duty on spirits imposed by the UK in 2017. (The effect of the 25% increase in tariffs imposed by the U.S. in October 2019 would not be apparent until 2020.) Nonetheless, by year-end 2017, exports had reached a record-breaking amount.
In November 2019, the Association announced that the government of the UK had agreed to consider revising the alcohol taxation system, hopefully producing a new plan that was simplified and "fairer".
Exports in 2018 again increased 7.8% by value, and 3.6% in number of bottles, in spite of the duty imposed in 2017; exports grew to a record level, £4.7 billion. The US imported Scotch whisky with a value of just over £1 billion while the European Union was the second largest importer, taking 30% of global value. This was a boom year with a record high in exports, but the Scotch Whisky Association expressed concern for the future, particularly "the challenges posed by Brexit and by tensions in the global trading system."
Scotch whisky tourism has developed around the industry, with distilleries being the third most visited attractions in Scotland; roughly 2 million visits were recorded in 2018. Some 68 distilleries operate visitors' centres in Scotland and another eight accept visits by appointment. Hotels, restaurants and other facilities are also impacted by the tourism phenomenon. The tourism has had an especially visible impact on the economy in some remote rural areas, according to Fiona Hyslop MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs. "The Scottish Government is committed to working with partners like the Scotch Whisky Association to increase our tourism offer and encourage more people to visit our distilleries," the Secretary said.
A 2016 report stated that only 20% of the whisky was made by companies owned in Scotland. Distilleries owned by Diageo, a London-based company, produce 40% of all Scotch whisky, with over 24 brands, such as Johnnie Walker, Oban, and Talisker. Another 20% of the product is made by distillers owned by Pernod Ricard of France, including brands such as Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, and Ballantine's. There are also smaller distillers that are owned by foreign companies, such as BenRiach whose parent is the Brown–Forman Corporation based in Kentucky. Nonetheless, Scotch whisky is produced according to the current regulations, as to ageing, production and so on, ensuring that it remains Scottish.
Independents owned by Scots companies make a substantial amount of Scotch whisky, with the largest, William Grant & Sons, producing 8%, or about 7.6 million cases per year. Its brands include Glenfiddich and Balvenie. Glenfiddich is the best-selling single malt Scotch in the world. Roughly 14 million bottles of Glenfiddich are sold annually.
Most malt distilleries sell a significant amount of whisky by the cask for blending, and sometimes to private buyers as well. Whisky from such casks is sometimes bottled as a single malt by "independent bottling" firms such as Duncan Taylor, Master of Malt, Gordon & MacPhail, Cadenhead's, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Murray McDavid, Berry Bros. & Rudd, Douglas Laing, and others. These are usually labelled with the distillery's name, but not using the distillery's trademarked logos or typefaces. An "official bottling" (or "proprietary bottling"), by comparison, is from the distillery (or its owner). Many independent bottlings are from single casks, and they may sometimes be very different from an official bottling.
For a variety of reasons, some independent brands do not identify which facility distilled the whisky in the bottle. They may instead identify only the general geographical area of the source, or they simply market the product using their own brand name without identifying their source. This may, in some cases, be simply to give the independent bottling company the flexibility to purchase from multiple distillers without changing their labels.
There are two basic types of Scotch whisky, from which all blends are made:
Excluded from the definition of "single grain Scotch whisky" is any spirit that qualifies as a single malt Scotch whisky or as a blended Scotch whisky. The latter exclusion is to ensure that a blended Scotch whisky produced from single malt(s) and single grain(s) distilled at the same distillery does not also qualify as single grain Scotch whisky.
Nearly 90% of the bottles of Scotch sold per year are blended whiskies. Three types of blends are defined for Scotch whisky:
The five Scotch whisky definitions are structured in such a way that the categories are mutually exclusive. The 2009 regulations changed the formal definition of blended Scotch whisky to achieve this result, but in a way that reflected traditional and current practice: before the 2009 SWR, any combination of Scotch whiskies qualified as a blended Scotch whisky, including for example a blend of single malt Scotch whiskies.
As was the case under the Scotch Whisky Act 1988, regulation 5 of the SWR 2009 stipulates that the only whisky that may be manufactured in Scotland is Scotch whisky. The definition of "manufacture" is "keeping for the purpose of maturation; and keeping, or using, for the purpose of blending, except for domestic blending for domestic consumption". This provision prevents the existence of two "grades" of whisky originating from Scotland, one "Scotch whisky" and the other, a "whisky – product of Scotland" that complies with the generic EU standard for whisky. According to the Scotch Whisky Association, allowing non-Scotch whisky production in Scotland would make it difficult to protect Scotch whisky as a distinctive product.
The SWR regulation also states that no additives may be used except for plain (E150A) caramel colouring.
To qualify for this category the Scotch whisky must be made in one distillery, in a pot still by batch distillation, using only water and malted barley. As with any other Scotch whisky, the Scotch Whisky Regulations of 2009 also require single malt Scotch to be made completely and bottled in Scotland and aged for at least three years. Most are aged longer.
Another term is sometimes seen, called "double wood" or "triple wood", sometimes incorrectly referred to as "double malt" or "triple malt". These indicate that the whisky was aged in two or three types of casks. Hence, if the whisky otherwise meets the criteria of a single malt, it still falls into the single malt category even if more than one type of cask was used for ageing. Examples include The Balvenie 12 Years Old DoubleWood and Laphroaig Triple Wood.
Another nuance is that Lowland Scotch malts used a triple distillation just like the Irish do, breaking away from the general rule that all Scotch is double distilled.
Single grain whisky is made with water and a malted barley but the distillery then adds other grains or cereals, wheat, corn or rye, for example. From that moment on, it can no longer be called single malt. This type of product must be from a single distillery and is often used in making blended Scotch. Single grain whiskies are usually not distilled in pot stills but with column stills.
Blended malt whisky—formerly called "vatted malt" or "pure malt" (terms that are now prohibited in the SWR 2009)—is one of the least common types of Scotch: a blend of single malts from more than one distillery (possibly with differing ages).
Blended malts contain only single malt whiskies from two or more distilleries. This type must contain no grain whiskies and is distinguished by the absence of the word "single" on the bottle. The age of the vat is that of the youngest of the original ingredients. For example, a blended malt marked "8 years old" may include older whiskies, with the youngest constituent being eight years old. Johnnie Walker Green Label and Monkey Shoulder are examples of blended malt whisky. Starting from November 2011, no Scotch whisky could be labelled as a vatted malt or pure malt, the SWR requiring them to be labelled blended malt instead.
Blended Scotch whisky constitutes about 90% of the whisky produced in Scotland. Blended Scotch whiskies contain both malt whisky and grain whisky. Producers combine the various malts and grain whiskies to produce a consistent brand style. Notable blended Scotch whisky brands include Ballantine's, Bell's, Chivas Regal, Cutty Sark, Dewar's, J&B, Johnnie Walker, Teacher's Highland Cream, The Famous Grouse, and Whyte and Mackay.
The term blended grain Scotch refers to whisky that contains at least two single grain Scotch whiskies from at least two distilleries, combined to create one batch of the product.
Dozens of compounds contribute to Scotch whisky flavour and aroma characteristics, including volatile alcohol congeners (also called "higher oils") formed during fermentation, such as acetaldehyde, methanol, ethyl acetate, n-propanol, and isobutanol. Other flavour and aroma compounds include vanillic acid, syringic acid, vanillin, syringaldehyde, furfural, phenyl ethanol, and acetic acid. One analysis established 13 distinct flavour characteristics dependent on individual compounds, including sour, sweet, grainy, and floral as major flavour perceptions.
Some distilleries use a peat fire to dry the barley for some of their products before grinding it and making the mash. Peat smoke contributes phenolic compounds, such as guaiacol, that give aromas similar to smoke. The Maillard browning process of the residual sugars in the mashing process, particularly through formation of 2-furanmethanol and pyrazines imparting nutty or cereal characteristics, contributes to the baked bread notes in the flavour and aroma profile. Maturation during multi-year casking from reusing sherry oak barrels originally used for bourbon whiskey production contributes a vanilla aroma to some premium Scotch whiskies.
Refilling and fabrication or tampering of branded Scotch whiskies are types of Scotch whisky adulteration that diminishes brand integrity, consumer confidence, and profitability in the Scotch industry. Deviation from normal concentrations of major constituents, such as alcohol congeners, provides a precise, quantitative method for determining authenticity of Scotch whiskies. Over 100 compounds can be detected during counterfeit analysis, including phenolics and terpenes which may vary in concentration by different geographic origins, the barley used in the fermentation mash, or the oak cask used during ageing. Typical high-throughput instruments used in counterfeit detection are liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry.
Scotland was traditionally divided into four regions: The Highlands, The Lowlands, The Isle of Islay, and Campbeltown. Due to the large number of distilleries found there, the Speyside area became the fifth, recognised by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) as a distinct region in 2014. The whisky-producing islands other than Islay are not recognised as a distinct region by the SWA, which groups them into the Highlands region.
Although only five regions are specified, any Scottish locale may be used to describe a whisky if it is distilled entirely within that place; for example a single malt whisky distilled on Orkney could be described as "Orkney Single Malt Scotch Whisky" instead of as an Island whisky. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28896 |
Special drawing rights
Special drawing rights (SDRs) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency "per se". They represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged. SDRs were created in 1969 to supplement a shortfall of preferred foreign exchange reserve assets, namely gold and U.S. dollars. The ISO 4217 currency code for special drawing rights is XDR and the numeric code is "960".
SDRs are allocated by the IMF to countries, and cannot be held or used by private parties. The number of SDRs in existence was around XDR 21.4 billion in August 2009. During the global financial crisis of 2009, an additional XDR 182.6 billion was allocated to "provide liquidity to the global economic system and supplement member countries’ official reserves". By October 2014, the number of SDRs in existence was XDR 204 billion.
The value of a SDR is based on a basket of key international currencies reviewed by IMF every five years. The weights assigned to each currency in the XDR basket are adjusted to take into account their current prominence in terms of international trade and national foreign exchange reserves. In the review conducted in November 2015, the IMF decided to add the Renminbi (Chinese yuan) to the basket, effective 1 October 2016. Since that date, the XDR basket has consisted of the following five currencies: U.S. dollar 41.73%, euro 30.93%, renminbi (Chinese yuan) 10.92%, Japanese yen 8.33%, British pound 8.09%.
While the ISO 4217 currency code for special drawing rights is XDR, they are often referred to by their acronym SDR. Both refer to the name "special drawing rights".
Intentionally innocuous and free of connotations because of disagreements over the nature of this new reserve asset during its creation, the name derives from a debate about its primary function—money or credit. While the name would offend neither side, it can be argued that prior to 1981 the XDR was a debt security and so a form of credit. Member countries receiving XDR allocations were required by the reconstitution provision of the XDR articles to hold a prescribed number of XDRs. If a state used any of its allotment, it was expected to rebuild its XDR holdings. As the reconstitution provisions were abrogated in 1981, the XDR now functions less like credit than previously. Countries are still expected to maintain their XDR holdings at a certain level, but penalties for holding fewer than the allocated amount are now less onerous.
The name may actually derive from an early proposal for IMF "reserve drawing rights". The word "reserve" was later replaced with "special" because the idea that the IMF was creating a foreign exchange reserve asset was contentious.
Special drawing rights were created by the IMF in 1969 and were intended to be an asset held in foreign exchange reserves under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. 1 XDR was initially defined as US$1, equal to 0.888671 g of gold. After the collapse of that system in the early 1970s the SDR has taken on a less important role. Acting as the unit of account for the IMF has been its primary purpose since 1972.
The IMF itself calls the current role of the XDR "insignificant". Developed countries, who hold the greatest number of XDRs, are unlikely to use them for any purpose. The only actual users of XDRs may be those developing countries that see them as "a rather cheap line of credit".
One reason XDRs may not see much use as foreign exchange reserve assets is that they must be exchanged into a currency before use. This is due in part to the fact private parties do not hold XDRs: they are only used and held by IMF member countries, the IMF itself, and a select few organizations licensed to do so by the IMF. Basic functions of foreign exchange reserves, such as market intervention and liquidity provision, as well as some less prosaic ones, such as maintaining export competitiveness via favorable exchange rates, cannot be accomplished directly using XDRs. This fact has led the IMF to label the XDR as an "imperfect reserve asset".
Another reason they may see little use is that the number of XDRs in existence is relatively few. As of January 2011, XDRs represented less than 4% of global foreign exchange reserve assets. To function well a foreign exchange reserve asset must have sufficient liquidity, but XDRs, because of their small number, may be perceived to be an illiquid asset. The IMF says, "expanding the volume of official XDRs is a prerequisite for them to play a more meaningful role as a substitute reserve asset."
The XDR comes to prominence when the U.S. dollar is weak or otherwise unsuitable to be a foreign exchange reserve asset. This usually manifests itself as an allocation of XDRs to IMF member countries. Distrust of the U.S. dollar is not the only stated reason allocations have been made, however.
One of its first roles was to alleviate an expected shortfall of U.S. dollars c. 1970. At this time, the United States had a conservative monetary policy and did not want to increase the total amount of U.S. dollars in existence. If the United States had continued down this path, the dollar would have become a less attractive foreign exchange reserve asset: it would not have had the necessary liquidity to serve this function. Soon after XDR allocations began, the United States reversed its former policy and provided sufficient liquidity. In the process a potential role for the XDR was removed. During this first round of allocations, 9.3 billion XDRs were distributed to IMF member countries.
The XDR resurfaced in 1978 when many countries were wary of taking on more foreign exchange reserve assets denominated in U.S. dollars. This suspicion of the dollar precipitated an allocation of 12 billion XDRs over a period of four years.
Concomitant with the financial crisis of 2007–08, the third round of XDR allocations occurred in the years 2009 and 2011. The IMF recognized the financial crisis as the cause for distributing the large majority of these third-round allotments, but some allocations were couched as distributing XDRs to countries that had never received any and others as a re-balancing of IMF quotas, which determine how many XDRs a country is allotted, to better represent the economic strength of emerging markets.
During this time China, a country with large holdings of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves, voiced its displeasure at the current international monetary system, and promoted measures that would allow the XDR to "fully satisfy the member countries' demand for a reserve currency." These comments, made by a chairman of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, drew media attention, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28897 |
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements.
Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it or liaised with it were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as "Churchill's Secret Army" or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". Its various branches, and sometimes the organisation as a whole, were concealed for security purposes behind names such as the "Joint Technical Board" or the "Inter-Service Research Bureau", or fictitious branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty or War Office.
SOE operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis forces, except where demarcation lines were agreed with Britain's principal Allies (the United States and the Soviet Union). It also made use of neutral territory on occasion, or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organisation directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women.
After the war, the organisation was officially dissolved on 15 January 1946. On the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey is the official memorial to all those who served in the SOE during the Second World War. It was unveiled on 13 February 1996 by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. A further memorial to SOE's agents was unveiled in October 2009 on the Albert Embankment by Lambeth Palace in London.
The Valençay SOE Memorial honours 104 SOE agents who lost their lives while working in France.
The organisation was formed from the merger of three existing secret departments, which had been formed shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Immediately after Germany annexed Austria (the "Anschluss") in March 1938, the Foreign Office created a propaganda organisation known as Department EH (after Electra House, its headquarters), run by Canadian newspaper magnate Sir Campbell Stuart. Later that month, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) formed a section known as Section D, under Major Lawrence Grand RE, to investigate the use of sabotage, propaganda, and other irregular means to weaken an enemy. In the autumn of the same year, the War Office expanded an existing research department known as GS (R) and appointed Major J. C. Holland RE as its head to conduct research into guerrilla warfare. GS (R) was renamed MI(R) in early 1939.
These three departments worked with few resources until the outbreak of war. There was much overlap between their activities. Section D and EH duplicated much of each other's work. On the other hand, the heads of Section D and MI(R) knew each other and shared information. They agreed to a rough division of their activities; MI(R) researched irregular operations that could be undertaken by regular uniformed troops, while Section D dealt with truly undercover work.
During the early months of the war, Section D was based first at St Ermin's Hotel in Westminster and then the Metropole Hotel near Trafalgar Square. The Section attempted unsuccessfully to sabotage deliveries of vital strategic materials to Germany from neutral countries by mining the Iron Gate on the River Danube. MI(R) meanwhile produced pamphlets and technical handbooks for guerrilla leaders. MI(R) was also involved in the formation of the Independent Companies, autonomous units intended to carry out sabotage and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines in the Norwegian Campaign, and the Auxiliary Units, stay-behind commando units based on the Home Guard which would act in the event of an Axis invasion of Britain, as seemed possible in the early years of the war.
On 13 June 1940, at the instigation of newly appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lord Hankey (who held the Cabinet post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) persuaded Section D and MI(R) that their operations should be coordinated. On 1 July, a Cabinet level meeting arranged the formation of a single sabotage organisation. On 16 July, Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, was appointed to take political responsibility for the new organisation, which was formally created on 22 July 1940. Dalton recorded in his diary that on that day the War Cabinet agreed to his new duties and that Churchill had told him, "And now go and set Europe ablaze." Dalton used the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence as a model for the organisation.
Sir Frank Nelson was nominated by SIS to be director of the new organisation, and a senior civil servant, Gladwyn Jebb, transferred from the Foreign Office to it, with the title of Chief Executive Officer. Campbell Stuart left the organisation, and the flamboyant Major Grand was returned to the regular army. At his own request, Major Holland also left to take up a regular appointment in the Royal Engineers. (Both Grand and Holland eventually attained the rank of Major-general.) However, Holland's former deputy at MI(R), Brigadier Colin Gubbins, returned from command of the Auxiliary Units to be Director of Operations of SOE.
One department of MI(R), MI R(C), which was involved in the development of weapons for irregular warfare, was not formally integrated into SOE but became an independent body codenamed MD1. Directed by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Millis Jefferis, it was located at The Firs in Whitchurch and nicknamed "Churchill's Toyshop" from the Prime Minister's close interest in it and his enthusiastic support.
The director of SOE was usually referred to by the initials "CD". Nelson, the first director to be appointed, was a former head of a trading firm in India, a back bench Conservative Member of Parliament and Consul in Basel, Switzerland. There he had also been engaged in undercover intelligence work.
In February 1942 Dalton became President of the Board of Trade and was replaced as Minister of Economic Warfare by Lord Selborne. Selborne in turn retired Nelson, who had suffered ill health as a result of his hard work, and appointed Sir Charles Hambro, head of Hambros Bank, to replace him. He also transferred Jebb back to the Foreign Office.
Hambro had been a close friend of Churchill before the war and had won the Military Cross in the First World War. He retained several other interests, for example remaining chairman of Hambros and a director of the Great Western Railway. Some of his subordinates and associates expressed reservations that these interests distracted him from his duties as director. Selborne and Hambro nevertheless cooperated closely until August 1943, when they fell out over the question of whether SOE should remain a separate body or co-ordinate its operations with those of the British Army in several theatres of war. Hambro felt that any loss of autonomy would cause a number of problems for SOE in the future. At the same time, Hambro was found to have failed to pass on vital information to Selborne. He was dismissed as director, and became head of a raw materials purchasing commission in Washington, D.C., which was involved in the exchange of nuclear information.
As part of the subsequent closer ties between the Imperial General Staff and SOE (although SOE had no representation on the Chiefs of Staff Committee), Hambro's replacement as director from September 1943 was Gubbins, now a Major-general. Gubbins had wide experience of commando and clandestine operations and had played a major part in MI(R)'s and SOE's early operations. He also put into practice many of the lessons he learned from the IRA during the Irish War of Independence.
The organisation of SOE continually evolved and changed during the war. Initially, it consisted of three broad departments: SO1, which dealt with propaganda; SO2 (operations); and SO3 (research). SO3 was quickly overloaded with paperwork and was merged into SO2. In August 1941, following quarrels between the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Ministry of Information over their relative responsibilities, SO1 was removed from SOE and became an independent organisation, the Political Warfare Executive.
Thereafter, a single, broad "Operations" department controlled the Sections operating into enemy and sometimes neutral territory, and the selection and training of agents. Sections, usually referred to by code letters or groups of letters, were assigned to a single country. Some enemy-occupied countries had two or more sections assigned to deal with politically disparate resistance movements. (France had no less than six). For security purposes, each section had its own headquarters and training establishments. This strict compartmentalisation was so effective that in mid-1942 five governments in exile jointly suggested that a single sabotage organisation be created, and were startled to learn that SOE had been in existence for two years.
Four departments and some smaller groups were controlled by the director of scientific research, Professor Dudley Maurice Newitt, and were concerned with the development or acquisition and production of special equipment. A few other sections were involved with finance, security, economic research and administration, although SOE had no central registry or filing system. When Gubbins was appointed director, he formalised some of the administrative practices which had grown in an "ad hoc" fashion and appointed an establishment officer to oversee the manpower and other requirements of the various departments.
The main controlling body of SOE was its council, consisting of around fifteen heads of departments or sections. About half of the council were from the armed forces (although some were specialists who were only commissioned after the outbreak of war), the rest were various civil servants, lawyers, or business or industrial experts. Most of the members of the council, and the senior officers and functionaries of SOE generally, were recruited by word of mouth among public school alumni and Oxbridge graduates, although this did not notably affect SOE's political complexion.
Several subsidiary SOE headquarters and stations were set up to manage operations which were too distant for London to control directly. SOE's operations in the Middle East and Balkans were controlled from a headquarters in Cairo, which was notorious for poor security, infighting and conflicts with other agencies. It finally became known in April 1944 as Special Operations (Mediterranean), or SO(M). Shortly after the Allied landings in North Africa, a station codenamed ""Massingham"" was established near Algiers in late 1942, which operated into Southern France. Following the Allied invasion of Italy, personnel from "Massingham" established forward stations in Brindisi and near Naples. A subsidiary headquarters initially known as "Force 133" was later set up in Bari in Southern Italy, under the Cairo headquarters, to control operations in the Balkans and Northern Italy.
An SOE station, which was first called the "India Mission", and was subsequently known as "GS I(k)" was set up in India late in 1940. It subsequently moved to Ceylon so as to be closer to the headquarters of the Allied South East Asia Command and became known as Force 136. A "Singapore Mission" was set up at the same time as the India Mission but was unable to overcome official opposition to its attempts to form resistance movements in Malaya before the Japanese overran Singapore. Force 136 took over its surviving staff and operations.
New York City also had a branch office, formally titled British Security Coordination, and headed by the Canadian businessman Sir William Stephenson. This office, located at Room 3603, 630 Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, coordinated the work of SOE, SIS and MI5 with the American FBI and Office of Strategic Services.
As with its leadership and organisation, the aims and objectives of SOE changed throughout the war, although they revolved around sabotaging and subverting the Axis war machines through indirect methods. SOE occasionally carried out operations with direct military objectives, such as Operation Harling, originally designed to cut one of the Axis supply lines to their troops fighting in North Africa. They also carried out some high-profile operations aimed mainly at the morale both of the Axis and occupied nations, such as Operation Anthropoid, the assassination in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich. In general also, SOE's objectives were to foment mutual hatred between the population of Axis-occupied countries and the occupiers, and to force the Axis to expend manpower and resources on maintaining their control of subjugated populations.
Dalton's early enthusiasm for fomenting widespread strikes, civil disobedience and nuisance sabotage in Axis-occupied areas had to be curbed. Thereafter, there were two main aims, often mutually incompatible; sabotage of the Axis war effort, and the creation of secret armies which would rise up to assist the liberation of their countries when Allied troops arrived or were about to do so. It was recognised that acts of sabotage would bring about reprisals and increased Axis security measures which would hamper the creation of underground armies. As the tide of war turned in the Allies' favour, these underground armies became more important.
At the government level, SOE's relationships with the Foreign Office were often difficult. On several occasions, various governments in exile protested at operations taking place without their knowledge or approval, provoking Axis reprisals against civilian populations, or complained about SOE's support for movements opposed to the exiled governments. SOE's activities also threatened relationships with neutral countries. SOE nevertheless generally adhered to the rule, ""No bangs without Foreign Office approval.""
Early attempts at bureaucratic control of Jefferis's MIR(c) by the Ministry of Supply were eventually foiled by Churchill's intervention. Thereafter, they co-operated, though at arm's length, with Dudley Newitt's various supply and development departments. The Treasury were accommodating from the start and were often prepared to turn a blind eye to some of SOE's questionable activities.
With other military headquarters and commands, SOE cooperated fairly well with Combined Operations Headquarters during the middle years of the war, usually on technical matters as SOE's equipment was readily adopted by commandos and other raiders. This support was lost when Vice Admiral Louis Mountbatten left Combined Operations, though by this time SOE had its own transport and had no need to rely on Combined Operations for resources. On the other hand, the Admiralty objected to SOE developing its own underwater vessels, and the duplication of effort this involved. The Royal Air Force, and in particular RAF Bomber Command under "Bomber" Harris were usually reluctant to allocate aircraft to SOE.
Towards the end of the war, as Allied forces began to liberate territories occupied by the Axis and in which SOE had established resistance forces, SOE also liaised with and to some extent came under the control of the Allied theatre commands. Relationships with Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in north-west Europe (whose commander was General Dwight D. Eisenhower) and South East Asia Command (whose commander was Admiral Louis Mountbatten, already well known to SOE) were generally excellent. However, there were difficulties with the Commanders in Chief in the Mediterranean, partly because of the complaints over impropriety at SOE's Cairo headquarters during 1941 and partly because both the supreme command in the Mediterranean and SOE's establishments were split in 1942 and 1943, leading to divisions of responsibility and authority.
There was tension between SOE and SIS, which the Foreign Office controlled. Where SIS preferred placid conditions in which it could gather intelligence and work through influential persons or authorities, SOE was intended to create unrest and turbulence, and often backed anti-establishment organisations, such as the Communists, in several countries. At one stage, SIS actively hindered SOE's attempts to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied France.
Even before the United States joined the war, the head of the newly formed Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), William J. Donovan, had received technical information from SOE and had arranged for some members of his organisation to undergo training at a camp run by SOE in Oshawa in Canada. In early 1942, Donovan's organisation became the Office of Strategic Services. SOE and OSS worked out respective areas of operation: OSS's exclusive sphere included China (including Manchuria), Korea and Australia, the Atlantic islands and Finland. SOE retained India, the Middle East and East Africa, and the Balkans. While the two services both worked in Western Europe, it was expected that SOE would be the leading partner.
In the middle of the war, the relations between SOE and OSS were not often smooth. They established a joint headquarters in Algiers but the officers of the two organisations working there refused to share information with each other. In the Balkans, and Yugoslavia especially, SOE and OSS several times worked at cross-purposes, reflecting their governments' differing (and changing) attitudes to the Partisans and Chetniks. However, in 1944 SOE and OSS successfully pooled their personnel and resources to mount Operation Jedburgh, providing large scale support to the French Resistance following the Normandy landings.
SOE had some nominal contact with the Soviet NKVD, but this was limited to a single liaison officer at each other's headquarters.
After working from temporary offices in Central London, the headquarters of SOE was moved on 31 October 1940 into 64 Baker Street (hence the nickname ""the Baker Street Irregulars""). Ultimately, SOE occupied much of the western side of Baker Street. "Baker Street" became the euphemistic way of referring to SOE. The precise nature of the buildings remained concealed; it had no entry in the telephone directories, and correspondence to external bodies bore service addresses; MO1 (SP) (a War Office branch), NID(Q) (Admiralty), AI10 (Air Ministry), or other fictitious bodies or civilian companies.
SOE maintained a large number of training, research and development or administrative centres. It was a joke that ""SOE"" stood for ""Stately 'omes of England"", after the large number of country houses and estates it requisitioned and used.
The establishments connected with experimentation and production of equipment were mainly concentrated in and around Hertfordshire and were designated by roman numbers. The main weapons and devices research establishments were The Firs, the home of MD1 near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire (although this was not formally part of SOE), and Station IX at The Frythe, a country house (and former private hotel) outside Welwyn Garden City where, under the cover name of ISRB (Inter Services Research Bureau), SOE developed radios, weapons, explosive devices and booby traps.
Section D originally had a research station at Bletchley Park, which also held the Government Code and Cipher School, until in November 1940 it was decided that it was unwise to conduct codebreaking and explosives experiments on the same site. The establishment moved to Aston House near Stevenage in Hertfordshire and was renamed Station XII. It originally conducted research and development but from 1941 it became a production, storage and distribution centre for devices already developed.
Station XV, at the Thatched Barn near Borehamwood, was devoted to camouflage, which usually meant equipping agents with authentic local clothing and personal effects. Various sub-stations in London were also involved in this task. Station XV and other camouflage sections also devised methods of hiding weapons, explosives or radios in innocuous-seeming items.
Agents also needed identity papers, ration cards, currency and so on. Station XIV, at Briggens House near Roydon in Essex, was originally the home of STS38, a training facility for Polish saboteurs, ) who set up their own forgery section. As the work expanded, it became the central forgery department for SOE and the Poles eventually moved out on 1 April 1942. The technicians at Station XIV included a number of ex-convicts.
The training establishments, and properties used by country sections, were designated by Arabic numbers and were widely distributed. The initial training centres of the SOE were at country houses such as Wanborough Manor, Guildford. Agents destined to serve in the field underwent commando training at Arisaig in Scotland, where they were taught armed and unarmed combat skills by William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes, former Inspectors in the Shanghai Municipal Police. Those who passed this course received parachute training by STS 51 and 51a situated near Altrincham, Cheshire with the assistance of No.1 Parachute Training School RAF, at RAF Ringway (which later became Manchester Airport). They then attended courses in security and Tradecraft at Group B schools around Beaulieu in Hampshire. Finally, depending on their intended role, they received specialist training in skills such as demolition techniques or Morse code telegraphy at various country houses in England.
SOE's Cairo branch established a commando and parachute training school numbered STS 102 at Ramat David near Haifa. This school trained agents who joined SOE from among the armed forces stationed in the Middle East, and also members of the Special Air Service and Greek Sacred Squadron.
A commando training centre similar to Arisaig and run by Fairbairn was later set up at Oshawa, for Canadian members of SOE and members of the newly created American organisation, the Office of Strategic Services.
A variety of people from all classes and pre-war occupations served SOE in the field. The backgrounds of agents in F Section, for example, ranged from aristocrats such as Polish-born Countess Krystyna Skarbek, and Noor Inayat Khan, the daughter of an Indian Sufi leader, to working-class people such as Violette Szabo, with some even reputedly from the criminal underworld.
In most cases, the primary quality required of an agent was a deep knowledge of the country in which he or she was to operate, and especially its language, if the agent was to pass as a native of the country. Dual nationality was often a prized attribute. This was particularly so of France. In other cases, especially in the Balkans, a lesser degree of fluency was required as the resistance groups concerned were already in open rebellion and a clandestine existence was unnecessary. A flair for diplomacy combined with a taste for rough soldiering was more necessary. Some regular army officers proved adept as envoys, although others (such as the former diplomat Fitzroy Maclean or the classicist Christopher Woodhouse) were commissioned only during wartime.
Several of SOE's agents were from the Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine, many of whom were already Émigrés from Nazi or other oppressive or anti-semitic regimes in Europe. Thirty-two of them served as agents in the field, seven of whom were captured and executed.
Exiled or escaped members of the armed forces of some occupied countries were obvious sources of agents. This was particularly true of Norway and the Netherlands. In other cases (such as Frenchmen owing loyalty to Charles de Gaulle and especially the Poles), the agents' first loyalty was to their leaders or governments in exile, and they treated SOE only as a means to an end. This could occasionally lead to mistrust and strained relations in Britain.
The organisation was prepared to ignore almost any contemporary social convention in its fight against the Axis. It employed known homosexuals, people with criminal records (some of whom taught skills such as picking locks) or bad conduct records in the armed forces, Communists and anti-British nationalists. Some of these might have been considered a security risk, but no known case exists of an SOE agent wholeheartedly going over to the enemy. The case of Henri Déricourt is an example in which the conduct of agents was questionable, but it was impossible to establish whether they were acting under secret orders from SOE or MI6.
SOE was also far ahead of contemporary attitudes in its use of women in armed combat. Although women were first considered only as couriers in the field or as wireless operators or administrative staff in Britain, those sent into the field were trained to use weapons and in unarmed combat. Most were commissioned into either the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) or the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Women often assumed leadership roles in the field. Pearl Witherington became the organiser (leader) of a highly successful resistance network in France. Early in the war, American Virginia Hall functioned as the unofficial nerve center of several SOE networks in Vichy France. Many women agents such as Odette Hallowes or Violette Szabo were decorated for bravery, posthumously in Szabo's case. Of SOE's 41 (or 39 in some estimates) female agents serving in Section F (France) sixteen did not survive with twelve killed or executed in Nazi concentration camps.
Most of the resistance networks which SOE formed or liaised with were controlled by radio directly from Britain or one of SOE's subsidiary headquarters. All resistance circuits contained at least one wireless operator, and all drops or landings were arranged by radio, except for some early exploratory missions sent "blind" into enemy-occupied territory.
At first, SOE's radio traffic went through the SIS-controlled radio station at Bletchley Park. From 1 June 1942 SOE used its own transmitting and receiving stations at Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire and Poundon nearby, as the location and topography were suitable. Teleprinters linked the radio stations with SOE's HQ in Baker Street. Operators in the Balkans worked to radio stations in Cairo.
SOE was highly dependent upon the security of radio transmissions, involving three factors: the physical qualities and capabilities of the radio sets, the security of the transmission procedures and the provision of proper ciphers.
SOE's first radios were supplied by SIS. They were large, clumsy and required large amounts of power. SOE acquired a few, much more suitable, sets from the Poles in exile, but eventually designed and manufactured their own, such as the Paraset, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel F. W. Nicholls R. Sigs who had served with Gubbins between the wars. The A Mk III, with its batteries and accessories, weighed only , and could fit into a small attache case, although the B Mk II, otherwise known as the B2, which weighed , was required to work over ranges greater than about .
Operating procedures were insecure at first. Operators were forced to transmit verbose messages on fixed frequencies and at fixed times and intervals. This allowed German direction finding teams time to triangulate their positions. After several operators were captured or killed, procedures were made more flexible and secure. The SOE wireless operators were also known as "The Pianists".
As with their first radio sets, SOE's first ciphers were inherited from SIS. Leo Marks, SOE's chief cryptographer, was responsible for the development of better codes to replace the insecure poem codes. Eventually, SOE settled on single use ciphers, printed on silk. Unlike paper, which would be given away by rustling, silk would not be detected by a casual search if it was concealed in the lining of clothing.
The BBC also played its part in communications with agents or groups in the field. During the war, it broadcast to almost all Axis-occupied countries, and was avidly listened to, even at risk of arrest. The BBC included various "personal messages" in its broadcasts, which could include lines of poetry or apparently nonsensical items. They could be used to announce the safe arrival of an agent or message in London for example, or could be instructions to carry out operations on a given date. These were used for example to mobilise the resistance groups in the hours before Operation Overlord.
In the field, agents could sometimes make use of the postal services, though these were slow, not always reliable and letters were almost certain to be opened and read by the Axis security services. In training, agents were taught to use a variety of easily available substances to make invisible ink, though most of these could be detected by a cursory examination, or to hide coded messages in apparently innocent letters. The telephone services were even more certain to be intercepted and listened to by the enemy, and could be used only with great care.
The most secure method of communication in the field was by courier. In the earlier part of the war, most women sent as agents in the field were employed as couriers, on the assumption that they would be less likely to be suspected of illicit activities.
Although SOE used some suppressed assassination weapons such as the De Lisle carbine and the Welrod (specifically developed for SOE at Station IX), it took the view that weapons issued to resisters should not require extensive training in their use, or need careful maintenance. The crude and cheap Sten was a favourite. For issue to large forces such as the Yugoslav Partisans, SOE used captured German or Italian weapons. These were available in large quantities after the Tunisian and Sicilian campaigns and the surrender of Italy, and the partisans could acquire ammunition for these weapons (and the Sten) from enemy sources.
SOE also adhered to the principle that resistance fighters would be handicapped rather than helped by heavy equipment such as mortars or anti-tank guns. These were awkward to transport, almost impossible to conceal and required skilled and highly trained operators. Later in the war however, when resistance groups staged open rebellions against enemy occupation, some heavy weapons were dispatched, for example to the Maquis du Vercors. Weapons such as the British Army's standard Bren light machine gun were also supplied in such cases.
Most SOE agents received training on captured enemy weapons before being sent into enemy-occupied territory. Ordinary SOE agents were also armed with handguns acquired abroad, such as, from 1941, a variety of US pistols, and a large quantity of the Spanish Llama .38 ACP in 1944. Such was SOE's demand for weapons, a consignment of 8,000 Ballester–Molina .45 calibre weapons was purchased from Argentina, apparently with the mediation of the US.
SOE agents were issued with the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife also issued to Commandos. For specialised operations or use in extreme circumstances, SOE issued small fighting knives which could be concealed in the heel of a hard leather shoe or behind a coat lapel. Given the likely fate of agents captured by the Gestapo, SOE also disguised suicide pills as coat buttons.
SOE developed a wide range of explosive devices for sabotage, such as limpet mines, shaped charges and time fuses, which were also widely used by commando units. Most of these devices were designed and produced at The Firs. The Time Pencil, invented by Commander A.J.G. Langley, the first commandant of Station XII at Aston was used to give a saboteur time to escape after setting a charge and was far simpler to carry and use than lighted fuses or electrical detonators. It relied on crushing an internal vial of acid which then corroded a retaining wire, which sometimes made it inaccurate in cold or hot conditions. Later the L-Delay, which instead allowed a lead retaining wire to "creep" until it broke and was less affected by the temperature, was introduced.
SOE pioneered the use of plastic explosive. (The term "plastique" comes from plastic explosive packaged by SOE and originally destined for France but taken to the United States instead.) Plastic explosive could be shaped and cut to perform almost any demolition task. It was also inert and required a powerful detonator to cause it to explode, and was therefore safe to transport and store. It was used in everything from car bombs, to exploding rats designed to destroy coal-fired boilers.
Other, more subtle sabotage methods included lubricants laced with grinding materials, intended for introduction into vehicle oil systems, railway wagon axle boxes, etc., incendiaries disguised as innocuous objects, explosive material concealed in coal piles to destroy locomotives, and land mines disguised as cow or elephant dung. On the other hand, some sabotage methods were extremely simple but effective, such as using sledgehammers to crack cast-iron mountings for machinery.
Station IX developed several miniature submersible craft. The Welman submarine and "Sleeping Beauty" were offensive weapons, intended to place explosive charges on or adjacent to enemy vessels at anchor. The Welman was used once or twice in action, but without success. The Welfreighter was intended to deliver stores to beaches or inlets, but it too was unsuccessful.
A sea trials unit was set up in West Wales at Goodwick, by Fishguard (station IXa) where these craft were tested. In late 1944 craft were dispatched to Australia to the Allied Intelligence Bureau (SRD), for tropical testing.
SOE also revived some medieval devices, such as the caltrop, which could be used to burst the tyres of vehicles or injure foot soldiers and crossbows powered by multiple rubber bands to shoot incendiary bolts. There were two types, known as ""Big Joe"" and ""Lil Joe"" respectively. They had tubular alloy skeleton stocks and were designed to be collapsible for ease of concealment.
An important section of SOE was the Operation Research and Trials Section, which was formally established in August 1943. The section had the responsibility both for issuing formal requirements and specifications to the relevant development and production sections, and for testing prototypes of the devices produced under field conditions. Over the period from 1 November 1943 to 1 November 1944, the section tested 78 devices. Some of these were weapons such as the Sleeve gun or fuses or adhesion devices to be used in sabotage, others were utility objects such as waterproof containers for stores to be dropped by parachute, or night glasses (lightweight binoculars with plastic lenses). Of the devices tested, 47% were accepted for use with little or no modification, 31% were accepted only after considerable modification and the remaining 22% were rejected.
Before SOE's research and development procedures were formalised in 1943, a variety of more or less useful devices were developed. Some of the more imaginative devices invented by SOE included exploding pens with enough explosive power to blast a hole in the bearer's body, or guns concealed in tobacco pipes, though there is no record of any of these being used in action. Station IX developed a miniature folding motorbike (the "Welbike") for use by parachutists, though this was noisy and conspicuous, used scarce petrol and was of little use on rough ground.
The continent of Europe was largely closed to normal travel. Although it was possible in some cases to cross frontiers from neutral countries such as Spain or Sweden, it was slow and there were problems over violating these countries' neutrality. SOE had to rely largely on its own air or sea transport for movement of people, arms and equipment.
SOE never had its own air force, but had to rely on the RAF for its planes. It was engaged in disputes with the RAF from its early days. In January 1941, an intended ambush (Operation Savanna) against the aircrew of a German "pathfinder" air group near Vannes in Brittany was thwarted when Air Vice Marshal Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, objected on moral grounds to parachuting what he regarded as assassins, although Portal's objections were later overcome and "Savanna" was mounted, unsuccessfully. From 1942, when Air Marshal Arthur Harris (""Bomber Harris"") became the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command, he consistently resisted the diversion of the most capable types of bombers to SOE purposes.
SOE's first aircraft were two Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys belonging to 419 Flight RAF, which was formed in September 1940. In 1941, the flight was expanded to become No. 138 Squadron RAF. In February 1942, they were joined by No. 161 Squadron RAF. 161 Squadron flew agent insertions and pick-ups, while 138 Squadron delivered arms and stores by parachute. "C" flight from No. 138 Squadron later became No. 1368 Flight of the Polish Air Force, which joined No. 624 Squadron flying Halifaxes in the Mediterranean. By the later stages of the war several United States Army Air Forces squadrons were operating Douglas C-47 Skytrains in the Mediterranean, although by this time their operations had passed from SOE proper to the "Balkan Air Terminal Service". Three Special Duties squadrons operated in the Far East using a variety of aircraft, including the very long-range Consolidated B-24 Liberator.
Nos. 161 and 138 Squadrons were based at RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire though No. 161 Squadron often moved forward to RAF Tangmere, close to the coast in West Sussex, to shorten their flights. The airfield at Tempsford became the RAF's most secret base. (Tempsford had been rejected for Bomber Command's purposes by Harris in March 1942, as it frequently became waterlogged.) RAF Tempsford was designed to look like an ordinary working farm. The SOE used Tangmere Cottage, opposite the main entrance to the base. SOE agents were lodged in a local hotel before being ferried to farm buildings, the "Gibraltar Farm" within the airfield's perimeter track. After final briefings and checks at the farm, the agents were issued firearms in the barn, and then boarded a waiting aircraft.
The squadrons' first task was to take agents to France who could select suitable fields for their aircraft. Most of these agents were French expatriates, some of whom had been pilots in the French Armée de l'Air. Once the agent was in place and had selected a number of potential fields, 161 Squadron delivered SOE agents, wireless equipment and operators and weapons, and flew French political leaders, resistance leaders or their family members, and downed allied airmen to Britain. Between them, the two squadrons transported 101 agents to, and recovered 128 agents, diplomats and airmen from occupied France.
161 Squadron's principal aircraft was the Westland Lysander. It handled very well at low speed and could use landing grounds only long. It had a range of and could carry one to three passengers in the rear cockpit and stores in a pannier underneath the fuselage. It was flown by a single pilot, who also had to navigate, so missions had to be flown on clear nights with a full or near full moon. Bad weather often thwarted missions, German night fighters were also a hazard, and pilots could never know when landing whether they would be greeted by the resistance or the Gestapo.
The procedure once a Lysander reached its destination in France was described by Squadron Leader Hugh Verity. Once the aircraft reached the airfield the agent on the ground would signal the aircraft by flashing a prearranged code letter in Morse. The aircraft would respond by blinking back the appropriate code response letter. The agent and his men would then mark the field by lighting the three landing lights, which were flashlights attached to poles. The "A" lamp was at the base of the landing ground. 150 metres beyond it and into the wind was the "B" light, and 50 metres to the right of "B" was the "C" light. The three lights formed an inverted "L", with the "B" and "C" lights upwind from "A". With the code passed the pilot would land the aircraft. He then would taxi back to the "A" lamp, where the passengers would clamber down the fixed ladder to the ground, often while the pilot was making a slow U-turn. Before leaving the last passenger would hand off the luggage and then take aboard the outgoing luggage before climbing down the ladder as well. Then the outgoing passengers would climb aboard and the aircraft would take off. The whole exchange might take as little as 3 minutes.
The Lockheed Hudson had a range greater and could carry more passengers (ten or more), but required landing strips three times as long as those needed for the Lysander (450 yards vs. 150 yards). It carried a navigator, to ease the load on the pilot, and could also be fitted with navigational equipment such as the "Rebecca" homing receiver. The Hudson's use with 161 Squadron was developed by Charles Pickard and Hugh Verity. Pickard determined that the Hudson's stall speed was actually some 20 mph slower than its manual stated. Before it was first used on 13 January 1943, 161 Squadron had to send two Lysander aircraft in what they termed "a double" if larger parties needed to be picked up.
No. 138 Squadron's primary mission was the delivery of equipment, and occasionally agents, by parachute. It flew a variety of bomber-type aircraft, often modified with extra fuel tanks and flame-suppressing exhaust shrouds: the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley until November 1942, the Handley Page Halifax and later the Short Stirling. The Stirling could carry a very large load, but the aircraft with the longest range was the Halifax, which when based in Italy could reach drop zones as far away as eastern Poland.
Stores were usually parachuted in cylindrical containers. The "C" type was long, and when fully loaded could weigh up to . The "H" type was the same size overall but could be broken down into five smaller sections. This made it easier to carry and conceal but it could not be loaded with longer loads such as rifles. Some inert stores such as boots and blankets were "free-dropped" i.e. simply thrown out of the aircraft bundled together without a parachute, often to the hazard of any receiving committee on the ground.
Some devices used by SOE were designed specifically to guide aircraft to landing strips and dropping zones. Such sites could be marked by an agent on the ground with bonfires or bicycle lamps, but this required good visibility, as the pilot or navigator of a plane had not only to spot the ground signals, but also to navigate by visible landmarks to correct dead reckoning. Many landings or drops were thwarted by bad weather. To overcome these problems, SOE and Allied airborne forces used the Rebecca/Eureka transponding radar, which enabled a Hudson or larger aircraft to home in on a point on the ground even in thick weather. It was however difficult for agents or resistance fighters to carry or conceal the ground-based "Eureka" equipment.
SOE also developed the S-Phone, which allowed a pilot or radio operator aboard an aircraft to communicate by voice with the "reception committee". Sound quality was good enough for voices to be recognisable, so that a mission could be aborted in case of any doubts of an agent's identity.
SOE also experienced difficulties with the Royal Navy, who were usually unwilling to allow SOE to use its submarines or motor torpedo boats to deliver agents or equipment. Submarines were regarded as too valuable to risk within range of enemy coastal defences. They could also carry only small numbers of agents, in great discomfort, and could disembark stores only in small dinghies or canoes, which made it difficult to land large quantities of equipment. SOE nevertheless used them in the Indian Ocean where the distances made it impracticable to use any smaller craft. The vessels used by SOE during the early part of the war were clandestine craft such as fishing boats or caiques. They could pass muster as innocent local craft and carry large quantities of stores. They also had the advantage of being largely outside Admiralty control. However, SOE's first small craft organisation, which was set up in the Helford estuary, suffered from obstruction from SIS, which had a similar private navy nearby. Eventually, in spring 1943, the Admiralty created a Deputy Director of Operations (Irregular), to superintend all such private navies. This officer turned out to be the former commander of SIS's craft in the Helford estuary, but his successor in charge of SIS's Helford base cooperated much better with SOE's flotilla.
While SIS and SOE (and MI9) landed and embarked several dozen agents, refugees and allied aircrew, it was impossible to transport large quantities of arms and equipment inland from beaches in heavily patrolled coastal areas, until France was almost liberated. After the German occupation of Norway, many Norwegian merchant seamen and fishermen made their way to Britain. SOE recruited several to maintain communications to Norway, using fishing boats from a base in the Shetland Islands. The service became so reliable that it became known as the Shetland Bus. One of its boats and crews launched a daring but unsuccessful attack ("Operation Title") against the German battleship Tirpitz. A similar organisation ran missions to occupied Denmark (and neutral Sweden) from the East Coast of Britain. The "Shetland Bus" was unable to operate only during the very long hours of daylight in the arctic summer, because of the risk that the slow fishing boats would be attacked by patrolling German aircraft. Late in the war, the unit acquired three fast Submarine chasers for such missions. About the same time, SOE also acquired MTBs and Motor Gun Boats for the Helford flotilla. SOE also ran feluccas from Algiers into southern France and Corsica, and some caiques in the Aegean.
In France, most agents were directed by two London-based country sections. F Section was under SOE control, while RF Section was linked to Charles de Gaulle's Free French Government in exile. Most native French agents served in RF. Two smaller sections also existed: EU/P Section, which dealt with the Polish community in France, and the DF Section which was responsible for establishing escape routes. During the latter part of 1942 another section known as AMF was established in Algiers, to operate into Southern France.
On 5 May 1941 Georges Bégué (1911–1993) became the first SOE agent dropped into German occupied France. Between Bégué's first drop in May 1941 and August 1944, more than four hundred F Section agents were sent into occupied France, with Andrée Borrel (1919–1944) being the first woman parachuted into France on 24 September 1942. They served in a variety of functions including arms and sabotage instructors, couriers, circuit organisers, liaison officers and radio operators. RF sent about the same number; AMF sent 600 (although not all of these belonged to SOE). EU/P and DF sent a few dozen agents each.
Some networks were compromised, with the loss of many agents. In particular agents continued to be sent to the "Prosper" network for some time after it had been controlled by Germans. The head of F Section, Maurice Buckmaster was blamed by many for the loss.
To support the Allied invasion of France on D Day in June 1944 three-man parties were dropped into various parts of France as part of Operation Jedburgh, to co-ordinate widespread overt (as opposed to clandestine) acts of resistance. A total of 100 men were eventually dropped, together with 6,000 tons of military stores (4,000 tons had been dropped during the years before D-Day). At the same time, all the various sections operating in France (except EU/P) were nominally placed under a London-based HQ titled État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (EMFFI).
It was to take many weeks for a full assessment of the contributions of the Jedburgh teams to the Allied landings in Normandy, but when it came it vindicated Gubbins' belief that carefully planned sabotage could cripple a modern army. General Eisenhower's staff at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force said that the Jedburghs had "succeeded in imposing more or less serious delays on all the division moved to Normandy". This had prevented Hitler from striking back in the crucial opening hours of Operation Overlord. Eisenhower's staff singled out the work of Tommy Macpherson and his two comrades-in-arms for particular praise. The most "outstanding example was the delay to the 2nd SS Panzer Division”, they said, and added a very personal endorsement, agreeing that the work carried out under Gubbins' leadership played a "very considerable part in our complete and final victory".
Casualties of agents and their helpers in France were heavy. About one-third of 42 female agents of Section F did not survive the war; the death toll for more than 400 male agents was one-fourth and the toll of thousands of French people helping SOE agents and networks was about one-fifth.
SOE did not need to instigate Polish resistance, because unlike the Vichy French the Poles overwhelmingly refused to collaborate with the Nazis. Early in the war the Poles established the Polish Home Army, led by a clandestine resistance government known as the Polish Secret State. Nevertheless, many members of SOE were Polish and the SOE and the Polish resistance cooperated extensively.
SOE assisted the Polish government in exile with training facilities and logistical support for its 605 special forces operatives known as the Cichociemni, or ""The Dark and Silent"". Members of the unit, which was based in Audley End House, Essex, were rigorously trained before being parachuted into occupied Poland. Because of the distance involved in air travel to Poland, customised aircraft with extra fuel capacity were used in Polish operations such as Operation Wildhorn III. Sue Ryder chose the title Baroness Ryder of Warsaw in honour of these operations.
Secret Intelligence Service member Krystyna Skarbek ("nom de guerre" Christine Granville) was a founder member of SOE and helped establish a cell of Polish spies in Central Europe. She ran several operations in Poland, Egypt, Hungary (with Andrzej Kowerski) and France, often using the staunchly anti-Nazi Polish expatriate community as a secure international network. Non-official cover agents Elzbieta Zawacka and Jan Nowak-Jezioranski perfected the Gibraltar courier route out of occupied Europe. Maciej Kalenkiewicz was parachuted into occupied Poland, only to be killed by the Soviets. A Polish agent was integral to SOE's Operation Foxley, the plan to assassinate Hitler.
Thanks to co-operation between SOE and the Polish Home Army, the Poles were able to deliver the first Allied intelligence on the Holocaust to London in June 1942. Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army designed a joint operation with SOE to liberate Auschwitz, but the British rejected it as infeasible. Joint Anglo-Polish operations provided London with vital intelligence on the V-2 rocket, German troops movements on the Eastern Front, and the Soviet repressions of Polish citizens.
RAF 'Special Duties Flights' were sent to Poland to assist the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis. The rebellion was defeated with a loss of 200,000 casualties (mostly German executions of Polish civilians) after the nearby Red Army refused military assistance to the Polish Home Army. RAF Special Duties Flights were refused landing rights at Soviet-held airfields near Warsaw, even when requiring emergency landings after battle damage. These flights were also attacked by Soviet fighters, despite the USSR's officially Allied status.
Due to the dangers and lack of friendly population few operations were conducted in Germany itself. The German and Austrian section of SOE was run by Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Thornley for most of the war, and was mainly involved with black propaganda and administrative sabotage in collaboration with the German section of the Political Warfare Executive. After D-Day, the section was re-organised and enlarged with Major General Gerald Templer heading the Directorate, with Thornley as his deputy.
Several major operations were planned, including Operation Foxley, a plan to assassinate Hitler, and Operation Periwig, an ingenious plan to simulate the existence of a large-scale anti-Nazi resistance movement within Germany. "Foxley" was never carried out but "Periwig" went ahead despite restrictions placed on it by SIS and SHAEF. Several German prisoners of war were trained as agents, briefed to make contact with the anti-Nazi resistance and to conduct sabotage. They were then parachuted into Germany in the hope that they would either hand themselves in to the "Gestapo" or be captured by them, and reveal their supposed mission. Fake coded wireless transmissions were broadcast to Germany and various pieces of agent paraphernalia such as code books and wireless receivers were allowed to fall into the hands of the German authorities.
In Austria a resistance group formed around Kaplan Heinrich Maier. The Maier group was informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through its contacts with the Semperit factory near Auschwitz. SOE was in contact with this resistance group through its colleague G. E. R. Gedye in 1943, but was not convinced of the reliability of the contact and did not cooperate due to security concerns.
Section N of SOE ran operations in the Netherlands. They committed some of SOE's worst blunders in security, which allowed the Germans to capture many agents and much sabotage material, in what the Germans called the 'Englandspiel'. SOE ignored the absence of security checks in radio transmissions, and other warnings from their chief cryptographer, Leo Marks, that the Germans were running the supposed resistance networks. A total of 50 agents were caught and brought to Camp Haaren in the South of the Netherlands.
Five captured men managed to escape from the camp. Two of them, Pieter Dourlein and Ben Ubbink, escaped on 29 August 1943 and found their way to Switzerland. There, the Netherlands Embassy sent messages over their controlled sets to England that SOE Netherlands was compromised. SOE set up new elaborate networks, which continued to operate until the Netherlands were liberated at the end of the war.
From September 1944 to April 1945, eight Jedburgh teams were also active in the Netherlands. The first team, code named "Dudley" was parachuted into the east of the Netherlands one week before Operation Market Garden. The next four teams were attached to the Airborne forces that carried out Market Garden. After the failure of Market Garden, one Jedburgh team trained (former) resistance men in the liberated South of the Netherlands. In April 1945 the last two Dutch Jedburgh teams became operational. One team code named "Gambling", was a combined Jedburgh/Special Air Service (SAS) group that was dropped into the centre of the Netherlands to assist the Allied advance. The last team was parachuted into the Northern Netherlands as part of SAS operation "Amherst". Despite the fact that operating in the flat and densely populated Netherlands was very difficult for the Jedburghs, the teams were quite successful.
Section T established some effective networks in Belgium, in part orchestrated by fashion designer Hardy Amies, who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Amies adapted names of fashion accessories for use as code words, while managing some of the most murderous and ruthless agents in the field. The rapid liberation of the country by Allied forces in September 1944 provided the resistance with little time to stage an uprising. They did assist the Allies to bypass German rearguards, and enabled the Allies to capture the vital Port of Antwerp intact.
After Brussels was liberated, Amies outraged his superiors by setting up a "Vogue" photo-shoot in Belgium. In 1946, he was knighted in Belgium for his service with SOE, being named an officer of the Order of the Crown.
As both an enemy country, and supposedly a monolithic fascist state with no organised opposition which SOE could use, SOE made little effort in Italy before mid-1943, when Mussolini's government collapsed and Allied forces already occupied Sicily. In April 1941, in a mission codenamed "Yak", Peter Fleming attempted to recruit agents from among the many thousands of Italian prisoners of war captured in the Western Desert Campaign. He met with no response. Attempts to search among Italian immigrants in the United States, Britain and Canada for agents to be sent to Italy had similarly poor results.
During the first three years of war, the most important "episode" of the collaboration between SOE and Italian anti-fascism was a project of an anti-fascist uprising in Sardinia, which the SOE supported at some stage but did not receive approval from the Foreign Office.
In the aftermath of the Italian collapse, SOE (in Italy renamed No. 1 Special Force) helped build a large resistance organisation in the cities of Northern Italy, and in the Alps. Italian partisans harassed German forces in Italy throughout the autumn and winter of 1944, and in the Spring 1945 offensive in Italy they captured Genoa and other cities unaided by Allied forces. SOE helped the Italian Resistance send British missions to the partisan formations and supply war material to the bands of patriots, a supply made without political prejudices, and which also helped the Communist formations (Brigate Garibaldi).
Late in 1943, SOE established a base at Bari in Southern Italy, from which they operated their networks and agents in the Balkans. This organisation had the codename ""Force 133"". This later became ""Force 266"", reserving 133 for operations run from Cairo rather than the heel of Italy. Flights from Brindisi were run to the Balkans and Poland, particularly once control had been wrested from SOE's Cairo headquarters and was exercised directly by Gubbins. SOE established a new packing station for the parachute containers close to Brindisi Air base, along the lines of those created at Saffron Walden. This was ME 54, a factory employing hundreds, the American (OSS) side of which was known as "Paradise Camp".
In the aftermath of the German invasion in 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia fragmented. Croatia had a substantial pro-Axis movement, the Ustaše. In Croatia as well as the remainder of Yugoslavia, two resistance movements formed: the royalist Chetniks under Draža Mihailović, and the Communist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito.
Mihailović was the first to attempt to contact the Allies, and SOE despatched a party on 20 September 1941 under Major "Marko" Hudson. Hudson also encountered Tito's forces. Notable members of this party included Sir Christopher Lee. Through the royalist government in exile, SOE at first supported the Chetniks. Eventually, however, due to reports that the Chetniks were less effective and even collaborating with German and Italian forces on occasion, British support was redirected to the Partisans, even before the Tehran Conference in 1943.
Although relations were often touchy throughout the war, it can be argued that SOE's unstinting support was a factor in Yugoslavia's maintaining a neutral stance during the Cold War. However, accounts vary dramatically between all historical works on the ""Chetnik controversy"".
SOE was unable to establish links or contacts in Hungary before the regime of Miklós Horthy aligned itself with the Axis Powers. Distance and lack of such contacts prevented any effort being made by SOE until the Hungarians themselves dispatched a diplomat (László Veress) in a clandestine attempt to contact the Western Allies. SOE facilitated his return, with some radio sets. Before the Allied governments could agree terms, Hungary was placed under German military occupation and Veress was forced to flee the country.
Two missions subsequently dropped "blind" i.e. without prior arrangement for a reception party, failed. So too did an attempt by Basil Davidson to incite a partisan movement in Hungary, after he made his way there from northeastern Yugoslavia.
Greece was overrun by the Axis after a desperate defence lasting several months. In the aftermath, SIS and another intelligence organisation, SIME, discouraged attempts at sabotage or resistance as this might imperil relations with Turkey, although SOE maintained contacts with resistance groups in Crete. When an agent, "Odysseus", a former tobacco-smuggler, attempted to contact potential resistance groups in Greece, he reported that no group was prepared to co-operate with the monarchist government in exile in Cairo.
In late 1942, at the army's instigation, SOE mounted its first operation, codenamed Operation Harling, into Greece in an attempt to disrupt the railway which was being used to move materials to the German Panzer Army Africa. A party under Colonel (later Brigadier) Eddie Myers, assisted by Christopher Woodhouse, was parachuted into Greece and discovered two guerrilla groups operating in the mountains: the pro-Communist ELAS and the republican EDES. On 25 November 1942, Myers's party blew up one of the spans of the railway viaduct at Gorgopotamos, supported by 150 Greek partisans from these two organisations who engaged Italians guarding the viaduct. This cut the railway linking Thessaloniki with Athens and Piraeus.
Relations between the resistance groups and the British soured. When the British needed once again to disrupt the railway across Greece as part of the deception operations preceding Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, the resistance groups refused to take part, rightly fearing German reprisals against civilians. Instead, a six-man commando party from the British and New Zealand armies, led by New Zealander Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Edward Barnes a civil engineer, carried out the destruction of the Asopos viaduct on 21 June 1943. Two attempts by Mike Cumberlege to make the Corinth Canal unnavigable ended in failure.
EDES received most aid from SOE, but ELAS secured many weapons when Italy collapsed and Italian military forces in Greece dissolved. ELAS and EDES fought a vicious civil war in 1943 until SOE brokered an uneasy armistice (the Plaka agreement).
A lesser known, but important function of the SOE in Greece was to inform the Cairo headquarters of the movement of the German military aircraft that were serviced and repaired at the two former Greek military aircraft facilities in and around Athens.
Eventually, the British Army occupied Athens and Piraeus in the aftermath of the German withdrawal, and fought a street-by-street battle to drive ELAS from these cities and impose an interim government under Archbishop Damaskinos. SOE's last act was to evacuate several hundred disarmed EDES fighters to Corfu, preventing their massacre by ELAS.
Several resistance groups and Allied stay-behind parties operated in Crete after the Germans occupied the island in the Battle of Crete. SOE's operations involved figures such as Patrick Leigh Fermor, John Lewis, Harry Rudolph Fox Burr, Tom Dunbabin, Sandy Rendel, John Houseman, Xan Fielding and Bill Stanley Moss. Some of the most famous moments included the abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe led by Leigh Fermor and Moss – subsequently portrayed in the film "Ill Met by Moonlight", and the sabotage of Damasta led by Moss.
Albania had been under Italian influence since 1923, and was occupied by the Italian Army in 1939. In 1943, a small liaison party entered Albania from northwestern Greece. SOE agents who entered Albania then or later included Julian Amery, Anthony Quayle, David Smiley and Neil "Billy" McLean. They discovered another internecine war between the Communist partisans under Enver Hoxha, and the republican Balli Kombëtar. As the latter had collaborated with the Italian occupiers, Hoxha gained Allied support.
SOE's envoy to Albania, Brigadier Edmund "Trotsky" Davies, was captured by the Germans early in 1944. Some SOE officers warned that Hoxha's aim was primacy after the war, rather than fighting Germans. They were ignored, but Albania was never a major factor in the effort against the Germans.
SOE sent many missions into the Czech areas of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and later into Slovakia. The most famous mission was Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. From 1942 to 1943 the Czechoslovaks had their own Special Training School (STS) at Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire. In 1944, SOE sent men to support the Slovak National uprising.
In March 1941 a group performing commando raids in Norway, Norwegian Independent Company 1 (NOR.I.C.1) was organised under leadership of Captain Martin Linge. Their initial raid in 1941 was Operation Archery, the best known raid was probably the Norwegian heavy water sabotage. Communication lines with London were gradually improved so that by 1945, 64 radio operators were spread throughout Norway.
The Danish resistance assisted SOE in its activities in neutral Sweden. For example, SOE was able to obtain several shiploads of vital ball-bearings which had been interned in Swedish ports. The Danes also pioneered several secure communications methods; for example, a burst transmitter/receiver which transcribed Morse code onto a paper tape faster than a human operator could handle.
In 1943 an SOE delegation was parachuted into Romania to instigate resistance against the Nazi occupation at "any cost" (Operation Autonomous). The delegation, including Colonel Gardyne de Chastelain, Captain Silviu Meţianu and Ivor Porter, was captured by the Romanian Gendarmerie and held until the night of King Michael's Coup on 23 August 1944.
Abyssinia was the scene of some of SOE's earliest and most successful efforts. SOE organised a force of Ethiopian irregulars under Orde Charles Wingate in support of the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie. This force (named Gideon Force by Wingate) caused heavy casualties to the Italian occupation forces, and contributed to the successful British campaign there. Wingate was to use his experience to create the Chindits in Burma.
The neutral Spanish island of Fernando Po was the scene of Operation Postmaster, one of SOE's most successful exploits. The large Italian merchant vessel "Duchessa d'Aosta" and the German tug "Likomba" had taken refuge in the harbour of Santa Isabel. On 14 January 1942, while the ships' officers were attending a party ashore thrown by an SOE agent, commandos and SOE personnel led by Gus March-Phillipps boarded the two vessels, cut the anchor cables and towed them out to sea, where they later rendezvoused with Royal Navy ships. Several neutral authorities and observers were impressed by the British display of ruthlessness.
As early as 1940, SOE was preparing plans for operations in Southeast Asia. As in Europe, after initial Allied military disasters, SOE built up indigenous resistance organisations and guerrilla armies in enemy (Japanese) occupied territory. SOE also launched ""Operation Remorse"" (1944–45), which was ultimately aimed at protecting the economic and political status of Hong Kong. Force 136 engaged in covert trading of goods and currencies in China. Its agents proved remarkably successful, raising £77m through their activities, which were used to provide assistance for Allied prisoners of war and, more controversially, to buy influence locally to facilitate a smooth return to pre-war conditions.
In late 1944, as it became clear that the war would soon be over, Lord Selborne advocated keeping SOE or a similar body in being, and that it would report to the Ministry of Defence. Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, insisted that his ministry, already responsible for the SIS, should control SOE or its successors. The Joint Intelligence Committee, which had a broad co-ordinating role over Britain's intelligence services and operations, took the view that SOE was a more effective organisation than the SIS but that it was unwise to split the responsibility for espionage and more direct action between separate ministries, or to perform special operations outside the ultimate control of the Chiefs of Staff. The debate continued for several months until on 22 May 1945, Selborne wrote:
Churchill took no immediate decision, and after he lost the general election on 5 July 1945, the matter was dealt with by the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. Selborne told Attlee that SOE still possessed a worldwide network of clandestine radio networks and sympathisers. Attlee replied that he had no wish to own a British Comintern, and closed Selborne's network down at 48 hours' notice.
SOE was dissolved officially on 15 January 1946. Some of its senior staff moved easily into financial services in the City of London, although some of them had not lost their undercover mentality and did little for the City's name. Most of SOE's other personnel reverted to their peacetime occupations or regular service in the armed forces, but 280 of them were taken into the ""Special Operations Branch"" of MI6. Some of these had served as agents in the field, but MI6 was most interested in SOE's training and research staff. Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6 (who was generally known simply as "C") soon decided that a separate Special Operations branch was unsound, and merged it into the general body of MI6.
Gubbins, the last director, was not given further employment by the Army, but he later founded the Special Forces Club for former members of SOE and similar organisations.
Although the wartime British government considered the activities of the SOE to be lawful, the German invaders, as in World War I and the War of 1870, argued that those engaging in resistance (local resistance fighters and the agents of foreign governments who supported them) were "bandits" and "terrorists", maintaining that all "Francs-tireurs" (and said agents) were engaging in an illegal form of warfare, and, as such, had no legal rights. A view expressed by Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, making him the man in charge of bringing workers to the factories in Germany for forced labour, who demanded the flight of young French men to the countryside be stopped and called the "maquis" "terrorists", "bandits" and "criminals" for their opposition to lawful authority.
The mode of warfare encouraged and promoted by SOE is considered by several modern commentators to have established the modern model that many alleged terrorist organisations emulate. Two opposed views were quoted by Tony Geraghty in "The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence". M. R. D. Foot, who wrote several official histories of SOE wrote,
The British military historian John Keegan wrote,
Another, later view, on the moral contribution of SOE, was expressed by the writer Max Hastings,
Since the end of the war, the SOE has appeared in many films, comics, books, and television.
Official publications/academic histories
Biographies/popular books by outsiders
Commentaries | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28898 |
System request
System request (often abbreviated SysRq or Sys Req) is a key on personal computer keyboards that has no standard use. Introduced by IBM with the PC/AT, it was intended to be available as a special key to directly invoke low-level operating system functions with no possibility of conflicting with any existing software. A special BIOS routine – software interrupt 0x15, subfunction 0x85 – was added to signal the OS when SysRq was pushed or released. Unlike most keys, when it is pressed nothing is stored in the keyboard buffer.
The specific low level function intended for the SysRq key was to switch between operating systems. When the original IBM-PC was created in 1980, there were three leading competing operating systems: PC DOS, CP/M-86, and UCSD p-System, while Xenix was added in 1983–1984. The SysRq key was added so that multiple operating systems could be run on the same computer, making use of the capabilities of the 286 chip in the PC/AT.
A special key was needed because most software of the day operated at a low level, often bypassing the OS entirely, and typically made use of many hotkey combinations. The use of Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs further complicated matters. To implement a task switching or multitasking environment, it was thought that a special, separate key was needed. This is similar to the way "Control-Alt-Delete" is used under Windows NT.
On 84-key keyboards (except the 84-key IBM Model M space saver keyboard), SysRq was a key of its own. On the later 101-key keyboard, it shares a physical key with the Print screen key function. The Alt key must be held down while pressing this dual-function key to invoke SysRq.
The default BIOS keyboard routines simply ignore SysRq and return without taking action. So did the MS-DOS input routines. The keyboard routines in libraries supplied with many high-level languages followed suit. Although it is still included on most PC keyboards manufactured, and though it is used by some debugging software, the key is of no use for the vast majority of users.
On the Hyundai/Hynix Super-16 computer, pressing will hard boot the system (it will reboot when is unresponsive, and it will invoke startup memory tests that are bypassed on soft-boot).
In Linux, the kernel can be configured to provide functions for system debugging and crash recovery. This use is known as the "magic SysRq key".
Microsoft has also used SysRq for various OS- and application-level debuggers. In the CodeView debugger, it was sometimes used to break into the debugging during program execution. For the Windows NT remote kernel debugger, it can be used to force the system into the debugger.
IBM 3270-type console keyboards of the IBM System/370 mainframe computer, created in 1970, had an operator interrupt key that was used to cause the operating system such as VM/370 or MVS to allow the console to give input to the operating system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28899 |
Split infinitive
In the English language, a split infinitive or cleft infinitive is a grammatical construction in which a word or phrase comes between the "to" and the bare infinitive of the "to" form of the infinitive verb. Usually, an adverb or an adverbial phrase comes between them. The opening sequence of the "Star Trek" television series contains a well-known example, where William Shatner says "to "boldly" go where no man has gone before"; the adverb "boldly" is said to split the infinitive "to go". There are occasions where more than one word splits the infinitive, such as: "The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years".
In the 19th century, some linguistic prescriptivists sought to introduce a prescriptive rule against the split infinitive. The construction is to some extent still the subject of disagreement, but modern English usage guides have dropped the objection to it.
In Old English, infinitives were single words ending in "-n" or "-an" (comparative to modern Dutch and German "-n", "-en"). Gerunds were formed using "to" followed by a verbal noun in the dative case, which ended in "-anne" or "-enne" (e.g. "tō cumenne" = "coming, to come"). In Middle English, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in "-(e)n" (e.g. "comen" "come"; "to comen" "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.
The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon's "Brut" (early 13th century):
This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from John Wycliffe (14th century), who often split infinitives:
After its rise in Middle English, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries. William Shakespeare used it once, or perhaps twice. The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter:
Edmund Spenser, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and the King James Version of the Bible used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson. John Donne used them several times, though, and Samuel Pepys also used at least one. No reason for the near disappearance of the split infinitive is known; in particular, no prohibition is recorded.
Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th.
Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather are among the writers who used them. Examples in the poems of Robert Burns attest its presence also in 18th-century Scots:
In colloquial speech the construction came to enjoy widespread use. Today, according to the "American Heritage Book of English Usage", "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought". In corpora of contemporary spoken English, some adverbs such as "always" and "completely" appear more often in the split position than the unsplit.
Although it is difficult to say why the construction developed in Middle English, or why it revived so powerfully in Modern English, a number of theories have been postulated.
Traditional grammarians have suggested that the construction appeared because people frequently place adverbs before finite verbs. George Curme writes: "If the adverb should immediately precede the finite verb, we feel that it should immediately precede also the infinitive…" Thus, if one says:
one may, by analogy, wish to say:
This is supported by the fact that split infinitives are often used as echoes, as in the following exchange, in which the riposte parodies the slightly odd collocation in the original sentence:
Here is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.
Transformational grammarians have attributed the construction to a re-analysis of the role of "to".
In the modern language, splitting usually involves a single adverb coming between the verb and its marker. Very frequently, this is an emphatic adverb, for example:
Sometimes it is a negation, as in the self-referential joke:
However, in modern colloquial English, almost any adverb may be found in this syntactic position, especially when the adverb and the verb form a close syntactic unit (really-pull, not-split).
Compound split infinitives, i.e., infinitives split by more than one word, usually involve a pair of adverbs or a multi-word adverbial:
Examples of non-adverbial elements participating in the split-infinitive construction seem rarer in Modern English than in Middle English. The pronoun "all" commonly appears in this position:
and may even be combined with an adverb:
However an object pronoun, as in the Layamon example above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the "to" as a preposition:
While, structurally, acceptable as poetic formulation, this would result in a garden path sentence particularly evident if the indirect object is omitted:
Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position. However, in verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Shakespeare's split infinitive ("to pitied be", cited above), in fact an inverted passive construction in which the infinitive is split by a past participle. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.
Finally, there is a construction with a word or words between "to" and an infinitive that nevertheless is not considered a split infinitive, namely, infinitives joined by a conjunction. This is not objected to even when an adverb precedes the second infinitive. Examples include "We pray you "to" proceed/ And "justly and religiously unfold"..." (Shakespeare, "Henry V", Act II, scene 9) and "...she is determined "to" be independent, and "not live" with aunt Pullet" (George Eliot, "The Mill on the Floss", volume VI, chapter I).
It was not until the very end of the 19th century that terminology emerged to describe the construction. The earliest use of the term "split infinitive" on record dates from 1890. The now rare "cleft infinitive" is almost as old, attested from 1893. "Splitting the infinitive" is slightly older, back to 1887. According to the main etymological dictionaries, "infinitive-splitting" and "infinitive-splitter" followed in 1926 and 1927, respectively. The term "compound split infinitive" is not found in these dictionaries and appears to be very recent.
This terminology implies analysing the full infinitive as a two-word infinitive, which not all grammarians accept. As one who used "infinitive" to mean the single-word verb, Otto Jespersen challenged the epithet: "'To' is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think of calling 'the good man' a split nominative." However, no alternative terminology has been proposed.
Although it is sometimes reported that a prohibition on split infinitives goes back to Renaissance times, and frequently the 18th century scholar Robert Lowth is cited as the originator of the prescriptive rule, such a rule is not to be found in Lowth's writing, and is not known to appear in any text before the 19th century.
Possibly the earliest comment against split infinitives was by the American John Comly in 1803.
An adverb should not be placed between the verb of the infinitive mood and the preposition "to", which governs it; as "Patiently" to wait—not To "patiently" wait.
Another early prohibition came from an anonymous American in 1834:
The practice of separating the prefix of the infinitive mode from the verb, by the intervention of an adverb, is not unfrequent among uneducated persons … I am not conscious, that any rule has been heretofore given in relation to this point … The practice, however, of not separating the particle from its verb, is so general and uniform among good authors, and the exceptions are so rare, that the rule which I am about to propose will, I believe, prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers. It is this :—"The particle, "TO", which comes before the verb in the infinitive mode, must not be separated from it by the intervention of an adverb or any other word or phrase; but the adverb should immediately precede the particle, or immediately follow the verb."
In 1840, Richard Taylor also condemned split infinitives as a "disagreeable affectation", and in 1859, Solomon Barrett, Jr., called them "a common fault". However, the issue seems not to have attracted wider public attention until Henry Alford addressed it in his "Plea for the Queen's English" in 1864:
A correspondent states as his own usage, and defends, the insertion of an adverb between the sign of the infinitive mood and the verb. He gives as an instance, ""to scientifically illustrate"". But surely this is a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers. It seems to me, that we ever regard the "to" of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb. And, when we have already a choice between two forms of expression, "scientifically to illustrate" and "to illustrate scientifically", there seems no good reason for flying in the face of common usage.
Others followed, among them Bache, 1869 ("The "to" of the infinitive mood is inseparable from the verb"); William B. Hodgson, 1889; and Raub, 1897 ("The sign "to" must not be separated from the remaining part of the infinitive by an intervening word").
Even as these authorities were condemning the split infinitive, others were endorsing it: Brown, 1851 (saying some grammarians had criticized it and it was less elegant than other adverb placements but sometimes clearer); Hall, 1882; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; and Fowler and Fowler, 1906. Despite the defence by some grammarians, by the beginning of the 20th century the prohibition was firmly established in the press. In the 1907 edition of "The King's English", the Fowler brothers wrote:
The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer.
In large parts of the school system, the construction was opposed with ruthless vigour. A correspondent to the BBC on a programme about English grammar in 1983 remarked:
One reason why the older generation feel so strongly about English grammar is that we were severely punished if we didn't obey the rules! One split infinitive, one whack; two split infinitives, two whacks; and so on.
As a result, the debate took on a degree of passion which the bare facts of the matter never warranted. There was frequent skirmishing between the splitters and anti-splitters until the 1960s. George Bernard Shaw wrote letters to newspapers supporting writers who used the split infinitive and Raymond Chandler complained to the editor of "The Atlantic" about a proofreader who interfered with Chandler's split infinitives:
By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.
Post-1960 authorities show a strong tendency to accept the split infinitive. Follett, in "Modern American Usage" (1966) writes: "The split infinitive has its place in good composition. It should be used when it is expressive and well led up to." Fowler (Gowers' revised second edition, 1965) offers the following example of the consequences of refusal to split infinitives: "The greatest difficulty about assessing the economic achievements of the Soviet Union is that its spokesmen try "absurdly to exaggerate" them; in consequence the visitor may tend "badly to underrate" them" (italics added). This question results: "Has dread of the split infinitive led the writer to attach the adverbs ['absurdly' and 'badly'] to the wrong verbs, and would he not have done better "to boldly split" both infinitives, since he cannot put the adverbs after them without spoiling his rhythm" (italics added)? Bernstein (1985) argues that, although infinitives should not always be split, they should be split where doing so improves the sentence: "The natural position for a modifier is before the word it modifies. Thus the natural position for an adverb modifying an infinitive should be just … "after" the to" (italics added). Bernstein continues: "Curme's contention that the split infinitive is often an improvement … cannot be disputed." Heffernan and Lincoln, in their modern English composition textbook, agree with the above authors. Some sentences, they write, "are weakened by … cumbersome splitting", but in other sentences "an infinitive may be split by a one-word modifier that would be awkward in any other position".
Objections to the split infinitive fall into three categories, of which only the first is accorded any credence by linguists.
An early proposed rule proscribing the split infinitive, which was expressed by an anonymous author in the "New-England Magazine" in 1834, was based on the purported observation that it was a feature of a form of English commonly used by uneducated persons but not by "good authors."
Henry Alford, in his "Plea for the Queen's English" in 1864 went further, stating that use of the "split infinitive" was "a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers."
A second argument is summed up by Alford's statement "It seems to me that we ever regard the "to" of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb."
The "to" in the infinitive construction, which is found throughout the Germanic languages, is originally a preposition before the dative of a verbal noun, but in the modern languages it is widely regarded as a particle which serves as a marker of the infinitive. In German and Dutch, this marker ("zu" and "te" respectively) sometimes precedes the infinitive, but is not regarded as part of it. In English, on the other hand, it is traditional to speak of the "bare infinitive" without "to" and the "full infinitive" with it, and to conceive of "to" as part of the full infinitive. (In the sentence "I had my daughter clean her room", "clean" is a bare infinitive; in "I told my daughter to clean her room", "to clean" is a full infinitive.) Possibly this is because the absence of an "inflected" infinitive form made it useful to include the particle in the citation form of the verb, and in some nominal constructions in which other Germanic languages would omit it (e.g. "to know her is to love her"). The concept of a two-word infinitive can reinforce an intuitive sense that the two words belong together. For instance, the rhetorician John Duncan Quackenbos said, ""To have" is as much one thing, and as inseparable by modifiers, as the original form "habban", or the Latin "habere"." The usage writer John Opdycke based a similar argument on the closest French, German, and Latin translations.
That there are two parts to the infinitive is disputed, and some linguists say that the infinitive in English is a single-word verb form, which may or may not be preceded by the particle "to". Some modern generative analysts classify "to" as a "peculiar" auxiliary verb; other analysts, as the infinitival subordinator. Moreover, even when the concept of the full infinitive is accepted, it does not necessarily follow that any two words that belong together grammatically need be adjacent to each other. They usually are, but counter-examples are easily found, such as an adverb splitting a two-word finite verb ("will not do", "has not done").
A frequently discussed argument states that the split-infinitive prohibition is based on Latin. An infinitive in Latin is never used with a marker equivalent to English "to", and thus there is no parallel there for the construction. The claim that those who dislike split infinitives are applying rules of Latin grammar to English is asserted in many references that accept the split infinitive. One example is in the "American Heritage Book of English Usage": "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin." In more detail, the usage author Marilyn Moriarty states:
The rule forbidding a split infinitive comes from the time when Latin was the universal language of the world. All scholarly, respectable writing was done in Latin. Scientists and scholars even took Latin names to show that they were learned. In Latin, infinitives appear as a single word. The rule which prohibits splitting an infinite shows deference to Latin and to the time when the rules which governed Latin grammar were applied to other languages.
The assertion is also made in the "Oxford Guide to Plain English", "Compact Oxford English Dictionary", and Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct", among other sources.
The argument implies an adherence to the humanist idea of the greater purity of the classics, which, particularly in Renaissance times, led people to regard as inferior aspects of English that differed from Latin. However, by the 19th century, such views were no longer widespread; Moriarty is in error about the age of the prohibition.
It has also been stated that an argument from Latin would be fallacious because "there is no precedent in these languages for condemning the split infinitive because in Greek and Latin (and all the other romance languages) the infinitive is a single word that is impossible to sever".
Although many sources suggest that the argument from classical languages motivated the early opponents of the split infinitive, there is little primary source evidence; indeed, Richard Bailey has noted that despite the lack of evidence, this theory has simply become “part of the folklore of linguistics.”
Present style and usage manuals deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable. For example, Curme's "Grammar of the English Language" (1931) says that not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression". "The Columbia Guide to Standard American English" notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity", in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction. "Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage" says: "the objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis". According to Mignon Fogarty, "today almost everyone agrees that it is OK to split infinitives".
Nevertheless, many teachers of English still admonish students against using split infinitives in writing. Because the prohibition has become so widely known, the "Columbia Guide" recommends that writers "follow the conservative path [of avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary], especially when you're uncertain of your readers' expectations and sensitivities in this matter". Likewise, the Oxford Dictionaries do not regard the split infinitive as ungrammatical, but on balance consider it likely to produce a weak style and advise against its use for formal correspondence. R. W. Burchfield's revision of Fowler's "Modern English Usage" goes farther (quoting Burchfield's own 1981 book "The Spoken Word"): "Avoid splitting infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the completion of a sentence already begun." Still more strongly, older editions of "The Economist" Style Guide said, "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it" (but added "To never split an infinitive is quite easy."). This recommendation, however, is weakened in the 12th edition. After stating that the ban is pointless, "The Economist Style Guide" now says "To see a split infinitive nevertheless annoys some readers, so try to avoid placing a modifier between "to" and the verb in an infinitive. But if moving the modifier would ruin the rhythm, change the meaning or even just put the emphasis in the wrong place, splitting the infinitive is the best option."
As well as varying according to register, tolerance of split infinitives varies according to type. While most authorities accept split infinitives in general, it is not hard to construct an example which any native speaker would reject. Wycliff's Middle English compound split would, if transferred to modern English, be regarded by most people as un-English:
Attempts to define the boundaries of normality are controversial. In 1996, the usage panel of "The American Heritage Book" was evenly divided for and against such sentences as,
but more than three-quarters of the panel rejected
Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase "to be seeking a plan to relieve": a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence. By contrast, 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in
not surprisingly perhaps, because here there is no other place to put the words "more than" without substantially recasting the sentence.
A special case is the splitting of an infinitive by the negation in sentences like
Here traditional idiom, placing the negation before the marker ("I soon learned not to provoke her") or with verbs of desire, negating the finite verb ("I don't want to see you anymore") remains easy and natural, and is still overwhelmingly the more common construction. Some argue that the two forms have different meanings, while others see a grammatical difference, but most speakers do not make such a distinction.
In an example drawn from the British National Corpus the use of "to not be" against "not to be" is only 0.35% (from a total of 3121 sampled usages).
Writers who avoid splitting infinitives either place the splitting element elsewhere in the sentence or reformulate the sentence, perhaps rephrasing it without an infinitive and thus avoiding the issue. However, a sentence such as "to more than double" must be completely rewritten to avoid the split infinitive; it is ungrammatical to put the words "more than" anywhere else in the sentence. While split infinitives can be avoided, a writer must be careful not to produce an awkward or ambiguous sentence. Fowler (1926) stressed that, if a sentence is to be rewritten to remove a split infinitive, this must be done without compromising the language:
It is of no avail merely to fling oneself desperately out of temptation; one must so do it that no traces of the struggle remain; that is, sentences must be thoroughly remodeled instead of having a word lifted from its original place & dumped elsewhere …
In some cases, moving the adverbial creates an ungrammatical sentence or changes the meaning. R. L. Trask uses this example:
The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, by using a noun or a different grammatical aspect of the verb, or by avoiding the informal "get rid":
Fowler notes that the option of rewriting is always available but questions whether it is always worth the trouble. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28900 |
Samurai
In Japanese, they are usually referred to as , meaning 'warrior', or . According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning 'to wait upon', 'accompany persons' in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, "saburau". In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean 'those who serve in close attendance to the nobility', the Japanese term "saburai" being the nominal form of the verb." According to Wilson, an early reference to the word "samurai" appears in the "Kokin Wakashū", the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the 10th century.
By the end of the 12th century, "samurai" became almost entirely synonymous with "bushi", and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai were usually associated with a clan and their lord and were trained as officers in military tactics and grand strategy. While the samurai numbered less than 10% of then Japan's population, their teachings can still be found today in both everyday life and in modern Japanese martial arts.
Following the Battle of Hakusukinoe against Tang China and Silla in 663 AD which led to a retreat from Korean affairs, Japan underwent widespread reform. One of the most important was that of the Taika Reform, issued by Prince Naka-no-Ōe (Emperor Tenji) in 646. This edict allowed the Japanese aristocracy to adopt the Tang dynasty political structure, bureaucracy, culture, religion, and philosophy. As part of the Taihō Code of 702, and the later Yōrō Code, the population was required to report regularly for the census, a precursor for national conscription. With an understanding of how the population was distributed, Emperor Monmu introduced a law whereby 1 in 3–4 adult males were drafted into the national military. These soldiers were required to supply their own weapons, and in return were exempted from duties and taxes. This was one of the first attempts by the imperial government to form an organized army modeled after the Chinese system. It was called "Gundan-Sei" () by later historians and is believed to have been short-lived.
The Taihō Code classified most of the Imperial bureaucrats into 12 ranks, each divided into two sub-ranks, 1st rank being the highest adviser to the emperor. Those of 6th rank and below were referred to as "samurai" and dealt with day-to-day affairs. Although these "samurai" were civilian public servants, the modern word is believed to have derived from this term. Military men, however, would not be referred to as "samurai" for many more centuries.
In the early Heian period, during the late 8th and early 9th centuries, Emperor Kanmu sought to consolidate and expand his rule in northern Honshū and sent military campaigns against the Emishi, who resisted the governance of the Kyoto-based imperial court. Emperor Kanmu introduced the title of "sei'i-taishōgun" (), or "shōgun", and began to rely on the powerful regional clans to conquer the Emishi. Skilled in mounted combat and archery (kyūdō), these clan warriors became the emperor's preferred tool for putting down rebellions; the most well-known of which was Sakanoue no Tamuramaro. Though this is the first known use of the title "shōgun", it was a temporary title and was not imbued with political power until the 13th century. At this time (the 7th to 9th centuries), officials considered them to be merely a military section under the control of the Imperial Court.
Ultimately, Emperor Kanmu disbanded his army. From this time, the emperor's power gradually declined. While the emperor was still the ruler, powerful clans around Kyoto assumed positions as ministers, and their relatives bought positions as magistrates. To amass wealth and repay their debts, magistrates often imposed heavy taxes, resulting in many farmers becoming landless. Through protective agreements and political marriages, the aristocrats accumulated political power, eventually surpassing the traditional aristocracy.
Some clans were originally formed by farmers who had taken up arms to protect themselves from the imperial magistrates sent to govern their lands and collect taxes. These clans formed alliances to protect themselves against more powerful clans, and by the mid-Heian period, they had adopted characteristic armor and weapons.
The Kamakura period (1185–1333) saw the rise of the samurai under shogun rule as they were “entrusted with the security of the estates” and were symbols of the ideal warrior and citizen. Originally, the emperor and non-warrior nobility employed these warrior nobles. In time they amassed enough manpower, resources and political backing, in the form of alliances with one another, to establish the first samurai-dominated government. As the power of these regional clans grew, their chief was typically a distant relative of the emperor and a lesser member of either the Fujiwara, Minamoto, or Taira clan. Though originally sent to provincial areas for fixed four-year terms as magistrates, the "toryo" declined to return to the capital when their terms ended, and their sons inherited their positions and continued to lead the clans in putting down rebellions throughout Japan during the middle- and later-Heian period. Because of their rising military and economic power, the warriors ultimately became a new force in the politics of the imperial court. Their involvement in the Hōgen Rebellion in the late Heian period consolidated their power, which later pitted the rivalry of Minamoto and Taira clans against each other in the Heiji Rebellion of 1160.
The victor, Taira no Kiyomori, became an imperial advisor and was the first warrior to attain such a position. He eventually seized control of the central government, establishing the first samurai-dominated government and relegating the emperor to figurehead status. However, the Taira clan was still very conservative when compared to its eventual successor, the Minamoto, and instead of expanding or strengthening its military might, the clan had its women marry emperors and exercise control through the emperor.
The Taira and the Minamoto clashed again in 1180, beginning the Genpei War, which ended in 1185. Samurai fought at the naval battle of Dan-no-ura, at the Shimonoseki Strait which separates Honshu and Kyūshū in 1185. The victorious Minamoto no Yoritomo established the superiority of the samurai over the aristocracy. In 1190 he visited Kyoto and in 1192 became "Sei'i Taishōgun", establishing the Kamakura shogunate, or "Kamakura bakufu". Instead of ruling from Kyoto, he set up the shogunate in Kamakura, near his base of power. "Bakufu" means "tent government", taken from the encampments the soldiers would live in, in accordance with the Bakufu's status as a military government.
After the Genpei war, Yoritomo obtained the right to appoint "shugo" and "jitō", and was allowed to organize soldiers and police, and to collect a certain amount of tax. Initially, their responsibility was restricted to arresting rebels and collecting needed army provisions and they were forbidden from interfering with "Kokushi" officials, but their responsibility gradually expanded. Thus, the samurai class became the political ruling power in Japan.
Various samurai clans struggled for power during the Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates. Zen Buddhism spread among the samurai in the 13th century and helped to shape their standards of conduct, particularly overcoming the fear of death and killing, but among the general populace Pure Land Buddhism was favored.
In 1274, the Mongol-founded Yuan dynasty in China sent a force of some 40,000 men and 900 ships to invade Japan in northern Kyūshū. Japan mustered a mere 10,000 samurai to meet this threat. The invading army was harassed by major thunderstorms throughout the invasion, which aided the defenders by inflicting heavy casualties. The Yuan army was eventually recalled, and the invasion was called off. The Mongol invaders used small bombs, which was likely the first appearance of bombs and gunpowder in Japan.
The Japanese defenders recognized the possibility of a renewed invasion and began construction of a great stone barrier around Hakata Bay in 1276. Completed in 1277, this wall stretched for 20 kilometers around the border of the bay. It would later serve as a strong defensive point against the Mongols. The Mongols attempted to settle matters in a diplomatic way from 1275 to 1279, but every envoy sent to Japan was executed.
Leading up to the second Mongolian invasion, Kublai Khan continued to send emissaries to Japan, with five diplomats sent in September 1275 to Kyūshū. Hōjō Tokimune, the shikken of the Kamakura shogun, responded by having the Mongolian diplomats brought to Kamakura and then beheading them. The graves of the five executed Mongol emissaries exist to this day in Kamakura at Tatsunokuchi. On 29 July 1279, five more emissaries were sent by the Mongol empire, and again beheaded, this time in Hakata. This continued defiance of the Mongol emperor set the stage for one of the most famous engagements in Japanese history.
In 1281, a Yuan army of 140,000 men with 5,000 ships was mustered for another invasion of Japan. Northern Kyūshū was defended by a Japanese army of 40,000 men. The Mongol army was still on its ships preparing for the landing operation when a typhoon hit north Kyūshū island. The casualties and damage inflicted by the typhoon, followed by the Japanese defense of the Hakata Bay barrier, resulted in the Mongols again being defeated.
The thunderstorms of 1274 and the typhoon of 1281 helped the samurai defenders of Japan repel the Mongol invaders despite being vastly outnumbered. These winds became known as "kami-no-Kaze", which literally translates as "wind of the gods". This is often given a simplified translation as "divine wind". The "kami-no-Kaze" lent credence to the Japanese belief that their lands were indeed divine and under supernatural protection.
During this period, the tradition of Japanese swordsmithing developed using laminated or piled steel, a technique dating back over 2,000 years in the Mediterranean and Europe of combining layers of soft and hard steel to produce a blade with a very hard (but brittle) edge, capable of being highly sharpened, supported by a softer, tougher, more flexible spine. The Japanese swordsmiths refined this technique by using multiple layers of steel of varying composition, together with differential heat treatment, or tempering, of the finished blade, achieved by protecting part of it with a layer of clay while quenching (as explained in the article on Japanese swordsmithing). The craft was perfected in the 14th century by the great swordsmith Masamune. The Japanese sword (katana) became renowned around the world for its sharpness and resistance to breaking. Many swords made using these techniques were exported across the East China Sea, a few making their way as far as India.
Issues of inheritance caused family strife as primogeniture became common, in contrast to the division of succession designated by law before the 14th century. Invasions of neighboring samurai territories became common to avoid infighting, and bickering among samurai was a constant problem for the Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates.
The "Sengoku jidai" ("warring states period") was marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming "de facto" samurai.
Japanese war tactics and technologies improved rapidly in the 15th and 16th centuries. Use of large numbers of infantry called ashigaru ("light-foot", because of their light armor), formed of humble warriors or ordinary people with "naga yari" (a long lance) or "naginata", was introduced and combined with cavalry in maneuvers. The number of people mobilized in warfare ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands.
The arquebus, a matchlock gun, was introduced by the Portuguese via a Chinese pirate ship in 1543, and the Japanese succeeded in assimilating it within a decade. Groups of mercenaries with mass-produced arquebuses began playing a critical role. By the end of the Sengoku period, several hundred thousand firearms existed in Japan, and massive armies numbering over 100,000 clashed in battles.
Oda Nobunaga was the well-known lord of the Nagoya area (once called Owari Province) and an exceptional example of a samurai of the Sengoku period. He came within a few years of, and laid down the path for his successors to follow, the reunification of Japan under a new "bakufu" (shogunate).
Oda Nobunaga made innovations in the fields of organization and war tactics, made heavy use of arquebuses, developed commerce and industry, and treasured innovation. Consecutive victories enabled him to realize the termination of the Ashikaga Bakufu and the disarmament of the military powers of the Buddhist monks, which had inflamed futile struggles among the populace for centuries. Attacking from the "sanctuary" of Buddhist temples, they were constant headaches to any warlord and even the emperor who tried to control their actions. He died in 1582 when one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, turned upon him with his army.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate, were loyal followers of Nobunaga. Hideyoshi began as a peasant and became one of Nobunaga's top generals, and Ieyasu had shared his childhood with Nobunaga. Hideyoshi defeated Mitsuhide within a month and was regarded as the rightful successor of Nobunaga by avenging the treachery of Mitsuhide. These two were able to use Nobunaga's previous achievements on which build a unified Japan and there was a saying: "The reunification is a rice cake; Oda made it. Hashiba shaped it. In the end, only Ieyasu tastes it." (Hashiba is the family name that Toyotomi Hideyoshi used while he was a follower of Nobunaga.)
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who became a grand minister in 1586, created a law that non-samurai were not allowed to carry weapons, which the samurai caste codified as permanent and hereditary, thereby ending the social mobility of Japan, which lasted until the dissolution of the Edo shogunate by the Meiji revolutionaries.
The distinction between samurai and non-samurai was so obscure that during the 16th century, most male adults in any social class (even small farmers) belonged to at least one military organization of their own and served in wars before and during Hideyoshi's rule. It can be said that an "all against all" situation continued for a century. The authorized samurai families after the 17th century were those that chose to follow Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Large battles occurred during the change between regimes, and a number of defeated samurai were destroyed, went "rōnin" or were absorbed into the general populace.
In 1592 and again in 1597, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, aiming to invade China through Korea, mobilized an army of 160,000 peasants and samurai and deployed them to Korea. Taking advantage of arquebus mastery and extensive wartime experience from the Sengoku period, Japanese samurai armies made major gains in most of Korea. A few of the famous samurai generals of this war were Katō Kiyomasa, Konishi Yukinaga, and Shimazu Yoshihiro. Katō Kiyomasa advanced to Orangkai territory (present-day Manchuria) bordering Korea to the northeast and crossed the border into Manchuria, but withdrew after retaliatory attacks from the Jurchens there, as it was clear he had outpaced the rest of the Japanese invasion force. Shimazu Yoshihiro led some 7,000 samurai and, despite being heavily outnumbered, defeated a host of allied Ming and Korean forces at the Battle of Sacheon in 1598, near the conclusion of the campaigns. Yoshihiro was feared as "Oni-Shimazu" ("Shimazu ogre") and his nickname spread across Korea and into China.
In spite of the superiority of Japanese land forces, the two expeditions ultimately failed, though they did devastate the Korean peninsula. The causes of the failure included Korean naval superiority (which, led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, harassed Japanese supply lines continuously throughout the wars, resulting in supply shortages on land), the commitment of sizable Ming forces to Korea, Korean guerrilla actions, wavering Japanese commitment to the campaigns as the wars dragged on, and the underestimation of resistance by Japanese commanders. In the first campaign of 1592, Korean defenses on land were caught unprepared, under-trained, and under-armed; they were rapidly overrun, with only a limited number of successfully resistant engagements against the more experienced and battle-hardened Japanese forces. During the second campaign in 1597, however, Korean and Ming forces proved far more resilient and, with the support of continued Korean naval superiority, managed to limit Japanese gains to parts of southeastern Korea. The final death blow to the Japanese campaigns in Korea came with Hideyoshi's death in late 1598 and the recall of all Japanese forces in Korea by the Council of Five Elders (established by Hideyoshi to oversee the transition from his regency to that of his son Hideyori).
Many samurai forces that were active throughout this period were not deployed to Korea; most importantly, the "daimyōs" Tokugawa Ieyasu carefully kept forces under his command out of the Korean campaigns, and other samurai commanders who were opposed to Hideyoshi's domination of Japan either mulled Hideyoshi's call to invade Korea or contributed a small token force. Most commanders who opposed or otherwise resisted or resented Hideyoshi ended up as part of the so-called Eastern Army, while commanders loyal to Hideyoshi and his son (a notable exception to this trend was Katō Kiyomasa, who deployed with Tokugawa and the Eastern Army) were largely committed to the Western Army; the two opposing sides (so named for the relative geographical locations of their respective commanders' domains) later clashed, most notably at the Battle of Sekigahara, which was won by Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Eastern Forces, paving the way for the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Social mobility was high, as the ancient regime collapsed and emerging samurai needed to maintain a large military and administrative organizations in their areas of influence. Most of the samurai families that survived to the 19th century originated in this era, declaring themselves to be the blood of one of the four ancient noble clans: Minamoto, Taira, Fujiwara and Tachibana. In most cases, however, it is difficult to prove these claims.
During the Tokugawa shogunate, samurai increasingly became courtiers, bureaucrats, and administrators rather than warriors. With no warfare since the early 17th century, samurai gradually lost their military function during the Tokugawa era (also called the Edo period). By the end of the Tokugawa era, samurai were aristocratic bureaucrats for the "daimyōs", with their "daishō", the paired long and short swords of the samurai (cf. katana and wakizashi) becoming more of a symbolic emblem of power rather than a weapon used in daily life. They still had the legal right to cut down any commoner who did not show proper respect , but to what extent this right was used is unknown. When the central government forced "daimyōs" to cut the size of their armies, unemployed rōnin became a social problem.
Theoretical obligations between a samurai and his lord (usually a "daimyō") increased from the Genpei era to the Edo era. They were strongly emphasized by the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, which were required reading for the educated samurai class. The leading figures who introduced Confucianism in Japan in the early Tokugawa period were Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619), Hayashi Razan (1583–1657), and Matsunaga Sekigo (1592–1657).
The conduct of samurai served as role model behavior for the other social classes. With time on their hands, samurai spent more time in pursuit of other interests such as becoming scholars.
The relative peace of the Tokugawa era was shattered with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's massive U.S. Navy steamships in 1853. Perry used his superior firepower to force Japan to open its borders to trade. Prior to that only a few harbor towns, under strict control from the shogunate, were allowed to participate in Western trade, and even then, it was based largely on the idea of playing the Franciscans and Dominicans against one another (in exchange for the crucial arquebus technology, which in turn was a major contributor to the downfall of the classical samurai).
From 1854, the samurai army and the navy were modernized. A naval training school was established in Nagasaki in 1855. Naval students were sent to study in Western naval schools for several years, starting a tradition of foreign-educated future leaders, such as Admiral Enomoto. French naval engineers were hired to build naval arsenals, such as Yokosuka and Nagasaki. By the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867, the Japanese navy of the "shōgun" already possessed eight western-style steam warships around the flagship "Kaiyō Maru", which were used against pro-imperial forces during the Boshin War, under the command of Admiral Enomoto. A French Military Mission to Japan (1867) was established to help modernize the armies of the Bakufu.
The last showing of the original samurai was in 1867 when samurai from Chōshū and Satsuma provinces defeated the shogunate forces in favor of the rule of the emperor in the Boshin War. The two provinces were the lands of the "daimyōs" that submitted to Ieyasu after the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.
In the 1870s, Samurai comprised five percent of the population, or 400,000 families with about 1.9 million members. They came under direct national jurisdiction in 1869, and of all the classes during the Meiji revolution they were the most affected.
Although many lesser samurai had been active in the Meiji restoration, the older ones represented an obsolete feudal institution that had a practical monopoly of military force, and to a large extent of education as well. A priority of the Meiji government was to gradually abolish the entire class of samurai and integrate them into the Japanese professional, military and business classes. Their traditional guaranteed salaries were very expensive, and in 1873 the government started taxing the stipends and began to transform them into interest-bearing government bonds; the process was completed in 1879. The main goal was to provide enough financial liquidity to enable former samurai to invest in land and industry. A military force capable of contesting not just China but the imperial powers required a large conscript army that closely followed Western standards. Germany became the model. The notion of very strict obedience to chain of command was incompatible with the individual authority of the samurai. Samurai now became "Shizoku" (; this status was abolished in 1947). The right to wear a katana in public was abolished, along with the right to execute commoners who paid them disrespect. In 1877, there was a localized samurai rebellion that was quickly crushed.
Younger samurai often became exchange students because they were ambitious, literate and well-educated. On return, some started private schools for higher educations, while many samurai became reporters and writers and set up newspaper companies. Others entered governmental service. In the 1880s, 23 percent of prominent Japanese businessmen were from the samurai class; by the 1920s the number had grown to 35 percent.
The philosophies of Buddhism and Zen, and to a lesser extent Confucianism and Shinto, influenced the samurai culture. Zen meditation became an important teaching because it offered a process to calm one's mind. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation and rebirth led samurai to abandon torture and needless killing, while some samurai even gave up violence altogether and became Buddhist monks after coming to believe that their killings were fruitless. Some were killed as they came to terms with these conclusions in the battlefield. The most defining role that Confucianism played in samurai philosophy was to stress the importance of the lord-retainer relationship—the loyalty that a samurai was required to show his lord.
Literature on the subject of "bushido" such as "Hagakure" ("Hidden in Leaves") by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and " Gorin no Sho" ("Book of the Five Rings") by Miyamoto Musashi, both written in the Edo period, contributed to the development of "bushidō" and Zen philosophy.
According to Robert Sharf, "The notion that Zen is somehow related to Japanese culture in general, and bushidō in particular, is familiar to Western students of Zen through the writings of D. T. Suzuki, no doubt the single most important figure in the spread of Zen in the West." In an account of Japan sent to Father Ignatius Loyola at Rome, drawn from the statements of Anger (Han-Siro's western name), Xavier describes the importance of honor to the Japanese (Letter preserved at College of Coimbra):
In the first place, the nation with which we have had to do here surpasses in goodness any of the nations lately discovered. I really think that among barbarous nations there can be none that has more natural goodness than the Japanese. They are of a kindly disposition, not at all given to cheating, wonderfully desirous of honour and rank. Honour with them is placed above everything else. There are a great many poor among them, but poverty is not a disgrace to any one. There is one thing among them of which I hardly know whether it is practised anywhere among Christians. The nobles, however poor they may be, receive the same honour from the rest as if they were rich.
In the 13th century, Hōjō Shigetoki wrote: "When one is serving officially or in the master's court, he should not think of a hundred or a thousand people, but should consider only the importance of the master." Carl Steenstrup notes that 13th and 14th century warrior writings ("gunki") "portrayed the "bushi" in their natural element, war, eulogizing such virtues as reckless bravery, fierce family pride, and selfless, at times senseless devotion of master and man". Feudal lords such as Shiba Yoshimasa (1350–1410) stated that a warrior looked forward to a glorious death in the service of a military leader or the emperor: "It is a matter of regret to let the moment when one should die pass by ... First, a man whose profession is the use of arms should think and then act upon not only his own fame, but also that of his descendants. He should not scandalize his name forever by holding his one and only life too dear ... One's main purpose in throwing away his life is to do so either for the sake of the Emperor or in some great undertaking of a military general. It is that exactly that will be the great fame of one's descendants."
In 1412, Imagawa Sadayo wrote a letter of admonishment to his brother stressing the importance of duty to one's master. Imagawa was admired for his balance of military and administrative skills during his lifetime, and his writings became widespread. The letters became central to Tokugawa-era laws and became required study material for traditional Japanese until World War II:
"First of all, a samurai who dislikes battle and has not put his heart in the right place even though he has been born in the house of the warrior, should not be reckoned among one's retainers ... It is forbidden to forget the great debt of kindness one owes to his master and ancestors and thereby make light of the virtues of loyalty and filial piety ... It is forbidden that one should ... attach little importance to his duties to his master ... There is a primary need to distinguish loyalty from disloyalty and to establish rewards and punishments."
Similarly, the feudal lord Takeda Nobushige (1525–1561) stated: "In matters both great and small, one should not turn his back on his master's commands ... One should not ask for gifts or enfiefments from the master ... No matter how unreasonably the master may treat a man, he should not feel disgruntled ... An underling does not pass judgments on a superior."
Nobushige's brother Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) also made similar observations: "One who was born in the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty ... Everyone knows that if a man doesn't hold filial piety toward his own parents he would also neglect his duties toward his lord. Such a neglect means a disloyalty toward humanity. Therefore such a man doesn't deserve to be called 'samurai'."
The feudal lord Asakura Yoshikage (1428–1481) wrote: "In the fief of the Asakura, one should not determine hereditary chief retainers. A man should be assigned according to his ability and loyalty." Asakura also observed that the successes of his father were obtained by the kind treatment of the warriors and common people living in domain. By his civility, "all were willing to sacrifice their lives for him and become his allies."
Katō Kiyomasa was one of the most powerful and well-known lords of the Sengoku period. He commanded most of Japan's major clans during the invasion of Korea. In a handbook he addressed to "all samurai, regardless of rank", he told his followers that a warrior's only duty in life was to "grasp the long and the short swords and to die". He also ordered his followers to put forth great effort in studying the military classics, especially those related to loyalty and filial piety. He is best known for his quote: "If a man does not investigate into the matter of Bushido daily, it will be difficult for him to die a brave and manly death. Thus it is essential to engrave this business of the warrior into one's mind well."
Nabeshima Naoshige (1538–1618 AD) was another Sengoku "daimyō" who fought alongside Kato Kiyomasa in Korea. He stated that it was shameful for any man to have not risked his life at least once in the line of duty, regardless of his rank. Nabeshima's sayings were passed down to his son and grandson and became the basis for Tsunetomo Yamamoto's "Hagakure". He is best known for his saying "The way of the samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man."
Torii Mototada (1539–1600) was a feudal lord in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu. On the eve of the battle of Sekigahara, he volunteered to remain behind in the doomed Fushimi Castle while his lord advanced to the east. Torii and Tokugawa both agreed that the castle was indefensible. In an act of loyalty to his lord, Torii chose to remain behind, pledging that he and his men would fight to the finish. As was custom, Torii vowed that he would not be taken alive. In a dramatic last stand, the garrison of 2,000 men held out against overwhelming odds for ten days against the massive army of Ishida Mitsunari's 40,000 warriors. In a moving last statement to his son Tadamasa, he wrote:
"It is not the Way of the Warrior [i.e., "bushidō"] to be shamed and avoid death even under circumstances that are not particularly important. It goes without saying that to sacrifice one's life for the sake of his master is an unchanging principle. That I should be able to go ahead of all the other warriors of this country and lay down my life for the sake of my master's benevolence is an honor to my family and has been my most fervent desire for many years."
It is said that both men cried when they parted ways, because they knew they would never see each other again. Torii's father and grandfather had served the Tokugawa before him, and his own brother had already been killed in battle. Torii's actions changed the course of Japanese history. Ieyasu Tokugawa successfully raised an army and won at Sekigahara.
The translator of "Hagakure", William Scott Wilson, observed examples of warrior emphasis on death in clans other than Yamamoto's: "he (Takeda Shingen) was a strict disciplinarian as a warrior, and there is an exemplary story in the "Hagakure" relating his execution of two brawlers, not because they had fought, but because they had not fought to the death".
The rival of Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) was Uesugi Kenshin (1530–1578), a legendary Sengoku warlord well-versed in the Chinese military classics and who advocated the "way of the warrior as death". Japanese historian Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki describes Uesugi's beliefs as: "Those who are reluctant to give up their lives and embrace death are not true warriors ... Go to the battlefield firmly confident of victory, and you will come home with no wounds whatever. Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death. When you leave the house determined not to see it again you will come home safely; when you have any thought of returning you will not return. You may not be in the wrong to think that the world is always subject to change, but the warrior must not entertain this way of thinking, for his fate is always determined."
Families such as the Imagawa were influential in the development of warrior ethics and were widely quoted by other lords during their lifetime. The writings of Imagawa Sadayo were highly respected and sought out by Tokugawa Ieyasu as the source of Japanese Feudal Law. These writings were a required study among traditional Japanese until World War II.
Historian H. Paul Varley notes the description of Japan given by Jesuit leader St. Francis Xavier: "There is no nation in the world which fears death less." Xavier further describes the honour and manners of the people: "I fancy that there are no people in the world more punctilious about their honour than the Japanese, for they will not put up with a single insult or even a word spoken in anger." Xavier spent 1549 to 1551 converting Japanese to Christianity. He also observed: "The Japanese are much braver and more warlike than the people of China, Korea, Ternate and all of the other nations around the Philippines."
In December 1547, Francis was in Malacca (Malaysia) waiting to return to Goa (India) when he met a low-ranked samurai named Anjiro (possibly spelled "Yajiro"). Anjiro was not an intellectual, but he impressed Xavier because he took careful notes of everything he said in church. Xavier made the decision to go to Japan in part because this low-ranking samurai convinced him in Portuguese that the Japanese people were highly educated and eager to learn. They were hard workers and respectful of authority. In their laws and customs they were led by reason, and, should the Christian faith convince them of its truth, they would accept it en masse.
By the 12th century, upper-class samurai were highly literate because of the general introduction of Confucianism from China during the 7th to 9th centuries and in response to their perceived need to deal with the imperial court, who had a monopoly on culture and literacy for most of the Heian period. As a result, they aspired to the more cultured abilities of the nobility.
Examples such as Taira Tadanori (a samurai who appears in the "Heike Monogatari") demonstrate that warriors idealized the arts and aspired to become skilled in them. Tadanori was famous for his skill with the pen and the sword or the "bun and the bu", the harmony of fighting and learning.
Samurai were expected to be cultured and literate and admired the ancient saying "bunbu-ryōdō" (文武両道, literary arts, military arts, both ways) or "The pen and the sword in accord". By the time of the Edo period, Japan had a higher literacy comparable to that in central Europe.
The number of men who actually achieved the ideal and lived their lives by it was high. An early term for warrior, "uruwashii", was written with a kanji that combined the characters for literary study ("bun" 文) and military arts ("bu" 武), and is mentioned in the Heike Monogatari (late 12th century). The Heike Monogatari makes reference to the educated poet-swordsman ideal in its mention of Taira no Tadanori's death:
In his book "Ideals of the Samurai" translator William Scott Wilson states: "The warriors in the "Heike Monogatari" served as models for the educated warriors of later generations, and the ideals depicted by them were not assumed to be beyond reach. Rather, these ideals were vigorously pursued in the upper echelons of warrior society and recommended as the proper form of the Japanese man of arms. With the Heike Monogatari, the image of the Japanese warrior in literature came to its full maturity." Wilson then translates the writings of several warriors who mention the Heike Monogatari as an example for their men to follow.
Plenty of warrior writings document this ideal from the 13th century onward. Most warriors aspired to or followed this ideal otherwise there would have been no cohesion in the samurai armies.
As aristocrats for centuries, samurai developed their own cultures that influenced Japanese culture as a whole. The culture associated with the samurai such as the tea ceremony, monochrome ink painting, rock gardens and poetry was adopted by warrior patrons throughout the centuries 1200–1600. These practices were adapted from the Chinese arts. Zen monks introduced them to Japan and they were allowed to flourish due to the interest of powerful warrior elites. Musō Soseki (1275–1351) was a Zen monk who was advisor to both Emperor Go-Daigo and General Ashikaga Takauji (1304–58). Musō, as well as other monks, served as a political and cultural diplomat between Japan and China. Musō was particularly well known for his garden design. Another Ashikaga patron of the arts was Yoshimasa. His cultural advisor, the Zen monk Zeami, introduced the tea ceremony to him. Previously, tea had been used primarily for Buddhist monks to stay awake during meditation.
In general, samurai, aristocrats, and priests had a very high literacy rate in kanji. Recent studies have shown that literacy in kanji among other groups in society was somewhat higher than previously understood. For example, court documents, birth and death records and marriage records from the Kamakura period, submitted by farmers, were prepared in Kanji. Both the kanji literacy rate and skills in math improved toward the end of Kamakura period.
Some samurai had "buke bunko", or "warrior library", a personal library that held texts on strategy, the science of warfare, and other documents that would have proved useful during the warring era of feudal Japan. One such library held 20,000 volumes. The upper class had "Kuge bunko", or "family libraries", that held classics, Buddhist sacred texts, and family histories, as well as genealogical records.
Literacy was generally high among the warriors and the common classes as well. The feudal lord Asakura Norikage (1474–1555 AD) noted the great loyalty given to his father, due to his polite letters, not just to fellow samurai, but also to the farmers and townspeople:
There were to Lord Eirin's character many high points difficult to measure, but according to the elders the foremost of these was the way he governed the province by his civility. It goes without saying that he acted this way toward those in the samurai class, but he was also polite in writing letters to the farmers and townspeople, and even in addressing these letters he was gracious beyond normal practice. In this way, all were willing to sacrifice their lives for him and become his allies.
In a letter dated 29 January 1552, St Francis Xavier observed the ease of which the Japanese understood prayers due to the high level of literacy in Japan at that time:
There are two kinds of writing in Japan, one used by men and the other by women; and for the most part both men and women, especially of the nobility and the commercial class, have a literary education. The bonzes, or bonzesses, in their monasteries teach letters to the girls and boys, though rich and noble persons entrust the education of their children to private tutors.
Most of them can read, and this is a great help to them for the easy understanding of our usual prayers and the chief points of our holy religion.
In a letter to Father Ignatius Loyola at Rome, Xavier further noted the education of the upper classes:
The Nobles send their sons to monasteries to be educated as soon as they are 8 years old, and they remain there until they are 19 or 20, learning reading, writing and religion; as soon as they come out, they marry and apply themselves to politics.
They are discreet, magnanimous and lovers of virtue and letters, honouring learned men very much.
In a letter dated 11 November 1549, Xavier described a multi-tiered educational system in Japan consisting of "universities", "colleges", "academies" and hundreds of monasteries that served as a principal center for learning by the populace:
But now we must give you an account of our stay at Cagoxima. We put into that port because the wind was adverse to our sailing to Meaco, which is the largest city in Japan, and most famous as the residence of the King and the Princes. It is said that after four months are passed the favourable season for a voyage to Meaco will return, and then with the good help of God we shall sail thither. The distance from Cagoxima is three hundred leagues. We hear wonderful stories about the size of Meaco: they say that it consists of more than ninety thousand dwellings. There is a very famous University there, as well as five chief colleges of students, and more than two hundred monasteries of bonzes, and of others who are like coenobites, called Legioxi, as well as of women of the same kind, who are called Hamacutis. Besides this of Meaco, there are in Japan five other principal academies, at Coya, at Negu, at Fisso, and at Homia. These are situated round Meaco, with short distances between them, and each is frequented by about three thousand five hundred scholars. Besides these there is the Academy at Bandou, much the largest and most famous in all Japan, and at a great distance from Meaco. Bandou is a large territory, ruled by six minor princes, one of whom is more powerful than the others and is obeyed by them, being himself subject to the King of Japan, who is called the Great King of Meaco. The things that are given out as to the greatness and celebrity of these universities and cities are so wonderful as to make us think of seeing them first with our own eyes and ascertaining the truth, and then when we have discovered and know how things really are, of writing an account of them to you. They say that there are several lesser academies besides those which we have mentioned.
A samurai was usually named by combining one kanji from his father or grandfather and one new kanji. Samurai normally used only a small part of their total name.
For example, the full name of Oda Nobunaga would be "Oda Kazusanosuke Saburo Nobunaga" (), in which "Oda" is a clan or family name, "Kazusanosuke" is a title of vice-governor of Kazusa province, "Saburo" is a formal nickname ("yobina"), and "Nobunaga" is an adult name ("nanori") given at genpuku, the coming of age ceremony. A man was addressed by his family name and his title, or by his "yobina" if he did not have a title. However, the "nanori" was a private name that could be used by only a very few, including the Emperor.
Samurai could choose their own "nanori", and frequently changed their names to reflect their allegiances.
Samurai’s were given the privilege of carrying 2 swords and using ‘samurai surnames’ to identify themselves from the common people.
Samurai had arranged marriages, which were arranged by a go-between of the same or higher rank. While for those samurai in the upper ranks this was a necessity (as most had few opportunities to meet women), this was a formality for lower-ranked samurai. Most samurai married women from a samurai family, but for lower-ranked samurai, marriages with commoners were permitted. In these marriages a dowry was brought by the woman and was used to set up the couple's new household.
A samurai could take concubines but their backgrounds were checked by higher-ranked samurai. In many cases, taking a concubine was akin to a marriage. Kidnapping a concubine, although common in fiction, would have been shameful, if not criminal. If the concubine was a commoner, a messenger was sent with betrothal money or a note for exemption of tax to ask for her parents' acceptance. Even though the woman would not be a legal wife, a situation normally considered a demotion, many wealthy merchants believed that being the concubine of a samurai was superior to being the legal wife of a commoner. When a merchant's daughter married a samurai, her family's money erased the samurai's debts, and the samurai's social status improved the standing of the merchant family. If a samurai's commoner concubine gave birth to a son, the son could inherit his father's social status.
A samurai could divorce his wife for a variety of reasons with approval from a superior, but divorce was, while not entirely nonexistent, a rare event. A wife's failure to produce a son was cause for divorce, but adoption of a male heir was considered an acceptable alternative to divorce. A samurai could divorce for personal reasons, even if he simply did not like his wife, but this was generally avoided as it would embarrass the person who had arranged the marriage. A woman could also arrange a divorce, although it would generally take the form of the samurai divorcing her. After a divorce samurai had to return the betrothal money, which often prevented divorces.
Maintaining the household was the main duty of women of the samurai class. This was especially crucial during early feudal Japan, when warrior husbands were often traveling abroad or engaged in clan battles. The wife, or "okugatasama" (meaning: one who remains in the home), was left to manage all household affairs, care for the children, and perhaps even defend the home forcibly. For this reason, many women of the samurai class were trained in wielding a polearm called a naginata or a special knife called the "kaiken" in an art called "tantojutsu" (lit. the skill of the knife), which they could use to protect their household, family, and honor if the need arose. There were women who actively engaged in battles alongside male samurai in Japan, although most of these female warriors (Onna-bugeisha) were not formal samurai.
Traits valued in women of the samurai class were humility, obedience, self-control, strength, and loyalty. Ideally, a samurai wife would be skilled at managing property, keeping records, dealing with financial matters, educating the children (and perhaps servants as well), and caring for elderly parents or in-laws that may be living under her roof. Confucian law, which helped define personal relationships and the code of ethics of the warrior class required that a woman show subservience to her husband, filial piety to her parents, and care to the children. Too much love and affection was also said to indulge and spoil the youngsters. Thus, a woman was also to exercise discipline.
Though women of wealthier samurai families enjoyed perks of their elevated position in society, such as avoiding the physical labor that those of lower classes often engaged in, they were still viewed as far beneath men. Women were prohibited from engaging in any political affairs and were usually not the heads of their household.
This does not mean that women in the samurai class were always powerless. Powerful women both wisely and unwisely wielded power at various occasions. After Ashikaga Yoshimasa, 8th "shōgun" of the Muromachi shogunate, lost interest in politics, his wife Hino Tomiko largely ruled in his place. Nene, wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was known to overrule her husband's decisions at times and Yodo-dono, his concubine, became the "de facto" master of Osaka castle and the Toyotomi clan after Hideyoshi's death. Tachibana Ginchiyo was chosen to lead the Tachibana clan after her father's death. Chiyo, wife of Yamauchi Kazutoyo, has long been considered the ideal samurai wife. According to legend, she made her kimono out of a quilted patchwork of bits of old cloth and saved pennies to buy her husband a magnificent horse, on which he rode to many victories. The fact that Chiyo (though she is better known as "Wife of Yamauchi Kazutoyo") is held in such high esteem for her economic sense is illuminating in the light of the fact that she never produced an heir and the Yamauchi clan was succeeded by Kazutoyo's younger brother. The source of power for women may have been that samurai left their finances to their wives.
As the Tokugawa period progressed more value became placed on education, and the education of females beginning at a young age became important to families and society as a whole. Marriage criteria began to weigh intelligence and education as desirable attributes in a wife, right along with physical attractiveness. Though many of the texts written for women during the Tokugawa period only pertained to how a woman could become a successful wife and household manager, there were those that undertook the challenge of learning to read, and also tackled philosophical and literary classics. Nearly all women of the samurai class were literate by the end of the Tokugawa period.
Several people born in foreign countries were granted the title of samurai.
After Bunroku and Keichō no eki, many people born in the Joseon dynasty were brought to Japan as prisoners or cooperators. Some of them served "daimyōs" as retainers. One of the most prominent figures among them was Kim Yeocheol, who was granted the Japanese name Wakita Naokata and promoted to Commissioner of Kanazawa city.
The English sailor and adventurer William Adams (1564–1620) was, along with Joosten, among the first Westerners to receive the dignity of samurai. The "shōgun" Tokugawa Ieyasu presented him with two swords representing the authority of a samurai, and decreed that William Adams the sailor was dead and that Anjin Miura (), a samurai, was born. Adams also received the title of "hatamoto" (bannerman), a high-prestige position as a direct retainer in the "shōgun"s court. He was provided with generous revenues: "For the services that I have done and do daily, being employed in the Emperor's service, the Emperor has given me a living". (Letters) He was granted a fief in Hemi () within the boundaries of present-day Yokosuka City, "with eighty or ninety husbandmen, that be my slaves or servants". (Letters) His estate was valued at 250 "koku". He finally wrote "God hath provided for me after my great misery", (Letters) by which he meant the disaster-ridden voyage that initially brought him to Japan.
Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn ( – ), a Dutch colleague of Adams' on their ill-fated voyage to Japan in the ship De Liefde, was also given similar privileges by Tokugawa Ieyasu. Joosten likewise became a hatamoto samurai and was given a residence within Ieyasu's castle at Edo. Today, this area at the east exit of Tokyo Station is known as Yaesu (八重洲). Yaesu is a corruption of the Dutchman's Japanese name, Yayousu (耶楊子). Also in common with Adams, Joostens was given a Red Seal Ship (朱印船) allowing him to trade between Japan and Indo-China. On a return journey from Batavia, Joosten drowned after his ship ran aground.
Yasuke (弥助) was a Retainer of Oda Nobunaga originally from Portuguese Mozambique, Africa. Weapon bearer of Nobunaga. He served in the Honnō-ji incident. According to Thomas Lockley's African Samurai in the 'Oda vassal clan, the Maeda [archives]' there was mention of him receiving 'a stipend, a private residence ... and was given a short sword with a decorative sheath.'
As far back as the seventh century Japanese warriors wore a form of "lamellar armor", this armor eventually evolved into the armor worn by the samurai. The first types of Japanese armors identified as samurai armor were known as "yoroi". These early samurai armors were made from small individual scales known as "kozane". The kozane were made from either iron or leather and were bound together into small strips, the strips were coated with lacquer to protect the kozane from water. A series of strips of kozane were then laced together with silk or leather lace and formed into a complete chest armor ("dou or dō"). A complete set of the yoroi weighed 66 lbs.
In the 1500s a new type of armor started to become popular due to the advent of firearms, new fighting tactics and the need for additional protection. The "kozane dou" made from individual scales was replaced by "plate armor". This new armor, which used iron plated "dou (dō)", was referred to as "Tosei-gusoku", or modern armor. The newer armor added features and pieces of armor for the face, thigh, and back. The back piece had multiple uses, such as for a flag bearing. Various other components of armor protected the samurai's body. The helmet "kabuto" was an important part of the samurai's armor. It was paired with a shikoro and fukigaeshi for protection of the head and neck. The garment worn under all of the armor and clothing was called the Fundoshi, also known as a loincloth. Samurai armor changed and developed as the methods of samurai warfare changed over the centuries. The known last use of samurai armor occurring in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion. As the last samurai rebellion was crushed, Japan modernized its defenses and turned to a national conscription army that used uniforms.
During the existence of the samurai, two opposite types of organization reigned. The first type were recruits-based armies: at the beginning, during the Nara period, samurai armies relied on armies of Chinese-type recruits and towards the end in infantry units composed of ashigaru. The second type of organization was that of a samurai on horseback who fought individually or in small groups.
At the beginning of the contest a series of bulbous-headed arrows were shot, which buzzed in the air. The purpose of these shots was to call the kami to witness the displays of courage that were about to unfold. After a brief exchange of arrows between the two sides, a contest called ikkiuchi (一 騎 討 ち) was developed, where great rivals on both sides faced each other. In this type of duels, aspects such as range influenced a lot, the name, the position within the army, etc. After these individual combats, the major combats were given way, usually sending infantry troops led by samurai on horseback. At the beginning of the samurai battles, it was an honor to be the first to enter battle. This changed in the Sengoku period with the introduction of the arcabuz. At the beginning of the use of firearms, the combat methodology was as follows: at the beginning an exchange of arcabuz shots was made at a distance of approximately 100 meters; When the time was right, the Ashigaru spearmen were ordered to advance and finally the samurai would attack, either on foot or on horseback. The army chief used to be sitting in a scissor chair inside a semi-open tent called Maku, which exhibited its respective mon. As a sign of the symbolism so strong that this represented, another way of calling the shogunate instituted by Minamoto no Yoritomo was the term bakufu, which meant "government from the maku."
In the middle of the contest, some samurai decided to get off the horse and seek to cut off the head of a worthy rival. This act was considered an honor. In addition, through it they gained respect among the military class. After the battle, the high-ranking samurai normally celebrated the tea ceremony, and the victorious general reviewed the heads of the most important members of the enemy who had been cut.
It is important to note that most of the battles were not resolved in the manner so idealist exposed above, but that most wars were won through surprise attacks, such as night raids, fires, etc. The renowned samurai Minamoto no Tamemoto said:
Cutting off the head of a worthy rival on the battlefield was a source of great pride and recognition. There was a whole ritual to beautify the severed heads: first they were washed and combed and once this was done, the teeth were blackened by applying a dye called ohaguro. The reason for blackening the teeth was that white teeth was a sign of distinction, so applying a dye to darken them was a metaphorical way to remove some of it. Finally the heads were carefully arranged on a table for exposure.
During Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, the number of severed heads of the enemies that had to be sent to Japan was such that for logistical reasons only the nose was sent. These were covered with salt and shipped in wooden barrels. These barrels were buried in a burial mound near the "Great Buddha" of Hideyoshi, where they remain today under the wrong name of Mimizuka or "burial mound."
During the Azuchi-Momoyama period and thanks to the introduction of firearms, combat tactics changed dramatically. The military formations adopted had poetic names, among which are:
Each child who grew up in a samurai family was expected to be a warrior when he grew up, so much of his childhood was spent practicing different martial arts. A complete samurai should be skilled at least in the use of the sword (kenjutsu), the bow and arrow (kyujutsu), the spear (sojutsu, yarijutsu), the halberd (naginatajutsu) and subsequently the firearms. Similarly, they were instructed in the use of these weapons while riding a horse. They were also expected to know how to swim and dive.
During the feudal era of Japan, various types of martial arts flourished, known in Japanese under the name of bujutsu (武術). The term jutsu can be translated as "method", "art" or "technique" and the name that each one has is indicative of the mode or weapon with which they are executed. The combat methods that were developed and perfected are very diverse, among which are:
Today martial arts are classified in Koryū budō or classical martial arts, before the 19th century, and to the modernization of Japan. Modern traditional martial arts are called Gendai Budō.
Most samurai were bound by a code of honor and were expected to set an example for those below them. A notable part of their code is or "hara kiri", which allowed a disgraced samurai to regain his honor by passing into death, where samurai were still beholden to social rules. While there are many romanticized characterizations of samurai behavior such as the writing of in 1905, studies of Kobudō and traditional Budō indicate that the samurai were as practical on the battlefield as were any other warriors.
Despite the rampant romanticism of the 20th century, samurai could be disloyal and treacherous (e.g., Akechi Mitsuhide), cowardly, brave, or overly loyal (e.g., Kusunoki Masashige). Samurai were usually loyal to their immediate superiors, who in turn allied themselves with higher lords. These loyalties to the higher lords often shifted; for example, the high lords allied under Toyotomi Hideyoshi () were served by loyal samurai, but the feudal lords under them could shift their support to Tokugawa, taking their samurai with them. There were, however, also notable instances where samurai would be disloyal to their lord ("daimyō"), when loyalty to the Emperor was seen to have supremacy.
Jidaigeki (literally historical drama) has always been a staple program on Japanese movies and television. The programs typically feature a samurai. Samurai films and westerns share a number of similarities and the two have influenced each other over the years. One of Japan's most renowned directors, Akira Kurosawa, greatly influenced western film-making. George Lucas' "Star Wars" series incorporated many stylistic traits pioneered by Kurosawa and "Star Wars: A New Hope" takes the core story of a rescued princess being transported to a secret base from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress". Kurosawa was inspired by the works of director John Ford and in turn Kurosawa's works have been remade into westerns such as "Seven Samurai" into "The Magnificent Seven" and "Yojimbo" into "A Fistful of Dollars". There is also a 26 episode anime adaptation ("Samurai 7") of "Seven Samurai". Along with film, literature containing samurai influences are seen as well. As well as influence from American Westerns Kurosawa's also adapted two of Shakespeare's plays as sources for samurai movies; "Throne of Blood" was based on "Macbeth" and "Ran" was based on "King Lear".
Most common are historical works where the protagonist is either a samurai or former samurai (or another rank or position) who possesses considerable martial skill. Eiji Yoshikawa is one of the most famous Japanese historical novelists. His retellings of popular works, including Taiko, Musashi and "The Tale of the Heike", are popular among readers for their epic narratives and rich realism in depicting samurai and warrior culture. The samurai have also appeared frequently in Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime). Examples are "Samurai Champloo", "Shigurui", "Requiem from the Darkness", "", and "Afro Samurai". Samurai-like characters are not just restricted to historical settings and a number of works set in the modern age, and even the future, include characters who live, train and fight like samurai. Some of these works have made their way to the west, where it has been increasing in popularity with America.
In the 21st century samurai have become more popular in America. "Hyperbolizing the samurai in such a way that they appear as a whole to be a loyal body of master warriors provides international interest in certain characters due to admirable traits." (Moscardi, N. D.) Through various media, producers and writers have been capitalizing on the notion that Americans admire the samurai lifestyle. The animated series, "Afro Samurai", became well-liked in American popular culture due to its blend of hack-and-slash animation and gritty urban music. Created by Takashi Okazaki, "Afro Samurai" was initially a dōjinshi, or manga series, which was then made into an animated series by Studio Gonzo. In 2007 the animated series debuted on American cable television on the Spike TV channel. (Denison, 2010) The series was produced for American viewers which “embodies the trend... comparing hip-hop artists to samurai warriors, an image some rappers claim for themselves". (Solomon, 2009) The storyline keeps in tone with the perception of a samurais finding vengeance against someone who has wronged him. Starring the voice of well known American actor Samuel L. Jackson, "Afro is the second-strongest fighter in a futuristic, yet, still feudal Japan and seeks revenge upon the gunman who killed his father." (King 2008) Due to its popularity, "Afro Samurai" was adopted into a full feature animated film and also became titles on gaming consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox. Not only has the samurai culture been adopted into animation and video games, it can also be seen in comic books.
American comic books have adopted the character type for stories of their own like the mutant-villain Silver Samurai of Marvel Comics. The design of this character preserves the samurai appearance; the villain is "Clad in traditional gleaming samurai armor and wielding an energy charged katana". (Buxton, 2013) Not only does the Silver Samurai make over 350 comic book appearances, the character is playable in several video games, such as "Marvel vs. Capcom" 1 and 2. In 2013, the samurai villain was depicted in James Mangold's film "The Wolverine". Ten years before the Wolverine debuted, another film helped pave the way to ensure the samurai were made known to American cinema:
A film released in 2003 titled "The Last Samurai", starring Tom Cruise, is inspired by the samurai way of life. In the film, Cruise's character finds himself deeply immersed in samurai culture. The character in the film, "Nathan Algren, is a fictional contrivance to make nineteenth-century Japanese history less foreign to American viewers". (Ravina, 2010) After being captured by a group of samurai rebels, he becomes empathetic towards the cause they fight for. Taking place during the Meiji Period, Tom Cruise plays the role of US Army Captain Nathan Algren, who travels to Japan to train a rookie army in fighting off samurai rebel groups. Becoming a product of his environment, Algren joins the samurai clan in an attempt to rescue a captured samurai leader. "By the end of the film, he has clearly taken on many of the samurai traits, such as zen-like mastery of the sword, and a budding understanding of spirituality". (Manion, 2006)
The television series "Power Rangers Samurai" (adapted from "Samurai Sentai Shinkenger") is also inspired by the way of the Samurai. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28288 |
Slackware
Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions, and is the oldest distribution that is still maintained.
Slackware aims for design stability and simplicity and to be the most "Unix-like" Linux distribution. It makes as few modifications as possible to software packages from upstream and tries not to anticipate use cases or preclude user decisions. In contrast to most modern Linux distributions, Slackware provides no graphical installation procedure and no automatic dependency resolution of software packages. It uses plain text files and only a small set of shell scripts for configuration and administration. Without further modification it boots into a command-line interface environment. Because of its many conservative and simplistic features, Slackware is often considered to be most suitable for advanced and technically inclined Linux users.
Slackware is available for the IA-32 and x86_64 architectures, with a port to the ARM architecture. While Slackware is mostly free and open-source software, it does not have a formal bug tracking facility or public code repository, with releases periodically announced by Volkerding. There is no formal membership procedure for developers and Volkerding is the primary contributor to releases.
The name "Slackware" stems from the fact that the distribution started as a private side project with no intended commitment. To prevent it from being taken too seriously at first, Volkerding gave it a humorous name, which stuck even after Slackware became a serious project.
Slackware refers to the "pursuit of Slack", a tenet of the Church of the SubGenius, a parody religion. Certain aspects of Slackware graphics reflect this—the pipe that Tux is smoking, as influenced by the image of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs' head.
A humorous reference to the Church of the SubGenius can be found in many versions of the "install.end" text files, which indicate the end of a software series to the setup program. In recent versions, including Slackware release 14.1, the text is ROT13 obfuscated.
Slackware was originally derived from the Softlanding Linux System (SLS), the most popular of the original Linux distributions and the first to offer a comprehensive software collection that comprised more than just the kernel and basic utilities, including X11 graphical interface, TCP/IP and UUCP networking and GNU Emacs.
Patrick Volkerding started with SLS after needing a LISP interpreter for a school project at the then named Moorhead State University (MSU). He found CLISP was available for Linux and downloaded SLS to run it. A few weeks later, Volkerding was asked by his artificial intelligence professor at MSU to show him how to install Linux at home and on some of the computers at school. Volkerding had made notes describing fixes to issues he found after installing SLS and he and his professor went through and applied those changes to a new installation. However, this took almost as long as it took to just install SLS, so the professor asked if the install disks could be adjusted so the fixes could be applied during installation. This was the start of Slackware. Volkerding continued making improvements to SLS: fixing bugs, upgrading software, automatic installation of shared libraries and the kernel image, fixing file permissions, and more. In a short time, Volkerding had upgraded around half the packages beyond what SLS had available.
Volkerding had no intentions to provide his modified SLS version for the public. His friends at MSU urged him to put his SLS modifications onto an FTP server, but Volkerding assumed that "SLS would be putting out a new version that included these things soon enough", so he held off for a few weeks. During that time, many SLS users on the internet were asking SLS for a new release, so eventually Volkerding made a post titled "Anyone want an SLS-like 0.99pl11A system?", to which he received many positive responses. After a discussion with the local sysadmin at MSU, Volkerding obtained permission to upload Slackware to the university's FTP server. This first Slackware release, version 1.00, was distributed on July 17, 1993, at 00:16:36 (UTC), and was supplied as twenty-four 3½" floppy disk images. After the announcement was made, Volkerding watched as the flood of FTP connections continually crashed the server. Soon afterwards, Walnut Creek CDROM offered additional archive space on their FTP servers.
The size of Slackware quickly increased with the addition of included software, and by version 2.1, released October 1994, it had more than tripled to comprise seventy-three 1.44M floppy disk images.
In 1999, Slackware saw its version jump from 4 to 7. Slackware version numbers were lagging behind other distributions, and this led many users to believe it was out of date even though the bundled software versions were similar. Volkerding made the decision to bump the version as a marketing effort to show that Slackware was as up-to-date as other Linux distributions, many of which had release numbers of 6 at the time. He chose 7, estimating that most other distributions would soon be at this release number.
In April 2004, Patrick Volkerding added X.Org Server packages into the testing/ directory of -current as a replacement for the XFree86 packages currently being used, with a request for comments on what the future of the X Window System in Slackware should be. A month later, he switched from XFree86 to X.Org Server after stating that the opinions were more than 4 to 1 in favor of using the X.org release as the default version of X. He stated the decision was primarily a technical one, as XFree86 was proving to cause compatibility problems. Slackware 10.0 was the first release with X.Org Server.
In March 2005, Patrick Volkerding announced the removal of the GNOME desktop environment in the development ChangeLog. He stated this had been under consideration for more than four years and that there were already projects that provided a more complete version of GNOME for Slackware than what Slackware itself provided. Volkerding stated future GNOME support would rely on the community. The community responded and as of October 2016, there are several active GNOME projects for Slackware. These include: Cinnamon, Dlackware, Dropline GNOME, MATE, and SlackMATE. The removal was deemed significant by some in the Linux community due to the prevalence of GNOME in many distributions.
In May 2009, Patrick Volkerding announced the public (development) release of an official x86_64 variant, called Slackware64, maintained in parallel with the IA-32 distribution. Slackware64 is a pure 64-bit distribution in that it does not support running or compiling 32-bit programs, however, it was designed as "multilib-ready". Eric Hameleers, one of the core Slackware team members, maintains a multilib repository that contains the necessary packages to convert Slackware64 to multilib to enable running of 32-bit software. Hameleers started the 64-bit port as a diversion from the pain of recovering from surgery in September 2008. Volkerding tested the port in December 2008, and was impressed when he saw speed increases between 20 and 40 percent for some benchmarks compared to the 32-bit version. To minimize the extra effort of maintaining both versions in parallel, Slackware's build scripts, called SlackBuilds, were slowly transitioned to supporting either architecture, allowing for one set of sources for both versions. Slackware64 saw its first stable release with version 13.0.
Between the November 2013 release of 14.1 and June 2016, Slackware saw a 31-month gap between releases, marking the longest span in release history. During this time the development branch went without updates for 47 days. However, on April 21, 2015, Patrick Volkerding apologized on the ChangeLog for the absence of updates and stated that the development team used the time to get "some good work done." There were over 700 program changes listed on that ChangeLog entry, including many major library upgrades. In January 2016, Volkerding announced the reluctant addition of PulseAudio, primarily due to BlueZ dropping direct ALSA support in v5.x. while various other projects were in turn dropping support for BlueZ v4.x. Knowing some users would not be happy with the change, he stated that "Bug reports, complaints, and threats can go to me." These changes culminated in the release of Slackware 14.2 in June 2016.
The design philosophy of Slackware is oriented toward simplicity, software purity, and a core design that emphasizes lack of change to upstream sources. Many design choices in Slackware can be seen as a heritage of the simplicity of traditional Unix systems and as examples of the KISS principle. In this context, "simple" refers to the simplicity in system design, rather than system usage. Thus, ease of use may vary between users: those lacking knowledge of command line interfaces and classic Unix tools may experience a steep learning curve using Slackware, whereas users with a Unix background may benefit from a less abstract system environment. In keeping with Slackware's design philosophy, and its spirit of purity, most software in Slackware uses the original configuration mechanisms supplied by the software's authors; however, for some administrative tasks, distribution-specific configuration tools are delivered.
There is no formal issue tracking system and no official procedure to become a code contributor or developer. The project does not maintain a public code repository. Bug reports and contributions, while being essential to the project, are managed in an informal way. All the final decisions about what is going to be included in a Slackware release strictly remain with Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, Patrick Volkerding.
The first versions of Slackware were developed by Patrick Volkerding alone. Beginning with version 4.0, the official Slackware announce files list David Cantrell and Logan Johnson as part of the "Slackware team". Later announce statements, up to release version 8.1, include Chris Lumens. Lumens, Johnson and Cantrell are also the authors of the first edition of "Slackware Linux Essentials", the official guide to Slackware Linux. The Slackware website mentions Chris Lumens and David Cantrell as being "Slackware Alumni", who "worked full-time on the Slackware project for several years." In his release notes for Slackware 10.0 and 10.1 Volkerding thanks Eric Hameleers for "his work on supporting USB, PCI, and Cardbus wireless cards". Starting with version 12.0 there is, for a second time, a team building around Volkerding. According to the release notes of 12.2, the development team consists of seven people. Future versions added people. Since version 13.0, the Slackware team seems to have core members. Eric Hameleers gives an insight into the core team with his essay on the "History of Slackware Development", written on October 3–4, 2009 (shortly after the release of version 13.0).
Slackware's package management system, collectively known as pkgtools, can administer (), install (), upgrade (), and remove () packages from local sources. It can also uncompress () and create () packages. The official tool to update Slackware over a network or the internet is . It was originally developed by Piter Punk as an unofficial way to keep Slackware up-to-date. It was officially included in the main tree in Slackware 12.2, having been included in since Slackware 9.1. When a package is upgraded, it will install the new package over the old one and then remove any files that no longer exist in the new package. When running , it only confirms that the version numbers are "different", thus allowing downgrading the package if desired.
Slackware packages are tarballs compressed using various methods. Starting with 13.0, most packages are compressed using xz (based on the LZMA compression algorithm), utilizing the filename extension. Prior to 13.0, packages were compressed using gzip (based on the DEFLATE compression algorithm), using the extension. Support for bzip2 and lzip compression was also added, using the filename extensions and respectively, although these are not commonly used.
Packages contain all the files for that program, as well as additional metadata files used by the package manager. The package tarball contains the full directory structure of the files and is meant to be extracted in the system's root directory during installation. The additional metadata files, located under the special directory within the tarball, usually include a file, which is a specifically formatted text file that is read by the package manager to provide users with a description of the packaged software, as well as a file, which is a post-unpacking shell script allowing creation of symbolic links, preserving permissions on startup files, proper handling of new configuration files, and any other aspects of installation that can't be implemented via the package's directory structure. During the development of 15.0, Volkerding introduced support for a uninstall script that can be launched when removing or upgrading a package. This allows package maintainers to run commands when a package is uninstalled.
The package manager maintains a local database on the computer, stored in multiple folders. On 14.2 and older systems, the main database of installed packages was maintained in , however, during the development of 15.0, Volkerding moved two of the directories to a dedicated location under to prevent accidental deletion when clearing system logs. Each Slackware installation will contain a and directory in the main database location. The former is where each package installed will have a corresponding install log file (based on the package name, version, arch, and build) that contains the package size, both compressed and uncompressed, the software description, and the full path of all files that were installed. If the package contained an optional post-installation script, the contents of that script will be added to a file in the directory matching the filename of the corresponding package in the directory, allowing the administrator to view the post-installation script at a future point. When a package is removed or upgraded, the old install logs and scripts found under and are moved to and , making it possible to review any previous packages and see when they were removed. These directories can be found in on 14.2 and earlier, but were moved to during the development of 15.0. On systems supporting the uninstall script, those scripts will be stored in the directory while the package is installed. Once removed, the script will be moved to .
The package management system does not track or manage "dependencies"; however, when performing the recommended full install, all dependencies of the stock packages are met. For custom installations or 3rd-party packages, Slackware relies on the user to ensure that the system has all the supporting system libraries and programs required by the program. Since no official lists of dependencies for stock packages are provided, if users decide to install a custom installation or install 3rd-party software, they will need to work through any possible missing dependencies themselves. Since the package manager doesn't manage dependencies, it will install any and all packages, whether or not dependencies are met. A user may find out that dependencies are missing only when attempting to use the software.
While Slackware itself does not incorporate official tools to resolve dependencies, some unofficial, community-supported software tools do provide this function, similar to the way APT does for Debian-based distributions and yum does for Red Hat-based distributions. They include:
There are no official repositories for Slackware. The only official packages Slackware provides are available on the installation media. However, there are many third-party repositories for Slackware; some are standalone repositories and others are for distributions that are Slackware-based but retain package compatibility with Slackware. Many of these can be searched at once using pkgs.org, which is a Linux package search engine. However, mixing and matching dependencies from multiple repositories can lead to two or more packages that require different versions of the same dependency, which is a form of dependency hell. Slackware itself won't provide any dependency resolution for these packages, however some projects will provide a list of dependencies that are not included with Slackware with the files for the package, commonly with a extension.
Due to the possibility of dependency issues, many users choose to compile their own programs using community-provided SlackBuilds. SlackBuilds are shell scripts that will create an installable Slackware package from a provided software tarball. Since SlackBuilds are scripts, they aren't limited to just compiling a program's source; they can also be used to repackage pre-compiled binaries provided by projects or other distributions' repositories into proper Slackware packages. SlackBuilds that compile sources have several advantages over pre-built packages: since they build from the original author's source code, the user does not have to trust a third-party packager; furthermore the local compilation process allows for machine-specific optimization. In comparison to manual compilation and installation of software, SlackBuilds provide cleaner integration to the system by utilizing Slackware's package manager. Some SlackBuilds will come with an additional file with metadata that allows automated tools to download the source, verify the source is not corrupted, and calculate additional dependencies that are not part of Slackware. Some repositories will include both SlackBuilds and the resulting Slackware packages, allowing users to either build their own or install a pre-built package.
The only officially endorsed SlackBuilds repository is SlackBuilds.org, commonly referred to as SBo. This is a community-supported project offering SlackBuilds for building software not included with Slackware. Users are able to submit new SlackBuilds for software to the site and, once approved, they become the "package maintainer". They are then responsible for providing updates to the SlackBuild, either to fix issues or to build newer versions provided by upstream. To ensure all programs can be compiled and used, any required dependencies of the software not included with Slackware are required to be documented and be available on the site. All submissions are tested by the site's administrators before being added to the repository. The administrators intend for the build process to be nearly identical to the way Slackware's official packages are built, mainly to ensure Volkerding was "sympathetic of our cause". This allows SlackBuilds that Volkerding deems worthy to be pulled into regular Slackware with minimal changes to the script. It also prevent users from suggesting Volkerding to change his scripts to match SBo's. SBo provides templates for SlackBuilds and the additional metadata files and they encourage package maintainers to not deviate unless necessary.
Two Slackware team members, Eric Hameleers and Robby Workman each have their own repository of pre-compiled packages along with the SlackBuilds and source files used to create the packages. While most packages are just additional software not included in Slackware that they felt was worth their time to maintain, some packages are used as a testbed for future upgrades to Slackware, most notably, Hameleers provides "Ktown" packages for newer versions of KDE. He also maintains Slackware's "multilib" repository, enabling Slackware64 to run and compile 32bit packages.
Slackware's release policy follows a feature and stability based release cycle, in contrast to the time-bound ("e.g.", Ubuntu) or rolling release ("e.g.", Gentoo Linux) schemes of other Linux distributions. This means there is no set time on when to expect a release. Volkerding will release the next version after he feels a suitable number of changes from the previous version have been made and those changes lead to a stable environment. As stated by Patrick Volkerding, "It's usually our policy not to speculate on release dates, since that's what it is — pure speculation. It's not always possible to know how long it will take to make the upgrades needed and tie up all the related loose ends. As things are built for the upcoming release, they'll be uploaded into the -current tree."
Throughout Slackware's history, they generally try to deliver up-to-date software on at least an annual basis. However, between Slackware 14.1 and 14.2, there was more than a 2-year gap between releases. From its inception, other than 2014 and 2015, Slackware had at least one release per year. Release activity peaked in 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1999, with three releases each year. Starting with version 7.1 (June 22, 2000) the release progression became more stable and tended to occur once a year. Since then, the only years with two releases were 2003, 2005 and 2008.
Slackware's latest 32bit x86 and 64bit x86_64 stable releases are at version 14.2 (released on June 30, 2016), which include support for Linux 4.4.14.
Volkerding also maintains a testing/developmental version of Slackware called "-current" that can be used for a more bleeding edge configuration. This version will eventually become the next stable release, at which point Volkerding will start a new -current to start developing for the next release of Slackware. While this version is generally known to be stable, it is possible for things to break, so -current tends to not be recommended for production systems.
Currently, Slackware has no officially stated support term policy. However, on June 14, 2012, notices appeared in the changelogs for versions 8.1, 9.0, 9.1, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, and 12.0 stating that, effective August 1, 2012, security patches would no longer be provided for these versions. The oldest release, version 8.1, was released on June 18, 2002 and had over 10 years of support before reaching EOL. Later, on August 30, 2013, announcements were made on the changelogs of 12.1 and 12.2 stating their EOL on December 9, 2013. It was stated in the changelog entries that they had at least 5 years of support. On April 6, 2018, versions of 13.0, 13.1 and 13.37 were declared reaching their EOL on July 5, 2018. It was stated in the changelog entries that they had at least 7 years of support (13.0 had been supported almost 9 years). , there have been no announcements from the Slackware team on when any versions of Slackware from 14.0 and up will be EOL.
While there have been no official announcements for versions prior to 8.1, they are no longer maintained and are effectively EOL.
Historically, Slackware concentrated solely on the IA-32 architecture and releases were available as 32-bit only. However, starting with Slackware 13.0, a 64-bit x86_64 variant is available and officially supported in symmetrical development with the 32-bit platform. Prior to the release of Slackware64 users wanting 64-bit were required to use unofficial ports such as slamd64.
Slackware is also available for the IBM S/390 architecture in the form of Slack/390 and for the ARM architecture under Slackware ARM (originally known as 'ARMedslack'). Both ports have been declared "official" by Patrick Volkerding. However, the S/390 port is still at version 10.0 for the stable version and 11.0 for the testing/developmental version, and has had no updates since 2009. Also, on May 7, 2016, the developer of Slackware ARM announced 14.1 will be EOL on September 1, 2016 and development of -current will cease with the release of 14.2, however support for 14.2 will be maintained for the foreseeable future. The EOL announcement for 14.1 was added to the changelog on June 25, 2016.
In July 2016, the developer of Slackware ARM announced that the development and build tools had been enhanced to reduce the manual effort involved in maintaining the ARM port, and proceeded to announce that a 32-bit hardware floating port was in development. The port was released in August 2016 in "current" form.
Slackintosh is a port of Slackware Linux for the Macintosh New World ROM PowerPC architecture, used by Apple's Power Macintosh, PowerBook, iMac, iBook, and Xserve lines from 1994 until 2006. The latest version of Slackintosh is 12.1, published 2008-06-07. When Apple migrated to Intel's x86, Slackintosh could no longer run on the latest Apple computers, and development stopped. Slackintosh is still an active project and can be downloaded and used by those who have older PowerPC Macintosh computers.
Slackware ISO images for installation can be downloaded for free at the Slackware website via BitTorrent or from various FTP and HTTP mirrors.
A 6-CD set or a single Dual-DVD were previously available for order from the Slackware official store, but the store is currently unavailable with no official statement as to if or when it will return. The CD set was targeted at the 32bit IA-32 platform but also runs on 64bit x86_64 processors in 32-bit mode. The DVD contains both the 32bit and 64bit versions.
The distributions of the ports for the ARM architecture and for IBM S/390 are neither available as CD/DVDs nor as ISO images, but can be downloaded. Slackware S/390 installs from a DOS Partition or from floppy disk. Slackware ARM does not distribute ISO files because most ARM devices can not boot from a CD or DVD. Instead, it is installed off a network, using Das U-Boot and a TFTP boot server or from a mini-root filesystem. Slackware ARM can also be installed on a PC running QEMU using the same technique.
As of 2019, DistroWatch ranks Slackware at 29th. Interest appears to have peaked in 2002, when Slackware's rank reached 7th. It had gradually slipped from the top 10 by 2010, and appears to have stabilized around its current rank in 2015. However, since DistroWatch only tracks visitors to the various distributions' pages, they state that their ranking doesn't always correlate with the usage of a distribution; rather, it measures the popularity of that distribution on their site. Because of this, their rankings "should not be used to measure the market share of distributions." As with most Linux distributions, Slackware has no official system for tracking total unique installs or active users. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28290 |
Short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood.
The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques.
Short story writers may define their works as part of the artistic and personal expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and fixed formation.
Short stories have deep roots and the power of short fiction has been recognized in modern society for hundreds of years.
As William Boyd, the award-winning British author and short story writer has said:
[short stories] seem to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion.
In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories, however some have 15,000 words and are still classed as short stories. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction".
run into the thousands.
Sales of short-story fiction are strong. In the UK sales jumped 45% in 2017, driven by collections from international names such as Alice Munro, new writers to the genre such as Tom Hanks, and the revival of short story salons, such as those held by short fiction company, Pin Drop Studio.
More than 690,000 short stories and anthologies were sold in the UK in 2017, generating £5.88 million, the genre's highest sales since 2010.
In 2012 Pin Drop Studio launched a short story salon held regularly in London and other major cities. Short story writers who have appeared at the salon to read their short stories to a live audience include Ben Okri, Lionel Shriver, Elizabeth Day, A.L. Kennedy, William Boyd, Graham Swift, David Nicholls, Will Self, Sebastian Faulks, Julian Barnes, Evie Wylde and Claire Fuller.
Prominent short story awards such as The Sunday Times Short Story Award, the BBC National Short Story Award , the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize , The London Magazine Short Story Prize , the Pin Drop Studio Short Story Award and many others, attract hundreds of entries each year. Published and non-published writers take part, sending their stories from across the world.
In 2013, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—her citation read "master of the contemporary short story." She said she hopes the award would bring readership for the short story, as well as recognize the short story on its own merit, rather than "something that people do before they write their first novel." Short stories have been cited with regard to other laureates as well, Paul Heyse in 1910 and Gabriel García Márquez in 1982.
Short stories are sometimes adapted for radio, TV and film:
Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846).
Interpreting this standard nowadays is problematic, because the expected length of "one sitting" may now be briefer than it was in Poe's era.
Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count, there is no official demarcation between an anecdote, a short story, and a novel. Rather, the form's parameters are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to the evolution of the publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses.
As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length in the Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of fewer than 7,500 words.
Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered "novellas" or novelettes and, like short stories, maybe collected into the more marketable form of "collections", often containing previously unpublished stories. Sometimes, authors who do not have the time or money to write a novella or novel decide to write short stories instead, working out a deal with a popular website or magazine to publish them for profit.
The precursors of short story were legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, fables and anecdotes which were present in various ancient communities across the world. These short pieces existed mostly in oral form and they were transmitted from one generation to another in oral form. A large number of such tales are found in ancient literature, from the Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. The 1001 Arabian Nights, compiled for the first time probably in the eighth century, is also a storehouse of Middle Eastern folk tales and fairy tales. Emerging in the 17th century from oral storytelling traditions and above-mentioned written works of the ancient times (which themselves are based on oral traditions), the short story has grown to encompass a body of work so diverse as to defy easy characterization.
With the rise of the realistic novel, the short story evolved in a parallel tradition, with some of its first distinctive examples in the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. The character of the form developed particularly with authors known for their short fiction, either by choice (they wrote nothing else) or by critical regard, which acknowledged the focus and craft required in the short form. An example is Jorge Luis Borges, who won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths", published in the August 1948 "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". Another example is O. Henry (author of "Gift of the Magi"), for whom the O. Henry Award is named. Other of his most popular, inventive and most often reprinted stories (among over 600) include: "The Ransom of Red Chief", "The Cop and the Anthem", "The Skylight Room", "After Twenty Years", "A Municipal Report", "An Unfinished Story", "A Lickpenny Lover", "Mammon and the Archer" and "The Last Leaf". American examples include: Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Science fiction short story with a special poetic touch was a genre developed with great popular success by Ray Bradbury.
The genre of the short story was often neglected until the second half of the 19th century.
The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Pioneering role in founding the rules of the genre in the Western canon include, among others, Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Guy de Maupassant (France), Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico) and Rubén Darío (Nicaragua).
An important theoretical example for storytelling analysis is provided by Walter Benjamin in his essay "The Storyteller" where he argues about the decline of storytelling art and the incommunicability of experiences in the modern world. Oscar Wilde's essay "The Decay of Lying" and Henry James's "The Art of Fiction" are also partly related to this subject.
Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, "Homeric epithets". Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition, and adaptation of the story. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.
The other ancient form of a short story, the anecdote, was popular under the Roman Empire. Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the "Gesta Romanorum". Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published.
In India, there is a rich heritage of ancient folktales as well as a compiled body of short fiction which shaped the sensibility of modern Indian short story. Some of the famous Sanskrit collection of legends, folktales, fairy tales, and fables are Panchatantra, Hitopadesha and Kathasaritsagara. Jataka tales, originally written in Pali, is a compilation of tales concerning the previous births of Lord Gautama Buddha. The Frame story or frame narrative or story within a story is a narrative technique that probably originated in ancient Indian works such as Panchatantra.
In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron". Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fiction) set within a larger narrative story (a frame story), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo Bandello (especially in their French translation).
The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette. In the 1690s, traditional fairy tales began to be published (one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault). The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the "Thousand and One Nights" (or "Arabian Nights") (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12) would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.
Early examples of short stories were published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries around the same period.
The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Great novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote short stories.
One of the earliest short stories in the United States was Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" from 1805. Washington Irving wrote mysterious tales including "Rip van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820). Nathaniel Hawthorne published the first part of his "Twice-Told Tales" in 1837. Edgar Allan Poe wrote his tales of mystery and imagination between 1832 and 1849. Poe is often given the credit (by scholars such as M. H. Abrams) of establishing a short story as a genre of literature. Poe's classic stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Gold Bug, and the first detective stories, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter". In "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) Poe argued that a literary work (short story) should be short enough for a reader to finish in one sitting.
In Germany, the first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811. The Brothers Grimm published their first volume of collected fairy tales in 1812. E.T.A. Hoffmann followed with his own original fantasy tales, of which "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) and "The Sandman" are the most famous.
In France, Prosper Mérimée wrote "Mateo Falcone" in 1829.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words.
In the United Kingdom, Thomas Hardy wrote dozens of short stories, including "The Three Strangers" (1883), "A Mere Interlude" (1885) and "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890). Rudyard Kipling published short story collections for adults, e.g. "Plain Tales from the Hills" (1888), as well as for children, e.g. "The Jungle Book" (1894). In 1892, Arthur Conan Doyle brought the detective story to a new height with "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". H.G. Wells wrote his first science fiction stories in the 1880s. He is best known for his renowned, "The Country of the Blind" (1904).
In the United States, Herman Melville published his story collection "The Piazza Tales" in 1856. "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was the title story of Mark Twain's first book one year later. In 1884, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published "The Philosophy of the Short-Story". During that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James. James wrote a lot of short stories himself, including "The Real Thing" (1892), "Maud-Evelyn" and "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903). In the 1890s, Kate Chopin published short stories in several magazines.
The most prolific French author of short stories was Guy de Maupassant. He composed short stories, ""Boule de Suif"" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and ""L'Inutile Beauté"" ("The Useless Beauty", 1890) are good examples of French realism.
In Russia, Ivan Turgenev gained recognition with his story collection "A Sportsman's Sketches". Nikolai Leskov created his first short stories in the 1860s. Late in his life Fyodor Dostoyevski wrote "The Meek One" (1876) and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877), two stories with great psychological and philosophical depth. Leo Tolstoy handled ethical questions in his short stories, for example in "Ivan the Fool" (1885), "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) and "Alyosha the Pot" (1905). The greatest specialist of the Russian short story, however, was Anton Chekhov. Classic examples of his realistic prose are "The Bet" (1889), "Ward No. 6" (1892), and "The Lady with the Dog" (1899). Maxim Gorky's best known short story is "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1899).
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India, Rabindranath Tagore published more than 150 short stories, on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as peasants, women, and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation. Some of his famous short stories include "The Kabuliwala", "The Hungry Stone", "The Wife's Letter", "The Parrot's Training" and "Punishment". Tagore's contemporary, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was another pioneer in Bengali short stories. Chattopadhyay's stories focused on the social scenario of rural Bengal and the lives of common people, especially the oppressed classes. His most popular short stories include "Bindu's Son", "Abhagi's Heaven", "Mahesh", "Ram's Good Lesson", "Lalu" (3 parts) and "The Husband".
The prolific Indian author of short stories Munshi Premchand, pioneered the genre in the Hindustani language, writing a substantial body of short stories and novels in a style characterized by realism and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society. Premchand's works include over 200 short stories (such as "The Shroud", "The Cost of Milk" and "Lottery").
In Poland, Bolesław Prus was the most important author of short stories. In 1888 he wrote, "A Legend of Old Egypt".
The Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis was the most important short story writer from his country at the time, under influences (among others) of Xavier de Maistre, Lawrence Sterne, Guy de Maupassant. At the end of the 19th century, the writer João do Rio became popular by short stories about the bohemianism. Writing about the former slaves, and very ironical about nationalism, Lima Barreto died almost forgotten, but became very popular in the 20th century.
In Portuguese literature, the major names of the time are Almeida Garrett and the historian and novelist Alexandre Herculano. Still influential, Eça de Queiroz produced some short stories with a style influenced by Émile Zola, Balzac and Dickens.
In the United Kingdom, periodicals like "The Strand Magazine" and "Story-Teller" contributed to the popularity of the short story. Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of Saki, wrote satirical short stories about Edwardian England. W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote over a hundred short stories, was one of the most popular authors of his time. P.G. Wodehouse published his first collection of comical stories about valet Jeeves in 1917. Many detective stories were written by G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Short stories by Virginia Woolf are "Kew Gardens" (1919) and "Solid Objects," about a politician with mental problems. Graham Greene wrote his Twenty-One Stories between 1929 and 1954. A specialist in the short story was V.S. Pritchett, whose first collection appeared in 1932. Arthur C. Clarke published his first science fiction story, "Travel by Wire!" in 1937. Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and L.P. Hartley were other popular British storytellers whose career started in this period.
In Ireland, James Joyce published his short story collection "Dubliners" in 1914. These stories, written in a more accessible style than his later novels, are based on careful observation of the inhabitants of his birth city.
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile American magazines such as "The Atlantic Monthly", "Harper's Magazine", "The New Yorker", "Scribner's", "The Saturday Evening Post", "Esquire", and "The Bookman" published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great and the money paid for such so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story (as Matthews preferred to write it) writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection "Flappers and Philosophers" appeared in book form in 1920. William Faulkner wrote over one hundred short stories. "Go Down, Moses", a collection of seven stories, appeared in 1941. Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly fit for shorter fiction. Stories like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926), "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) are only a few pages long but carefully crafted. Dorothy Parker's the bittersweet story "Big Blonde" debuted in 1929. A popular science fiction story is "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov.
Katherine Mansfield from New Zealand wrote many short stories between 1912 and her death in 1923. "The Doll's House" (1922) treats the topic of social inequity.
In Uruguay, Horacio Quiroga became one of the most influentials short story writers in the Spanish language, with a clear influence from Edgar Allan Poe, he had a great skill using the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states.
Two important authors of short stories in the German language were Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. In 1922 the latter wrote "A Hunger Artist", about a man who fasts for several days.
In India, the master of the short story in the Urdu language, Saadat Hasan Manto is revered for his exceptional depth, irony, and sardonic humor. The author of some 250 short stories, radio plays, essays, reminiscences, and a novel, Manto is widely admired for his analyses of violence, bigotry, prejudice, and the relationships between reason and unreason. Combining realism with surrealism and irony, Manto's works such as the celebrated short story Toba Tek Singh are aesthetic masterpieces that continue to give profound insight into the nature of human loss, violence, and devastation. Another famous Urdu writer is Ismat Chughtai whose short story "Lihaaf" (The Quilt) on a lesbian relationship between an upper-class Muslim woman and her maidservant created great controversy following its publication in 1942.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) is called the Father of the Japanese short story.
In Brazil, the most famous modern short story writer is Mário de Andrade. At the time, Paulistan writer António de Alcantâra Machado became very popular from his collection of short stories titled, "Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda" (1928), about several Italian neighborhoods, but now he is mostly read in just São Paulo. Also, novelist Graciliano Ramos and poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade have significant short story works.
Portuguese writers like Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Florbela Espanca, and Fernando Pessoa wrote well-known short stories, although their major genre was poetry.
The period following World War II saw a great flowering of literary short fiction in the United States. "The New Yorker" continued to publish the works of the form's leading mid-century practitioners, including Shirley Jackson, whose story, "The Lottery", published in 1948, elicited the strongest response in the magazine's history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the last 1940s included John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford, and Eudora Welty. Cheever is best known for "The Swimmer" (1964) which beautifully blends realism and surrealism. J.D. Salinger's "Nine Stories" (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O'Connor's well-known story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1955) reinvigorated the Southern Gothic style. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s. Philip Roth and Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961) adopted a consciously feminist perspective. James Baldwin's collection "Going to Meet the Man" (1965) told stories of African-American life. Frank O'Connor's "The Lonely Voice", an exploration of the short story, appeared in 1963. Wallace Stegner's short stories are primarily set in the American West. Stephen King published many short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. King's interest is found in the supernatural and macabre. The 1970s saw the rise of the postmodern short story in the works of Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Traditionalists including John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates maintained a significant influence on the form. Minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie.
Canadian short story writers include Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, and Lynn Coady. In the year 2013 Alice Munro became the first writer of only short stories to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her award-winning short story collections include "Dance of the Happy Shades, Lives of Girls and Women, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Progress of Love, The Love of a Good Woman" and "Runaway".
In the United Kingdom, Daphne du Maurier wrote suspense stories like "The Birds" (1952) and "Don't Look Now" (1971). Roald Dahl was the master of the twist-in-the-tale. Short story collections like "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1953) and "Kiss Kiss" (1960) illustrate his dark humor.
Some of the Bengal I short story writers of the post-Tagore and post-Sarat Chandra generation is Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Manik Bandyopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Ramapada Chowdhury and Humayun Ahmed. The role of the bi-monthly magazine Desh (first published in 1933) is imperative in the development of the Bengali short story. Two of the most popular detective story writers of Bengali literature are Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi) and Satyajit Ray (the creator of Feluda). The canon of Hindi short story was enriched by the contributions of Jaishankar Prasad, Amrita Pritam, Dharamvir Bharti, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Nirmal Verma, Kamleshwar, Mannu Bhandari, Harishankar Parsai and others.
In Italy, Italo Calvino published the short story collection "Marcovaldo", about a poor man in a city, in 1963.
In Brazil, the short story became popular among female writers like Clarice Lispector, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Adélia Prado, who wrote about their society from a feminine viewpoint, although the genre has great male writers like Dalton Trevisan, Autran Dourado Moacyr Scliar and Carlos Heitor Cony too. Also, writing about poverty and the favelas, João Antonio became a well-known writer. Other post-modern short fiction authors include writers Hilda Hilst and Caio Fernando Abreu. Detective literature was led by Rubem Fonseca. It is also necessary to mention João Guimarães Rosa, wrote short stories in the book "Sagarana" using a complex, experimental language based on tales of oral tradition.
Portuguese writers like Vergílio Ferreira, Fernando Goncalves Namora, and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen are among the most influential short story writers from 20th-century Portuguese language literature. Manuel da Silva Ramos is one of the most well-known names of postmodernism in the country. Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago published a few short stories, but became popular from his novels.
The Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira is one of the most well-known writers from his country and has several short stories. José Eduardo Agualusa is also increasingly read in Portuguese-speaking countries.
Mozambican Mia Couto is a widely known writer of postmodern prose, and he is read even in non-Portuguese speaking countries. Other Mozambican writers such as Suleiman Cassamo, Paulina Chiziane, and Eduardo White are gaining popularity with Portuguese-speakers too.
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is one of the most famous writers of short stories in the Spanish language. "The Library of Babel" (1941) and "The Aleph" (1945) handle difficult subjects like infinity. Two of the most representative writers of the Magical realism genre are also widely known Argentinian short story writers: Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar.
The Uruguay a writer Juan Carlos Onetti is known as one of the most important magical realist writers from Latin America.
In Colombia, the Nobel prize laureate author Gabriel García Márquez is the main novelist and short story writer, known by his magical realist stories and his defense of the Communist Party in his country.
The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, also a Nobel prize winner, has significant short story works.
The Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz is the most well-known author from his country but has only a few short stories.
Japanese world-known short story writers include Kenzaburō Ōe (Nobel prize winner of 1994), Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami.
Multi-awarded Philippine writer Peter Solis Nery is one of the most famous writers of short stories in Hiligaynon language. His stories "Lirio" (1998), "Candido" (2007), "Donato Bugtot" (2011), and "Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios" (2013) are all gold prize winners at the Palanca Awards of Philippine Literature.
As a concentrated, concise form of narrative and descriptive prose fiction, the short story has been theorized through the traditional elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation, and main characters), complication (the event that introduces the conflict), rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action), climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action) and resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved). Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition, more typically beginning in the middle of the action ("in medias res"). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by the creator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28296 |
Soul
The soul, in many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal essence of a living being. Soul or psyche (Ancient Greek: ψυχή "psykhḗ", of ψύχειν "psýkhein", "to breathe") comprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal.
Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, understood that the soul (ψυχή "psūchê") must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions. At his defense trial, Socrates even summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence ("Apology" 30a–b).
In Judaism and in Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality may have been influenced by Plato). For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" ("anima") to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) hold that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves (Atman, jiva) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus if we see a tiger then there is a self-conscious identity residing in it (the soul), and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. Some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This belief is called animism.
The Modern English word "soul", derived from Old English "sáwol, sáwel", was first attested in the 8th century poem "Beowulf" v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50 . It is cognate with other German and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic "saiwala", Old High German "sêula, sêla", Old Saxon "sêola", Old Low Franconian "sêla, sîla", Old Norse "sála" and Lithuanian "siela". Deeper etymology of the Germanic word is unclear.
The original concept behind the Germanic root is thought to mean “"coming from or belonging to the sea" (or "lake")”, because of the Germanic and pre-Celtic belief in souls emerging from and returning to sacred lakes, Old Saxon "sêola" (soul) compared to Old Saxon "sêo" (sea).
The Koine Greek Septuagint uses ("psyche") to translate Hebrew ("nephesh"), meaning "life, vital breath", and specifically refers to a mortal, physical life, but in English it is variously translated as "soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion"; an example can be found in :
The Koine Greek word ("psychē"), "life, spirit, consciousness", is derived from a verb meaning "to cool, to blow", and hence refers to the breath, as opposed to ("soma"), meaning "body". "Psychē" occurs juxtaposed to , as seen in :
Paul the Apostle used ψυχή ("psychē") and ("pneuma") specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of ("nephesh") and "ruah" (spirit) (also in the Septuagint, e.g. = = "" = "the Spirit of God").
In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al, ordered an inscribed stele erected upon his death. The inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The basalt stele is tall and wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois.
The Bahá'í Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel". Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God; and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world.
Buddhism teaches the principle of impermanence, that all things are in a constant state of flux: all is changing, and no permanent state exists by itself. This applies to human beings as much as to anything else in the cosmos. Thus, a human being has no permanent self. According to this doctrine of "anatta" (Pāli; Sanskrit: "anātman") – "no-self" or "no soul" – the words "I" or "me" do not refer to any fixed thing. They are simply convenient terms that allow us to refer to an ever-changing entity.
The "anatta" doctrine is not a kind of materialism. Buddhism does not deny the existence of "immaterial" entities, and it (at least traditionally) distinguishes bodily states from mental states. Thus, the conventional translation of "anatta" as "no-soul" can be confusing. If the word "soul" simply refers to an incorporeal component in living things that can continue after death, then Buddhism does not deny the existence of the soul. Instead, Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent entity that remains constant behind the changing corporeal and incorporeal components of a living being. Just as the body changes from moment to moment, so thoughts come and go, and there is no permanent state underlying the mind that experiences these thoughts, as in Cartesianism. Conscious mental states simply arise and perish with no "thinker" behind them. When the body dies, Buddhists believe the incorporeal mental processes continue and are reborn in a new body. Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the being that is reborn is neither entirely different from, nor exactly the same as, the being that died. However, the new being is "continuous" with the being that died – in the same way that the "you" of this moment is continuous with the "you" of a moment before, despite the fact that you are constantly changing.
Buddhist teaching holds that a notion of a permanent, abiding self is a delusion that is one of the causes of human conflict on the emotional, social, and political levels. They add that an understanding of "anatta" provides an accurate description of the human condition, and that this understanding allows us to pacify our mundane desires.
Various schools of Buddhism have differing ideas about what continues after death. The Yogacara school in Mahayana Buddhism said there are Store consciousness which continue to exist after death. In some schools, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, the view is that there are three minds: "very subtle mind", which does not disintegrate in death; "subtle mind", which disintegrates in death and which is "dreaming mind" or "unconscious mind"; and "gross mind", which does not exist when one is "sleeping". Therefore, "gross mind" is less permanent than subtle mind, which does not exist in death. "Very subtle mind", however, does continue, and when it "catches on", or coincides with phenomena, again, a new "subtle mind" emerges, with its own personality/assumptions/habits, and "that" entity experiences karma in the current continuum.
Plants were said to be non-sentient (無情), but Buddhist monks are required to not cut or burn trees, because some sentient beings rely on them. Some Mahayana monks said non-sentient beings such as plants and stones have Buddha-nature.
Certain modern Buddhists, particularly in Western countries, reject—or at least take an agnostic stance toward—the concept of rebirth or reincarnation. Stephen Batchelor discusses this in his book "Buddhism Without Beliefs". Others point to research that has been conducted at the University of Virginia as proof that some people are reborn.
According to a common Christian eschatology, when people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or to Hades awaiting the resurrection. Other Christians understand the soul as the life, and believe that the dead have no life until after the resurrection (Christian conditionalism). Some Christians believe that the souls and bodies of the unrighteous will be destroyed in hell rather than suffering eternally (annihilationism). Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God.
Although all major branches of Christianity – Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Evangelical, and mainline Protestants – teach that Jesus Christ plays a decisive role in the Christian salvation process, the specifics of that role and the part played by individual persons or by ecclesiastical rituals and relationships, is a matter of wide diversity in official church teaching, theological speculation and popular practice. Some Christians believe that if one has not repented of one's sins and has not trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, one will go to Hell and suffer eternal damnation or eternal separation from God. Some hold a belief that babies (including the unborn) and those with cognitive or mental impairments who have died will be received into Heaven on the basis of God's grace through the sacrifice of Jesus.
There are also beliefs in universal salvation.
The "origin of the soul" has provided a vexing question in Christianity. The major theories put forward include soul creationism, traducianism, and pre-existence. According to soul creationism, God creates each individual soul created directly, either at the moment of conception or some later time. According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception. There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood. Stances in this question might play a role in judgements on the morality of abortion.
Augustine (354-430), one of western Christianity's most influential early Christian thinkers, described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body". Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body ("soma"), soul ("psyche"), and spirit ("pneuma"). However, the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how the concepts of "spirit" and of "soul" are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each human comprises a body and a soul. Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12 NASB), and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control.
The present Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the soul as "the innermost aspect of humans, that which is of greatest value in them, that by which they are in God's image described as 'soul' signifies the "spiritual principle" in man". All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth. The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."
Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence, but fall into two major camps about what this means in terms of an afterlife. Some, following Calvin, believe in the immortality of the soul and conscious existence after death, while others, following Luther, believe in the mortality of the soul and unconscious "sleep" until the resurrection of the dead. Various new religious movements deriving from Adventism—including Christadelphians, Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses—similarly believe that the dead do not possess a soul separate from the body and are unconscious until the resurrection.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit and body together constitute the Soul of Man (Mankind). "The spirit and the body are the soul of man." Latter-day Saints believe that the soul is the union of a pre-existing, God-made spirit and a temporal body, which is formed by physical conception on earth. After death, the spirit continues to live and progress in the Spirit world until the resurrection, when it is reunited with the body that once housed it. This reuniting of body and spirit results in a perfect soul that is immortal and eternal and capable of receiving a fulness of joy. Latter-day Saint cosmology also describes "intelligences" as the essence of consciousness or agency. These are co-eternal with God, and animate the spirits. The union of a newly-created spirit body with an eternally-existing intelligence constitutes a "spirit birth" and justifies God's title "Father of our spirits".
Some Confucian traditions contrast a spiritual soul with a corporeal soul.
"Ātman" is a Sanskrit word that means inner self or soul. In Hindu philosophy, especially in the Vedanta school of Hinduism, Ātman is the first principle, the "true" self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essence of an individual. In order to attain liberation (moksha), a human being must acquire self-knowledge (atma jnana), which is to realize that one's true self (Ātman) is identical with the transcendent self Brahman.
The six orthodox schools of Hinduism believe that there is Ātman (self, essence) in every being.
In Hinduism and Jainism, a "jiva" (, , alternative spelling "jiwa"; , , alternative spelling "jeev") is a living being, or any entity imbued with a life force.
In Jainism, "jiva" is the immortal essence or soul of a living organism (human, animal, fish or plant etc.) which survives physical death. The concept of "Ajiva" in Jainism means "not soul", and represents matter (including body), time, space, non-motion and motion. In Jainism, a "Jiva" is either "samsari" (mundane, caught in cycle of rebirths) or "mukta" (liberated).
The concept of "jiva" in Jainism is similar to "atman" in Hinduism. However, some Hindu traditions differentiate between the two concepts, with "jiva" considered as individual self, while atman as that which is universal unchanging self that is present in all living beings and everything else as the metaphysical Brahman. The latter is sometimes referred to as "jiva-atman" (a soul in a living body).
According to Brahma Kumaris, the soul is an eternal point of light.
The Quran, the holy book of Islam, uses two words to refer to the soul: "rūḥ" (translated as spirit, consciousness, pneuma or "soul") and "nafs" (translated as self, ego, psyche or "soul"), cognates of the Hebrew "nefesh" and "ruach". The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, though "rūḥ" is more often used to denote the divine spirit or "the breath of life", while "nafs" designates one's disposition or characteristics. In Islamic philosophy, the immortal rūḥ "drives" the mortal nafs, which comprises temporal desires and perceptions necessary for living.
Two of the passages in the Quran that mention the rûh occur in chapters 17 ("The Night Journey") and 39 ("The Troops"):
In Jainism, every living being, from plant or bacterium to human, has a soul and the concept forms the very basis of Jainism. According to Jainism, there is no beginning or end to the existence of soul. It is eternal in nature and changes its form until it attains liberation.
The soul "(Jīva)" is basically categorized in one of two ways based on its present state.
Until the time the soul is liberated from the "saṃsāra" (cycle of repeated birth and death), it gets attached to one of these bodies based on the karma (actions) of the individual soul. Irrespective of which state the soul is in, it has got the same attributes and qualities. The difference between the liberated and non-liberated souls is that the qualities and attributes are manifested completely in case of "siddha" (liberated soul) as they have overcome all the karmic bondages whereas in case of non-liberated souls they are partially exhibited. Souls who rise victorious over wicked emotions while still remaining within physical bodies are referred to as arihants.
Concerning the Jain view of the soul, Virchand Gandhi said
The Hebrew terms "nefesh" (literally "living being"), "ruach" (literally "wind"), "neshamah" (literally "breath"), "chayah" (literally "life") and "yechidah" (literally "singularity") are used to describe the soul or spirit.
In Judaism the soul was believed to be given by God to Adam as mentioned in Genesis,
Judaism relates the quality of one's soul to one's performance of the commandments ("mitzvot)" and reaching higher levels of understanding, and thus closeness to God. A person with such closeness is called a "tzadik". Therefore, Judaism embraces the commemoration of the day of one's death, "nahala"/"Yahrtzeit" and not the birthday as a festivity of remembrance, for only toward the end of life's struggles, tests and challenges could human souls be judged and credited for righteousness. Judaism places great importance on the study of the souls.
Kabbalah and other mystic traditions go into greater detail into the nature of the soul. Kabbalah separates the soul into five elements, corresponding to the five worlds:
Kabbalah also proposed a concept of reincarnation, the "gilgul". (See also "nefesh habehamit" the "animal soul".)
The Scientology view is that a person does not have a soul, it is a soul. A person is immortal, and may be reincarnated if they wish. The Scientology term for the soul is "thetan", derived from the Greek word "theta", symbolizing thought. Scientology counselling (called auditing) addresses the soul to improve abilities, both worldly and spiritual.
The belief in soul dualism is found throughout most Austronesian shamanistic traditions. The reconstructed Proto-Austronesian word for the "body soul" is "*nawa" ("breath", "life", or "vital spirit"). It is located somewhere in the abdominal cavity, often in the liver or the heart (Proto-Austronesian "*qaCay"). The "free soul" is located in the head. Its names are usually derived from Proto-Austronesian "*qaNiCu" ("ghost", "spirit [of the dead]"), which also apply to other non-human nature spirits. The "free soul" is also referred to in names that literally mean "twin" or "double", from Proto-Austronesian "*duSa" ("two"). A virtuous person is said to be one whose souls are in harmony with each other, while an evil person is one whose souls are in conflict.
The "free soul" is said to leave the body and journey to the spirit world during sleep, trance-like states, delirium, insanity, and death. The duality is also seen in the healing traditions of Austronesian shamans, where illnesses are regarded as a "soul loss" and thus to heal the sick, one must "return" the "free soul" (which may have been stolen by an evil spirit or got lost in the spirit world) into the body. If the "free soul" can not be returned, the afflicted person dies or goes permanently insane.
In some ethnic groups, there can also be more than two souls. Like among the Tagbanwa people, where a person is said to have six souls - the "free soul" (which is regarded as the "true" soul) and five secondary souls with various functions.
Kalbo Inuit groups believe that a person has more than one type of soul. One is associated with respiration, the other can accompany the body as a shadow. In some cases, it is connected to shamanistic beliefs among the various Inuit groups. Also Caribou Inuit groups believed in several types of souls.
The shaman heals within the spiritual dimension by returning 'lost' parts of the human soul from wherever they have gone. The shaman also cleanses excess negative energies, which confuse or pollute the soul.
Sikhism considers soul ("atma") to be part of God (Waheguru). Various hymns are cited from the holy book Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God." The same concept is repeated at various pages of the SGGS. For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love." and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."
The "atma" or soul according to Sikhism is an entity or "spiritual spark" or "light" in our body because of which the body can sustain life. On the departure of this entity from the body, the body becomes lifeless – No amount of manipulations to the body can make the person make any physical actions. The soul is the 'driver' in the body. It is the "roohu" or spirit or "atma", the presence of which makes the physical body alive.
Many religious and philosophical traditions support the view that the soul is the ethereal substance – a spirit; a non-material spark – particular to a unique living being. Such traditions often consider the soul both immortal and innately aware of its immortal nature, as well as the true basis for sentience in each living being. The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly even within a given religion as to what happens to the soul after death. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it possibly material.
According to Chinese traditions, every person has two types of soul called hun and po (魂 and 魄), which are respectively yang and yin. Taoism believes in ten souls, "sanhunqipo" () "three "hun" and seven "po"". A living being that loses any of them is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness, while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability, lower desire realms, or may even be unable to reincarnate.
In theological reference to the soul, the terms "life" and "death" are viewed as emphatically more definitive than the common concepts of "biological life" and "biological death". Because the soul is said to be transcendent of the "material existence," and is said to have (potentially) eternal life, the death of the soul is likewise said to be an "eternal death". Thus, in the concept of divine judgment, God is commonly said to have options with regard to the dispensation of souls, ranging from Heaven (i.e., angels) to hell (i.e., demons), with various concepts in between. Typically both Heaven and hell are said to be eternal, or at least far beyond a typical human concept of lifespan and time.
According to Louis Ginzberg, the soul of Adam is the image of God. Every soul of human also escapes from the body every night, rises up to heaven, and fetches new life thence for the body of man.
In Dada Bhagwan, The Soul is an independent eternal element. The Soul is permanent. In order to experience the Soul you need to attain Self-Realization.
In Brahma Kumaris, human souls are believed to be incorporeal and eternal. God is considered to be the Supreme Soul, with maximum degrees of spiritual qualities, such as peace, love and purity.
In Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy, the soul is the field of our psychological activity (thinking, emotions, memory, desires, will, and so on) as well as of the so-called paranormal or psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, out-of-body experiences, etc.). However, the soul is not the highest, but a middle dimension of human beings. Higher than the soul is the spirit, which is considered to be the real self; the source of everything we call "good"—happiness, wisdom, love, compassion, harmony, peace, etc. While the spirit is eternal and incorruptible, the soul is not. The soul acts as a link between the material body and the spiritual self, and therefore shares some characteristics of both. The soul can be attracted either towards the spiritual or towards the material realm, being thus the "battlefield" of good and evil. It is only when the soul is attracted towards the spiritual and merges with the Self that it becomes eternal and divine.
Rudolf Steiner claimed classical trichotomic stages of soul development, which interpenetrated one another in consciousness:
In Surat Shabda Yoga, the soul is considered to be an exact replica and spark of the Divine. The purpose of Surat Shabd Yoga is to realize one's True Self as soul (Self-Realisation), True Essence (Spirit-Realisation) and True Divinity (God-Realisation) while living in the physical body.
Similarly, the spiritual teacher Meher Baba held that "Atma, or the soul, is in reality identical with Paramatma the Oversoul – which is one, infinite, and eternal...[and] [t]he sole purpose of creation is for the soul to enjoy the infinite state of the Oversoul consciously."
Eckankar, founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965, defines Soul as the true self; the inner, most sacred part of each person.
The ancient Greeks used the word "ensouled" to represent the concept of being "alive", indicating that the earliest surviving western philosophical view believed that the soul was that which gave the body life. The soul was considered the incorporeal or spiritual "breath" that animates (from the Latin, "anima", cf. "animal") the living organism.
Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar by saying that the soul sleeps while the limbs are active, but when one is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near" in dreams.
Erwin Rohde writes that an early pre-Pythagorean belief presented the soul as lifeless when it departed the body, and that it retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body.
Drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, Plato considered the psyche to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. Plato said that even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as bodies die, the soul is continually reborn (metempsychosis) in subsequent bodies. However, Aristotle believed that only one part of the soul was immortal, namely the intellect ("logos"). The Platonic soul consists of three parts:
The parts are located in different regions of the body:
Plato also compares the three parts of the soul or psyche to a societal caste system. According to Plato's theory, the three-part soul is essentially the same thing as a state's class system because, to function well, each part must contribute so that the whole functions well. Logos keeps the other functions of the soul regulated.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) defined the soul, or "Psūchê" (ψυχή), as the "first actuality" of a naturally organized body, and argued against its separate existence from the physical body. In Aristotle's view, the primary activity, or full actualization, of a living thing constitutes its soul. For example, the full actualization of an eye, as an independent organism, is to see (its purpose or final cause). Another example is that the full actualization of a human being would be living a fully functional human life in accordance with reason (which he considered to be a faculty unique to humanity). For Aristotle, the soul is the organization of the form and matter of a natural being which allows it to strive for its full actualization. This organization between form and matter is necessary for any activity, or functionality, to be possible in a natural being. Using an artifact (non-natural being) as an example, a house is a building for human habituation, but for a house to be actualized requires the material (wood, nails, bricks, etc.) necessary for its actuality (i.e. being a fully functional house). However, this does not imply that a house has a soul. In regards to artifacts, the source of motion that is required for their full actualization is outside of themselves (for example, a builder builds a house). In natural beings, this source of motion is contained within the being itself. Aristotle elaborates on this point when he addresses the faculties of the soul.
The various faculties of the soul, such as nutrition, movement (peculiar to animals), reason (peculiar to humans), sensation (special, common, and incidental) and so forth, when exercised, constitute the "second" actuality, or fulfillment, of the capacity to be alive. For example, someone who falls asleep, as opposed to someone who falls dead, can wake up and live their life, while the latter can no longer do so.
Aristotle identified three hierarchical levels of natural beings: plants, animals, and people, having three different degrees of soul: "Bios" (life), "Zoë" (animate life), and "Psuchë" (self-conscious life). For these groups, he identified three corresponding levels of soul, or biological activity: the nutritive activity of growth, sustenance and reproduction which all life shares ("Bios"); the self-willed motive activity and sensory faculties, which only animals and people have in common ("Zoë"); and finally "reason", of which people alone are capable ("Pseuchë").
Aristotle's discussion of the soul is in his work, "De Anima" ("On the Soul"). Although mostly seen as opposing Plato in regard to the immortality of the soul, a controversy can be found in relation to the fifth chapter of the third book: in this text both interpretations can be argued for, soul as a whole can be deemed mortal, and a part called "active intellect" or "active mind" is immortal and eternal. Advocates exist for both sides of the controversy, but it has been understood that there will be permanent disagreement about its final conclusions, as no other Aristotelian text contains this specific point, and this part of "De Anima" is obscure. Further, Aristotle states that the soul helps humans find the truth, and understanding the true purpose or role of the soul is extremely difficult.
Following Aristotle, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Ibn al-Nafis, an Arab physician, further elaborated upon the Aristotelian understanding of the soul and developed their own theories on the soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics. Some of Avicenna's views on the soul include the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.
While he was imprisoned, Avicenna wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantial nature of the soul. He told his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that in this scenario one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms, when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."
Avicenna generally supported Aristotle's idea of the soul originating from the heart, whereas Ibn al-Nafis rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs". He further criticized Aristotle's idea whereby every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. Al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul," and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying "I".
Following Aristotle (whom he referred to as "the Philosopher") and Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) understood the soul to be the first actuality of the living body. Consequent to this, he distinguished three orders of life: plants, which feed and grow; animals, which add sensation to the operations of plants; and humans, which add intellect to the operations of animals.
Concerning the human soul, his epistemological theory required that, since the knower becomes what he knows, the soul is definitely not corporeal—if it is corporeal when it knows what some corporeal thing is, that thing would come to be within it. Therefore, the soul has an operation which does not rely on a body organ, and therefore the soul can exist without a body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings is a subsistent form and not something made of matter and form, it cannot be destroyed in any natural process. The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Aquinas' elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the First Part of the Summa Theologica.
In his discussions of rational psychology, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and argued that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved.
Gilbert Ryle's ghost in the machine argument, which is a rejection of Descartes' mind–body dualism, can provide a contemporary understanding of the soul/mind, and the problem concerning its connection to the brain/body.
Psychologist James Hillman's archetypal psychology is an attempt to restore the concept of the soul, which Hillman viewed as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests. Hillman described the soul as that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a special relation with death". Departing from the Cartesian dualism "between outer tangible reality and inner states of mind", Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides. Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which, in Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.
Many modern scientists, such as Julien Musolino, hold that the mind is merely a complex machine that operates on the same physical laws as all other objects in the universe. According to Musolino, there is currently no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the existence of the soul; he claims there is also considerable evidence that seems to indicate that souls do not exist.
The search for the soul, however, is seen to have been instrumental in driving the understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body, particularly in the fields of cardiovascular and neurology. In the two dominant conflicting concepts of the soul – one seeing it to be spiritual and immortal, and the other seeing it to be material and mortal, both have described the soul as being located in a particular organ or as pervading the whole body.
Neuroscience as an interdisciplinary field, and its branch of cognitive neuroscience particularly, operates under the ontological assumption of physicalism. In other words, it assumes—in order to perform its science—that only the fundamental phenomena studied by physics exist. Thus, neuroscience seeks to understand mental phenomena within the framework according to which human thought and behavior are caused solely by physical processes taking place inside the brain, and it operates by the way of reductionism by seeking an explanation for the mind in terms of brain activity.
To study the mind in terms of the brain several methods of functional neuroimaging are used to study the neuroanatomical correlates of various cognitive processes that constitute the mind. The evidence from brain imaging indicates that all processes of the mind have physical correlates in brain function. However, such correlational studies cannot determine whether neural activity plays a causal role in the occurrence of these cognitive processes (correlation does not imply causation) and they cannot determine if the neural activity is either necessary or sufficient for such processes to occur. Identification of causation, and of necessary and sufficient conditions requires explicit experimental manipulation of that activity. If manipulation of brain activity changes consciousness, then a causal role for that brain activity can be inferred. Two of the most common types of manipulation experiments are loss-of-function and gain-of-function experiments. In a loss-of-function (also called "necessity") experiment, a part of the nervous system is diminished or removed in an attempt to determine if it is necessary for a certain process to occur, and in a gain-of-function (also called "sufficiency") experiment, an aspect of the nervous system is increased relative to normal. Manipulations of brain activity can be performed with direct electrical brain stimulation, magnetic brain stimulation using transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychopharmacological manipulation, optogenetic manipulation, and by studying the symptoms of brain damage (case studies) and lesions. In addition, neuroscientists are also investigating how the mind develops with the development of the brain.
Physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that the idea of a soul is incompatible with quantum field theory (QFT). He writes that for a soul to exist: "Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can't be a new collection of 'spirit particles' and 'spirit forces' that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments."
Some theorists have invoked quantum indeterminism as an explanatory mechanism for possible soul/brain interaction, but neuroscientist Peter Clarke found errors with this viewpoint, noting there is no evidence that such processes play a role in brain function; Clarke concluded that a Cartesian soul has no basis from quantum physics.
Some parapsychologists have attempted to establish, by scientific experiment, whether a soul separate from the brain exists, as is more commonly defined in religion rather than as a synonym of psyche or mind. Milbourne Christopher (1979) and Mary Roach (2010) have argued that none of the attempts by parapsychologists have yet succeeded.
In 1901 Duncan MacDougall conducted an experiment in which he made weight measurements of patients as they died. He claimed that there was weight loss of varying amounts at the time of death; he concluded the soul weighed 21 grams, based on measurements of a single patient and discarding conflicting results. The physicist Robert L. Park has written that MacDougall's experiments "are not regarded today as having any scientific merit" and the psychologist Bruce Hood wrote that "because the weight loss was not reliable or replicable, his findings were unscientific." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28297 |
Steradian
The steradian (symbol: sr) or square radian is the SI unit of solid angle. It is used in three-dimensional geometry, and is analogous to the radian, which quantifies planar angles. Whereas an angle in radians, projected onto a circle, gives a "length" on the circumference, a solid angle in steradians, projected onto a sphere, gives an "area" on the surface. The name is derived from the Greek 'solid' + radian.
The steradian, like the radian, is a dimensionless unit, the quotient of the area subtended and the square of its distance from the center. Both the numerator and denominator of this ratio have dimension length squared (i.e. , dimensionless). It is useful, however, to distinguish between dimensionless quantities of a different nature, so the symbol "sr" is used to indicate a solid angle. For example, radiant intensity can be measured in watts per steradian (W⋅sr−1). The steradian was formerly an SI supplementary unit, but this category was abolished in 1995 and the steradian is now considered an SI derived unit.
A steradian can be defined as the solid angle subtended at the center of a unit sphere by a unit area on its surface. For a general sphere of radius "r", any portion of its surface with area subtends one steradian at its center.
The solid angle is related to the area it cuts out of a sphere:
Because the surface area "A" of a sphere is 4"r"2, the definition implies that a sphere subtends 4 steradians (≈ 12.56637 sr) at its center. By the same argument, the maximum solid angle that can be subtended at any point is 4 sr.
If , it corresponds to the area of a spherical cap () (where "h" stands for the "height" of the cap) and the relationship holds. Therefore, in this case, one steradian corresponds to the plane (i.e. radian) angle of the cross-section of a simple cone subtending the plane angle 2"θ", with "θ" given by:
This angle corresponds to the plane aperture angle of 2"θ" ≈ 1.144 rad or 65.54°.
A steradian is also equal to the spherical area of a polygon having an angle excess of 1 radian, to of a complete sphere, or to ≈ 3282.80635 square degrees.
The solid angle of a cone whose cross-section subtends the angle 2"θ" is:
Millisteradians (msr) and microsteradians (μsr) are occasionally used to describe light and particle beams. Other multiples are rarely used. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28299 |
String theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.
String theory is a broad and varied subject that attempts to address a number of deep questions of fundamental physics. String theory has been applied to a variety of problems in black hole physics, early universe cosmology, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, and it has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Because string theory potentially provides a unified description of gravity and particle physics, it is a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Despite much work on these problems, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details.
String theory was first studied in the late 1960s as a theory of the strong nuclear force, before being abandoned in favor of quantum chromodynamics. Subsequently, it was realized that the very properties that made string theory unsuitable as a theory of nuclear physics made it a promising candidate for a quantum theory of gravity. The earliest version of string theory, bosonic string theory, incorporated only the class of particles known as bosons. It later developed into superstring theory, which posits a connection called supersymmetry between bosons and the class of particles called fermions. Five consistent versions of superstring theory were developed before it was conjectured in the mid-1990s that they were all different limiting cases of a single theory in 11 dimensions known as M-theory. In late 1997, theorists discovered an important relationship called the AdS/CFT correspondence, which relates string theory to another type of physical theory called a quantum field theory.
One of the challenges of string theory is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. Another issue is that the theory is thought to describe an enormous landscape of possible universes, which has complicated efforts to develop theories of particle physics based on string theory. These issues have led some in the community to criticize these approaches to physics, and to question the value of continued research on string theory unification.
In the 20th century, two theoretical frameworks emerged for formulating the laws of physics. The first is Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, a theory that explains the force of gravity and the structure of spacetime at the macro-level. The other is quantum mechanics which is a completely different formulation to describe physical phenomena using the known probability principles at the micro-level. By the late 1970s, these two frameworks had proven to be sufficient to explain most of the observed features of the universe, from elementary particles to atoms to the evolution of stars and the universe as a whole.
In spite of these successes, there are still many problems that remain to be solved. One of the deepest problems in modern physics is the problem of quantum gravity. The general theory of relativity is formulated within the framework of classical physics, whereas the other fundamental forces are described within the framework of quantum mechanics. A quantum theory of gravity is needed in order to reconcile general relativity with the principles of quantum mechanics, but difficulties arise when one attempts to apply the usual prescriptions of quantum theory to the force of gravity. In addition to the problem of developing a consistent theory of quantum gravity, there are many other fundamental problems in the physics of atomic nuclei, black holes, and the early universe.
String theory is a theoretical framework that attempts to address these questions and many others. The starting point for string theory is the idea that the point-like particles of particle physics can also be modeled as one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how strings propagate through space and interact with each other. In a given version of string theory, there is only one kind of string, which may look like a small loop or segment of ordinary string, and it can vibrate in different ways. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string will look just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In this way, all of the different elementary particles may be viewed as vibrating strings. In string theory, one of the vibrational states of the string gives rise to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force. Thus string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.
One of the main developments of the past several decades in string theory was the discovery of certain 'dualities', mathematical transformations that identify one physical theory with another. Physicists studying string theory have discovered a number of these dualities between different versions of string theory, and this has led to the conjecture that all consistent versions of string theory are subsumed in a single framework known as M-theory.
Studies of string theory have also yielded a number of results on the nature of black holes and the gravitational interaction. There are certain paradoxes that arise when one attempts to understand the quantum aspects of black holes, and work on string theory has attempted to clarify these issues. In late 1997 this line of work culminated in the discovery of the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence or AdS/CFT. This is a theoretical result which relates string theory to other physical theories which are better understood theoretically. The AdS/CFT correspondence has implications for the study of black holes and quantum gravity, and it has been applied to other subjects, including nuclear and condensed matter physics.
Since string theory incorporates all of the fundamental interactions, including gravity, many physicists hope that it will eventually be developed to the point where it fully describes our universe, making it a theory of everything. One of the goals of current research in string theory is to find a solution of the theory that reproduces the observed spectrum of elementary particles, with a small cosmological constant, containing dark matter and a plausible mechanism for cosmic inflation. While there has been progress toward these goals, it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of details.
One of the challenges of string theory is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. The scattering of strings is most straightforwardly defined using the techniques of perturbation theory, but it is not known in general how to define string theory nonperturbatively. It is also not clear whether there is any principle by which string theory selects its vacuum state, the physical state that determines the properties of our universe. These problems have led some in the community to criticize these approaches to the unification of physics and question the value of continued research on these problems.
The application of quantum mechanics to physical objects such as the electromagnetic field, which are extended in space and time, is known as quantum field theory. In particle physics, quantum field theories form the basis for our understanding of elementary particles, which are modeled as excitations in the fundamental fields.
In quantum field theory, one typically computes the probabilities of various physical events using the techniques of perturbation theory. Developed by Richard Feynman and others in the first half of the twentieth century, perturbative quantum field theory uses special diagrams called Feynman diagrams to organize computations. One imagines that these diagrams depict the paths of point-like particles and their interactions.
The starting point for string theory is the idea that the point-like particles of quantum field theory can also be modeled as one-dimensional objects called strings. The interaction of strings is most straightforwardly defined by generalizing the perturbation theory used in ordinary quantum field theory. At the level of Feynman diagrams, this means replacing the one-dimensional diagram representing the path of a point particle by a two-dimensional (2D) surface representing the motion of a string. Unlike in quantum field theory, string theory does not have a full non-perturbative definition, so many of the theoretical questions that physicists would like to answer remain out of reach.
In theories of particle physics based on string theory, the characteristic length scale of strings is assumed to be on the order of the Planck length, or meters, the scale at which the effects of quantum gravity are believed to become significant. On much larger length scales, such as the scales visible in physics laboratories, such objects would be indistinguishable from zero-dimensional point particles, and the vibrational state of the string would determine the type of particle. One of the vibrational states of a string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force.
The original version of string theory was bosonic string theory, but this version described only bosons, a class of particles which transmit forces between the matter particles, or fermions. Bosonic string theory was eventually superseded by theories called superstring theories. These theories describe both bosons and fermions, and they incorporate a theoretical idea called supersymmetry. In theories with supersymmetry, each boson has a counterpart which is a fermion, and vice versa.
There are several versions of superstring theory: type I, type IIA, type IIB, and two flavors of heterotic string theory ( and ). The different theories allow different types of strings, and the particles that arise at low energies exhibit different symmetries. For example, the type I theory includes both open strings (which are segments with endpoints) and closed strings (which form closed loops), while types IIA, IIB and heterotic include only closed strings.
In everyday life, there are three familiar dimensions (3D) of space: height, width and length. Einstein's general theory of relativity treats time as a dimension on par with the three spatial dimensions; in general relativity, space and time are not modeled as separate entities but are instead unified to a four-dimensional (4D) spacetime. In this framework, the phenomenon of gravity is viewed as a consequence of the geometry of spacetime.
In spite of the fact that the Universe is well described by 4D spacetime, there are several reasons why physicists consider theories in other dimensions. In some cases, by modeling spacetime in a different number of dimensions, a theory becomes more mathematically tractable, and one can perform calculations and gain general insights more easily. There are also situations where theories in two or three spacetime dimensions are useful for describing phenomena in condensed matter physics. Finally, there exist scenarios in which there could actually be more than 4D of spacetime which have nonetheless managed to escape detection.
One notable feature of string theories is that these theories require extra dimensions of spacetime for their mathematical consistency. In bosonic string theory, spacetime is 26-dimensional, while in superstring theory it is 10-dimensional, and in M-theory it is 11-dimensional. In order to describe real physical phenomena using string theory, one must therefore imagine scenarios in which these extra dimensions would not be observed in experiments.
Compactification is one way of modifying the number of dimensions in a physical theory. In compactification, some of the extra dimensions are assumed to "close up" on themselves to form circles. In the limit where these curled up dimensions become very small, one obtains a theory in which spacetime has effectively a lower number of dimensions. A standard analogy for this is to consider a multidimensional object such as a garden hose. If the hose is viewed from a sufficient distance, it appears to have only one dimension, its length. However, as one approaches the hose, one discovers that it contains a second dimension, its circumference. Thus, an ant crawling on the surface of the hose would move in two dimensions.
Compactification can be used to construct models in which spacetime is effectively four-dimensional. However, not every way of compactifying the extra dimensions produces a model with the right properties to describe nature. In a viable model of particle physics, the compact extra dimensions must be shaped like a Calabi–Yau manifold. A Calabi–Yau manifold is a special space which is typically taken to be six-dimensional in applications to string theory. It is named after mathematicians Eugenio Calabi and Shing-Tung Yau.
Another approach to reducing the number of dimensions is the so-called brane-world scenario. In this approach, physicists assume that the observable universe is a four-dimensional subspace of a higher dimensional space. In such models, the force-carrying bosons of particle physics arise from open strings with endpoints attached to the four-dimensional subspace, while gravity arises from closed strings propagating through the larger ambient space. This idea plays an important role in attempts to develop models of real world physics based on string theory, and it provides a natural explanation for the weakness of gravity compared to the other fundamental forces.
A notable fact about string theory is that the different versions of the theory all turn out to be related in highly nontrivial ways. One of the relationships that can exist between different string theories is called S-duality. This is a relationship that says that a collection of strongly interacting particles in one theory can, in some cases, be viewed as a collection of weakly interacting particles in a completely different theory. Roughly speaking, a collection of particles is said to be strongly interacting if they combine and decay often and weakly interacting if they do so infrequently. Type I string theory turns out to be equivalent by S-duality to the heterotic string theory. Similarly, type IIB string theory is related to itself in a nontrivial way by S-duality.
Another relationship between different string theories is T-duality. Here one considers strings propagating around a circular extra dimension. T-duality states that a string propagating around a circle of radius is equivalent to a string propagating around a circle of radius in the sense that all observable quantities in one description are identified with quantities in the dual description. For example, a string has momentum as it propagates around a circle, and it can also wind around the circle one or more times. The number of times the string winds around a circle is called the winding number. If a string has momentum and winding number in one description, it will have momentum and winding number in the dual description. For example, type IIA string theory is equivalent to type IIB string theory via T-duality, and the two versions of heterotic string theory are also related by T-duality.
In general, the term "duality" refers to a situation where two seemingly different physical systems turn out to be equivalent in a nontrivial way. Two theories related by a duality need not be string theories. For example, Montonen–Olive duality is example of an S-duality relationship between quantum field theories. The AdS/CFT correspondence is example of a duality which relates string theory to a quantum field theory. If two theories are related by a duality, it means that one theory can be transformed in some way so that it ends up looking just like the other theory. The two theories are then said to be "dual" to one another under the transformation. Put differently, the two theories are mathematically different descriptions of the same phenomena.
In string theory and other related theories, a brane is a physical object that generalizes the notion of a point particle to higher dimensions. For instance, a point particle can be viewed as a brane of dimension zero, while a string can be viewed as a brane of dimension one. It is also possible to consider higher-dimensional branes. In dimension "p", these are called "p"-branes. The word brane comes from the word "membrane" which refers to a two-dimensional brane.
Branes are dynamical objects which can propagate through spacetime according to the rules of quantum mechanics. They have mass and can have other attributes such as charge. A "p"-brane sweeps out a ("p"+1)-dimensional volume in spacetime called its "worldvolume". Physicists often study fields analogous to the electromagnetic field which live on the worldvolume of a brane.
In string theory, D-branes are an important class of branes that arise when one considers open strings. As an open string propagates through spacetime, its endpoints are required to lie on a D-brane. The letter "D" in D-brane refers to a certain mathematical condition on the system known as the Dirichlet boundary condition. The study of D-branes in string theory has led to important results such as the AdS/CFT correspondence, which has shed light on many problems in quantum field theory.
Branes are frequently studied from a purely mathematical point of view, and they are described as objects of certain categories, such as the derived category of coherent sheaves on a complex algebraic variety, or the Fukaya category of a symplectic manifold. The connection between the physical notion of a brane and the mathematical notion of a category has led to important mathematical insights in the fields of algebraic and symplectic geometry and representation theory.
Prior to 1995, theorists believed that there were five consistent versions of superstring theory (type I, type IIA, type IIB, and two versions of heterotic string theory). This understanding changed in 1995 when Edward Witten suggested that the five theories were just special limiting cases of an eleven-dimensional theory called M-theory. Witten's conjecture was based on the work of a number of other physicists, including Ashoke Sen, Chris Hull, Paul Townsend, and Michael Duff. His announcement led to a flurry of research activity now known as the second superstring revolution.
In the 1970s, many physicists became interested in supergravity theories, which combine general relativity with supersymmetry. Whereas general relativity makes sense in any number of dimensions, supergravity places an upper limit on the number of dimensions. In 1978, work by Werner Nahm showed that the maximum spacetime dimension in which one can formulate a consistent supersymmetric theory is eleven. In the same year, Eugene Cremmer, Bernard Julia, and Joel Scherk of the École Normale Supérieure showed that supergravity not only permits up to eleven dimensions but is in fact most elegant in this maximal number of dimensions.
Initially, many physicists hoped that by compactifying eleven-dimensional supergravity, it might be possible to construct realistic models of our four-dimensional world. The hope was that such models would provide a unified description of the four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Interest in eleven-dimensional supergravity soon waned as various flaws in this scheme were discovered. One of the problems was that the laws of physics appear to distinguish between clockwise and counterclockwise, a phenomenon known as chirality. Edward Witten and others observed this chirality property cannot be readily derived by compactifying from eleven dimensions.
In the first superstring revolution in 1984, many physicists turned to string theory as a unified theory of particle physics and quantum gravity. Unlike supergravity theory, string theory was able to accommodate the chirality of the standard model, and it provided a theory of gravity consistent with quantum effects. Another feature of string theory that many physicists were drawn to in the 1980s and 1990s was its high degree of uniqueness. In ordinary particle theories, one can consider any collection of elementary particles whose classical behavior is described by an arbitrary Lagrangian. In string theory, the possibilities are much more constrained: by the 1990s, physicists had argued that there were only five consistent supersymmetric versions of the theory.
Although there were only a handful of consistent superstring theories, it remained a mystery why there was not just one consistent formulation. However, as physicists began to examine string theory more closely, they realized that these theories are related in intricate and nontrivial ways. They found that a system of strongly interacting strings can, in some cases, be viewed as a system of weakly interacting strings. This phenomenon is known as S-duality. It was studied by Ashoke Sen in the context of heterotic strings in four dimensions and by Chris Hull and Paul Townsend in the context of the type IIB theory. Theorists also found that different string theories may be related by T-duality. This duality implies that strings propagating on completely different spacetime geometries may be physically equivalent.
At around the same time, as many physicists were studying the properties of strings, a small group of physicists were examining the possible applications of higher dimensional objects. In 1987, Eric Bergshoeff, Ergin Sezgin, and Paul Townsend showed that eleven-dimensional supergravity includes two-dimensional branes. Intuitively, these objects look like sheets or membranes propagating through the eleven-dimensional spacetime. Shortly after this discovery, Michael Duff, Paul Howe, Takeo Inami, and Kellogg Stelle considered a particular compactification of eleven-dimensional supergravity with one of the dimensions curled up into a circle. In this setting, one can imagine the membrane wrapping around the circular dimension. If the radius of the circle is sufficiently small, then this membrane looks just like a string in ten-dimensional spacetime. In fact, Duff and his collaborators showed that this construction reproduces exactly the strings appearing in type IIA superstring theory.
Speaking at a string theory conference in 1995, Edward Witten made the surprising suggestion that all five superstring theories were in fact just different limiting cases of a single theory in eleven spacetime dimensions. Witten's announcement drew together all of the previous results on S- and T-duality and the appearance of higher dimensional branes in string theory. In the months following Witten's announcement, hundreds of new papers appeared on the Internet confirming different parts of his proposal. Today this flurry of work is known as the second superstring revolution.
Initially, some physicists suggested that the new theory was a fundamental theory of membranes, but Witten was skeptical of the role of membranes in the theory. In a paper from 1996, Hořava and Witten wrote "As it has been proposed that the eleven-dimensional theory is a supermembrane theory but there are some reasons to doubt that interpretation, we will non-committally call it the M-theory, leaving to the future the relation of M to membranes." In the absence of an understanding of the true meaning and structure of M-theory, Witten has suggested that the "M" should stand for "magic", "mystery", or "membrane" according to taste, and the true meaning of the title should be decided when a more fundamental formulation of the theory is known.
In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of numbers or other data. In physics, a matrix model is a particular kind of physical theory whose mathematical formulation involves the notion of a matrix in an important way. A matrix model describes the behavior of a set of matrices within the framework of quantum mechanics.
One important example of a matrix model is the BFSS matrix model proposed by Tom Banks, Willy Fischler, Stephen Shenker, and Leonard Susskind in 1997. This theory describes the behavior of a set of nine large matrices. In their original paper, these authors showed, among other things, that the low energy limit of this matrix model is described by eleven-dimensional supergravity. These calculations led them to propose that the BFSS matrix model is exactly equivalent to M-theory. The BFSS matrix model can therefore be used as a prototype for a correct formulation of M-theory and a tool for investigating the properties of M-theory in a relatively simple setting.
The development of the matrix model formulation of M-theory has led physicists to consider various connections between string theory and a branch of mathematics called noncommutative geometry. This subject is a generalization of ordinary geometry in which mathematicians define new geometric notions using tools from noncommutative algebra. In a paper from 1998, Alain Connes, Michael R. Douglas, and Albert Schwarz showed that some aspects of matrix models and M-theory are described by a noncommutative quantum field theory, a special kind of physical theory in which spacetime is described mathematically using noncommutative geometry. This established a link between matrix models and M-theory on the one hand, and noncommutative geometry on the other hand. It quickly led to the discovery of other important links between noncommutative geometry and various physical theories.
In general relativity, a black hole is defined as a region of spacetime in which the gravitational field is so strong that no particle or radiation can escape. In the currently accepted models of stellar evolution, black holes are thought to arise when massive stars undergo gravitational collapse, and many galaxies are thought to contain supermassive black holes at their centers. Black holes are also important for theoretical reasons, as they present profound challenges for theorists attempting to understand the quantum aspects of gravity. String theory has proved to be an important tool for investigating the theoretical properties of black holes because it provides a framework in which theorists can study their thermodynamics.
In the branch of physics called statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the randomness or disorder of a physical system. This concept was studied in the 1870s by the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who showed that the thermodynamic properties of a gas could be derived from the combined properties of its many constituent molecules. Boltzmann argued that by averaging the behaviors of all the different molecules in a gas, one can understand macroscopic properties such as volume, temperature, and pressure. In addition, this perspective led him to give a precise definition of entropy as the natural logarithm of the number of different states of the molecules (also called "microstates") that give rise to the same macroscopic features.
In the twentieth century, physicists began to apply the same concepts to black holes. In most systems such as gases, the entropy scales with the volume. In the 1970s, the physicist Jacob Bekenstein suggested that the entropy of a black hole is instead proportional to the "surface area" of its event horizon, the boundary beyond which matter and radiation is lost to its gravitational attraction. When combined with ideas of the physicist Stephen Hawking, Bekenstein's work yielded a precise formula for the entropy of a black hole. The Bekenstein–Hawking formula expresses the entropy as
where is the speed of light, is Boltzmann's constant, is the reduced Planck constant, is Newton's constant, and is the surface area of the event horizon.
Like any physical system, a black hole has an entropy defined in terms of the number of different microstates that lead to the same macroscopic features. The Bekenstein–Hawking entropy formula gives the expected value of the entropy of a black hole, but by the 1990s, physicists still lacked a derivation of this formula by counting microstates in a theory of quantum gravity. Finding such a derivation of this formula was considered an important test of the viability of any theory of quantum gravity such as string theory.
In a paper from 1996, Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa showed how to derive the Beckenstein–Hawking formula for certain black holes in string theory. Their calculation was based on the observation that D-branes—which look like fluctuating membranes when they are weakly interacting—become dense, massive objects with event horizons when the interactions are strong. In other words, a system of strongly interacting D-branes in string theory is indistinguishable from a black hole. Strominger and Vafa analyzed such D-brane systems and calculated the number of different ways of placing D-branes in spacetime so that their combined mass and charge is equal to a given mass and charge for the resulting black hole. Their calculation reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking formula exactly, including the factor of . Subsequent work by Strominger, Vafa, and others refined the original calculations and gave the precise values of the "quantum corrections" needed to describe very small black holes.
The black holes that Strominger and Vafa considered in their original work were quite different from real astrophysical black holes. One difference was that Strominger and Vafa considered only extremal black holes in order to make the calculation tractable. These are defined as black holes with the lowest possible mass compatible with a given charge. Strominger and Vafa also restricted attention to black holes in five-dimensional spacetime with unphysical supersymmetry.
Although it was originally developed in this very particular and physically unrealistic context in string theory, the entropy calculation of Strominger and Vafa has led to a qualitative understanding of how black hole entropy can be accounted for in any theory of quantum gravity. Indeed, in 1998, Strominger argued that the original result could be generalized to an arbitrary consistent theory of quantum gravity without relying on strings or supersymmetry. In collaboration with several other authors in 2010, he showed that some results on black hole entropy could be extended to non-extremal astrophysical black holes.
One approach to formulating string theory and studying its properties is provided by the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence. This is a theoretical result which implies that string theory is in some cases equivalent to a quantum field theory. In addition to providing insights into the mathematical structure of string theory, the AdS/CFT correspondence has shed light on many aspects of quantum field theory in regimes where traditional calculational techniques are ineffective. The AdS/CFT correspondence was first proposed by Juan Maldacena in late 1997. Important aspects of the correspondence were elaborated in articles by Steven Gubser, Igor Klebanov, and Alexander Markovich Polyakov, and by Edward Witten. By 2010, Maldacena's article had over 7000 citations, becoming the most highly cited article in the field of high energy physics.
In the AdS/CFT correspondence, the geometry of spacetime is described in terms of a certain vacuum solution of Einstein's equation called anti-de Sitter space. In very elementary terms, anti-de Sitter space is a mathematical model of spacetime in which the notion of distance between points (the metric) is different from the notion of distance in ordinary Euclidean geometry. It is closely related to hyperbolic space, which can be viewed as a disk as illustrated on the left. This image shows a tessellation of a disk by triangles and squares. One can define the distance between points of this disk in such a way that all the triangles and squares are the same size and the circular outer boundary is infinitely far from any point in the interior.
One can imagine a stack of hyperbolic disks where each disk represents the state of the universe at a given time. The resulting geometric object is three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. It looks like a solid cylinder in which any cross section is a copy of the hyperbolic disk. Time runs along the vertical direction in this picture. The surface of this cylinder plays an important role in the AdS/CFT correspondence. As with the hyperbolic plane, anti-de Sitter space is curved in such a way that any point in the interior is actually infinitely far from this boundary surface.
This construction describes a hypothetical universe with only two space dimensions and one time dimension, but it can be generalized to any number of dimensions. Indeed, hyperbolic space can have more than two dimensions and one can "stack up" copies of hyperbolic space to get higher-dimensional models of anti-de Sitter space.
An important feature of anti-de Sitter space is its boundary (which looks like a cylinder in the case of three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space). One property of this boundary is that, within a small region on the surface around any given point, it looks just like Minkowski space, the model of spacetime used in nongravitational physics. One can therefore consider an auxiliary theory in which "spacetime" is given by the boundary of anti-de Sitter space. This observation is the starting point for AdS/CFT correspondence, which states that the boundary of anti-de Sitter space can be regarded as the "spacetime" for a quantum field theory. The claim is that this quantum field theory is equivalent to a gravitational theory, such as string theory, in the bulk anti-de Sitter space in the sense that there is a "dictionary" for translating entities and calculations in one theory into their counterparts in the other theory. For example, a single particle in the gravitational theory might correspond to some collection of particles in the boundary theory. In addition, the predictions in the two theories are quantitatively identical so that if two particles have a 40 percent chance of colliding in the gravitational theory, then the corresponding collections in the boundary theory would also have a 40 percent chance of colliding.
The discovery of the AdS/CFT correspondence was a major advance in physicists' understanding of string theory and quantum gravity. One reason for this is that the correspondence provides a formulation of string theory in terms of quantum field theory, which is well understood by comparison. Another reason is that it provides a general framework in which physicists can study and attempt to resolve the paradoxes of black holes.
In 1975, Stephen Hawking published a calculation which suggested that black holes are not completely black but emit a dim radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. At first, Hawking's result posed a problem for theorists because it suggested that black holes destroy information. More precisely, Hawking's calculation seemed to conflict with one of the basic postulates of quantum mechanics, which states that physical systems evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation. This property is usually referred to as unitarity of time evolution. The apparent contradiction between Hawking's calculation and the unitarity postulate of quantum mechanics came to be known as the black hole information paradox.
The AdS/CFT correspondence resolves the black hole information paradox, at least to some extent, because it shows how a black hole can evolve in a manner consistent with quantum mechanics in some contexts. Indeed, one can consider black holes in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, and any such black hole corresponds to a configuration of particles on the boundary of anti-de Sitter space. These particles obey the usual rules of quantum mechanics and in particular evolve in a unitary fashion, so the black hole must also evolve in a unitary fashion, respecting the principles of quantum mechanics. In 2005, Hawking announced that the paradox had been settled in favor of information conservation by the AdS/CFT correspondence, and he suggested a concrete mechanism by which black holes might preserve information.
In addition to its applications to theoretical problems in quantum gravity, the AdS/CFT correspondence has been applied to a variety of problems in quantum field theory. One physical system that has been studied using the AdS/CFT correspondence is the quark–gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter produced in particle accelerators. This state of matter arises for brief instants when heavy ions such as gold or lead nuclei are collided at high energies. Such collisions cause the quarks that make up atomic nuclei to deconfine at temperatures of approximately two trillion kelvin, conditions similar to those present at around seconds after the Big Bang.
The physics of the quark–gluon plasma is governed by a theory called quantum chromodynamics, but this theory is mathematically intractable in problems involving the quark–gluon plasma. In an article appearing in 2005, Đàm Thanh Sơn and his collaborators showed that the AdS/CFT correspondence could be used to understand some aspects of the quark–gluon plasma by describing it in the language of string theory. By applying the AdS/CFT correspondence, Sơn and his collaborators were able to describe the quark gluon plasma in terms of black holes in five-dimensional spacetime. The calculation showed that the ratio of two quantities associated with the quark–gluon plasma, the shear viscosity and volume density of entropy, should be approximately equal to a certain universal constant. In 2008, the predicted value of this ratio for the quark–gluon plasma was confirmed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The AdS/CFT correspondence has also been used to study aspects of condensed matter physics. Over the decades, experimental condensed matter physicists have discovered a number of exotic states of matter, including superconductors and superfluids. These states are described using the formalism of quantum field theory, but some phenomena are difficult to explain using standard field theoretic techniques. Some condensed matter theorists including Subir Sachdev hope that the AdS/CFT correspondence will make it possible to describe these systems in the language of string theory and learn more about their behavior.
So far some success has been achieved in using string theory methods to describe the transition of a superfluid to an insulator. A superfluid is a system of electrically neutral atoms that flows without any friction. Such systems are often produced in the laboratory using liquid helium, but recently experimentalists have developed new ways of producing artificial superfluids by pouring trillions of cold atoms into a lattice of criss-crossing lasers. These atoms initially behave as a superfluid, but as experimentalists increase the intensity of the lasers, they become less mobile and then suddenly transition to an insulating state. During the transition, the atoms behave in an unusual way. For example, the atoms slow to a halt at a rate that depends on the temperature and on Planck's constant, the fundamental parameter of quantum mechanics, which does not enter into the description of the other phases. This behavior has recently been understood by considering a dual description where properties of the fluid are described in terms of a higher dimensional black hole.
In addition to being an idea of considerable theoretical interest, string theory provides a framework for constructing models of real world physics that combine general relativity and particle physics. Phenomenology is the branch of theoretical physics in which physicists construct realistic models of nature from more abstract theoretical ideas. String phenomenology is the part of string theory that attempts to construct realistic or semi-realistic models based on string theory.
Partly because of theoretical and mathematical difficulties and partly because of the extremely high energies needed to test these theories experimentally, there is so far no experimental evidence that would unambiguously point to any of these models being a correct fundamental description of nature. This has led some in the community to criticize these approaches to unification and question the value of continued research on these problems.
The currently accepted theory describing elementary particles and their interactions is known as the standard model of particle physics. This theory provides a unified description of three of the fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Despite its remarkable success in explaining a wide range of physical phenomena, the standard model cannot be a complete description of reality. This is because the standard model fails to incorporate the force of gravity and because of problems such as the hierarchy problem and the inability to explain the structure of fermion masses or dark matter.
String theory has been used to construct a variety of models of particle physics going beyond the standard model. Typically, such models are based on the idea of compactification. Starting with the ten- or eleven-dimensional spacetime of string or M-theory, physicists postulate a shape for the extra dimensions. By choosing this shape appropriately, they can construct models roughly similar to the standard model of particle physics, together with additional undiscovered particles. One popular way of deriving realistic physics from string theory is to start with the heterotic theory in ten dimensions and assume that the six extra dimensions of spacetime are shaped like a six-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold. Such compactifications offer many ways of extracting realistic physics from string theory. Other similar methods can be used to construct realistic or semi-realistic models of our four-dimensional world based on M-theory.
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. Despite its success in explaining many observed features of the universe including galactic redshifts, the relative abundance of light elements such as hydrogen and helium, and the existence of a cosmic microwave background, there are several questions that remain unanswered. For example, the standard Big Bang model does not explain why the universe appears to be same in all directions, why it appears flat on very large distance scales, or why certain hypothesized particles such as magnetic monopoles are not observed in experiments.
Currently, the leading candidate for a theory going beyond the Big Bang is the theory of cosmic inflation. Developed by Alan Guth and others in the 1980s, inflation postulates a period of extremely rapid accelerated expansion of the universe prior to the expansion described by the standard Big Bang theory. The theory of cosmic inflation preserves the successes of the Big Bang while providing a natural explanation for some of the mysterious features of the universe. The theory has also received striking support from observations of the cosmic microwave background, the radiation that has filled the sky since around 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
In the theory of inflation, the rapid initial expansion of the universe is caused by a hypothetical particle called the inflaton. The exact properties of this particle are not fixed by the theory but should ultimately be derived from a more fundamental theory such as string theory. Indeed, there have been a number of attempts to identify an inflaton within the spectrum of particles described by string theory, and to study inflation using string theory. While these approaches might eventually find support in observational data such as measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the application of string theory to cosmology is still in its early stages.
In addition to influencing research in theoretical physics, string theory has stimulated a number of major developments in pure mathematics. Like many developing ideas in theoretical physics, string theory does not at present have a mathematically rigorous formulation in which all of its concepts can be defined precisely. As a result, physicists who study string theory are often guided by physical intuition to conjecture relationships between the seemingly different mathematical structures that are used to formalize different parts of the theory. These conjectures are later proved by mathematicians, and in this way, string theory serves as a source of new ideas in pure mathematics.
After Calabi–Yau manifolds had entered physics as a way to compactify extra dimensions in string theory, many physicists began studying these manifolds. In the late 1980s, several physicists noticed that given such a compactification of string theory, it is not possible to reconstruct uniquely a corresponding Calabi–Yau manifold. Instead, two different versions of string theory, type IIA and type IIB, can be compactified on completely different Calabi–Yau manifolds giving rise to the same physics. In this situation, the manifolds are called mirror manifolds, and the relationship between the two physical theories is called mirror symmetry.
Regardless of whether Calabi–Yau compactifications of string theory provide a correct description of nature, the existence of the mirror duality between different string theories has significant mathematical consequences. The Calabi–Yau manifolds used in string theory are of interest in pure mathematics, and mirror symmetry allows mathematicians to solve problems in enumerative geometry, a branch of mathematics concerned with counting the numbers of solutions to geometric questions.
Enumerative geometry studies a class of geometric objects called algebraic varieties which are defined by the vanishing of polynomials. For example, the Clebsch cubic illustrated on the right is an algebraic variety defined using a certain polynomial of degree three in four variables. A celebrated result of nineteenth-century mathematicians Arthur Cayley and George Salmon states that there are exactly 27 straight lines that lie entirely on such a surface.
Generalizing this problem, one can ask how many lines can be drawn on a quintic Calabi–Yau manifold, such as the one illustrated above, which is defined by a polynomial of degree five. This problem was solved by the nineteenth-century German mathematician Hermann Schubert, who found that there are exactly 2,875 such lines. In 1986, geometer Sheldon Katz proved that the number of curves, such as circles, that are defined by polynomials of degree two and lie entirely in the quintic is 609,250.
By the year 1991, most of the classical problems of enumerative geometry had been solved and interest in enumerative geometry had begun to diminish. The field was reinvigorated in May 1991 when physicists Philip Candelas, Xenia de la Ossa, Paul Green, and Linda Parks showed that mirror symmetry could be used to translate difficult mathematical questions about one Calabi–Yau manifold into easier questions about its mirror. In particular, they used mirror symmetry to show that a six-dimensional Calabi–Yau manifold can contain exactly 317,206,375 curves of degree three. In addition to counting degree-three curves, Candelas and his collaborators obtained a number of more general results for counting rational curves which went far beyond the results obtained by mathematicians.
Originally, these results of Candelas were justified on physical grounds. However, mathematicians generally prefer rigorous proofs that do not require an appeal to physical intuition. Inspired by physicists' work on mirror symmetry, mathematicians have therefore constructed their own arguments proving the enumerative predictions of mirror symmetry. Today mirror symmetry is an active area of research in mathematics, and mathematicians are working to develop a more complete mathematical understanding of mirror symmetry based on physicists' intuition. Major approaches to mirror symmetry include the homological mirror symmetry program of Maxim Kontsevich and the SYZ conjecture of Andrew Strominger, Shing-Tung Yau, and Eric Zaslow.
Group theory is the branch of mathematics that studies the concept of symmetry. For example, one can consider a geometric shape such as an equilateral triangle. There are various operations that one can perform on this triangle without changing its shape. One can rotate it through 120°, 240°, or 360°, or one can reflect in any of the lines labeled , , or in the picture. Each of these operations is called a "symmetry", and the collection of these symmetries satisfies certain technical properties making it into what mathematicians call a group. In this particular example, the group is known as the dihedral group of order 6 because it has six elements. A general group may describe finitely many or infinitely many symmetries; if there are only finitely many symmetries, it is called a finite group.
Mathematicians often strive for a classification (or list) of all mathematical objects of a given type. It is generally believed that finite groups are too diverse to admit a useful classification. A more modest but still challenging problem is to classify all finite "simple" groups. These are finite groups which may be used as building blocks for constructing arbitrary finite groups in the same way that prime numbers can be used to construct arbitrary whole numbers by taking products. One of the major achievements of contemporary group theory is the classification of finite simple groups, a mathematical theorem which provides a list of all possible finite simple groups.
This classification theorem identifies several infinite families of groups as well as 26 additional groups which do not fit into any family. The latter groups are called the "sporadic" groups, and each one owes its existence to a remarkable combination of circumstances. The largest sporadic group, the so-called monster group, has over elements, more than a thousand times the number of atoms in the Earth.
A seemingly unrelated construction is the -function of number theory. This object belongs to a special class of functions called modular functions, whose graphs form a certain kind of repeating pattern. Although this function appears in a branch of mathematics which seems very different from the theory of finite groups, the two subjects turn out to be intimately related. In the late 1970s, mathematicians John McKay and John Thompson noticed that certain numbers arising in the analysis of the monster group (namely, the dimensions of its irreducible representations) are related to numbers that appear in a formula for the -function (namely, the coefficients of its Fourier series). This relationship was further developed by John Horton Conway and Simon Norton who called it monstrous moonshine because it seemed so far fetched.
In 1992, Richard Borcherds constructed a bridge between the theory of modular functions and finite groups and, in the process, explained the observations of McKay and Thompson. Borcherds' work used ideas from string theory in an essential way, extending earlier results of Igor Frenkel, James Lepowsky, and Arne Meurman, who had realized the monster group as the symmetries of a particular version of string theory. In 1998, Borcherds was awarded the Fields medal for his work.
Since the 1990s, the connection between string theory and moonshine has led to further results in mathematics and physics. In 2010, physicists Tohru Eguchi, Hirosi Ooguri, and Yuji Tachikawa discovered connections between a different sporadic group, the Mathieu group, and a certain version of string theory. Miranda Cheng, John Duncan, and Jeffrey A. Harvey proposed a generalization of this moonshine phenomenon called umbral moonshine, and their conjecture was proved mathematically by Duncan, Michael Griffin, and Ken Ono. Witten has also speculated that the version of string theory appearing in monstrous moonshine might be related to a certain simplified model of gravity in three spacetime dimensions.
Some of the structures reintroduced by string theory arose for the first time much earlier as part of the program of classical unification started by Albert Einstein. The first person to add a fifth dimension to a theory of gravity was Gunnar Nordström in 1914, who noted that gravity in five dimensions describes both gravity and electromagnetism in four. Nordström attempted to unify electromagnetism with his theory of gravitation, which was however superseded by Einstein's general relativity in 1919. Thereafter, German mathematician Theodor Kaluza combined the fifth dimension with general relativity, and only Kaluza is usually credited with the idea. In 1926, the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein gave a physical interpretation of the unobservable extra dimension—it is wrapped into a small circle. Einstein introduced a non-symmetric metric tensor, while much later Brans and Dicke added a scalar component to gravity. These ideas would be revived within string theory, where they are demanded by consistency conditions.
String theory was originally developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a never completely successful theory of hadrons, the subatomic particles like the proton and neutron that feel the strong interaction. In the 1960s, Geoffrey Chew and Steven Frautschi discovered that the mesons make families called Regge trajectories with masses related to spins in a way that was later understood by Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielsen and Leonard Susskind to be the relationship expected from rotating strings. Chew advocated making a theory for the interactions of these trajectories that did not presume that they were composed of any fundamental particles, but would construct their interactions from self-consistency conditions on the S-matrix. The S-matrix approach was started by Werner Heisenberg in the 1940s as a way of constructing a theory that did not rely on the local notions of space and time, which Heisenberg believed break down at the nuclear scale. While the scale was off by many orders of magnitude, the approach he advocated was ideally suited for a theory of quantum gravity.
Working with experimental data, R. Dolen, D. Horn and C. Schmid developed some sum rules for hadron exchange. When a particle and antiparticle scatter, virtual particles can be exchanged in two qualitatively different ways. In the s-channel, the two particles annihilate to make temporary intermediate states that fall apart into the final state particles. In the t-channel, the particles exchange intermediate states by emission and absorption. In field theory, the two contributions add together, one giving a continuous background contribution, the other giving peaks at certain energies. In the data, it was clear that the peaks were stealing from the background—the authors interpreted this as saying that the t-channel contribution was dual to the s-channel one, meaning both described the whole amplitude and included the other.
The result was widely advertised by Murray Gell-Mann, leading Gabriele Veneziano to construct a scattering amplitude that had the property of Dolen–Horn–Schmid duality, later renamed world-sheet duality. The amplitude needed poles where the particles appear, on straight line trajectories, and there is a special mathematical function whose poles are evenly spaced on half the real line—the gamma function— which was widely used in Regge theory. By manipulating combinations of gamma functions, Veneziano was able to find a consistent scattering amplitude with poles on straight lines, with mostly positive residues, which obeyed duality and had the appropriate Regge scaling at high energy. The amplitude could fit near-beam scattering data as well as other Regge type fits, and had a suggestive integral representation that could be used for generalization.
Over the next years, hundreds of physicists worked to complete the bootstrap program for this model, with many surprises. Veneziano himself discovered that for the scattering amplitude to describe the scattering of a particle that appears in the theory, an obvious self-consistency condition, the lightest particle must be a tachyon. Miguel Virasoro and Joel Shapiro found a different amplitude now understood to be that of closed strings, while Ziro Koba and Holger Nielsen generalized Veneziano's integral representation to multiparticle scattering. Veneziano and Sergio Fubini introduced an operator formalism for computing the scattering amplitudes that was a forerunner of world-sheet conformal theory, while Virasoro understood how to remove the poles with wrong-sign residues using a constraint on the states. Claud Lovelace calculated a loop amplitude, and noted that there is an inconsistency unless the dimension of the theory is 26. Charles Thorn, Peter Goddard and Richard Brower went on to prove that there are no wrong-sign propagating states in dimensions less than or equal to 26.
In 1969–70, Yoichiro Nambu, Holger Bech Nielsen, and Leonard Susskind recognized that the theory could be given a description in space and time in terms of strings. The scattering amplitudes were derived systematically from the action principle by Peter Goddard, Jeffrey Goldstone, Claudio Rebbi, and Charles Thorn, giving a space-time picture to the vertex operators introduced by Veneziano and Fubini and a geometrical interpretation to the Virasoro conditions.
In 1971, Pierre Ramond added fermions to the model, which led him to formulate a two-dimensional supersymmetry to cancel the wrong-sign states. John Schwarz and André Neveu added another sector to the fermi theory a short time later. In the fermion theories, the critical dimension was 10. Stanley Mandelstam formulated a world sheet conformal theory for both the bose and fermi case, giving a two-dimensional field theoretic path-integral to generate the operator formalism. Michio Kaku and Keiji Kikkawa gave a different formulation of the bosonic string, as a string field theory, with infinitely many particle types and with fields taking values not on points, but on loops and curves.
In 1974, Tamiaki Yoneya discovered that all the known string theories included a massless spin-two particle that obeyed the correct Ward identities to be a graviton. John Schwarz and Joel Scherk came to the same conclusion and made the bold leap to suggest that string theory was a theory of gravity, not a theory of hadrons. They reintroduced Kaluza–Klein theory as a way of making sense of the extra dimensions. At the same time, quantum chromodynamics was recognized as the correct theory of hadrons, shifting the attention of physicists and apparently leaving the bootstrap program in the dustbin of history.
String theory eventually made it out of the dustbin, but for the following decade all work on the theory was completely ignored. Still, the theory continued to develop at a steady pace thanks to the work of a handful of devotees. Ferdinando Gliozzi, Joel Scherk, and David Olive realized in 1977 that the original Ramond and Neveu Schwarz-strings were separately inconsistent and needed to be combined. The resulting theory did not have a tachyon, and was proven to have space-time supersymmetry by John Schwarz and Michael Green in 1984. The same year, Alexander Polyakov gave the theory a modern path integral formulation, and went on to develop conformal field theory extensively. In 1979, Daniel Friedan showed that the equations of motions of string theory, which are generalizations of the Einstein equations of general relativity, emerge from the renormalization group equations for the two-dimensional field theory. Schwarz and Green discovered T-duality, and constructed two superstring theories—IIA and IIB related by T-duality, and type I theories with open strings. The consistency conditions had been so strong, that the entire theory was nearly uniquely determined, with only a few discrete choices.
In the early 1980s, Edward Witten discovered that most theories of quantum gravity could not accommodate chiral fermions like the neutrino. This led him, in collaboration with Luis Álvarez-Gaumé, to study violations of the conservation laws in gravity theories with anomalies, concluding that type I string theories were inconsistent. Green and Schwarz discovered a contribution to the anomaly that Witten and Alvarez-Gaumé had missed, which restricted the gauge group of the type I string theory to be SO(32). In coming to understand this calculation, Edward Witten became convinced that string theory was truly a consistent theory of gravity, and he became a high-profile advocate. Following Witten's lead, between 1984 and 1986, hundreds of physicists started to work in this field, and this is sometimes called the first superstring revolution.
During this period, David Gross, Jeffrey Harvey, Emil Martinec, and Ryan Rohm discovered heterotic strings. The gauge group of these closed strings was two copies of E8, and either copy could easily and naturally include the standard model. Philip Candelas, Gary Horowitz, Andrew Strominger and Edward Witten found that the Calabi–Yau manifolds are the compactifications that preserve a realistic amount of supersymmetry, while Lance Dixon and others worked out the physical properties of orbifolds, distinctive geometrical singularities allowed in string theory. Cumrun Vafa generalized T-duality from circles to arbitrary manifolds, creating the mathematical field of mirror symmetry. Daniel Friedan, Emil Martinec and Stephen Shenker further developed the covariant quantization of the superstring using conformal field theory techniques. David Gross and Vipul Periwal discovered that string perturbation theory was divergent. Stephen Shenker showed it diverged much faster than in field theory suggesting that new non-perturbative objects were missing.
In the 1990s, Joseph Polchinski discovered that the theory requires higher-dimensional objects, called D-branes and identified these with the black-hole solutions of supergravity. These were understood to be the new objects suggested by the perturbative divergences, and they opened up a new field with rich mathematical structure. It quickly became clear that D-branes and other p-branes, not just strings, formed the matter content of the string theories, and the physical interpretation of the strings and branes was revealed—they are a type of black hole. Leonard Susskind had incorporated the holographic principle of Gerardus 't Hooft into string theory, identifying the long highly excited string states with ordinary thermal black hole states. As suggested by 't Hooft, the fluctuations of the black hole horizon, the world-sheet or world-volume theory, describes not only the degrees of freedom of the black hole, but all nearby objects too.
In 1995, at the annual conference of string theorists at the University of Southern California (USC), Edward Witten gave a speech on string theory that in essence united the five string theories that existed at the time, and giving birth to a new 11-dimensional theory called M-theory. M-theory was also foreshadowed in the work of Paul Townsend at approximately the same time. The flurry of activity that began at this time is sometimes called the second superstring revolution.
During this period, Tom Banks, Willy Fischler, Stephen Shenker and Leonard Susskind formulated matrix theory, a full holographic description of M-theory using IIA D0 branes. This was the first definition of string theory that was fully non-perturbative and a concrete mathematical realization of the holographic principle. It is an example of a gauge-gravity duality and is now understood to be a special case of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa calculated the entropy of certain configurations of D-branes and found agreement with the semi-classical answer for extreme charged black holes. Petr Hořava and Witten found the eleven-dimensional formulation of the heterotic string theories, showing that orbifolds solve the chirality problem. Witten noted that the effective description of the physics of D-branes at low energies is by a supersymmetric gauge theory, and found geometrical interpretations of mathematical structures in gauge theory that he and Nathan Seiberg had earlier discovered in terms of the location of the branes.
In 1997, Juan Maldacena noted that the low energy excitations of a theory near a black hole consist of objects close to the horizon, which for extreme charged black holes looks like an anti-de Sitter space. He noted that in this limit the gauge theory describes the string excitations near the branes. So he hypothesized that string theory on a near-horizon extreme-charged black-hole geometry, an anti-de Sitter space times a sphere with flux, is equally well described by the low-energy limiting gauge theory, the N = 4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory. This hypothesis, which is called the AdS/CFT correspondence, was further developed by Steven Gubser, Igor Klebanov and Alexander Polyakov, and by Edward Witten, and it is now well-accepted. It is a concrete realization of the holographic principle, which has far-reaching implications for black holes, locality and information in physics, as well as the nature of the gravitational interaction. Through this relationship, string theory has been shown to be related to gauge theories like quantum chromodynamics and this has led to more quantitative understanding of the behavior of hadrons, bringing string theory back to its roots.
To construct models of particle physics based on string theory, physicists typically begin by specifying a shape for the extra dimensions of spacetime. Each of these different shapes corresponds to a different possible universe, or "vacuum state", with a different collection of particles and forces. String theory as it is currently understood has an enormous number of vacuum states, typically estimated to be around , and these might be sufficiently diverse to accommodate almost any phenomenon that might be observed at low energies.
Many critics of string theory have expressed concerns about the large number of possible universes described by string theory. In his book "Not Even Wrong", Peter Woit, a lecturer in the mathematics department at Columbia University, has argued that the large number of different physical scenarios renders string theory vacuous as a framework for constructing models of particle physics. According to Woit,
Some physicists believe this large number of solutions is actually a virtue because it may allow a natural anthropic explanation of the observed values of physical constants, in particular the small value of the cosmological constant. The anthropic principle is the idea that some of the numbers appearing in the laws of physics are not fixed by any fundamental principle but must be compatible with the evolution of intelligent life. In 1987, Steven Weinberg published an article in which he argued that the cosmological constant could not have been too large, or else galaxies and intelligent life would not have been able to develop. Weinberg suggested that there might be a huge number of possible consistent universes, each with a different value of the cosmological constant, and observations indicate a small value of the cosmological constant only because humans happen to live in a universe that has allowed intelligent life, and hence observers, to exist.
String theorist Leonard Susskind has argued that string theory provides a natural anthropic explanation of the small value of the cosmological constant. According to Susskind, the different vacuum states of string theory might be realized as different universes within a larger multiverse. The fact that the observed universe has a small cosmological constant is just a tautological consequence of the fact that a small value is required for life to exist. Many prominent theorists and critics have disagreed with Susskind's conclusions. According to Woit, "in this case [anthropic reasoning] is nothing more than an excuse for failure. Speculative scientific ideas fail not just when they make incorrect predictions, but also when they turn out to be vacuous and incapable of predicting anything."
No vacuum in the string theory landscape is known to support a metastable, positive cosmological constant, except possibly one unconfirmed model described by Kachru "et al." in 2003. In 2018, a group of four physicists advanced a controversial conjecture which would imply that no such universe exists. This is contrary to some popular models of dark energy such as Λ-CDM, which requires a positive vacuum energy. However, string theory is likely compatible with certain types of quintessence, where dark energy is caused by a new field with exotic properties.
One of the fundamental properties of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that it is background independent, meaning that the formulation of the theory does not in any way privilege a particular spacetime geometry.
One of the main criticisms of string theory from early on is that it is not manifestly background independent. In string theory, one must typically specify a fixed reference geometry for spacetime, and all other possible geometries are described as perturbations of this fixed one. In his book "The Trouble With Physics", physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics claims that this is the principal weakness of string theory as a theory of quantum gravity, saying that string theory has failed to incorporate this important insight from general relativity.
Others have disagreed with Smolin's characterization of string theory. In a review of Smolin's book, string theorist Joseph Polchinski writes
Polchinski notes that an important open problem in quantum gravity is to develop holographic descriptions of gravity which do not require the gravitational field
to be asymptotically anti-de Sitter. Smolin has responded by saying that the AdS/CFT correspondence, as it is currently understood, may not be strong enough to resolve all concerns about background independence.
Since the superstring revolutions of the 1980s and 1990s, string theory has become the dominant paradigm of high energy theoretical physics. Some string theorists have expressed the view that there does not exist an equally successful alternative theory addressing the deep questions of fundamental physics. In an interview from 1987, Nobel laureate David Gross made the following controversial comments about the reasons for the popularity of string theory:
Several other high-profile theorists and commentators have expressed similar views, suggesting that there are no viable alternatives to string theory.
Many critics of string theory have commented on this state of affairs. In his book criticizing string theory, Peter Woit views the status of string theory research as unhealthy and detrimental to the future of fundamental physics. He argues that the extreme popularity of string theory among theoretical physicists is partly a consequence of the financial structure of academia and the fierce competition for scarce resources. In his book "The Road to Reality", mathematical physicist Roger Penrose expresses similar views, stating "The often frantic competitiveness that this ease of communication engenders leads to bandwagon effects, where researchers fear to be left behind if they do not join in." Penrose also claims that the technical difficulty of modern physics forces young scientists to rely on the preferences of established researchers, rather than forging new paths of their own. Lee Smolin expresses a slightly different position in his critique, claiming that string theory grew out of a tradition of particle physics which discourages speculation about the foundations of physics, while his preferred approach, loop quantum gravity, encourages more radical thinking. According to Smolin,
Smolin goes on to offer a number of prescriptions for how scientists might encourage a greater diversity of approaches to quantum gravity research.
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Sin
In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful, or alienating might be termed "sinful".
The word derives from "Old English "syn(n)", for original *"sunjō". The stem may be related to that of Latin '"sons", "sont-is"' (guilty). In Old English there are examples of the original general sense, ‘offence, wrong-doing, misdeed'".
Baháʼís consider humans to be naturally good, fundamentally spiritual beings. Human beings were created because of God's immeasurable love for us. However, the Baháʼí teachings compare the human heart to a mirror, which, if turned away from the light of the sun (i.e. God), is incapable of receiving God's love. It is only by turning unto God that the spiritual advancement can be made. In this sense, "sinning" is to follow the inclinations of one's own lower nature, to turn the mirror of one's heart away from God. One of the main hindrances to spiritual development is the Baháʼí concept of the "insistent self" which is a self-serving inclination within all people. Baháʼís interpret this to be the true meaning of Satan, often referred to in the Baháʼí Writings as "the Evil One".Watch over yourselves, for the Evil One is lying in wait, ready to entrap you. Gird yourselves against his wicked devices, and, led by the light of the name of the All-Seeing God, make your escape from the darkness that surroundeth you. — Baháʼu'lláhThis lower nature in humans is symbolized as Satan — the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside. — ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
There are a few differing Buddhist views on sin. American Zen author Brad Warner states that in Buddhism there is no concept of sin at all. The Buddha Dharma Education Association also expressly states "The idea of sin or original sin has no place in Buddhism."
Ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf explained, "In Buddhist thinking the whole universe, men as well as gods, are subject to a reign of law. Every action, good or bad, has an inevitable and automatic effect in a long chain of causes, an effect which is independent of the will of any deity. Even though this may leave no room for the concept of 'sin' in the sense of an act of defiance against the authority of a personal god, Buddhists speak of 'sin' when referring to transgressions against the universal moral code."
However, Anantarika-kamma in Theravada Buddhism is a heinous crime, which through karmic process brings immediate disaster. In Mahayana Buddhism these five crimes are referred to as "pañcānantarya" (Pāli), and are mentioned in "The Sutra Preached by the Buddha on the Total Extinction of the Dharma", The five crimes or sins are:
The doctrine of sin is central to Christianity, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ. Christian hamartiology describes sin as an act of offense against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, and by injuring others. In Christian views it is an evil human act, which violates the rational nature of man as well as God's nature and his eternal law. According to the classical definition of St. Augustine of Hippo sin is "a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God."
Among some scholars, sin is understood mostly as legal infraction or contract violation of non-binding philosophical frameworks and perspectives of Christian ethics, and so salvation tends to be viewed in legal terms. Other Christian scholars understand sin to be fundamentally relational—a loss of love for the Christian God and an elevation of self-love ("concupiscence", in this sense), as was later propounded by Augustine in his debate with the Pelagians. As with the legal definition of sin, this definition also affects the understanding of Christian grace and salvation, which are thus viewed in relational terms.
This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.
The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine also shaped and developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle (Romans and 1 Corinthians ) and the Old Testament verse of Psalms . Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine's formulation of original sin after 412 CE was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence (or "hurtful desire"), affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good. Before 412 CE, Augustine said that free will was weakened but not destroyed by original sin. But after 412 CE this changed to a loss of free will except to sin. Modern Augustinian Calvinism holds this later view. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead the Catholic Church declares that Baptism erases original sin.
Sin is an important concept in Islamic ethics. Muslims see sin as anything that goes against the commands of God (Allah), a breach of the laws and norms laid down by religion. Islam teaches that sin is an act and not a state of being. It is believed that God weighs an individual's good deeds against his or her sins on the Day of Judgement and punishes those individuals whose evil deeds outweigh their good deeds. These individuals are thought to be sentenced to afterlife in the fires of "jahannam" (Hell).
Islamic terms for sin include "dhanb" and "khaṭīʾa", which are synonymous and refer to intentional sins; "khiṭʾ", which means simply a sin; and "ithm", which is used for grave sins.
Judaism regards the violation of any of the 613 commandments as a sin. Judaism teaches that to sin is a part of life, since there is no perfect man and everyone has an inclination to do evil. Sin has many classifications and degrees, but the principal classification is that of "missing the mark" ("cheit" in Hebrew). Some sins are punishable with death by the court, others with death by heaven, others with lashes, and others without such punishment, but no sins committed with willful intentions go without consequence. Sins committed out of lack of knowledge are not considered sins, since a sin cannot be a sin if the one who committed it did not know it was wrong. Unintentional sins are considered less severe sins.
Sins between people are considered much more serious in Judaism than sins between man and God. Yom Kippur, the main day of repentance in Judaism, can atone for sins between man and God, but not for sins between man and his fellow, that is until he has appeased his friend. Eleazar ben Azariah derived [this from the verse]: "From all your sins before God you shall be cleansed" (Book of Leviticus, 16:30) – for sins between man and God Yom Kippur atones, but for sins between man and his fellow Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases his fellow.
When the Temple yet stood in Jerusalem, people would offer Karbanot (sacrifices) for their misdeeds. The atoning aspect of "karbanot" is carefully circumscribed. For the most part, "karbanot" only expiate unintentional sins, that is, sins committed because a person forgot that this thing was a sin or by mistake. No atonement is needed for violations committed under duress or through lack of knowledge, and for the most part, "karbanot" cannot atone for a malicious, deliberate sin. In addition, "karbanot" have no expiating effect unless the person making the offering sincerely repents of his or her actions before making the offering, and makes restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation.
Judaism teaches that all willful sin has consequences. The completely righteous suffer for their sins (by humiliation, poverty, and suffering that God sends them) in this world and receive their reward in the world to come. The in-between (not completely righteous or completely wicked), suffer for and repent their sins after death and thereafter join the righteous. The very evil do not repent even at the gates of hell. Such people prosper in this world to receive their reward for any good deed, but cannot be cleansed by and hence cannot leave "gehinnom", because they do not or cannot repent. This world can therefore seem unjust where the righteous suffer, while the wicked prosper. Many great thinkers have contemplated this. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28307 |
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke (guitar) was a member of the band from 1999 to 2005.
Sonic Youth emerged from the experimental no wave art and music scene in New York before evolving into a more conventional rock band and becoming a prominent member of the American noise rock scene. Sonic Youth have been praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do" using a wide variety of unorthodox guitar tunings and preparing guitars with objects like drum sticks and screwdrivers to alter the instruments' timbre. The band is considered to be a pivotal influence on the alternative and indie rock movements.
After gaining a large underground following and critical praise through releases with SST Records in the late 1980s, the band experienced mainstream success throughout the 1990s and 2000s after signing to major label DGC in 1990 and headlining the 1995 Lollapalooza festival. In 2011, Ranaldo announced that the band was "ending for a while" following the separation of married couple Gordon and Moore. Thurston Moore updated and clarified the position in May 2014: "Sonic Youth is on hiatus. The band is a democracy of sorts, and as long as Kim and I are working out our situation, the band can't really function reasonably." Gordon refers several times in her 2015 autobiography "Girl in a Band" to the band having "split up".
Shortly after guitarist Thurston Moore moved to New York City in early 1977, he formed a group, Room Tone, with his roommates, who later changed their name to the Coachmen. After the breakup of the Coachmen, Moore began jamming with Stanton Miranda, whose band, CKM, featured Kim Gordon. Moore and Gordon formed a band, appearing under names like Male Bonding and Red Milk and the Arcadians, before settling on Sonic Youth just before June 1981. The name came from combining the nickname of MC5's Fred "Sonic" Smith with "Youth" from reggae artist Big Youth. Gordon later recalled that "as soon as Thurston came up with the name Sonic Youth, a certain sound that was more of what we wanted to do came about." The band played Noise Fest in June 1981 at New York's White Columns gallery, where Lee Ranaldo was playing as a member of Glenn Branca's electric guitar ensemble. Their performance impressed Moore, who described them as "the most ferocious guitar band that I had ever seen in my life", and he invited Ranaldo to join the band. The new trio played three songs at the festival later in the week without a drummer. Each band member took turns playing the drums, until they met drummer Richard Edson.
Branca signed Sonic Youth as the first act on his record label Neutral Records. In December 1981 the group recorded five songs in a studio in New York's Radio City Music Hall. The material was released as the "Sonic Youth (EP)" that, while largely ignored, was sent to a few key members of the US press, who gave it uniformly favorable reviews. The album featured a relatively conventional post-punk style, in contrast to their later releases. After their first release, Edson quit the group for an acting career and was replaced by Bob Bert.
During their early days as part of the New York music scene, Sonic Youth formed a friendship with fellow New York noise rock band Swans. The bands came to share the same rehearsal space, and Sonic Youth embarked on its first tour, a two-week journey through the southern United States starting in November 1982, supporting Swans. During a second tour with Swans of the Midwest the following month, tensions ran high and Moore constantly criticized Bert's drumming, which he felt was not "in the pocket". Bert was fired afterwards and replaced by Jim Sclavunos, who played drums on the band's first studio album, 1983's "Confusion Is Sex", which featured a dramatically louder and more dissonant sound than their debut EP. Sonic Youth set up a two-week tour of Europe for the summer of 1983. Sclavunos, however, quit after only a few months. The group asked Bert to rejoin, and he agreed, on the condition that he would not be fired again after the tour's conclusion. Bert went on to play on the band's "Kill Yr Idols" EP.
Sonic Youth found themselves well received in Europe, but the New York press largely ignored the local noise rock scene. Eventually, as the press began to take notice of the genre, Sonic Youth was grouped along with bands like Big Black, the Butthole Surfers and Pussy Galore under the "pigfucker" label by "Village Voice" editor Robert Christgau. After a substandard September concert in New York, another critic from "The Village Voice" panned it. Gordon wrote a scornful letter to the newspaper, criticizing it for not supporting its local music scene, to which Christgau responded by saying they are not obligated to support them. Moore retaliated by renaming the song "Kill Yr Idols" to "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick", before the two eventually sorted out their differences amicably.
During another tour of Europe in 1984, Sonic Youth's disastrous London debut (where the band's equipment malfunctioned and Moore consequently destroyed the equipment onstage in frustration) actually resulted in rave reviews in "Sounds" and the "NME". By the time they returned to New York, they were so popular they played shows practically every week. That same year, Moore and Gordon were married, and Sonic Youth released "Bad Moon Rising", a self-described "Americana" album that served as a reaction to the state of the nation at the time. The album, recorded by Martin Bisi, was built around transitional pieces that Moore and Ranaldo had come up with in order to take up time onstage while the other guitarist was busy tuning his instrument; as a result, there are almost no breaks between the songs on the record, which feature walls of feedback and pounding rhythms. "Bad Moon Rising" featured an appearance by Lydia Lunch on the album's single "Death Valley '69", inspired by the Charles Manson Family murders. In contrast to their abrasive, atonal material of the time, the band considered the song relatively conventional. Due to a falling-out with Branca over disputed royalty payments from their Neutral releases, they were signed to Homestead Records by Gerard Cosloy and by Blast First in the UK (which founder Paul Smith created simply so he could distribute the band's records in Europe). While even the New York press ignored "Bad Moon Rising" upon its release, now viewing the band as too arty and pretentious, Sonic Youth was becoming quite critically acclaimed in the United Kingdom, where the new album had sold 5,000 copies in just six months.
Claiming he was bored with playing "Bad Moon Rising" live in its entirety for over a year, Bert quit the group and was replaced by Steve Shelley, formerly of the punk group The Crucifucks. The band was so impressed with Shelley's drumming after seeing him play live they hired him without an audition. Bert remained on good terms with the group; he and Shelley both appeared in the music video for "Death Valley '69", as Bert performed the drums on the song, but Shelley was the group's drummer when the video was made.
Sonic Youth had a long fascination with influential indie label SST Records. Ranaldo said, "It was the first record company we were on that we really would have given anything to be on." Sonic Youth eventually signed to the label in early 1986 and began recording "EVOL" with Martin Bisi in March of that year.
"EVOL" itself represented an evolution of sorts for the band: in addition to increasingly melodic material and the impact of new drummer Shelley's playing, the record also dealt with themes of celebrity, particularly with songs like "Madonna, Sean, and Me" (also known as "Expressway to Yr. Skull" and called "a classic" by Neil Young) and "Marilyn Moore". Signing to SST catapulted the band on to a national stage, something that did not happen to their peers in the New York underground. The mainstream music press subsequently began to take notice of the band. Robert Palmer of "The New York Times" declared that Sonic Youth was "making the most startlingly original guitar-based music since Jimi Hendrix" and even "People" praised "EVOL" as the "aural equivalent of a toxic waste dump." "EVOL" is also notable for a guest appearance by bass guitarist Mike Watt, a friend whom the band coaxed to come to New York after he was deeply depressed by the death of his bandmate, D. Boon.
Around the same time, the band formed a side-project with Watt under the alias Ciccone Youth, which is a play on the names Sonic Youth and Ciccone, the birth surname of pop singer Madonna. As Ciccone Youth, the band released one single and one studio album during its career before disbanding in 1988. The single, "Into the Groove(y)", consisted of three tracks: "Into the Groove(y)" (a cover of Madonna's hit "Into the Groove", incorporating snippets of her recording) and the short "Tuff Titty Rap" on the A side (both performed by the Sonic Youth members), and "Burnin' Up" (performed by Watt with additional guitars by Greg Ginn) on the B side. The studio album,"The Whitey Album", included the previously released three tracks as well as three cover songs by other artists: "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer (recorded in a karaoke booth), and "Burnin' Up" and "Into the Groove" by Madonna.
On 1987's "Sister", Sonic Youth continued refining their blend of pop song structures with uncompromising experimentalism. Another loose concept album, "Sister" is partly inspired by the life and works of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (the "sister" of the title was Dick's fraternal twin, who died shortly after her birth, and whose memory haunted Dick his entire life). "Sister" sold 60,000 copies and received very positive reviews, becoming the first Sonic Youth album to crack the Top 20 of the "Village Voice"'s Pazz & Jop critics poll.
Despite the critical success, the band was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with SST due to concerns about payment and other administrative practices. Sonic Youth decided to release their next record on Enigma Records, which was distributed by Capitol Records and partly owned by EMI. The 1988 double LP "Daydream Nation" was a critical success that earned Sonic Youth substantial acclaim. The album came in second on the "Village Voice" Pazz & Jop poll and topped the year-end album lists of the "NME", "CMJ" and "Melody Maker". In 2005, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. The lead single from the album, "Teen Age Riot", was their first song receiving significant airplay in modern and college rock stations, reaching number 20 on the "Billboard" Modern Rock Tracks. A number of prominent music periodicals including "Rolling Stone" hailed "Daydream Nation" as one of the best albums of the decade and named Sonic Youth as the "Hot Band" in its "Hot" issue. Unfortunately, distribution problems arose and "Daydream Nation" was often difficult to find in stores. Moore considered Enigma a "cheap-jack Mafioso outfit" and the band began looking for a major label deal.
In 1990, Sonic Youth released "Goo", their first album for Geffen. The album featured the single "Kool Thing" on which Public Enemy's Chuck D made a guest appearance. "Kool Thing" was later featured in the Hal Hartley film "Simple Men" and the video game "" and was made available as a paid download for the "Rock Band" video game. The record is considered much more accessible than their previous work and became the band's best-selling record to date.
In 1992, the band released "Dirty" on the DGC label. Their influence as tastemakers continued with their discovery of acclaimed skateboard video director Spike Jonze, who they recruited for the video for "100%", which also featured skateboarder turned actor turned photographer Jason Lee. This song, along with the Gordon tune "JC", contains lyrical references to the murder of Joe Cole, a friend who worked with Black Flag as a roadie. The album features artwork by Los Angeles-based artist Mike Kelley. "Dirty" features a guest appearance by Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi) playing guitar on the track "Youth Against Fascism".
In 1993, the band contributed the track "Burning Spear" to the AIDS benefit album "No Alternative", produced by the Red Hot Organization.
In 1994, the band released "Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star", their best-charting release in the United States (until 2009's "The Eternal"), which peaked at No. 34 on the "Billboard" 200. The album was filled with low-key melodies and even produced a hit single, "Bull in the Heather". Moore and Gordon's daughter, Coco Hayley Moore, was born later in the year, and many of the songs from the album were never played live because there was never a full tour to support the album due to Gordon's pregnancy. In 1994, the band also released a cover of The Carpenters' 1971 hit "Superstar" for the tribute album "If I Were a Carpenter"; their version was played in the 1996 film "The Frighteners" and would later be featured in the 2007 film "Juno".
The band headlined the 1995 Lollapalooza festival with alternative rock groups Hole and Pavement. By that time, alternative rock had gained considerable mainstream attention, and the festival was parodied on "The Simpsons" 1996 episode "Homerpalooza", which featured voiceovers from the band. They also performed the final credits theme for that episode.
Gordon collaborated in Free Kitten, and started a clothing label X-Girl, based in Los Angeles. Ranaldo and Moore played with many experimental/noise musicians, including William Hooker, Nels Cline, Tom Surgal, Don Dietrich, Christian Marclay, DJ Spooky and Mission of Burma, among others. Shelley started up the Smells Like Records record label, as well as playing in backing bands for Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Two Dollar Guitar. Thurston Moore also made several guest appearances on DJ Spooky's albums, which combined rock and hip hop.
From Sonic Youth's earliest days, Gordon had occasionally played guitar with the group. Around the time of "Washing Machine" and "A Thousand Leaves", she began playing guitar more frequently, resulting in a three-guitar and drums lineup. These songs were something of a shift for the group's sound, and would lead to the introduction of a fifth member a few years later.
The "Washing Machine" album began a shift in the band away from their punk roots, seeing them working with longer jam sections. Two tracks showed the new approach in full force: the title track "Washing Machine" is just under 10 minutes long, and "The Diamond Sea" is over 19 minutes long.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the band began releasing a series of highly experimental records on their own Hoboken, New Jersey-based label SYR. The music was mostly instrumental and improvised, and the album and track titles and even the liner notes and credits were in different languages: "" was in French, "" in Dutch, "" in Esperanto, "SYR5" in Japanese, "" in Lithuanian, "" in Arpitan and "" in Danish. "SYR3" was the first to feature Jim O'Rourke, who went on to become an official band member. Tracks from the SYR releases featured in their live sets in 1998, particularly "Anagrama" from "SYR1", and tracks from "SYR2" formed the basis of two tracks from "A Thousand Leaves".
Released in 1998, "A Thousand Leaves" has a dreamy, semi-improvised feel, and features extended jam sections on tracks such as "Wildflower Soul" and "Female Mechanic Now on Duty". The album also features two Ranaldo-led numbers, "Hoarfrost" and "Karen Koltrane". The only single to be released from this album, "Sunday", was accompanied by a video directed by Harmony Korine and starring Macaulay Culkin.
"" was subtitled "Goodbye, 20th Century" and featured works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but some critics praised the group's efforts at popularizing and reinterpreting the composers' works.
On July 4, 1999, Sonic Youth's instruments, amps and gear were stolen in the middle of the night while on tour in Orange County, California, with almost 30 guitars and bass were stolen (see initial post on Usenet). Forced to start from scratch with new instruments, they recorded "NYC Ghosts & Flowers" and opened for Pearl Jam during the east coast leg of their 2000 tour. They later recovered some of their instruments, amps and gear for next 12 years, with only 8 guitars and bass were recovered by them.
In 2001, Sonic Youth collaborated with French avant-garde singer and poet Brigitte Fontaine on Fontaine's album "Kékéland".
When the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred, several members of the band were blocks away; Jim at their NYC studio (Echo Canyon on Murray Street) and Ranaldo and his wife Leah nearby at home. After the attacks, they curated the first U.S. outing of the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in L.A. The festival was originally scheduled for October, but it was delayed until March the following year due to the attacks.
In the summer of 2002, "Murray Street" was released; many critics heralded a "return to form for SY", seemingly revitalized by the addition of Jim O'Rourke, who became a full member during this period, playing bass guitar, guitar and occasionally synthesizer. It was during this period that the band were filmed for Scott Crary's documentary "Kill Your Idols", depicting Sonic Youth as a key influence upon the post-punk revival then happening in New York. This was followed in 2004 by the release of "Sonic Nurse", an album similar in sound and approach to its immediate predecessor that also received positive reviews. "Pattern Recognition", a song named after the 2003 William Gibson novel, finds the band once again using Gibson's work for inspiration. The band also showed their pop culture commentary and sense of humor with the track "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream", a faster-tempo song sung by Gordon, which spoofed Carey's life, including her short-lived relationship with rapper Eminem, which originally appeared on a 2003 split 7" with Erase Errata (on the album cover, the reference to "Mariah Carey" in the title was replaced by "Kim Gordon" due to potential copyright issues.) "Sonic Nurse" had decent sales, in part due to performances on TV talk shows including "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". The band was also slated to perform in 2004's Lollapalooza tour along with acts such as Pixies and The Flaming Lips, but the concert was canceled due to lackluster ticket sales. When the band toured later that year, they played extensively from their 1980s catalog.
On October 6, 2005, "LA CityBeat" reported that some of the gear stolen in 1999 was surprisingly recovered and that it might be used for recording of the next album, then tentatively titled "Sonic Life". The report also said that Jim O'Rourke might be leaving the band soon; his departure was confirmed by Lee Ranaldo in an interview with Pitchfork Media. In May 2006, the group announced on their website that ex-Pavement member Mark Ibold would play bass for the band on their upcoming tour.
"Rather Ripped" was released in Europe on June 5, 2006 and in the USA on June 13, 2006. Compared to previous Sonic Youth recordings, the album features many short, conventionally-structured, melodic songs and fewer feedback-fuelled left-field improvisations (the band's avant-garde tendencies nowadays have been largely exorcised through SYR releases and solo outings rather than band albums). Later that summer, Sonic Youth played the 2006 Bonnaroo Festival, as well as Lollapalooza, promoting the album. In December, "Rolling Stone" made it their number three Album of the Year 2006.
The band released "" in December 2006. It features tracks previously available only on vinyl, limited-release compilations, B-sides to international singles, and some material that had never before been released. This marked the band's final Geffen release.
In April 2007, the band became one of the earlier big-name rock bands to play China when they were brought on a China tour by Beijing and Shanghai based company Split Works.
In 2008, the band independently re-released "Master=Dik" for the first time on CD, exclusively at their online store. They also released two more editions to the SYR series, "" and "". "SYR7" was released on April 22, and "SYR8" was released July 28. On June 10, they also released a compilation album on Starbucks Music, called "Hits Are for Squares". The first fifteen tracks were selected by other celebrities, and track sixteen, "Slow Revolution", is a new recording by Sonic Youth.
On August 30, 2008, the band premiered two new songs at the final McCarren Park Pool show. Thurston Moore stated that in November the band would start recording a new studio album. The band did not continue their contract with Geffen, being discontented at the way Geffen handled their last four or five albums. On September 8, it was confirmed by Matador's Matablog that Sonic Youth would release its sixteenth album (titled "The Eternal") in spring 2009, on Matador Records. In December, it was also announced that the group had recently collaborated with John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame) on a piece that served as the soundtrack for a new Merce Cunningham Dance Company piece. This work was performed by the company on April 16–19, 2009, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in celebration of Cunningham's 90th birthday. On February 12, 2009 the band revealed the cover art for "The Eternal" via their website and blog. The album, produced by John Agnello, was released on June 9. With the release, Matador Records also offered an exclusive live LP only available to those who preordered the album. The band scored and composed the soundtrack of the French thriller-drama "Simon Werner a Disparu", which premiered in May, 2010 as part of the Cannes International Film Festival. The soundtrack has been released in 2011 as "SYR9: Simon Werner a Disparu", the latest edition of the SYR series.
On October 14, 2011, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore announced, through a statement by Matador, that they had separated after 27 years of marriage. Matador also explained that plans for the band remained "uncertain", despite previously hinting that they would record new material later in the year.
In an interview on November 28, 2011, Lee Ranaldo said that Sonic Youth are "ending for a while". "I'm feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point", Ranaldo said. "It was a pretty good tour overall. I mean, there was a little bit of tiptoeing around and some different situations with the travelling – you know, they're not sharing a room any more or anything like that [...] It remains to be seen at this point what happens. I think they are certainly the last shows for a while and I guess I'd just leave it at that." Ranaldo also suggested there are no plans for Sonic Youth to record new material. "There's tons and tons of archival projects and things like that still going on," he said. "I'm just happy right now to let the future take its course."
In November 2013, Ranaldo said in response to the question of a possible reunion, "I fear not. Everybody is busy with their own projects, besides that Thurston and Kim aren't getting along together very well since their split. I think you can put a cross behind Sonic Youth, same as you can put it behind the names Mike Kelley and Lou Reed. Let them all rest in peace." In her 2015 autobiography "Girl in a Band", Gordon refers several times to the band having "split up" for good.
On June 25, 2019, "The New York Times Magazine" listed Sonic Youth among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Sonic Youth is considered a pioneering band in the noise rock and alternative rock genres. Their music has also been labelled experimental rock, indie rock and post-punk.
Sonic Youth's sound relied heavily on the use of alternative tunings. Scordatura on stringed instruments has been used for centuries and alternative guitar tunings had been used for decades in blues music, and to a limited degree in rock music (such as with Lou Reed's Ostrich guitar on "The Velvet Underground & Nico"). Azerrad writes that early in their career,
[Sonic Youth] could only afford cheap guitars, and cheap guitars "sounded" like cheap guitars. But with weird tunings or something jammed under a particular fret, those humble instruments could sound rather amazing – bang a drum stick on a cheap Japanese Stratocaster copy in the right tuning, crank the amplifier to within an inch of its life and it will sound like church bells.
The tunings were painstakingly developed by Moore and Ranaldo during the band's rehearsals; Moore once reported that the odd tunings were an attempt to introduce new sounds: "When you're playing in standard tuning all the time [...] things sound pretty standard." Rather than re-tune for every song, Sonic Youth generally used a particular guitar for one or two songs, and would take dozens of instruments on tour. This would be the source of much trouble for the band, as live performances of many songs relied on specific guitars that have been uniquely prepared or otherwise altered for those exact songs.
Moore said that they were heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground. Besides The Stooges, Branca, Patti Smith, Wire, Public Image Ltd and French avant-gardist Brigitte Fontaine, another influence was 1980s-era hardcore punk; after seeing Minor Threat perform in May 1982, Moore declared them "the greatest live band I have ever seen". He also saw The Faith performing in 1981 and had a strong admiration towards their only two records, a split LP with fellow Washington, D.C. hardcore band Void and the EP "Subject to Change". While recognizing that their own music was very different from hardcore, Moore and Gordon, especially, were impressed by hardcore's speed and intensity, and by the nationwide network of musicians and fans. "It was great", said Moore, "the whole thing with slam dancing and stage diving, that was far more exciting than pogoing and spitting. [...] I thought hardcore was very musical and very radical."
Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo expressed on numerous occasions their admiration for the music of Joni Mitchell, such as this quote by Thurston Moore: "Joni Mitchell! I've used elements of her songwriting and guitar playing, and no one would ever know about it." Additionally, as with Sonic Youth, Joni Mitchell has always used a number of alternative tunings. The band named a song after her, "Hey Joni".
Members of the band have also maintained relationships with other avant-garde artists from other genres and even other media, drawing influence from the work of John Cage and Henry Cowell. For a 1988 John Peel Session, Sonic Youth covered three songs by The Fall and "Victoria" by The Kinks, also covered by The Fall. Sonic Youth has featured album art by several well-known avant-garde visual artists, such as Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler and Gerhard Richter, whose paintings from his "Candles" series was used as artwork on "Daydream Nation".
Sonic Youth's sound was generated by their vast collection of unique and exclusive instruments; from guitars altered to meet the needs of the unique tunings employed to effects and amps designed to around their whims, Sonic Youth used a wide array of custom instruments in creating their sound.
Final lineup
Former members | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28309 |
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disk drives and tape drives, but it can connect a wide range of other devices, including scanners and CD drives, although not all controllers can handle all devices. The SCSI standard defines command sets for specific peripheral device types; the presence of "unknown" as one of these types means that in theory it can be used as an interface to almost any device, but the standard is highly pragmatic and addressed toward commercial requirements.
The ancestral SCSI standard, X3.131-1986, generally referred to as SCSI-1, was published by the X3T9 technical committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1986. SCSI-2 was published in August 1990 as X3.T9.2/86-109, with further revisions in 1994 and subsequent adoption of a multitude of interfaces. Further refinements have resulted in improvements in performance and support for ever-increasing storage data capacity.
SCSI is derived from "SASI", the "Shugart Associates System Interface", developed circa 1978 and publicly disclosed in 1981. Larry Boucher is considered to be the "father" of SASI and ultimately SCSI due to his pioneering work first at Shugart Associates and then at Adaptec.
A SASI controller provided a bridge between a hard disk drive's low-level interface and a host computer, which needed to read blocks of data. SASI controller boards were typically the size of a hard disk drive and were usually physically mounted to the drive's chassis. SASI, which was used in mini- and early microcomputers, defined the interface as using a 50-pin flat ribbon connector which was adopted as the SCSI-1 connector. SASI is a fully compliant subset of SCSI-1 so that many, if not all, of the then-existing SASI controllers were SCSI-1 compatible.
Until at least February 1982, ANSI developed the specification as "SASI" and "Shugart Associates System Interface" however, the committee documenting the standard would not allow it to be named after a company. Almost a full day was devoted to agreeing to name the standard "Small Computer System Interface", which Boucher intended to be pronounced "sexy", but ENDL's Dal Allan pronounced the new acronym as "scuzzy" and that stuck.
A number of companies such as NCR Corporation, Adaptec and Optimem were early supporters of SCSI. The NCR facility in Wichita, Kansas is widely thought to have developed the industry's first SCSI controller chip; it worked the first time.
The "small" reference in "small computer system interface" is historical; since the mid-1990s, SCSI has been available on even the largest of computer systems.
Since its standardization in 1986, SCSI has been commonly used in the Amiga, Atari, Apple Macintosh and Sun Microsystems computer lines and PC server systems. Apple started using the less-expensive parallel ATA (PATA, also known as "IDE") for its low-end machines with the Macintosh Quadra 630 in 1994, and added it to its high-end desktops starting with the Power Macintosh G3 in 1997. Apple dropped on-board SCSI completely in favor of IDE and FireWire with the (Blue & White) Power Mac G3 in 1999, while still offering a PCI SCSI host adapter as an option on up to the Power Macintosh G4 (AGP Graphics) models. Sun switched its lower-end range to Serial ATA (SATA). Commodore included SCSI on the Amiga 3000/3000T systems and it was an add-on to previous Amiga 500/2000 models. Starting with the Amiga 600/1200/4000 systems Commodore switched to the IDE interface. Atari included SCSI as standard in its Atari MEGA STE, Atari TT and Atari Falcon computer models. SCSI has never been popular in the low-priced IBM PC world, owing to the lower cost and adequate performance of ATA hard disk standard. However, SCSI drives and even SCSI RAIDs became common in PC workstations for video or audio production.
Recent physical versions of SCSISerial Attached SCSI (SAS), SCSI-over-Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), and USB Attached SCSI (UAS)break from the traditional parallel SCSI bus and perform data transfer via serial communications using point-to-point links. Although much of the SCSI documentation talks about the parallel interface, all modern development efforts use serial interfaces. Serial interfaces have a number of advantages over parallel SCSI, including higher data rates, simplified cabling, longer reach, improved fault isolation and full-duplex capability. The primary reason for the shift to serial interfaces is the clock skew issue of high speed parallel interfaces, which makes the faster variants of parallel SCSI susceptible to problems caused by cabling and termination.
The non-physical iSCSI preserves the basic SCSI paradigm, especially the command set, almost unchanged, through embedding of SCSI-3 over TCP/IP. Therefore, iSCSI uses "logical connections" instead of physical links and can run on top of any network supporting IP. The actual physical links are realized on lower network layers, independently from iSCSI. Predominantly, Ethernet is used which is also of serial nature.
SCSI is popular on high-performance workstations, servers, and storage appliances. Almost all RAID subsystems on servers have used some kind of SCSI hard disk drives for decades (initially Parallel SCSI, recently SAS and Fibre Channel), though a number of manufacturers offer SATA-based RAID subsystems as a cheaper option. Moreover, SAS offers compatibility with SATA devices, creating a much broader range of options for RAID subsystems together with the existence of nearline SAS (NL-SAS) drives. Instead of SCSI, modern desktop computers and notebooks typically use SATA interfaces for internal hard disk drives, with NVME over PCIe gaining popularity as SATA can bottleneck modern solid-state drives.
SCSI is available in a variety of interfaces. The first was parallel SCSI (also called SCSI Parallel Interface or SPI), which uses a parallel bus design. Since 2005, SPI was gradually replaced by Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), which uses a serial design but retains other aspects of the technology. Many other interfaces which do not rely on complete SCSI standards still implement the SCSI command protocol; others drop physical implementation entirely while retaining the SCSI architectural model. iSCSI, for example, uses TCP/IP as a transport mechanism, which is most often transported over Gigabit Ethernet or faster network links.
SCSI interfaces have often been included on computers from various manufacturers for use under Microsoft Windows, classic Mac OS, Unix, Commodore Amiga and Linux operating systems, either implemented on the motherboard or by the means of plug-in adaptors. With the advent of SAS and SATA drives, provision for parallel SCSI on motherboards was discontinued.
Initially, the "SCSI Parallel Interface" (SPI) was the only interface using the SCSI protocol. Its standardization started as a single-ended 8-bit bus in 1986, transferring up to 5 MB/s, and evolved into a low-voltage differential 16-bit bus capable of up to 320 MB/s. The last SPI-5 standard from 2003 also defined a 640 MB/s speed which failed to be realized.
Parallel SCSI specifications include several synchronous transfer modes for the parallel cable, and an asynchronous mode. The asynchronous mode is a classic request/acknowledge protocol, which allows systems with a slow bus or simple systems to also use SCSI devices. Faster synchronous modes are used more frequently.
Internal parallel SCSI cables are usually ribbons, with two or more 50–, 68–, or 80–pin connectors attached. External cables are typically shielded (but may not be), with 50– or 68–pin connectors at each end, depending upon the specific SCSI bus width supported. The 80–pin Single Connector Attachment (SCA) is typically used for hot-pluggable devices
Fibre Channel can be used to transport SCSI information units, as defined by the Fibre Channel Protocol for SCSI (FCP). These connections are hot-pluggable and are usually implemented with optical fiber.
Serial attached SCSI (SAS) uses a modified Serial ATA data and power cable.
iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) usually uses Ethernet connectors and cables as its physical transport, but can run over any physical transport capable of transporting IP.
The SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) is a protocol that specifies how to transport SCSI commands over a reliable RDMA connection. This protocol can run over any RDMA-capable physical transport, e.g. InfiniBand or Ethernet when using RoCE or iWARP.
USB Attached SCSI allows SCSI devices to use the Universal Serial Bus.
The Automation/Drive Interface − Transport Protocol (ADT) is used to connect removable media devices, such as tape drives, with the controllers of the libraries (automation devices) in which they are installed. The ADI standard specifies the use of RS-422 for the physical connections. The second-generation ADT-2 standard defines iADT, use of the ADT protocol over IP (Internet Protocol) connections, such as over Ethernet. The Automation/Drive Interface − Commands standards (ADC, ADC-2, and ADC-3) define SCSI commands for these installations.
In addition to many different hardware implementations, the SCSI standards also include an extensive set of command definitions. The SCSI command architecture was originally defined for parallel SCSI buses but has been carried forward with minimal change for use with iSCSI and serial SCSI. Other technologies which use the SCSI command set include the ATA Packet Interface, USB Mass Storage class and FireWire SBP-2.
In SCSI terminology, communication takes place between an initiator and a target. The initiator sends a command to the target, which then responds. SCSI commands are sent in a Command Descriptor Block (CDB). The CDB consists of a one byte operation code followed by five or more bytes containing command-specific parameters.
At the end of the command sequence, the target returns a status code byte, such as 00h for success, 02h for an error (called a Check Condition), or 08h for busy. When the target returns a Check Condition in response to a command, the initiator usually then issues a SCSI Request Sense command in order to obtain a key code qualifier (KCQ) from the target. The Check Condition and Request Sense sequence involves a special SCSI protocol called a Contingent Allegiance Condition.
There are four categories of SCSI commands: N (non-data), W (writing data from initiator to target), R (reading data), and B (bidirectional). There are about 60 different SCSI commands in total, with the most commonly used being:
Each device on the SCSI bus is assigned a unique SCSI identification number or ID. Devices may encompass multiple logical units, which are addressed by logical unit number (LUN). Simple devices have just one LUN, more complex devices may have multiple LUNs.
A "direct access" (i.e. disk type) storage device consists of a number of logical blocks, addressed by Logical Block Address (LBA). A typical LBA equates to 512 bytes of storage. The usage of LBAs has evolved over time and so four different command variants are provided for reading and writing data. The Read(6) and Write(6) commands contain a 21-bit LBA address. The Read(10), Read(12), Read Long, Write(10), Write(12), and Write Long commands all contain a 32-bit LBA address plus various other parameter options.
The capacity of a "sequential access" (i.e. tape-type) device is not specified because it depends, amongst other things, on the length of the tape, which is not identified in a machine-readable way. Read and write operations on a sequential access device begin at the current tape position, not at a specific LBA. The block size on sequential access devices can either be fixed or variable, depending on the specific device. Tape devices such as half-inch 9-track tape, DDS (4 mm tapes physically similar to DAT), Exabyte, etc., support variable block sizes.
On a parallel SCSI bus, a device (e.g. host adapter, disk drive) is identified by a "SCSI ID", which is a number in the range 0–7 on a narrow bus and in the range 0–15 on a wide bus. On earlier models a physical jumper or switch controls the SCSI ID of the initiator (host adapter). On modern host adapters (since about 1997), doing I/O to the adapter sets the SCSI ID; for example, the adapter often contains a BIOS program that runs when the computer boots up and that program has menus that let the operator choose the SCSI ID of the host adapter. Alternatively, the host adapter may come with software that must be installed on the host computer to configure the SCSI ID. The traditional SCSI ID for a host adapter is 7, as that ID has the highest priority during bus arbitration (even on a 16 bit bus).
The SCSI ID of a device in a drive enclosure that has a back plane is set either by jumpers or by the slot in the enclosure the device is installed into, depending on the model of the enclosure. In the latter case, each slot on the enclosure's back plane delivers control signals to the drive to select a unique SCSI ID. A SCSI enclosure without a back plane often has a switch for each drive to choose the drive's SCSI ID. The enclosure is packaged with connectors that must be plugged into the drive where the jumpers are typically located; the switch emulates the necessary jumpers. While there is no standard that makes this work, drive designers typically set up their jumper headers in a consistent format that matches the way that these switches implement.
Setting the bootable (or first) hard disk to SCSI ID 0 is an accepted IT community recommendation. SCSI ID 2 is usually set aside for the floppy disk drive while SCSI ID 3 is typically for a CD-ROM drive.
Note that a SCSI target device (which can be called a "physical unit") is often divided into smaller "logical units". For example, a high-end disk subsystem may be a single SCSI device but contain dozens of individual disk drives, each of which is a logical unit. Further, a RAID array may be a single SCSI device, but may contain many logical units, each of which is a "virtual" disk—a stripe set or mirror set constructed from portions of real disk drives. The SCSI ID, WWN, etc. in this case identifies the whole subsystem, and a second number, the logical unit number (LUN) identifies a disk device (real or virtual) within the subsystem.
It is quite common, though incorrect, to refer to the logical unit itself as a "LUN". Accordingly, the actual LUN may be called a "LUN number" or "LUN id".
In modern SCSI transport protocols, there is an automated process for the "discovery" of the IDs. The SSA initiator (normally the host computer through the 'host adaptor') "walk the loop" to determine what devices are connected and then assigns each one a 7-bit "hop-count" value. Fibre Channel – Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) initiators use the LIP (Loop Initialization Protocol) to interrogate each device port for its WWN (World Wide Name). For iSCSI, because of the unlimited scope of the (IP) network, the process is quite complicated. These discovery processes occur at power-on/initialization time and also if the bus topology changes later, for example if an extra device is added.
While all SCSI controllers can work with read/write storage devices, i.e. disk and tape, some will not work with some other device types; older controllers are likely to be more limited, sometimes by their driver software, and more Device Types were added as SCSI evolved. Even CD-ROMs are not handled by all controllers. Device Type is a 5-bit field reported by a SCSI Inquiry Command; defined SCSI Peripheral Device Types include, in addition to many varieties of storage device, printer, scanner, communications device, and a catch-all "processor" type for devices not otherwise listed.
In larger SCSI servers, the disk-drive devices are housed in an intelligent enclosure that supports SCSI Enclosure Services (SES). The initiator can communicate with the enclosure using a specialized set of SCSI commands to access power, cooling, and other non-data characteristics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28313 |
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), also known as the Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Australasia (Oceania), and 1993 in South America. In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom (SFC). In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different cartridges from being compatible with one another.
The SNES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time. The system was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated in game cartridges to be competitive into the next generation.
The SNES was a global success, becoming the best-selling console of the 16-bit era after launching relatively late and facing intense competition from Sega's Genesis console in North America and Europe. Overlapping the NES's 61.9 million unit sales, the SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, with 49.1 million units sold worldwide by the time it was discontinued in 2003. It continues to be popular among collectors and retro gamers, with new homebrew games and Nintendo's emulated rereleases, such as on the Virtual Console, the Super NES Classic Edition, and Nintendo Switch Online.
To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, and Sega followed suit with the Mega Drive in 1988. The two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics and sound over the 8-bit NES. However, it took several years for Sega's system to become successful. Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system, but they reconsidered when they began to see their dominance in the market slipping.
Designed by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21, 1990 for . It was an instant success; Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours, and the resulting social disturbance led the Japanese government to ask video game manufacturers to schedule future console releases on weekends. The system's release also gained the attention of the Yakuza, leading to a decision to ship the devices at night to avoid robbery.
With the Super Famicom quickly outselling its rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendo's success was partially due to the retention of most of its key third-party developers, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei, and Enix.
Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a redesigned version of the Super Famicom, in North America for . It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23, 1991, with an official nationwide release date of September 9, 1991.
Most of the PAL region versions of the console use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling and the length of the joypad leads. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL-M, uses the North American design. Both the NES and SNES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente.
The SNES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were well received in the marketplace. In Japan, only two games were initially available: "Super Mario World" and "F-Zero". (A third game, "Bombuzal", was released during the launch week.) In North America, "Super Mario World" launched as a bundle with the console; other launch games include "F-Zero", "Pilotwings" (both of which demonstrate the console's Mode 7 pseudo-3D rendering capability), "SimCity", and "Gradius III".
The rivalry between Nintendo and Sega resulted in what has been described as one of the most notable console wars in video game history, in which Sega positioned the Genesis as the "cool" console, with games aimed at older audiences, and aggressive advertisements that occasionally attacked the competition. Nintendo, however, scored an early public-relations advantage by securing the first console conversion of Capcom's arcade classic "Street Fighter II" for SNES, which took more than a year to make the transition to the Genesis. Though the Genesis had a two-year lead to launch time, a much larger library of games, and a lower price point, it only represented an estimated 60% of the American 16-bit console market in June 1992, and neither console could maintain a definitive lead for several years. "Donkey Kong Country" is said to have helped establish the SNES's market prominence in the latter years of the 16-bit generation, and for a time, maintain against the PlayStation and Saturn. According to Nintendo, the company had sold more than 20 million SNES units in the U.S. According to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on NPD sales data, the SNES outsold the Genesis in the U.S. market.
During the NES era, Nintendo maintained exclusive control over games released for the system—the company had to approve every game, each third-party developer could only release up to five games per year (but some third parties got around this by using different names, such as Konami's "Ultra Games" brand), those games could not be released on another console within two years, and Nintendo was the exclusive manufacturer and supplier of NES cartridges. However, competition from Sega's console brought an end to this practice; in 1991, Acclaim began releasing games for both platforms, with most of Nintendo's other licensees following suit over the next several years; Capcom (which licensed some games to Sega instead of producing them directly) and Square were the most notable holdouts.
Nintendo continued to carefully review submitted games, scoring them on a 40-point scale and allocating marketing resources accordingly. Each region performed separate evaluations. Nintendo of America also maintained a policy that, among other things, limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. The surprise arcade hit "Mortal Kombat" (1992), a gory fighting game with huge splashes of blood and graphically violent fatality moves, was heavily censored by Nintendo. Because the Genesis version retains all of the gore, it outsold the censored SNES version by a ratio of nearly three to one.
U.S. Senators Herb Kohl and Joe Lieberman convened a Congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, to investigate the marketing of violent video games to children. Though Nintendo took the high ground with moderate success, the hearings led to the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association and the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the inclusion of ratings on all video games. With these ratings in place, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed.
While other companies were moving on to 32-bit systems, Rare and Nintendo proved that the SNES was still a strong contender in the market. In November 1994, Rare released "Donkey Kong Country", a platform game featuring 3D models and textures pre-rendered on SGI workstations. With its detailed graphics, fluid animation and high-quality music, "Donkey Kong Country" rivals the aesthetic quality of games that were being released on newer 32-bit CD-based consoles. In the last 45 days of 1994, 6.1 million copies were sold, making it the fastest-selling video game in history to that date. This game sent a message that early 32-bit systems had little to offer over the SNES, and proved the market for the more advanced consoles of the near future. According to TRSTS reports, two of the top five best-selling games in the U.S. for December 1996 are Super NES games.
In October 1997, Nintendo released a redesigned model of the SNES (the SNS-101 model referred to as "New-Style Super NES") in North America for , with some units including the pack-in game "". Like the earlier redesign of the NES (model NES-101), the new model is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, but it lacks S-Video and RGB output, and it is among the last major SNES-related releases in the region. A similarly redesigned Super Famicom Jr. was released in Japan at around the same time. However, the redesign did not make it to Europe.
Nintendo ceased the production of the SNES in North America in 1999, about two years after releasing "Kirby's Dream Land 3" (its final first-party game in the US) on November 27, 1997, and a year after releasing "Frogger" (its final third-party game in the US). In Japan, Nintendo continued production of both the Family Computer and the Super Famicom until September 25, 2003, and new games were produced until the year 2000, ending with the release of "Metal Slader Glory Director's Cut" on November 29, 2000.
Many popular SNES games were ported to the Game Boy Advance, which has similar video capabilities. In 2005, Nintendo announced that SNES games would be made available for download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. On October 31, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would no longer repair Family Computer or Super Famicom systems due to an increasing shortage of the necessary parts. On March 3, 2016, Nintendo Co., Ltd. announced that it would bring SNES games to the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL (and later the New Nintendo 2DS XL) via its eShop download service. At the "Nintendo Direct" event on September 4, 2019, Nintendo announced that it would be bringing select SNES games to the Nintendo Switch Online platform.
The 16-bit design of the SNES incorporates graphics and sound co-processors that perform tiling and simulated 3D effects, a palette of 32,768 colors, and 8-channel ADPCM audio. These base platform features, plus the ability to dramatically extend them all through substantial chip upgrades inside of each cartridge, represent a leap over the 8-bit NES generation and some significant advantages over 16-bit competitors such as the Genesis.
The CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, which is a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz but the CPU will slow down to either 2.68 MHz or 1.79 MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.
This CPU has an 8-bit data bus and two address buses. The 24-bit "Bus A" is used for general accesses, while the 8-bit "Bus B" is used to access support chip registers such as the video and audio co-processors.
The WDC 65C816 also supports an 8-channel DMA unit; an 8-bit parallel I/O port a controller port interface circuits allowing serial and parallel access to controller data; a 16-bit multiplication and division unit; and circuitry for generating non-maskable interrupts on V-blank and IRQ interrupts on calculated screen positions.
Early revisions of the 5A22 used in SHVC boards are prone to spontaneous failure; this can produce a variety of symptoms including graphics glitches during Mode 7 operation, a black screen on power-on, or inability to read the controllers properly. The first revision 5A22 also had a fatal bug in the DMA controller that could cause games to crash when running; this was corrected in subsequent revisions.
The console contains 128KB of general-purpose RAM, which is separate from the RAM dedicated to the video and audio subsystems.
The "Picture Processing Unit" (PPU) consists of two separate but closely tied IC packages. It contains 64KB of SRAM for storing video data, 544 bytes of object attribute memory (OAM) for storing sprite data, and 256 × 15 bits of color generator RAM (CGRAM) for storing palette data. This CGRAM allows the console to display up to 256 colors, chosen from the 15-bit RGB color space, for a total of 32,768 possible colors. The PPU is clocked by the same signal as the CPU, and generates a pixel every two or four cycles.
Eight video modes are available to the programmer:
The audio subsystem, the S-SMP, is a dedicated single chip consisting of an 8-bit CPU, along with a 16-bit DSP, and 64KB of SRAM. It is designed and produced by Sony and is completely independent from the rest of the system. It is clocked at a nominal 24.576 MHz in both NTSC and PAL systems.
It is capable of producing stereo sound, composed from 8 voices generated using 8 bit audio samples and various effects such as echo.
Nintendo employed several types of regional lockout, including both physical and hardware incompatibilities.
Physically, the cartridges are shaped differently for different regions. North American cartridges have a rectangular bottom with inset grooves matching protruding tabs in the console, while other regions' cartridges are narrower with a smooth curve on the front and no grooves. The physical incompatibility can be overcome with use of various adapters, or through modification of the console.
Internally, a regional lockout chip (CIC) within the console and in each cartridge prevents PAL region games from being played on Japanese or North American consoles and vice versa. The Japanese and North American machines have the same region chip. This can be overcome through the use of adapters, typically by inserting the imported cartridge in one slot and a cartridge with the correct region chip in a second slot. Alternatively, disconnecting one pin of the console's lockout chip will prevent it from locking the console; hardware in later games can detect this situation, so it later became common to install a switch to reconnect the lockout chip as needed.
PAL consoles face another incompatibility when playing out-of-region cartridges: the NTSC video standard specifies video at 60 Hz while PAL operates at 50 Hz, resulting in approximately 16.7% slower framerate. Additionally, PAL's higher resolution results in letterboxing of the output image. Some commercial PAL region releases exhibit this same problem and, therefore, can be played in NTSC systems without issue, while other games will face a 20% speedup if played in an NTSC console. To mostly correct this issue, a switch can be added to place the SNES PPU into a 60 Hz mode supported by most newer PAL televisions. Later games will detect this setting and refuse to run, requiring the switch to be thrown only after the check completes.
All versions of the Super NES are predominantly gray, of slightly different shades. The original North American version, designed by Nintendo of America industrial designer Lance Barr (who previously redesigned the Famicom to become the NES), has a boxy design with purple sliding switches and a dark gray eject lever. The loading bay surface is curved, both to invite interaction and to prevent food or drinks from being placed on the console and spilling as had happened with the flat surfaced NES. The Japanese and European versions are more rounded, with darker gray accents and buttons. The North American New-style Super NES (model SNS-101) and the Japanese Super Famicom Jr. (model SHVC-101), all designed by Barr, are both smaller with a rounded contour; however, the SNS-101 buttons are purple where the Super Famicom Jr. buttons are gray. The European and American versions of the SNES controllers have much longer cables compared to the Japanese Super Famicom controllers.
All versions incorporate a top-loading slot for game cartridges, although the shape of the slot differs between regions to match the different shapes of the cartridges. The MULTI OUT connector (later used on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube) can output composite video, S-Video and RGB signals, as well as RF with an external RF modulator. Original versions additionally include a 28-pin expansion port under a small cover on the bottom of the unit and a standard RF output with channel selection switch on the back; the redesigned models output composite video only, requiring an external modulator for RF.
The ABS plastic used in the casing of some older SNES and Super Famicom consoles is particularly susceptible to oxidization with exposure to air, likely due to an incorrect mixture of the stabilizing or flame retarding additives. This, along with the particularly light color of the original plastic, causes affected consoles to quickly become yellow; if the sections of the casing came from different batches of plastic, a "two-tone" effect results. This issue may be reversed with a method called Retrobrighting, where a mixture of chemicals is applied to the case and exposed to UV light.
The Nintendo Super System is an arcade system for retail preview of 11 particular Super NES games in the United States, similar to the PlayChoice-10 for NES games. It consists of slightly modified Super NES hardware with a menu interface and 25-inch monitor, that allows gameplay for a certain amount of time depending on game credits. Manufacturing of this model was discontinued in 1992.
The cartridge media of the console is officially referred to as Game Pak in most Western regions, and as in Japan and parts of Latin America. While the SNES can address 128 Mbit, only 117.75 Mbit are actually available for cartridge use. A fairly normal mapping could easily address up to 95 Mbit of ROM data (48 Mbit at FastROM speed) with 8 Mbit of battery-backed RAM. However, most available memory access controllers only support mappings of up to 32 Mbit. The largest games released ("Tales of Phantasia" and "Star Ocean") contain 48 Mbit of ROM data, while the smallest games contain only 2 Mbit.
Cartridges may also contain battery-backed SRAM to save the game state, extra working RAM, custom coprocessors, or any other hardware that will not exceed the maximum current rating of the console.
1757 games were officially released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, 717 in North America (plus 4 championship cartridges), 521 in Europe, 1,448 in Japan, 231 on Satellaview, and 13 on Sufami Turbo. Many SNES games like "Super Mario World" (1990), "" (1991), "Donkey Kong Country" (1994), "EarthBound" (1994), "Super Metroid" (1994), "Yoshi's Island" (1995) and more are often considered to be some of the greatest video games of all time and have been rereleased several times, including the Virtual Console, SNES Classic Mini, and Nintendo's Classic games service on Nintendo Switch Online. It is also possible to play all Game Boy games on the SNES with the Super Game Boy add-on. There are also many emulators for SNES software (see List of SNES emulators). Some SNES games support Mode 7, a graphics mode which transforms the background layer into a two-dimensional horizontal texture-mapped plane that trades height for depth.
The standard SNES controller adds X and Y face buttons to the design of the NES iteration, arranging the four in a diamond shape, and adds two shoulder buttons. It features an ergonomic design by Lance Barr, later used for the NES-102 model controllers, also designed by Barr. The Japanese and PAL region versions incorporate the colors of the four action buttons into the system's logo. The North American version's buttons are colored to match the redesigned console; the X and Y buttons are lavender with concave faces, and the A and B buttons are purple with convex faces. Several later consoles derive elements of their controller design from the SNES, including the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Xbox, and Wii Classic Controller.
Throughout the course of its life, a number of peripherals were released which added to the functionality of the SNES. Many of these devices were modeled after earlier add-ons for the NES: the Super Scope is a light gun functionally similar to the NES Zapper (though the Super Scope features wireless capabilities) and the Super Advantage is an arcade-style joystick with adjustable turbo settings akin to the NES Advantage. Nintendo also released the SNES Mouse in conjunction with "Mario Paint". Hudson Soft, under license from Nintendo, released the Super Multitap, a multiplayer adapter for use with its popular series of "Bomberman" games. Some of the more unusual controllers include the BatterUP baseball bat, the Life Fitness Entertainment System (an exercise bike controller with built-in monitoring software), and the TeeV Golf golf club.
Though Nintendo never released an adapter for playing NES games on the SNES, the Super Game Boy adapter cartridge allows games designed for Nintendo's portable Game Boy system to be played on the SNES. The Super Game Boy touts several feature enhancements over the Game Boy, including palette substitution, custom screen borders, and access to the SNES console's features by specially enhanced Game Boy games. Japan also saw the release of the Super Game Boy 2, which adds a communication port to enable a second Game Boy to connect for multiplayer games.
Like the NES before it, the SNES has unlicensed third-party peripherals, including a new version of the Game Genie cheat cartridge designed for use with SNES games.
Soon after the release of the SNES, companies began marketing backup devices such as the Super Wildcard, Super Pro Fighter Q, and Game Doctor. These devices create a backup of a cartridge. They can also be used to play illicit ROM images or to create copies of rented video games, violating copyright laws in many jurisdictions.
Japan saw the release of the Satellaview, a modem which attaches to the Super Famicom's expansion port and connected to the St.GIGA satellite radio station from April 23, 1995 to June 30, 2000. Satellaview users could download gaming news and specially designed games, which were frequently either remakes of or sequels to older Famicom games, and released in installments. In the United States, the relatively short-lived XBAND allowed users to connect to a network via a dial-up modem to compete against other players around the country.
During the SNES's life, Nintendo contracted with two different companies to develop a CD-ROM-based peripheral for the console to compete with Sega's CD-ROM based add-on, Sega CD. Although a SNES-CD prototype console was produced by Sony, Nintendo's deals with both Sony and Philips were canceled, with Philips gaining the right to release a series of games based on Nintendo franchises for its CD-i multimedia console and Sony going on to develop its own PlayStation console based on its initial dealings with Nintendo.
As part of the overall plan for the SNES, rather than include an expensive CPU that would still become obsolete in a few years, the hardware designers made it easy to interface special coprocessor chips to the console, just like the MMC chips used for most NES games. This is most often characterized by 16 additional pins on the cartridge card edge.
The Super FX is a RISC CPU designed to perform functions that the main CPU can not feasibly do. The chip is primarily used to create 3D game worlds made with polygons, texture mapping and light source shading. The chip can also be used to enhance 2D games.
The Nintendo fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) chip allowed for fast vector-based calculations, bitmap conversions, both 2D and 3D coordinate transformations, and other functions. Four revisions of the chip exist, each physically identical but with different microcode. The DSP-1 version, including the later 1A and 1B bug fix revisions, is used most often; the DSP-2, DSP-3, and DSP-4 are used in only one game each.
Similar to the 5A22 CPU in the console, the SA-1 chip contains a 65c816 processor core clocked at 10 MHz, a memory mapper, DMA, decompression and bitplane conversion circuitry, several programmable timers, and CIC region lockout functionality.
In Japan, games could be downloaded cheaper than standard cartridges, from Nintendo Power kiosks onto special cartridges containing flash memory and a MegaChips MX15001TFC chip. The chip manages communication with the kiosks to download ROM images, and has an initial menu to select a game. Some were published both in cartridge and download form, while others were download only. The service closed on February 8, 2007.
Many cartridges contain other enhancement chips, most of which were created for use by a single company in a few games; the only limitations are the speed of the SNES itself to transfer data from the chip and the current limit of the console.
Like the NES before it, the SNES has retained a long-lived fan base. It has continued to thrive on the second-hand market, emulators, and remakes. The SNES has taken the same revival path as the NES.
Emulation projects began with the initial release of VSMC in 1994, and Super Pasofami became the first working SNES emulator in 1996. During that time, two competing emulation projects—Snes96 and Snes97—merged to form Snes9x. In 1997, SNES enthusiasts began programming an emulator named ZSNES. In 2004, higan began development as bsnes, in an effort to emulate the system as closely as possible.
Nintendo of America took the same stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image files and the use of emulators as it did with the NES, insisting that they represented flagrant software piracy. Proponents of SNES emulation cite discontinued production of the SNES constituting abandonware status, the right of the owner of the respective game to make a personal backup via devices such as the Retrode, space shifting for private use, the desire to develop homebrew games for the system, the frailty of SNES ROM cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports. Nintendo designed a hobbyist development system for the Super NES, but never released it.
Emulation of the Super NES is also available on platforms such as Android, and iOS, the Nintendo DS line, the Gizmondo, the Dingoo and the GP2X by GamePark Holdings, as well as PDAs. While individual games have been included with emulators on some GameCube discs, Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii marks the introduction of officially sanctioned general SNES emulation.
A dedicated mini-console, the Super NES Classic Edition, was released in September 2017 after the NES Classic Edition. The emulation-based system, which is physically modeled after the North American and European versions of the SNES in their respective regions, is bundled with two SNES-style controllers and comes preloaded with 21 games, including the previously unreleased "Star Fox 2".
Approximately 49.1 million Super NES consoles were sold worldwide, with 23.35 million of those units sold in the Americas and 17.17 million in Japan. Although it could not quite repeat the success of the NES, which sold 61.91 million units worldwide, the SNES was the best-selling console of its era.
In a 1997 year-end review, a team of five "Electronic Gaming Monthly" editors gave the Super Nintendo Entertainment System scores of 5.5, 8.0, 7.0, 7.0, and 8.0. While they criticized how few new games were coming out for the system and how dated its graphics were compared to current generation consoles, they regarded its selection of must-have games to be still unsurpassed. Additionally noting that used Super NES games were readily available in bargain bins, most of them still recommended buying a Super NES. In 2007, GameTrailers named the SNES as the second-best console of all time in their list of top ten consoles that "left their mark on the history of gaming", citing its graphics, sound, and library of top-quality games. In 2015, they also named it the best Nintendo console of all time, saying, "The list of games we love from this console completely annihilates any other roster from the Big N." Technology columnist Don Reisinger proclaimed "The SNES is the greatest console of all time" in January 2008, citing the quality of the games and the console's dramatic improvement over its predecessor; fellow technology columnist Will Greenwald replied with a more nuanced view, giving the SNES top marks with his heart, the NES with his head, and the PlayStation (for its controller) with his hands. GamingExcellence also gave the SNES first place in 2008, declaring it "simply the most timeless system ever created" with many games that stand the test of time and citing its innovation in controller design, graphics capabilities, and game storytelling. At the same time, GameDaily rated it 5th of the 10 greatest consoles for its graphics, audio, controllers, and games. In 2009, IGN named the Super Nintendo Entertainment System the fourth best video game console, complimenting its audio and number of AAA games. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28314 |
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language underpinning the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis". It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg, Ted Kaehler, Diana Merry, Scott Wallace, and others during the 1970s.
The language was first generally released as Smalltalk-80. Smalltalk-like languages are in active development and have gathered loyal communities of users around them. ANSI Smalltalk was ratified in 1998 and represents the standard version of Smalltalk.
Smalltalk took second place for "most loved programming language" in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey in 2017, but it was not among the 26 most loved programming languages of the 2018 survey.
There are a large number of Smalltalk variants. The unqualified word "Smalltalk" is often used to indicate the Smalltalk-80 language, the first version to be made publicly available and created in 1980. The first environment to run the Smalltalk were Xerox Alto computers.
Smalltalk was the product of research led by Alan Kay at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC); Alan Kay designed most of the early Smalltalk versions, Adele Goldberg wrote most of the documentation, and Dan Ingalls implemented most of the early versions. The first version, termed Smalltalk-71, was created by Kay in a few mornings on a bet that a programming language based on the idea of message passing inspired by Simula could be implemented in "a page of code". A later variant used for research work is now termed Smalltalk-72 and influenced the development of the Actor model. Its syntax and execution model were very different from modern Smalltalk variants.
After significant revisions which froze some aspects of execution semantics to gain performance (by adopting a Simula-like class inheritance model of execution), Smalltalk-76 was created. This system had a development environment featuring most of the now familiar tools, including a class library code browser/editor. Smalltalk-80 added metaclasses, to help maintain the "everything is an object" (except private instance variables) paradigm by associating properties and behavior with individual classes, and even primitives such as integer and boolean values (for example, to support different ways to create instances).
Smalltalk-80 was the first language variant made available outside of PARC, first as Smalltalk-80 Version 1, given to a small number of firms (Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Tektronix, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)) and universities (UC Berkeley) for "peer review" and implementing on their platforms. Later (in 1983) a general availability implementation, named Smalltalk-80 Version 2, was released as an image (platform-independent file with object definitions) and a virtual machine specification. ANSI Smalltalk has been the standard language reference since 1998.
Two of the currently popular Smalltalk implementation variants are descendants of those original Smalltalk-80 images. Squeak is an open source implementation derived from Smalltalk-80 Version 1 by way of Apple Smalltalk. VisualWorks is derived from Smalltalk-80 version 2 by way of Smalltalk-80 2.5 and ObjectWorks (both products of ParcPlace Systems, a Xerox PARC spin-off company formed to bring Smalltalk to the market). As an interesting link between generations, in 2001 Vassili Bykov implemented Hobbes, a virtual machine running Smalltalk-80 inside VisualWorks. (Dan Ingalls later ported Hobbes to Squeak.)
During the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Smalltalk environments—including support, training and add-ons—were sold by two competing organizations: ParcPlace Systems and Digitalk, both California based. ParcPlace Systems tended to focus on the Unix/Sun microsystems market, while Digitalk focused on Intel-based PCs running Microsoft Windows or IBM's OS/2. Both firms struggled to take Smalltalk mainstream due to Smalltalk's substantial memory needs, limited run-time performance, and initial lack of supported connectivity to SQL-based relational database servers. While the high price of ParcPlace Smalltalk limited its market penetration to mid-sized and large commercial organizations, the Digitalk products initially tried to reach a wider audience with a lower price. IBM initially supported the Digitalk product, but then entered the market with a Smalltalk product in 1995 called VisualAge/Smalltalk. Easel introduced Enfin at this time on Windows and OS/2. Enfin became far more popular in Europe, as IBM introduced it into IT shops before their development of IBM Smalltalk (later VisualAge). Enfin was later acquired by Cincom Systems, and is now sold under the name ObjectStudio, and is part of the Cincom Smalltalk product suite.
In 1995, ParcPlace and Digitalk merged into ParcPlace-Digitalk and then rebranded in 1997 as ObjectShare, located in Irvine, CA. ObjectShare (NASDAQ: OBJS) was traded publicly until 1999, when it was delisted and dissolved. The merged firm never managed to find an effective response to Java as to market positioning, and by 1997 its owners were looking to sell the business. In 1999, Seagull Software acquired the ObjectShare Java development lab (including the original Smalltalk/V and Visual Smalltalk development team), and still owns VisualSmalltalk, although worldwide distribution rights for the Smalltalk product remained with ObjectShare who then sold them to Cincom. VisualWorks was sold to Cincom and is now part of Cincom Smalltalk. Cincom has backed Smalltalk strongly, releasing multiple new versions of VisualWorks and ObjectStudio each year since 1999.
Cincom, GemTalk, and Instantiations, continue to sell Smalltalk environments. IBM has 'end of life'd VisualAge Smalltalk having in the late 1990s decided to back Java instead and it is, , supported by Instantiations, Inc. who renamed the product VA Smalltalk (VAST Platform) and continue to release new versions yearly. The open Squeak implementation has an active community of developers, including many of the original Smalltalk community, and has recently been used to provide the Etoys environment on the OLPC project, a toolkit for developing collaborative applications Croquet Project, and the Open Cobalt virtual world application. GNU Smalltalk is a free software implementation of a derivative of Smalltalk-80 from the GNU project. Pharo Smalltalk is a fork of Squeak oriented toward research and use in commercial environments.
A significant development, that has spread across all Smalltalk environments as of 2016, is the increasing usage of two web frameworks, Seaside and AIDA/Web, to simplify the building of complex web applications. Seaside has seen considerable market interest with Cincom, Gemstone, and Instantiations incorporating and extending it.
Smalltalk was one of many object-oriented programming languages based on Simula. Smalltalk is also one of the most influential programming languages. Virtually all of the object-oriented languages that came after—Flavors, CLOS, Objective-C, Java, Python, Ruby, and many others—were influenced by Smalltalk. Smalltalk was also one of the most popular languages with the Agile Methods, Rapid Prototyping, and Software Patterns communities. The highly productive environment provided by Smalltalk platforms made them ideal for rapid, iterative development.
Smalltalk emerged from a larger program of ARPA funded research that in many ways defined the modern world of computing. In addition to Smalltalk, working prototypes of things such as hypertext, GUIs, multimedia, the mouse, telepresence, and the Internet were developed by ARPA researchers in the 1960s. Alan Kay (one of the inventors of Smalltalk) also described a tablet computer he called the Dynabook which resembles modern tablet computers like the iPad.
Smalltalk environments were often the first to develop what are now common object-oriented software design patterns. One of the most popular is the model–view–controller (MVC) pattern for user interface design. The MVC pattern enables developers to have multiple consistent views of the same underlying data. It's ideal for software development environments, where there are various views (e.g., entity-relation, dataflow, object model, etc.) of the same underlying specification. Also, for simulations or games where the underlying model may be viewed from various angles and levels of abstraction.
In addition to the MVC pattern, the Smalltalk language and environment were highly influential in the history of the graphical user interface (GUI) and the "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) user interface, font editors, and desktop metaphors for UI design. The powerful built-in debugging and object inspection tools that came with Smalltalk environments set the standard for all the integrated development environments, starting with Lisp Machine environments, that came after.
As in other object-oriented languages, the central concept in Smalltalk-80 (but not in Smalltalk-72) is that of an "object". An object is always an "instance" of a "class". Classes are "blueprints" that describe the properties and behavior of their instances. For example, a GUI's window class might declare that windows have properties such as the label, the position and whether the window is visible or not. The class might also declare that instances support operations such as opening, closing, moving and hiding. Each particular window object would have its own values of those properties, and each of them would be able to perform operations defined by its class.
A Smalltalk object can do exactly three things:
The state an object holds is always private to that object. Other objects can query or change that state only by sending requests (messages) to the object to do so. Any message can be sent to any object: when a message is received, the receiver determines whether that message is appropriate. Alan Kay has commented that despite the attention given to objects, messaging is the most important concept in Smalltalk: "The big idea is 'messaging'—that is what the kernel of Smalltalk/Squeak is all about (and it's something that was never quite completed in our Xerox PARC phase)."
Unlike most other languages, Smalltalk objects can be modified while the system is running. Live coding and applying fixes ‘on-the-fly’ is a dominant programming methodology for Smalltalk and is one of the main reasons for its efficiency.
Smalltalk is a "pure" object-oriented programming language, meaning that, unlike C++ and Java, there is no difference between values which are objects and values which are primitive types. In Smalltalk, primitive values such as integers, booleans and characters are also objects, in the sense that they are instances of corresponding classes, and operations on them are invoked by sending messages. A programmer can change or extend (through subclassing) the classes that implement primitive values, so that new behavior can be defined for their instances—for example, to implement new control structures—or even so that their existing behavior will be changed. This fact is summarized in the commonly heard phrase "In Smalltalk everything is an object", which may be more accurately expressed as "all values are objects", as variables are not.
Since all values are objects, classes are also objects. Each class is an instance of the "metaclass" of that class. Metaclasses in turn are also objects, and are all instances of a class called Metaclass. Code blocks—Smalltalk's way of expressing anonymous functions—are also objects.
Reflection is a term that computer scientists apply to software programs that have the ability to inspect their own structure, for example their parse tree or data types of input and output parameters. Reflection is a feature of dynamic, interactive languages such as Smalltalk and Lisp. Interactive programs with reflection (either interpreted or compiled) maintain the state of all in-memory objects, including the code object itself, which are generated during parsing/compilation and are programmatically accessible and modifiable.
Reflection is also a feature of having a meta-model as Smalltalk does. The meta-model is the model that describes the language, and developers can use the meta-model to do things like walk through, examine, and modify the parse tree of an object. Or find all the instances of a certain kind of structure (e.g., all instances of the Method class in the meta-model).
Smalltalk-80 is a totally reflective system, implemented in Smalltalk-80. Smalltalk-80 provides both structural and computational reflection. Smalltalk is a structurally reflective system which structure is defined by Smalltalk-80 objects. The classes and methods that define the system are also objects and fully part of the system that they help define. The Smalltalk compiler compiles textual source code into method objects, typically instances of codice_1. These get added to classes by storing them in a class's method dictionary. The part of the class hierarchy that defines classes can add new classes to the system. The system is extended by running Smalltalk-80 code that creates or defines classes and methods. In this way a Smalltalk-80 system is a "living" system, carrying around the ability to extend itself at run time.
Since the classes are objects, they can be asked questions such as "what methods do you implement?" or "what fields/slots/instance variables do you define?". So objects can easily be inspected, copied, (de)serialized and so on with generic code that applies to any object in the system.
Smalltalk-80 also provides computational reflection, the ability to observe the computational state of the system. In languages derived from the original Smalltalk-80 the current activation of a method is accessible as an object named via a pseudo-variable (one of the six reserved words), codice_2. By sending messages to codice_2 a method activation can ask questions like "who sent this message to me". These facilities make it possible to implement co-routines or Prolog-like back-tracking without modifying the virtual machine. The exception system is implemented using this facility. One of the more interesting uses of this is in the Seaside web framework which relieves the programmer of dealing with the complexity of a Web Browser's back button by storing continuations for each edited page and switching between them as the user navigates a web site. Programming the web server using Seaside can then be done using a more conventional programming style.
An example of how Smalltalk can use reflection is the mechanism for handling errors. When an object is sent a message that it does not implement, the virtual machine sends the object the codice_4 message with a reification of the message as an argument. The message (another object, an instance of codice_5) contains the selector of the message and an codice_6 of its arguments. In an interactive Smalltalk system the default implementation of codice_4 is one that opens an error window (a Notifier) reporting the error to the user. Through this and the reflective facilities the user can examine the context in which the error occurred, redefine the offending code, and continue, all within the system, using Smalltalk-80's reflective facilities.
By creating a class that understands (implements) only doesNotUnderstand:, one can create an instance that can intercept any message sent to it via its doesNotUnderstand: method. Such instances are called transparent proxies. Such proxies can then be used to implement a number of facilities such as distributed Smalltalk where messages are exchanged between multiple Smalltalk systems, database interfaces where objects are transparently faulted out of a database, promises, etc. The design of distributed Smalltalk influenced such systems as CORBA.
Smalltalk-80 syntax is rather minimalist, based on only a handful of declarations and reserved words. In fact, only six "keywords" are reserved in Smalltalk: codice_8, codice_9, codice_10, codice_11, codice_12, and codice_2. These are properly termed "pseudo-variables", identifiers that follow the rules for variable identifiers but denote bindings that a programmer cannot change. The codice_8, codice_9, and codice_10 pseudo-variables are singleton instances. codice_11 and codice_12 refer to the receiver of a message within a method activated in response to that message, but sends to codice_12 are looked up in the superclass of the method's defining class rather than the class of the receiver, which allows methods in subclasses to invoke methods of the same name in superclasses. codice_2 refers to the current activation record. The only built-in language constructs are message sends, assignment, method return and literal syntax for some objects. From its origins as a language for children of all ages, standard Smalltalk syntax uses punctuation in a manner more like English than mainstream coding languages. The remainder of the language, including control structures for conditional evaluation and iteration, is implemented on top of the built-in constructs by the standard Smalltalk class library. (For performance reasons, implementations may recognize and treat as special some of those messages; however, this is only an optimization and is not hardwired into the language syntax.)
The adage that "Smalltalk syntax fits on a postcard" refers to a code snippet by Ralph Johnson, demonstrating all the basic standard syntactic elements of methods:
exampleWithNumber: x
The following examples illustrate the most common objects which can be written as literal values in Smalltalk-80 methods.
Numbers. The following list illustrates some of the possibilities.
42
-42
123.45
1.2345e2
2r10010010
16rA000
The last two entries are a binary and a hexadecimal number, respectively. The number before the 'r' is the radix or base. The base does not have to be a power of two; for example 36rSMALLTALK is a valid number equal to 80738163270632 decimal.
Characters are written by preceding them with a dollar sign:
$A
Strings are sequences of characters enclosed in single quotes:
'Hello, world!'
To include a quote in a string, escape it using a second quote:
'I said, "Hello, world!" to them.'
Double quotes do not need escaping, since single quotes delimit a string:
'I said, "Hello, world!" to them.'
Two equal strings (strings are equal if they contain all the same characters) can be different objects residing in different places in memory. In addition to strings, Smalltalk has a class of character sequence objects called Symbol. Symbols are guaranteed to be unique—there can be no two equal symbols which are different objects. Because of that, symbols are very cheap to compare and are often used for language artifacts such as message selectors (see below).
Symbols are written as # followed by a string literal. For example:
If the sequence does not include whitespace or punctuation characters,
this can also be written as:
Arrays:
defines an array of four integers.
Many implementations support the following literal syntax for ByteArrays:
defines a ByteArray of four integers.
And last but not least, blocks (anonymous function literals)
[... Some smalltalk code...]
Blocks are explained in detail further in the text.
Many Smalltalk dialects implement additional syntaxes for other objects, but the ones above are the essentials supported by all.
The two kinds of variables commonly used in Smalltalk are instance variables and temporary variables. Other variables and related terminology depend on the particular implementation. For example, VisualWorks has class shared variables and namespace shared variables, while Squeak and many other implementations have class variables, pool variables and global variables.
Temporary variable declarations in Smalltalk are variables declared inside a method (see below). They are declared at the top of the method as names separated by spaces and enclosed by vertical bars. For example:
declares a temporary variable named index which contains initially the value codice_10.
Multiple variables may be declared within one set of bars:
declares two variables: index and vowels. All variables are initialized. Variables are initialized to nil except the indexed variables of Strings, which are initialized to the null character or ByteArrays which are initialized to 0.
A variable is assigned a value via the 'codice_22' syntax. So:
vowels := 'aeiou'
Assigns the string codice_23 to the formerly declared vowels variable. The string is an object (a sequence of characters between single quotes is the syntax for literal strings), created by the compiler at compile time.
In the original Parc Place image, the glyph of the underscore character ⟨_⟩ appeared as a left-facing arrow ⟨←⟩ (like in the 1963 version of the ASCII code). Smalltalk originally accepted this left-arrow as the only assignment operator. Some modern code still contains what appear to be underscores acting as assignments, hearkening back to this original usage. Most modern Smalltalk implementations accept either the underscore or the colon-equals syntax.
The message is the most fundamental language construct in Smalltalk. Even control structures are implemented as message sends. Smalltalk adopts by default a synchronous, single dynamic message dispatch strategy (as contrasted to the asynchronous, multiple dispatch strategy adopted by some other object-oriented languages).
The following example sends the message 'factorial' to number 42:
42 factorial
In this situation 42 is called the message "receiver", while 'factorial' is the message "selector". The receiver responds to the message by returning a value (presumably in this case the factorial of 42). Among other things, the result of the message can be assigned to a variable:
aRatherBigNumber := 42 factorial
"factorial" above is what is called a "unary message" because only one object, the receiver, is involved. Messages can carry additional objects as "arguments", as follows:
2 raisedTo: 4
In this expression two objects are involved: 2 as the receiver and 4 as the message argument. The message result, or in Smalltalk parlance, "the answer" is supposed to be 16. Such messages are called "keyword messages". A message can have more arguments, using the following syntax:
'hello world' indexOf: $o startingAt: 6
which answers the index of character 'o' in the receiver string, starting the search from index 6. The selector of this message is "indexOf:startingAt:", consisting of two pieces, or "keywords".
Such interleaving of keywords and arguments is meant to improve readability of code, since arguments are explained by their preceding keywords. For example, an expression to create a rectangle using a C++ or Java-like syntax might be written as:
new Rectangle(100, 200);
It's unclear which argument is which. By contrast, in Smalltalk, this code would be written as:
Rectangle width: 100 height: 200
The receiver in this case is "Rectangle", a class, and the answer will be a new instance of the class with the specified width and height.
Finally, most of the special (non-alphabetic) characters can be used as what are called "binary messages". These allow mathematical and logical operators to be written in their traditional form:
3 + 4
which sends the message "+" to the receiver 3 with 4 passed as the argument (the answer of which will be 7). Similarly,
3 > 4
is the message ">" sent to 3 with argument 4 (the answer of which will be false).
Notice, that the Smalltalk-80 language itself does not imply the meaning of those operators. The outcome of the above is only defined by how the receiver of the message (in this case a Number instance) responds to messages "+" and ">".
A side effect of this mechanism is operator overloading. A message ">" can also be understood by other objects, allowing the use of expressions of the form "a > b" to compare them.
An expression can include multiple message sends. In this case expressions are parsed according to a simple order of precedence. Unary messages have the highest precedence, followed by binary messages, followed by keyword messages. For example:
3 factorial + 4 factorial between: 10 and: 100
is evaluated as follows:
The answer of the last message sent is the result of the entire expression.
Parentheses can alter the order of evaluation when needed. For example,
(3 factorial + 4) factorial between: 10 and: 100
will change the meaning so that the expression first computes "3 factorial + 4" yielding 10. That 10 then receives the second "factorial" message, yielding 3628800. 3628800 then receives "between:and:", answering false.
Note that because the meaning of binary messages is not hardwired into Smalltalk-80 syntax, all of them are considered to have equal precedence and are evaluated simply from left to right. Because of this, the meaning of Smalltalk expressions using binary messages can be different from their "traditional" interpretation:
3 + 4 * 5
is evaluated as "(3 + 4) * 5", producing 35. To obtain the expected answer of 23, parentheses must be used to explicitly define the order of operations:
3 + (4 * 5)
Unary messages can be "chained" by writing them one after another:
3 factorial factorial log
which sends "factorial" to 3, then "factorial" to the result (6), then "log" to the result (720), producing the result 2.85733.
A series of expressions can be written as in the following (hypothetical) example, each separated by a period. This example first creates a new instance of class Window, stores it in a variable, and then sends two messages to it.
If a series of messages are sent to the same receiver as in the example above, they can also be written as a "cascade" with individual messages separated by semicolons:
This rewrite of the earlier example as a single expression avoids the need to store the new window in a temporary variable. According to the usual precedence rules, the unary message "new" is sent first, and then "label:" and "open" are sent to the answer of "new".
A block of code (an anonymous function) can be expressed as a literal value (which is an object, since all values are objects). This is achieved with square brackets:
[ :params | ]
Where ":params" is the list of parameters the code can take. This means that the Smalltalk code:
[:x | x + 1]
can be understood as:
or expressed in lambda terms as:
and
[:x | x + 1] value: 3
can be evaluated as
Or in lambda terms as:
The resulting block object can form a closure: it can access the variables of its enclosing lexical scopes at any time. Blocks are first-class objects.
Blocks can be executed by sending them the "value" message (compound variations exist in order to provide parameters to the block e.g. 'value:value:' and 'valueWithArguments:').
The literal representation of blocks was an innovation which on the one hand allowed certain code to be significantly more readable; it allowed algorithms involving iteration to be coded in a clear and concise way. Code that would typically be written with loops in some languages can be written concisely in Smalltalk using blocks, sometimes in a single line. But more importantly blocks allow control structure to be expressed using messages and polymorphism, since blocks defer computation and polymorphism can be used to select alternatives. So if-then-else in Smalltalk is written and implemented as
expr ifTrue: [statements to evaluate if expr] ifFalse: [statements to evaluate if not expr]
"True methods for evaluation"
"False methods for evaluation"
positiveAmounts := allAmounts select: [:anAmount | anAmount isPositive]
Note that this is related to functional programming, wherein patterns of computation (here selection) are abstracted into higher-order functions. For example, the message "select:" on a Collection is equivalent to the higher-order function filter on an appropriate functor.
Control structures do not have special syntax in Smalltalk. They are instead implemented as messages sent to objects. For example, conditional execution is implemented by sending the message ifTrue: to a Boolean object, passing as an argument the block of code to be executed if and only if the Boolean receiver is true.
The following code demonstrates this:
result := a > b
Blocks are also used to implement user-defined control structures, enumerators, visitors, exception handling, pluggable behavior and many other patterns.
For example:
aString := 'This is a string'.
vowels := aString select: [:aCharacter | aCharacter isVowel].
In the last line, the string is sent the message select: with an argument that is a code block literal. The code block literal will be used as a predicate function that should answer true if and only if an element of the String should be included in the Collection of characters that satisfy the test represented by the code block that is the argument to the "select:" message.
A String object responds to the "select:" message by iterating through its members (by sending itself the message "do:"), evaluating the selection block ("aBlock") once with each character it contains as the argument. When evaluated (by being sent the message "value: each"), the selection block (referenced by the parameter "aBlock", and defined by the block literal "[:aCharacter | aCharacter isVowel]"), answers a boolean, which is then sent "ifTrue:". If the boolean is the object true, the character is added to a string to be returned.
Because the "select:" method is defined in the abstract class Collection, it can also be used like this:
rectangles := OrderedCollection
aPoint := Point x: 20 y: 20.
collisions := rectangles select: [:aRect | aRect containsPoint: aPoint].
The exception handling mechanism uses blocks as handlers (similar to CLOS-style exception handling):
] on:Error do:[:ex |
The exception handler's "ex" argument provides access to the state of the suspended operation (stack frame, line-number, receiver and arguments etc.) and is also used to control how the computation is to proceed (by sending one of "ex proceed", "ex reject", "ex restart" or "ex return").
This is a stock class definition:
Object subclass: #MessagePublisher
Often, most of this definition will be filled in by the environment. Notice that this is a message to the codice_24 class to create a subclass called codice_25. In other words: classes are first-class objects in Smalltalk which can receive messages just like any other object and can be created dynamically at execution time.
When an object receives a message, a method matching the message name is invoked. The following code defines a method publish, and so defines what will happen when this object receives the 'publish' message.
publish
The following method demonstrates receiving multiple arguments and returning a value:
quadMultiply: i1 and: i2
The method's name is codice_26. The return value is specified with the codice_27 operator.
Note that objects are responsible for determining dynamically at runtime which method to execute in response to a message—while in many languages this may be (sometimes, or even always) determined statically at compile time.
The following code:
MessagePublisher new
creates (and returns) a new instance of the MessagePublisher class. This is typically assigned to a variable:
publisher := MessagePublisher new
However, it is also possible to send a message to a temporary, anonymous object:
MessagePublisher new publish
The Hello world program is used by virtually all texts to new programming languages as the first program learned to show the most basic syntax and environment of the language. For Smalltalk, the program is extremely simple to write. The following code, the message "show:" is sent to the object "Transcript" with the String literal 'Hello, world!' as its argument. Invocation of the "show:" method causes the characters of its argument (the String literal 'Hello, world!') to be displayed in the transcript ("terminal") window.
Transcript show: 'Hello, world!'.
Note that a Transcript window would need to be open in order to see the results of this example.
Most popular programming systems separate static program code (in the form of class definitions, functions or procedures) from dynamic, or run time, program state (such as objects or other forms of program data). They load program code when a program starts, and any prior program state must be recreated explicitly from configuration files or other data sources. Any settings the program (and programmer) does not explicitly save must be set up again for each restart. A traditional program also loses much useful document information each time a program saves a file, quits, and reloads. This loses details such as undo history or cursor position. Image based systems don't force losing all that just because a computer is turned off, or an OS updates.
Many Smalltalk systems, however, do not differentiate between program data (objects) and code (classes). In fact, classes are objects. Thus, most Smalltalk systems store the entire program state (including both Class and non-Class objects) in an image file. The image can then be loaded by the Smalltalk virtual machine to restore a Smalltalk-like system to a prior state. This was inspired by FLEX, a language created by Alan Kay and described in his M.Sc. thesis.
Smalltalk images are similar to (restartable) core dumps and can provide the same functionality as core dumps, such as delayed or remote debugging with full access to the program state at the time of error. Other languages that model application code as a form of data, such as Lisp, often use image-based persistence as well. This method of persistence is powerful for rapid development because all the development information (e.g. parse trees of the program) is saved which facilitates debugging. However, it also has serious drawbacks as a true persistence mechanism. For one thing, developers may often want to hide implementation details and not make them available in a run time environment. For reasons of legality and maintenance, allowing anyone to modify a program at run time inevitably introduces complexity and potential errors that would not be possible with a compiled system that exposes no source code in the run time environment. Also, while the persistence mechanism is easy to use, it lacks the true persistence abilities needed for most multi-user systems. The most obvious is the ability to do transactions with multiple users accessing the same database in parallel.
Everything in Smalltalk-80 is available for modification from within a running program. This means that, for example, the IDE can be changed in a running system without restarting it. In some implementations, the syntax of the language or the garbage collection implementation can also be changed on the fly. Even the statement codice_28 is valid in Smalltalk, although executing it is not recommended.
Smalltalk programs are usually compiled to bytecode, which is then interpreted by a virtual machine or dynamically translated into machine-native code. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28319 |
Steve Biko
Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk.
Raised in a poor Xhosa family, Biko grew up in Ginsberg township in the Eastern Cape. In 1966, he began studying medicine at the University of Natal, where he joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Strongly opposed to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule in South Africa, Biko was frustrated that NUSAS and other anti-apartheid groups were dominated by white liberals, rather than by the blacks who were most affected by apartheid. He believed that well-intentioned white liberals failed to comprehend the black experience and often acted in a paternalistic manner. He developed the view that to avoid white domination, black people had to organise independently, and to this end he became a leading figure in the creation of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968. Membership was open only to "blacks", a term that Biko used in reference not just to Bantu-speaking Africans but also to Coloureds and Indians. He was careful to keep his movement independent of white liberals, but opposed anti-white racism and had white friends and lovers. The white-minority National Party government were initially supportive, seeing SASO's creation as a victory for apartheid's ethos of racial separatism.
Influenced by the Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon and the African-American Black Power movement, Biko and his compatriots developed Black Consciousness as SASO's official ideology. The movement campaigned for an end to apartheid and the transition of South Africa toward universal suffrage and a socialist economy. It organised Black Community Programmes (BCPs) and focused on the psychological empowerment of black people. Biko believed that black people needed to rid themselves of any sense of racial inferiority, an idea he expressed by popularizing the slogan "black is beautiful". In 1972, he was involved in founding the Black People's Convention (BPC) to promote Black Consciousness ideas among the wider population. The government came to see Biko as a subversive threat and placed him under a banning order in 1973, severely restricting his activities. He remained politically active, helping organise BCPs such as a healthcare centre and a crèche in the Ginsberg area. During his ban he received repeated anonymous threats, and was detained by state security services on several occasions. Following his arrest in August 1977, Biko was beaten to death by state security officers. Over 20,000 people attended his funeral.
Biko's fame spread posthumously. He became the subject of numerous songs and works of art, while a 1978 biography by his friend Donald Woods formed the basis for the 1987 film "Cry Freedom". During Biko's life, the government alleged that he hated whites, various anti-apartheid activists accused him of sexism, and African racial nationalists criticised his united front with Coloureds and Indians. Nonetheless, Biko became one of the earliest icons of the movement against apartheid, and is regarded as a political martyr and the "Father of Black Consciousness". His political legacy remains a matter of contention.
Bantu Stephen Biko was born on 18 December 1946, at his grandmother's house in Tarkastad, Eastern Cape. The third child of Mzingaye Mathew Biko and Alice 'Mamcete' Biko, he had an older sister, Bukelwa, an older brother, Khaya, and a younger sister, Nobandile. His parents had married in Whittlesea, where his father worked as a police officer. Mzingaye was transferred to Queenstown, Port Elizabeth, Fort Cox, and finally King William's Town, where he and Alice settled in Ginsberg township. This was a settlement of around 800 families, with every four families sharing a water supply and toilet. Both Bantu African and Coloured people lived in the township, where Xhosa, Afrikaans, and English were all spoken. After resigning from the police force, Mzingaye worked as a clerk in the King William's Town Native Affairs Office, while studying for a law degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa. Alice was employed first in domestic work for local white households, then as a cook at Grey Hospital in King William's Town. According to his sister, it was this observation of his mother's difficult working conditions that resulted in Biko's earliest politicisation.
Biko's given name "Bantu" means "people"; Biko interpreted this in terms of the saying ""Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu"" ("a person is a person by means of other people"). As a child he was nicknamed "Goofy" and "Xwaku-Xwaku", the latter a reference to his unkempt appearance. He was raised in his family's Anglican Christian faith. In 1950, when Biko was four, his father fell ill, was hospitalised in St. Matthew's Hospital, Keiskammahoek, and died, making the family dependent on his mother's income.
Biko spent two years at St. Andrews Primary School and four at Charles Morgan Higher Primary School, both in Ginsberg. Regarded as a particularly intelligent pupil, he was allowed to skip a year. In 1963 he transferred to the Forbes Grant Secondary School in the township. Biko excelled at maths and English and topped the class in his exams. In 1964 the Ginsberg community offered him a bursary to join his brother Khaya as a student at Lovedale, a prestigious boarding school in Alice, Eastern Cape. Within three months of Steve's arrival, Khaya was accused of having connections to Poqo, the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), an African nationalist group which the government had banned. Both Khaya and Steve were arrested and interrogated by the police; the former was convicted, then acquitted on appeal. No clear evidence of Steve's connection to Poqo was presented, but he was expelled from Lovedale. Commenting later on this situation, he stated: "I began to develop an attitude which was much more directed at authority than at anything else. I hated authority like hell."
From 1964 to 1965, Biko studied at St. Francis College, a Catholic boarding school in Mariannhill, Natal. The college had a liberal political culture, and Biko developed his political consciousness there. He became particularly interested in the replacement of South Africa's white minority colonial government with an administration that represented the country's black majority. Among the anti-colonialist leaders who became Biko's heroes at this time were Algeria's Ahmed Ben Bella and Kenya's Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. He later said that most of the "politicos" in his family were sympathetic to the PAC, which had anti-communist and African racialist ideas. Biko admired what he described as the PAC's "terribly good organisation" and the courage of many of its members, but he remained unconvinced by its racially exclusionary approach, believing that members of all racial groups should unite against the government. In December 1964, he travelled to Zwelitsha for the ulwaluko circumcision ceremony, symbolically marking his transition from boyhood to manhood.
Biko was initially interested in studying law at university, but many of those around him discouraged this, believing that law was too closely intertwined with political activism. Instead they convinced him to choose medicine, a subject thought to have better career prospects. He secured a scholarship, and in 1966 entered the "non-European" section of the University of Natal Medical School in Wentworth, a township of Durban. There, he joined what his biographer Xolela Mangcu called "a peculiarly sophisticated and cosmopolitan group of students" from across South Africa; many of them later held prominent roles in the post-apartheid era. The late 1960s was the heyday of radical student politics across the world, as reflected in the protests of 1968, and Biko was eager to involve himself in this environment. Soon after he arrived at the university, he was elected to the Students' Representative Council (SRC).
The university's SRC was affiliated with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). NUSAS had taken pains to cultivate a multi-racial membership but remained white-dominated because the majority of South Africa's students were from the country's white minority. As Clive Nettleton, a white NUSAS leader, put it: "the essence of the matter is that NUSAS was founded on white initiative, is financed by white money and reflects the opinions of the majority of its members who are white". NUSAS officially opposed apartheid, but it moderated its opposition in order to maintain the support of conservative white students. Biko and several other black African NUSAS members were frustrated when it organised parties in white dormitories, which black Africans were forbidden to enter. In July 1967, a NUSAS conference was held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown; after the students arrived, they found that dormitory accommodation had been arranged for the white and Indian delegates but not the black Africans, who were told that they could sleep in a local church. Biko and other black African delegates walked out of the conference in anger. Biko later related that this event forced him to rethink his belief in the multi-racial approach to political activism:
I realized that for a long time I had been holding onto this whole dogma of nonracism almost like a religion ... But in the course of that debate I began to feel there was a lot lacking in the proponents of the nonracist idea ... they had this problem, you know, of superiority, and they tended to take us for granted and wanted us to accept things that were second-class. They could not see why we could not consider staying in that church, and I began to feel that our understanding of our own situation in this country was not coincidental with that of these liberal whites.
Following the 1968 NUSAS conference in Johannesburg, many of its members attended a July 1968 conference of the University Christian Movement at Stutterheim. There, the black African members decided to hold a December conference to discuss the formation of an independent black student group. The South African Students' Organisation (SASO) was officially launched at a July 1969 conference at the University of the North; there, the group's constitution and basic policy platform were adopted. The group's focus was on the need for contact between centres of black student activity, including through sport, cultural activities, and debating competitions. Though Biko played a substantial role in SASO's creation, he sought a low public profile during its early stages, believing that this would strengthen its second level of leadership, such as his ally Barney Pityana. Nonetheless, he was elected as SASO's first president; Pat Matshaka was elected vice president and Wuila Mashalaba elected secretary. Durban became its "de facto" headquarters.
Biko developed SASO's ideology of "Black Consciousness" in conversation with other black student leaders. A SASO policy manifesto produced in July 1971 defined this ideology as "an attitude of mind, a way of life. The basic tenet of Black Consciousness is that the Blackman must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity." Black Consciousness centred on psychological empowerment, through combating the feelings of inferiority that most black South Africans exhibited. Biko believed that, as part of the struggle against apartheid and white-minority rule, blacks should affirm their own humanity by regarding themselves as worthy of freedom and its attendant responsibilities. It applied the term "black" not only to Bantu-speaking Africans, but also to Indians and Coloureds. SASO adopted this term over "non-white" because its leadership felt that defining themselves in opposition to white people was not a positive self-description. Biko promoted the slogan "black is beautiful", explaining that this meant "Man, you are okay as you are. Begin to look upon yourself as a human being."
Biko presented a paper on "White Racism and Black Consciousness" at an academic conference in the University of Cape Town's Abe Bailey Centre in January 1971. He also expanded on his ideas in a column written for the "SASO Newsletter" under the pseudonym "Frank Talk". His tenure as president was taken up largely by fundraising activities, and involved travelling around various campuses in South Africa to recruit students and deepen the movement's ideological base. Some of these students censured him for abandoning NUSAS' multi-racial approach; others disapproved of SASO's decision to allow Indian and Coloured students to be members. Biko stepped down from the presidency after a year, insisting that it was necessary for a new leadership to emerge and thus avoid any cult of personality forming around him.
SASO decided after a debate to remain non-affiliated with NUSAS, but would nevertheless recognise the larger organisation as the national student body. One of SASO's founding resolutions was to send a representative to each NUSAS conference. In 1970 SASO withdrew its recognition of NUSAS, accusing it of attempting to hinder SASO's growth on various campuses. SASO's split from NUSAS was a traumatic experience for many white liberal youth who had committed themselves to the idea of a multi-racial organisation and felt that their attempts were being rebuffed. The NUSAS leadership regretted the split, but largely refrained from criticising SASO. The government—which regarded multi-racial liberalism as a threat and had banned multi-racial political parties in 1968—was pleased with SASO's emergence, regarding it as a victory of apartheid thinking.
The early focus of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was on criticising anti-racist white liberals and liberalism itself, accusing it of paternalism and being a "negative influence" on black Africans. In one of his first published articles, Biko stated that although he was "not sneering at the [white] liberals and their involvement" in the anti-apartheid movement, "one has to come to the painful conclusion that the [white] liberal is in fact appeasing his own conscience, or at best is eager to demonstrate his identification with the black people only insofar as it does not sever all ties with his relatives on his side of the colour line."
Biko and SASO were openly critical of NUSAS' protests against government policies. Biko argued that NUSAS merely sought to influence the white electorate; in his opinion, this electorate was not legitimate, and protests targeting a particular policy would be ineffective for the ultimate aim of dismantling the apartheid state. SASO regarded student marches, pickets, and strikes to be ineffective and stated it would withdraw from public forms of protest. It deliberately avoided open confrontation with the state until such a point when it had a sufficiently large institutional structure. Instead, SASO's focus was on establishing community projects and spreading Black Consciousness ideas among other black organisations and the wider black community. Despite this policy, in May 1972 it issued the Alice Declaration, in which it called for students to boycott lectures in response to the expulsion of SASO member Abram Onkgopotse Tiro from the University of the North after he made a speech criticising its administration. The Tiro incident convinced the government that SASO was a threat.
In Durban, Biko entered a relationship with a nurse, Nontsikelelo "Ntsiki" Mashalaba; they married at the King William's Town magistrates court in December 1970. Their first child, Nkosinathi, was born in 1971. Biko initially did well in his university studies, but his grades declined as he devoted increasing time to political activism. Six years after starting his degree, he found himself repeating his third year. In 1972, as a result of his poor academic performance, the University of Natal barred him from further study.
In August 1971, Biko attended a conference on "The Development of the African Community" in Edendale. There, a resolution was presented calling for the formation of the Black People's Convention (BPC), a vehicle for the promotion of Black Consciousness among the wider population. Biko voted in favour of the group's creation but expressed reservations about the lack of consultation with South Africa's Coloureds or Indians. A. Mayatula became the BPC's first president; Biko did not stand for any leadership positions. The group was formally launched in July 1972 in Pietermaritzburg. By 1973, it had 41 branches and 4000 members, sharing much of its membership with SASO.
While the BPC was primarily political, Black Consciousness activists also established the Black Community Programmes (BCPs) to focus on improving healthcare and education and fostering black economic self-reliance. The BCPs had strong ecumenical links, being part-funded by a program on Christian action, established by the Christian Institute of Southern Africa and the South African Council of Churches. Additional funds came from the Anglo-American Corporation, the International University Exchange Fund, and Scandinavian churches. In 1972, the BCP hired Biko and Bokwe Mafuna, allowing Biko to continue his political and community work. In September 1972, Biko visited Kimberley, where he met the PAC founder and anti-apartheid activist Robert Sobukwe.
Biko's banning order in 1973 prevented him from working officially for the BCPs from which he had previously earned a small stipend, but he helped to set up a new BPC branch in Ginsberg, which held its first meeting in the church of a sympathetic white clergyman, David Russell. Establishing a more permanent headquarters in Leopold Street, the branch served as a base from which to form new BCPs; these included self-help schemes such as classes in literacy, dressmaking and health education. For Biko, community development was part of the process of infusing black people with a sense of pride and dignity. Near King William's Town, a BCP Zanempilo Clinic was established to serve as a healthcare centre catering for rural black people who would not otherwise have access to hospital facilities. He helped to revive the Ginsberg crèche, a daycare for children of working mothers, and establish a Ginsberg education fund to raise bursaries for promising local students. He helped establish Njwaxa Home Industries, a leather goods company providing jobs for local women. In 1975, he co-founded the Zimele Trust, a fund for the families of political prisoners.
Biko endorsed the unification of South Africa's black liberationist groups—among them the BCM, PAC, and African National Congress (ANC)—in order to concentrate their anti-apartheid efforts. To this end, he reached out to leading members of the ANC, PAC, and Unity Movement. His communications with the ANC were largely via Griffiths Mxenge, and plans were being made to smuggle him out of the country to meet Oliver Tambo, a leading ANC figure. Biko's negotiations with the PAC were primarily through intermediaries who exchanged messages between him and Sobukwe; those with the Unity Movement were largely via Fikile Bam.
By 1973, the government regarded Black Consciousness as a threat. It sought to disrupt Biko's activities, and in March 1973 placed a banning order on him. This prevented him from leaving the King William's Town magisterial district, prohibited him from speaking either in public or to more than one person at a time, barred his membership of political organisations, and forbade the media from quoting him. As a result, he returned to Ginsberg, living initially in his mother's house and later in his own residence.
In December 1975, attempting to circumvent the restrictions of the banning order, the BPC declared Biko their honorary president. After Biko and other BCM leaders were banned, a new leadership arose, led by Muntu Myeza and Sathasivian Cooper, who were considered part of the Durban Moment. Myeza and Cooper organised a BCM demonstration to mark Mozambique's independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975. Biko disagreed with this action, correctly predicting that the government would use it to crack down on the BCM. The government arrested around 200 BCM activists, nine of whom were brought before the Supreme Court, accused of subversion by intent. The state claimed that Black Consciousness philosophy was likely to cause "racial confrontation" and therefore threatened public safety. Biko was called as a witness for the defence; he sought to refute the state's accusations by outlining the movement's aims and development. Ultimately, the accused were convicted and imprisoned on Robben Island.
In 1973, Biko had enrolled for a law degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa. He passed several exams, but had not completed the degree at his time of death. His performance on the course was poor; he was absent from several exams and failed his Practical Afrikaans module. The state security services repeatedly sought to intimidate him; he received anonymous threatening phone calls, and gun shots were fired at his house. A group of young men calling themselves 'The Cubans' began guarding him from these attacks. The security services detained him four times, once for 101 days. With the ban preventing him from gaining employment, the strained economic situation impacted his marriage.
During his ban, Biko asked for a meeting with Donald Woods, the white liberal editor of the "Daily Dispatch". Under Woods' editorship, the newspaper had published articles criticising apartheid and the white-minority regime and had also given space to the views of various black groups, but not the BCM. Biko hoped to convince Woods to give the movement greater coverage and an outlet for its views. Woods was initially reticent, believing that Biko and the BCM advocated anti-white racism. When he met Biko for the first time, Woods expressed his concern about the anti-white liberal sentiment of Biko's early writings. Biko acknowledged that his earlier "antiliberal" writings were "overkill", but said that he remained committed to the basic message contained within them.
Over the coming years the pair became close friends. Woods later related that, although he continued to have concerns about "the unavoidably racist aspects of Black Consciousness", it was "both a revelation and education" to socialise with blacks who had "psychologically emancipated attitudes". Biko also remained friends with another prominent white liberal, Duncan Innes, who served as NUSAS President in 1969; Innes later commented that Biko was "invaluable in helping me to understand black oppression, not only socially and politically, but also psychologically and intellectually". Biko's friendship with these white liberals came under criticism from some members of the BCM.
In 1977, Biko broke his banning order by travelling to Cape Town, hoping to meet Unity Movement leader Neville Alexander and deal with growing dissent in the Western Cape branch of the BCM, which was dominated by Marxists like Johnny Issel. Biko drove to the city with his friend Peter Jones on 17 August, but Alexander refused to meet with Biko, fearing that he was being monitored by the police. Biko and Jones drove back toward King William's Town, but on 18 August they were stopped at a police roadblock near Grahamstown. Biko was arrested for having violated the order restricting him to King William's Town. Unsubstantiated claims have been made that the security services were aware of Biko's trip to Cape Town and that the road block had been erected to catch him. Jones was also arrested at the roadblock; he was subsequently held without trial for 533 days, during which he was interrogated on numerous occasions.
The security services took Biko to the Walmer police station in Port Elizabeth, where he was held naked in a cell with his legs in shackles. On 6 September, he was transferred from Walmer to room 619 of the security police headquarters in the Sanlam Building in central Port Elizabeth, where he was interrogated for 22 hours, handcuffed and in shackles, and chained to a grille. Exactly what happened has never been ascertained, but during the interrogation he was severely beaten by at least one of the ten security police officers. He suffered three brain lesions that resulted in a massive brain haemorrhage on 6 September. Following this incident, Biko's captors forced him to remain standing and shackled to the wall. The police later said that Biko had attacked one of them with a chair, forcing them to subdue him and place him in handcuffs and leg irons.
Biko was examined by a doctor, Ivor Lang, who stated that there was no evidence of injury on Biko. Later scholarship has suggested Biko's injuries must have been obvious. He was then examined by two other doctors who, after a test showed blood cells to have entered Biko's spinal fluid, agreed that he should be transported to a prison hospital in Pretoria. On 11 September, police loaded him into the back of a Land Rover, naked and manacled, and drove him to the hospital. There, Biko died alone in a cell on 12 September 1977. According to an autopsy, an "extensive brain injury" had caused "centralisation of the blood circulation to such an extent that there had been intravasal blood coagulation, acute kidney failure, and uremia". He was the twenty-first person to die in a South African prison in twelve months, and the forty-sixth political detainee to die during interrogation since the government introduced laws permitting imprisonment without trial in 1963.
News of Biko's death spread quickly across the world, and became symbolic of the abuses of the apartheid system. His death attracted more global attention than he had ever attained during his lifetime. Protest meetings were held in several cities; many were shocked that the security authorities would kill such a prominent dissident leader. Biko's Anglican funeral service, held on 25 September 1977 at King William's Town's Victoria Stadium, took five hours and was attended by around 20,000 people. The vast majority were black, but a few hundred whites also attended, including Biko's friends, such as Russell and Woods, and prominent progressive figures like Helen Suzman, Alex Boraine, and Zach de Beer. Foreign diplomats from thirteen nations were present, as was an Anglican delegation headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu. The event was later described as "the first mass political funeral in the country". Biko's coffin had been decorated with the motifs of a clenched black fist, the African continent, and the statement "One Azania, One Nation"; Azania was the name that many activists wanted South Africa to adopt post-apartheid. Biko was buried in the cemetery at Ginsberg. Two BCM-affiliated artists, Dikobé Ben Martins and Robin Holmes, produced a T-shirt marking the event; the design was banned the following year. Martins also created a commemorative poster for the funeral, the first in a tradition of funeral posters that proved popular throughout the 1980s.
Speaking publicly about Biko's death, the country's police minister Jimmy Kruger initially implied that it had been the result of a hunger strike, a statement he later denied. His account was challenged by some of Biko's friends, including Woods, who said that Biko had told them that he would never kill himself in prison. Publicly, he stated that Biko had been plotting violence, a claim repeated in the pro-government press. South Africa's attorney general initially stated that no one would be prosecuted for Biko's death. Two weeks after the funeral, the government banned all Black Consciousness organisations, including the BCP, which had its assets seized.
Both domestic and international pressure called for a public inquest to be held, to which the government agreed. It began in Pretoria's Old Synagogue courthouse in November 1977, and lasted for three weeks. Both the running of the inquest and the quality of evidence submitted came in for extensive criticism. An observer from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law stated that the affidavit's statements were "sometimes redundant, sometimes inconsistent, frequently ambiguous"; David Napley described the police investigation of the incident as "perfunctory in the extreme". The security forces alleged that Biko had acted aggressively and had sustained his injuries in a scuffle, in which he had banged his head against the cell wall. The presiding magistrate accepted the security forces' account of events and refused to prosecute any of those involved.
The verdict was treated with scepticism by much of the international media and the US Government led by President Jimmy Carter. On 2 February 1978, based on the evidence given at the inquest, the attorney general of the Eastern Cape stated that he would not prosecute the officers. After the inquest, Biko's family brought a civil case against the state; at the advice of their lawyers, they agreed to a settlement of R65,000 (US$78,000) in July 1979. Shortly after the inquest, the South African Medical and Dental Council initiated proceedings against the medical professionals who had been entrusted with Biko's care; eight years later two of the medics were found guilty of improper conduct. The failure of the government-employed doctors to diagnose or treat Biko's injuries has been frequently cited as an example of a repressive state influencing medical practitioners' decisions, and Biko's death as evidence of the need for doctors to serve the needs of patients before those of the state.
After the abolition of apartheid and the establishment of a majority government in 1994, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to investigate past human-rights abuses. The Commission made plans to investigate Biko's death, but his family petitioned against this on the grounds that the Commission could grant amnesty to those responsible, thereby preventing the family's right to justice and redress. In 1996, the Constitutional Court ruled against the family, allowing the investigation to proceed. Five police officers (Harold Snyman, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert, and Johan Beneke) appeared before the Commission and requested amnesty in return for information about the events surrounding Biko's death. In December 1998, the Commission refused amnesty to the five men; this was because their accounts were conflicting and thus deemed untruthful, and because Biko's killing had no clear political motive, but seemed to have been motivated by "ill-will or spite". In October 2003, South Africa's justice ministry announced that the five policemen would not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had elapsed and there was insufficient evidence to secure a prosecution.
The ideas of the Black Consciousness Movement were not developed solely by Biko, but through lengthy discussions with other black students who were rejecting white liberalism. Biko was influenced by his reading of authors like Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Léopold Sédar Senghor, James Cone, and Paulo Freire. The Martinique-born Fanon, in particular, has been cited as a profound influence over Biko's ideas about liberation. Biko's biographer Xolela Mangcu cautioned that it would be wrong to reduce Biko's thought to an interpretation of Fanon, and that the impact of "the political and intellectual history of the Eastern Cape" had to be appreciated too. Additional influences on Black Consciousness were the United States-based Black Power movement, and forms of Christianity like the activist-oriented black theology.
Biko rejected the apartheid government's division of South Africa's population into tribal and ethnic groups, instead dividing the population into two categories: the white and the black. He defined blackness as a "mental attitude" rather than a "matter of pigmentation", referring to "blacks" as "those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society" and who identify "themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations". In this way, he and the Black Consciousness Movement used "black" in reference not only to Bantu-speaking Africans but also to Coloureds and Indians, who together made up almost 90% of South Africa's population in the 1970s. Biko was not a Marxist and believed that it was oppression based on race, rather than class, which would be the main political motivation for change in South Africa. He argued that those on the "white left" often promoted a class-based analysis as a "defence mechanism... primarily because they want to detach us from anything relating to race. In case it has a rebound effect on them because they are white".
Biko saw white racism in South Africa as the totality of the white power structure. He argued that under apartheid, white people not only participated in the oppression of black people but were also the main voices in opposition to that oppression. He thus argued that in dominating both the apartheid system and the anti-apartheid movement, white people totally controlled the political arena, leaving black people marginalised. He believed white people were able to dominate the anti-apartheid movement because of their access to resources, education, and privilege. He nevertheless thought that white South Africans were poorly suited to this role because they had not personally experienced the oppression that their black counterparts faced.
Biko and his comrades regarded multi-racial anti-apartheid groups as unwittingly replicating the structure of apartheid because they contained whites in dominant positions of control. For this reason, Biko and the others did not participate in these multi-racial organisations. Instead, they called for an anti-apartheid programme that was controlled by black people. Although he called on sympathetic whites to reject any concept that they themselves could be spokespeople for the black majority, Biko nevertheless believed that they had a place in the anti-apartheid struggle, asking them to focus their efforts on convincing the wider white community on the inevitability of apartheid's fall. Biko clarified his position to Woods: "I don't reject liberalism as such or white liberals as such. I reject only the concept that black liberation can be achieved through the leadership of white liberals." He added that "the [white] liberal is no enemy, he's a friend – but for the moment he holds us back, offering a formula too gentle, too inadequate for our struggle".
Biko's approach to activism focused on psychological empowerment, and both he and the BCM saw their main purpose as combating the feeling of inferiority that most black South Africans experienced. Biko expressed dismay at how "the black man has become a shell, a shadow of man ... bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity", and stated that "the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed". He believed that blacks needed to affirm their own humanity by overcoming their fears and believing themselves worthy of freedom and its attendant responsibilities. He defined Black Consciousness as "an inward-looking process" that would "infuse people with pride and dignity". To promote this, the BCM adopted the slogan "Black is Beautiful".
One of the ways that Biko and the BCM sought to achieve psychological empowerment was through community development. Community projects were seen not only as a way to alleviate poverty in black communities but also as a means of transforming society psychologically, culturally, and economically. They would also help students to learn about the "daily struggles" of ordinary black people and to spread Black Consciousness ideas among the population. Among the projects that SASO set its members to conduct in the holidays were repairs to schools, house-building, and instructions on financial management and agricultural techniques. Healthcare was also a priority, with SASO members focusing on primary and preventative care.
Biko opposed any collaboration with the apartheid government, such as the agreements that the Coloured and Indian communities made with the regime. In his view, the Bantustan system was "the greatest single fraud ever invented by white politicians", stating that it was designed to divide the Bantu-speaking African population along tribal lines. He openly criticised the Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, stating that the latter's co-operation with the South African government "[diluted] the cause" of black liberation. He believed that those fighting apartheid in South Africa should link with anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in the world and with activists in the global African diaspora combating racial prejudice and discrimination. He also hoped that foreign countries would boycott South Africa's economy.
Biko believed that while apartheid and white-minority rule continued, "sporadic outbursts" of violence against the white minority were inevitable. He wanted to avoid violence, stating that "if at all possible, we want the revolution to be peaceful and reconciliatory". He noted that views on violence differed widely within the BCM—which contained both pacifists and believers in violent revolution—although the group had agreed to operate peacefully, and unlike the PAC and ANC, had no armed wing.
A staunch anti-imperialist, Biko saw the South African situation as a "microcosm" of the broader "black–white power struggle" which manifests as "the global confrontation between the Third World and the rich white nations of the world". He was suspicious of the Soviet Union's motives in supporting African liberation movements, relating that "Russia is as imperialistic as America", although acknowledged that that "in the eyes of the Third World they have a cleaner slate". He also acknowledged that the material assistance provided by the Soviets was "more valuable" to the anti-apartheid cause than the "speeches and wrist-slapping" provided by Western governments. He was cautious of the possibility of a post-apartheid South Africa getting caught up in the imperialist Cold War rivalries of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Biko hoped that a future socialist South Africa could become a completely non-racial society, with people of all ethnic backgrounds living peacefully together in a "joint culture" that combined the best of all communities. He did not support guarantees of minority rights, believing that doing so would continue to recognise divisions along racial lines. Instead he supported a one person, one vote system. Initially arguing that one-party states were appropriate for Africa, he developed a more positive view of multi-party systems after conversations with Woods. He saw individual liberty as desirable, but regarded it as a lesser priority than access to food, employment, and social security.
Biko was neither a communist nor capitalist. Described as a proponent of African socialism, he called for "a socialist solution that is an authentic expression of black communalism". This idea was derided by some of his Marxist contemporaries, but later found parallels in the ideas of the Mexican Zapatistas. Noting that there was significant inequality in the distribution of wealth in South Africa, Biko believed that a socialist society was necessary to ensure social justice. In his view, this required a move towards a mixed economy that allowed private enterprise but in which all land was owned by the state and in which state industries played a significant part in forestry, mining, and commerce. He believed that, if post-apartheid South Africa remained capitalist, some black people would join the bourgeoisie but inequality and poverty would remain. As he put it, if South Africa transitioned to proportional democracy without socialist economic reforms, then "it would not change the position of "economic" oppression of the blacks".
In conversation with Woods, Biko insisted that the BCM would not degenerate into anti-white racism "because it isn't a negative, hating thing. It's a positive black self-confidence thing involving no hatred of anyone". He acknowledged that a "fringe element" may retain "anti-white bitterness"; he added: "we'll do what we can to restrain that, but frankly it's not one of our top priorities or one of our major concerns. Our main concern is the liberation of the blacks." Elsewhere, Biko argued that it was the responsibility of a vanguard movement to ensure that, in a post-apartheid society, the black majority would not seek vengeance upon the white minority. He stated that this would require an education of the black population in order to teach them how to live in a non-racial society.
Tall and slim in his youth, by his twenties Biko was over six feet tall, with the "bulky build of a heavyweight boxer carrying more weight than when in peak condition", according to Woods. His friends regarded him as "handsome, fearless, a brilliant thinker". Woods saw him as "unusually gifted ... His quick brain, superb articulation of ideas and sheer mental force were highly impressive." According to Biko's friend Trudi Thomas, with Biko "you had a remarkable sense of being in the presence of a great mind". Woods felt that Biko "could enable one to share his vision" with "an economy of words" because "he seemed to communicate ideas through extraverbal media – almost psychically." Biko exhibited what Woods referred to as "a new style of leadership", never proclaiming himself to be a leader and discouraging any cult of personality from growing up around him. Other activists did regard him as a leader and often deferred to him at meetings. When engaged in conversations, he displayed an interest in listening and often drew out the thoughts of others.
Biko and many others in his activist circle had an antipathy toward luxury items because most South African blacks could not afford them. He owned few clothes and dressed in a low-key manner. He had a large record collection and particularly liked gumba. He enjoyed parties, and according to his biographer Linda Wilson, he often drank substantial quantities of alcohol. Religion did not play a central role in his life. He was often critical of the established Christian churches, but remained a believer in God and found meaning in the Gospels. Woods described him as "not conventionally religious, although he had genuine religious feeling in broad terms". Mangcu noted that Biko was critical of organised religion and denominationalism and that he was "at best an unconventional Christian".
The Nationalist government portrayed Biko as a hater of whites, but he had several close white friends, and both Woods and Wilson insisted that he was not a racist. Woods related that Biko "simply wasn't a hater of people", and that he did not even hate prominent National Party politicians like B. J. Vorster and Andries Treurnicht, instead hating their ideas. It was rare and uncharacteristic of him to display any rage, and was rare for him to tell people about his doubts and inner misgivings, reserving those for a small number of confidants.
Biko never addressed questions of gender and sexism in his politics. The sexism was evident in many ways, according to Mamphela Ramphele, a BCM activist and doctor at the Zanempilo Clinic, including that women tended to be given responsibility for the cleaning and catering at functions. "There was no way you could think of Steve making a cup of tea or whatever for himself", another activist said. Feminism was viewed as irrelevant "bra-burning". Surrounded by women who cared about him, Biko developed a reputation as a womaniser, something that Woods described as "well earned". He displayed no racial prejudice, sleeping with both black and white women. At NUSAS, he and his friends competed to see who could have sex with the most female delegates. Responding to this behaviour, the NUSAS general secretary Sheila Lapinsky accused Biko of sexism, to which he responded: "Don't worry about my sexism. What about your white racist friends in NUSAS?" Sobukwe also admonished Biko for his womanising, believing that it set a bad example to other activists.
Biko married Ntsiki Mashalaba in December 1970. They had two children together: Nkosinathi, born in 1971, and Samora, born in 1975. Biko's wife chose the name Nkosinathi ("The Lord is with us"), and Biko named their second child after the Mozambican revolutionary leader Samora Machel. Angered by her husband's serial adultery, Mashalaba ultimately moved out of their home, and by the time of his death, she had begun divorce proceedings. Biko had also begun an extra-marital relationship with Mamphela Ramphele. In 1974, she bore him a daughter, Lerato, who died after two months. A son, Hlumelo, was born to Ramphele in 1978, after Biko's death. Biko was also in a relationship with Lorrain Tabane, who bore him a child named Motlatsi in 1977.
Biko is viewed as the "father" of the Black Consciousness Movement and the anti-apartheid movement's first icon. Nelson Mandela called him "the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa", adding that the Nationalist government "had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid". Opening an anthology of his work in 2008, Manning Marable and Peniel Joseph wrote that his death had "created a vivid symbol of black resistance" to apartheid that "continues to inspire new black activists" over a decade after the transition to majority rule. Johann de Wet, a professor of communication studies, described him as "one of South Africa's most gifted political strategists and communicators". In 2004 he was elected 13th in SABC 3's Great South Africans public poll.
Although Biko's ideas have not received the same attention as Frantz Fanon's, in 2001 Ahluwalia and Zegeye wrote that the men shared "a highly similar pedigree in their interests in the philosophical psychology of consciousness, their desire for a decolonising of the mind, the liberation of Africa and in the politics of nationalism and socialism for the 'wretched of the earth'". Some academics argue that Biko's thought remains relevant; for example, in "African Identities" in 2015, Isaac Kamola wrote that Biko's critique of white liberalism was relevant to situations like the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and Invisible Children, Inc.'s "KONY 2012" campaign.
Woods held the view that Biko had filled the vacuum within the country's African nationalist movement that arose in the late 1960s following the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the banning of Sobukwe. Following Biko's death, the Black Consciousness Movement declined in influence as the ANC emerged as a resurgent force in anti-apartheid politics. This brought about a shift in focus from the BCM's community organising to wider mass mobilisation, including attempts to follow Tambo's call to make South Africa "ungovernable", which involved increasing violence and clashes between rival anti-apartheid groups.
Followers of Biko's ideas re-organised as the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO), which subsequently split into the Socialist Party of Azania and the Black People's Convention. Several figures associated with the ANC denigrated Biko during the 1980s. For instance, members of the ANC-affiliated United Democratic Front assembled outside Biko's Ginsberg home shouting "U-Steve Biko, I-CIA!", an allegation that Biko was a spy for the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These demonstrations resulted in clashes with Biko supporters from AZAPO.
A year after Biko's death, his "Frank Talk" writings were published as an edited collection, "I Write What I Like". The defence that Biko provided for arrested SASO activists was used as the basis for the 1978 book "The Testimony of Steve Biko", edited by Millard Arnold. Woods fled to England that year, where he campaigned against apartheid and further publicised Biko's life and death, writing many newspaper articles about him, as well as a book, "Biko" (1978). This was made into the 1987 film "Cry Freedom" by Richard Attenborough, starring Denzel Washington as Biko. Many film critics and Black Consciousness proponents were concerned that the film foregrounded white characters like Woods over Biko himself, but "Cry Freedom" brought Biko's life and activism to a wider audience. The state censors initially permitted its release in South Africa, but after it began screening in the country's cinemas, copies were confiscated by police on the order of Police Commissioner General Hendrik de Wit, who claimed that it would inflame tensions and endanger public safety. The South African government banned many books about Biko, including those of Arnold and Woods.
Biko was commemorated in several artworks after his death. Gerard Sekoto, a South African artist based in France, produced "Homage to Steve Biko" in 1978, and another South African artist, Peter Stopforth, included a work entitled "The Interrogators" in his 1979 exhibition. A triptych, it depicted the three police officers implicated in Biko's death. Kenya released a commemorative postage stamp featuring Biko's face.
Biko's death also inspired several songs, including from artists outside South Africa such as Tom Paxton and Peter Hammill. The English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel released "Biko" in tribute to him, which was a hit single in 1980, and was banned in South Africa soon after. Along with other anti-apartheid music, the song helped to integrate anti-apartheid themes into Western popular culture. Biko's life was also commemorated through theatre. The inquest into his death was dramatised as a play, "The Biko Inquest", first performed in London in 1978; a 1984 performance was directed by Albert Finney and broadcast on television. Anti-apartheid activists used Biko's name and memory in their protests; in 1979, a mountaineer climbed the spire of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to unfurl a banner with the names of Biko and imprisoned Black Panther Party leader Geronimo Pratt on it.
Following apartheid's collapse, Woods raised funds to commission a bronze statue of Biko from Naomi Jacobson. It was erected outside the front door of city hall in East London on the Eastern cape, opposite a statue commemorating British soldiers killed in the Second Boer War. Over 10,000 people attended the monument's unveiling in September 1997. In the following months it was vandalised several times; in one instance it was daubed with the letters "AWB", an acronym of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, a far-right Afrikaner paramilitary group. In 1997, the cemetery where Biko was buried was renamed the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance. The District Six Museum also held an exhibition of artwork marking the 20th anniversary of his death by examining his legacy.
Also in September 1997, Biko's family established the Steve Biko Foundation. The Ford Foundation donated money to the group to establish a Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg, opened in 2012. The Foundation launched its annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture in 2000, each given by a prominent black intellectual. The first speaker was Njabulo Ndebele; later speakers included Zakes Mda, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Mandela.
Buildings, institutes and public spaces around the world have been named after Biko, such as the Steve Bikoplein in Amsterdam. In 2008, the Pretoria Academic Hospital was renamed the Steve Biko Hospital. The University of the Witwatersrand has a Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics. In Salvador, Bahia, a Steve Biko Institute was established to promote educational attainment among poor Afro-Brazilians. In 2012, the Google Cultural Institute published an online archive containing documents and photographs owned by the Steve Biko Foundation. On 18 December 2016, Google marked what would have been Biko's 70th birthday with a Google Doodle.
Amid the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s, various political parties competed over Biko's legacy, with several saying they were the party that Biko would support if he were still alive. AZAPO in particular claimed exclusive ownership over Black Consciousness. In 1994, the ANC issued a campaign poster suggesting that Biko had been a member of their party, which was untrue. Following the end of apartheid when the ANC formed the government, they were accused of appropriating his legacy. In 2002, AZAPO issued a statement declaring that "Biko was not a neutral, apolitical and mythical icon" and that the ANC was "scandalously" using Biko's image to legitimise their "weak" government. Members of the ANC have also criticised AZAPO's attitude to Biko; in 1997, Mandela said that "Biko belongs to us all, not just AZAPO." On the anniversary of Biko's death in 2015, delegations from both the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters independently visited his grave. In March 2017, the South African President Jacob Zuma laid a wreath at Biko's grave to mark Human Rights Day. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28320 |
Survivor: Africa
Survivor: Africa is the third season of the American CBS competitive reality television series "Survivor". The season was filmed from July 11, 2001 through August 18, 2001 in Kenya's Shaba National Reserve on the African continent, and aired weekly from October 11, 2001 until the live finale on January 10, 2002, when Ethan Zohn was named Sole Survivor over Kim Johnson by a jury vote of 5-2. Hosted by Jeff Probst, it consisted of the usual 39 days of gameplay with 16 competitors.
The two initial tribes were Boran and Samburu, named for the real-life Borana and Samburu tribes. After 12 days, three members of each team switched to the other team, in what became known as the first "twist" in "Survivor". When ten contestants remained, the two tribes merged into the Moto Maji tribe (Swahili for 'fire' and 'water').
The complete season, including the mid-season recap episode, live reunion show, and "Back From Africa" special documenting the post-"Survivor" lives of the contestants, was released on DVD on October 5, 2010. The collection was initially released in a 9-disc package, but was later reissued condensed into 5 discs.
Ethan Zohn has competed with Lex van den Berghe, and Tom Buchanan again on "". Zohn also competed on "", where he placed 17th. In 2015, Teresa Cooper was included on the public poll to choose the cast of "", but was not chosen to compete.
Outside of "Survivor", Zohn competed on a "Reality All-Stars" episode of "Fear Factor" and also appeared on "The Amazing Race 19" with then-girlfriend and fellow "Survivor" winner Jenna Morasca. In 2013, van den Berghe and Buchanan were both involved in the making of the television series "Family Beef".
The sixteen castaways were split into two tribes, Samburu and Boran, and were given camps that included pre-constructed fencing to help protect them from wildlife. Samburu took an early lead, but the tribe was internally divided along age lines (Silas, Kim P., Brandon and Lindsey as one, and Frank, Teresa, Carl and Linda as the other). At their first Tribal Council, the age blocs left a stalemate tie between Carl and Lindsey, and with no previous votes to count, a quiz was used, with Lindsay winning and putting the younger members in control; on the next visit to Tribal Council, Linda was eliminated, and both tribes were even at six members. On Day 13, the tribes were given a vague clue about sending three members on a quest, unaware this would be the first tribal swap for "Survivor". Silas picked himself along with the two remaining older Samburu, Frank and Teresa, while Kelly, Big Tom and Lex were picked for Boran. After informed of the tribal swap, these players joined their new tribe; Frank and Teresa quickly went to work with the original Boran members to eliminate Silas, while the original Boran members on Samburu learned of Lindsay's past votes and were able to eliminate her.
The tribes merged into Moto Maji with ten players remaining, six from the original Boran and four from Samburu. Aware that the Boran players were sticking with original alliances, Boran members of Moto Maji scrambled to stay in.
During the first tribal council post-merge, a mystery vote was cast for Lex, sending him on a witch hunt. Deciding it had been Kelly, a member of his alliance that had voted against him, he asked his alliance to turn against one of their own. When she found out what was going to happen, Kelly banded with the Samburu members, but Lex had also convinced Brandon to vote with his alliance, leading to Kelly's elimination. Brandon's disloyalty to Samburu would lead to his elimination as well as the elimination of the other remaining original Samburu members.
The final four were Ethan, Lex, Big Tom, and Kim J. Kim won the last two immunity challenges; Tom was voted off, then, Lex was voted out by Kim's solitary vote. At the Final Tribal Council, Kim J. was praised for surviving the game for her age, but accused of riding the coattails of Lex, Ethan, and Big Tom. Ethan was voted the Sole Survivor on a 5-2 vote.
Unlike the previous two seasons, "Survivor: Africa" received much more criticism, primarily for the tough living conditions that the cast had to go through during filming. Dalton Ross of "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it as the ninth-worst season of the series, saying that, aside from "Some great challenges, not that much else was great." Tom Santilli of Examiner.com ranked it #26, saying that following "Borneo" and "Australian Outback", "it was a complete dud at the time," while also noting that winner Ethan Zohn "was just so-so and not that interesting," and that the cast's "lethargy showed on screen" due to the poor conditions in the filming location. It was also ranked 24th by fan site "The Purple Rock Podcast," which similarly said that "this season suffers because of its location," and that "the cast on this season is generally pretty decent, and probably would have been much better if they weren't constantly sapped of energy by lack of food and water." In 2015, former "Survivor" contestant and reality TV podcaster Rob Cesternino ranked the season 26th out of the first 30, while a poll on his site saw it rank 19th. The season was similarly ranked as the fifth-worst by Andrea Deiher of Zap2it in 2013, before it was replaced by "" in 2015.
There was some controversy surrounding an immunity challenge in the final episode. In a "Fallen Comrades" challenge, in which the contestants were quizzed on trivia regarding players in the game who had been voted out, the final question was "Which female contestant has no piercings?" The official answer, given by Kim J to earn the win, was Kelly. Lex answered the question with Lindsey's name, who, unbeknownst to the producers, also had no piercings. Had Lex been given credit for his correct answer, he and Kim J. would have been tied in the challenge and would have faced tie-breaker questions. After the producers had been alerted to the mistake, both third-place finisher Lex and fourth-place finisher Tom were awarded the $100,000 runner-up prize instead of the traditional third and fourth place earnings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28322 |
Samhain
Samhain (; ) is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. Traditionally, it is celebrated from 31 October to 1 November, as the Celtic day began and ended at sunset. This is about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasadh. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Similar festivals are held at the same time of year in other Celtic lands, for example the Brittonic Calan Gaeaf (in Wales), Kalan Gwav (in Cornwall), and Kalan Goañv (in Brittany).
Samhain is believed to have Celtic pagan origins and there is evidence it has been an important date since ancient times. Some Neolithic passage tombs in Ireland are aligned with the sunrise around the time of Samhain. It is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and many important events in Irish mythology happen or begin on Samhain. It was the time when cattle were brought back down from the summer pastures and when livestock were slaughtered for the winter.
As at Beltane, special bonfires were lit, which were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers, and there were rituals involving them. Like Bealtaine, Samhain was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. This meant the "Aos Sí", the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into our world. Most scholars see the "Aos Sí" as remnants of the pagan gods and nature spirits. At Samhain, it was believed that the "Aos Sí" needed to be propitiated to ensure that the people and their livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink were left outside for them. The souls of the dead were also thought to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Feasts were had, at which the souls of dead kin were beckoned to attend and a place set at the table for them.
Mumming and guising were part of the festival, and involved people going door-to-door in costume (or in disguise), often reciting verses in exchange for food. The costumes may have been a way of imitating, and disguising oneself from, the "Aos Sí". Divination rituals and games were also a big part of the festival and often involved nuts and apples. In the late 19th century, Sir John Rhys and Sir James Frazer suggested that it was the "Celtic New Year", and this view has been repeated by some other scholars.
In the 9th century, the Western Christian church shifted the date of All Saints' Day to 1 November, while 2 November later became All Souls' Day. Over time, Samhain and All Saints'/All Souls' merged to create the modern Halloween. Historians have used the name 'Samhain' to refer to Gaelic 'Halloween' customs up until the 19th century.
Since the later 20th century, Celtic neopagans and Wiccans have observed Samhain, or something based on it, as a religious holiday. Neopagans in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Samhain on or around 1 May.
In Modern Irish as well as Scottish Gaelic the name is . Older forms of the word include the Scottish Gaelic spellings and . In Manx Gaelic the name is .
These are also the names of November in each language, shortened from "Mí na Samhna" (Irish), "Mì na Samhna" (Scottish Gaelic) and "Mee Houney" (Manx), meaning "month of Samhain". The night of 31 October—Halloween—is "Oíche Shamhna" (Irish), "Oidhche Shamhna" (Scottish Gaelic) and "Oie Houney" (Manx), meaning "Samhain night". The day of 1 November, or the whole festival, may be called "Lá Samhna" (Irish), "Là Samhna" (Scottish Gaelic) and "Laa Houney" (Manx), meaning "Samhain day".
These names all come from the Old Irish "Samain" or "Samuin" , the name for the festival held on 1 November in medieval Ireland. This comes from Proto-Indo-European "*semo-" ("summer"). One suggestion is that the name means "summer's end", from "sam" ("summer") and "fuin" ("end"), but this may be a folk etymology. In 1907, Whitley Stokes suggested an etymology from Proto-Celtic "*samani" ("assembly"), and Joseph Vendryes suggested that it is unrelated to "*semo-" ("summer"), because the Celtic summer ended in August.
The Gaulish month name "SAMON[IOS]" "(pertaining to) Summer" on the Coligny calendar is likely related to the word "Samhain". A festival of some kind may have been held during the 'three nights of "Samonios"' (Gaulish "trinux[tion] samo[nii]"). The Gaulish calendar seems to have split the year into two-halves: the first beginning with the month "SAMON[IOS]" and the second beginning with the month "GIAMONIOS", which is related to the word for winter, PIE "*g'hei-men-" (Latin "hiems", Latvian "ziema", Lithuanian "žiema", Slavic "zima", Greek "kheimon", Hittite "gimmanza"), cf. Old Irish "gem-adaig" ('winter's night'). "Samonios" may represent the beginning of the summer season and "Giamonios" (the seventh month) the beginning of the winter season. The lunations marking the middle of each half-year may also have been marked by festivals.
"Samain" or "Samuin" was the name of the "feis"- the festival marking the beginning of winter in Gaelic Ireland. It is attested in some of the earliest Old Irish literature, from the 10th century onward. It was one of four Gaelic seasonal festivals: Samhain (~1 November), Imbolc (~1 February), Bealtaine (~1 May) and Lughnasadh (~1 August). Samhain and Bealtaine, at opposite sides of the year, are thought to have been the most important. Sir James George Frazer wrote in his 1890 book, "The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion", that 1 May and 1 November are of little importance to European crop-growers, but of great importance to herdsmen. It is at the beginning of summer that cattle are driven to the upland summer pastures and the beginning of winter that they are led back. Thus, Frazer suggests that halving the year at 1 May and 1 November dates from a time when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent on their herds.
Some Neolithic passage tombs in Ireland are aligned with the sunrise around the times of Samhain and Imbolc. These include the Mound of the Hostages ("Dumha na nGiall") at the Hill of Tara, and Cairn L at Slieve na Calliagh.
In medieval Ireland the festival marked the end of the season for trade and warfare and was a time for tribal gatherings. These gatherings are a popular setting for early Irish tales.
Irish mythology was originally a spoken tradition, but much of it was eventually written down in the Middle Ages by Christian monks, who Christianized it to some extent. Nevertheless, these tales may shed some light on what Samhain meant and how it was marked in ancient Ireland.
Irish mythology says that Samhain was one of the four seasonal festivals of the year, and the 10th-century tale "Tochmarc Emire" ('The Wooing of Emer') lists Samhain as the first of these four "quarter days". The tales say it was marked by great gatherings where they held meetings, feasted, drank alcohol, and held contests. Specifically, Samhain is described as the Easter festival of the Pagans when every seven years the Feast of Tara was held, during which new laws and duties were ordained and Ireland's councils were formed; anyone who broke the laws established during this time would be banished. The High King also appointed 150 champions to enforce his rule, laws, and hunting and appointed a steward over all of Ireland. The other important holidays and their festivals compared to Samhain are the Fair of Tailtiu on Lughnasadh and the Great Meeting of Uisneach on Beltane.
According to Irish mythology, Samhain (like Bealtaine) was a time when the 'doorways' to the Otherworld opened, allowing supernatural beings and the souls of the dead to come into our world; but while Bealtaine was a summer festival for the living, Samhain "was essentially a festival for the dead". "The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn" says that the "sídhe" (fairy mounds or portals to the Otherworld) "were always open at Samhain". It tells us that the High King of Ireland hosted a great gathering at Tara each Samhain. Each year the fire-breather Aillen emerges from the Otherworld and burns down the palace of Tara after lulling everyone to sleep with his music.
One Samhain, the young Fionn mac Cumhaill is able to stay awake and slays Aillen with a magical spear, for which he is made leader of the fianna. In a similar tale, one Samhain the Otherworld being Cúldubh comes out of the burial mound on Slievenamon and snatches a roast pig. Fionn kills Cúldubh with a spear throw as he re-enters the mound. Fionn's thumb is caught between the door and the post as it shuts, and he puts it in his mouth to ease the pain. As his thumb had been inside the Otherworld, Fionn is bestowed with great wisdom. This may refer to gaining knowledge from the ancestors. "Acallam na Senórach" ('Colloquy of the Elders') tells how three female werewolves emerge from the cave of Cruachan (an Otherworld portal) each Samhain and kill livestock. When Cas Corach plays his harp, they take on human form, and the fianna warrior Caílte then slays them with a spear.
Some tales may suggest that offerings or sacrifices were made at Samhain. In the "Lebor Gabála Érenn" (or 'Book of Invasions'), each Samhain the people of Nemed had to give two-thirds of their children, their corn and their milk to the monstrous Fomorians. The Fomorians seem to represent the harmful or destructive powers of nature; personifications of chaos, darkness, death, blight and drought. This tribute paid by Nemed's people may represent a "sacrifice offered at the beginning of winter, when the powers of darkness and blight are in the ascendant". According to the later "Dindsenchas" and the "Annals of the Four Masters"—which were written by Christian monks—Samhain in ancient Ireland was associated with a god or idol called Crom Cruach. The texts claim that a first-born child would be sacrificed at the stone idol of Crom Cruach in Magh Slécht. They say that King Tigernmas, and three-fourths of his people, died while worshiping Crom Cruach there one Samhain.
The legendary kings Diarmait mac Cerbaill and Muirchertach mac Ercae each die a threefold death on Samhain, which involves wounding, burning and drowning, and of which they are forewarned. In the tale "Togail Bruidne Dá Derga" ('The Destruction of Dá Derga's Hostel'), king Conaire Mór also meets his death on Samhain after breaking his "geasa" (prohibitions or taboos). He is warned of his impending doom by three undead horsemen who are messengers of Donn, god of the dead. "The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn" tells how each Samhain the men of Ireland went to woo a beautiful maiden who lives in the fairy mound on Brí Eile (Croghan Hill). It says that each year someone would be killed "to mark the occasion", by persons unknown. Some academics suggest that these tales recall human sacrifice, and argue that several ancient Irish bog bodies (such as Old Croghan Man) appear to have been kings who were ritually killed, some of them around the time of Samhain.
In the "Echtra Neraí" ('The Adventure of Nera'), King Ailill of Connacht sets his retinue a test of bravery on Samhain night. He offers a prize to whoever can make it to a gallows and tie a band around a hanged man's ankle. Each challenger is thwarted by demons and runs back to the king's hall in fear. However, Nera succeeds, and the dead man then asks for a drink. Nera carries him on his back and they stop at three houses. They enter the third, where the dead man drinks and spits it on the householders, killing them. Returning, Nera sees a fairy host burning the king's hall and slaughtering those inside. He follows the host through a portal into the Otherworld. Nera learns that what he saw was only a vision of what will happen the next Samhain unless something is done. He is able to return to the hall and warns the king.
The tale "Aided Chrimthainn maic Fidaig" ('The Killing of Crimthann mac Fidaig') tells how Mongfind kills her brother, king Crimthann of Munster, so that one of her sons might become king. Mongfind offers Crimthann a poisoned drink at a feast, but he asks her to drink from it first. Having no other choice but to drink the poison, she dies on Samhain eve. The Middle Irish writer notes that Samhain is also called "Féile Moingfhinne" (the Festival of Mongfind or Mongfhionn), and that "women and the rabble make petitions to her" at Samhain.
Many other events in Irish mythology happen or begin on Samhain. The invasion of Ulster that makes up the main action of the "Táin Bó Cúailnge" ('Cattle Raid of Cooley') begins on Samhain. As cattle-raiding typically was a summer activity, the invasion during this off-season surprised the Ulstermen. The "Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh" also begins on Samhain. The Morrígan and The Dagda meet and have sex before the battle against the Fomorians; in this way the Morrígan acts as a sovereignty figure and gives the victory to the Dagda's people, the Tuatha Dé Danann. In "Aislinge Óengusa" ('The Dream of Óengus') it is when he and his bride-to-be switch from bird to human form, and in "Tochmarc Étaíne" ('The Wooing of Étaín') it is the day on which Óengus claims the kingship of Brú na Bóinne.
Several sites in Ireland are especially linked to Samhain. Each Samhain a host of otherworldly beings was said to emerge from Oweynagat ("cave of the cats"), at Rathcroghan in County Roscommon. The Hill of Ward (or Tlachtga) in County Meath is thought to have been the site of a great Samhain gathering and bonfire; the Iron Age ringfort is said to have been where the goddess or druid Tlachtga gave birth to triplets and where she later died.
In "The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain" (1996), Ronald Hutton writes: "No doubt there were [pagan] religious observances as well, but none of the tales ever portrays any". The only historic reference to pagan religious rites is in the work of Geoffrey Keating (died 1644), but his source is unknown. Hutton says it may be that no religious rites are mentioned because, centuries after Christianization, the writers had no record of them. Hutton suggests Samhain may not have been "particularly" associated with the supernatural. He says that the gatherings of royalty and warriors on Samhain may simply have been an ideal setting for such tales, in the same way that many Arthurian tales are set at courtly gatherings at Christmas or Pentecost.
Samhain was one of the four main festivals of the Gaelic calendar, marking the end of the harvest and beginning of winter. Samhain customs are mentioned in several medieval texts. In "Serglige Con Culainn" ('Cúchulainn's Sickbed'), it is said that the festival of the Ulaid at Samhain lasted a week: Samhain itself, and the three days before and after. It involved great gatherings at which they held meetings, feasted, drank alcohol, and held contests The Celts also recorded horse racing as part of their Samhain festivities. The "Togail Bruidne Dá Derga" notes that bonfires were lit at Samhain and stones cast into the fires. It is mentioned in Geoffrey Keating's "Foras Feasa ar Éirinn", which was written in the early 1600s but draws on earlier medieval sources, some of which are unknown. He claims that the "feis" of Tara was held for a week every third Samhain, when the nobles and ollams of Ireland met to lay down and renew the laws, and to feast. He also claims that the druids lit a sacred bonfire at Tlachtga and made sacrifices to the gods, sometimes by burning them in the fire. He adds that all other fires were doused and then re-lit from this bonfire.
Traditionally, Samhain was a time to take stock of the herds and food supplies. Cattle were brought down to the winter pastures after six months in the higher summer pastures. It was also the time to choose which animals would need to be slaughtered for the winter. This custom is still observed by many who farm and raise livestock because it is when meat will keep since the freeze has come and also since summer grass is gone and free foraging is no longer possible. It is thought that some of the rituals associated with the slaughter have been transferred to other winter holidays. On St. Martin's Day (11 November) in Ireland, an animal—usually a rooster, goose or sheep—would be slaughtered and some of its blood sprinkled on the threshold of the house. It was offered to Saint Martin, who may have taken the place of a god or gods, and it was then eaten as part of a feast. This custom was common in parts of Ireland until the 19th century, and was found in some other parts of Europe. At New Year in the Hebrides, a man dressed in a cowhide would circle the township sunwise. A bit of the hide would be burnt and everyone would breathe in the smoke. These customs were meant to keep away bad luck, and similar customs were found in other Celtic regions.
As at Bealtaine, bonfires were lit on hilltops at Samhain and there were rituals involving them. However, by the modern era, they only seem to have been common in parts of the Scottish Highlands, on the Isle of Man, in north and mid Wales, and in parts of Ulster. F. Marian McNeill says that a force-fire (or need-fire) was the traditional way of lighting them, but notes that this method gradually died out. Likewise, only certain kinds of wood were traditionally used, but later records show that many kinds of flammable material were burnt. It is suggested that the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic—they mimicked the Sun, helping the "powers of growth" and holding back the decay and darkness of winter. They may also have served to symbolically "burn up and destroy all harmful influences". Accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries suggest that the fires (as well as their smoke and ashes) were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers.
In Moray, boys asked for bonfire fuel from each house in the village. When the fire was lit, "one after another of the youths laid himself down on the ground as near to the fire as possible so as not to be burned, and in such a position as to let the smoke roll over him. The others ran through the smoke and jumped over him". When the bonfire burnt down, they scattered the ashes, vying with each other who should scatter them most. Sometimes, two bonfires would be built side by side, and the people—sometimes with their livestock—would walk between them as a cleansing ritual. The bones of slaughtered cattle were said to have been cast upon bonfires. In the pre-Christian Gaelic world, cattle were the main form of wealth and were the center of agricultural and pastoral life.
People also took flames from the bonfire back to their homes. In parts of Scotland, torches of burning fir or turf were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them. In some places, people doused their hearth fires on Samhain night. Each family then solemnly re-lit its hearth from the communal bonfire, thus bonding the community together. The 17th century writer Geoffrey Keating claimed that this was an ancient tradition, instituted by the druids. Dousing the old fire and bringing in the new may have been a way of banishing evil, which was done at New Year festivals in many countries.
The bonfires were used in divination rituals, although not all divination involved fire. In 18th century Ochtertyre, a ring of stones—one for each person—was laid round the fire, perhaps on a layer of ashes. Everyone then ran round it with a torch, "exulting". In the morning, the stones were examined and if any was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year. A similar custom was observed in northern Wales and in Brittany. James Frazer says that this may come from "an older custom of actually burning them" (i.e. human sacrifice) or may have always been symbolic. Divination has likely been a part of the festival since ancient times, and it has survived in some rural areas.
At household festivities throughout the Gaelic regions and Wales, there were many rituals intended to divine the future of those gathered, especially with regard to death and marriage. Apples and hazelnuts were often used in these divination rituals or games. In Celtic mythology, apples were strongly associated with the Otherworld and immortality, while hazelnuts were associated with divine wisdom. One of the most common games was apple bobbing. Another involved hanging a small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod was spun round and everyone took turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth. Apples were peeled in one long strip, the peel tossed over the shoulder, and its shape was said to form the first letter of the future spouse's name.
Two hazelnuts were roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desired. If the nuts jumped away from the heat, it was a bad sign, but if the nuts roasted quietly it foretold a good match. Items were hidden in food—usually a cake, barmbrack, cranachan, champ or sowans—and portions of it served out at random. A person's future was foretold by the item they happened to find; for example a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth. A salty oatmeal bannock was baked; the person ate it in three bites and then went to bed in silence without anything to drink. This was said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst. Egg whites were dropped in water, and the shapes foretold the number of future children. Children would also chase crows and divine some of these things from the number of birds or the direction they flew.
As noted earlier, Samhain was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. This meant the "aos sí", the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into our world. Many scholars see the "aos sí" as remnants of the pagan gods and nature spirits. At Samhain, it was believed that the "aos sí" needed to be propitiated to ensure that the people and their livestock survived the winter. As such, offerings of food and drink would be left outside for the "aos sí". Portions of the crops might also be left in the ground for them.
One custom—described a "blatant example" of a "pagan rite surviving into the Christian epoch"—was observed in the Outer Hebrides until the early 19th century. On 31 October, the locals would go down to the shore. One man would wade into the water up to his waist, where he would pour out a cup of ale and ask 'Seonaidh' ('Shoney'), whom he called "god of the sea", to bestow blessings on them. People also took special care not to offend the "aos sí" and sought to ward-off any who were out to cause mischief. They stayed near to home or, if forced to walk in the darkness, turned their clothing inside-out or carried iron or salt to keep them at bay. The dead were also honored at Samhain. The beginning of winter may have been seen as the most fitting time to do so, as it was a time of 'dying' in nature. The souls of the dead were thought to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them.
The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures throughout the world. James Frazer suggests "It was perhaps a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor, shivering, hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage". However, the souls of thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a wronged person could return to wreak revenge.
Mumming and guising was a part of Samhain from at least the 16th century and was recorded in parts of Ireland, Scotland, Mann and Wales. It involved people going from house to house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting songs or verses in exchange for food. It is suggested that it evolved from a tradition whereby people impersonated the "aos sí", or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf. Impersonating these spirits or souls was also believed to protect oneself from them. S. V. Peddle suggests the guisers "personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded reward in exchange for good fortune". McNeill suggests that the ancient festival included people in masks or costumes representing these spirits and that the modern custom came from this. In Ireland, costumes were sometimes worn by those who went about before nightfall collecting for a Samhain feast.
In parts of southern Ireland during the 19th century, the guisers included a hobby horse known as the "Láir Bhán" (white mare). A man covered in a white sheet and carrying a decorated horse skull (representing the "Láir Bhán") would lead a group of youths, blowing on cow horns, from farm to farm. At each they recited verses, some of which "savoured strongly of paganism", and the farmer was expected to donate food. If the farmer donated food he could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune. This is akin to the "Mari Lwyd" (grey mare) procession in Wales, which takes place at Midwinter. In Wales the white horse is often seen as an omen of death. In some places, young people cross-dressed. In Scotland, young men went house-to-house with masked, veiled, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed. This was common in the 16th century in the Scottish countryside and persisted into the 20th. It is suggested that the blackened faces comes from using the bonfire's ashes for protection. Elsewhere in Europe, costumes, mumming and hobby horses were part of other yearly festivals. However, in the Celtic-speaking regions they were "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers".
Hutton writes: "When imitating malignant spirits it was a very short step from guising to playing pranks". Playing pranks at Samhain is recorded in the Scottish Highlands as far back as 1736 and was also common in Ireland, which led to Samhain being nicknamed "Mischief Night" in some parts. Wearing costumes at Halloween spread to England in the 20th century, as did the custom of playing pranks, though there had been mumming at other festivals. At the time of mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration, which popularised Halloween in North America, Halloween in Ireland and Scotland had a strong tradition of guising and pranks. Trick-or-treating may have come from the custom of going door-to-door collecting food for Samhain feasts, fuel for Samhain bonfires and/or offerings for the "aos sí". Alternatively, it may have come from the All Saints/All Souls custom of collecting soul cakes.
The "traditional illumination for guisers or pranksters abroad on the night in some places was provided by turnips or mangel wurzels, hollowed out to act as lanterns and often carved with grotesque faces". They were also set on windowsills. By those who made them, the lanterns were variously said to represent the spirits or supernatural beings, or were used to ward off evil spirits. These were common in parts of Ireland and the Scotland into the 20th century. They were also found in Somerset (see Punkie Night). In the 20th century they spread to other parts of England and became generally known as jack-o'-lanterns.
During the late 19th and early 20th century Celtic Revival, there was an upswell of interest in Samhain and the other Celtic festivals. Sir John Rhys put forth that it had been the "Celtic New Year". He inferred it from contemporary folklore in Ireland and Wales, which he felt was "full of Hallowe'en customs associated with new beginnings". He visited Mann and found that the Manx sometimes called 31 October "New Year's Night" or "Hog-unnaa". The "Tochmarc Emire", written in the Middle Ages, reckoned the year around the four festivals at the beginning of the seasons, and put Samhain at the beginning of those. However, Hutton says that the evidence for it being the Celtic or Gaelic New Year's Day is flimsy. Rhys's theory was popularised by Sir James George Frazer, though at times he did acknowledge that the evidence is inconclusive. Frazer also put forth that Samhain had been the pagan Celtic festival of the dead and that it had been Christianized as All Saints and All Souls. Since then, Samhain has been popularly seen as the Celtic New Year and an ancient festival of the dead. The calendar of the Celtic League, for example, begins and ends at Samhain.
In the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, Samhain is known as the 'calends of winter'. The Brythonic lands of Wales, Cornwall and Brittany held festivals on 31 October similar to the Gaelic one. In Wales it is "Calan Gaeaf", in Cornwall it is Allantide or "Kalan Gwav" and in Brittany it is "Kalan Goañv".
The Manx celebrate Hop-tu-Naa on 31 October, which is a celebration of the original New Year's Eve. Traditionally, children carve turnips rather than pumpkins and carry them around the neighbourhood singing traditional songs relating to hop-tu-naa.
The Roman Catholic holy day of All Saints (or All Hallows) was introduced in the year 609, but was originally celebrated on 13 May. In 835, Louis the Pious switched it to 1 November in the Carolingian Empire, at the behest of Pope Gregory IV. However, from the testimony of Pseudo-Bede, it is known that churches in what are now England and Germany were already celebrating All Saints on 1 November at the beginning of the 8th century. Thus, Louis merely made official the custom of celebrating it on 1 November. James Frazer suggests that 1 November was chosen because it was the date of the Celtic festival of the dead (Samhain)—the Celts had influenced their English neighbours, and English missionaries had influenced the Germans. However, Ronald Hutton points out that, according to Óengus of Tallaght (d. ca. 824), the 7th/8th century church in Ireland celebrated All Saints on 20 April. He suggests that the 1 November date was a Germanic rather than a Celtic idea. In the 11th century, 2 November became established as All Souls' Day. This created the three-day observance known as Allhallowtide: All Hallows' Eve (31 October), All Hallows' Day (1 November), and All Souls' Day (2 November).
It is widely believed that many of the modern secular customs of All Hallows' Eve (or Halloween) were influenced by the festival of Samhain.
Samhain and Samhain-based festivals are held by some Neopagans. As there are many kinds of Neopaganism, their Samhain celebrations can be very different despite the shared name. Some try to emulate the historic festival as much as possible. Other Neopagans base their celebrations on sundry unrelated sources, Gaelic culture being only one of the sources. Folklorist Jenny Butler describes how Irish pagans pick some elements of historic Samhain celebrations and meld them with references to the Celtic past, making a new festival of Samhain that is inimitably part of neo-pagan culture.
Neopagans usually celebrate Samhain on 31 October – 1 November in the Northern Hemisphere and 30 April – 1 May in the Southern Hemisphere, beginning and ending at sundown. Some Neopagans celebrate it at the astronomical midpoint between the autumn equinox and winter solstice (or the full moon nearest this point). In the Northern Hemisphere, this midpoint is when the ecliptic longitude of the Sun reaches 225 degrees. In 2015, this is on 7 November, at 17:44 GMT.
Like other Reconstructionist traditions, Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans emphasize historical accuracy. They base their celebrations and rituals on traditional lore as well as research into the beliefs of the polytheistic Celts.
Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans (or CRs) often celebrate Samhain on the date of first frost, or when the last of the harvest is in and the ground is dry enough to have a bonfire. Some follow the old tradition of building two bonfires, which celebrants and livestock then walk or dance between as a ritual of purification. For CRs, it is a time when the dead are especially honoured. Though CRs make offerings at all times of the year, Samhain is a time when more elaborate offerings are made to specific ancestors. This may involve making a small shrine. Often there will be a meal, where a place for the dead is set at the table and they are invited to join. Traditional tales may be told and traditional songs, poems and dances performed. A western-facing door or window may be opened and a candle left burning on the windowsill to guide the dead home. Divination for the coming year is often done, whether in all solemnity or as games for the children. The more mystically inclined may also see this as a time for deeply communing with their deities, especially those seen as being particularly linked with this festival.
Wiccans celebrate a variation of Samhain as one of the yearly Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year. It is deemed by most Wiccans to be the most important of the four "greater Sabbats". Samhain is seen by some Wiccans as a time to celebrate the lives of those who have died, and it often involves paying respect to ancestors, family members, elders of the faith, friends, pets and other loved ones who have died. In some rituals the spirits of the dead are invited to attend the festivities. It is seen as a festival of darkness, which is balanced at the opposite point of the wheel by the spring festival of Beltane, which Wiccans celebrate as a festival of light and fertility.
Wiccans believe that at Samhain the veil between this world and the afterlife is at its thinnest point of the whole year, making it easier to communicate with those who have left this world.
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Early Irish literature | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28323 |
Stargate (film)
Stargate is a 1994 science fiction adventure film released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Carolco Pictures. Written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the film is the first release in the "Stargate" franchise. Directed by Emmerich, the film stars Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Alexis Cruz, Mili Avital, and Viveca Lindfors. The plot centers on the premise of a "Stargate", an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole enabling travel to a similar device elsewhere in the universe. The film's central plot explores the theory of extraterrestrial beings having an influence upon human civilization.
The film had a mixed initial critical reception, earning both praise and criticism for its atmosphere, story, characters, and graphic content. Nevertheless, "Stargate" became a commercial success worldwide.
In 1994, Egyptologist and linguist Daniel Jackson, Ph.D., is invited by Catherine Langford to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs on cover stones that her father had unearthed in Giza, Egypt, in 1928. Jackson is taken to a U.S. Air Force installation and told by its commander, Special Operations Colonel Jack O'Neil, that the project is classified information. Jackson determines that the hieroglyphs refer to a "stargate" which uses constellations as spatial coordinates. On this revelation, Jackson is shown that the base has this Stargate, also discovered by Langford's father. They use Jackson's coordinates to align the Stargate's metal ring with markings along its outside, and once all seven are locked in, a wormhole opens, connecting the Stargate with a distant planet. Jackson joins O'Neil and his team, consisting of Reilly, Porro, Freeman, Brown, Ferretti, and Kawalsky, as they pass through the wormhole.
On the arid desert planet, Abydos, they find themselves in a pyramid-like structure. Jackson locates the Stargate's controls, but lacks the coordinates to return home. Colonel O'Neil orders Reilly, Porro, Freeman, and Ferretti to stay behind to guard the Stargate. Nearby, O’Neil’s group discover a tribe of humans working to mine a strange mineral from the planet. Jackson is able to communicate with them as they speak a variation of Ancient Egyptian, and finds the tribe sees them as emissaries of their god Ra. The tribe's chieftain Kasuf presents Jackson with his daughter Sha'uri as a gift, and though Jackson initially refuses her, he later becomes romantically attached to her. O'Neil befriends Kasuf's teenaged son Skaara and his friends, in part because Skaara reminds him of his long-deceased son who had shot himself with O'Neil's service weapon. Through hidden markings and discussions with the tribe, Jackson learns that Ra is an alien being who had come to Earth during the Ancient Egyptian period, looking to possess human bodies to extend his own life. Ra enslaved these humans and brought some to this planet through the Stargate to mine the mineral that is used in the alien technology. The humans on Earth revolted, overthrew Ra's overseers, and buried the Stargate to prevent its use. Ra forbade the humans in the tribe from becoming literate, fearing another revolt. During this investigation, Jackson comes across a cartouche containing six of the seven symbols for the Stargate, but the seventh has been broken off.
That night, Ra's ship lands atop the pyramid structure, and Ferretti and Freeman are captured by Ra's soldiers, while Porro and Reilly are killed. When Jackson, O'Neil, Brown, and Kawalsky return, they end up in a firefight against Ra's soldiers. Captured by Ra's soldiers Jackson and O'Neil are brought before Ra and his guards where it is revealed they are mere humanoids as their armored head-pieces retract. A firefight breaks out and Jackson is killed and the others are captured. Ra places Jackson's body in a sarcophagus-like device that regenerates him. Ra then explains to Jackson that he has found a nuclear bomb O'Neil secretly brought with him, has used his alien technology to increase its explosive power a hundred-fold, and threatens to send it back through the Stargate. Ra orders the human tribe to watch as he prepares to force Jackson to execute the others to demonstrate his power, but Skaara and his friends create a diversion that allows Jackson, O'Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti to escape, with Freeman being killed. They flee to nearby caves to hide from Ra. Skaara and his friends celebrate, and Skaara draws out a sign of victory in a wall, which Jackson recognizes as the final symbol.
O'Neil and his remaining men aid Skaara in overthrowing the remaining overseers, and then launch an attack on Ra, who himself sends out fighter ships against the humans while he orders his ship to depart. The humans outside are forced to surrender to the fighter ships' pilots when they run out of ammunition, but the rest of the tribe, having the true nature of their false gods revealed by Jackson, rebel against the pilots and overthrow them. Sha'uri is killed, but Jackson takes her body and sneaks aboard Ra's ship using a teleportation system, leaving O'Neil to fight Ra's guard captain, Anubis. Jackson places Sha'uri in the regeneration device, and she recovers, but Ra discovers them and attempts to kill Jackson. O'Neil activates the teleportation system, killing Anubis and allowing Jackson and Sha'uri to escape the ship. O'Neil and Jackson use the teleporter to transport the bomb to Ra's ship; the ensuing blast destroys the ship in space along with Ra. With the humans freed, the remaining team (O’Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti) returns to Earth, and Jackson chooses to stay behind with Sha'uri and the others.
The director's cut had several scenes which were cut from the theatrical release. The first such scene took place immediately after the excavation of the Stargate in 1928 and showed petrified Horus guards near the cover stones; the producers had tried to introduce the idea that beings had attempted to come through the Stargate after its burial, but they cut the scene for time concerns.
The film in its original cut plays out in chronological order, but when Devlin and Emmerich edited the film in the director's cut to tighten the narrative, they decided to change the first scene of the film into a flashback to show who the human host of Ra was before the aliens took him. Only Davidson's upper torso was filmed because he had refused to take out his nipple rings. The first scene was a combination of model shots and a set in Yuma, Arizona where "Rambo III" had been filmed. The scene of the excavation of the Stargate was also filmed in three days in Arizona. A golden look was achieved by filming near the time of sunset. To keep within the limit of the budget, the producers put stick figures with cloth in the distant desert to appear as humans. The original Stargate was painted black, but it looked like a giant tire so it was repainted silver at the last moment.
Daniel Jackson's lecture on his theories was filmed in a hotel in Los Angeles. The scene was originally much longer and delved more into the theories that aliens had built the Egyptian pyramids, but it was trimmed for time concerns for the release. The scenes with O'Neil at his house were the first ones filmed with Kurt Russell; his hair was cut short afterwards. Russell requested his hair color to be brightened a little for the film. The fictional facility housing the Stargate was the largest set for the film, the former Spruce Goose Dome located in Long Beach, California. Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith joined production to make all Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and spoken language as accurate as possible.
The mask of the pharaoh in the opening credits was made out of fiber glass and modeled in the workshop. The sequence used a motion-control camera to give better depth of field. The score of "Stargate" was composer David Arnold's first work on an American feature film. When Devlin and Emmerich first flew to London to meet with Arnold, they had not yet heard the score; hearing it, they felt "he had elevated the film to a whole other level". Arnold later interviewed the actors during principal photography, using the information to improve his score.
Jeff Kleiser and Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co.'s visual effects team of 40 people created the look of the Stargate. They used self-written image-creation and compositing software, as well as commercial digital packages to create the Stargate, the morphing helmets worn by Ra and the Horus guards, and the cityscape of Nagada. Footprints in the sand were often digitally removed. The creation of the wormhole, which was fully digital, was one of the biggest challenges in the making of the film. The ripples had to be digitally composited to appear accurate and realistic. Scanning lasers were lined up parallel to the gate to illustrate the amount of body that passed the surface of the Stargate plane. Afterwards, the parts of the body that had or had not yet gone through the gate (depending of the side of filming) were obliterated with a digital matte - a process that removes unwanted components from an individual frame or sequence of frames. The use of computers generating a big 3D storyboard allowed Emmerich to try out different shooting angles before settling on one angle.
The film's score was composed by David Arnold, played by the Sinfonia of London and conducted by Nicholas Dodd. It was the second motion picture that Arnold had composed and his first major one. At the time of production, Arnold had recently started to work in a local video store in London. Once hired, he spent several months in a hotel room working on the soundtrack, spending more time rewriting the music and improving it, during delays due to film companies trying to get the rights to distribution. According to Arnold, "when I first read the script for Stargate, I knew what approach to take, which was to be as big and bold as possible," saying: "Every time there was an amazing sight, the characters would stand back and say, 'Oh my God!' But James would just smile and walk towards it. That was the basis for the Stargate score, moving forward with a sense of majesty instead of being frightened by what's around the corner."
"Stargate" was released on October 28, 1994 in the United States and released internationally in December of the same year. In 1995 the film was released on VHS and as a Dolby Digital-encoded laserdisc spanning two discs (three sides). The first DVD release was on June 18, 1997. The DVD format was re-released in October 1999 under the title "Stargate Special Edition", and again in 2003 on VHS and a 2-disc DVD set with remastered theatrical and extended editions. The film was released on Blu-ray format on August 29, 2006.
The film received a warmer reception from the public, grossing $71,567,262 at the United States box office and $125 million internationally for a worldwide total of $196,567,262. At the time, the film set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film released in the month of October.
In its first run, "Stargate" made more money than film industry insiders predicted, considering the lukewarm reviews. Some regard it as Emmerich's breakthrough film. "Stargate" grossed over $16,651,000 in the United States during its opening week in October 1994. It was the 35th-highest-grossing film opening in the U.S. in October. From November 4–6, the film grossed around $12,368,700, declining 25%. The film would continue this decline until the end of November, when the film garnered $4,777,198, or an 8.2% rise. The week before that the film garnered around $4,413,420, a 45.6% decline. In its last week playing theatrically, the film garnered around $1,170,500 in the U.S.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 52%, based on 46 reviews, and an average rating of 5.29/10. The site's consensus states: ""Stargate" has splashy visuals and James Spader to recommend it, but corny characterization and a clunky script makes this a portal to ho-hum." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". At MRQE, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from most critics, the film holds a score of 64 based on 95 reviews. Out of Emmerich's works, "Stargate" is his fourth-highest-rated film, behind "The Patriot", "Independence Day", and "White House Down".
Most of the negativity focused on the overuse of special effects, thinness of plot, and excessive use of clichés. Roger Ebert went so far as to say, "The movie "Ed Wood", about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for "Stargate"". Ebert awarded the film one out of four stars and, even over ten years later, "Stargate" remained on his list of most hated films. Mike DiBella from Allmovie said, "There simply isn't enough spectacle in "Stargate" to make up for its many flaws." The film peaked at number one on the "Billboard" chart "Top Video Rentals" on April 29, 1995.
The positive reviews stated that it was an "instant camp classic" and praised the film for its special effects and entertainment value, with Chris Hicks of the "Deseret News" calling it ""Star Wars" meets "Ben Hur"". Scott McKenzie from DVDactive said, "It's a shame because the world created around the "Stargate" is compelling and detailed. It's almost enough to make me want to watch the TV series, but not quite." In January 1995, Emmerich and Devlin were sued by an Egyptology student who claimed that he had written the story and given them the idea. The suit was later settled out of court.
In 1996, Omar Zuhdi, a Shawnee high school teacher, filed a lawsuit against the makers and originators of the original movie, claiming that they stole the plot and story of his 1984 film script "Egyptscape", as the basis of the film "Stargate" (and thus the franchise "Stargate").
In 1995, "Stargate" was considered for various film awards worldwide. It won six of the ten awards it was nominated for.
Devlin and Emmerich always envisioned "Stargate" as the first part of a trilogy of films, but Parts 2 and 3 were never developed. At Comic-Con 2006, twelve years after the original film was released, Devlin stated that he was in early discussions with rights-holders MGM about finally bringing the final two parts to the screen.
According to Devlin, the second film is intended to be set around twelve years after the original, with Jackson making a discovery that leads him back to Earth and to the uncovering of a new Stargate. The second entry would supposedly use a different mythology from the Egyptian one which formed the background to the original film, with the third installment tying these together to reveal that "all mythologies are actually tied together with a common thread that we haven't recognized before." Devlin stated that he hoped to enlist original stars Kurt Russell (Col. Jack O'Neil) and James Spader (Dr. Daniel Jackson) for the sequels. The actors have reportedly expressed an interest in participating in the project.
The film trilogy would not directly tie into the series "Stargate SG-1". According to Devlin, the relationship between the movie and the series is "we would just continue the mythology of the movie and finish that out. I think the series could still live on at the end of the third sequel. So we're going to try to not tread on their stories." Plans for sequels to the original film are unrelated to the development of straight-to-DVD films made as sequels to "Stargate SG-1".
Using some of Emmerich's notes, Bill McCay wrote a series of five novels, continuing the story the original creators had envisioned, which involved the Earth-humans, the locals and the successors of Ra. According to Devlin, he and Emmerich had always planned to do three films with the potential for more, but MGM preferred to play out the television series first.
The CD-ROM programme "Secrets of Stargate", released after the film, showed how the special effects were made, and included behind-the-scenes of the film and the showing of interviews with the cast and the production members. Dean Devlin eventually gave Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) the rights over the film, and author Bill McCay wrote a series of five novels based on Emmerich's notes, continuing the story the original creators had envisioned.
In 1996, MGM hired Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner to create a spin-off television series. "Stargate SG-1" premiered on the American subscription channel Showtime on July 27, 1997 and ended its ten-season run in 2007. "Stargate SG-1" itself spawned the non-canon animated television series "Stargate Infinity" (2002–03), and the live-action television series "Stargate Atlantis" (2004–09) and "Stargate Universe" (2009–11).
"SG-1" creators and executive producers Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner altered the canon by introducing several new concepts during production of the "SG-1" and "Atlantis" series. In the television series characters were portrayed by different actors, and names were spelled differently. Daniel Jackson was played by James Spader in the film and by Michael Shanks in the series. Kurt Russell's character Jonathan "Jack" O'Neil, a rather humorless Colonel, is played by Richard Dean Anderson as Jonathan "Jack" O'Neill (with two 'l's) in "SG-1". French Stewart's character was Lieutenant Louis Ferretti but in "SG-1", played by Brent Stait, he is a Major. The spelling of Daniel Jackson's wife changes from "Sha'uri" to "Sha're", O'Neill's wife from Sarah to Sara. (Similarly, the name of O'Neil's son changes from "Tyler" in the film to "Charlie".)
The Stargate Command setting was transferred from the fictional military facility located in Creek Mountain, to the Cheyenne Mountain military complex. The unnamed planet from the film was named Abydos in the series and the distance from Earth changed from millions of light-years away (in an entirely different galaxy, "the Kalium galaxy") to becoming the closest planet to Earth with a Stargate, residing in the same galaxy as Earth. Also in "SG-1", Stargate travel is limited to the Stargate network in the Milky Way galaxy (unless a tremendous amount of power is used to lengthen the subspace wormhole of a Stargate to another galaxy's Stargate). Ra was the last of an unnamed race in the film, being of a humanoid species with large black eyes and a lack of facial features. In "SG-1", Ra is one of many "Goa'uld System Lords", a race of parasitic eel-like creatures. There were also changes to the Stargate. The unique set of 39 Stargate symbols in the film were replaced with the concept of 38 symbols that are the same for each Stargate (Earth's symbols based on Earth's constellations), plus a single point of origin symbol that is unique to that individual gate. While the kawoosh effect in the movie was created by filming the actual swirl of water in a glass tube, and looked like a vortex on the back of the Gate, on the TV series this effect was completely created in computer graphics by the Canadian visual effects company "Rainmaker." At the beginning of season 9, the original movie wormhole sequence was substituted by a new sequence similar to the one already used on "Stargate Atlantis", but blue as it was in the movie and "SG-1". In "Atlantis", it is green and, in "Universe", it is white.
On September 5, 2013, during an interview with Digital Spy, Emmerich said that he and MGM are planning a new "Stargate" as a reboot with a trilogy. On May 29, 2014, it was announced that MGM and Warner Bros. are partnering together for a reboot as a trilogy with Emmerich directing, Devlin producing, and Nicolas Wright and James A. Woods writing. On November 17, 2016, Devlin told Empire Online that the plans to make a reboot and a potential new series are stalled. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28327 |
Solomon
Solomon (; , "Shlomoh)," also called Jedidiah (Hebrew "Yedidyah"), was, according to the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Quran, and Hadiths, a fabulously wealthy and wise king of the United Kingdom of Israel who succeeded his father, King David. The conventional dates of Solomon's reign are about 970 to 931 BCE, normally given in alignment with the dates of David's reign. He is described as king of the United Monarchy, which broke apart into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah shortly after his death. Following the split, his patrilineal descendants ruled over Judah alone.
According to the Talmud, Solomon is one of the 48 prophets. In the Quran, he is considered a major prophet, and Muslims generally refer to him by the Arabic variant Sulayman, son of David.
The Hebrew Bible identifies him as the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem, beginning in the fourth year of his reign, using the vast wealth he and his father had accumulated. He dedicated the temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel. He is portrayed as great in wisdom, wealth and power beyond either of the previous kings of the country, but also as a king who sinned. His sins included idolatry, marrying foreign women and, ultimately, turning away from Yahweh, and they led to the kingdom's being torn in two during the reign of his son Rehoboam.
Solomon is the subject of many other later references and legends, most notably in the 1st century apocryphal work known as the Testament of Solomon. In the New Testament, he is portrayed as a teacher of wisdom excelled by Jesus, and as arrayed in glory, but excelled by "the lilies of the field". In later years, in mostly non-biblical circles, Solomon also came to be known as a magician and an exorcist, with numerous amulets and medallion seals dating from the Hellenistic period invoking his name.
The life of Solomon is primarily described in 2Samuel, 1Kings and 2Chronicles. His two names mean "peaceful" and "friend of God", both considered "predictive of the character of his reign".
The conventional dates of Solomon's reign are derived from biblical chronology and are set from about 970 to 931 BCE. Regarding the Davidic dynasty, to which King Solomon belongs, its chronology can be checked against datable Babylonian and Assyrian records at a few points, and these correspondences have allowed archaeologists to date its kings in a modern framework. According to the most widely used chronology, based on that by Old Testament professor Edwin R. Thiele, the death of Solomon and the division of his kingdom would have occurred in the spring of 931 BCE.
Solomon was born in Jerusalem, the second born child of David and his wife Bathsheba, widow of Uriah the Hittite. The first child (unnamed in that account), a son conceived adulterously during Uriah's lifetime, had died as a punishment on account of the death of Uriah by David's order. Solomon had three named full brothers born to Bathsheba: Nathan, Shammua, and Shobab, besides six known older half-brothers born of as many mothers.
The biblical narrative shows that Solomon served as a peace offering between God and David, due to his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba. In an effort to hide this sin, for example, he sent the woman's husband to battle, hoping that he would be killed there. After he died, David was finally able to marry his wife. As punishment, the first child, who was conceived during the adulterous relationship, died. Solomon was born after David was forgiven. It is this reason why his name, which means peace, was chosen. Some historians cited that Nathan the Prophet brought up Solomon as his father was busy governing the realm. This could also be attributed to the notion that the prophet held great influence over David because he knew of his adultery, which was considered a grievous offense under the Mosaic Law.
According to the First Book of Kings, when David was old, "he could not get warm". "So they sought a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunamite, and brought her to the king. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not."
While David was in this state, court factions were maneuvering for power. David's heir apparent, Adonijah, acted to have himself declared king, but was outmaneuvered by Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan, who convinced David to proclaim Solomon king according to his earlier promise (not recorded elsewhere in the biblical narrative), despite Solomon's being younger than his brothers.
Solomon, as instructed by David, began his reign with an extensive purge, including his father's chief general, Joab, among others, and further consolidated his position by appointing friends throughout the administration, including in religious positions as well as in civic and military posts. It is said that Solomon ascended to the throne when he was only about fifteen.
Solomon greatly expanded his military strength, especially the cavalry and chariot arms. He founded numerous colonies, some of which doubled as trading posts and military outposts.
Trade relationships were a focus of his administration. In particular he continued his father's very profitable relationship with the Phoenician king Hiram I of Tyre (see 'wealth' below); they sent out joint expeditions to the lands of Tarshish and Ophir to engage in the trade of luxury products, importing gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes and peacocks. Solomon is considered the most wealthy of the Israelite kings named in the Bible.
Solomon was the biblical king most famous for his wisdom. In 1Kings he sacrificed to God, and God later appeared to him in a dream, asking what Solomon wanted from God. Solomon asked for wisdom. Pleased, God personally answered Solomon's prayer, promising him great wisdom because he did not ask for self-serving rewards like long life or the death of his enemies.
Perhaps the best known story of his wisdom is the Judgment of Solomon; two women each lay claim to being the mother of the same child. Solomon easily resolved the dispute by commanding the child to be cut in half and shared between the two. One woman promptly renounced her claim, proving that she would rather give the child up than see it killed. Solomon declared the woman who showed compassion to be the true mother, entitled to the whole child.
Solomon was traditionally considered the author of several biblical books, "including not only the collections of Proverbs, but also of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon and the later apocryphal book the Wisdom of Solomon."
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelite monarchy gained its highest splendour and wealth during Solomon's reign of 40 years. In a single year, according to , Solomon collected tribute amounting to 666 talents (18,125 kilograms) of gold. Solomon is described as surrounding himself with all the luxuries and the grandeur of an Eastern monarch, and his government prospered. He entered into an alliance with Hiram I, king of Tyre, who in many ways greatly assisted him in his numerous undertakings.
For some years before his death, David was engaged in collecting materials for building a temple in Jerusalem as a permanent home for Yahweh and the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon is described as undertaking the construction of the temple, with the help of an architect, also named Hiram, and other materials, sent from King Hiram of Tyre.
After the completion of the temple, Solomon is described in the biblical narrative as erecting many other buildings of importance in Jerusalem. For 13 years, he was engaged in the building of a royal palace on Ophel (a hilly promontory in central Jerusalem). This complex included buildings referred to as:
as well as his own residence and a residence for his wife, Pharaoh's daughter.
Solomon's throne is said to have been a spectacle, seeing that it was one of the earliest mechanical devices built by man. Solomon also constructed great works for the purpose of securing a plentiful supply of water for the city, and the Millo (Septuagint, "Acra") for the defense of the city. However, excavations of Jerusalem have shown a distinct lack of monumental architecture from the era, and no remains of either the Temple or Solomon's palace have been found.
Solomon is also described as rebuilding cities elsewhere in Israel, creating the port of Ezion-Geber, and constructing Palmyra in the wilderness as a commercial depot and military outpost. Although the location of the port of Ezion-Geber is known, no remains have ever been found. More archaeological success has been achieved with the major cities Solomon is said to have strengthened or rebuilt, for example, Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. These all have substantial ancient remains, including impressive six-chambered gates, and ashlar palaces; however it is no longer the scholarly consensus that these structures date to the time, according to the Bible, when Solomon ruled.
According to the Bible, during Solomon's reign, Israel enjoyed great commercial prosperity, with extensive traffic being carried on by land with Tyre, Egypt, and Arabia, and by sea with Tarshish, Ophir, and South India.
According to the biblical account, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. The wives were described as foreign princesses, including Pharaoh's daughter and women of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon and of the Hittites. His marriage to Pharaoh's daughter appears to have cemented a political alliance with Egypt, whereas he clung to his other wives and concubines "in love". "The Message", a biblical paraphrase, says that Solomon was "obsessed with women".
The only wife mentioned by name is Naamah the Ammonite, mother of Solomon's successor, Rehoboam. The biblical narrative notes with disapproval that Solomon permitted his foreign wives to import their national deities, building temples to Ashtoreth and Milcom.
In the branch of literary analysis that examines the Bible, called higher criticism, the story of Solomon falling into idolatry by the influence of Pharaoh's daughter and his other foreign wives is "customarily seen as the handiwork of the 'deuteronomistic historian(s)'", who are held to have written, compiled, or edited texts to legitimize the reforms of Hezekiah's great-grandson, King Josiah who reigned from about 641 to 609 BCE (over 280 years after Solomon's death according to Bible scholars). Scholarly consensus in this field holds that "Solomon's wives/women were introduced in the 'Josianic' (customarily Dtr) edition of Kings as a theological construct to blame the schism [between Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel] on his misdeeds".
In a brief, unelaborated, and enigmatic passage, the Hebrew Bible describes how the fame of Solomon's wisdom and wealth spread far and wide, so much so that the queen of Sheba decided that she should meet him. The queen is described as visiting with a number of gifts including gold, spices and precious stones. When Solomon gave her "all her desire, whatsoever she asked", she left satisfied (1 Kings 10:10).
Whether the passage is simply to provide a brief token, foreign witness of Solomon's wealth and wisdom, or whether there is meant to be something more significant to the queen's visit is unknown; nevertheless the visit of the Queen of Sheba has become the subject of numerous stories.
Sheba is typically identified as Saba, a nation once spanning the Red Sea on the coasts of what are now Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and Yemen, in Arabia Felix; although other sources place it in the area of what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. In a Rabbinical account (e.g. Targum Sheni), Solomon was accustomed to ordering the living creatures of the world to dance before him (Rabbinical accounts say that Solomon had been given control over all living things by Yahweh), but one day upon discovering that the mountain-cock or hoopoe (Aramaic name: "nagar tura") was absent, he summoned it to him, and the bird told him that it had been searching for somewhere new (see: ).
The bird had discovered a land in the east, exceedingly rich in gold, silver, and plants, whose capital was called "Kitor" and whose ruler was the Queen of Sheba, and the bird, on its own advice, was sent by Solomon to request the queen's immediate attendance at Solomon's court.
An Ethiopian account from the 14th century ("Kebra Nagast") maintains that the Queen of Sheba had sexual relations with King Solomon and gave birth by the Mai Bella stream in the province of Hamasien, Eritrea. The Ethiopian tradition has a detailed account of the affair. The child was a son who went on to become Menelik I, King of Axum, and founded a dynasty that would reign as the first Jewish, then Christian Empire of Ethiopia for 2,900+ years (less one usurpation episode, an interval of about 133 years until a legitimate male heir regained the crown) until Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974. Menelik was said to be a practicing Jew who was given a replica of the Ark of the Covenant by King Solomon; and, moreover, that the original was switched and went to Axum with him and his mother, and is still there, guarded by a single priest charged with caring for the artifact as his life's task.
The claim of such a lineage and of possession of the Ark has been an important source of legitimacy and prestige for the Ethiopian monarchy throughout the many centuries of its existence, and had important and lasting effects on Ethiopian culture as a whole. The Ethiopian government and church deny all requests to view the alleged ark.
Some classical-era Rabbis, attacking Solomon's moral character, have claimed instead that the child was an ancestor of Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed Solomon's temple some 300 years later.
According to Solomon's "wives turned his heart after other gods", their own national deities, to whom Solomon built temples, thus incurring divine anger and retribution in the form of the division of the kingdom after Solomon's death ().
According to and , it was because of these sins that the Lord punishes Solomon by removing most of the Tribes of Israel from rule by Solomon's house.
Near the end of his life, Solomon was forced to contend with several enemies, including Hadad of Edom, Rezon of Zobah, and one of his officials named Jeroboam who was from the tribe of Ephraim.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Solomon is the last ruler of a united Kingdom of Israel. After a reign of forty years, he dies of natural causes at around 60 years of age. Upon Solomon's death, his son, Rehoboam, succeeds him. However, ten of the Tribes of Israel refuse to accept him as king, splitting the United Monarchy in the northern Kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam, while Rehoboam continues to reign over the much smaller southern Kingdom of Judah. Henceforth the two kingdoms are never again united.
King Solomon is one of the central biblical figures in Jewish heritage that have lasting religious, national and political aspects. As the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem and last ruler of the united Kingdom of Israel before its division into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, Solomon is associated with the peak "golden age" of the independent Kingdom of Israel as well as a source of judicial and religious wisdom. According to Jewish tradition, King Solomon wrote three books of the Bible:
The Hebrew word "To Solomon" (which can also be translated as "by Solomon") appears in the title of two hymns, 72 and 127, in the book of Psalms ("Tehillim"), suggesting to some that Solomon wrote them.
Rabbinical tradition attributes the "Wisdom of Solomon" (included within the Septuagint) to Solomon, although this book was probably written in the 2nd century BCE. In this work, Solomon is portrayed as an astronomer. Other books of wisdom poetry such as the "Odes of Solomon" and the "Psalms of Solomon" also bear his name. The Jewish historian Eupolemus, who wrote about 157 BCE, included copies of apocryphal letters exchanged between Solomon and the kings of Egypt and Tyre.
The Gnostic "Apocalypse of Adam", which may date to the 1st or 2nd century, refers to a legend in which Solomon sends out an army of demons to seek a virgin who had fled from him, perhaps the earliest surviving mention of the later common tale that Solomon controlled demons and made them his slaves. This tradition of Solomon's control over demons appears fully elaborated in the early pseudographical work called the "Testament of Solomon" with its elaborate and grotesque demonology.
As with most biblical personages in the middle era of Israelite society, the historicity of Solomon is hotly debated. Current consensus states that regardless of whether or not a man named Solomon truly reigned as king over the Judean hills in the 10th century BCE, the biblical descriptions of his apparent empire's lavishness is almost surely an anachronistic invention.
As for Solomon himself, scholars on both the maximalist and minimalist sides of the spectrum of biblical archeology generally agree Solomon himself probably existed. However, a historically accurate picture of the Davidic king is difficult to construct. The "de facto" accepted position based on these assumptions is that Solomon could have only been the monarch or chieftain of Judah, which was likely small, and that the northern kingdom was a separate development. There are some dissenters to this view.
Historical evidence of King Solomon other than the biblical accounts has been so minimal that some scholars have understood the period of his reign as a 'Dark Age' (Muhly 1998). The first-century Romano-Jewish scholar Josephus in "Against Apion", citing Tyrian court records and Menander, gives a specific year during which King Hiram I of Tyre sent materials to Solomon for the construction of the Temple. However, no material evidence indisputably of Solomon's reign has been found. Yigael Yadin's excavations at Hazor, Megiddo, Beit Shean and Gezer uncovered structures that he and others have argued date from Solomon's reign, but others, such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, argue that they should be dated to the Omride period, more than a century after Solomon.
According to Finkelstein and Silberman, authors of "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts", at the time of the kingdoms of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was populated by only a few hundred residents or less, which is insufficient for an empire stretching from the Euphrates to Eilath. According to "The Bible Unearthed", archaeological evidence suggests that the kingdom of Israel at the time of Solomon was little more than a small city state, and so it is implausible that Solomon received tribute as large as 666 talents of gold per year. Although both Finkelstein and Silberman accept that David and Solomon were real inhabitants of Judah about the 10th century BCE, they claim that the earliest independent reference to the Kingdom of Israel is about 890 BCE, and for Judah about 750 BCE. They suggest that because of religious prejudice, the authors of the Bible suppressed the achievements of the Omrides (whom the Hebrew Bible describes as being polytheist), and instead pushed them back to a supposed golden age of Judaism and monotheists, and devotees of Yahweh. Some Biblical minimalists like Thomas L. Thompson go further, arguing that Jerusalem became a city and capable of being a state capital only in the mid-7th century. Likewise, Finkelstein and others consider the claimed size of Solomon's temple implausible.
These views are criticized by William G. Dever and André Lemaire, among others. Lemaire states in "Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple" that the principal points of the biblical tradition of Solomon are generally trustworthy, although elsewhere he writes that he could find no substantiating archaeological evidence that supports the Queen of Sheba's visit to king Solomon, saying that the earliest records of trans-Arabian caravan voyages from Tayma and Sheba unto the Middle-Euphrates etc. occurred in the mid-8th century BCE, placing a possible visit from the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem around this time—some 250 years later than the timeframe traditionally given for king Solomon's reign. Kenneth Kitchen argues that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state, and considers 666 gold talents a modest amount of money. Kitchen calculates that over 30 years, such a kingdom might have accumulated up to 500 tons of gold, which is small compared to other examples, such as the 1,180 tons of gold that Alexander the Great took from Susa. Similarly, Kitchen and others consider the temple of Solomon a reasonable and typically sized structure for the region at the time. Dever states "that we now have direct Bronze and Iron Age parallels for every feature of the 'Solomonic temple' as described in the Hebrew Bible".
Some scholars have charted a middle path between minimalist scholars like Finkelstein, Silberman, and Philip Davies (who believes that "Solomon is a totally invented character") and maximalist scholars like Dever, Lemaire and Kitchen. For instance, the archaeologist Avraham Faust has argued that biblical depictions of Solomon date to later periods and do overstate his wealth, buildings, and kingdom, but that Solomon did have an acropolis and ruled over a polity larger than Jerusalem. In particular, his archaeological research in regions near Jerusalem, like Sharon, finds commerce too great not to be supported by a polity and such regions probably were ruled loosely by Jerusalem. Scholars like Lester Grabbe also believe that there must have been a ruler in Jerusalem during this period and that he likely built a temple, although the town was quite small.
The archaeological remains that are considered to date from the time of Solomon are notable for the fact that Canaanite material culture appears to have continued unabated; there is a distinct lack of magnificent empire, or cultural development—indeed comparing pottery from areas traditionally assigned to Israel with that of the Philistines points to the latter having been significantly more sophisticated. However, there is a lack of physical evidence of its existence, despite some archaeological work in the area. This is not unexpected because the area was devastated by the Babylonians, then rebuilt and destroyed several times.
Little archaeological excavation has been done around the area known as the Temple Mount, in what is thought to be the foundation of Solomon's Temple, because attempts to do so are met with protests by the Muslim authorities.
The biblical passages that understand Tarshish as a source of King Solomon's great wealth in metals—especially silver, but also gold, tin and iron (Ezekiel 27)—were linked to archaeological evidence from silver-hoards found in Phoenicia in 2013. The metals from Tarshish were reportedly obtained by Solomon in partnership with King Hiram of Phoenician Tyre (Isaiah 23), and the fleets of Tarshish-ships that sailed in their service, and the silver-hoards provide the first recognized material evidence that agrees with the ancient texts concerning Solomon's kingdom and his wealth (see 'wealth' below).
Possible evidence for the described wealth of Solomon and his kingdom was discovered in ancient silver-hoards, which were found in Israel and Phoenicia and recognized for their importance in 2003. The evidence from the hoards shows that the Levant was a center of wealth in precious metals during the reign of Solomon and Hiram, and matches the texts that say the trade extended from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean.
From a critical point of view, Solomon's building of a temple for Yahweh should not be considered an act of particular devotion to Yahweh because Solomon is also described as building places of worship for a number of other deities. Some scholars and historians argue that Solomon's apparent initial devotion to Yahweh, described in passages such as his dedication prayer (), were written much later, after Jerusalem had become the religious centre of the kingdom, replacing locations such as Shiloh and Bethel. Earlier historians maintain that there is evidence that these passages in Kings are derived from official court records at the time of Solomon and from other writings of that time that were incorporated into the canonical books of Kings. More recent scholars believe that passages such as these in the Books of Kings were not written by the same authors who wrote the rest of the text, instead probably by the Deuteronomist.
King Solomon sinned by acquiring many foreign wives and horses because he thought he knew the reason for the biblical prohibition and thought it did not apply to him. When King Solomon married the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, a sandbank formed which eventually formed the "great nation of Rome"—the nation that destroyed the Second Temple (Herod's Temple). Solomon gradually lost more and more prestige until he became like a commoner. Some say he regained his status while others say he did not. In the end however, he is regarded as a righteous king and is especially praised for his diligence in building the Temple. King Josiah was also said to have had the Ark of the Covenant, Aaron's rod, vial of manna and the anointing oil placed within a hidden chamber which had been built by King Solomon
The Seder Olam Rabba holds that Solomon's reign was not in 1000 BCE, but rather in the 9th century BCE, during which time he built the First Temple in 832 BCE. However, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia gives the more common date of "971 to 931 BCE".
Christianity has traditionally accepted the historical existence of Solomon, though some modern Christian scholars have also questioned at least his authorship of those biblical texts ascribed to him. Such disputes tend to divide Christians into traditionalist and modernist camps.
Of the two genealogies of Jesus given in the Gospels, Matthew mentions Solomon, but Luke does not. Some commentators see this as an issue that can be reconciled while others disagree. For instance, it has been suggested that Matthew is using Joseph's genealogy and Luke is using Mary's, but Darrell Bock states that this would be unprecedented, "especially when no other single woman appears in the line". Other suggestions include the use by one of the royal and the other of the natural line, one using the legal line and the other the physical line, or that Joseph was adopted.
Jesus makes reference to Solomon, using him for comparison purposes in his admonition against worrying about your life. This account is recorded in Matthew 6:29 and the parallel passage in Luke 12:27
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Solomon is commemorated as a saint, with the title of "Righteous Prophet and King". His feast day is celebrated on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (two Sundays before the Great Feast of the Nativity of the Lord).
The staunchly Catholic King Philip II of Spain sought to model himself after King Solomon. Statues of King David and Solomon stand on either side of the entrance to the basilica of El Escorial, Philip's palace, and Solomon is also depicted in a great fresco at the center of El Escorial's library. Philip identified the warrior-king David with his own father Charles V, and himself sought to emulate the thoughtful and logical character which he perceived in Solomon. Moreover, the structure of the Escorial was inspired by that of Solomon's Temple.
In Islamic tradition, Solomon is venerated as a prophet and a messenger of God, as well as a divinely appointed monarch, who ruled over the Kingdom of Israel. Solomon inherited his position from his father as the prophetic King of the Israelites. Unlike in the Bible where Solomon was granted an incomparable realm because God was impressed by his wish to have wisdom, the Quran states that Solomon prayed earnestly to God to grant him a kingdom which would be greater than any realm before or after him. As in Judaism, Islam recognizes Solomon as the son of King David, who is also considered a prophet and a king but refuses to accuse Solomon of idolatry, claiming instead that an enslaved jinn escaped his captivity and took over his kingdom and posed as Solomon, while others thought indeed that he became a ruthless king.
The Quran ascribes to Solomon a great level of wisdom, knowledge and power. He knew the "Mantiq al-tayr" (, language of the birds). Solomon was also known in Islam to have other supernatural abilities bestowed upon him by Allah, after a special request by Solomon himself, such as controlling the wind, ruling over the jinn, enslaving demons, and hearing the communication of ants:
The Quran mentions Solomon 17 times.
In the Bahá'í Faith, Solomon is regarded as one of the lesser prophets along with David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, along with others. Baha'is see Solomon as a prophet who was sent by God to address the issues of his time. Baha'ullah wrote about Solomon in the "Hidden Words". He also mentions Solomon in the "Tablet of Wisdom", where he is depicted as a contemporary of Pythagoras.
A well-known story in the collection "One Thousand and One Nights" describes a genie who had displeased King Solomon and was punished by being locked in a bottle and thrown into the sea. Since the bottle was sealed with Solomon's seal, the genie was helpless to free himself, until he was freed many centuries later by a fisherman who discovered the bottle. In other stories from the "One Thousand and One Nights", protagonists who had to leave their homeland and travel to the unknown places of the world saw signs which proved that Solomon had already been there. Sometimes, protagonists discovered words of Solomon that were intended to help those who were lost and had unluckily reached those forbidden and deserted places.
According to the Rabbinical literature, on account of his modest request for wisdom only, Solomon was rewarded with riches and an unprecedented glorious realm, which extended over the upper world inhabited by the angels and over the whole of the terrestrial globe with all its inhabitants, including all the beasts, fowl, and reptiles, as well as the demons and spirits. His control over the demons, spirits, and animals augmented his splendor, the demons bringing him precious stones, besides water from distant countries to irrigate his exotic plants. The beasts and fowl of their own accord entered the kitchen of Solomon's palace, so that they might be used as food for him, and extravagant meals for him were prepared daily by each of his 700 wives and 300 concubines, with the thought that perhaps the king would feast that day in her house.
A magic ring called the "Seal of Solomon" was supposedly given to Solomon and gave him power over demons or Jinn. The magical symbol said to have been on the Seal of Solomon which made it efficacious is often considered to be the "Star of David" though this emblem (also known as the Shield of David) is known to have been associated with Judaism only as recently as the 11th century CE while the five pointed star (pentagram) can be found on jars and other artifacts from Jerusalem dating back to at least the 2nd and 4th centuries BCE and is more likely to have been the emblem found on the ring purportedly used by King Solomon to control the Jinn or demons. Asmodeus, king of demons, was one day, according to the classical Rabbis, captured by Benaiah using the ring, and was forced to remain in Solomon's service. In one tale, Asmodeus brought a man with two heads from under the earth to show Solomon; the man, unable to return, married a woman from Jerusalem and had seven sons, six of whom resembled the mother, while one resembled the father in having two heads. After their father's death, the son with two heads claimed two shares of the inheritance, arguing that he was two men; Solomon decided that the son with two heads was only one man. The Seal of Solomon, in some legends known as the Ring of Aandaleeb, was a highly sought after symbol of power. In several legends, different groups or individuals attempted to steal it or attain it in some manner.
One legend concerning Asmodeus (see: ) goes on to state that Solomon one day asked Asmodeus what could make demons powerful over man, and Asmodeus asked to be freed and given the ring so that he could demonstrate; Solomon agreed but Asmodeus threw the ring into the sea and it was swallowed by a fish. Asmodeus then swallowed the king, stood up fully with one wing touching heaven and the other earth, and spat out Solomon to a distance of 400 miles. The Rabbis claim this was a divine punishment for Solomon's having failed to follow three divine commands, and Solomon was forced to wander from city to city, until he eventually arrived in an Ammonite city where he was forced to work in the king's kitchens. Solomon gained a chance to prepare a meal for the Ammonite king, which the king found so impressive that the previous cook was sacked and Solomon put in his place; the king's daughter, Naamah, subsequently fell in love with Solomon, but the family (thinking Solomon a commoner) disapproved, so the king decided to kill them both by sending them into the desert. Solomon and the king's daughter wandered the desert until they reached a coastal city, where they bought a fish to eat, which just happened to be the one which had swallowed the magic ring. Solomon was then able to regain his throne and expel Asmodeus. The element of a ring thrown into the sea and found back in a fish's belly also appeared in Herodotus' account of Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos (c. 538–522 BCE).
In another familiar version of the legend of the Seal of Solomon, Asmodeus disguises himself. In some myths, he's disguised as King Solomon himself, while in more frequently heard versions he's disguised as a falcon, calling himself Gavyn (Gavinn or Gavin), one of King Solomon's trusted friends. The concealed Asmodeus tells travelers who have ventured up to King Solomon's grand lofty palace that the Seal of Solomon was thrown into the sea. He then convinces them to plunge in and attempt to retrieve it, for if they do they would take the throne as king.
Other magical items attributed to Solomon are his key and his Table. The latter was said to be held in Toledo, Spain during Visigoth rule and was part of the loot taken by Tarik ibn Ziyad during the Umayyad Conquest of Iberia, according to Ibn Abd-el-Hakem's "History of the Conquest of Spain". The former appears in the title of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a grimoire whose framing story is Solomon capturing demons using his ring, and forcing them to explain themselves to him. In "The Book of Deadly Names", purportedly translated from Arabic manuscripts found hidden in a building in Spain, the "King of the Jinn" Fiqitush brings 72 Jinn before King Solomon to confess their corruptions and places of residence. Fiqitush tells King Solomon the recipes for curing such corruptions as each evil Jinn confesses.
Angels also helped Solomon in building the Temple; though not by choice. The edifice was, according to rabbinical legend, miraculously constructed throughout, the large heavy stones rising and settling in their respective places of themselves. The general opinion of the Rabbis is that Solomon hewed the stones by means of a "shamir", a mythical worm whose mere touch cleft rocks. According to Midrash Tehillim, the shamir was brought from paradise by Solomon's eagle; but most of the rabbis state that Solomon was informed of the worm's haunts by Asmodeus. The shamir had been entrusted by the prince of the sea to the mountain rooster alone, and the rooster had sworn to guard it well, but Solomon's men found the bird's nest, and covered it with glass. When the bird returned, it used the shamir to break the glass, whereupon the men scared the bird, causing it to drop the worm, which the men could then bring to Solomon.
Early adherents of the Kabbalah portray Solomon as having sailed through the air on a throne of light placed on an eagle, which brought him near the heavenly gates as well as to the dark mountains behind which the fallen angels "Uzza" and "Azzazel" were chained; the eagle would rest on the chains, and Solomon, using the magic ring, would compel the two angels to reveal every mystery he desired to know.
According to one legend, while traveling magically, Solomon noticed a magnificent palace to which there appeared to be no entrance. He ordered the demons to climb to the roof and see if they could discover any living being within the building but they found only an eagle, which said that it was 700 years old, but that it had never seen an entrance. An elder brother of the eagle, 900 years old, was then found, but it also did not know the entrance. The eldest brother of these two birds, which was 1,300 years old, then declared it had been informed by its father that the door was on the west side, but that it had become hidden by sand drifted by the wind. Having discovered the entrance, Solomon found an idol inside that had in its mouth a silver tablet saying in Greek (a language not thought by modern scholars to have existed 1000 years before the time of Solomon) that the statue was of "Shaddad, the son of 'Ad", and that it had "reigned over a million cities, rode on a million horses, had under it a million vassals and slew a million warriors", yet it could not resist the angel of death.
Solomon's throne is described at length in Targum Sheni, which is compiled from three different sources, and in two later Midrash. According to these, there were on the steps of the throne twelve golden lions, each facing a golden eagle. There were six steps to the throne, on which animals, all of gold, were arranged in the following order: on the first step a lion opposite an ox; on the second, a wolf opposite a sheep; on the third, a tiger opposite a camel; on the fourth, an eagle opposite a peacock, on the fifth, a cat opposite a cock; on the sixth, a sparrow-hawk opposite a dove. On the top of the throne was a dove holding a sparrow-hawk in its claws, symbolizing the dominion of Israel over the Gentiles. The first midrash claims that six steps were constructed because Solomon foresaw that six kings would sit on the throne, namely, Solomon, Rehoboam, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah. There was also on the top of the throne a golden candelabrum, on the seven branches of the one side of which were engraved the names of the seven patriarchs Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job, and on the seven of the other the names of Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses, Aaron, Eldad, Medad, and, in addition, Hur (another version has Haggai). Above the candelabrum was a golden jar filled with olive oil and beneath it a golden basin which supplied the jar with oil and on which the names of Nadab, Abihu, and Eli and his two sons were engraved. Over the throne, twenty-four vines were fixed to cast a shadow on the king's head.
By a mechanical contrivance the throne followed Solomon wherever he wished to go. Supposedly, due to another mechanical trick, when the king reached the first step, the ox stretched forth its leg, on which Solomon leaned, a similar action taking place in the case of the animals on each of the six steps. From the sixth step the eagles raised the king and placed him in his seat, near which a golden serpent lay coiled. When the king was seated the large eagle placed the crown on his head, the serpent uncoiled itself, and the lions and eagles moved upward to form a shade over him. The dove then descended, took the scroll of the Law from the Ark, and placed it on Solomon's knees. When the king sat, surrounded by the Sanhedrin, to judge the people, the wheels began to turn, and the beasts and fowls began to utter their respective cries, which frightened those who had intended to bear false testimony. Moreover, while Solomon was ascending the throne, the lions scattered all kinds of fragrant spices. After Solomon's death, Pharaoh Shishak, when taking away the treasures of the Temple (I Kings xiv. 26), carried off the throne, which remained in Egypt until Sennacherib conquered that country. After Sennacherib's fall Hezekiah gained possession of it, but when Josiah was slain by Pharaoh Necho, the latter took it away. However, according to rabbinical accounts, Necho did not know how the mechanism worked and so accidentally struck himself with one of the lions causing him to become lame; Nebuchadnezzar, into whose possession the throne subsequently came, shared a similar fate. The throne then passed to the Persians, whose king Darius was the first to sit successfully on Solomon's throne after his death; subsequently the throne came into the possession of the Greeks and Ahasuerus.
Masonic rituals refer to King Solomon and the building of his Temple. Masonic Temples, where a Masonic Lodge meets, are an allegorical reference to King Solomon's Temple. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28329 |
Saul
Saul (; – "Šāʾūl", , meaning "asked for, prayed for"), according to the Hebrew Bible, was the first king of the United Kingdom of Israel (Israel and Judah). His reign, traditionally placed in the late 11th century BC, supposedly marked a transition from a tribal society to statehood.
Saul's life and reign are described in the Hebrew Bible. He was anointed by the prophet Samuel and reigned from Gibeah. He fell on his sword (committing suicide) to avoid capture in the battle against the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, during which three of his sons were also killed. The succession to his throne was contested by Ish-bosheth, his only surviving son, and his son-in-law David, who eventually prevailed. According to the Hebrew text of the Bible Saul reigned for forty-two years, but scholars generally agree that the text is faulty and that a reign of twenty or twenty-two years is more probable.
The biblical accounts of Saul's life are found in the Books of Samuel:
According to the Tanakh, Saul was the son of Kish, of the family of the Matrites, and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the twelve Tribes of Israel. It appears that he came from Gibeah.
Saul married Ahinoam, daughter of Ahimaaz, with whom he sired four sons (Jonathan, Abinadab, Malchishua and Ish-bosheth) and two daughters (Merab and Michal).
Saul also had a concubine named Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, who bore him two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth ().
Saul died at the Battle of Mount Gilboa (; ), and was buried in Zelah, in the region of Benjamin (). Three of Saul's sons – Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua – died with him at Mount Gilboa (; ). Ish-bosheth became king of Israel, at the age of forty. At David's request Abner had Michal returned to David. Ish-bosheth reigned for two years, but after the death of Abner, was killed by two of his own captains ().
Armoni and Mephibosheth (Saul's sons with his concubine, Rizpah) were given by David along with the five sons of Merab (Saul's daughter) to the Gibeonites, who killed them (). Michal was childless ().
The only male descendant of Saul to survive was Mephibosheth, Jonathan's lame son (), who was five years old at the time of his father's and grandfather's deaths. In time, he came under the protection of David (). Mephibosheth had a young son, Micah (), who had four sons and descendants named until the ninth generation ().
The First Book of Samuel gives three accounts of Saul's rise to the throne in three successive chapters:
André Lemaire finds the third account probably the most reliable tradition. The Pulpit Commentary distinguishes between a private and a public selection process.
Having been anointed by Samuel, Saul is told of signs indicating that he has been divinely appointed. The last of these is that Saul will be met by an ecstatic group of prophets leaving a "high place" and playing the lyre, tambourine, and flutes. Saul encounters the ecstatic prophets and joins them. Later, Saul sends men to pursue David, but when they meet a group of ecstatic prophets playing music, they become possessed by a "prophetic state" and join in. Saul sends more men, but they too join the prophets. Eventually, Saul himself goes and also joins the prophets ().
After relieving the siege of Jabesh-Gilead, Saul conducts military campaigns against the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Aram Rehob and the kings of Zobah, the Philistines, and the Amalekites (). A biblical summary states that "wherever he turned, he was victorious".
In the second year of his reign, King Saul, his son Jonathan, and a small force of a few thousand Israelite soldiers defeated a massive Philistine force of 3,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, and more than 30,000 infantry in the pass of Michmash. After the battle, Saul instructs his armies, by a rash oath, to fast. Methodist commentator Joseph Benson suggests that "Saul’s intention in putting this oath was undoubtedly to save time, lest the Philistines should gain ground of them in their flight. But the event showed it was a false policy; for the people were so faint and weak for want of food, that they were less able to follow and slay the Philistines than if they had stopped to take a moderate refreshment". Jonathan's party were not aware of the oath and ate honey, resulting in Jonathan realising that he had broken an oath of which he was not aware, but was nevertheless liable for its breach, until popular intervention allowed Jonathan to be saved from death on account of his victory over the Philistines.
During Saul’s campaign against the Philistines, Samuel said that he would arrive in seven days to perform the requisite rites. When a week passed with no word of Samuel, and with the Israelites growing restless, Saul prepares for battle by offering sacrifices. Samuel arrives just as Saul is finishing sacrificing and reprimands Saul for not obeying his instructions.
Several years after Saul’s victory against the Philistines at Michmash Pass, Samuel instructs Saul to make war on the Amalekites and to "utterly destroy" them, in fulfilment of a mandate set out :
Having forewarned the Kenites who were living among the Amalekites to leave, Saul goes to war and defeats the Amalekites. Saul kills all the men, women, children and poor quality livestock, but leaves alive the king and best livestock. When Samuel learns that Saul has not obeyed his instructions in full, he informs Saul that God has rejected him as king due to his disobedience. As Samuel turns to go, Saul seizes hold of his garments and tears off a piece; Samuel prophesies that the kingdom will likewise be torn from Saul. Samuel then kills the Amalekite king himself. Samuel and Saul each return home and never meet again after these events ().
After Samuel tells Saul that God has rejected him as king, David, a son of Jesse, from the tribe of Judah, enters the story: from this point on Saul's story is largely the account of his increasingly troubled relationship with David.
Saul offered his elder daughter Merab as a wife to the now popular David, after his victory over Goliath, but David demurred. David distinguishes himself in the Philistine wars. Upon David's return from battle, the women praise him in song:
implying that David is the greater warrior. Saul fears David's growing popularity and henceforth views him as a rival to the throne.
Saul's son Jonathan and David become close friends. Jonathan recognizes David as the rightful king, and "made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul." Jonathan even gives David his military clothes, symbolizing David's position as successor to Saul.
On two occasions, Saul threw a spear at David as he played the harp for Saul. David becomes increasingly successful and Saul becomes increasingly resentful. Now Saul actively plots against David. Saul offered his other daughter, Michal in marriage to David. David initially rejects this offer also, claiming he is too poor. Saul offers to accept a bride price of 100 Philistine foreskins, intending that David die in the attempt. Instead, David obtains 200 foreskins and is consequently married to Michal. Jonathan arranges a short-lived reconciliation between Saul and David and for a while David served Saul "as in times past" () until "the distressing spirit from the Lord" re-appeared. Saul sends assassins in the night, but Michal helps him escape, tricking them by placing a household idol in his bed. David flees to Jonathan, who arranges a meeting with his father. While dining with Saul, Jonathan explains David's absence, saying he has been called away to his brothers. But Saul sees through the ruse and reprimands Jonathan for protecting David, warning him that his love of David will cost him the kingdom, furiously throwing a spear at him. The next day, Jonathan meets with David and tells him Saul's intent. The two friends say their goodbyes, and David flees into the countryside. Saul later marries Michal to another man.
Saul is later informed by his head shepherd, Doeg the Edomite, that high priest Ahimelech assisted David, giving him the sword of Goliath, which had been kept at the temple at Nob. Doeg kills Ahimelech and eighty-five other priests and Saul orders the death of the entire population of Nob.
David had left Nob by this point and had amassed some 300 disaffected men including some outlaws. With these men David rescues the town of Keilah from a Philistine attack. Saul realises he could trap David and his men by laying the city to siege. David realizes that the citizens of Keilah will betray him to Saul. He flees to Ziph pursued by Saul. Saul hunts David in the vicinity of Ziph on two occasions:
The Philistines make war again, assembling at Shunem, and Saul leads his army to face them at Mount Gilboa. Before the battle he goes to consult a medium or witch at Endor. The medium, unaware of his identity, reminds him that the king has made witchcraft a capital offence, but he assures her that Saul will not harm her. She conjures the spirit of the prophet Samuel, who before his death had prophesied that he would lose the kingdom. Samuel tells him that God has fully rejected him, will no longer hear his prayers, has given the kingdom to David and that the next day he will lose both the battle and his life. Saul collapses in fear, and the medium restores him with food in anticipation of the next day's battle.
The Books of Samuel give conflicting accounts of Saul's death. In 1 Samuel, and in a parallel account in 1 Chronicles 10, the defeated Israelites flee from the enemy and Saul asks his armour bearer to kill him, but the armour bearer refuses, and so Saul falls upon his own sword. In 2 Samuel, an Amalekite tells David he found Saul leaning on his spear after the battle and delivered the "coup de grâce"; David has the Amalekite put to death for having killed the Lord's anointed king.
The victorious Philistines recover Saul's body as well as those of his three sons who also died in the battle, decapitated them and displayed them on the wall of Beth-shan. They display Saul's armour in the temple of Ashtaroth (an Ascalonian temple of the Canaanites). But at night the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead retrieve the bodies for cremation and burial (). Later on, David takes the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan and buries them in Zela, in the tomb of his father (). The account in 1 Chronicles summarises by stating that:
There are several textual or narrative issues in the text, including the aforementioned conflicting accounts of Saul's rise to kingship and his death, as well as plays on words, that biblical scholars have discussed.
The birth-narrative of the prophet Samuel is found at 1 Samuel 1–28. It describes how Samuel's mother Hannah requests a son from Yahweh, and dedicates the child to God at the shrine of Shiloh. The passage makes extensive play with the root-elements of Saul's name, and ends with the phrase "hu sa'ul le-Yahweh", "he is dedicated to Yahweh." Hannah names the resulting son Samuel, giving as her explanation, "because from God I requested him." Samuel's name, however, can mean "name of God," (or "Heard of God" or "Told of God") and the etymology and multiple references to the root of the name seems to fit Saul instead. The majority explanation for the discrepancy is that the narrative originally described the birth of Saul, and was given to Samuel in order to enhance the position of David and Samuel at the former king's expense.
The Bible's tone with regard to Saul changes over the course of the narrative, especially around the passage where David appears, midway through 1 Samuel. Before, Saul is presented in positive terms, but afterward his mode of ecstatic prophecy is suddenly described as fits of madness, his errors and disobedience to Samuel's instructions are stressed and he becomes a paranoiac. This may indicate that the David story is inserted from a source loyal to the House of David; David's lament over Saul in 2 Samuel 1 then serves an apologetic purpose, clearing David of the blame for Saul's death.
God's change of mind in rejecting Saul as king has raised questions about God's "repentance", which would be inconsistent with God's immutability.
In the narrative of Saul's private anointing in 1 Samuel 9:1-10:16, Saul is not referred to as a king ("melech"), but rather as a "leader" or "commander" ("nagid") (; ). Saul is only given the title "king" ("melech") at the public coronation ceremony at Gilgal ().
Various authors have attempted to harmonize the two narratives regarding Saul's death. Josephus writes that Saul's attempted suicide was stalled because he was not able to run the sword through himself, and that he therefore asked the Amalekite to finish it. Later biblical criticism has posited that the story of Saul's death was redacted from various sources, although this view in turn has been criticized because it does not explain why the contradiction was left in by the redactors. But since 2 Samuel records only the Amalekite's report, and not the report of any other eye-witness, some scholars theorize that the Amalekite may have been lying to try to gain favor with David. On this view, 1 Samuel records what actually happened, while 2 Samuel records what the Amalekite "claimed" happened.
Two opposing views of Saul are found in classical rabbinical literature. One is based on the reverse logic that punishment is a proof of guilt, and therefore seeks to rob Saul of any halo which might surround him; typically this view is similar to the "republican source". The passage referring to Saul as "a choice young man, and goodly" (1 Samuel 9:2) is in this view interpreted as meaning that Saul was not good in every respect, but "goodly" only with respect to his personal appearance (Num. Rashi 9:28). According to this view, Saul is only a "weak branch" (Gen. Rashi 25:3), owing his kingship not to his own merits, but rather to his grandfather, who had been accustomed to light the streets for those who went to the "bet ha-midrash", and had received as his reward the promise that one of his grandsons should sit upon the throne (Lev. Rashi 9:2).
The second view of Saul makes him appear in the most favourable light as man, as hero, and as king. This view is similar to that of the "monarchical source". In this view it was on account of his modesty that he did not reveal the fact that he had been anointed king (1 Samuel 10:16; Meg. 13b); and he was extraordinarily upright as well as perfectly just. Nor was there any one more pious than he (M. Q. 16b; Ex. Rashi 30:12); for when he ascended the throne he was as pure as a child, and had never committed sin (Yoma 22b). He was marvelously handsome; and the maidens who told him concerning Samuel (cf 1 Samuel 9:11–13) talked so long with him that they might observe his beauty the more (Ber. 48b). In war he was able to march 120 miles without rest. When he received the command to smite Amalek (1 Samuel 15:3), Saul said: "For one found slain the Torah requires a sin offering [Deuteronomy 21:1–9]; and here so many shall be slain. If the old have sinned, why should the young suffer; and if men have been guilty, why should the cattle be destroyed?" It was this mildness that cost him his crown. And while Saul was merciful to his enemies, he was strict with his own people; when he found out that Ahimelech, a kohen, had assisted David with finding food, Saul, in retaliation, killed the rest of the 85 kohanim of the family of Ahimelech and the rest of his hometown, Nov (Yoma 22b; Num. Rashi 1:10). The fact that he was merciful even to his enemies, being indulgent to rebels themselves, and frequently waiving the homage due to him, was incredible as well as deceiving. But if his mercy toward a foe was a sin, it was his only one; and it was his misfortune that it was reckoned against him, while David, although he had committed much iniquity, was so favored that it was not remembered to his injury (Yoma 22b; M. Q. 16b, and Rashi ad loc.). In some respects Saul was superior to David, e.g., in having only one concubine {Rizpah}, while David had many. Saul expended his own substance for the war, and although he knew that he and his sons would fall in battle, he nevertheless went forward, while David heeded the wish of his soldiers not to go to war in person (2 Samuel 21:17; Lev. Rashi 26:7; Yalq., Sam. 138).
According to the Rabbis, Saul ate his food with due regard for the rules of ceremonial purity prescribed for the sacrifice (Yalq., l.c.), and taught the people how they should slay cattle (cf 1 Samuel 14:34). As a reward for this, God himself gave Saul a sword on the day of battle, since no other sword suitable for him was found (ibid 13:22). Saul's attitude toward David finds its excuse in the fact that his courtiers were all tale-bearers, and slandered David to him (Deut. Rashi 5:10); and in like manner he was incited by Doeg against the priests of Nob (1 Samuel 22:16–19; Yalq., Sam. 131)—this act was forgiven him, however, and a heavenly voice ("bat qol") was heard, proclaiming: "Saul is the chosen one of God" (Ber. 12b). His anger at the Gibeonites (2 Samuel 21:2) was not personal hatred, but was induced by zeal for the welfare of Israel (Num. Rashi 8:4). The fact that he made his daughter remarry (1 Samuel 25:44), finds its explanation in his (Saul's) view that her betrothal to David had been gained by false pretenses, and was therefore invalid (Sanhedrin 19b). During the lifetime of Saul there was no idolatry in Israel. The famine in the reign of David (cf 2 Samuel 21:1) was to punish the people, because they had not accorded Saul the proper honours at his burial (Num. Rashi 8:4). In Sheol, Samuel reveals to Saul that in the next world, Saul would dwell with Samuel, which is a proof that all has been forgiven him by God (Er. 53ba).
Some Muslims refer to Saul as Tālūt (), and believe that (as in the Bible) he was the commander of Israel. Other scholars, however, have identified Talut as Gideon with the reasoning that the Qur'an references the same incident of the drinking from the river as that found in Judges 7:5–7 and other factors associated with Gideon. According to the Qur'an, Talut was chosen by the Prophet Samuel (not mentioned by name explicitly, but rather as "a Prophet" of the Israelites) after being asked by the people of Israel for a King) to lead them into war. The Israelites criticized Samuel for appointing Talut, lacking respect for Talut because he was not wealthy. Samuel rebuked the people for this and told them that Talut was more favored than they were. Talut led the Israelites to victory over the army of Goliath, who was killed by Dawud (David). Talut is not considered a "Nabi" (, Prophet), but a Divinely appointed King.
The name 'Tālūt' has uncertain etymology. Unlike some other Qur'anic figures, the Arabic name is not similar to the Hebrew name ("Sha'ul"). According to Muslim exegetes, the name 'Tālūt' means 'Tall' (from the Arabic "tūl") and refers to the extraordinary stature of Saul, which would be consistent with the Biblical account. In explanation of the name, exegetes such as Tha'labi hold that at this time, the future King of Israel was to be recognised by his height; Samuel set up a measure, but no one in Israel reached its height except Tālūt (Saul).
In the Qur'an, Israelites demanded a King after the time of Musa (Moses). God appointed Talut as their King. Saul was distinguished by the greatness of his knowledge and of his physique; it was a sign of his role as King that God brought back the Ark of the Covenant for Israel. Talut tested his people at a river; whoever drank from it would not follow him in battle excepting one who takes [from it] in the hollow of his hand. Many drank but only the faithful ventured on. In the battle, however, David slew Goliath and was made the subsequent King of Israel.
The Qur'anic account differs from the Biblical account (if Saul is assumed to be Talut) in that in the Bible the sacred Ark was returned to Israel before Saul's accession, and the test by drinking water is made in the Hebrew Bible not by Saul but by Gideon.. However, the story of Saul in 1 Samuel 14 has parallels to Qur'an 2:246-251, faithfully accounting for the sacred Ark and the fasting test (; ; ).
The historicity of Saul's kingdom is not universally accepted and there is insufficient extrabiblical evidence to verify if the biblical account reflects historical reality. The notion of a United Monarchy of Israel and Judah is believed by some scholars to be a later ideological construct; Judah is thought, on the basis of archaeological evidence, to have emerged as an operational kingdom no earlier than the 8th century BCE.
Saul’s kingdom was not very large. It probably included Mt. Ephraim, Benjamin and Gilead. He also exerted some influence in the northern mountains in Judah and beyond the Jezreel Valley. His capital appears to have been essentially a military camp near Gibeah. Archeology seems to confirm that until about 1000 BCE, the end of Iron Age I, Israelite society was essentially a society of farmers and stockbreeders without any truly centralized organization and administration.
Accounts of Saul's behavior have made him a popular subject for speculation among modern psychiatrists. George Stein views the passages depicting Saul's ecstatic episodes as suggesting that he may have suffered from mania. Martin Huisman sees the story of Saul as illustrative of the role of stress as a factor in depression. Liubov Ben-Noun of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, believes that passages referring to King Saul's disturbed behavior indicate he was afflicted by a mental disorder, and lists a number of possible conditions. However, Christopher C. H. Cook of the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK recommends caution in offering any diagnoses in relation to people who lived millennia ago. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28330 |
Samaria
Samaria (; , Standard ', Tiberian "Šōmərôn"; , ' – also known as "", "Nablus Mountains") is a historical and biblical name used for the central region of the ancient Land of Israel, bordered by Galilee to the north and Judaea to the south. For the beginning of the Common Era, Josephus set the Mediterranean Sea as its limit to the west, and the Jordan River as its limit to the east. Its territory largely corresponds to the biblical allotments of the tribe of Ephraim and the western half of Manasseh; after the death of Solomon and the splitting-up of his empire into the southern Kingdom of Judah and the northern Kingdom of Israel, this territory constituted the southern part of the Kingdom of Israel. The border between Samaria and Judea is set at the latitude of Ramallah.
The name "Samaria" is derived from the ancient city of Samaria, the second capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The name likely began being used for the entire kingdom not long after the town of Samaria had become Israel's capital, but it is first documented after its conquest by Sargon II of Assyria, who turned the kingdom into the province of Samerina.
Samaria was revived as an administrative term in 1967, when the West Bank was defined by Israeli officials as the Judea and Samaria Area, of which the entire area north of the Jerusalem District is termed as Samaria.
Jordan ceded its claim to the area to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in August 1988. In 1994, control of Areas 'A' (full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority) and 'B' (Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control) were transferred by Israel to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority and the international community do not recognize the term "Samaria"; in modern times, the territory is generally known as part of the West Bank.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew name "Shomron" is derived from the individual [or clan] "Shemer", from whom King Omri (ruled 880s–870s BCE) purchased the hill on which he built his new capital city ().
The fact that the mountain was called Shomeron when Omri bought it may indicate that the correct etymology of the name is to be found more directly, in the Semitic root for "guard", hence its initial meaning would have been "watch mountain". In the earlier cuneiform inscriptions, Samaria is designated under the name of "Bet Ḥumri" ("the house of Omri"); but in those of Tiglath-Pileser III (ruled 745–727 BCE) and later it is called Samirin, after its Aramaic name, Shamerayin.
There are variations in the geographical definition of Samaria during history.
In biblical times, Samaria "reached from the [Mediterranean] sea to the Jordan Valley", including Mount Carmel and the Sharon plain.
The classical Roman-Jewish historian Josephus wrote: (4) Now as to the country of Samaria, it lies between Judea and Galilee; it begins at a village that is in the great plain called Ginea, and ends at the Acrabbene toparchy, and is entirely of the same nature with Judea; for both countries are made up of hills and valleys, and are moist enough for agriculture, and are very fruitful. They have abundance of trees, and are full of autumnal fruit, both that which grows wild, and that which is the effect of cultivation. They are not naturally watered by many rivers, but derive their chief moisture from rain-water, of which they have no want; and for those rivers which they have, all their waters are exceeding sweet: by reason also of the excellent grass they have, their cattle yield more milk than do those in other places; and, what is the greatest sign of excellency and of abundance, they each of them are very full of people. (5) In the limits of Samaria and Judea lies the village Anuath, which is also named Borceos. This is the northern boundary of Judea.
At the beginning of the Common Era, the boundary between Samaria and Judea passed eastwards of Antipatris, along the deep valley which had Beth Rima (today's Beit Rima) and Beth Laban (today's Al-Lubban al-Gharbi) on its southern, Judean bank; then it passed Anuath and Borceos, identified by Charles William Wilson (1836–1905) as the ruins of ’Aina and Khirbet Berkit; and reached the Jordan Valley north of Acrabbim and Sartaba. Mount Hazor also stands at that boundary.
In modern times, Samaria was one of six administrative districts of British-ruled Mandatory Palestine.
Following the administration of the West Bank by Israel in 1967, the Israelis continued to refer to the territories by their biblical names and argued for their usage on historical, religious, nationalist and security grounds.
To the north, the area known as the hills of Samaria is bounded by the Jezreel Valley; to the east, by the Jordan Rift Valley; to the northwest, by the Carmel Ridge; to the west, by the Sharon plain; and to the south, by the Jerusalem mountains.
The Samarian hills are not very high, seldom reaching the height of over 800 metres. Samaria's climate is more hospitable than the climate further south.
There is no clear division between the mountains of southern Samaria and northern Judaea.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites captured the region known as Samaria from the Canaanites and assigned it to the Tribe of Joseph. After the death of King Solomon (c. 931 BC), the northern tribes, including those of Samaria, separated from the southern tribes and established the separate Kingdom of Israel. Initially its capital was Tirzah until the time of King Omri (c.884 BC), who built the city of Shomron and made it his capital.
In 726–722 BC, the new king of Assyria, Shalmaneser V, invaded the land and besieged the city of Samaria. After an assault of three years, the city fell and much of its population was taken into captivity and deported. Little documentation exists for the period between the fall of Samaria and the end of the Assyrian Empire.
It seems likely that many returned in 715 BC due to slave revolts that Assyrian king Sargon was enduring. Tremper Longman III suggests that , implies that later Assyrian kings also returned more Israelites to Samaria.
In the Bible, Samaria was condemned by the Hebrew prophets for its "ivory houses" and luxury palaces displaying pagan riches.
In AD 6, the region became part of the Roman province of Iudaea, after the death of king Herod the Great.
Over time, the region has been controlled by numerous different civilizations, including Israelites, Babylonians, the classical Persian Empire, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks.
The New Testament mentions Samaria in Luke , in the miraculous healing of the ten lepers, which took place on the border of Samaria and Galilee. John records Jesus' encounter at Jacob's Well with the woman of Sychar, in which he declares himself to be the Messiah. In it is recorded that the early community of disciples of Jesus began to be persecuted in Jerusalem and were 'scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria'. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached and healed the sick there. In the time of Jesus, "Iudaea" of the Romans was divided into the toparchies of Judea, Samaria, Galilee and the Paralia. Samaria occupied the centre of "Iudaea" (). ("Iudaea" was later renamed "Syria Palaestina" in 135, following the Bar Kokhba revolt.) In the Talmud, Samaria is called the "land of the Cuthim".
The modern history of Samaria began when the territory of Samaria, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, was entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandatory Palestine District of Samaria between 1918–1948. The 1947 UN partition plan called for the Arab state to consist of several parts, the largest of which was described as "the hill country of Samaria and Judea."
As a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, most of the territory was unilaterally incorporated as Jordanian-controlled territory, and was administered as part of the West Bank (west of the Jordan river). The Jordanian-held West Bank was captured and been occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Jordan ceded its claims in the West Bank (except for certain prerogatives in Jerusalem) to the PLO in November 1988, later confirmed by the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace of 1994. In the 1994 Oslo accords, the Palestinian Authority was established and given responsibility for the administration over some of the territory of West Bank (Areas 'A' and 'B').
Samaria is one of several standard statistical districts utilized by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. "The Israeli CBS also collects statistics on the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza District. It has produced various basic statistical series on the territories, dealing with population, employment, wages, external trade, national accounts, and various other topics." The Palestinian Authority however use Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Salfit, Ramallah and Tubas governorates as administrative centers for the same region.
The Shomron Regional Council is the local municipal government that administers the smaller Israeli towns (settlements) throughout the area. The council is a member of the network of regional municipalities spread throughout Israel. Elections for the head of the council are held every five years by Israel's ministry of interior, all residents over age 17 are eligible to vote. In special elections held in August 2015 Yossi Dagan was elected as head of the Shomron Regional Council.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered by the international community to be illegal under international law, but the United States and Israeli governments dispute this. In September 2016, the Town Board of the American Town of Hempstead in the State of New York, led by Councilman Bruce Blakeman entered into a partnership agreement with the Shomron Regional Council, led by Yossi Dagan, as part of an anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
The ancient site of Samaria-Sebaste covers the hillside overlooking the Palestinian village of Sebastia on the eastern slope of the hill. Remains have been found from the Canaanite, Israelite, Hellenistic, Herodian, Roman and Byzantine era.
Archaeological finds from Roman-era Sebaste, a site that was rebuilt and renamed by Herod the Great in 30 BC, include a colonnaded street, a temple-lined acropolis, and a lower city, where John the Baptist is believed to have been buried.
The Harvard excavation of Samaria, which began in 1908, was headed by Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner. The findings included Hebrew, Aramaic, cuneiform and Greek inscriptions, as well as pottery remains, coins, sculpture, figurines, scarabs and seals, faience, amulets, beads and glass. The joint British-American-Hebrew University excavation continued under John Winter Crowfoot in 1931–35, during which time some of the chronology issues were resolved. The round towers lining the acropolis were found to be Hellenistic, the street of columns was dated to the 3–4th century, and 70 inscribed potsherds were dated to the early 8th century.
In 1908–1935, remains of luxury furniture made of wood and ivory were discovered in Samaria, representing the Levant's most important collection of ivory carvings from the early first millennium BC. Despite theories of their Phoenician origin, some of the letters serving as fitter's marks are in Hebrew.
As of 1999 three series of coins have been found that confirm Sinuballat was a governor of Samaria. Sinuballat is best known as an adversary of Nehemiah from the Book of Nehemiah where he is said to have sided with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian. All three coins feature a warship on the front, likely derived from earlier Sidonian coins. The reverse side depicts the Persian King in his kandys robe facing down a lion that is standing on its hind legs.
The Samaritans (Hebrew: Shomronim) are an ethnoreligious group named after and descended from ancient Semitic inhabitants of Samaria, since the Assyrian exile of the Israelites, according to and first-century historian Josephus. Religiously, the Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Based on the Samaritan Torah, Samaritans claim their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel. Their temple was built at Mount Gerizim in the middle of the 5th century BCE, and was destroyed under the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus of Judea in 110 BCE, although their descendants still worship among its ruins. The antagonism between Samaritans and Jews is important in understanding the Bible's New Testament stories of the "Samaritan woman at the well" and "Parable of the Good Samaritan". The modern Samaritans, however, see themselves as co-equals in inheritance to the Israelite lineage through Torah, as do the Jews, and are not antagonistic to Jews in modern times. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28333 |
Sennacherib
Sennacherib (Assyrian: "Sîn-ahhī-erība" or "Sîn-aḥḥē-erība", meaning "Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705BC to his own death in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is among the most famous of all Assyrian kings due to the role he played in the Old Testament of the Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. Other events of his reign which secured his legacy throughout the millennia following his death include his destruction of the city Babylon in 689BC and his construction of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh.
Although Sennacherib was one of the most powerful and wide-ranging of all the Assyrian kings, he faced considerable difficulty in controlling Babylonia, which formed the southern portion of his empire. Many of Sennacherib's Babylonian troubles stemmed from the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II, who had been Babylon's king until he was defeated by Sennacherib's father. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. Though Sennacherib reclaimed the south in 700BC, Marduk-apla-iddina continued to trouble him, probably instigating Assyrian vassals in the Levant to rebel and successfully convincing Sennacherib's vassal king in Babylonia, Bel-ibni, to also throw off Sennacherib's rule. After the Babylonians and Elamites captured and executed Sennacherib's eldest son Ashur-nadin-shumi, whom Sennacherib had proclaimed as his vassal king in Babylon, Sennacherib campaigned in both regions, successfully subduing Elam. Because Babylon, well within his own territory, had been the target of most of his military campaigns and had caused the death of his son, Sennacherib destroyed the city in 689BC.
The Levantine War of 701BC was made necessary because several Assyrian vassals in the region decided to rebel, either because they were encouraged by Marduk-apla-iddina or because of the ill omens associated with the battlefield death of Sennacherib's father. Though the northern Levant was subdued relatively quickly, the states in the southern Levant, especially the Kingdom of Judah under King Hezekiah, did not submit as easily. The Assyrians thus invaded Judaea, a campaign which is recorded not only in Sennacherib's own accounts but also in the Second Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. Though the biblical narrative holds that Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem was defeated through divine intervention by an angel destroying the Assyrian army, an outright Assyrian defeat is unlikely as Hezekiah submitted to Sennacherib at the end of the campaign.
Sennacherib transferred the capital of Assyria to Nineveh, where he had spent most of his time as crown prince. In order to transform Nineveh into a capital worthy of his empire, he launched one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history. He expanded the size of the city, constructed great city walls, numerous temples and a great royal garden. His most famous work in the city is the Southwest Palace, a large palace which Sennacherib himself called the "Palace without Rival".
After his eldest son and crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi was killed by the Elamites, Sennacherib originally designated his second eldest son, Arda-Mulissu, as his heir, but later replaced him with a younger son, Esarhaddon, in 684BC, for unknown reasons. Sennacherib ignored repeated appeals from Arda-Mulissu to be reinstated as heir. Sennacherib was assaulted and murdered by Arda-Mulissu and another son, who hoped to seize power for themselves, in 681BC. His death was welcomed as divine punishment in Babylonia and the Levant, while the Assyrian heartland probably reacted with resentment and horror. Arda-Mulissu's coronation was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib.
Sennacherib was the son and successor of the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II, who had reigned as king of Assyria from 722 to 705 BC and as king of Babylon from 710 to 705 BC. The identity of Sennacherib's mother is not entirely certain. Though the most popular view historically has been that Sennacherib was the son of Sargon's wife Ataliya, this is probably impossible. To be the mother of Sennacherib, Ataliya would have had to be born at the latest around the year 760 BC and lived to about 692 BC, but Ataliya's grave at Kalhu indicates that she was at most 35 years old when she died. It is considered more plausible that Sennacherib's mother was another of Sargon's wives, Ra'īmâ, who in a stele from Assur (once the capital of Assyria) is specifically referred to as the "mother of Sennacherib". Sargon claimed that he was the son of the earlier king Tiglath-Pileser III, but this is uncertain as Sargon usurped the throne from Tiglath-Pileser's (other) son Shalmaneser V.
Sennacherib was probably born 745 BC. If Sargon was the son of Tiglath-Pileser and not a non-dynastic usurper, he would probably have lived in the royal palace at Kalhu for several years before becoming king. Sennacherib would then probably have been born at Kalhu, where he would then have grown up and spent most of his youth. Sargon lived in Kalhu until long after becoming king, leaving the city in 710 BC to reside at Babylon and later at his new capital, Dur-Sharrukin. By that point Sennacherib, who served as Sargon's crown prince and intended heir to the throne had already left the city, living in a residence at Nineveh. Nineveh had been the designated seat of the Assyrian crown prince since the reign of Tiglath-Pileser. As crown prince, Sennacherib also owned an estate at Tarbisu. Alongside his siblings, Sennacherib would have been educated by the royal educator Hunnî, probably receiving a scribal education, learning some arithmetic and learning how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian.
He had several brothers and at least one sister. In addition to the older brothers who died before his birth, Sennacherib also had younger brothers, some of which are mentioned as being alive as late as 670 BC, then in the service of Sennacherib's son and successor Esarhaddon. Sennacherib's only known sister, Ahat-abisha, was married off to Ambaris, the king of Tabal, but probably returned to Assyria after Sargon's first successful campaign against Tabal.
Sennacherib's name, "Sîn-aḥḥē-erība" in Akkadian, means "Sîn (the moon-god) has replaced the brothers". The name probably derives from Sennacherib not being Sargon's first son, but all of his older brothers being dead by the time he was born. In Hebrew, his name was rendered as "Snḥryb" and in Aramaic it was "Šnḥ’ryb". As per a 670 BC document, it was illegal to give the name Sennacherib (then the former king) to a commoner in Assyria, as it was considered a taboo and sacrilege.
As crown prince, Sennacherib exercised royal power together with his father, or alone as a substitute while Sargon was away campaigning. During Sargon's longer absences from the Assyrian heartland, Sennacherib's residence would have served as the center of government in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with the crown prince taking on significant administrative and political responsibilities. The vast responsibilities entrusted to Sennacherib suggests a certain degree of trust between the king and the crown prince. In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are depicted in discussion, appearing almost as equals. As regent, Sennacherib's main duty was to maintain relations with Assyrian governors and generals and oversee the vast military intelligence network of the empire. Sennacherib also oversaw domestic affairs and often informed Sargon of the progress being made on building projects throughout the empire. Sennacherib was also assigned to the distribution and reception of audience gifts and tribute, after distributing such financial resources, Sennacherib sent letters to his father to inform him of the decisions made.
Sennacherib's letter to his father indicates that he respected him and that they were on friendly terms. He never disobeyed his father and though his letters indicate that he wanted to please Sargon, they also show that he knew him quite well. For unknown reasons Sargon never brought Sennacherib along on his military campaigns, something Sennacherib may have resented his father for as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. In any event, Sennacherib never took action against Sargon or attempted to usurp the throne despite being more than old enough to become king on his own.
By the time Sennacherib became king, the Neo-Assyrian Empire had been the dominant power in the Near East for more than thirty years, chiefly due to its well-trained and large army which was superior to that of any other contemporary kingdom. Though Babylonia to the south had once been a large kingdom as well, it was typically weaker than its northern neighbor during this period, due to being internally divided and lacking the well-organized army of the Assyrians. The population of Babylonia was divided into various ethnic groups with different priorities and ideas. Though most of the cities, such as Babylon itself and Kish, Ur, Uruk, Borsippa and Nippur, were ruled by the old native Babylonians, most of the southernmost land was dominated by Chaldean tribes led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other. The Arameans lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. The two kingdoms had competed since the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC and in the 8th century BC, the Assyrians consistently gained the upper hand. Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 729 BC.
During the expansion of Assyria into a major empire, the Assyrians had conquered various neighboring kingdoms, generally either annexing them as Assyrian provinces or turning them into vassal states. However, because the Assyrians venerated the long history and culture of Babylon, it was preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king, or by the Assyrian king in a personal union. The relationship between Assyria and Babylonia was not entirely unlike the relationship between Greece and Rome in later centuries; Assyria and Babylonia shared the same language and a large amount of Assyria's own culture, texts and traditions had been imported from the south. The relationship between Assyria and Babylon was emotional in a sense, with the implicit gendering of the two countries as the Assyrian metaphorical "husband" to its "wife" Babylon in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions and worldview. In the words of Assyriologist Eckart Frahm, "the Assyrians were in love with Babylon, but also wished to dominate her". Though Babylon was respected as the well-spring of civilization, it was expected to remain passive in political matters, something which Assyria's "Babylonian bride" repeatedly refused to do.
In 705 BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led the Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurdî of Tabal in central Anatolia. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse was carried off by the Anatolians. The defeat was made significantly worse by the death of Sargon, who Assyrians believed was punished by the gods for some major past misdeed. In Mesopotamian mythology, the afterlife suffered by those who died in battle and weren't buried was terrible, doomed to suffer like beggars for eternity. Sennacherib was about 35 years old when he ascended to the Assyrian throne in August of 705 BC and was well experienced with how to rule the empire due to his long tenure as crown prince. His reaction to the fate of his father was to distance himself from Sargon and appears to have been in denial, refusing to acknowledge and deal with what happened to him. Sargon's great new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, was abandoned immediately and the capital was instead moved to Nineveh. Before he began any other major projects, one of Sennacherib's first actions as king was to rebuild a temple dedicated to the god Nergal, associated with death, disaster and war, at the city Tarbisu.
Even with this public denial in mind, Sennacherib was superstitious and spent much time asking his diviners what kind of sin Sargon could have committed to suffer the fate that he did, possibly considering the idea that Sargon might have offended Babylon's deities by taking control of the city. A text, though probably written after Sennacherib's own death, states that Sennacherib proclaimed he was investigating the nature of a "sin" committed by his father. A minor 704 BC campaign (unmentioned in Sennacherib's later historical accounts), led by Sennacherib's magnates rather than the king himself, was sent against Gurdî in Tabal to avenge Sargon. Sennacherib spent a lot of time and effort to rid the empire of Sargon's imagery. Images which Sargon had created at the temple in Assur were made invisible through raising the level of the courtyard, Sargon's wife Ataliya was buried hastily when she died without regard to the traditional burial practices (and in the same coffin as another woman, the queen of the previous king Tiglath-Pileser), and Sargon is never mentioned in his inscriptions.
Sargon II's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across the Assyrian Empire. Sargon had ruled Babylonia since 710 BC, when he defeated the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II, who had taken control of the south in the aftermath of the death of Sargon's predecessor Shalmaneser V in 722 BC. As with his immediate predecessors, Sennacherib took the ruling titles of both Assyria and Babylonia when he became king, but his reign in Babylonia was less stable. Unlike Sargon and previous Babylonian rulers, who had proclaimed themselves as "shakkanakku" (viceroys) of Babylon, in reverence for the city's deity Marduk (who was considered Babylon's formal "king"), Sennacherib explicitly proclaimed himself as Babylon's king. Furthermore, Sennacherib did not "take the hand" of the Statue of Marduk, the physical representation of the deity, and thus did not honor the god by undergoing the traditional Babylonian coronation ritual.
Angered by the disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704 or 703 BC overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. First, a Babylonian by the name of Marduk-zakir-shumi II took the throne, but was deposed after just two or four weeks by Marduk-apla-iddina, the same Chaldean warlord who had seized control of the city once before and had warred against Sennacherib's father. Marduk-apla-iddina's main strength was his ability to unite the normally infighting Chaldean tribes and the Babylonians against the Assyrians. Shutur-Nahhunte II, the king of Elam (a civilization in modern-day south-western Iran), sent aid to Marduk-apla-iddina, sending an army of 80,000 Elamite bowmen, supported by cavalry, under the command of his commander. Elam's massive support inspired the rest of the Chaldean tribes and the Arameans to join the ranks of the Babylonian king.
Due to portions of the Assyrian army being absent in Tabal in 704 BC and Sennacherib possibly considering a two-front war too risky, he left Marduk-apla-iddina unchallenged for several months. After the Tabal expedition had been completed, Sennacherib gathered the Assyrian army at Assur in 703 BC, often used as a mustering spot for campaigns against the south. The Assyrian army, led by Sennacherib's chief commander, launched an unsuccessful attack on the coalition forces near the city of Kish, bolstering the legitimacy of the coalition. Once Sennacherib, encamped by the city of Kutha, received word of the defeat of his first army he personally led the next attack, defeating the coalition troops near Kish. At this point, the anti-Assyrian army was led by Elam as Marduk-apla-iddina, fearing for his life, had fled to the southern Sea Land (the marshlands in southernmost Mesopotamia). Among the captives taken after the victory was a stepson of Marduk-apla-iddina and brother of an Arabian queen, Yatie, who had joined the coalition.
Sennacherib then marched directly towards Babylon. As the Assyrians appeared on the horizon, Babylon opened its gates to Sennacherib, surrendering without a fight. The Assyrians then spent five days unsuccessfully hunting for Marduk-apla-iddina in the Sea Land, destroying the fields of Chaldeans, Arameans and Babylonians who had supported the revolting regime and taking more than two hundred thousand prisoners. The city of Babylon itself was also reprimanded, suffering a minor sack, though the citizens were not harmed. Because his previous policy of reigning as king of both Assyria and Babylonia had evidently failed, Sennacherib attempted another method, appointing a native Babylonian who had grown up at the Assyrian court, Bel-ibni, as his vassal king of the south. Bel-ibni was described by Sennacherib as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy".
After the Babylonian war, Sennacherib's second campaign was in the Zagros Mountains. There, Sennacherib subdued the Yasubigallians, a people from east of the Tigris river, and the Kassites, a people which centuries prior had ruled Babylonia. Sennacherib's third campaign, directed against the kingdoms and city-states in the Levant, is very well documented compared to many other events in the ancient Near East. Notably, it is the most well-documented event in the history of Israel during the First Temple period. In 705 BC, Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had stopped paying his annual tribute to the Assyrians and began pursuing a markedly aggressive foreign policy, probably inspired by the recent wave of anti-Assyrian rebellions across the empire. Hezekiah conspired with Egypt and Sidqia, an anti-Assyrian king of the city Ashkelon, attacked Philistine cities loyal to Assyria and captured the Assyrian vassal Padi, king of Ekron, and imprisoned him in his capital Jerusalem. In the northern Levant, former Assyrian vassal cities rallied around Luli, the king of Tyre and Sidon. The anti-Assyrian sentiment among some of the empire's western vassals was encouraged by Sennacherib's arch-enemy Marduk-apla-iddina, who corresponded with and sent gifts to western rulers such as Hezekiah, probably hoping to assemble a vast anti-Assyrian alliance.
In 701 BC, Sennacherib first moved to attack the Syro-Hittite and Phoenician cities in the north. Like many rulers of these cities had done before and would do after, Luli decided to flee rather than face the wrath of the Assyrians, escaping by boat until he was safely outside of Sennacherib's reach. In his stead, Sennacherib proclaimed a noble by the name Ethbaal as the new king of Sidon as his vassal and oversaw the submission of many of the surrounding cities to his rule. Faced with a massive Assyrian army nearby, many of the Levantine rulers, including Budu-ilu of Ammon, Kamusu-nadbi of Moab, Mitini of Ashdod and Malik-rammu of Edom, quickly submitted to Sennacherib to avoid retribution.
The resistance in the southern Levant was not as easily suppressed, forcing Sennacherib to invade the region. The Assyrians began with taking Ashkelon, defeating Sidqia, and then proceeded to besiege and take numerous cities. As the Assyrians were preparing to retake Ekron, Hezekiah's ally Egypt intervened in the conflict, however the Egyptian expedition was defeated in battle near the city Eltekeh. The cities of Ekron and Timnah were taken and Judah stood alone, with Sennacherib setting his sight on Jerusalem. While a portion of Sennacherib's troops prepared to blockade Jerusalem, Sennacherib himself marched on the important Judean city Lachish. Both the blockade of Jerusalem and the siege of Lachish probably served to prevent further Egyptian aid from reaching Hezekiah and to intimidate the kings of other smaller states in the region. The siege of Lachish, which ended in the city's destruction, was so long that the defenders eventually began using arrows made of bone rather than metal due to lack of supply. In order to take the city, the Assyrians constructed a great siege mound, essentially a ramp made of stone and earth, to reach the top of Lachish's walls. After the city was destroyed, survivors were deported into the Assyrian Empire. Some of them were forced to aid in Sennacherib's building projects and others were employed in the king's personal guard.
Sennacherib's account of what happened at Jerusalem begins with "As for Hezekiah ... like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him". As such, Jerusalem was blockaded in some capacity, though the lack of massive military activities and appropriate equipment means that it was probably not a full siege. According to the narrative of the event laid out in the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, a senior Assyrian official with the title Rabshakeh stood in front of the city's walls and demanded its surrender. Allegedly, the Rabshakeh used the phrase "eat feces and drink urine" to threaten the Judeans with the difficult conditions that they were soon to experience. Although the Assyrian account of the operation may lead one to believe that Sennacherib was present in person, this is never explicitly stated and reliefs depicting the campaign show Sennacherib as seated on a throne in Lachish instead of overseeing the preparations for an assault on Jerusalem. According to the biblical account, Sennacherib's threatening representatives to Hezekiah found Sennacherib engaged in a struggle with the city Libnah upon their return to the king, who remained at Lachish.
The account of the blockade erected around Jerusalem is different from the sieges described in Sennacherib's annals and the massive reliefs in Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, which depict the Levantine campaign as showing the successful siege of Lachish rather than what transpired at Jerusalem. Though the blockade of Jerusalem was not a proper siege, it is clear from all available sources that a massive Assyrian army was encamped in the city's vicinity, probably on its northern side.
Though it is clear that the blockade of Jerusalem ended without significant fighting, how it was resolved and what stopped Sennacherib's massive army from overwhelming the city is uncertain. The Biblical account of the end of Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem holds that though Hezekiah's soldiers manned the walls of the city, ready to defend it against the Assyrians, an entity referred to as the destroying angel, sent by Yahweh, annihilated Sennacherib's army, killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in front of Jerusalem's gates. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describe the operation being an Assyrian failure due to a "multitude of field-mice" descending upon the Assyrian camp, devouring crucial material such as quivers and bowstrings, making the Assyrians unarmed and causing them to flee. It is possible that the story of the mice infestation is an allusion to some kind of disease striking the Assyrian camp, possibly the septicemic plague. The battle being an outright Assyrian defeat is considered unlikely, especially on account of contemporary Babylonian chronicles, otherwise eager to mention Assyrian failures, being silent on the matter.
Despite the seemingly inconclusive end to the blockade of Jerusalem, the Levantine campaign was largely an Assyrian victory. After the Assyrians had successfully seized many of Judah's most important fortified cities and destroyed several towns and villages, Hezekiah realized that his anti-Assyrian activities had been disastrous military and political miscalculations and as such submitted to the Assyrians once more. He was forced to pay a heavier tribute than previously, probably alongside a heavy penalty and the tribute which he had failed to send to Nineveh from 705 to 701 BC. He was also forced to release the imprisoned king of Ekron, Padi, and Judah lost a substantial amount of territory in the aftermath of the campaign, with Sennacherib granting portions of its land to the neighboring kingdoms of Gaza, Ashdod and Ekron.
Sennacherib's victory in the Levant had not been as conclusive and decisive as most Assyrian victories, which may have encouraged the vassal king of Babylon, Bel-ibni, to listen to the Elamites and Marduk-apla-iddina. Because Marduk-apla-iddina continued to be active in Babylonia, Sennacherib campaigned against the south again in 700 BC and removed Bel-ibni from the throne, either due to complicity or incompetence. Sennacherib's hunt for Marduk-apla-iddina was so furious that the Chaldean escaped on boats with his people and treasury across the Persian Gulf, taking refuge in the Elamite city of Nagitu. Victorious, Sennacherib attempted yet another method to govern Babylonia and appointed his son Ashur-nadin-shumi to reign as Babylonian vassal king.
Ashur-nadin-shumi was also titled as "māru rēštû", a title that could be interpreted either as the "pre-eminent son" or the "firstborn son". His appointment as king of Babylon and the new title suggests that Ashur-nadin-shumi was being groomed to succeed Sennacherib as the King of Assyria upon his death. Ashur-nadin-shumi being titled as the "māru rēštû" likely means that he was Sennacherib's crown prince; if it means "pre-eminent" such a title would be befitting only for the crown prince and if it means "firstborn", it also suggests that Ashur-nadin-shumi was the heir as the Assyrians in most cases followed the principle of primogeniture, wherein the oldest son inherits. More evidence in favor of Ashur-nadin-shumi being the crown prince is Sennacherib's construction of a palace for him at the city of Assur, something Sennacherib would also do for the later crown prince Esarhaddon. As an Assyrian King of Babylon, Ashur-nadin-shumi's position was politically important and highly delicate and would have granted valuable experience to him as the intended heir to the entire Neo-Assyrian Empire.
In the years that followed, Babylonia stayed relatively quiet and Sennacherib campaigned elsewhere. His fifth campaign in 699 BC was composed of a series of raids against the villages around the foot of Mount Judi, located to the northeast of Nineveh. Other small campaigns were also led by Sennacherib's general without the king present, including a 698 BC expedition against Kirua, a revolting Assyrian governor in Cilicia, and a 695 BC campaign against the city Tegarama for which the cause is unknown. Throughout these years, the survival of Marduk-apla-iddina likely represented a thorn in Sennacherib's side, so he decided to invade Elam in 694 BC in pursuit of his Chaldean enemies.
In preparation for an invasion of Elam, aimed at capturing the escaped Chaldeans rather than defeating the Elamites themselves, Sennacherib had for some time overseen the construction of a great fleet by Phoenician shipbuilders in the northern parts of the Euphrates and in Nineveh, by the Tigris. The ships, manned by sailors from Tyre, Sidon and Cyprus, then transported large portions of the Assyrian army to the city Opis. At Opis, the ships were pulled ashore and transported overland on rollers or sledges to the Arahtu canal, perhaps because the lower portions of the two rivers were under Elamite influence. Where the Arahtu joined with the Euphrates south of Babylon, the troops embarked and marched to the mouth of the river. Sennacherib was not present on the boats, marching the entire distance from Nineveh to the mouth of the Euphrates. From the city Bab-Salemeti, Sennacherib then joined the rest of the army and sailed across the Persian Gulf. Though the journey took five days and was apparently difficult, with repeated sacrifices being made to Ea, the god of the deep, the Assyrians successfully landed at the Elamite coast.
Though they faced heavy resistance, Sennacherib's forces prevailed and took several cities, an event the king describes in his own records as a "great victory". The many captured Chaldeans and Elamites were apportioned among his soldiers. Though Sennacherib had his revenge against Marduk-apla-iddina, his arch-enemy had not lived the see it, seemingly dying of natural causes shortly before. The campaign was not a total success, as Shutur-Nahhunte's successor as king of Elam, Hallushu-Inshushinak, exacted his revenge for the invasion by striking at Babylonia. Wishing to restore their independence, some of the Babylonians then seized their king Ashur-nadin-shumi at the city Sippar and handed him over to the Elamites whereafter Ashur-nadin-shumi was taken to Elam and never heard from again, probably being executed. In his stead, the Elamites proclaimed a native Babylonian, Nergal-ushezib, as the king of Babylon.
Sennacherib's position, cut off from his own empire by both Elam and Babylonia, was disadvantageous and the Elamite-Babylonian alliance was initially successful. In June or July of 694 BC, Nergal-ushezib captured the city Nippur, however three months later the Assyrians took Uruk, shortly thereafter turning the war decisively in their favor. In 693 BC, Negal-ushezib and the Elamites attacked the Assyrian army near Nippur but were defeated and Nergal-ushezib was taken as a prisoner to Nineveh. Shortly thereafter, a rebellion broke out in Elam, and three weeks after the defeat at Nippur, Hallushu-Inshushinak was replaced as Elamite king by Kutir-Nahhunte III. Even then, the Babylonians did not surrender and instead proclaimed the Chaldean Mushezib-Marduk as their new king. Before moving to deal with this problem, Sennacherib was determined to defeat Elam. Though the Assyrians captured and destroyed 46 cities, the Elamites refused to fight them, retreating with their new king into the mountains. The oncoming winter, combined with snow and rain, stopped Sennacherib from pursuing them and he returned to Nineveh.
After reigning for just ten months, Kutir-Nahhunte III was replaced as king of Elam by Humban-Numena III and Sennacherib decided that the time had come to decisively defeat his southern enemies. With the threat of Assyrian invasion looming, the Babylonians quickly ensured the continued support of Elam by bribing the new Elamite king with valuables they stripped from their great temple dedicated to their god Marduk. The Assyrian records consider Humban-Numena's decision to support Babylon as unintelligent, describing him as a "man without any sense or judgement". In 691 BC, Mushezib-Marduk's anti-Assyrian coalition struck against Sennacherib. Humban-Numena and his commander, Humban-undasha, led the forces of the coalition against Sennacherib in the Battle of Halule, the outcome of which is uncertain. Both Babylonian and Assyrian texts claim the battle as a great victory. Since Assyrian texts do not mention events in the south again until the later siege of Babylon, it is more likely that the southerners won, though likely suffering large casualties. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh with both of his enemies still on their respective thrones.
In 690 BC, Humban-Numena suffered a stroke and his jaw became locked in a way that prevented him from speaking. Taking advantage of the situation, Sennacherib embarked on his final campaign against Babylon. Although the Babylonians were initially successful, that was short-lived, and in that same year, a siege of Babylon was already well underway. Babylon would likely have been in a poor condition once it fell to Sennacherib in 689 BC, having been besieged for over fifteen months. The king who had anxiously considered the implications of Sargon's seizure of Babylon and the role that the city's offended gods may have played in his father's downfall was gone, replaced by a king wishing to avenge the death of his son and tiring of a city well within the borders of his empire which had repeatedly rebelled against his rule. He had no affection for gods who had inspired their populace to attack him and Sennacherib decided to destroy the city. Sennacherib's own account of the destruction reads as follows:
Although Sennacherib destroyed the city, he was still somewhat fearful of Babylon's ancient gods. Earlier in his account of the campaign he specifically mentions that the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies and the passage in which the seizure of the property of the gods and the destruction of some of their statues is described is one of the few in which Sennacherib uses "my people" rather than "I". This leaves the blame of the fate of the temples not on Sennacherib himself, but on the decisions made by the temple personnel and the actions of the Assyrian people rather than the king in particular.
During the destruction of the city, Sennacherib destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, which he took to Assyria. This caused consternation in Assyria itself, where Babylon and its gods were held in high esteem. Sennacherib attempted to justify his actions to his own countrymen through a campaign of religious propaganda. Among the elements of this campaign he commissioned a myth in which Marduk was put on trial before Ashur, the god of Assyria. This text is fragmentary but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense; he described his defeat of the Babylonian rebels in the language of the Babylonian creation myth, identifying Babylon with the evil demon-goddess Tiamat and himself with Marduk; Ashur replaced Marduk in the New Year's festival; and in the temple of the festival he placed a symbolic pile of rubble from Babylon. In Babylonia, Sennacherib's policy spawned a deep-seated hatred amongst much of the populace.
Sennacherib's goal was the complete eradication of the Babylonia as a political entity. Though some northern Babylonian territories were turned into Assyrian provinces, the Assyrians made no effort to rebuild Babylon itself and southern chronicles from the time refer to the era as the "kingless" period when there was no king in the land.
After the final war with Babylon, Sennacherib seemingly spent the rest of his reign in peace, dedicating his time to improving his new capital at Nineveh rather than embarking on large military campaigns. Nineveh had been an important city in northern Mesopotamia for millennia. The oldest traces of human settlement at its location are from the 7th millennium BC, and from the 4th millennium BC and onwards it formed an important administrative center in the north. When Sennacherib made the city his new capital it experienced one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history, being completely transformed from the somewhat neglected state the city had been in before his reign.
The earliest inscriptions discussing the building project at Nineveh date to 702 BC and are about the construction of the Southwest Palace, a large residence constructed in the city's southwestern parts. Sennacherib called this palace the "ekallu ša šānina la išu", the "Palace without Rival". During the construction process, a previous smaller palace was torn down, a stream of water which had been eroding parts of the palace mound was redirected and a terrace which the new palace was to stand on was erected and raised to the height of 160 layers of brick. Though many of these early inscriptions talk about the palace as if it was already completed, this was the standard way of writing about building projects in ancient Assyria. The Nineveh described in Sennacherib's earliest accounts of its construction was a city which at that point only existed in his imagination.
By 700 BC the walls of the Southwest Palace's throne room were being constructed, followed shortly thereafter by the many reliefs that were to be displayed within it. After the reliefs were done, the final step in the construction of the palace was the erection of great colossal statues depicting bulls and lions, characteristic of Late Assyrian architecture. Though such statues in stone have been excavated at Nineveh, similar colossal statues mentioned in the inscriptions as being made of precious metals remain missing. The roof of the palace was constructed with cypress and cedar recovered from the mountains in the west and the palace was illuminated through multiple windows and decorated with silver and bronze pegs on the inside and glazed bricks on the outside. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1476 ft) long and 220 metres (722 ft) wide. An inscription on a stone lion in the quarter associated with Sennacherib's queen, Tashmetu-sharrat, contains hopes that the king and queen would both live long and healthy lives within the new palace. The text of the inscription reads:
Though probably conceived as a structure similar to the palace Sargon built at Dur-Sharrukin, Sennacherib's palace, and especially the artwork featured therein shows some differences. Though Sargon's reliefs usually show the king as close to other members of the Assyrian aristocracy, Sennacherib's art usually depicts the king towering above everyone else in his vicinity due to being mounted in a chariot. His reliefs show larger scenes, some almost from a birds-eye point of view. There are also examples of a more naturalistic approach in the art; where colossal statues of bulls from Sargon's palace depicts them with five legs so that four legs could be seen from either side and two from the front, Sennacherib's bulls all have four legs. Sennacherib constructed beautiful gardens at his new palace, importing various plants and herbs from throughout his empire and beyond. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India. It has been suggested that the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, where actually these gardens in Nineveh, but the presence of impressive royal gardens in Babylon itself makes this idea somewhat unlikely.
In addition to the palace, Sennacherib oversaw other building projects at Nineveh. He built a large second palace at the city's southern mound, which served as an arsenal to store military equipment and also as permanent quarters for portions of the Assyrian standing army. Numerous temples were built and restored, many of them on the Kuyunjik mound (where the Southwest Palace was located), including a temple dedicated to the god Sîn (invoked in the king's own name). Furthermore, Sennacherib massively expanded the city to the south and erected new huge and massive city walls, surrounded by a moat, up to 25 metres (82 ft) high and 15 metres (49 ft) thick.
When his eldest son and original crown prince Ashur-nadin-shumi disappeared, presumably executed, Sennacherib selected his eldest surviving son, Arda-Mulissu, as the new crown prince. Arda-Mulissu held the position of heir apparent for several years until he suddenly was replaced as heir by his younger brother Esarhaddon in 684 BC. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal from the prominent position is unknown, but it is clear from contemporary inscriptions that he was very disappointed. Esarhaddon's influential mother Naqi'a may have played a role in convincing Sennacherib to pick Esarhaddon as heir. Despite his dismissal, Arda-Mulissu remained a popular figure and some vassals secretly supported him as the heir to throne.
Arda-Mulissu was forced to swear loyalty to Esarhaddon by his father, but made many appeals to Sennacherib to reinstated as heir. Sennacherib noted the increasing popularity of Arda-Mulissu and came to fear for his designated successor, so he sent Esarhaddon away to the western provinces. This exile of Esarhaddon put Arda-Mulissu in a difficult position as he had reached the height of his popularity but was powerless to do anything to Esarhaddon. In order to use the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided that he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. Arda-Mulissu concluded a "treaty of rebellion" with another of his younger brothers, Nabu-shar-usur, and on 20 October 681 BC, they attacked and killed their father in one of Nineveh's temples, possibly the temple dedicated to Sîn.
The murder of Sennacherib, ruler of one of the strongest empires on the planet at his time, was shocking to his contemporaries and was received with strong emotion and mixed feelings throughout Mesopotamia and the rest of the Ancient Near East. In the Levant and in Babylonia the news were celebrated and proclaimed as divine punishment due to Sennacherib's brutal campaigns against them while in Assyria, the reaction was probably resentment and horror. The event was recorded in numerous sources and is even mentioned in the Bible (; ), wherein Arda-Mulissu is called "Adrammelech".
Despite the success of their conspiracy, Arda-Mulissu couldn't successfully seize the throne. The murder of the king caused some resentment against Arda-Mulissu by his own supporters which delayed his potential coronation and in the meantime, Esarhaddon had raised an army. The army raised by Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur met Esarhaddon's forces at Hanigalbat, a city in the western parts of the empire. There, most of their soldiers deserted and joined Esarhaddon, who then marched on Nineveh without opposition, becoming the new king of Assyria. Shortly after taking the throne, Esarhaddon executed all conspirators and political enemies within his reach, including the families of his brothers. All servants involved with the security of the royal palace at Nineveh were executed. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur survived this purge as they had escaped as exiles to the northern kingdom of Urartu.
As was traditional for Assyrian kings, Sennacherib had a harem of many women. Two of his wives are known by name; Tashmetu-sharrat (Akkadian: "Tašmetu-šarrat") and Naqi'a. Whether both of the women held the position of queen or not is uncertain, but contemporary sources suggest that though the kings had multiple women, only one would be recognized as queen and primary consort at one time. For most of Sennacherib's reign, the queen was Tashmetu-sharrat, whose name literally means "Tashmetum is queen". Inscriptions suggest that Sennacherib and Tashmetu-sharrat had a loving relationship, with the king referring to her as "my beloved wife" and publicly praising her beauty.
Whether Nagi'a ever held the title of queen is not clear, she was referred to as the "queen mother" during Esarhaddon's reign but as she was Esarhaddon's mother, the title may have been bestowed on her either late in Sennacherib's reign or by Esarhaddon. Though Tashmetu-sharrat was the primary consort for longer, Naqi'a is more well known today due to her role during Esarhaddon's reign. When she became one of Sennacherib's wives, she took the Akkadian name "Zakûtu" (Naqi'a being an Aramaic name). Naqi'a having two names could point to her originating outside of Assyria proper, possibly in Babylonia or in the Levant, but there is no substantial evidence for any theory regarding her origin.
Sennacherib had at least seven sons and at least one daughter. With the exception of Esarhaddon (who is known to be the son of Naqi'a), which of Sennacherib's wives were the mothers of his children is unknown. Tashmetu-sharrat is likely to have been the mother of at least some of them. Their names were:
A small tablet excavated at Nineveh lists the names of mythological Mesopotamian heroes, such as Gilgamesh, and some personal names. As the name Ashur-ili-muballissu appears in the list of personal names, alongside fragmentary names that could possibly be reconstructed as Ashur-nadin-shumi (or Ashur-shumu-ushabshi) and Esarhaddon, it is also possible that the other personal names were names of further sons of Sennacherib. These names include "Ile"e-bullutu-Aššur", "Aššur-mukkaniš-ilija", "Ana-Aššur-taklak", "Aššur-bani-beli", "Samaš-andullašu" (or "Samaš-salamšu") and "Aššur-šakin-liti".
The main sources that can be used to deduce Sennacherib's personality are his royal inscriptions. However, these inscriptions were not actually written by the king himself, but rather his royal scribes, and often served as propaganda meant to portray the king as better than all other rulers, both contemporary and ancient. Furthermore, Assyrian royal inscriptions often only explore military and construction matters and were highly formulaic, differing little from king to king. However, by examining the inscriptions and comparing them to those of other kings and of non-royal inscriptions, it is possible to assume some aspects of Sennacherib's character. As in the inscriptions of other Assyrian kings, Sennacherib's inscriptions show pride and high self-esteem, for instance in the passage "Ashur, father of the gods, looked steadfastly upon me among all the rulers and he made my weapons greater than (those of) all who sit on (royal) daises". In several places, the great intelligence of Sennacherib is emphasized, for instance, the passage "the god Ninshiku gave me wide understanding equal to (that of) the sage Adapu (and) endowed me with broad knowledge". In several inscriptions he is explicitly referred to as "foremost of all rulers" ("ašared kal malkī") and a "perfect man" ("eṭlu gitmālu"). Sennacherib's decision to keep his birth name when he became king, rather than assuming a throne name, something at least 19 of his 21 immediate predecessors had done, suggests a certain degree of self-confidence. Sennacherib assumed several new epithets never before used by Assyrian kings, such as "guardian of the right" and "lover of justice", suggesting a desire to leave a personal mark on a new era beginning with his reign.
When Sennacherib became king he was already an adult and had served as Sargon's crown prince for over 15 years. He would thus have been well acquainted with the administration of the empire. Unlike many preceding and later Assyrian kings (including his father), Sennacherib did not portray himself as a conqueror or express much desire in conquering the world. Instead, his inscriptions often portrayed the most important parts of his reign as his large-scale building projects. Most of Sennacherib's campaigns were not aimed at conquest but at suppressing revolts against his rule, restoring lost territories and securing treasure to finance his building projects. As can be seen in several of Sennacherib's campaigns being led by his generals rather than the king in person, Sennacherib was not as interested in campaigning as his predecessors had been. The brutal retribution and punishment served to Assyria's enemies as described in Sennacherib's accounts do not necessarily reflect the truth as these accounts also served as propaganda and psychological warfare through intimidation.
Despite the apparent lack of interest in world domination, Sennacherib did assume the traditional Mesopotamian titles that designated rule of the entire world; "king of the universe" and "king of the four corners of the world". Other titles, such as "strong king" and "mighty king", emphasized his power and greatness, alongside epithets such as "virile warrior" ("zikaru qardu") and "fierce wild bull" ("rīmu ekdu"). All Sennacherib's campaigns were described as victories in his own accounts, even the unsuccessful ones. This was not necessarily due to personal pride; a failed campaign would have been regarded by his subjects as an indication that the gods no longer favored Sennacherib's rule. Sennacherib was fully convinced that the gods supported him and saw all his wars as just for this reason. The enemies of Assyria were seen as people who did not respect the gods and they were thus treated and punished as criminals.
It is possible that Sennacherib suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder due to the catastrophic fate of his father. From the available sources, it does appear that Sennacherib was easily enraged by bad news and that he developed serious psychological problems over time. Sennacherib's son and successor Esarhaddon mentions in his inscriptions that Sennacherib was afflicted with the ""alû" demon" and that none of Sennacherib's diviners initially dared to tell the kings that signs pointing to the demon had been observed. What the "alû" demon was is not entirely understood, but the typical symptoms described in contemporary documents include the afflicted not knowing who they are, their pupils constricting, their limbs being tense, being incapable of speech and their ears roaring.
Assyriologists Julian E. Reade and Eckart Frahm have pondered the idea that Sennacherib could be classified as a feminist. Female members of the court were more prominent and enjoyed greater privileges under Sennacherib's reign than under the reigns of previous Assyrian kings. The reasons for Sennacherib's policy towards his female relatives are unknown. It might be due to a desire to shift power away from powerful generals and magnates to his own family, due to encounters with powerful Arabian queens who made their own decisions and led armies or as a way to compensate for the way he treated his father's memory. Evidence to the increased standing of the royal women includes the increased amount of texts referencing Assyrian queens from Sennacherib's reign compared to queens of earlier times and evidence that the queens of Sennacherib had their own standing military units, just like the king. Mirroring the increased standing of the women of the royal family, female deities were also depicted more frequently during the time of Sennacherib. For instance, the god Ashur is frequently depicted together with a female companion, probably the goddess Mullissu.
Throughout the milllennia that followed Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. There are two primary reasons for this, the first being Sennacherib's negative portrayal in the Bible, as the evil conqueror who attempted to take Jerusalem, and the second being his destruction of Babylon, one of the most prominent cities in the ancient world. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. In the famous 1815 poem "The Destruction of Sennacherib" by Lord Byron, Sennacherib is presented as akin to a ruthless predator, attacking Judah as a "wolf on the fold":
Sennacherib's 701 BC attack against Jerusalem was a "world event", drawing together the fates of numerous otherwise disparate groups. The event and its aftermath affected and had consequences for not only the Assyrians and the Israelites, but also the Babylonians, Egyptians, Nubians, Syro-Hittites and Anatolian peoples. The siege is discussed not only in contemporary sources but also in later folklore and traditions, such in Aramaic folklore, in later Greco-Roman histories on the Near East and in the tales of medieval Syriac Christians and Arabs. Sennacherib's Levantine campaign is a significant event in the Bible, being brought up and discussed in numerous places, notably 2 Kings 18:13–19:37, 20:6 and Chronicles 32:1–23. A vast majority of the Biblical account of King Hezekiah's reign in 2 Kings is dedicated to Sennacherib's campaign, cementing it as the most important event of Hezekiah's time. In Chronicles, the failure of Sennacherib and the success of Hezekiah is emphasized, the Assyrian campaign (described as an act of aggression rather than as a response to Hezekiah's rebellious activities) is seen as doomed to fail from the start. According to the narrative, no enemy, not even the powerful king of Assyria, would have been able to triumph over Hezekiah as the Judean king had God on his side. The conflict is presented as something akin to a holy war; God's war against the pagan Sennacherib.
Though Assyria had more than a hundred kings throughout its long history, Sennacherib (alongside his son Esarhaddon and grandsons Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin) is one of the few kings who were remembered and figured in Aramaic and Syriac folklore long after the kingdom had fallen. In the ancient Aramaic story of Ahikar, Sennacherib is portrayed as a benevolent patron of the titular character Ahikar, with his son Esarhaddon being portrayed more negatively. In medieval Syriac tales, Sennacherib is characterized as an archetypical pagan king who is assassinated as part of a family feud and whose children convert to Christianity. In the legend of the 4th-century Saints Behnam and Sarah, Sennacherib, under the name Sinharib, is cast as the royal father of Behnam and Sarah. After Behnam converts to Christianity, Sinharib orders his execution but is later struck by a dangerous disease that is cured through being baptized by Saint Matthew in Assur. Thankful, Sinharib then converts to Christianity and founds an important monastery near Mosul, called Deir Mar Mattai.
In later Jewish tradition, Sennacherib also occupied various roles. In Midrash, similar examinations of the Old Testament and later stories, the events of 701 BC are often explored in detail; often featuring massive armies deployed by Sennacherib and pointing out how Sennacherib repeatedly consulted astrologers on his campaign, delaying his actions. In the stories, Sennacherib's armies are destroyed when Hezekiah recites Hallel psalms on the eve of Passover. The event is often portrayed as an apocalyptic scenario, with Hezekiah portrayed as a messianic figure and Sennacherib and his armies being personifications of Gog and Magog.
The discovery of Sennacherib's own inscriptions in the 19th century, in which brutal and cruel acts such as ordering the throats of his Elamite enemies to be slit, and their hands and lips to be cut off, amplified his already ferocious reputation. Today, an abundance of such inscriptions are known, most of them housed in the collections of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London, though many are also scattered throughout the world in other institutions and in private collections. Some large objects with Sennacherib's inscriptions remain at Nineveh, where some have even been reburied. Sennacherib's own accounts of his building projects and military campaigns typically referred to as his "annals", of his reign were often copied several times and spread throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire during his reign. For the first six years of his reign, they were written on clay cylinders, but he later began using clay prisms, probably because they provided a greater surface area.
Letters associated with Sennacherib are less in number than those known from his father and from the time of his son Esarhaddon, and most of them are from Sennacherib's tenure as crown prince. Other types of non-royal inscriptions from Sennacherib's reign, such as administrative documents, economic documents and chronicles, are more numerous. In addition to written sources, numerous pieces of artwork have also survived from Sennacherib's time, notably the king's reliefs from his palace at Nineveh. These reliefs typically depict his conquests, sometimes with short pieces of texts explaining the scene shown. First discovered and excavated from 1847 to 1851 by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, the discovery of reliefs depicting Sennacherib's siege of Lachish in the Southwest Palace was the first archaeological confirmation of an event described in the Bible.
Further excavations of the Southwest Palace were then led by Hormuzd Rassam and Henry Creswicke Rawlinson from 1852 to 1854, William Kennett Loftus from 1854 to 1855 and George Smith from 1873 to 1874. Among the many inscriptions found at the site, Smith discovered a fragmentary account of a flood, which generated much excitement both among the general public and among scholars. Since Smith, the site has been experienced several periods of intense excavations and study; Hormuzd Rassam returned from 1878 to 1882, E. A. Wallis Budge oversaw excavations from 1889 to 1891, Leonard William King from 1903 to 1904 and Reginald Campbell Thompson in 1905 and from 1931 to 1932. The most recent expeditions were conducted by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities under T. Madhloom from 1965 to 1968. Many of Sennacherib's reliefs are today exhibited at the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the British Museum, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris.
The following titulature is used by Sennacherib in early accounts of his 703 BC Babylonian campaign:
This variant of the titulature is used in an inscription from the Southwest Palace at Nineveh written after Sennacherib's 700 BC Babylonian campaign: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28334 |
Saaremaa
Saaremaa ( , ; German and ) is the largest island in Estonia, measuring . The main island of Saare County, it is located in the Baltic Sea, south of Hiiumaa island and west of Muhu island, and belongs to the West Estonian Archipelago. The capital of the island is Kuressaare, which in January 2018 had 13,276 inhabitants. The whole island had a recorded population in January 2017 of 31,357.
In old Scandinavian sources, Saaremaa is called "Eysysla" and in the Icelandic Sagas "Eysýsla", meaning "the district (land) of island". The island is called "Saaremaa" in Estonian, and in Finnish "Saarenmaa"—literally "isle land" or "island land"., i.e. the same as the Scandinavian name for the island .
The old Scandinavian name is also the origin of the island's name in Danish "Øsel", German and Swedish, "Ösel", Gutnish "Oysl", and in Latin, "Osilia". In Latvian, the island is called "Sāmsala", which means "the island of Saami". Saaremaa is believed by Estonian scholar Raul Talvik and former Estonian president Lennart Meri to have been the historic Ultima Thule.
According to archaeological finds, the territory of Saaremaa has been inhabited from at least 5000 BCE. Nordic Iron Age ship burials, dated to AD 700–750, have been found in Sõrve Peninsula. Sagas talk about numerous skirmishes between islanders and Vikings. Saaremaa was and the home of notorious pirates, sometimes called the Eastern Vikings. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes a fleet of sixteen ships and five hundred Osilians ravaging the area that is now southern Sweden, then belonging to Denmark.
Probably around 1000, Gunnar Hámundarson from Iceland took part in a Viking raid at Eysýsla (Saaremaa). There he obtained his famous atgeir, by taking it from a man named Hallgrímur. Njáls saga tells the following:
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes a fleet of sixteen ships and five hundred pirates from Saaremaa ravaging the area that is now southern Sweden, then belonging to Denmark. In the XIVth book of Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus describes a battle on Öland in 1170 in which the Danish king Valdemar I mobilised his entire fleet to curb the incursions of pirates from Couronia and Saaremaa.
Perhaps the most renowned raid by the inhabitants of Saaremaa occurred in 1187, with the attack on the Swedish town of Sigtuna (other candidates as raiders are Karelians and Curonians). Among the casualties of this raid was the Swedish archbishop Johannes. Archaeological excavations have not verified the traditions of destruction of the town. Normal life in Sigtuna continued until town started to slowly lose its importance during 13th century due to navigability problems caused by post-glacial rebound.
In 1227, Saaremaa was conquered by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword during the Livonian Crusade but the resistance of the local inhabitants remained strong. The crusaders founded the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek there. When the Order was defeated by the Lithuanian army in the Battle of Saule in 1236, the Saaremaa islanders rebelled. The conflict was ended by a treaty that was signed by the Osilians and the Master of the Order. In the following year, the Sword-Brothers were absorbed into the Teutonic Order. As the crusaders' hold on Saaremaa got stronger, Christianity also became more established on the island, and to this day Saaremaa has a unique set of medieval churches in Kaarma, Karja, Kihelkonna, Muhu, Pöide, Püha and Valjala churches. The crusader's fortress Kuressaare Castle, known in German as Schloss Arensburg, was built by the Teutonic Order for the bishops of Ösel-Wieck (Estonian: Saare-Lääne). Construction began in 1380 and it is one of the most well-preserved medieval castles in Estonia and bears testimony to the late Medieval Age.
During the 14th–16th centuries, and possibly earlier, local inhabitants started to expand across the Baltic Sea into surrounding areas thus establishing villages at Livonian coast.
Most of Saaremaa was ruled directly by the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek, while some parts were enfeoffed to the Livonian Order. In 1559, the bishopric and Saaremaa were sold to Denmark, becoming part of Danish Estonia. From 1570 until 1645 the entire island was under Danish possession.
In 1645, Saaremaa was ceded from Denmark to Sweden by the Treaty of Brömsebro. In 1721, along with the rest of Livonia, Saaremaa (then known by its Swedish name of Ösel) was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Nystad, becoming a part of the Governorate of Livonia.
In 1840 the first spa opened in Kuressaare (then known as Arensburg), and the town experienced renaissance and became a resort for Russians and Baltic Germans.
In World War I, the Estonian islands were conquered by Imperial German Army in October 1917 and remained occupied (Operation Albion) until the end of hostilities. Estonia gained independence on February 24, 1918 after the October Revolution and the collapse of the Russian Empire. As a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the new state was incorporated into the Soviet Union in June 1940 as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most of the Baltic German population of the island was evacuated to Germany following the Pact. The island was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 (Operation Beowulf); German troops remained there until expelled by the Red Army in the Moonzund Landing Operation in October and November 1944. In 1946, Saaremaa was declared a restricted zone, closed to foreigners and to most mainland Estonians. It remained a restricted area until 1989.
Estonia regained independence on August 20, 1991, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The island forms the main barrier between the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic Sea. To the south of it is the main passage out of the gulf, the Irbe Strait, next to Sõrve Peninsula, the southernmost portion of the island. In medieval times islanders crossed the strait to form fishing villages on the Livonian coast, notably Pitrags. In those days it was easier and quicker to cross the strait towards nearby Kolka, Saunags or Mazirbe, than travel by horse large distances inland. The highest point on the island is 54 m above sea level. The Kaali crater is on the island. The island has much forested terrain. One of the symbols of the island is the juniper.
More than 10,000 years ago the first parts of Saaremaa arose from the Baltic Ice Lake. The uplift of the Earth's crust is continuing even today, at per year. The West Estonian islands are lowlying plains resting on limestone, their average elevation being about above sea level. Limestone has become denuded in a great number of places, resulting in cliffs, limestone pits and quarries at Mustjala, Ninase, Pulli, Üügu and Kaugatuma.
Because of its mild maritime climate and a variety of soils, Saaremaa has a rich flora, illustrated by the fact that 80% of the plant species found in Estonia are represented here. Altogether 1200 species of vascular plants can be found in Saaremaa. About 120 of the local plant species are rare ones that have received special protection status. The most famous endemic species is Rhinanthus osiliensis, a rare little flower growing mostly in spring fens. Rare and beautiful flowers are widespread; out of the 36 species found in Estonia, 35 of them are found on Saaremaa and neighbouring islands.
Over 40% of Saaremaa is covered with forests. They are mostly mixed forests but in some areas one can find broad-leaved (deciduous) trees, which are relict plant communities of former milder climatic periods. Wooded meadows were common in Saaremaa before World War II, but many of these unique natural complexes have gradually become overgrown and thus turned into the ordinary forest. The same is true for alvars (limestone areas covered with thin soil and stunted vegetation). Once a typical and exclusive landscape element in Saaremaa alvars are now in decline. Nature conservation planning for Saaremaa now includes protection of the largest and most unusual alvar areas.
Saaremaa has a wide variety of rare wildlife species, ranging from insects to seals. The smallest protected wildlife species include Cloude Apolle butterflies and Roman snails.
The coastal areas of Saaremaa are famous seal habitats. The gray seal that is common here can be found in three large permanent resting areas on the islets off the coast in the western and southern parts of Saaremaa. The local population of grey seals is slightly increasing. Ringed seals can be encountered everywhere in the coastal waters of Saaremaa but, because of their timidity, it has not been possible to make an estimation of their number.
The islands lie in the East Atlantic Flyway, a migration path of waterfowl. This "bird road" connects northeastern Europe with Arctic regions. Each year hundreds of thousands of migratory birds visit Saaremaa in spring and autumn. The barnacle goose, mute swan, whooper swan, eider, shelduck and a great many other bird species have been given protection status. But on the whole, the islands are somewhat poorer in wildlife species than the mainland. Neither mole, mink, nor otter can be found here, the lynx and the brown bear are infrequent guests.
Kaali is a small group of nine unique meteorite craters on Saaremaa. The largest of the craters measures in diameter and contains a small lake, known as "Kaali järv" ("Lake Kaali"). The meteor cluster had an impact velocity of and a mass of 20–80 tons. At the altitude of the meteor broke into pieces. The largest fragment produced the main crater with a depth of .
Eight smaller craters with diameters ranging from and depths varying from are all within of the main crater. The age estimates of the crater vary, with 4000 ± 1000 BCE being a commonly accepted estimate, though other estimates suggest the explosion was as recent as 660 ± 85 BCE. The energy of the impact — about 80 TJ (20 kilotons of TNT), comparable with the Hiroshima bomb) — burned forests within a radius of . There are numerous legends related to the crater; these are summarized by Lennart Meri in his book "Hõbevalge".
Dolomite, limestone, curative mud, mineral water, ceramic clay, sand, and gravel are the major local resources. Of these local resources, dolomite is perhaps the most famous above all.
The majority of the population is Estonian (97%). The biggest minority nationality is Russian, comprising 2% of the inhabitants. Compared to the Republic of Estonia on the whole, the population of Saare County and particularly of Kuressaare town is younger, whereas the number of the retired people is considerably smaller. Saaremaa is located in the centre of the Baltic region with the most rapidly growing market in Europe, containing 70 million consumers. Gates to the West include not only the newly reconstructed Kuressaare Airport and Roomassaare Port, the operation of modern ferries between Saaremaa and the mainland but also the rapid development of the telecommunications, highly important for the island. Saaremaa is a tourist destination, revisited by 35% of foreign and 95% of domestic tourists. Saaremaa has an entrepreneur-friendly, safe, and strain-free economic environment.
Saaremaa is reached by TS Laevad's ferries from Virtsu on the Estonian mainland to Kuivastu on Muhu island, which is itself connected to Saaremaa by a causeway, the Väinatamm. Saaremaa can also be reached by ferry from Sõru on the island of Hiiumaa to Triigi. There are also passenger services from Roomassaare to the smaller island of Abruka. During many winters it is possible to drive to Saaremaa by an ice road between the mainland and Muhu or between Saaremaa and the island of Hiiumaa.
There are regular bus services from Tallinn, Pärnu and Tartu on the mainland, which use the ferry from Virtsu to Muhu.
There is an airport at Kuressaare with regular flights to Tallinn operated by Transaviabaltika. In the summer season there are regular service to Ruhnu and Pärnu operated by Luftverkehr Friesland Harle, and a twice weekly service to Stockholm operated by Estonian Air.
Historically there was a Soviet air base at Aste during the Cold War. Plans to connect Saaremaa to the mainland either by the Saaremaa Bridge or Saaremaa Tunnel are being studied.
FC Kuressaare competes in the first tier of Estonian football, the Meistriliiga. Saaremaa competes in the biannual Island Games.
There are three main international traditional sport events in Saaremaa:
Saaremaa has more spas than anywhere else in Estonia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28338 |
Single-shot
Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded after each shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, and many centuries passed before multi-shot repeater designs became commonplace. Single-shot designs are less complex than revolvers or magazine-fed firearms, and many single-shot designs are still produced by many manufacturers, in both cartridge- and non-cartridge varieties, from zip guns to the highest-quality shooting-match weapons.
The vast majority of firearms before the introduction of metallic cartridges in the 1860s were single-shot and muzzle loading. However, multi-barrel, breech loading, revolving, and other multi-shot firearms had been experimented with for centuries. Notable pre-cartridge era single-shot firearms included matchlock, wheellock, snaplock, doglock, miquelet lock, flintlock, and percussion cap firearms. Muzzle loaders included the Brown Bess, Charleville and Springfield Model 1861 muskets, the Kentucky and Mississippi rifles, and the duelling pistol. There were also early breech-loading single-shot rifles such as the Hall, Ferguson, and Sharps.
Almost all of the early cartridge-fed rifles were single-shot designs, taking advantage of the strength and simplicity of single-shot actions. A good example is the "trapdoor" or Allin action used in early cartridge conversions of 1863 Springfield muzzleloading rifles. The conversion consisted of filing out (or later milling out) the rear of the barrel, and attaching a folding bolt, the "trapdoor", that flipped up and forwards to allow the cartridge to be loaded in the breech. Once loaded, the bolt was closed and latched in place, holding the round securely in place. The bolt contained a firing pin that used the existing percussion hammer, so no changes were required to the lock. After firing, the act of opening the bolt would partially extract the fired case from the chamber, allowing it to be removed. In 1866, the United States standardized on the .50-70 cartridge, chambered in trapdoor conversions of rifled muskets that had been used in the American Civil War. The trapdoor mechanism continued with the adoption of the Springfield 1873 rifle, chambered in the new .45-70 cartridge. The Springfield stayed in service until 1893, when it was replaced by the Krag–Jørgensen bolt-action rifle.
Another muzzleloader conversion similar in concept to the Allin action was the British Snider–Enfield, also introduced in 1866, which hinged to the side rather than forward. Unlike the US Army, which kept its trapdoors for decades, the British soon moved beyond the Snider to the more sophisticated dropping-block Martini action derived from the Peabody action. Martini–Henrys were the standard British rifles of the late Victorian era, and Martini–Enfield conversions continued in second-line service until the Second World War.
Single-shot rifles were the preferred tools of big-game hunters in the later 19th century. The buffalo hunters of the American West used Sharps, Remington and Springfield single-shots; ivory and trophy hunters in Africa and Asia used Martini and break-action "express rifles" and "elephant guns." These rifles were designed for very large black-powder cartridges, from military-issue .45-70 on up to the enormous .50-140 Sharps and .500 Express; early repeating actions were not capable of handling rounds of this power and physical size. The single-shot big-game rifle would only be displaced by bolt action repeaters firing high-velocity smokeless-powder cartridges in the early 20th century.
After the advent of high-powered repeating rifles, single-shot rifles were primarily used for target shooting matches, with the first official match shooting event, opening at Creedmoor, Long Island in 1872. From about 1872 until the U.S. entry into World War I (1917), target shooting with single-shot rifles was nearly as popular in America as golf is today. During that golden age of match shooting, the most popular target rifles were made by Bullard, Stevens, Remington, Maynard, Ballard, Farrow, and Winchester. Calibers used by some of these rifles during matches ranged from the .25/20, .32/40, .33, .35, .35-55, .38-55, .40-50, .40/70, and a host of .44's (.44/105, .44/77, etc.) for over-600-yard shooting at Creedmoor. But two calibers maintained consistency throughout their tenure during the single-shot era: the .32-40 and the .38-55 calibers. The minimum standard in the beginning of the sport had been 200 yard firing from the standing position (off-hand position). No rifle scopes, no bench rests, no prone (lying down on the front) positions, but shooting, as famed rifle barrel maker, "Harry Melville Pope" (1861–1950), once stated, "standing on his hind legs and shooting like a man." The .32-40 and .38-55 were able to buck the wind better at 200 yards, and not wear the rifleman out by heavy recoil, all while sustaining great accuracy. In the end though, it was the .32-40 single-shot rifle that became the dean of match shooters, as the recoil from the .38-55 took its toll after hundreds of rounds had been fired during a match.
In 1878, John Moses Browning patented arguably the greatest single-shot rifle ever produced: after Browning sold his design to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company it was brought out as the Winchester Model 1885 Rifle. Although fewer than 200,000 Model 1885 Single Shots were built, it remained in production from 1885 to 1920.
Remington, Sharps, and Browning all made single-shot rifles using different actions, such as the rolling block and falling block. These rifles were originally chambered in large black-powder cartridges, such as .50-110, and were used for hunting large game, often bison. Later production rifles would be in popular smokeless powder cartridges, such as the .30-40 Krag.
Single-shot rifles co-existed for some time with the lever action rifle, but they began to fade out of manufacture with the advent of reliable bolt action rifles.
The handgun began as a single-shot weapon in China in the 14th century. In its many versions it remained a muzzle-loaded weapon until the advent of the metallic cartridge in the first third of the 18th century. Such single-shot cartridge-firing pistols were short-lived, as revolver technology evolved rapidly, and cartridge conversions existed for the common models of cap and ball revolvers. Two forms of single-shot pistol, however, remained: single-shot derringers, and target pistols, which were essentially single-shot rifle actions cut down to pistol size. The Remington Rolling Block is perhaps the most well known of these. As the era of single-shot rifles faded, so did these early single-shot pistols.
In 1907, J. Stevens Arms, a maker of inexpensive break-open single-shot rifles in pistol calibers, started making pistol versions of their rifles. This pistol was chambered in .22 Long Rifle and came with adjustable iron sights and grips designed for target shooting. These models were discontinued in 1939.
Single-barrel shotguns have always been popular as an inexpensive alternative to double-barreled shotguns. They are almost always break-open designs, like the double-barreled designs, but far less expensive since they do not require the precise aligning of parallel barrels. Single-barrel shotguns are also lighter, which can be an advantage if they are carried hunting, though it does mean they have more felt recoil. They are not widely used in shotgun sports, as most events require the ability to quickly fire two successive shots.
The single-barrel shotgun is often referred to as a "kitchen door gun" or a "farm gun" due to its low cost as a self-defense weapon.
The earliest metallic-cartridge breechloaders designed for general military issue began as conversions of muzzle-loading rifle-muskets. The upper rear portion of the barrel was filed or milled away and replaced by a hinged breechblock which opened upward to permit loading. An internal angled firing pin allowed the re-use of the rifle's existing side-hammer. The Allin action made by Springfield Arsenal in the US hinged forward; the Snider–Enfield used by the British opened to the side. Whereas the British quickly replaced the Snider with a dropping-block Peabody-style Martini action, the US Army felt the trapdoor action to be adequate and followed its muzzleloader conversions with the new-production Springfield Model 1873, which was the principal longarm of the Indian Wars and was still in service with some units in the Spanish–American War.
Other trapdoor actions include the rare Confederate Tarpley carbine, the Austrian Wanzl, the Belgian Albini-Braendlin rifle and Terssen conversion (some of which were made from French 1777 pattern flintlocks!), the M1842/59/67 Swiss Milbank-Amsler, the M1859/67 Spanish Berdan, and the Colt-manufactured Russian Berdan Type I. All of these designs save the 1863 Tarpley date from the period 1865–1869, and all but the Tarpley and the Russian Berdan were conversions from muzzle-loaders.
Perhaps the most common type of single-shot action, usually found in shotguns, small pistols, and black-powder "elephant" guns, a break action connects the barrel assembly to the breechblock with a hinge. When a locking latch is released, the barrel assembly pivots away from the receiver, opening the breech and sometimes on higher quality firearms, partially extracting the spent cartridge.
In a rolling block action the breechblock takes the form of a part-cylinder, with a pivot pin through its axis. The operator rotates or "rolls" the block to open and close the breech; it is a simple, rugged and reliable design. Rolling blocks are most often associated with firearms made by Remington in the later 19th century; in the Remington action the hammer serves to lock the breech closed at the moment of firing, and the block in turn prevents the hammer from falling with the breech open. An interesting variation of the rolling block was the Austrian M1867 Werndl–Holub, in which the pivot pin was parallel to the barrel and the block rotated sideways.
These are actions wherein the breechblock lowers or "drops" into the receiver to open the breech, usually actuated by an underlever. There are two principal types of dropping block: the tilting block and the falling or sliding block.
In a tilting or pivoting block action, the breechblock is hinged at the rear. When the lever is operated, the block tilts down and forward, exposing the chamber. The best-known pivoting block designs are the Peabody, the Peabody–Martini, and Ballard actions.
The original Peabody rifles, manufactured by the Providence Tool Company, used a manually cocked side-hammer. Swiss gunsmith Friedrich Martini devised an action that resembled the Peabody but incorporated a hammerless striker cocked by the operating lever with the same motion that pivoted the block. The 1871 Martini–Henry which replaced the "trapdoor" Snider–Enfield was the standard British Army rifle of the later Victorian era, and the Martini was also a popular action for civilian rifles.
Charles H. Ballard's self-cocking tilting-block action was produced by the Marlin Firearms Company from 1875, and earned a superlative reputation among long-range "Creedmoor" target shooters. Surviving Marlin Ballards are today highly prized by collectors, especially those mounted in the elaborate Swiss-style "Schützen" stocks of the day.
In a falling block action the block does not pivot, but rather slides vertically in a slot milled into the receiver. Falling blocks are among the strongest small-arm actions ever produced, and are also used in heavy artillery. Well-known falling block designs include the Sharps rifles and carbines, the Browning/Winchester Single Shot, the Farquharson rifle, and the modern Ruger No. 1.
Although bolt actions are usually associated with fixed or detachable box magazines, in fact the first general-issue military breechloader was a single-shot bolt action: the paper-cartridge Prussian needle gun of 1841. France countered in 1866 with its superior Chassepot rifle, also a paper-cartridge bolt action. The first metallic-cartridge bolt actions in general military service were the Berdan Type II introduced by Russia in 1870, the Mauser Model 1871, and a modified Chassepot, the Gras rifle of 1874; all these were single-shots.
Today most top-level smallbore match rifles are single-shot bolt actions.
Single-shot bolt actions in .22 caliber were also widely manufactured as inexpensive "boys' guns" in the earlier 20th century; and there have been a few single-shot bolt-action shotguns, usually in .410 bore.
The OSS stinger pen pistol and several other clandestine pen guns, as well as homemade zip guns often made using plumbing parts, and cane guns used for both defense and poaching use a screw thread to attach the chambered barrel to a receiver with some sort of breech and firing pin. The user unscrews the barrel from the receiver to expose the chamber to load a cartridge. The RN50 .50bmg single shot rifle uses a similar screwthread breech cap to allow an otherwise simple break action to contain a .50bmg round.
Although non-cartridge single-shot firearms are still made in hobbyist contexts (for example, replicas of antique guns), this discussion focuses on newer designs employing cartridges.
The modern era of single-shot firearms is most visible in the realm of pistols. Remington introduced the single-shot bolt-action XP-100 pistol in 1963, which heralded the era of high-performance, high-velocity pistols. The .221 Fireball cartridge lived up to its name by reaching velocities of 2700 ft/s (823 m/s) from a 10.5" (26.7 cm) barrel. Essentially a shortened .222 Remington, the compact .221 Fireball delivered accuracy exceeding many rifles, out to ranges unheard of for other handguns.
Even bigger than the XP-100, the 1967 introduction of the Thompson Center Arms Contender pistol changed handgun sports forever. The Contender was a break-open design that allowed barrels to be changed by the shooter in minutes. Available in calibers from .22 Long Rifle up to .45-70, and in barrel lengths of 8, 10, and 14 inches (20, 25, and 35.5 cm), the Contender could, in the right hands, handle any type of game, and delivered rifle-like accuracy to match the XP-100.
Many other manufacturers make single-shot pistols, most based on the bolt-action rifle, with barrels generally ranging from 10 to 15 inches (25 to 38 cm). Single-shots dominate handgun metallic silhouette shooting, and single-shots are the most common handguns used for hunting.
Single-shot pistols have sometimes found popularity among insurgents, resistance fighters, and street gangs. The mass-produced, low-cost Liberator pistol of World War II, which was manufactured and distributed by U.S. forces to Allied Resistance forces and Guerrilla fighters as an assassination pistol, is the most common example of a mass-produced single-shot pistol. More than a million units were produced and distributed freely and many remain in private hands. A few varieties of zip guns could also be considered single-shot pistols. In recent years these improvised firearms have become more common in the hands of criminals and insurgents, especially when manufactured firearms are difficult to acquire.
In 1966, Sturm, Ruger introduced their first true rifle, Ruger No. 1, which uses a falling-block action and is available in a wide selection of calibers from .22 Hornet to .458 Winchester Magnum. The No. 1 has always been sought after by shooters who appreciate the compact size of a single-shot rifle, and the falling block action cuts about four inches off the length of the rifle for a given barrel length. From 1972 to 1987, Ruger also made a less expensive version of the #1, the #3. The #3, which sold for about half the price of a #1, used a simplified, non-locking lever for the falling block action, and came with an uncheckered stock.
In 1985 Browning re-introduced the famous Winchester Model 1885 single-shot rifles in popular calibers, but under the Browning name. Although the Winchester Single Shot gained fame under the Winchester brand name, it was John Moses Browning that designed the rifle, selling the rights to Winchester in the early 1880s. The Browning Single Shot Rifle was in production from 1985 to 2001.
The majority of rifles made by Cooper are single-shot bolt-action rifles. Many of their rifles are specially crafted to suit long-range varmint hunting, where the accuracy of the single-shot action is helpful.
Remington has once again made their No. 1 Rolling Block rifles available through their custom shop.
One of the most common single-action rifles would be the New England Firearms inexpensive break-open rifles, which are built on their 12 gauge break-open shotgun actions. The rifles however are made on a heat treated steel action, and the shotgun actions are not heat treated. Any rifle frame may accept rifle or shotgun barrels, the shotgun frames however are only safe for shotgun barrels. These were originally built by Harrington & Richardson starting in 1871. H&R was later acquired by NEF, and both are now part of the Marlin Firearms family. Rifles are sold both under the NEF and the H&R names. These rifles are quite accurate, and often less than half the price of a bolt-action rifle in the same caliber.
In 2005, Winchester re-marketed their legendary Model 1885 Single Shot Rifle, under their "Limited Series" category. The modern calibers of .17 was offered in a Low Wall design, and the .243 and .30-06 were of the High Wall type. The most faithful of the reproductions are the "Traditional Hunter Limited Series" Model 1885 Single Shots, as they have the original style steel crescent butt plates, and folding steel tang rear sights, with full length octagon barrels. The Traditional Hunters are chambered in the 19th century calibers of .45-90 BPCR, .45-70, .405, and .38-55. Test firing of some of these Winchesters showed that they are high quality in construction, using the latest technology and modern steel, they are stronger and safer than their 19th century predecessors; and accuracy from their factory (non-custom) barrels were exceptionally good; especially at 200 yards.
Sharps rifles were a staple of the buffalo hunters in the late 19th century. Recently they have had a resurgence in popularity for hunting large game as well as historical firearms events and black-powder cartridge (BPCR) competitions. Much of the current popularity is due to the film Quigley Down Under that featured a Sharps Model 1874 rifle. The popularity of Cowboy action shooting has also affected the availability of single-shot rifles, with many replicas of the old black-powder rifles, particularly the Sharps, now being available.
The Barrett M99 is a single-shot, bolt-action, bullpup sniper rifle. It is chambered in .50 BMG, and .416 Barrett round that has 0.5 MOA accuracy at ranges that far exceed one mile.
The Denel NTW-20 is a bolt-action, anti-materiel or large-caliber sniper rifle. With a buffered slide in the receiver, that the barrel can recoil inside the frame, allowing for large rounds to be fired with relative ease by the user. It is chambered for 20×82mm Mauser, 14.5×114mm, and 20×110mm Hispano-Suiza round. Specifically, it is only a single-shot when chambered to the 20mm Hispano-Suiza round, while the remaining chamberings feed from 3-round magazines.
The original version of Steyr HS .50 is a single-shot bolt-action sniper rifle. It is chambered in .50 BMG (or the .460 Steyr round in California) and can reach ranges from 1500 to 2500 meters. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28340 |
Simon the Sorcerer
Simon the Sorcerer is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Adventure Soft in 1993 for Amiga and MS-DOS formats. The first instalment in the "Simon the Sorcerer" series, the game follows a boy named Simon, who is transported to a parallel universe to embark on a mission to rescue a wizard called Calypso from an evil sorcerer named Sordid. The story includes parodies of works such as "The Lord of the Rings" and Jack and the Beanstalk.
The game was inspired by works such as the "Discworld" series, and the character of Simon was created to compete with the characters of such works. The character was modelled on characters including Blackadder. "Simon the Sorcerer" was well-received, with reviewers praising the humour and graphics. The game was re-released on CD, featuring voice-overs, with Simon being voiced by Chris Barrie. The game was released on GOG.com in 2008.
A 20th Anniversary Edition was developed by MojoTouch and released on Google Play in 2013. A 25th Anniversary Edition was released in April 2018.
The second instalment in the series, "", was released in 1995.
A boy called Simon was celebrating his 12th birthday, and was impressed by a magician who pulled rabbits out of hats and conjuring infinite amounts of gaily coloured handkerchiefs. A dog wrapped in paper turned up at the door, who had a book that nobody was able to read. Although Simon's parents were unaware of who had sent the dog, they adopted him and Simon called him Chippy. The book was stored in the loft. One day, Simon hears Chippy in the loft. Investigating, Simon finds that the book is titled "Ye Olde Spellbooke". Simon throws the book onto the floor in contempt, only for a portal to open above it. Chippy quickly goes through the portal and Simon follows, ending up in another world. After escaping from some goblins who intended to eat Simon, he quickly discovers a house in a village belonging to a wizard called Calypso, along with a note from him. Through it, Simon learns he was brought to this world to save Calypso from the evil sorcerer, Sordid.
Instructed to become a wizard, Simon is told to seek out wizards in the local tavern. He performs tasks for various people, recovering the spell book he lost, as well as locating Sordid's tower. After, gaining entry, he ends up in the tower's garden. Searching the tower, Simon helps to send some demons back to hell, and uses a teleporter to take him to the Fiery Pits of Rondor, so as to destroy Sordid's wand. Simon defeats him, and is sent back to his world. Although he assumes he had a dream, a portal opens in his bedroom, and a large gloved hand appears, taking him back through it.
As a point-and-click adventure game, the player controls Simon using the mouse. The iOS and Android versions feature touchscreen controls. Gameplay involves moving Simon around and interacting with objects and other characters. The player can make Simon perform actions such as giving an item to another character, talk to another character, and pick up (add to inventory), examine, use, move, consume, wear, or open or close an item. Some actions are binary: they involve two objects and the player sometimes, after telling Simon to use an item, needs to specify what to use it with. A map that enables Simon to instantly transport to a major landmark (if it has been discovered) is provided. The postcard is used to load, save, or quit the game.
The game includes parodies of various popular books and fairy tales, including Rapunzel, "The Lord of the Rings", "Discworld", The Chronicles of Narnia, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Mike Woodroffe, "Simon the Sorcerer"s director and producer, wanted to create the game to exploit a market for comic adventure games, which he realised existed due to the success of "". His son, Simon, penned the script. He was inspired by Terry Pratchett (Adventure Soft originally intended to make a "Discworld" game, but were unable to obtain a licence), and he and his father hoped that he would become involved with the game. Although he chose not to become involved, the script still contained much original humour. Many scenes are based on fairy tales, and the Wise Owl was modelled on Patrick Moore. Woodroffe said that Adventure Soft (then known as HorrorSoft) had done enough horror games and wanted to try a comedy game. The change in genre prompted the name change.
Simon Woodroffe explained that the character of Simon was a mixture of Blackadder, Rincewind, and Guybrush, and that he was originally intended to be a trainee wizard, similar to Harry Potter. He also explained that he was invented because they needed a character to compete with characters such as Rincewind, and that the game was inspired by the "Discworld" books and "Monkey Island". Mike Woodroffe said that the game was inspired by "Dungeons & Dragons" magic stories. Other influences, according to Simon Woodroffe, included "Red Dwarf", "Fawlty Towers", and "Monty Python". The character was invented during a journey on the M5 motorway, and was not named after Woodroffe. The name "Simon the Sorcerer" had that format because of the magical nature of the character, and because other names, such as "Willy The Wizard", were rejected because they were disliked. "Simon the Sorcerer" was developed by a team of 15 people. There was an effort to be British so as to distinguish themselves from the humour of "Monkey Island". Simon Woodroffe stated that his greatest challenges were the script creation and puzzle design, and he tuned the scripts (which were written in an in-house scripting language) continuously. The world was created for the characters rather than the puzzles, and the story was wrapped around characters the team liked. Woodroffe believed that Adventure Soft were able to rival more experienced studios due to their small team, all of whom had the same goals and passion for the game. On deciding which fairy tales to include in the game, Simon Woodroffe said that he "read a whole bunch of that kind of stuff", including the "Grimms' Fairy Tales", and that he also owned Ladybird Books when he was growing up. He said that there were some he "really wanted" to include, such as "The Magic Porridge Pot", but could not.
Alan Brigman was the technical director and co-producer. He and Mike Woodroffe developed a game creation system, Adventure Graphic Operating System (AGOS) II, which facilitated the development of "Simon the Sorcerer" and enabled the team to focus on the gameplay and story without worrying about the technical aspects. The system allowed the developers to input text commands on a separate monitor, and the engine could be ported to other platforms. Other features of the engine included translating actions performed by the mouse into text commands (a sentence parser carries them out), the loading of data as needed, and functions could be implemented by the simple addition of commands. The game was built as a database, which contained tables for rooms and objects. These tables contained animation code and information about what is supposed to happen. Alan Cox was also involved in the development of the AGOS engine, which is based on AberMUD.
The art was developed by Paul Drummond (lead artist), Kevin Preston (who hand-drew the character art and animation), Maria Drummond, Jeff Wall, and Karen Pinchin. This team were based at a studio in Manchester, rather than Birmingham, the central studio. Their work included character animations, developed in Autodesk Animator using its language POCO, which the graphics tools were built in. The artwork (including the sprites) was made as a selection of clips, and a final image was formed by pasting them together. The ability to use clips in multiple locations, and the colour information being stored separately and used on an as—needed basis meant that the art took much less space than was usual. The background artwork was sketched in black-and-white, and then scanned into a computer and colourised. The music is credited to Media Sorcery.
"Simon the Sorcerer", was released on floppy disk in 1993 for the Amiga and IBM PC compatibles. It was re-released in 1994 for the Amiga CD32 and PC CD-ROM, with an enhanced soundtrack featuring Chris Barrie as the voice of Simon. Simon Woodroffe stated that he had Barrie in mind when writing the scripts (Woodroffe said he is a fan of "Red Dwarf" and Arnold Rimmer), and that it was easier for him to do so when thinking of an actor he knew speaking the lines. It cost around £3000 per day to hire Barrie. Woodroffe said that there was "no hesitation" in doing a talkie version, and that it was "the next big thing". He also said that Barrie was "very patient and professional". "Simon the Sorcerer" used the visual and interface designs from LucasArts' games, and Woodroffe stated that this was because they had set a standard, and that Adventure Soft's focus was humour and story-telling.
The PC version was later ported to Microsoft Windows. The game was published in the United States by Activision. A patch was released, fixing compatibility issues with Windows ME, 2000, and XP. "Simon the Sorcerer" was released on GOG.com in December 2008. In 2009, the game was re-released for the iPhone by iPhSoft. A new version titled '20th Anniversary Edition was developed by MojoTouch and released for Android in August 2013. This version featured new animations and icons, remastered music, high-definition graphics, and new game menus. A 25th Anniversary Edition was released on the iOS App Store, Steam and GOG.com on 3 April 2018. A sequel, "", was released in 1995.
"Simon the Sorcerer" received critical acclaim: across all platforms, the humour and visuals in particular were commended, although criticisms included the controls and the game's linear nature. The game's global sales surpassed 600,000 units by September 1999.
The Amiga version received generally high ratings. "CU Amiga" praised the high quality graphics and how much fun the game was to play. "Amiga Computing"s Simon Clays also praised the graphics and the locations, saying the locations' stylisation made the game resemble a fairy tale. He also enjoyed the puzzles and detail in the game. "The One" reviewer said the graphics are "excellent", but believed the music did not take full advantage of the Amiga's sound hardware. A reviewer of "" thought the Amiga version's graphics are "magnificent".
The CD32 version was noted for its speech. "CU Amiga"s Dean Evans was impressed with "sumptuous" backgrounds and the animation, and believed the main selling point was the digitised speech, especially Chris Barrie as Simon. Jonathan Nash of "Amiga Power" liked the "gorgeous" graphics, but thought the dialogue was annoying, and he also criticised the puzzles as "spread thinly over the pointlessly large playing area". The reviewer of "Amiga CD32 Gamer" was impressed with the soundtrack, describing it as "top notch", and thought the story had plenty of wit. The main criticism was the scenes downplaying interaction, making the comedy linear. "The One"s reviewer corroborated others' views on the graphics, believing them to be "stunning", and also believed the atmosphere was augmented by the speech. Chris Barrie as Simon was believed by "Amiga Computing" to "greatly enhance" the game by giving the speech a new appeal. "Amiga Format"s reviewer criticised the controls, believing the controller's limitations would make players "an insane hysterical gibbering wreck", but complimented the addition of speech, and echoed others' opinions on the graphics by calling them "beautiful". In a later review, Andy Smith believed that Barrie's voice acting livened the humour, and concurred with Evans' evaluation of the graphics as "sumptuous", but said that it was difficult to get the game working on an Amiga 1200.
Reviewers of the DOS and Windows versions praised the humour and dialogue. The reviewers of "" described the adventure as "excellent", and believed "Simon the Sorcerer" might be the most amusing and idiosyncratic adventure game. "Computer Gaming World" stated that the "wacky, tongue-in-cheek interactive fantasy [...] features a rich world of tasty puzzles designed to test the wits of the most astute adventurer while keeping the humor dial turned up to the max". Jeuxvideo.com described the characters' dialogue as "crazy" and praised the abundance of humour, but they believed the adventure is over too quickly. Their review of the Amiga version was identical. Tawny Ditmer of Gamezebo lauded the story as "hilarious" and the scenery and music as "wonderfully colorful and cheery", criticised the lack of side-quests and pointed out that the original graphics looks outdated in 2009. The script and dialogue were praised as "fantastic" by Rob Franklin of Adventure Gamers, and complimented Chris Barrie's "brilliant" voice acting, but criticised the plot for being vague. He recommended the game for fans of adventure games and British humour. Zoltán Ormándi of Adventure Classic Gaming thought highly or the puzzles' originality and Simon's humour. He claimed that the game's popularity caused a term, "Simonology" to be coined describing the humour of an adventure's protagonist. GameRankings states the PC version has a rating of 86 per cent. The reviewer of "" liked the decoration, animation, and characters.
Paul Marchant of Pocket Gamer reviewed the iOS version, and said that it was the game he liked, rather than the iPhone implementation, but thought the game a "classic" and described the dialogue as "original". Damian Chiappara of AppSpy believed the iOS version's graphics are improved over the original, and liked the "quirky" humour, but thought that it can take time for players to familiarise themselves with its controls. The iPad and Android versions appeared on Pocket Gamer's Top 10 point-and-click adventure games for their respective platforms.
In 2011, Adventure Gamers named "Simon the Sorcerer" the 44th-best adventure game ever released. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28341 |
South African Republic
The South African Republic (; the ZAR; also known as the Transvaal Republic) was an independent and internationally recognised state located in what is now South Africa, from 1852 to 1902.
The republic defeated the British Empire in what is often referred to as the First Boer War and remained independent until the end of the Second Boer War on 31 May 1902, when it was forced to surrender to the British after Lord Kitchener authorised the use of a scorched earth policy and concentration camps to hold captured Boer women and children. More than 27,000 of these civilians died as result. After the war the territory of the ZAR became the Transvaal Colony. During World War I, there was an attempt at resurrecting the republic in the Maritz rebellion.
The land area that was once the ZAR now comprises all or most of the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and North West in the northeastern portion of modern-day Republic of South Africa.
Constitutionally the name of the country was the . The ZAR was also commonly referred to as in reference to the area over (or trans) the Vaal River, including by the British and European press. The British objected to the use of the name . After the end of the First Boer War, the ZAR became a British Suzerainty and in the Pretoria Convention of 3 August 1881, the British insisted on the use of the name Transvaal State over . This convention was renegotiated in the London Convention dated 27 February 1884, a subsequent treaty between Britain and the ZAR, and Britain acquiesced and the ZAR reverted to the use of the previous name.
The name of the South African Republic was of such political significance that on 1 September 1900, the British declared by special proclamation that the name of the country be changed from to the Transvaal. This proclamation was issued during the British occupation of the region in the Second Boer War and while the ZAR was still nominally an independent country.
On 31 May 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed with the government of the South African Republic, the Orange Free State government, and the British government, ending the war, and converted the ZAR into the Transvaal Colony. Following the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Transvaal Colony became Transvaal Province. The name Transvaal was finally changed in 1994, when the South African government broke up the province into four provinces and renamed the core region to Gauteng.
The South African Republic came into existence on 17 January 1852, when the British signed the Sand River Convention treaty with about 40,000 Boer people, recognising their independence in the region to the north of the Vaal River.
The first president of the ZAR was Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, elected in 1857, son of Boer leader Andries Pretorius, who commanded the Boers to victory at the Battle of Blood River. The capital was established at Potchefstroom and later moved to Pretoria. The parliament was called the and had 24 members.
The unpopular presidency of Thomas F. Burgers came to a head with his campaign against the Bapedi under Sekukuni. The republic close to bankruptcy and his siege of Sekukuni’s stronghold failed because commando members objected to Burgers's theology, calling him a heretic, and abandoned the siege in droves. Burgers, having failed to eliminate the threat off the Bapedi, resigned and left the country. A. N. Pelzer writes: "Although [Sekukuni] made overtures for peace, he was not defeated and this fact, together with the shaky financial position, gave Sir Theophilus Shepstone the pretext he required to annex the republic [as the Transvaal, a British colony,] on 12 April 1877."
Sir Garnet Wolseley, High Commissioner for South East Africa, declared war on Sekukuni, and with the aid of British troops and allied troops – including the Swazis who had supported Burgers – and in 1879 defeated him and imprisoned him in Pretoria. With the threat of Sekukuni removed, the burghers were no longer so amenable to British rule.
On 13 December 1880, the members of the last were summoned to a meeting at Paardekraal, where authority was placed in the hands of a triumvirate comprising Paul Kruger, Piet Joubert and Marthinus W. Pretorius. They declared Heidelberg their seat of government and hoisted the Vierkleur there on 16 December. The war – not officially declared to the occupying British troops – opened with an irregular attack on a British regiment on the march at Bronkhorstspruit. The British garrisons in the Transvaal were besieged, but only one fell to the republicans.
The British suffered defeat at Laing’s Nek and Ingogo, and on 27 February 1881, at Majuba, where General Sir George Pomeroy Colley fell at the head of his troops. While the British would in other circumstances have sent more troops and defeated the rebels, Prime Minister William Gladstone chose to make peace. Drawing up of the detailed peace treaty (the Pretoria Convention) was left in the hands of a royal commission comprising Sir Hercules Robinson, General Sir Evelyn Wood and Justice John de Villiers of the Cape Colony. Britain now referred to the territory as the Transvaal State, but the regarded the old South African Republic as having been restored.
The ZAR became fully independent on 27 February 1884, when the London Convention was signed. The country independently also entered into various agreements with other foreign countries after that date. On 3 November 1884 the country signed a postal convention with the government of the Cape Colony and later a similar convention with the Orange Free State.
In November 1859, the independent Republics of Lijdenburg and Utrecht merged with the ZAR. On 9 May 1887, burghers from the territories of Stellaland and Goosen (sometimes referred to as "Goshen") were granted rights to the ZAR franchise. On 25 July 1895 the burghers that took part in the battle at Zoutpansberg, were granted citizenship of the ZAR.
The constitution of the ZAR was legally interesting for its time. It contained provisions for the division between the political leadership and office bearers in government administration. The legal system consisted of higher and lower courts and had adopted a jury system. Laws were enforced by the South African Republic Police ( or ZARP) which were divided into Mounted Police () and Foot Police.
On 10 April 1902, the Magistrates Court powers were extended to increase the civil ceiling amounts and to expand criminal jurisdiction to include all criminal cases not punishable by death or banishment. Also established were municipal government, the Witwatersrand District Court and the High Court of Transvaal.
Initially, the state and church were not separated in the constitution; citizens of the ZAR had to be members of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk – a breakaway of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1858, these clauses were altered in the constitution to allow for the to approve other Dutch Christian churches. The Reformed Church was approved by the in 1858, which had the effect of allowing Paul Kruger, of the Gereformeerde Kerk to remain a citizen of the ZAR. The Bible itself was also often used to interpret the intention of legal documents. The Bible was also used to interpret a prisoner exchange agreement, reached in terms of the Sand River Convention, between a commando of the ZAR, led by Kruger, and a Commando of the Orange Free State.
President Jacobus Nicolaas Boshof had issued a death sentence over two ZAR citizens, for treason. Kruger argued with President Boshof that the Bible said punishment does not mean a death sentence and at the prisoner exchange, it was agreed that the accused would be punished if found guilty. After double-checking Commandant Kruger’s Bible, President Boshof commuted the sentences to lashes with a sjambok.
Citizenship of the ZAR was legislated by the constitution as well as Law No 7 of 1882, as amended on 23 June 1890. Citizenship was gained by being born in the republic or by naturalisation. The voting age was 16 years. Persons not born in the republic could become citizens by taking the prescribed oath and procuring the letters of naturalisation. The oath involved abandoning, discarding and renouncing all allegiance and subjugation towards foreign sovereignties and in particular their previous citizenship.
Foreigners had to have been residing in the Republic for a period of two years, be of good character and have been accepted as member of the Dutch Reformed or Reformed Church. On 20 September 1893 the ZAR Constitution was amended so that two-thirds of the Volksraad would have to agree to changes to the citizenship law. This proclamation, No 224, also changed Law No 7 with regard to voting.
All citizens who were born in the ZAR or had obtained their franchise prior to 23 June 1890 would have the right to vote for both the first and second and in all other elections. Citizens who obtained their franchise through naturalization after 23 June 1890 would be able to vote in all elections, except those for the first . The total population of the republic in 1890 was an estimated 120,000 people.
The constitution promoted racism as it treated European people differently from native people. Although slavery was illegal in the constitution and foreigners were discriminated against, black foreigners had fewer rights than their white counterparts. Black and Asian foreigners could never become citizens of the ZAR; at this time in history, this was very similar to many European countries as well as some states in the New World.
The language spoken and written by the citizens of the ZAR was a variant of Dutch, locally referred to as . On 3 October 1884. the stated that they had reason to believe that in certain schools impure Dutch (in fact an early form of Afrikaans) was being used. The issued Proclamation 207 and compelled the Superintendent of Education to apply the language law enforcing the exclusive use of Dutch. On 30 July 1888, Dutch language was declared the sole official language, in court as well as education, trade and general use. All other languages were declared "foreign".
These changes to the ZAR laws made the use of all other foreign languages illegal in the ZAR. Use of any foreign language was subject to criminal penalty and fine of £20 (ZAR) for each offence. The British similarly had declared English to be the only language spoken in the Cape Colony some decades earlier to outlaw the Dutch language. The discovery of gold in 1885 led to a major influx of foreigners. By 1896, the language of government and citizens remained Dutch but in many market places, shops and homes the English language was spoken.
Hendrik Potgieter was elected at the assembly of 1849 as commandant general for life and it became necessary, to avoid strife, to appoint three commandants general all possessing equal powers. Commandant General Andries Pretorius became commandant general of the Potchefstroom and Rustenburg districts. On 16 December 1852, Commandant General Potgieter died and his son, Piet, was appointed in his stead as commandant general of the Lydenburg and Zoutpansberg districts.
There were some disputes over cattle which Mapela was raising on behalf of Potgieter and earlier Commandant Scholtz had confiscated a large number of rifles and amounts of ammunition, rifle repair equipment and materials of war from the home of English missionary, The Rev Mr Livingstone. Livingstone admitted to storing these for Secheli and by this he was acting in breach of the Sand River Convention of 1852, which prescribed that neither arms nor ammunition should be supplied to the natives.
In 1853, Herman Potgieter was called to Mapela to come and cull the elephant population.
When Herman arrived, Maphela took Herman, his son, his groom and a few other burghers to show them where the elephants were. On the way, Mapela and hundreds of natives attacked the Potgieter party. They killed Herman's son, Andries, and then dragged Herman up a hill, where they proceeded to skin him alive. They stopped once they had torn the entrails from his body. At the same time of these events, the Ndebele chief Magobane (known to the Boers as Makapaan) attacked and killed an entire convoy of women and children traveling to Pretoria. The two chiefs had concluded an agreement to murder all the Europeans in their respective districts and to keep the cattle that they were raising for the Europeans.
General Piet Potgieter set out with 100 men from Zoutpansberg and Commandant General Pretorius left Pretoria with 200 men. After the commandos met up, they first attacked Magobane and the natives were driven back to their caves in the mountains where they lived before. The Boers held them at siege in their caves and eventually hundreds of women and children came out.
Orphan children of the native tribes were booked in strictly controlled by legal process, at appointed Boer families to look after them until they came of age. The administration was similar to the system of indentured workers, which was simply another form of slavery, with the exception that children so registered had to be released at age 16. The commando would return all such children to the nearest landdrost district, for registration and allocation to a Boer family.
As there were slavers and other criminals dealing in children, any burgher found in possession of an unregistered minor child was guilty of a criminal offence. These children were also often called "oorlams" in reference to being overly used to the Dutch culture, and in reference to a hand-raised orphan sheep, or "hanslam". These children, even after their 16th birthday, and being free to come and go as they please, never re-connected with their own culture and own language and except for surviving and being cared for in terms of food and shelter, were basically forcefully divorced from their native tribe forever.
Among the casualties of this war was Commandant General Potgieter. The natives were armed with rifles and were good shots. The general was killed by native sniper on the ridge of a trench and his body recovered by then commandant Paul Kruger whilst under heavy fire from the natives. What remained of the joint commando, now under command of General Pretorius focussed their attention on Mapela. By the time the commando had reached Mapela, the natives had fled. A few wagons, bloody clothes, chests and other goods were discovered at a kop near Mapela’s town. Mapela and his soldiers escaped and with their rifles and ammunition intact and Mapela was only captured much later, in 1858.
Commandant-General Stephanus Schoeman did not accept the proclamation of 20 September 1858, under which members of the Reformed Churches of South Africa would be entitled to citizenship of the ZAR. Consequently, Paul Kruger was not accepted as a citizen and disallowed from political intercourse. Acting President van Rensburg called a special meeting of the general council of the Dutch Reformed Church, which then voted in a special resolution to allow members of the Reformed Church access to the franchise.
In 1876, a war between the ZAR and the Bapedi broke out over cattle theft and land encroachment. The declared war on the Pedi leader, Sekhukune, on 16 May 1876. The war only began in July 1876. The president of the ZAR, Burgers led an army of 2000 burghers and was joined by a strong force of Swazi warriors. The Swazis joined the war to aid Mampuru, who was ousted from his position of chieftain by Sekhukune.
One of the early battles occurred at Botsabelo Mission Station on 13 July 1876, against Johannes Dinkwanyane, who was Sekhukune’s brother. The Boer forces were led by Commandant Coetzee and accompanied by Swazi warriors. The Swazi warriors launched a surprise and successful attack while the Boers held back. Seeing this, the Swazis refused to hand over to the Boers any spoils from the battle, thereafter leaving and returning to Swaziland. Dinkwanyane’s followers also surrendered after this campaign.
On 12 April 1877, the British issued the "Annexation of the S. A. Republic to the British Empire." In it, the British stated that the country was "unstable, ungovernable, bankrupt and facing civil war", though in reality they wished to annex it merely for its strategic position, using the skirmishes merely as a poor excuse to justify this. The unsuccessful annexation apparently would not suspend self-government, but nonetheless attempted to convert the ZAR into a colony of the British Empire.
The ZAR recognised this proclamation as an act of aggression, and resisted. Instead of declaring war, the country decided to send a delegation to the United Kingdom and the United States, to protest. This unfortunately did not have any effect, and the First Boer War formally broke out on 20 December 1880. The First Boer War was the first conflict since the American Revolution in which the British had been decisively defeated and forced to sign a peace treaty under unfavourable terms.
It would see the introduction of the khaki uniform, marking the beginning of the end of the famous Redcoat. The Battle of Laing's Nek would be the last occasion on which a British regiment carried its official regimental colours into battle. The Pretoria Convention of 1881 was signed on 3 August 1881 and ratified on 25 October 1881 by the ZAR, where the is referred to by the name "Transvaal Territory". The Pretoria Convention of 1881 was superseded in 1884 by the London Convention, and in which the British suzerainty over the South African Republic, was relinquished.
The British Government, in the London Convention, accepted the name of the country as the South African Republic. The convention was signed in duplicate in London on 27 February 1884, by Hercules Robinson, Paul Kruger, Stephanus Jacobus du Toit and Nicolaas Smit, and later ratified by the South African Republic . In 1885, rich gold reefs were discovered. ZAR burghers were farmers and not miners and much of the mining fell to immigrants. The immigrants were also referred to as "outlanders". By 1897, immigrants had invested over 300,000,000 British Pounds in the ZAR goldfields.
The Malaboch War was between Chief Malaboch (Mmaleboho, Mmaleboxo) of the Bahananwa (Xananwa) people and the South African Republic (ZAR) Government led by Commandant-General Piet Joubert. Malboch refused to pay taxes to the Transvaal after it was given back to the Boers in 1881 by the British, which resulted in a military drive against him by the South African Republic (ZAR).
The British first attacked the ZAR with the December 1895 Jameson Raid, which ended in failure. British forces started building up troops and resources at the borders, followed by a demand for voting rights for the ZAR's 60,000 foreign nationals—of whom 50,000 British. Kruger rejected the British demand and called for the withdrawal of British troops from the ZAR's borders. When the British refused, Kruger declared war against Britain, Britain received assistance from its possessions Australia, and Canada, as well as Natal and the Cape Colony.
The Second Boer War was a watershed for the British Army in particular and for the British Empire as a whole. The British used concentration camps where women and children were held without adequate food or medical care. The abhorrent conditions in these camps caused the death of 4,177 women and 22,074 children under 16; death rates were between 344 and 700 per 1000 per year.
The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May 1902. The treaty ended the existence of the ZAR and the Orange Free State as independent Boer republics and placed them within the British Empire. On 20 May 1903, an Inter Colonial Council was established to manage the colonies of the British Government. The Boers were promised eventual limited self-government and this was granted in 1906 and 1907. The Union of South Africa was established in 1910.
The Maritz rebellion was an armed insurrection which occurred in South Africa in 1914 at the start of World War I. It was led by Boers who created a provisional government and sought to reestablish the South African Republic in the Transvaal. Many members of the South African government were themselves former Boers who had fought with the Maritz rebels against the British in the Second Boer War. The rebel republic allied with Germany, with whom Britain and South Africa were at war. Boer Commandos operated in and out of bordering German South West Africa. By 1915, the rebellion had failed, and the ringleaders received heavy fines and terms of imprisonment.
The discovery of gold during the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886 changed the economic fortunes of the formerly impoverished ZAR. The city of Johannesburg was founded as a gold mining town in the same year. Within 10 years it would be the largest city in the entire Southern Africa, surpassing Cape Town.
The discovery of gold allowed the construction of a railway network in the ZAR. The east-west railways in the ZAR, and notably the line from Pretoria to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa, were constructed by the Netherlands-South African Railway Company. The construction of the Pretoria-Lourenço Marques line allowed the ZAR access to harbour facilities not controlled by the British Empire, a key policy of Paul Kruger who deemed it vital to the country’s long-term survival.
The flag of the South African Republic featured three horizontal stripes of red, white and blue (mirroring the flag of the Netherlands) with a vertical green stripe at the hoist, and was known as the (English: "Four colour"). While the only legislation describing the flag required that the green panel be inscribed "" ("Unity makes strength," the motto of the republic), this was in fact rarely seen, and instead the motto was displayed with the republic’s coat of arms. The former flag of South Africa (1928–1994), had, as part of a feature contained within its central white bar, a horizontal flag of the Transvaal Republic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28343 |
Sling (weapon)
A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone, clay, or lead "sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling. Someone who specialises in using slings is called a slinger.
A sling has a small cradle or "pouch" in the middle of two lengths of cord. The "sling stone" is placed in the pouch. The middle finger or thumb is placed through a loop on the end of one cord, and a tab at the end of the other cord is placed between the thumb and forefinger. The sling is swung in an arc, and the tab released at a precise moment. This frees the projectile to fly to the target. The sling essentially works by extending the length of a human arm, thus allowing stones to be thrown much farther than they could be by hand.
The sling is inexpensive and easy to build. It has historically been used for hunting game and in combat. Film exists of Spanish Civil War combatants using slings to throw grenades over buildings into enemy positions on the opposite street. Today the sling is of interest as a wilderness survival tool and an improvised weapon.
The sling is an ancient weapon known to Neolithic peoples around the Mediterranean, but is likely much older. It is possible that the sling was invented during the Upper Paleolithic at a time when new technologies such as the spear-thrower and the bow and arrow were emerging.
With the exception of Australia, where spear throwing technology such as the woomera predominated, the sling became common all over the world, although it is not clear whether this occurred because of cultural diffusion or as an independent invention.
Whereas sling-bullets are common finds in the archaeological record, slings themselves are rare. This is both because a sling's materials are biodegradable and because slings were lower-status weapons, rarely preserved in a wealthy person’s grave.
The oldest-known surviving slings—radiocarbon dated to c. 2500 BC—were recovered from South American archaeological sites located on the coast of Peru. The oldest-known surviving North American sling—radiocarbon dated to c. 1200 BC—was recovered from Lovelock Cave, Nevada.
The oldest known extant slings from the Old World were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, who died about 1325 BC. A pair of finely plaited slings were found with other weapons. The sling was probably intended for the departed pharaoh to use for hunting game.
Another Egyptian sling was excavated in El-Lahun in Al Fayyum Egypt in 1914 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, and now resides in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology—Petrie dated it to about 800 BC. It was found alongside an iron spearhead. The remains are broken into three sections. Although fragile, the construction is clear: it is made of bast fibre (almost certainly flax) twine; the cords are braided in a 10-strand elliptical sennit and the cradle seems to have been woven from the same lengths of twine used to form the cords.
Representations of slingers can be found on artifacts from all over the ancient world, including Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs, the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, on coins and on the Bayeux Tapestry.
The oldest representation of a slinger in art may be from Çatalhöyük, from approximately 7,000 BC, though it is the only such depiction at the site, despite numerous depictions of archers.
The sling is mentioned by Homer and by other Greek authors. Xenophon in his history of the retreat of the Ten Thousand, 401 BC, relates that the Greeks suffered severely from the slingers in the army of Artaxerxes II of Persia, while they themselves had neither cavalry nor slingers, and were unable to reach the enemy with their arrows and javelins. This deficiency was rectified when a company of 200 Rhodians, who understood the use of leaden sling-bullets, was formed. They were able, says Xenophon, to project their missiles twice as far as the Persian slingers, who used large stones.
Ancient authors seemed to believe, incorrectly, that sling-bullets could penetrate armour, and that lead projectiles, heated by their passage through the air, would melt in flight. In the first instance, it seems likely that the authors were indicating that slings could cause injury through armour by a percussive effect rather than by penetration. In the latter case we may imagine that they were impressed by the degree of deformation suffered by lead sling-bullet after hitting a hard target.
Various ancient peoples enjoyed a reputation for skill with the sling. Thucydides mentions the Acarnanians and Livy refers to the inhabitants of three Greek cities on the northern coast of the Peloponnesus as expert slingers. Livy also mentions the most famous of ancient skillful slingers: the people of the Balearic Islands, who often worked as mercenaries. Of these people Strabo writes: "And their training in the use of slings used to be such, from childhood up, that they would not so much as give bread to their children unless they first hit it with the sling."
Strabo also extends the usage of the sling to the Iberians, Lusitanians and even some Gauls. He also mentions Persians and Arabs among those who used them. For his part, Diodorus includes Lybians and Phoenicians.
The late Roman writer Vegetius, in his work "De Re Militari", wrote:
According to description of Procopius, the sling had an effective range further than a Hun bow and arrow. In his book "Wars of Justinian", he recorded the felling of a Hun warrior by a slinger:
The sling is mentioned in the Bible, which provides what is believed to be the oldest textual reference to a sling in the Book of Judges, 20:16. This text was thought to have been written about 6th century BC, but refers to events several centuries earlier.
The Bible provides a famous slinger account, the battle between David and Goliath from the First Book of Samuel 17:34–36, probably written in the 7th or 6th century BC, describing events having occurred around the 10th century BC. The sling, easily produced, was the weapon of choice for shepherds fending off animals. Due to this, the sling was a commonly used weapon by the Israelite militia. Goliath was a tall, well equipped and experienced warrior. In this account, the shepherd David convinces Saul to let him fight Goliath on behalf of the Israelites. Unarmoured and equipped only with a sling, 5 smooth rocks, and his staff; David defeats the champion Goliath with a well-aimed shot to the head.
Use of the sling is also mentioned in Second Kings 3:25, First Chronicles 12:2, and Second Chronicles 26:14 to further illustrate Israelite use.
Ancient peoples used the sling in combat—armies included both specialist slingers and regular soldiers equipped with slings. As a weapon, the sling had several advantages; a sling bullet lobbed in a high trajectory can achieve ranges in excess of . Modern authorities vary widely in their estimates of the effective range of ancient weapons. A bow and arrow could also have been used to produce a long range arcing trajectory, but ancient writers repeatedly stress the sling's advantage of range. The sling was light to carry and cheap to produce; ammunition in the form of stones was readily available and often to be found near the site of battle. The ranges the sling could achieve with molded lead sling-bullets was surpassed only by the strong composite bow.
Caches of sling ammunition have been found at the sites of Iron Age hill forts of Europe; some 22,000 sling stones were found at Maiden Castle, Dorset. It is proposed that Iron Age hill forts of Europe were designed to maximise the effective defense of slingers.
The hilltop location of the wooden forts would have given the defending slingers the advantage of range over the attackers, and multiple concentric ramparts, each higher than the other, would allow a large number of men to create a hailstorm of stone. Consistent with this, it has been noted that defenses are generally narrow where the natural slope is steep, and wider where the slope is more gradual.
A classic sling is braided from non-elastic material. The traditional materials are flax, hemp or wool. Sling by Balearic islanders were said to be made from a rush. Flax and hemp resist rotting, but wool is softer and more comfortable. Polyester is an excellent material for modern slings, because it does not rot or stretch and is soft and free of splinters.
Braided cords are used in preference to twisted rope, as a braid resists twisting when stretched. This improves accuracy.
The overall length of a sling can vary. A slinger may have slings of different lengths. A longer sling is used when greater range is required. A length of about is typical.
At the centre of the sling, a cradle or pouch is constructed. This may be formed by making a wide braid from the same material as the cords or by inserting a piece of a different material such as leather. The cradle is typically diamond shaped (although some take the form of a net,) and will fold around the projectile in use. Some cradles have a hole or slit that allows the material to wrap around the projectile slightly, thereby holding it more securely.
At the end of one cord (called the retention cord) a finger-loop is formed. At the end of the other cord (the release cord), it is a common practice to form a knot or a tab. The release cord will be held between finger and thumb to be released at just the right moment, and may have a complex braid to add bulk to the end. This makes the knot easier to hold, and the extra weight allows the loose end of a discharged sling to be recovered with a flick of the wrist.
Braided construction resists stretching, and therefore produces an accurate sling. Modern slings are begun by plaiting the cord for the finger loop in the center of a double-length set of cords. The cords are then folded to form the finger-loop. The retained cord is then plaited away from the loop as a single cord up to the pocket. The pocket is then plaited, most simply as another pair of cords, or with flat braids or a woven net. The remainder of the sling, the released cord, is plaited as a single cord, and then finished with a knot or plaited tab.
The simplest projectile was a stone, preferably well-rounded. Suitable ammunition is frequently from a river. The size of the projectiles can vary dramatically, from pebbles massing no more than to fist-sized stones massing or more.
Projectiles could also be purpose-made from clay; this allowed a very high consistency of size and shape to aid range and accuracy. Many examples have been found in the archaeological record.
The best ammunition was cast from lead. Leaden sling-bullets were widely used in the Greek and Roman world. For a given mass, lead, being very dense, offers the minimum size and therefore minimum air resistance. In addition, leaden sling-bullets are small and difficult to see in flight.
In some cases, the lead would be cast in a simple open mould made by pushing a finger or thumb into sand and pouring molten metal into the hole. However, sling-bullets were more frequently cast in two part moulds. Such sling-bullets come in a number of shapes including an ellipsoidal form closely resembling an acorn; this could be the origin of the Latin word for a leaden sling-bullet: "glandes plumbeae" (literally leaden acorns) or simply "glandes" (meaning acorns, singular "glans").
Other shapes include spherical and (by far the most common) biconical, which resembles the shape of the shell of an almond nut or a flattened American football.
The ancients do not seem to have taken advantage of the manufacturing process to produce consistent results; leaden sling-bullets vary significantly. The reason why the almond shape was favoured is not clear: it is possible that there is some aerodynamic advantage, but it seems equally likely that there is some more prosaic reason, such as the shape being easy to extract from a mould, or the fact that it will rest in a sling cradle with little danger of rolling out.
Almond shaped leaden sling-bullets were typically about long and about wide, massing approximately . Very often, symbols or writings were moulded into lead sling-bullets. Many examples have been found including a collection of about 80 sling-bullets from the siege of Perusia in Etruria from 41 BC, to be found in the museum of modern Perugia. Examples of symbols include a stylised lightning bolt, a snake, and a scorpion – reminders of how a sling might strike without warning. Writing might include the name of the owning military unit or commander or might be more imaginative: "Take this", "Ouch", "get pregnant with this" and even "For Pompey's backside" added insult to injury, whereas "dexai" ("take this" or "catch!") is merely sarcastic.
Julius Caesar writes in "De bello Gallico", book 5, about clay shot being heated before slinging, so that it might set light to thatch.
Some bullets have been found with holes drilled in them. It was thought the holes were to contain poison. John Reid of the Trimontium Trust, finding holed Roman bullets excavated at the Burnswark hillfort, has proposed that the holes would cause the bullets to "whistle" in flight and the sound would intimidate opponents. The holed bullets were generally small and thus not particularly dangerous. Several could fit into a pouch and a single slinger could produce a terrorizing barrage. Experiments with modern replicas demonstrate they produce a whooshing sound in flight.
The Bayeux Tapestry of the 1070s portrays the use of slings in a hunting context. Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor employed slingers during the Siege of Tortona in 1155 to suppress the garrison while his own men built siege engines. Indeed, slings seem to have been a fairly common weapon in Italy during the 11th and 12th centuries. On the Iberian peninsula, the Spanish and Portuguese infantry favoured it against light and agile Moorish troops. The staff sling continued to be used in sieges and the sling was used as a part of large siege engines.
The sling was known throughout the Americas.
In ancient Andean civilizations such as the Inca Empire, slings were made from llama wool. These slings typically have a cradle that is long and thin and features a relatively long slit. Andean slings were constructed from contrasting colours of wool; complex braids and fine workmanship can result in beautiful patterns. Ceremonial slings were also made; these were large, non-functional and generally lacked a slit. To this day, ceremonial slings are used in parts of the Andes as accessories in dances and in mock battles. They are also used by llama herders; the animals will move away from the sound of a stone landing. The stones are not slung to hit the animals, but to persuade them to move in the desired direction.
The sling was also used in the Americas for hunting and warfare. One notable use was in Incan resistance against the conquistadors. These slings were apparently very powerful; in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, historian Charles C. Mann quoted a conquistador as saying that an Incan sling "could break a sword in two pieces" and "kill a horse". Some slings spanned as much as long and weighed an impressive .
The staff sling, also known as the stave sling, "fustibalus" (Latin), "fustibale" (French), consists of a staff (a length of wood) with a short sling at one end. One cord of the sling is firmly attached to the stave and the other end has a loop that can slide off and release the projectile. Staff slings are extremely powerful because the stave can be made as long as two meters, creating a powerful lever. Ancient art shows slingers holding staff slings by one end, with the pocket behind them, and using both hands to throw the staves forward over their heads.
The staff sling has a similar or superior range to the shepherd's sling, and can be as accurate in practiced hands. It is generally suited for heavier missiles and siege situations as staff slings can achieve very steep trajectories for slinging over obstacles such as castle walls. The staff itself can become a close combat weapon in a melee. The staff sling is able to throw heavy projectiles a much greater distance and at a higher arc than a hand sling. Staff slings were in use well into the age of gunpowder as grenade launchers, and were used in ship-to-ship combat to throw incendiaries.
The kestros (also known as the kestrosphendone, cestrus or cestrosphendone) is a sling weapon mentioned by Livy and Polybius. It seems to have been a heavy dart flung from a leather sling. It was invented in 168 BC and was employed by some of the Macedonian troops of King Perseus in Third Macedonian war.
The traction trebuchet was a siege engine which uses the power of men pulling on ropes or the energy stored in a raised weight to rotate what was, again, a staff sling. It was designed so that, when the throwing arm of the trebuchet had swung forward sufficiently, one end of the sling would automatically become detached and release the projectile. Some trebuchets were small and operated by a very small crew; however, unlike the onager, it was possible to build the trebuchet on a gigantic scale: such giants could hurl enormous rocks at huge ranges. Trebuchets are, in essence, mechanised slings.
Traditional slinging is still practiced as it always has been in the Balearic Islands, and competitions and leagues are common. In the rest of the world, the sling is primarily a hobby weapon, and a growing number of people make and practice with them. In recent years 'slingfests' have been held in Wyoming, USA, in September 2007 and in Staffordshire, England, in June 2008.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the current record for the greatest distance achieved in hurling an object from a sling is , using a long sling and a ovoid stone, set by Larry Bray in Loa, Utah, USA on 21 August 1981. The sling is of interest to athletes who desire to break distance records; the best modern material is UHMWPE (trade name Spectra/Dyneema).
The principles of the sling may find use on a larger scale in the future; proposals exist for tether propulsion of spacecraft, which functionally is an oversized sling to propel a spaceship.
The sling is used today as a weapon primarily by protestors, to launch either stones or incendiary devices, such as Molotov cocktails. Classic woolen slings are still in use in the Middle East by Arab nomads and Bedouins to ward off jackals and hyenas. International Brigades used slings to throw grenades during the Spanish Civil War. Similarly, the Finns made use of sling-launched Molotov cocktails in the Winter War against Soviet tanks. Slings were used during the various Palestinian riots against modern army personnel and riot police. They were also used in the 2008 disturbances in Kenya. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28347 |
Stock car racing
Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing found mainly and most prominently in the United States and Canada, with New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Great Britain and Brazil also having forms of stock car auto racing. Traditionally, races are run on oval tracks measuring approximately . The world's largest governing body for stock car racing is the American NASCAR, and its NASCAR Cup Series is the premier top level series of professional stock car racing. Top level races typically range between in length. The cars were originally production models (hence, "stock"), but are now highly modified.
Top level stock cars exceed at speedway tracks and on superspeedway tracks such as Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.
Contemporary NASCAR-spec top level cars produce maximum power outputs of 860-900 hp from their naturally aspirated V8 engines. In October 2007 American race car driver Russ Wicks set a speed record for stock cars in a 2007-season Dodge Charger built to NASCAR specifications by achieving a maximum speed of at Bonneville Speedway. For the 2015 NASCAR Cup Series, power output of the competing cars ranged from 750 to 800 hp (560 to 600 kW).
In the 1920s, moonshine runners during the Prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles—while leaving them looking ordinary, so as not to attract attention. Eventually, runners started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930s. The main problem racing faced was the lack of a unified set of rules among the different tracks. When Bill France, Sr. saw this problem, he set up a meeting at the Streamline Hotel in order to form an organization that would unify the rules.
When NASCAR was first formed by France in 1948 to regulate stock car racing in the U.S, there was a requirement that any car entered be made entirely of parts available to the general public through automobile dealers. Additionally, the cars had to be models that had sold more than 500 units to the public. This is referred to as "homologation". In NASCAR's early years, the cars were so "stock" that it was commonplace for the drivers to drive themselves to the competitions in the car that they were going to run in the race. While automobile engine technology had remained fairly stagnant in World War II, advanced aircraft piston engine development had provided a great deal of available data, and NASCAR was formed just as some of the improved technology was about to become available in production cars. Until the advent of the Trans-Am Series in 1967, NASCAR homologation cars were the closest thing that the public could buy that was actually very similar to the cars that were winning national races.
The 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket V-8 with a displacement of is widely recognized as the first postwar modern overhead valve (OHV) engine to become available to the public. The Oldsmobile was an immediate success in 1949 and 1950, and all the automobile manufacturers could not help noticing the higher sales of the Oldsmobile 88 to the buying public. The motto of the day became "win on Sunday, sell on Monday". However, in spite of the fact that several competing engines were more advanced, the aerodynamic and low-slung Hudson Hornet managed to win in 1951, 1952, and 1953 with a inline six-cylinder that used an old-style flathead engine, proving there was more to winning than just a more powerful engine.
At the time, it typically took three years for a new design of car body or engine to end up in production and be available for NASCAR racing. Most cars sold to the public did not have a wide variety of engine choices, and the majority of the buying public at the time was not interested in the large displacement special edition engine options that would soon become popular. However, the end of the Korean War in 1953 started an economic boom, and then car buyers immediately began demanding more powerful engines.
Also in 1953, NASCAR recommended that the drivers add roll bars, but did not require them.
In 1955, Chrysler produced the C-300 with its Chrysler FirePower engine OHV engine, which easily won in 1955 and 1956.
In 1957, several notable events happened. The Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) banned manufacturers from using race wins in their advertising and giving direct support to race teams, as they felt it led to reckless street racing. This forced manufacturers to become creative in producing race parts to help racers win. Race teams were often caught trying to use factory produced racing parts that were not really available to the public, though many parts passed muster by being labeled as heavy-duty "police" parts. Car manufacturers wanted to appear compliant with the ban, but they also wanted to win.
The NASCAR tracks at the time were mainly dirt tracks with modest barriers, and during the 1957 season a Mercury Monterey crashed into the crowd. This killed many spectators, and resulted in a serious overhaul of the safety rules, which in turn prompted the building of larger, more modern tracks. Also in 1957, Chevrolet sold enough of their new fuel injected engines to the public in order to make them available for racing (and Ford began selling superchargers as an option), but Bill France immediately banned fuel injection and superchargers from NASCAR before they could race. However, even without official factory support or the use of fuel injection, Buck Baker won in 1957 driving a small-block V-8 Chevrolet Bel Air.
In 1961, Ford introduced the F1 390 in a low drag Galaxie "Starliner", but 1960 and '61 championships were won by drivers in 409-powered Chevrolet Impalas.
Pontiac introduced their "Super Duty" 421 in Catalinas that made use of many aluminum body parts to save weight, and the Pontiacs easily won in 1962.
The desire from fans and manufacturers alike for higher performance cars within the restrictions of homologation meant that carmakers began producing limited production "special edition" cars based on high production base models. It also became apparent that manufacturers were willing to produce increasingly larger engines to remain competitive (Ford had developed a 483 they hoped to race). For the 1963 season NASCAR engines were restricted to using a maximum displacement of 7.0 liters (427 cu.in.) and using only two valves per cylinder.
Also, even with heavy duty special editions sold to the public for homologation purposes, the race car rules were further modified, primarily in the interest of safety. This is because race drivers and their cars during this era were subjected to forces unheard of in street use, and require a far higher level of protection than is normally afforded by truly "stock" automobile bodies.
In 1963 Ford sold enough of their aerodynamic "sport-roof" edition Galaxies to the public so it would qualify as stock, and with the heavy-duty FE block bored and stroked to the new limit of 427, the top five finishers were all Fords. Chrysler had bored their 413 to create the "Max Wedge" 426, but it still could not compete with the Fords. General Motors' headquarters had genuinely tried to adhere to the 1957 ban, but their Chevrolet division had also constantly tried to work around it, because the other manufacturers had openly circumvented the ban. In 1963 GM gave in and openly abandoned compliance, and Chevrolet was allowed to produce the ZO6 427, but it did not immediately enjoy success.
Then, in 1964 the new Chrysler 426 Hemi engine so dominated the series in a Plymouth Belvedere "Sport Fury", the homologation rules were changed so that 1,000 of any engine and car had to be sold to the public to qualify as a stock part, instead of just 500. This made the 426 Hemi unavailable for the 1965 season.
In 1965 Ford adapted two single-overhead-cams to their FE 427 V8 to allow it to run at a higher RPM (called the Ford 427 Cammer). Ford started to sell "cammers" to the public to homologate it (mostly to dealer-sponsored privateer drag racers), but NASCAR changed the rules to specify that all NASCAR engines must use a single cam-in-block. But even without the cammer, the Ford FE 427 won in 1965.
In 1966 Chrysler sold enough of the 426 Hemis to make it available again, and they put it in their new Dodge Charger which had a low-drag rear window that was radically sloped. It was called a "fast-back", and because of this David Pearson was the series champion that year with Richard Petty dominating 1967, winning 27 of 48 races (including 10 in a row) in the boxier Plymouth Belvedere.
The 1969 season featured the Torino Cobra or Torino "Talladega" which had enough aerodynamic body improvements that it gave it a higher speed than the 1968 Torino, with no other changes. The Cobra, featuring extended nose and reshaped rockers, was renamed Talladega part way through the 1969 season when the Boss 429 replaced the 427. Starting in 1963 up till this point, Ford had won six straight Manufacturer Championships, and by the end of the 1969 season Ford would make it seven in a row. Richard Petty was tired of winning races but losing the championship, so after a private viewing of Ford's new Talladega and Boss 429 engine, he signed a lucrative deal with Ford.
Prior to its first race at the Daytona 500, David Pearson's 427 powered Ford Torino Cobra set a new NASCAR record by being the first to exceed when he qualified at . When the race started Donnie Allison's Torino lead the majority of the race (84 laps). Towards the end of the race the Torino of LeeRoy Yarbrough chased down the Dodge of Charlie Glotzbach, who had an 11-second lead. It was the first Daytona 500 won on a last lap pass. Things got worse for Dodge when NASCAR, a few months later, finally allowed Ford to run its hemi-headed Boss 429 engine.
With Ford winning the majority of the races, Dodge was forced to develop a better car of their own. Using the Charger 500 as a basis, they added a pointed nose. This nose was almost a carbon copy of the nose on the 1962 Ford Mustang I prototype. This radical body shape required a wing to remain stable at speeds over . They named it the Dodge Daytona after the race they hoped to win. Even though it never won a Daytona 500 race, it was still a significant improvement over its predecessor the Dodge Charger 500.
NASCAR feared that these increasing speeds significantly surpassed the abilities of the tire technology of the day, and it would undoubtedly increase the number of gruesome wrecks that were occurring. As a result, the 1970 Homologation rules were changed so that one car for every two U.S. dealers had to be built for sale to the public to qualify, hoping to delay the use of aero-bodies until tires could improve.
For the 1970 season Dodge raced the 1969 model Daytona, but Plymouth managed to build over 1,920 Plymouth Superbirds, which were similarly equipped to the Daytona. Petty came back to Plymouth in the plus Superbird, and Bobby Isaac won the season championship in a Daytona. NASCAR restricted all "aero-cars" including the Ford Talladega, Mercury Spoiler II, Charger 500, Dodge Daytona and Plymouth Superbird to a maximum engine displacement of for 1971. Almost all teams switched to non-aero bodystyles. NASCAR eventually adopted a restrictor plate to limit top speeds for the 7.0L engine as teams switched to small-block engines.
Fans, drivers, and manufacturers alike demanded a complete revamping of the rules. NASCAR responded in a way that they hoped would make the cars safer and more equal, so the race series would be more a test of the drivers, rather than a test of car technology.
The era drew to a conclusion in the 1970s. 1972 brought so many rule changes, it has prompted many to consider this year as the start of the modern era of NASCAR racing. In addition, R.J. Reynolds (the tobacco conglomerate) took over as the major sponsor of NASCAR racing (changing the name to the "Winston Cup") and they made a significantly larger financial contribution than previous sponsors. Richard Petty's personal sponsorship with STP also set new, higher standards for financial rewards to driving teams. The sudden infusion of noticeably larger amounts of money changed the entire nature of the sport.
The 1973 oil crisis meant that large displacement special edition homologation cars of all makes were suddenly sitting unsold. Through the balance of the 1970s until 1992, the factory stock sheetmetal over a racing frame meant the cars looked very much like their street version counterparts. It can be said that 1993, with the addition of ground effect wrap-around type spoilers marked the beginning non-stock sheetmetal and from that point forward, stock cars were quickly allowed to differ greatly from anything available to the public. Modern racing "stock" cars are stock in name only, using a body template that is vaguely modeled after currently available automobiles. The chassis, running gear, and other equipment have almost nothing to do with anything in ordinary automobiles. NASCAR and the auto manufacturers have become aware of this, and for 2013 each brand (Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, and Toyota) have redesigned their racing sheetmetal to more resemble the street models of their cars.
A stock car, in the original sense of the term, is an automobile that has not been modified from its original factory configuration. Later the term "stock car" came to mean any production-based automobile used in racing. This term is used to differentiate such a car from a "race car", a special, custom-built car designed only for racing purposes.
The degree to which the cars conform to standard model specs has changed over the years and varies from country to country. Today most American stock cars may superficially resemble standard American family sedans, but are in fact purpose-built racing machines built to a strict set of regulations governing the car design ensuring that the chassis, suspension, engine, etc. are architecturally identical on all vehicles. For example, NASCAR Cup Series race vehicles now require fuel injection.
The closest European equivalent to stock car racing is probably touring car racing. In the UK and New Zealand there is a racing formula called stock cars but the cars are markedly different from any road car.
In Australia there was a formula that was quite similar to NASCAR called AUSCAR.
The Racecar-Euro Series began in 2009 and was sanctioned by NASCAR as a touring series in 2012, currently operating as the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series.
"True" stock car racing, which consists of only street vehicles that can be bought by the general public, is sometimes now called "street stock", "pure stock", "hobby stock", "showroom stock", or "U-car" racing. In 1972, SCCA started its first showroom stock racing series, with a price ceiling on the cars of $3,000. Some modern showroom stock racing allows safety modifications done on showroom stock cars.
Super stock classes are similar to street stock, but allow for more modifications to the engine. Power output is usually in the range of 500–550 horsepower (373–410 kilowatts). Tire width is usually limited to .
Some entry level classes are called "street stock", and are similar to what is often called "banger racing" in England.
Late models are usually the highest class of stock cars in local racing. Rules for construction of a late model car vary from region to region and even race track to race track. The most common variations (on paved tracks) include super late models (SLMs), late model stock cars (LMSCs), and limited late models (LLMs). A late model may be a custom built machine, or a heavily modified street car. Individual sanctioning bodies (like NASCAR, ACT, PASS, UARA, CRA, etc.) maintain their own late model rule books, and even individual racetracks can maintain their own rule books, meaning a late model that is legal in one series or at one track may not be legal at another without modifications. The national touring series, the NASCAR Late Model Sportsman Division, originated from local late model races in the east coast of the U.S. This division was later called the "Busch Series", the "Nationwide Series", and currently the "Xfinity Series" as its title sponsor changed.
NASCAR is currently the largest stock car racing governing body in the world. While NASCAR sanctions multiple series, it has three national championship touring series that are commonly referred to as the "top 3" series. In addition to the top three series, NASCAR also sanctions many regional and local series. NASCAR also sanctions three international series that race in Canada, Mexico, and Europe.
The most prominent championship in stock car racing is the NASCAR Cup Series. It is the most popular racing series in the United States, drawing over 6 million spectators in 1997, an average live audience of over 190,000 people for each race.
The most famous event in the series is the Daytona 500, an annual race at the Daytona International Speedway. The series' second-biggest event is arguably The Brickyard 400, an annual race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the legendary home of the Indianapolis 500, an open-wheeled race. Together the Cup Series and Xfinity Series drew 8 million spectators in 1997, compared to 4 million for both American open-wheel series (CART and IRL), which merged in 2008 under the IRL banner. In 2002, 17 of the 20 US top sporting events in terms of attendance were stock car races. Only football drew more television viewers that year.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series is the second tier series in the United States. It serves as the primary feeder series to the Cup Series, similar to Formula Two for Formula One, and Indy Lights for Indy Car. Races are commonly held as a support race to Cup Series events. Many current Cup Series drivers formerly competed in the Series before moving on to competing full-time in the Cup Series. Currently, drivers competing for points in the Cup Series are limited to the amount of races they are allowed to race in the Series. As of 2018 there are 33 races on the schedule.
The NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series is the third highest ranking stock car series in the United States. While this series races cars with pickup truck style bodies, it is still considered stock car racing due to being sanctioned by NASCAR and the trucks resemblance to commercially available pickup trucks.
Outside of NASCAR, there are a number of other national or regional stock-car sanctioning bodies in the United States. There are a few organizations that cater to these local short tracks. The Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA), American Speed Association (ASA), Champion Racing Association (CRA), International Motor Contest Association (IMCA), United Auto Racing Association (UARA), and Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) all sanction their own forms of stock-car racing, on varying types of track, and with various levels of media coverage. The International Race of Champions (IROC) series used stock cars, but is usually perceived as being outside of the usual stock car racing scene because of its 'All-Star' design.
Stockcar racing began in New Zealand during the 1950s, first race was at Aranui Speedway on November 27, 1954. It was brought to New Zealand after New Zealand Speedway riders witnessed the huge crowds that watched the races in Britain earlier that year. As with the UK, Stockcar racing in New Zealand is a very different form of racing than that of the USA. Stockcar racing is a full contact sport in New Zealand: as the rule book states, "contact is not only permitted, it is encouraged".
Cars are built to an extremely rigid design and feature strong steel guards around almost the entire car. "Stockcars" are divided into three classes: Superstocks, Stockcars, Ministocks (Ministocks predominantly being a non-contact youth class).
Superstocks are the top class and are typically powered by V8 engines up to which can produce over . The majority of races are of an individual nature however, unique to New Zealand stockcar racing is the team racing format. Typically teams racing consists of two teams of four cars each that work together to win the race. Teams normally protect their "runners" while attempting to eliminate the opposing team, the races can be decided by a points format or first across the finish line.
The class most resembling the North American form of stockcar racing are known as Saloon cars. Super Saloons are similar to dirt late models with the main differences being the bodies closer resemble production cars, use iron engines up to with no rear offset and run much larger sprintcar tyres on the rear.
Stock car racing in the NASCAR mould (AUSCAR) had a following in Australia during the mid-late 1980s and through the 1990s, but with the advent of the Supercars Championship, which took up the bulk of the competitors, sponsorship dollars on offer as well as major television time, the Australian Superspeedway series shut down after 2001.
The majority of the NASCAR and AUSCAR racing in Australia took place at the 1.801 km (1.119 mi), high-banked (24°) Calder Park Thunderdome in Melbourne. The Thunderdome, which was opened in 1987 and was built by multi-millionaire tyre retailer Bob Jane at a cost of A$54 million, was modelled on a scaled down version of the famous Charlotte Motor Speedway. Other tracks used included the mile (805 metre) Speedway Super Bowl at the Adelaide International Raceway (also owned by Jane, this was the only paved oval track in Australia other than the Thunderdome, though with only 7° banking in the turns it was more of a traditional flat track), as well as road courses such as the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit (where the cars ran as a support category to the Gold Coast IndyCar Grand Prix), Oran Park in Sydney, and the famous Mount Panorama Circuit.
Stock, in the sense of cars appearing to be similar to conventional road vehicles, is represented in the UK (and Europe) by touring cars.
The term 'stock cars' in the UK refers to a specialised form of racing that bears little resemblance to any road car.
Stock car racing was brought to Britain in 1954. Taking place on existing greyhound or speedway tracks, the cars were mostly 'stock' cars from the 1930s with locked rear axle differentials and added armour. After the first couple of years 'specials' began to appear eventually making the 'stock' car name something of a misnomer. Since the early days of stock car racing in Britain the sport has developed into many different classes, from the destructive 'Banger' categories to the very sophisticated National Hot Rods. However, the name 'stock car' is usually reserved for that racing class which traces its roots back to these early days in the 1950s, BriSCA F1 Stock Cars, which were previously known as "The Seniors" or "Senior Stock Cars". Despite the physical demands of this full-contact sport, many competitors have been racing for 20 and even 30 years. For the first 10 years of the sport, stock cars were either adapted from road cars, or bore the recognizable bodywork of road cars. By the 1970s, chassis and bodywork had evolved into very specialized forms.
The modern BriSCA Formula 1 Stock Cars are a highly sophisticated purpose built race car with race-tuned V-8 engines developing , quick change axles and gearboxes and biased and staggered chassis and braking set up for constant left turning. However large bumpers were mandatory with contact very much encouraged to remove opponents. The sport can be seen at venues throughout Britain and Mainland Europe. A downsized version of the BriSCA Formula 1 Stock Cars, the smaller BriSCA Formula 2 Stock Cars, previously known as "The Juniors" or "Junior Stock Cars", are also very popular. these cars are powered by the 2 litre Ford 'Pinto' engine. There are also many other formulas running on the oval tracks throughout a season that starts around March/Easter and continues to October/November.
In the 2008 World Final, held at Ipswich, Andy Smith raced to victory becoming the 2008 BriSCA F1 Stock Car World Champion for the second time in his career, taking the crown from brother Stuart Smith Jnr. 2009 also saw Andy Smith win again this time at Kings Lynns Norfolk Arena. 2010 saw Andy Smith win for a 3rd consecutive time at Coventry, the same venue as his 1st win in 2006. The 2011 World Championship took place at Northampton on September 10 with 2 Paul Harrison the winner of the Gold Roof. The 2012 World Championship held at Skegness was won by 217 Lee Fairhurst. The 2013 World Championship will be held at King's Lynn on Saturday 21 September.
In 2008, Ian Thompson Jr. became the first driver from Northern Ireland to win the Brisca F2 Stock Car World title since 1972 when he took the honours at Bristol in 2008. However, it was in controversial circumstances after first across the line Gordon Moodie (Thomson Jr's brother-in-law) was disqualified from the race after being found with carburetor irregularities at post race scrutineering. This irregularity has since been proven to be a manufacturing fault with the control of the driver but the governing body have refused to reinstate Gordon Moodie as the winner in the record books. In 2009 the World Championship winner was Micky Brennan and in 2010 the World Championship winner was John Fortune. The 2011 World Championship Final took place at Kings Lynns Norfolk Arena on Saturday 17 September with 871 Mark Simpson winner of the Gold Roof. In 2012, the World Championship was won again by 968 Micky Brennan this time held at Barford. The 2013 World Championship weekend will be held over 2 days of racing on 14/15 September at Smeatharpe near Honiton in Devon.
Another open wheeled stock car formula that races in the UK are Spedeworth Superstox. Licensed by Spedeworth, as opposed to BriSCA, Superstox are similar to Formula Two Stock Cars with the main visual difference being a smaller wing on the roof. These cars are also powered by the 2 litre Ford 'Pinto' engine. The 2010 World Championship Final held at Ipswich was won by Colin Aylward. The 2011 World Championship Final was held at Londons Wimbledon Stadium on Sunday 23 October and won by 151 Nick Smith. The 2012 World Championship was again held at Ipswich and won by Scot 177 Stuart Gilchrist. The 2013 World Championship will be held at Lochgelly in Fife, Scotland, with the date tbc.
Another form of UK stock car racing is Saloon Stock Cars, regulated by the Saloon Stock Car Association. This formula is based on heavily armoured Ford Sierra, Ford Mondeo, Vauxhall Vectra cars purposely reconstructed for this full contact class. The 2011 World Championship was held at Skegness in August with 677 Eddie Darby the winner of the Gold Roof for the next 12 months. The 2012 World Championship Final was held at Smeatharpe Raceway near Honiton in Devon in August 2012 and again won by 677 Eddie Darby. Other similar Stock Car classes are the 2 Litre Stock Cars licensed by Spedeworth and the 1300 Stock Cars licensed by several different promoters each to slightly differing rules although steps are currently being taken to standardise the specifications in order to make it a national class. The 2012 World Championship was won by 79 Barry Radcliffe at Ipswich. The 2013 World Championship will be held at King's Lynn on Saturday 17 August.
The Stock Car Speed Association "ASCAR" or "Days of Thunder" was a "NASCAR" style racing series based at Rockingham, United Kingdom, though the series did also race at the Lausitzring in Germany as well.
Internationally, stock car racing has not enjoyed the same success as within the United States. The NASCAR Pinty's Series enjoys generally strong car-counts using the base of the sport in Canada (the short-oval region of Southern Ontario). Brazil also has a successful stock car racing series, with starting grids of 40 or more cars, and four brands competing: Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen and Peugeot. Brazilian Stock Car also has two developing series. Despite the name, Brazilian stock car competitions are not held on oval tracks, thus they resemble more Touring car racing than Stock car racing the same can be said about Argentina's popular stock series, called Turismo Carretera.
Unsuccessful efforts have been made in Australia, South Africa, and Japan as well.
NASCAR drivers take various paths to the highest stock car divisions. Some start racing on dirt surfaces but all end up racing on asphalt surfaces as they progress in their career. They frequently start in karting or in cars that are completely stock except for safety modifications. They generally advance through intermediate or advanced local-level divisions. The highest local division, asphalt late model racing, is generally considered a requirement to advance to the next step, regional and national touring series.
Dirt track drivers follow the same general path. Their highest divisions are less well-known national touring late model series such as the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and regional touring series.
Some drivers have entered stock car racing after starting on a very different career path. The most famous might well be Mario Andretti, who is the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), NASCAR's Daytona 500 (1967), and the Formula One World Championship (1978). Juan Pablo Montoya is the only other driver with wins in all three series, with two Indy 500 wins (2000 and 2015), seven Formula One wins and two Sprint Cup wins (2007 and 2010). A. J. Foyt, with four Indianapolis 500 wins, seven IndyCar championships, and a victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans on his resume, also won the Daytona 500 in 1972. Johnny Rutherford, a three-time winner at Indy, has the rare distinction of winning his first NASCAR start, a qualifying race for the 1963 Daytona 500. Dan Gurney, a leading 1960s Formula One driver and later one of the most successful constructors of Indy cars (as well as being Foyt's co-driver at Le Mans), excelled in NASCAR's road-course events, winning at Riverside five times between 1963 and 1968. A notable crossover oddity is the one-race NASCAR career of the colorful Formula One and sports car driver Innes Ireland: after retiring at the end of the 1966 season, he was invited by NASCAR czar Bill France to compete at Daytona, where he was running in the top ten when his engine blew on the 126th of 200 laps.
Montoya initially surprised the auto racing community by leaving F1, but he was quickly followed by other drivers. Open wheel stars like Sam Hornish Jr., Patrick Carpentier, Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve, A. J. Allmendinger and Danica Patrick all made the move to the Monster Energy Cup series, with varying degrees of success. Two-time Australian Supercars champion Marcos Ambrose competed in the Monster Energy Cup Series from 2007 to 2014, winning two races.
Other drivers compete often in stock car racing but are well known for their success elsewhere. Ron Fellows and Boris Said are champion road racers and are often brought in by teams solely to compete in NASCAR's road course events, a title known as road course ringers. Robby Gordon was one of NASCAR's few remaining owner-drivers, but he is most famous for his numerous off-road championships and his three Baja 1000 wins.
Stock car races take place predominantly on oval tracks of 3 or 4 turns, with all turns to the left. Oval tracks are classified as "short track" (less than 1 mile), "intermediate" or "speedway" (1 to 2 miles) or "superspeedway" (over 2 miles). "Road courses" are any tracks having both left and right turns. Depending on the track, typical race speeds can vary from at Martinsville to over at Talladega. In 1987 Bill Elliott's qualifying time at Talladega brought about a change at superspeedways (Daytona and Talladega). Such high speeds and Bobby Allison's car going airborne into the catch-fence and injuring fans forced NASCAR to implement power-reducing measures, one of which was the mandated implement of below carburetor restrictor plates. This later became known as restrictor plate racing.
Oval circuits differ from the rough terrain and sharp turns of Rally, and the complicated twists and turns of Formula One tracks that put up to 5 or 6 "g" of horizontal stress on the driver's body. Stock cars are much heavier than Formula One cars, and as a result they are generally slower. Additionally, they cannot produce the g-forces of an open wheel car. A stock car's weak handling with high power output places more emphasis on car control.
In contrast with most forms of racing, minor car-to-car contact is generally accepted in stock car racing. This may happen in the form of forcing another vehicle out of the way, or pushing a competing vehicle forward for mutual benefit. Stock cars are generally built to be tolerant of superficial damage to bodywork, whereas open wheel designs can experience severe issues with even slight spoiler damage. On intermediate tracks and superspeedways, drafting is used to reduce the overall effect of drag. A driver accomplishes this by positioning the vehicle close to the one ahead of so as to benefit from the other's slipstream. Drafting was "discovered" by Junior Johnson during his winning performance at the 1960 Daytona 500. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28349 |
Sociology of religion
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use of both quantitative methods (surveys, polls, demographic and census analysis) and qualitative approaches such as participant observation, interviewing, and analysis of archival, historical and documentary materials.
Modern academic sociology began with the analysis of religion in Émile Durkheim's 1897 study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, a foundational work of social research which served to distinguish sociology from other disciplines, such as psychology. The works of Karl Marx and Max Weber emphasized the relationship between religion and the economic or social structure of society. Contemporary debates have centered on issues such as secularization, civil religion, and the cohesiveness of religion in the context of globalization and multiculturalism. The contemporary sociology of religion may also encompass the sociology of irreligion (for instance, in the analysis of secular humanist belief systems).
Sociology of religion is distinguished from the philosophy of religion in that it does not set out to assess the validity of religious beliefs. The process of comparing multiple conflicting dogmas may require what Peter L. Berger has described as inherent "methodological atheism". Whereas the sociology of religion broadly differs from theology in assuming indifference to the supernatural, theorists tend to acknowledge socio-cultural reification of religious practice.
Classical, seminal sociological theorists of the late 19th and early 20th century such as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx were greatly interested in religion and its effects on society. Like those of Plato and Aristotle from ancient Greece, and Enlightenment philosophers from the 17th through 19th centuries, the ideas posited by these sociologists continue to be examined today.
Durkheim, Marx, and Weber had very complex and developed theories about the nature and effects of religion. Of these, Durkheim and Weber are often more difficult to understand, especially in light of the lack of context and examples in their primary texts. Religion was considered to be an extremely important social variable in the work of all three.
According to Kevin J. Christiano et al., "Marx was the product of the Enlightenment, embracing its call to replace faith by reason and religion by science." But he "did not believe in science for science's sake … he believed that he was also advancing a theory that would … be a useful tool … [in] effecting a revolutionary upheaval of the capitalist system in favor of socialism." As such, the crux of his arguments was that humans are best guided by reason. Religion, Marx held, was a significant hindrance to reason, inherently masking the truth and misguiding followers. As we will later see, Marx viewed alienation as the heart of social inequality. The antithesis to this alienation is freedom. Thus, to propagate freedom means to present individuals with the truth and give them a choice to accept or deny it. In this, "Marx never suggested that religion ought to be prohibited."
Central to Marx's theories was the oppressive economic situation in which he dwelt. With the rise of European industrialism, Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels witnessed and responded to the growth of what he called "surplus value". Marx's view of capitalism saw rich capitalists getting richer and their workers getting poorer (the gap, the exploitation, was the "surplus value"). Not only were workers getting exploited, but in the process they were being further detached from the products they helped create. By simply selling their work for wages, "workers simultaneously lose connection with the object of labor and become objects themselves. Workers are devalued to the level of a commoditya thing …" From this objectification comes alienation. The common worker is led to believe that he or she is a replaceable tool, and is alienated to the point of extreme discontent. Here, in Marx's eyes, religion enters. Capitalism utilizes our tendency towards religion as a tool or ideological state apparatus to justify this alienation. Christianity teaches that those who gather up riches and power in this life will almost certainly not be rewarded in the next ("it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle …") while those who suffer oppression and poverty in this life, while cultivating their spiritual wealth, will be rewarded in the Kingdom of God. Hence Marx's famous line – "religion is the opium of the people", as it soothes them and dulls their senses to the pain of oppression. Some scholars have recently noted that this is a contradictory (or dialectical) metaphor, referring to religion as both an expression of suffering and a protest against suffering.
Émile Durkheim placed himself in the positivist tradition, meaning that he thought of his study of society as dispassionate and scientific. He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex modern societies together. Religion, he argued, was an expression of social cohesion.
In the field work that led to his famous "Elementary Forms of Religious Life", Durkheim, a secular Frenchman, looked at anthropological data of Indigenous Australians. His underlying interest was to understand the basic forms of religious life for all societies. In "Elementary Forms", Durkheim argues that the totems the Aborigines venerate are actually expressions of their own conceptions of society itself. This is true not only for the Aborigines, he argues, but for all societies.
Religion, for Durkheim, is not "imaginary", although he does deprive it of what many believers find essential. Religion is very real; it is an expression of society itself, and indeed, there is no society that does not have religion. We perceive as individuals a force greater than ourselves, which is our social life, and give that perception a supernatural face. We then express ourselves religiously in groups, which for Durkheim makes the symbolic power greater. Religion is an expression of our collective consciousness, which is the fusion of all of our individual consciousnesses, which then creates a reality of its own.
It follows, then, that less complex societies, such as the Australian Aborigines, have less complex religious systems, involving totems associated with particular clans. The more complex a particular society, the more complex the religious system is. As societies come in contact with other societies, there is a tendency for religious systems to emphasize universalism to a greater and greater extent. However, as the division of labour makes the individual seem more important (a subject that Durkheim treats extensively in his famous "The Division of Labour in Society"), religious systems increasingly focus on individual salvation and conscience.
Durkheim's definition of religion, from "Elementary Forms", is as follows: "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." This is a functional definition of religion, meaning that it explains what religion "does" in social life: essentially, it unites societies. Durkheim defined religion as a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, in effect this can be paralleled with the distinction between God and humans.
This definition also does not stipulate what exactly may be considered sacred. Thus later sociologists of religion (notably Robert Neelly Bellah) have extended Durkheimian insights to talk about notions of civil religion, or the religion of a state. American civil religion, for example, might be said to have its own set of sacred "things": the flag of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. Other sociologists have taken Durkheim's concept of what religion is in the direction of the religion of professional sports, the military, or of rock music.
Max Weber published four major texts on religion in a context of economic sociology and his rationalization thesis: "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905), "" (1915), "" (1915), and "Ancient Judaism" (1920).
In his sociology, Weber uses the German term "Verstehen" to describe his method of interpretation of the intention and context of human action. Weber is not a positivist; he does not believe we can find out "facts" in sociology that can be causally linked. Although he believes some generalized statements about social life can be made, he is not interested in hard positivist claims, but instead in linkages and sequences, in historical narratives and particular cases.
Weber argues for making sense of religious action on its own terms. A religious group or individual is influenced by all kinds of things, he says, but if they claim to be acting in the name of religion, we should attempt to understand their perspective on religious grounds first. Weber gives religion credit for shaping a person's image of the world, and this image of the world can affect their view of their interests, and ultimately how they decide to take action.
For Weber, religion is best understood as it responds to the human need for theodicy and soteriology. Human beings are troubled, he says, with the question of theodicy – the question of how the extraordinary power of a divine god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over. People need to know, for example, why there is undeserved good fortune and suffering in the world. Religion offers people soteriological answers, or answers that provide opportunities for salvation – relief from suffering, and reassuring meaning. The pursuit of salvation, like the pursuit of wealth, becomes a part of human motivation.
Because religion helps to define motivation, Weber believed that religion (and specifically Calvinism) actually helped to give rise to modern capitalism, as he asserted in his most famous and controversial work, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism".
In "The Protestant Ethic", Weber argues that capitalism arose in Europe in part because of how the belief in predestination was interpreted by everyday English Puritans. Puritan theology was based on the Calvinist notion that not everyone would be saved; there was only a specific number of the elect who would avoid damnation, and this was based sheerly on God's predetermined will and not on any action you could perform in this life. Official doctrine held that one could not ever really know whether one was among the elect.
Practically, Weber noted, this was difficult psychologically: people were (understandably) anxious to know whether they would be eternally damned or not. Thus Puritan leaders began assuring members that if they began doing well financially in their businesses, this would be one unofficial sign they had God's approval and were among the saved – but only if they used the fruits of their labour well. This along with the rationalism implied by monotheism led to the development of rational bookkeeping and the calculated pursuit of financial success beyond what one needed simply to live – and this is the "spirit of capitalism". Over time, the habits associated with the spirit of capitalism lost their religious significance, and the rational pursuit of profit became an aim in its own right.
"The Protestant Ethic" thesis has been much critiqued, refined, and disputed, but is still a lively source of theoretical debate in sociology of religion. Weber also did considerable work on world religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.
In his "magnum opus" "Economy and Society" Weber distinguished three ideal types of religious attitudes:
He also separated magic as pre-religious activity.
Symbolic Anthropology is the study of people and the understanding of their surroundings, as well as the actions of the members of their society.
There are two major premises for symbolic anthropology. The first premise is that beliefs are unintelligible, become comprehensible when understood as part of a cultural system of meaning. The second premise is that actions are guided by interpretation. This allows symbolism to aid in interpreting conceptual as well as material activities.
Phenomenology is the study of appearances of things or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things. It studies conscious experience as from the subjective or first person point of view. Phenomenology is understood in 2 ways: a disciplinary field in philosophy or as a movement in the history of philosophy. Traditional phenomenology has focused on subjective, practical, and social conditions, where as recent philosophy of mind has focused on the neural substrate of experience.
Symbolic anthropology and some versions of phenomenology argue that all humans require reassurance that the world is safe and ordered place – that is, they have a need for ontological security. Therefore, all societies have forms of knowledge that perform this psychological task. The inability of science to offer psychological and emotional comfort explains the presence and influence of non-scientific knowledge in human lives, even in rational world.
Unlike symbolic anthropology and phenomenology, functionalism points to the benefits for social organization which non-scientific belief systems provide and which scientific knowledge fails to deliver. Belief systems are seen as encouraging social order and social stability in ways that rationally based knowledge cannot. From this perspective, the existence of non-rational accounts of reality can be explained by the benefits they offer to society.
According to functionalists, "religion serves several purposes, like providing answers to spiritual mysteries, offering emotional comfort, and creating a place for social interaction and social control. … One of the most important functions of religion, from a functionalist perspective, is the opportunities it creates for social interaction and the formation of groups. It provides social support and social networking, offering a place to meet others who hold similar values and a place to seek help (spiritual and material) in times of need."
Rationalism is the epistemoligical theory, the branch of philosophy that investigates the possibility, origins, nature, and extent of human knowledge Rationalists object to the phenomenological and functionalist approaches, arguing that they fail to understand why believers in systems of non-scientific knowledge do think they tell the truth and that their ideas are right, even when science has shown them to be wrong. They claim that one cannot explain forms of knowledge in terms of the beneficial psychological or societal effects that an outside observer may see them as producing. Rationalists emphasize the importance of looking at the point of view of those who believe in them. People do not believe in God, practice magic, or think that witches cause misfortune because they think they are providing themselves with psychological reassurance, or to achieve greater cohesion for their social groups. They do so because they think their beliefs are correct – that they tell them the truth about the way the world is.
Nineteenth-century rationalist writers, reflecting the evolutionist spirits of their times, tended to explain the lack of rationality and the dominance of false beliefs in pre-modern worlds in terms of the deficient mental equipment of their inhabitants. Such people were seen as possessing pre-logical, or non-rational, mentality. Twentieth-century rationalist thinking generally rejected such a view, reasoning that pre-modern people didn't possess inferior minds, but lacked the social and cultural conditions needed to promote rationalism. Rationalists see the history of modern societies as the rise of scientific knowledge and the subsequent decline of non-rational belief. Some of these beliefs, such as magic and witchcraft, had disappeared, while others, such as religion, had become marginalized. This rationalist perspective has led to secularization theories of various kinds.
One common typology among sociologists, religious groups are classified as ecclesias, denominations, sects, or cults (now more commonly referred to in scholarship as new religious movements). The Church-Sect typology has its origins in the work of Max Weber. There is a basic premise continuum along which religions fall, ranging from the protest-like orientation of sects to the equilibrium maintaining "churches." This continuum includes several additional types. Note that sociologists give these words precise definitions which differ from how they are commonly used. In particular, sociologists use the words 'cult' and 'sect' without negative connotations, even though the popular use of these words is often pejorative.
Churches are the religious bodies that coexist in a relatively low state of tension with their social surrounding. They have mainstream "safe" beliefs and practices relative to those of the general population. This type of religious bodies are more world affirming, so they try to peacefully coexist with the secular world and are low-tension organizations.
Sects are high-tension organizations that don't fit well within the existing social environment. They are usually most attractive to society's least privileged- outcasts, minorities, or the poor- because they downplay worldly pleasure by stressing otherworldly promises. When church leaders become too involved in secular issues, Sects start to splinter off the existing church. They may end up forming their own sect and if over time the sect picks up a significant following, it almost inevitably transforms into its own church, ultimately becoming part of the mainstream.
Cults is a religious movement that makes some new claim about the supernatural and therefore does not easily fit within the sect-church cycle. All religions began as cults, and their leaders offer new insights, claiming that they are the word of God. They are often high-tension movements that antagonize their social world and/or are antagonized by it.
Denomination lies between the church and the sect on the continuum. They come into existence when churches lose their religious monopoly in a society. When churches or sects become denominations, there are also some changes in their characteristics.
Some sociologists of religion explore the theoretical analysis of the sociological dimensions of religiosity. For example, Charles Y. Glock is best known for his five-dimensional scheme of the nature of religious commitment. His list consist of the following variables: belief, knowledge, experience, practice (sometimes subdivided into private and public ritual) and consequences. Glock's first four dimensions have proved widely useful in research, because generally, they are simple to measure survey research. Similarly, Mervin F. Verbit's contribution was a twenty four-dimensional religiosity measure which includes measuring religiosity through six different "components" of religiosity: ritual, doctrine, emotion, knowledge, ethics, community, and along four dimensions: content, frequency, intensity, centrality.
Secularism is the general movement away from religiosity and spiritual belief towards a rational, scientific, orientation, a trend observed in Muslim and Christian industrialized nations alike. In the United States of America, many politicians, court systems, schools, and businesses embrace secularism. In relation to the processes of rationalization associated with the development of modernity, it was predicted in the works of many classical sociologists that religion would decline. They claimed that there would be a separation of religion from the institutions such as the state, economy, and family. Despite the claims of many classical theorists and sociologists immediately after World War II, many contemporary theorists have critiqued secularization thesis, arguing that religion has continued to play a vital role in the lives of individuals worldwide. In the United States, in particular, church attendance has remained relatively stable in the past 40 years. In Africa, the emergence of Christianity has occurred at a high rate. While Africa could claim roughly 10 million Christians in 1900, recent estimates put that number closer to 200 million. The rise of Islam as a major world religion, especially its new-found influence in the West, is another significant development. Peter Berger, an American sociologist, considers secularization is the result of a larger sociostructural crisis in religion is caused by pluralism. Pluralism is the presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society. The United States is both highly religious and pluralistic, standing out among other industrialized and wealthy nations in this regard. In short, presupposed secularization as a decline in religiosity might seem to be a myth, depending on its definition and the definition of its scope. For instance, some sociologists have argued that steady church attendance and personal religious belief may coexist with a decline in the influence of religious authorities on social or political issues. Additionally, regular attendance or affiliation do not necessarily translate into a behavior according to their doctrinal teachings.
In other words, numbers of members might still be growing, but this does not mean that all members are faithfully following the rules of pious behaviors expected. In that sense, religion may be seen as declining because of its waning ability to influence behavior.
According to Rodney Stark, David Martin was the first contemporary sociologist to reject the secularization theory outright. Martin even proposed that the concept of secularization be eliminated from social scientific discourse, on the grounds that it had only served ideological purposes and because there was no evidence of any general shift from a religious period in human affairs to a secular period.
Stark is well known for pioneering, with William Sims Bainbridge, a theory of religious economy, according to which societies that restrict supply of religion, either through an imposed state religious monopoly or through state-sponsored secularization, are the main causes of drops in religiosity. Correspondingly, the more religions a society has, the more likely the population is to be religious. This contradicts the older view of secularization which states that if a liberal religious community is tolerant of a wide array of belief, then the population is less likely to hold certain beliefs in common, so nothing can be shared and reified in a community context, leading to a reduction in religious observance. The religious economy model sparked a lively debate among sociologists of religion on whether market models fit religious practices and on the extents to which this model of religious behavior is specific to the United States.
Peter Berger observed that while researchers supporting the secularization theory have long maintained that religion must inevitably decline in the modern world, today, much of the world is as religious as ever. This points to the falsity of the secularization theory. On the other hand, Berger also notes that secularization may be indeed have taken hold in Europe, while the United States and other regions have continued to remain religious despite the increased modernity. Dr. Berger suggested that the reason for this may have to do with the education system; in Europe, teachers are sent by the educational authorities and European parents would have to put up with secular teaching, while in the United States, schools were for much of the time under local authorities, and American parents, however unenlightened, could fire their teachers. Berger also notes that unlike Europe, America has seen the rise of Evangelical Protestantism, or "born-again Christians".
Bryan R. Wilson is a writer on secularization who is interested in the nature of life in a society dominated by scientific knowledge. His work is in the tradition of Max Weber, who saw modern societies as places in which rationality dominates life and thought. Weber saw rationality as concerned with identifying causes and working out technical efficiency, with a focus on how things work and with calculating how they can be made to work more effectively, rather than why they are as they are. According to Weber, such rational worlds are disenchanted. Existential questions about the mysteries of human existence, about who we are and why we are here, have become less and less significant.
Wilson insists that non-scientific systems – and religious ones in particular – have experienced an irreversible decline in influence. He has engaged in a long debate with those who dispute the secularization thesis, some of which argue that the traditional religions, such as church-centered ones, have become displaced by an abundance of non-traditional ones, such as cults and sects of various kinds. Others argue that religion has become an individual, rather than a collective, organized affair. Still others suggest that functional alternatives to traditional religion, such as nationalism and patriotism, have emerged to promote social solidarity. Wilson does accept the presence of a large variety of non-scientific forms of meaning and knowledge, but he argues that this is actually evidence of the decline of religion. The increase in the number and diversity of such systems is proof of the removal of religion from the central structural location that it occupied in pre-modern times.
Unlike Wilson and Weber, Ernest Gellner (1974) acknowledges that there are drawbacks to living in a world whose main form of knowledge is confined to facts we can do nothing about and that provide us with no guidelines on how to live and how to organize ourselves. In this regard, we are worse off than pre-modern people, whose knowledge, while incorrect, at least provided them with prescriptions for living. However, Gellner insists that these disadvantages are far outweighed by the huge technological advances modern societies have experienced as a result of the application of scientific knowledge.
Gellner doesn't claim that non-scientific knowledge is in the process of dying out. For example, he accepts that religions in various forms continue to attract adherents. He also acknowledges that other forms of belief and meaning, such as those provided by art, music, literature, popular culture (a specifically modern phenomenon), drug taking, political protest, and so on are important for many people. Nevertheless, he rejects the relativist interpretation of this situation – that in modernity, scientific knowledge is just one of many accounts of existence, all of which have equal validity. This is because, for Gellner, such alternatives to science are profoundly insignificant since they are technically impotent, as opposed to science. He sees that modern preoccupations with meaning and being as a self-indulgence that is only possible because scientific knowledge has enabled our world to advance so far. Unlike those in pre-modern times, whose overriding priority is to get hold of scientific knowledge in order to begin to develop, we can afford to sit back in the luxury of our well-appointed world and ponder upon such questions because we can take for granted the kind of world science has constructed for us.
Michel Foucault was a post-structuralist who saw human existence as being dependent on forms of knowledge – discourses – that work like languages. Languages/discourses define reality for us. In order to think at all, we are obliged to use these definitions. The knowledge we have about the world is provided for us by the languages and discourses we encounter in the times and places in which we live our lives. Thus, who we are, what we know to be true, and what we think are discursively constructed.
Foucault defined history as the rise and fall of discourses. Social change is about changes in prevailing forms of knowledge. The job of the historian is to chart these changes and identify the reasons for them. Unlike rationalists, however, Foucault saw no element of progress in this process. To Foucault, what is distinctive about modernity is the emergence of discourses concerned with the control and regulation of the body. According to Foucault, the rise of body-centered discourses necessarily involved a process of secularization. Pre-modern discourses were dominated by religion, where things were defined as good and evil, and social life was centered around these concepts. With the emergence of modern urban societies, scientific discourses took over, and medical science was a crucial element of this new knowledge. Modern life became increasingly subject to medical control – the medical gaze, as Foucault called it.
The rise to power of science, and of medicine in particular, coincided with a progressive reduction of the power of religious forms of knowledge. For example, normality and deviance became more of a matter of health and illness than of good and evil, and the physician took over from the priest the role of defining, promoting, and healing deviance.
BBC News reported on a study by physicists and mathematicians that attempted to use mathematical modelling (nonlinear dynamics) to predict future religious orientations of populations. The study suggests that religion is headed towards "extinction" in various nations where it has been on the decline: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. The model considers not only the changing number of people with certain beliefs, but also attempts to assign utility values of a belief in each nation.
Thomas Luckmann maintains that the sociology of religion should cease preoccupations with the traditional and institutionalized forms of religion. Luckmann points instead to the "religious problem" which is the "problem of individual existence." This is the case as with the advent of modernity, religious meaning making has shifted more into the individual domain.
The sociology of religion continues to grow throughout the world, attempting to understand the relationship between religion and globalization. Two older approaches to globalization include modernization theory, a functionalist derivative, and world-systems theory, a Marxist approach. One of the differences between these theories is whether they view capitalism as positive or problematic. However, both assumed that modernization and capitalism would diminish the hold of religion.
To the contrary, as globalization intensified many different cultures started to look into different religions and incorporate different beliefs into society. New interpretations emerged that recognize the tensions. For example, according to Paul James and Peter Mandaville:
Religion and globalization have been intertwined with each other since the early empires attempted to extend their reach across what they perceived to be world-space. Processes of globalization carried religious cosmologies – including traditional conceptions of universalism – to the corners of the world, while these cosmologies legitimated processes of globalization. This dynamic of inter-relation has continued to the present, but with changing and sometimes new and intensifying contradictions.
Not only does religion shape large-scale social institutions such as government and social movements, it plays a part in families, race, gender, class, and age - things involved in everyday lives.
In general religion is most often associated with families, since it is normally passed on from generation to generation. Depending on the type of religion in the family, it can involve a different familial structure. For example, practising Catholics tend to have larger families
since the Catholic church is opposed to both contraception and abortion,
they go to mass every Sunday, and they most always send their kids through confirmation. Jewish families may emphasize nurturing and kindness, helping them to make a lasting impact on their community since they are in the minority culture in the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28352 |
Samuel
Samuel is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the period of the biblical judges to the institution of a kingdom under Saul, and again in the transition from Saul to David. He is venerated as a prophet by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In addition to his role in the Hebrew Scriptures, Samuel is mentioned in the New Testament, in rabbinical literature, and in the second chapter of the Qur'an (although here not by name). He is also treated in the fifth through seventh books of Josephus's "Antiquities of the Jews", written in the first century CE (AD). He is first called the Seer in 1 Samuel 9:9.
Samuel's mother was Hannah and his father was Elkanah. Elkanah lived at Ramathaim in the district of Zuph. His genealogy is also found in a pedigree of the Kohathites (1 Chronicles 6:3–15) and in that of Heman the Ezrahite, apparently his grandson (1 Chronicles 6:18–33).
According to the genealogical tables in Chronicles, Elkanah was a Levite - a fact not mentioned in the books of Samuel. The fact that Elkanah, a Levite, was denominated an Ephraimite is analogous to the designation of a Levite belonging to Judah (Judges 17:7, for example).
According to 1 Samuel 1:1–28, Elkanah had two wives, Peninnah and Hannah. Peninnah had children; Hannah did not. Nonetheless, Elkanah favored Hannah. Jealous, Penninah reproached Hannah for her lack of children, causing Hannah much heartache. The relationship of Penninah and Hannah recalls that between Hagar and Sarah. Elkanah was a devout man and would periodically take his family on pilgrimage to the holy site of Shiloh. The motif of Elkanah and Hannah as devout, childless parents will reoccur with Zachariah and Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist, and with Joachim and Saint Anne and the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus.
On one occasion Hannah went to the sanctuary and prayed for a child. In tears, she vowed that if she were granted a child, she would dedicate him to God as a Nazirite. Eli, who was sitting at the foot of the doorpost in the sanctuary at Shiloh, saw her apparently mumbling to herself and thought she was drunk but was soon assured of her motivation and sobriety. Eli was the priest of Shiloh, and one of the last Israelite Judges before the rule of kings in ancient Israel. He had assumed the leadership after Samson's death. Eli blessed her and she returned home. Subsequently, Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to Samuel. Hannah's exultant hymn of thanksgiving resembles in several points Mary's later Magnificat.
After the child was weaned, she left him in Eli's care, and from time to time she would come to visit her son.
According to , Hannah named Samuel to commemorate her prayer to God for a child. "... [She] called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord" (KJV). The Hebrew root rendered as "asked" in the KJV is "sha’al", a word mentioned seven times in 1 Samuel 1. Once it is even mentioned in the form "sha’ul", Saul’s name in Hebrew (1 Samuel 1:28).
According to the "Holman Bible Dictionary", Samuel was a "[p]ersonal name in the Ancient Near East meaning, 'Sumu is God' but understood in Israel as 'The name is God,' 'God is exalted,' or 'son of God.'"
Samuel worked under Eli in the service of the shrine at Shiloh. One night, Samuel heard a voice calling his name. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Samuel was about 11 years old. Samuel initially assumed it was coming from Eli and went to Eli to ask what he wanted. Eli, however, sent Samuel back to sleep. After this happened three times, Eli realised that the voice was the Lord's, and instructed Samuel on how to answer:
Once Samuel responded, the Lord told him that the wickedness of the sons of Eli had resulted in their dynasty being condemned to destruction. In the morning, Samuel was hesitant about reporting the message to Eli, but Eli asked him honestly to recount to him what he had been told by the Lord. Upon receiving the communication, Eli merely said that the Lord should do what seems right unto him.
This event established that Samuel was now "established as a prophet of the Lord" and "all Israel from Dan to Beersheba" became aware of his prophetic calling. Anglican theologian Donald Spence Jones comments that "the minds of all the people were thus gradually prepared when the right moment came to acknowledge Samuel as a God-sent chieftain"
During Samuel's youth at Shiloh, the Philistines inflicted a decisive defeat against the Israelites at Eben-Ezer, placed the land under Philistine control, and took the sanctuary's Ark for themselves. Upon hearing the news of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant, and the death of his sons, Eli collapsed and died. When the Philistines had been in possession of the Ark for seven months and had been visited with calamities and misfortunes, they decided to return the Ark to the Israelites.
According to Bruce C. Birch, Samuel was a key figure in keeping the Israelites' religious heritage and identity alive during Israel's defeat and occupation by the Philistines. "[I]t may have been possible and necessary for Samuel to exercise authority in roles that would normally not converge in a single individual (priest, prophet, judge)."
After 20 years of oppression, Samuel, who had gained national prominence as a prophet (1 Samuel 3:20), summoned the people to the hill of Mizpah, and led them against the Philistines. The Philistines, having marched to Mizpah to attack the newly amassed Israelite army, were soundly defeated and fled in terror. The retreating Philistines were slaughtered by the Israelites. The text then states that Samuel erected a large stone at the battle site as a memorial, and there ensued a long period of peace thereafter.
Samuel initially appointed his two sons Joel and Abijah as his successors; however, just like Eli's sons, Samuel's proved unworthy. The Israelites rejected them. Because of the external threat from other tribes, such as the Philistines, the tribal leaders decided that there was a need for a more unified, central government, and demanded Samuel appoint a king so that they could be like other nations. Samuel interpreted this as a personal rejection, and at first was reluctant to oblige, until reassured by a divine revelation. He warned the people of the potential negative consequences of such a decision. When Saul and his servant were searching for his father's lost asses, the servant suggested consulting the nearby Samuel. Samuel recognized Saul as the future king.
Just before his retirement, Samuel gathered the people to an assembly at Gilgal, and delivered a farewell speech or coronation speech in which he emphasised how prophets and judges were more important than kings, that kings should be held to account, and that the people should not fall into idol worship, or worship of Asherah or of Baal. Samuel promised that God would subject the people to foreign invaders should they disobey. This is seen by some as a deuteronomic redaction; since archaeological finds indicate that Asherah was still worshipped in Israelite households well into the sixth century. However, and note that the Israelites fell into Asherah worship later on.
When Saul was preparing to fight the Philistines, Samuel denounced him for proceeding with the pre-battle sacrifice without waiting for the overdue Samuel to arrive. He prophesied that Saul's rule would see no dynastic succession.
Samuel directed Saul to "utterly destroy" the Amalekites in fulfilment of the commandment in :
During the campaign against the Amalekites, King Saul spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites, and the best of their livestock. Saul told Samuel that he had spared the choicest of the Amalekites' sheep and oxen, intending to sacrifice the livestock to the Lord. This was in violation of the Lord's command, as pronounced by Samuel, to "... utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (1 Samuel 15:3, KJV). Samuel confronted Saul for his disobedience and told him that God made him king, and God can unmake him king. Samuel then proceeded to execute Agag. Saul never saw Samuel alive again after this.
Samuel then proceeded to Bethelehem and secretly anointed David as king. He would later provide sanctuary for David, when the jealous Saul first tried to have him killed.
Samuel is described in the biblical narrative as being buried in Ramah. According to tradition, this burial place has been identified with Samuel's tomb in the West Bank village of Nabi Samwil.
Some time after his death, Saul had the Witch of Endor conjure Samuel's ghost in order to predict the result of an up-coming battle. This passage is ascribed by textual scholars to the Republican Source. Classical rabbinical sources say that Samuel was terrified by the ordeal, having expected to be appearing to face God's judgment, and had, therefore, brought Moses with him (to the land of the living) as a witness to his adherence to the mitzvot.
Some authors see the biblical Samuel as combining descriptions of two distinct roles:
Source-critical scholarship suggests that these two roles come from different sources, which later were spliced together to form the Book(s) of Samuel. The oldest is considered to be that marking Samuel as the local seer of Ramah, who willingly anointed Saul as king in secret, while the latter presents Samuel as a national figure, begrudgingly anointing Saul as king in front of a national assembly. This later source is generally known as the Republican Source, since it denigrates the monarchy (particularly the actions of Saul) and favours religious figures, in contrast to the other main source—the Monarchial Source—which treats it favourably. Theoretically if we had the Monarchial Source we would see Saul appointed king by public acclamation, due to his military victories, and not by cleromancy involving Samuel. Another difference between the sources is that the Republican Source treats the ecstatic prophets as somewhat independent from Samuel (1 Samuel 9:1ff) rather than having been led by him ().
The passage in which Samuel is described as having exercised the functions of a (biblical) judge, during an annual circuit from Ramah to Bethel to Gilgal (the "Gilgal" between Ebal and Gerizim) to Mizpah and back to Ramah, is foreshadowed by Deborah, who used to render judgments from a place beneath a palm between Ramah and Bethel. Source-critical scholarship often considers it to be a redaction aimed at harmonizing the two portrayals of Samuel.
The Book(s) of Samuel variously describe Samuel as having carried out sacrifices at sanctuaries, and having constructed and sanctified altars. According to the Priestly Code/Deuteronomic Code only Aaronic priests/Levites (depending on the underling tradition) were permitted to perform these actions, and simply being a nazarite or prophet was insufficient. The books of Samuel and Kings offer numerous examples where this rule is not followed by kings and prophets, but some critical scholars look elsewhere seeking a harmonization of the issues. In the Book of Chronicles, Samuel is described as a Levite, rectifying this situation; however critical scholarship widely sees the Book of Chronicles as an attempt to redact the Book(s) of Samuel and of Kings to conform to later religious sensibilities. Since many of the Biblical law codes themselves are thought to postdate the Book(s) of Samuel (according to the Documentary Hypothesis), this would suggest Chronicles is making its claim based on religious motivations. The Levitical genealogy of is not historical, according to most modern scholarship.
According to the documentary hypothesis of Biblical source criticism, which postulates that "Deuteronomistic historians" redacted the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings), the Deuteronomists idealized Samuel as a figure larger than life, like Joshua. For example, Samuel's father Elkanah is described as having originated from Zuph, specifically Ramathaim-Zophim, which was part of the tribal lands of Ephraim, while 1 Chronicles states that he was a Levite. Samuel is portrayed as a judge who leads the military, as the judges in the Book of Judges, and also who exercises judicial functions. In 1 Sam 12:6–17, a speech of Samuel that portrays him as the judge sent by God to save Israel may have been composed by the Deuteronomists. In 1 Samuel 9:6–20, Samuel is seen as a local "seer". According to documentary scholarship, the Deuteronomistic historians preserved this view of Samuel while contributing him as "the first of prophets to articulate the failure of Israel to live up to its covenant with God." For the Deuteronomistic historians, Samuel would have been an extension of Moses and continuing Moses' function as a prophet, judge, and priest, which makes the nature of the historical Samuel uncertain.
According to the Book of Jeremiah and one of the Psalms, Samuel had a high devotion to God. Classical Rabbinical literature adds that he was more than an equal to Moses, God speaking directly to Samuel, rather than Samuel having to attend the tabernacle to hear God. Samuel is also described by the Rabbis as having been extremely intelligent; he argued that it was legitimate for laymen to slaughter sacrifices, since the Halakha only insisted that the priests "bring the blood" (cf , Zebahim 32a). Eli, who was viewed negatively by many Classical Rabbis, is said to have reacted to this logic of Samuel by arguing that it was technically true, but Samuel should be put to death for making legal statements while Eli (his mentor) was present.
Samuel is also treated by the Classical Rabbis as a much more sympathetic character than he appears at face value in the Bible; his annual circuit is explained as being due to his wish to spare people the task of having to journey to him; Samuel is said to have been very rich, taking his entire household with him on the circuit so that he didn't need to impose himself on anyone's hospitality; when Saul fell out of God's favour, Samuel is described as having grieved copiously and having prematurely aged.
His yahrzeit is observed on the 28th day of Iyar.
For Christians, Samuel is considered to be a prophet, judge, and wise leader of Israel, and treated as an example of fulfilled commitments to God. On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, as well as the Lutheran calendar, his feast day is August 20. He is commemorated as one of the Holy Forefathers in the Calendar of Saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 30. In the Coptic Orthodox Church, the commemoration of the departure of Samuel the Prophet is celebrated on 9 Paoni.
Herbert Lockyer and others have seen in Samuel's combined offices of prophet, priest, and ruler a foreshadowing of Christ.
Samuel () is seen as a prophet and seer in the Islamic faith. The narrative of Samuel in Islam focuses specifically on his birth and the anointing of Talut. Other elements from his narrative are in accordance with the narratives of other Prophets of Israel, as exegesis recounts Samuel's preaching against idolatry. He is not mentioned by name in the Qur’an, but referred to as a "prophet" instead.
In the Islamic narrative, the Israelites after Moses wanted a king to rule over their country. Thus, God sent a prophet, Samuel, to anoint Talut as the first king for the Israelites. However, the Israelites mocked and reviled the newly appointed king, as he was not wealthy from birth. But, assuming Talut to be Saul, in sharp contrast to the Hebrew Bible, the Qur’an praises Saul greatly, and mentions that he was gifted with great spiritual and physical strength. In the Qur’anic account, Samuel prophesies that the sign of Talut's kingship will be that the Ark of the Covenant will come back to the Israelites.
Actors who have portrayed Samuel include Leonard Nimoy in the 1997 TV-film "David", Eamonn Walker in the 2009 TV-series "Kings" and Mohammad Bakri in the 2016 TV-series "Of Kings and Prophets". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28354 |
Square (video game company)
Square originated in October 1983 as a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by the father of Masafumi Miyamoto, the eventual founder of Square Co Ltd in 1986. While at the time game development was usually conducted by only one programmer, Masafumi Miyamoto believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and professional story writers working together on common projects. Square's first two titles were "The Death Trap" and its sequel "", both designed by part-time employee Hironobu Sakaguchi and released on the NEC PC-8801. Despite an initial reluctance to develop for video game consoles, Square entered the Nintendo Famicom market in December 1985 with the porting of "Thexder".
In September 1986, Square spun off from Den-Yu-Sha and became an independent company officially named Square Co., Ltd. Sakaguchi then became a full-time employee as the Director of Planning and Development of the company. After releasing several unsuccessful games for the Famicom, Square relocated to Ueno, Tokyo in 1987 and developed a role-playing video game titled "Final Fantasy", inspired by Enix's success with the genre, "Dragon Quest" (later released in North America as "Dragon Warrior"). With 400,000 copies sold, "Final Fantasy" spawned multiple sequels over the years and became Square's main franchise.
Square has also made other widely known games such as "Chrono Trigger", "Chrono Cross", "Secret of Mana", "Legend of Mana", "Xenogears", "Brave Fencer Musashi", "Parasite Eve", "Parasite Eve 2", "Saga Frontier", "Romancing Saga", "Vagrant Story", "Kingdom Hearts" (done in collaboration with Disney Interactive), and "Super Mario RPG" (done under the guidance of Shigeru Miyamoto). By late 1994 they had developed a reputation as a producer of high quality role-playing video games.
Square was one of the many companies that had planned to develop and publish their games for the Nintendo 64, but with the cheaper costs associated with developing games on CD based consoles such as the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, Square decided to develop titles for the latter system. "Final Fantasy VII" was one of these games, and it sold 9.8 million copies, making it the second best selling game for the PlayStation.
On February 8, 2001, due to its first quarterly loss since going public, "the company implemented a restructuring plan for its Japanese corporate staff. Three key figures have been moved around in the company ranks, resigning from their current positions to take responsibility for the losses, and have been reassigned to different positions. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the Final Fantasy series, will no longer be vice president, and will instead be known as an "executive producer." Additionally, company president Tomoyuki Takeshi will become a contractual consultant for the company, with director Masahi Hiramatsu now taking the role of executive consultant.".
A merger between Square and its competitor Enix was in consideration since at least 2000; however, the financial failure of their first movie, "" made Enix hesitant to join with a company which was losing money. With the company in its second year of financial loss, Square approached Sony for a capital injection and on October, 8th 2001, Sony Corp purchased 18.6% stake in Square to bandage their loss.
In an interview with GIA.com in 2001, when asked "Are you ever worried that Square will become too heavily dependent on the Final Fantasy name?" Hironobu Sakaguchi responded that "Avoiding that has actually been one of Square's goals for a long time. It is our aim to try and develop a few more major franchises for the company; that has always been on our minds."
On November 26, it was reported that Square CEO Hisashi Suzuki was to step down as the company's President and that COO Yoichi Wada was to replace him in December with a restructuring plan for the company.
On May 28, 2002 it was detailed that in Wada's restructuring of the company, that "while Square formally took a development style where teams were formed and dispersed per project, developers will now be fixed into divisions. Source codes and resources will be shared for efficiency, and employees will receive varying bonuses depending on the profit of their division. By settling developers into groups, Square also aims for the developers to re-use the titles they have developed, making game development more cost efficient. Development costs- originally 2–3 Billion yen, are expected to fall to 1 Billion yen." In addition, the company revealed plans to release two Final Fantasy X spinoffs that would later become Final Fantasy X-2.
Following the success of both "Final Fantasy X" and "Kingdom Hearts", the company recovered its stability and recorded the highest operating margin in its history in fiscal year 2002. It was announced on November 25, 2002 that Square and Enix's previous plans to merge were to officially proceed. As described by Yoichi Wada "Square has also fully recovered, meaning this merger is occurring at a time when both companies are at their height." Despite this, some shareholders had doubts about the merger, notably Square's original founder and largest shareholder, Masafumi Miyamoto, who would find himself holding significantly less if the two RPG behemoths were to go ahead with the deal. Other criticism came from Takashi Oya of Deutsche Securities who expressed doubts about the benefits of such a merger.
"Enix outsources game development and has few in-house creators, while Square does everything by itself. The combination of the two provides no negative factors but would bring little in the way of operational synergies, he said." Masafumi Miyamoto's issue was eventually resolved, by altering the exchange ratio of one Square share for 0.81 Enix shares, thus greenlighting the merger, and on April 1, 2003, Square Enix was formed.
The Disk Original Group (DOG) was a union formed of no less than seven Japanese video game companies: Square Company, Limited, Micro Cabin, Thinking Rabbit, Carry Lab, System Sacom, XTALSOFT, and HummingBirdSoft. Founded July 14, 1986, Square took the lead in this alliance to produce games on the Famicom Disk System. Because Square headed DOG, all DOG titles were published under the name Square. In reality, however, Square only produced four of the eleven games published under the DOG label. Excluding Tobidase Daisakusen (The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner in North America) which sold 500,000 copies, the remaining games were commercial failures.
DigiCube was established in February 1996. It was formed to market and distribute games and related merchandising (toys, books, music, etc.) in Asia. It declared bankruptcy in October 2003.
Escape, Inc. was established in 1998. They developed the racing game "Driving Emotion Type-S".
Square Visual Works (CG studio), Square Sounds (sound studio), Squartz (quality assurance) and Square Next were all founded in June 1999. All were subsequently absorbed into Square Co., Ltd. in 2001 and 2002. Once Square merged with Enix, Square Visual Works was renamed Visual Works and produces CG animations for Square Enix and Eidos Interactive intellectual properties.
Quest Corporation was an independent software development studio established in July 1988, best known for the "Ogre Battle" series. Several team members, including Yasumi Matsuno, Hiroshi Minagawa and Akihiko Yoshida, left Quest in 1997 to join Square, where they worked on several titles for the Sony PlayStation, including "Final Fantasy Tactics" and "Vagrant Story". In June 2002, Quest was acquired by Square.
Square Soft, Inc. was established as the North American subsidiary of Square in March 1989. It was responsible for both the production and distribution of North American localizations of Square titles during the 16-bit era, and continued to produce English language localizations of Square games in the 32-bit era. It has also been responsible for localizing a number of non-Square titles, including Capcom's "Breath of Fire" for the SNES. It developed the game "Secret of Evermore" for the SNES.
Unlike its Japanese parent company or other subsidiaries (such as Square USA), Square Soft was never dissolved and is currently known as Square Enix, Inc. Square Soft's original headquarters were in Redmond, Washington. Square Enix, Inc. is currently located in El Segundo, California.
Square USA, Inc. (originally Square L.A., Inc.) was established in August 1995. It operated as a high-end computer-generated imagery research and development studio, and was integral in the production of graphics for Square-produced games since the beginning of the 32-bit era. Its headquarters were in Los Angeles, California and Honolulu, Hawaii. Like sister company, Square Soft, Inc., Square USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of Square Co., Ltd.
Square Europe, Limited was established in December 1998 to localize and market Square-developed games in Europe and Australia. Located in London, UK, Square Europe was granted exclusive publishing rights in Europe and other PAL territories for all interactive entertainment titles developed by Square.
Square Pictures was located in Honolulu, Hawaii and specialized in computer-animated films for Square. They started in 1997, with the goal to eventually "incorporate the movie division's technical advances into its games, spinning a cycle of creativity with games inspiring movies that in turn improve games." In 1998 it was announced that Square was partnering with Sony/Columbia to bring a full-length Final Fantasy movie to theaters "in the ambitious goal to be the first to simulate human emotions and movements through computer graphics." and in late 2000, the film was revealed as "". Sony released the film on July 11, 2001, but could only muster mixed reviews. Massive cost overruns resulted in the film's box-office failure.
They also created a short film for the Wachowskis that was a prequel to "The Matrix Reloaded" titled the "Final Flight of the Osiris". The short featured photo realistic characters, just as "The Spirits Within", performing acrobatic moves in action sequences. The film was shown in theaters alongside "Dreamcatcher" and was meant to set the stage for the two "Matrix" sequels. The short was released on DVD on June 3, 2003 as part of "The Animatrix". Square Pictures is now a consolidated subsidiary of Square Enix as Visual Works.
was a joint venture between Square and U.S. video game publisher Electronic Arts responsible for publishing and marketing EA's games in Japan. Its American subsidiary, Square Electronic Arts, LLC, was responsible for publishing Square's games in North America. Announced on April 27, 1998, Square EA was based in Costa Mesa, California and operated under the supervision of Square president and CEO Jun Iwasaki. Under the terms of the agreement, Electronic Arts owned 30 percent of Square EA, and Square owned 30 percent of EA Square.
Square EA proved to be very successful, and during its five years of existence released a higher proportion of localized Square titles to the American market than ever before. EA Square, on the other hand, was somewhat less successful, and struggled to make an impact on the Asian video game market. During its five-year run, EA Square handled the Japanese releases of games such as "", "Quake III: Team Arena", "SSX" and its sequel "SSX Tricky", and various video games based on the "Star Wars" franchise. EA Square had also developed a game, "X-Squad", which was released for the PlayStation 2 during its launch.
Following the announcement of the merger between Square and former competitor Enix in 2003, Square purchased back Electronic Arts' stake in Square EA, and folded it back into Square Soft, Inc., its North American subsidiary, which was subsequently renamed Square Enix U.S.A., Inc. (now Square Enix, Inc.) and continues to publish Square Enix's titles in North America. Conversely, EA did the same with Square's stake in EA Square, which was subsequently renamed Electronic Arts K.K., and continues to publish EA's titles in Japan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28355 |
Symplectic manifold
In differential geometry, a subject of mathematics, a symplectic manifold is a smooth manifold, formula_1, equipped with a closed nondegenerate differential 2-form formula_2, called the symplectic form. The study of symplectic manifolds is called symplectic geometry or symplectic topology. Symplectic manifolds arise naturally in abstract formulations of classical mechanics and analytical mechanics as the cotangent bundles of manifolds. For example, in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics, which provides one of the major motivations for the field, the set of all possible configurations of a system is modeled as a manifold, and this manifold's cotangent bundle describes the phase space of the system.
Symplectic manifolds arise from classical mechanics; in particular, they are a generalization of the phase space of a closed system. In the same way the Hamilton equations allow one to derive the time evolution of a system from a set of differential equations, the symplectic form should allow one to obtain a vector field describing the flow of the system from the differential "dH" of a Hamiltonian function "H". So we require a linear map , or equivalently, an element of . Letting "ω" denote a section of , the requirement that "ω" be non-degenerate ensures that for every differential "dH" there is a unique corresponding vector field "VH" such that . Since one desires the Hamiltonian to be constant along flow lines, one should have , which implies that "ω" is alternating and hence a 2-form. Finally, one makes the requirement that "ω" should not change under flow lines, i.e. that the Lie derivative of "ω" along "VH" vanishes. Applying Cartan's formula, this amounts to (here formula_3 is the interior product):
so that, on repeating this argument for different smooth functions formula_5 such that the corresponding formula_6 span the tangent space at each point the argument is applied at, we see that the requirement for the vanishing Lie derivative along flows of formula_6 corresponding to arbitrary smooth formula_5 is equivalent to the requirement that "ω" should be closed.
A symplectic form on a smooth manifold formula_1 is a closed non-degenerate differential 2-form formula_2. Here, non-degenerate means that for every point formula_11, the skew-symmetric pairing on the tangent space formula_12 defined by formula_2 is non-degenerate. That is to say, if there exists an formula_14 such that formula_15 for all formula_16, then formula_17. Since in odd dimensions, skew-symmetric matrices are always singular, the requirement that formula_2 be nondegenerate implies that formula_1 has an even dimension. The closed condition means that the exterior derivative of formula_2 vanishes. A symplectic manifold is a pair formula_21 where formula_1 is a smooth manifold and formula_2 is a symplectic form. Assigning a symplectic form to formula_1 is referred to as giving formula_1 a symplectic structure.
There is a standard linear model, namely a symplectic vector space formula_26 Let formula_27 be a basis for formula_26 We define our symplectic form "ω" on this basis as follows:
In this case the symplectic form reduces to a simple quadratic form. If "In" denotes the "n" × "n" identity matrix then the matrix, Ω, of this quadratic form is given by the block matrix:
There are several natural geometric notions of submanifold of a symplectic manifold formula_21.
The most important case of the isotropic submanifolds is that of Lagrangian submanifolds. A Lagrangian submanifold is, by definition, an isotropic submanifold of maximal dimension, namely half the dimension of the ambient symplectic manifold. One major example is that the graph of a symplectomorphism in the product symplectic manifold is Lagrangian. Their intersections display rigidity properties not possessed by smooth manifolds; the Arnold conjecture gives the sum of the submanifold's Betti numbers as a lower bound for the number of self intersections of a smooth Lagrangian submanifold, rather than the Euler characteristic in the smooth case.
Let formula_41 have global coordinates labelled formula_42 Then, we can equip formula_43 with the canonical symplectic form
There is a standard Lagrangian submanifold given by formula_45. The form formula_37 vanishes on formula_47 because given any pair of tangent vectors formula_48 we have that formula_49 To elucidate, consider the case formula_50. Then, formula_51 and formula_52 Notice that when we expand this out
both terms we have a formula_54 factor, which is 0, by definition.
The cotangent bundle of a manifold is locally modeled on a space similar to the first example. It can be shown that we can glue these affine symplectic forms hence this bundle forms a symplectic manifold. A more non-trivial example of a Lagrangian submanifold is the zero section of the cotangent bundle of a manifold. For example, let
Then, we can present formula_56 as
where we are treating the symbols formula_58 as coordinates of formula_59 We can consider the subset where the coordinates formula_60 and formula_61, giving us the zero section. This example can be repeated for any manifold defined by the vanishing locus of smooth functions formula_62 and their differentials formula_63.
Another useful class of Lagrangian submanifolds can be found using Morse theory. Given a Morse function formula_64 and for a small enough formula_65 one can construct a Lagrangian submanifold given by the vanishing locus formula_66. For a generic morse function we have a Lagrangian intersection given by formula_67.
In the case of Kahler manifolds (or Calabi-Yau manifolds) we can make a choice formula_68 on formula_69 as a holomorphic n-form, where formula_70 is the real part and formula_71 imaginary. A Lagrangian submanifold formula_72 is called special if in addition to the above Lagrangian condition the restriction formula_71 to formula_72 is vanishing. In other words, the real part formula_70 restricted on formula_72 leads the volume form on formula_72. The following examples are known as special Lagrangian submanifolds,
The SYZ conjecture has been proved for special Lagrangian submanifolds but in general, it is open, and brings a lot of impacts to the study of mirror symmetry. see
A Lagrangian fibration of a symplectic manifold "M" is a fibration where all of the fibres are Lagrangian submanifolds. Since "M" is even-dimensional we can take local coordinates and by Darboux's theorem the symplectic form "ω" can be, at least locally, written as , where d denotes the exterior derivative and ∧ denotes the exterior product. Using this set-up we can locally think of "M" as being the cotangent bundle formula_78 and the Lagrangian fibration as the trivial fibration formula_79 This is the canonical picture.
Let "L" be a Lagrangian submanifold of a symplectic manifold ("K",ω) given by an immersion ("i" is called a Lagrangian immersion). Let give a Lagrangian fibration of "K". The composite is a Lagrangian mapping. The critical value set of "π" ∘ "i" is called a caustic.
Two Lagrangian maps and are called Lagrangian equivalent if there exist diffeomorphisms "σ", "τ" and "ν" such that both sides of the diagram given on the right commute, and "τ" preserves the symplectic form. Symbolically:
where "τ"∗"ω"2 denotes the pull back of "ω"2 by "τ". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28356 |
Sid James
Sidney James (born Solomon Joel Cohen; 8 May 1913 – 26 April 1976) was a British character and comic actor born into a Jewish family in South Africa.
Appearing in British films from 1947, he was cast in numerous small and supporting roles into the 1950s. In 1951 he starred alongside Alec Guinness in "The Lavender Hill Mob", ranked 17th out of the 100 best British films by the British Film Institute. His profile was raised as Tony Hancock's co-star in "Hancock's Half Hour", first in the radio series and later when it was adapted for television and ran from 1954 to 1960. Afterwards, he became known as a regular performer in the "Carry On" films, appearing in nineteen films of the series, with the top billing role in 17 (in the other two he was cast below Frankie Howerd). Meanwhile, his starring roles in television sitcoms continued for the rest of his life. He starred alongside Diana Coupland in the 1970s sitcom "Bless This House" until his death in 1976.
Remembered for a lascivious persona in the "Carry On" films, with the "Snopes" website describing him as "the grand old man of dirty laughter", he became known for his amiability in his later television work. Bruce Forsyth described him as "a natural at being natural".
On 26 April 1976, while touring in "The Mating Season", James suffered a heart attack while performing on stage at the Sunderland Empire Theatre; he died in hospital an hour later. Some, including comedian Les Dawson, claim to have seen the ghost of James at the theatre, and subsequently refused to appear at the theatre again.
James was born Solomon Joel Cohen on 8 May 1913, to Jewish parents in South Africa, later changing his name to Sidney Joel Cohen, and then Sidney James. His family lived on Hancock Street in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Upon moving to the UK later in life, he claimed various previous occupations, including diamond cutter, dance tutor and boxer; in reality, he had trained and worked as a hairdresser.
It was at a hairdressing salon in Kroonstad, Orange Free State, that he met his first wife. He married Berthe Sadie Delmont, known as Toots, on 12 August 1936 and they had a daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1937. His father-in-law, Joseph Delmont, a Johannesburg businessman, bought a hairdressing salon for James, but within a year he announced that he wanted to become an actor and joined the Johannesburg Repertory Players. Through this group, he gained work with the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Toots divorced him in 1940.
During the Second World War, he served as a lieutenant in an entertainment unit of the South African Army, and subsequently took up acting as a career. He moved to the United Kingdom in December 1946, financed by his service gratuity. According to rumour, Sid had an affair with the daughter of an important member of Johannesburg society; his decision to move away from South Africa was partly because he was "advised" to leave due to the possible controversy. Initially, he worked in repertory before being spotted for the nascent British post-war film industry.
James made his first credited film appearances in "Night Beat" and "Black Memory" (1947), both crime dramas. He played the alcoholic hero's barman in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Small Back Room" (1949).
His first major comedy role was in "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951): with Alfie Bass, he made up the bullion robbery gang headed by Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway. He also appeared in "Lady Godiva Rides Again" and "The Galloping Major", both films were released in 1951, and as Harry Hawkins in "The Titfield Thunderbolt" (1953), and also had a lead role in "The Wedding of Lilli Marlene".He featured in another Alec Guinness film, "Father Brown" (US: "The Detective", 1954) and in "Trapeze" (1956) as Harry the snake charmer, a circus film which was one of the most successful films of its year, and he played Master Henry in "Outlaw Money" (also 1956), an episode of "The Adventures of Robin Hood". James had a supporting part as a TV advertisement producer in Charlie Chaplin's "A King in New York", a non-comic supporting role as a journalist in the science-fiction film "Quatermass 2", and he performed in "Hell Drivers" (all 1957), a film with Stanley Baker. The next year, James starred with Miriam Karlin in "East End, West End" by Wolf Mankowitz, a half-hour comedy series for the ITV company Associated Rediffusion. Set within the Jewish community of London's East End, the series of six episodes was transmitted in February and March 1958, but plans for further episodes were abandoned after a disappointing response. For a while though, it had looked as if his commitment elsewhere might end his work with Tony Hancock, one of the most popular television comedians of the time.
In 1954, he had begun working with Tony Hancock in his BBC Radio series "Hancock's Half Hour". Having seen him in "The Lavender Hill Mob", it was the idea of Hancock's writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, to cast James. He played a character with his own name (but having the invented middle name Balmoral) who was a petty criminal and would usually manage to con Hancock in some way, although the character eventually ceased to be Hancock's adversary. With the exception of James, the other regular cast members of the radio series were dropped when the series made the transition to television. His part in the show now greatly increased and many viewers came to think of Hancock and James as a double act.
Feeling the format had become exhausted, Hancock decided to end his professional relationship with James at the end of the sixth television series in 1960. Although the two men remained friends, James was upset at his colleague's decision. The experience led to a shift away from the kind of roles for which he had become best known. He remained the lovable rogue but was keen to steer clear of criminal characters - in 1960 he turned down the part of Fagin in the original West End staging of "Oliver!" for that very reason. Galton and Simpson continued to write for both James and Hancock for a while, and the Sidney Balmoral James character resurfaced in the "Citizen James" (1960–1962) series. Sid James was now consistently taking the lead role in his television work. "Taxi!" (1963–64) was his next series. A comedy-drama rather than a sitcom, it was created by Ted Willis, but although it ran to two series, the programme was not particularly successful.
In 1964, he made his first of two appearances on the Eamonn Andrews' Show. The first few moments of the opening credits of one of them can be heard and seen in the television show "Undermined", Episode 6, "Intent to Kill", broadcast on 12 June 1965. His name is heard announced, and the show is seen on a television camera seconds later.
James became a leading member of the "Carry On" films team, originally to replace Ted Ray, who had appeared in "Carry On Teacher" (1959). It had been intended that Ray would become a recurring presence in the "Carry On" series, but he was dropped after just one film because of contractual problems. James ultimately made 19 "Carry On" films, receiving top-billing in 17, making him one of the most featured performers of the regular cast.
The characters he portrayed in the films were usually very similar to the wise-cracking, sly, lecherous Cockney he was famed for playing on television, and in most cases they bore the name Sid or Sidney, examples being, Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond in "Carry On Up the Khyber" and Sid Boggle in "Carry On Camping".
His trademark "dirty laugh" was often used and became, along with a world-weary "Cor, blimey!", his catchphrase. His laugh can be heard here . (Similarly, other regular members of the Carry On cast abbreviated their real first names in the films: Bernard Bresslaw was Bernie and Barbara Windsor Babs.)
There were "Carry On" films in which James played characters who were not called Sid or Sidney: "Carry On Constable" (1960), in which he played Sergeant Frank Wilkins; "Carry On Henry" (1971), a parody of the TV series "The Six Wives of Henry VIII"; "Carry On Abroad" (1972), in which James's character was named Vic Flange; and "Carry On Dick" (1974), a parody version of the legend of the highwayman Dick Turpin. In "Henry" and "Dick", James played the title roles, while in "Carry On Cleo" he played Mark Antony. In "Carry On Cowboy" (1965), he adopted an American accent for his part as "The Rumpo Kid". According to Adrian Rigelsford:
The cast make valiant attempts to maintain American accents, with the most convincing belonging to—surprisingly—Sid James, who made no attempt to disguise his accent in any other film, either before or after this one.
Rigelsford was mistaken, however, as James had previously played an American (with an American accent) in the films "Give Us This Day" (1949), "Orders Are Orders" (1954), "A Yank in Ermine" (1955), "Wicked as They Come" (1956), Chaplin's "A King in New York" (1957) and "Another Time, Another Place" (1958).
In 1967, James was intending to play Sergeant Nocker in "Follow That Camel", but was already committed to recording the TV series "George and the Dragon" (1966–1968) for ATV, then one of the ITV contractors. James was replaced in "Follow That Camel" by the American comic actor Phil Silvers. On 13 May 1967, two weeks after the filming began of what eventually became an entry in the "Carry On" series, James suffered a severe heart attack. In the same year in "Carry On Doctor", James was shown mainly lying in a hospital bed, owing to his real-life health problems. After his heart attack, James gave up his heavy cigarette habit and instead smoked a pipe or an occasional cigar; he lost weight, ate only one main meal a day, and limited himself to two or three alcoholic drinks per evening.
Meanwhile, his success in TV situation comedy continued with the series "Two in Clover" (1969–70), and "Bless This House" (1971–1976) as Sid Abbott, a successful enough series in its day to spawn its own film version in 1972.
On 26 April 1976, while on a revival tour of "The Mating Season", a 1969 farce by the Northern Irish playwright Sam Cree, James suffered a heart attack on stage at the Sunderland Empire Theatre. Actress Olga Lowe thought that he was playing a practical joke at first when he failed to reply to her dialogue. When he failed to reply to her ad libs, she moved towards the wings to seek help. The technical manager, Melvyn James, called for the curtain to close and requested a doctor, while the audience – who were unaware of what was happening – laughed, believing the events to be part of the show. He was taken to the Sunderland Royal Hospital by ambulance, but was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 62.
James was cremated and his ashes were scattered at Golders Green Crematorium.
James married three times. He and his first wife, Berthe Sadie Delmont, were married in 1936 and a daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1937; they were divorced in 1940, mainly as a result of his many relationships with other women.
In 1943, he married a dancer, Meg Sergei, née Williams (born 1913); in 1948, they had a daughter Reina; they were divorced on 17 August 1952.
On 21 August 1952, James married Valerie Elizabeth Patsy Assan (born 1928), an actress who used Ashton as her stage name. They had a son, Steve James, born in 1954, who is now a music producer, and a daughter, Sue, who is a television producer. During the latter part of their marriage, they lived in a house partly designed by James himself, called Delaford Park, situated in Iver, Buckinghamshire, a location close enough to Pinewood Studios to allow him to return home for lunch while filming. During his marriage to Valerie, he had a well-publicised affair with "Carry On" co-star Barbara Windsor lasting more than 10 years. The affair was dramatised in the 1998 stage-play "Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick" and its 2000 television adaptation "Cor, Blimey!". James's obsession with Windsor was such that it was rumoured that her then husband Ronnie Knight had all of James's furniture rearranged at home as a subtle threat and, on another occasion, that he had put an axe in James's floor, but close friends of the time, including Vince Powell and William G. Stewart, have dismissed the suggestions.
James was an inveterate and largely unsuccessful gambler, losing tens of thousands of pounds over his lifetime. His gambling addiction was such that he had an agreement with his agent, Michael Sullivan, under which his wife was not told how much he was being paid, so that a portion could be set aside for gambling.
James has been the subject of at least five tribute shows: a 1996 one-off tribute, "The Very Best of Sid James"; as the focus of a 2000 episode of the series "The Unforgettable"; a 2002 episode of "Heroes of Comedy"; Channel Four's "With Out Walls, Seriously Seeking Sid" in the late 1980s; and in 2013, the BBC's "The Many Faces Of Sid James".
In August 2018 it was announced that a radio interview which James had recorded for BBC Radio Solent on 22 March 1976 had been re-discovered during research for a forthcoming BBC radio documentary celebrating the "Carry On" film series. The recording had been kept by BBC presenter Jeff Link, who had carried out the original interview. In the interview, James discusses his attempts to keep fit by skipping, his preference for working in films, his genuine affection for the "Carry On" films, and other topics. The interview is notable for its relaxed, humorous style. The producer of the forthcoming BBC "Carry On" documentary, Richard Latto, contacted James's surviving daughters after confirming the recording's authenticity. Reina James commented: "To hear him talking just before he's about to die.. there's something hugely moving about that". Sue James called the interview "lovely and sympathetic". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28360 |
Freight transport
Freight transport is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it has been extended to refer to transport by land or air (International English: "carriage") as well. "Logistics", a term borrowed from the military environment, is also used in the same sense.
In 2015, 108 trillion tonne-kilometers were transported worldwide (anticipated to grow by 3.4% per year until 2050): 70% by sea, 18% by road, 9% by rail, 2% by inland waterways and less than 0.25% by air.
Land or "ground" shipping can be made by train or by truck (British English: lorry). In air and sea shipments, ground transport is required to take the cargo from its place of origin to the airport or seaport and then to its destination because it is not always possible to establish a production facility near ports due to the limited coastlines of countries. Ground transport is typically more affordable than air, but more expensive than sea, especially in developing countries, where inland infrastructure may not be efficient.
Shipment of cargo by trucks, directly from the shipper's place to the destination, is known as a door-to-door shipment, or more formally as multimodal transport. Trucks and trains make deliveries to sea and airports where cargo is moved in bulk.
Much freight transport is done by ships. An individual nation's fleet and the people that crew it are referred to as its merchant navy or merchant marine. Merchant shipping is the lifeblood of the world economy, carrying 90% of international trade with 102,194 commercial ships worldwide. On rivers and canals, barges are often used to carry bulk cargo.
Cargo is transported by air in specialized cargo aircraft and in the luggage compartments of passenger aircraft. Air freight is typically the fastest mode for long-distance freight transport, but it is also the most expensive.
Intermodal freight transport refers to shipments that involve more than one mode. More specifically it usually refers to the use of intermodal shipping containers that are easily transferred between ship, rail, plane and truck.
For example, a shipper works together with both ground and air transportation to ship an item overseas. Intermodal freight transport is used to plan the route and carry out the shipping service from the manufacturer to the door of the recipient.
Common trading terms used in shipping goods internationally include:
Door-to-door shipping is a service provided by many international shipping companies. The quoted price of this service includes all shipping, handling, import and customs duties, making it a hassle-free option for customers to import goods from one jurisdiction to another. This is compared to standard shipping, the price of which typically includes only the expenses incurred by the shipping company in transferring the object from one place to another. Customs fees, import taxes and other tariffs may contribute substantially to this base price before the item ever arrives. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28362 |
Sidon
Sidon, known locally as Sayda or Saida (), is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate, of which it is the capital, on the Mediterranean coast. Tyre to the south and Lebanese capital Beirut to the north are both about away. Sidon has a population of about 80,000 within city limits, while its metropolitan area has more than a quarter-million inhabitants.
The Phoenician name "Ṣīdūn" (, ) probably meant "fishery" or "fishing town". It is mentioned in Papyrus Anastasi I as Djedouna. It appears in Biblical Hebrew as "Ṣīḏōn" () and in Syriac as "Ṣidon" (). This was Hellenised as "Sidṓn" (), which was Latinised as "". The name appears in Classical Arabic as "Ṣaydūn" () and in Modern Arabic as "Ṣaydā" ().
As a Roman colony, it was notionally refounded and given the formal name "" to honour its imperial sponsor.
In the Book of Genesis, Sidon was the first-born son of Canaan, who was a son of Ham, thereby making Sidon a great-grandson of Noah.
In the years before Christianity, Sidon had many conquerors: Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and finally Romans. Herod the Great visited Sidon. Both Jesus and Saint Paul are said to have visited it, too (see "Biblical Sidon" below). The city was eventually conquered by the Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks.
Sidon has been inhabited since very early in prehistory. The archaeological site of Sidon II shows a lithic assemblage dating to the Acheulean, whilst finds at Sidon III include a Heavy Neolithic assemblage suggested to date just prior to the invention of pottery.
It was one of the most important Phoenician cities, and it may have been the oldest. From there and other ports a great Mediterranean commercial empire was founded. Homer praised the skill of its craftsmen in producing glass, purple dyes, and its women's skill at the art of embroidery. It was also from here that a colonising party went to found the city of Tyre. Tyre also grew into a great city, and in subsequent years there was competition between the two, each claiming to be the metropolis ('Mother City') of Phoenicia. Glass manufacturing, Sidon's most important enterprise in the Phoenician era, was conducted on a vast scale, and the production of purple dye was almost as important. The small shell of the Murex trunculus was broken in order to extract the pigment that was so rare it became the mark of royalty. In AD 1855, the sarcophagus of King Eshmun’azar II was discovered. From a Phoenician inscription on its lid, it appears that he was a "king of the Sidonians," probably in the 5th century BC, and that his mother was a priestess of ‘Ashtart, "the goddess of the Sidonians." In this inscription the gods Eshmun and Ba‘al Sidon 'Lord of Sidon' (who may or may not be the same) are mentioned as chief gods of the Sidonians. ‘Ashtart is entitled "‘Ashtart-Shem-Ba‘al" '‘Ashtart the name of the Lord', a title also found in an Ugaritic text. At the end of the Persian era, in 351 BC, Phoenicia was invaded by Artaxerxes III.
Like other Phoenician city-states, Sidon suffered from a succession of conquerors. and then by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, when the Hellenistic era of Sidon began. Under the successors of Alexander, it enjoyed relative autonomy and organised games and competitions in which the greatest athletes of the region participated. In the Hellenistic-period necropolis of Sidon, important finds such as the Alexander Sarcophagus, the Lycian tomb and the Sarcophagus of the Crying Women were discovered, which are now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.
When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins. The Romans also built a theater and other major monuments in the city. In the reign of Elagabalus, a Roman colony was established there. During the Byzantine period, when the great earthquake of AD 551 destroyed most of the cities of Phoenice, Beirut's School of Law took refuge in Sidon. The town continued quietly for the next century, until it was conquered by the Arabs in AD 636.
On 4 December 1110, Sidon was captured after the siege of Sidon, a decade after the First Crusade, by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem and King Sigurd I of Norway. It then became the centre of the Lordship of Sidon, an important vassal-state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin captured it from the Crusaders in 1187, but German Crusaders restored it to Christian control in the Crusade of 1197. It would remain an important Crusader stronghold until it was finally destroyed by the Ayyubids in 1249. In 1260 it was again destroyed by the Mongols. The remains of the original walls are still visible.
After Sidon came under Ottoman Turkish rule in the early 16th century, it became the capital of the Sidon Eyalet (province) and regained a great deal of its earlier commercial importance.
During the Egyptian–Ottoman War, Sidon - like much of Ottoman Syria - was occupied by the forces of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. His ambitions were opposed by the British Empire, which backed the Ottomans. The British Admiral Charles Napier, commanding a mixed squadron of British, Turkish and Austrian ships, bombarded Sidon on September 26, 1840, and landed with the storming column. Sidon capitulated in two days, and the British went on to Acre. This action was recalled in two Royal Navy vessels being named "HMS Sidon".
After World War I it became part of the French Mandate of Lebanon. During World War II the city, together with the rest of Lebanon, was captured by British forces fighting against the Vichy French, and following the war it became a major city of independent Lebanon.
Following the Palestinian exodus in 1948, a considerable number of Palestinian refugees arrived in Sidon, as in other Lebanese cities, and were settled at the large refugee camps of Ein el-Hilweh and Mieh Mieh. At first these consisted of enormous rows of tents, but gradually houses were constructed. The refugee camps constituted de facto neighborhoods of Sidon, but had a separate legal and political status which made them into a kind of enclaves. At the same time, the remaining Jews of the city fled, and the Jewish cemetery fell into disrepair, threatened by coastal erosion.
Sidon was a small fishing town of 10,000 inhabitants in 1900, but studies in 2000 showed a population of 65,000 in the city, and around 200,000 in the metropolitan area. The little level land around the city is used for cultivation of some wheat, vegetables, and fruits, especially citrus and bananas. The fishing in the city remains active with a newly opened fishery that sells fresh fish by bidding every morning. The ancient basin was transformed into a fishing port, while a small quay was constructed to receive small commercial vessels. (Refer to the "Old City" and the "Architecture and Landscape" sections below).
Saida International Stadium was inaugurated in 2000 for the Asian Football Confederation's Cup 2000.
This sectarian and demographic division rose to the surface during the Lebanese Civil War, when armed clashes erupted between the pro-Palestinian Sunni Muslims and the anti-Palestinian and pro-Israel Christians. The clashes ended with the surrender of the Christian front, and the Christians were forced to move to east Beirut. After the war ended in 1990, the Christians have gradually returned to their hometowns and in the year 2000 many fled to Israel.
The local politics of Sidon in the 20th century was mainly dominated up till the 1980s by allegiances around two main families, the El-Bizri and Saad. The El-Bizri politicians were known for their business connections, close ties with eminent Lebanese and Levantine leaders, and their bent on serving the Lebanese state as government ministers, officials and mayors. The Saad politicians tended to be populist and became engaged in violent protests in the 1940s, 1950s and then during the Lebanese civil war as Nasserites (populist followers of Nasser in Lebanon).
The local political conflict between these two families was always resolved through amicable means and ties of kinship. Their hold over the political aspects of the city was similar to that of Mediterranean families in Sicily or to being also influenced by the ties of Arab families, clans, and tribes in traditionalist forms. The most notable figures of the El-Bizri family in the first half of the 20th century were: Ahmad El-Bizri (born 1899), Salah El-Bizri, Eizeddine El-Bizri (commonly known as Eizzo) and Anwar El-Bizri (born 1910). These four brothers were businessmen and politicians who dominated the political life of the city up till the late 1940s, using traditional inherited forms of governance since Ottoman times. With intelligence and strength they maintained their power for over 50 years. It is from their ranks that Maarouf Saad started his public life, and their close cousins, Nazih El-Bizri, Amin El-Bizri, and Fouad El-Bizri became the next generation of politicians and statesmen in Lebanon; holding positions as ministers and members of parliament.
The El-Bizri and the Saad political practices were bent on social justice and on local service in public affairs. The El-Bizri were since the Ottoman rule bent on serving the state, and this continued with their loyalty and support to the successive governments of Lebanon since the times of independence. They also helped eminent politicians and statesmen from Sidonian descent such as the Prime Ministers Riad Solh, Taki El-Din Solh and Rashid Solh, they also gave their support to former Prime Minister Saab Salam, father of the current Lebanese prime minister, Tamam Salam. The presence of the El-Bizris was at times intimidating on the local scene, but they were also known for their goodwill and dignified public service.
The Saad family developed their links with Nasserism in the 1950s and engaged in the uprising and armed protest of 1958 against the government of the Lebanese President Chamoun. They also became involved in the civil war as part of the left wing politics of the Lebanon (Al-Haraka al-Wataniyya) with PLO connections, and they actively contributed to resisting the Israeli occupation after 1982. The Saads remained populist in their politics and focused on the grassroots, while the El-Bizri were generally appealing to the middle and upper classes. In the middle 1980s, the Hariri family started to rise to prominence and it became the most influential in Sidon in political and financial terms, even though the presence of the Saad and the El-Bizri in local politics remained significant at the level of visibility and activism.
The politics of Sidon is similar to that of the traditional old cities of the Levant in the sense of being family-based. In broad terms one could say that the El-Bizri family had an influence since Ottoman times, and most significantly during the entirety of the 20th century. It was local in impact at first, but then the members of this family became influential within the Lebanese state and institutions, and they supported the Solh family that had successive Prime Ministers and that moved its power base from Sidon to Beirut. The Saad family developed its original politics from within the sphere of influence of the El-Bizri family and then became a power to reckon with on its own after 1948, and most powerfully in 1958, then in the civil war and up till today.
Maarouf Saad, the leader of his family, and a local influential politician, was assassinated at the eve of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. The Saads retained their populism and grassroots appeal, and attracted a core of loyal adherents since the middle of the 20th century. While the El-Bizri were Levantine in their Arabism (namely focused mainly on Bilad al-Shaam in regional politics), and the Solh being also similar to them in this, the Saad were leaning more towards a broader pan-Arabism (Nasserite, Libyan, and then Syrian). As for the Hariri family, they are regionally focused on Saudi orientations in politics. The Hariri family started to rise to political and economic prominence in the 1980s and became perhaps the most influential family in Lebanon by the middle 1990s. It is now one of the most organised in political terms and it follows modern forms of political practice through a large party (Future Movement) that cuts across various economic classes but that is usually seen as a Sunni political movement with regional weight due to its close ties with Saudi Arabia.
According to a recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report "data also point to an increase in urban poverty especially in Lebanon's largest cities suburbs such as Beirut, Tripoli and Saida, as illustrated by poverty-driven symptoms (child labour, over-crowding and deteriorated environment conditions)."
In another UNDP report, the author discusses the development predominance of Beirut over the rest of the regions of Lebanon (North, South and Beqaa) is a well-known imbalance that can be dated to the early 19th century. With the expansion of Beirut in the 1870s, urban growth in the future capital-city outgrew Tripoli and Saida. Transportation routes, missionary schools, universities and hospitals as well as the Beirut port development and the commerce of silk participated to the fortification of Beirut as a major trade center for Mediterranean exchange (ARNAUD 1993; LABAKI 1999: 23). However, the establishment of Great Lebanon in 1920, under the French mandate, added the poorer areas of the North (Akkar), Beqaa (Baalbak-Hermel) and the South (Jabal Aamel) to the relatively affluent cities of Mount Lebanon. This addition made of Lebanon a country composed of unequally developed regions. This legacy remains a heavy load to bear socially, culturally, economically and politically. Even though the public policies elaborated by the young Lebanese State were attempting to have regional perspectives, the early urban planning schemes reveal a development approach exclusively axed on Beirut and its suburbs.
The post war development policy of the State, promoted by Hariri government (1992–1998), was centred around balanced development and is widely inspired by the 1943 Pact and the 1989 Taef agreement (LABAKI1993: 104). However the application of this policy aims mainly at the rehabilitation and construction of roads and infrastructures (electricity, telephone, sewage). Another of its components is the rehabilitation of government buildings (airport, port, schools, universities and hospitals). Transportation projects (mainly concentrated on the coastal line) constitute 25% of the budget of 10-year economic plan developed by the CDR (BAALBAKI 1994: 90). However, all these projects are predominantly concentrated around Beirut, ignoring the regions.
Near the southern entrance to the city used to be a 'rubbish mountain' called at the time by the locals the "Makab"; namely, a 600,000 cubic metre heap that reached the height of a four-story building. It was originally created to dispose of the remains of buildings destroyed in Israeli air strikes during the 1982 invasion, but it then became the main dump for the city. Growing out of the sea, it became an environmental hazard, with medical waste and plastic bags polluting nearby fishing grounds.
Sidon politicians, including the Hariri family, failed for decades to resolve the "Makab" crisis—which has endangered residents health (especially during episodic burning). In 2004, Engineer Hamzi Moghrabi, a Sidon native, conceived the idea to establish a treatment plant for the City's decades-old chronic waste problem. He established the privately funded IBC Enviro and the treatment plant became operational in 2013.
The Ministry of Environment came up with a $50,000+ plan to clean the whole area and transform the dump into a green space, along with other heaps in the country. Qamla beach in Sidon, a coast in close proximity to the Sea Castle, witnessed a large municipal cleanup in May 2011, as it was an easy target of rubbish being washed up by the Makab. These plans aim to revive the former glory of the city's coasts and attract tourists who avoided swimming in Sidon's sea before. The project of cleaning the region where the waste dump has already started, and currently a waves-barrier is being built, and the vast bulk of the waste dump being cleared.
The city of Sidon is administrated by the Municipality of Sidon. The municipality is constituted of a council of 21 members including the City Mayor and his Deputy. It has administrative and financial independence but remains under the control and supervision of the central government, specifically the Ministry of Interior. The municipality's jurisdiction is limited to a region of 786 hectares in area and 5 meters in elevation, while each of the city's suburbs is administrated by its own independent municipal council. Sidon is the center of the Governorate of South Lebanon, and hosts the seat of the Governor of Southern Lebanon. The city is also the center of the Sidon District and the Union of Sidon and Zahrani Municipalities (founded in 1978 and contains 15 municipalities). Sidon hosts the southern regional headquarters of a series of governmental facilities like the Central Bank of Lebanon, Électricité du Liban, Central Telecommunications Station and others. It is also the home of the Justice Palace of South Lebanon in its new headquarters on East Boulevard (the old headquarters were an old Ottoman Saray that is currently occupied by the LSF and is planned to be transformed into a cultural center by the municipality).
In the 2000 and 2005 parliamentary elections, the Sidon District along with the Tyre and Bint Jbeil districts formed the first electoral district of South Lebanon. However, in the 2009 elections – and due to the reactivation of the 1960 electoral law – the city of Sidon was separated from its district to form a separate electoral district.
Sidon is the seat of the Greek Melkite Catholic Archbishop of Sidon and Deir el Qamar, and has housed a significant Catholic population throughout its history. Sidon also hosts the seat of the Shiite Ayatollah of South Lebanon.
In the 1930s, when Lebanon was still under the French mandate, Sidon had the largest Jewish population in Lebanon, estimated at 3,588, compared to 3,060 in Beirut.
Sidon is home to numerous educational facilities ranging from public elementary schools to private universities. According to a 2006 study, the city is home to 29 schools that serve a total of 18,731 students: 37% are in public schools, 63% are in private schools. Sidon also contains 10 universities, 5 of which are private universities.
Sidon I is an archaeological site located to the east of the city, south of the road to Jezzine. An assemblage of flint tools was found by P. E. Gigues suggested to date between 3800 and 3200 BC. The collection included narrow axes or chisels that were polished on one side and flaked on the other, similar to ones found at Ain Cheikh, Nahr Zahrani and Gelal en Namous. The collection appears to have gone missing from the Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut.
Sidon II is said to be "near the church" at approximately fifty meters above sea level. P. E. Gigues suggested that the industry found on the surface of this site dated to the Acheulean.
Sidon III was found by E. Passemard in the 1920s, who made a collection of material that is now in the National Museum of Beirut marked "Camp de l'Aviation". It includes large flint and chert bifacials that may be of Heavy Neolithic origin.
Sidon IV is the tell mound of ancient Sidon with Early Bronze Age (3200 BC -) deposits, now located underneath the ruined Saint Louis Castle and what are also thought to be the ruins of a Roman theatre.
In indication of the high-profile of the old city of Sidon in archaeological expeditions, and mainly in the 19th century, in October 1860 the famous French scholar Ernest Renan was entrusted with an archaeological mission to Lebanon, which included the search for the antique parts of Sidon. The Phoenician inscriptions that he discovered, and his field data, were eventually published in his notebook the: "Mission de Phénicie" (1864–1874; "Phoenician Expedition").
The St. Louis land-castle grounds were excavated in 1914–1920 by a French team. Then eastwards a new site was also excavated by another generation of French expeditions in the 1960s. This same site received renewed attention in 1998 when the Directorate General of Antiquities in Lebanon authorised the British Museum to begin excavations on this area of land that was specifically demarcated for archaeological research. This has resulted in published papers, with a special focus on studying ceramics.
The archaeological fieldwork was not fully undertaken since the independence of the Lebanon. The main finds are displayed in the National Museum in Beirut. The fieldwork was also interrupted during the long civil war period, and it is now resumed but at a timid and slow scale, and not involving major international expeditions or expertise. Perhaps this is also indicative of the general lack in cultural interests among the authorities of this city, and almost of the non-existence of notable intellectual activities in its modern life. There are signs that the locals are beginning to recognise the value of the medieval quarters, but this remains linked to minor individual initiatives and not a coordinated collective effort to rehabilitate it like it has been the case with Byblos, even though the old district of Sidon contains a great wealth in old and ancient architecture.
The Bible describes Sidon ( "Tsīdōn") in several passages:
Sidon is twinned with:
Chronological list.
Ahmad El Bizri,
Salah-Eddine El Bizri (Mayor of Sidon from 1937 till 1951. Member of Parliament from 1951 till 1953),
Ezzedine El Bizri,
Anwar El Bizri. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28366 |
Spam (food)
Spam (stylized as SPAM) is a brand of canned cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation. It was introduced by Hormel in 1937 and gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II. By 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries on six continents and trademarked in over 100 countries (excluding Middle East and North Africa due to it being haram). Spam's basic ingredients are pork with ham added, salt, water, modified potato starch (as a binder), sugar, and sodium nitrite (as a preservative). Natural gelatin is formed during cooking in its tins on the production line. Many have raised concerns over Spam's nutritional attributes, in large part due to its high content of fat, sodium, and preservatives.
It has become the subject of a number of appearances in pop culture, notably a Monty Python sketch which repeated the name many times, which led to its name being borrowed for unsolicited electronic messages, especially email.
Spam was introduced by Hormel on July 5, 1937. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America states that the product was intended to increase the sale of pork shoulder which was not a very popular cut. Ken Daigneau, brother of a company executive, won a $100 prize that year in a competition to name the new item. Hormel claims that the meaning of the name "is known by only a small circle of former Hormel Foods executives", but popular beliefs are that the name is an abbreviation of "spiced ham".
The difficulty of delivering fresh meat to the front during World War II saw Spam become a ubiquitous part of the U.S. soldier's diet. It became variously referred to as "ham that didn't pass its physical", "meatloaf without basic training", and "Special Army Meat". Over of Spam were purchased by the military before the war's end.
During World War II and the occupations which followed, Spam was introduced into Guam, Hawaii, Okinawa, the Philippines, and other islands in the Pacific. Immediately absorbed into native diets, it has become a unique part of the history and effects of U.S. influence in the Pacific islands.
As a consequence of World War II rationing and the Lend-Lease Act, Spam also gained prominence in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher later referred to it as a "wartime delicacy". In addition to increasing production for the U.K., Hormel expanded Spam output as part of Allied aid to the similarly beleaguered Soviet Union. In his memoir "Khrushchev Remembers", Nikita Khrushchev declared: "Without Spam we wouldn't have been able to feed our army." Throughout the war, countries ravaged by the conflict and faced with strict food rations came to appreciate Spam.
The billionth can of Spam was sold in 1959, the seven billionth can was sold in 2007, and the eight billionth can was sold in 2012.
Domestically, Spam's chief advantages were affordability, accessibility, and extended shelf life. Statistics from the 1990s say that 3.8 cans of Spam were consumed every second in the United States, totaling nearly 122 million cans annually. It became part of the diet of almost 30% of American households, perceived differently in various regions of the country. It is also sometimes associated with economic hardship because of its relatively low cost.
Spam that is sold in North America, South America, and Australia is produced in Austin, Minnesota (also known as "Spam Town USA") and in Fremont, Nebraska. Austin, Minnesota also had a restaurant with a menu devoted exclusively to Spam, called "Johnny's SPAMarama Menu".
Spam is especially popular in the state of Hawaii, where residents have the highest per capita consumption in the United States. Its perception there is very different from on the mainland. Hawaiians sometimes call it "Portagee Steak".
A popular local dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, where cooked Spam is placed atop rice and wrapped in a band of nori, a form of "onigiri".
Varieties of Spam are found in Hawaii that are unavailable in other markets, including Honey Spam, Spam with Bacon, and Hot and Spicy Spam.
Hawaiian Burger King restaurants began serving Spam in 2007 to compete with the local McDonald's chains (which also serve Spam). In Hawaii, Spam is so popular that it is sometimes referred to as "The Hawaiian Steak". There is even an annual Spam-themed festival on the island of Oahu that takes place every spring, known as the "Waikiki Spam Jam". Local chefs and restaurants compete to create new Spam-themed dishes, which are then sold in a massive street fair on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.
In 2017, Hawaii was plagued by a rash of thefts of Spam. Spam had long been a target of thieves in Hawaii, but the magnitude of the thefts ramped up, with incidents in which multiple cases of Spam were stolen at once. Local retailers believe organized crime was involved. This came alongside increases in thefts of some other retail goods, such as corned beef and liquor. The president of the retail merchants of Hawaii attributed the rise in retail thefts to a recent change in criminal law, which raised the threshold at which a theft would lead to felony charges by approximately $400.
In Guam, average per capita consumption is 16 tins (cans) per year. It is also found on McDonald's menus there. The "Spam Games" also takes place in Guam, where locals sample and honor the best original, homemade Spam recipes.
In the Northern Mariana Islands, lawyers from Hormel have threatened to sue the local press for publishing articles alleging ill-effects of high Spam consumption on the health of the local population.
Sandwich de Mezcla is a party staple in Puerto Rico containing Spam, Velveeta, and pimientos (made into a spread) between two slices of sandwich bread.
After World War II, Newforge Foods, part of the Fitch Lovell group, was awarded the licence to produce the product in the UK at its Gateacre factory, Liverpool, where it stayed until production switched to the Danish Crown Group (owners of the Tulip Food Company) in 1998.
The United Kingdom has adopted Spam into various recipes. For example, recipes include Spam Yorkshire Breakfast, Spamish Omelette, and Spam Hash. Spam can also be sliced, battered and deep-fried into Spam fritters.
In the Philippines, Spam (currently distributed by The Purefoods-Hormel Company Inc.) is a popular food item and seen as a cultural symbol. As a former US territory, Spam reached the islands similar to how it reached Hawaii and Guam: as a result of World War II rationing. Spam is commonly eaten with rice (usually garlic fried rice) and a sunny-side up egg for breakfast. It is prepared and used in a variety of ways, including being fried, served alongside condiments, or used in sandwiches. It has also been featured in numerous Filipino fusion cuisine dishes including Spam burgers, Spam spaghetti, Spam nuggets, and others.
The popularity of Spam in the Philippines transcends economic class, and Spam gift sets are even used as homecoming gifts. There are at least ten different varieties of Spam currently available in the country and an estimated 1.25 million kilos of the meat is sold every year in the Philippines. During the rescue efforts after Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) in 2009, Hormel Foods donated over 30,000 pounds of Spam to the Philippine National Red Cross.
In China, Hormel decided to adopt a different strategy to market Spam, promoting it as a foreign, premium food product and changing the Spam formula to be meatier in order to accommodate local Chinese tastes.
In Hong Kong after World War II, meat was scarce and expensive, so Spam was an accessible, affordable alternative. The luncheon meat has been incorporated into dishes such as macaroni with fried egg and spam in chicken soup, as well as ramen.
In Okinawa, Japan, the product is added into onigiri alongside eggs and used as a staple ingredient in the traditional Okinawan dish "chanpurū", and a Spam burger is sold by local fast food chain Jef. For the 70th anniversary of Spam in 2007, cans with special designs were sold in Japan due to its popularity, primarily in Okinawa.
Following the March 2011 earthquake, Spam sales in Japan declined and Hormel shifted its focus to China, although Hormel did pledge to donate $100,000 along with cans of Spam for relief efforts.
In early 2014, Burger King introduced the Spam and Cheese burger as a breakfast menu item.
In later years, the surfeit of Spam in both North and South Korea during the Korean War led to the establishment of the Spam "kimbap" (rice and vegetable filled seaweed roll). Because of a scarcity of fish and other traditional kimbap products such as kimchi or fermented cabbage, Spam was added to a rice roll with kimchi and cucumber and wrapped in seaweed. Spam was also used by US soldiers in Korea as a means of trading for items, services or information around their bases.
In South Korea, Spam (, licensed from Hormel by CJ CheilJedang) is popular with a majority of the population, and outranks Coca-Cola and KFC in status as a foodstuff. Today, South Korea produces and consumes more Spam than any other country except the United States. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28367 |
Spamming
Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send an unsolicited message (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, or for any prohibited purpose (especially the fraudulent purpose of phishing). While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish and where vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" over and over again.
Spamming remains economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, servers, infrastructures, IP ranges, and domain names, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the volume. Spamming has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
A person who creates spam is called a "spammer".
The term "spam" is derived from the 1970 "Spam" sketch of the BBC television comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus". The sketch, set in a cafe, has a waitress reading out a menu where every item but one includes Spam canned luncheon meat. As the waitress recites the Spam-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drown out all conversations with a song, repeating "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam… Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!". The excessive amount of Spam mentioned is a reference to the ubiquity of it and other imported canned meat products in the UK after World War II (a period of rationing in the UK) as the country struggled to rebuild its agricultural base.
In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "Spam" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. In early chat-room services like PeopleLink and the early days of Online America (later known as America Online or AOL), they actually flooded the screen with quotes from the Monty Python Spam sketch. This was used as a tactic by insiders of a group that wanted to drive newcomers out of the room so the usual conversation could continue. It was also used to prevent members of rival groups from chatting—for instance, "Star Wars" fans often invaded "Star Trek" chat rooms, filling the space with blocks of text until the "Star Trek" fans left.
It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many, if not all newsgroups, just as Spam appeared in all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch. The first usage of this sense was by Joel Furr This use had also become established—to "spam" Usenet was to flood newsgroups with junk messages. The word was also attributed to the flood of "Make Money Fast" messages that clogged many newsgroups during the 1990s. In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users."
There was also an effort to differentiate between types of newsgroup spam. Messages that were crossposted to too many newsgroups at once, as opposed to those that were posted too frequently, were called "velveeta" (after a cheese product), but this term did not persist.
In the late 19th century, Western Union allowed telegraphic messages on its network to be sent to multiple destinations. The first recorded instance of a mass unsolicited commercial telegram is from May 1864, when some British politicians received an unsolicited telegram advertising a dentist.
The earliest documented spam (although the term had not yet been coined) was a message advertising the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 recipients on ARPANET on May 3, 1978. Rather than send a separate message to each person, which was the standard practice at the time, he had an assistant, Carl Gartley, write a single mass email. Reaction from the net community was fiercely negative, but the spam did generate some sales.
Spamming had been practiced as a prank by participants in multi-user dungeon games, to fill their rivals' accounts with unwanted electronic junk.
The first major commercial spam incident started on March 5, 1994, when a husband and wife team of lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, began using bulk Usenet posting to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the "Green Card spam", after the subject line of the postings. Defiant in the face of widespread condemnation, the attorneys claimed their detractors were hypocrites or "zealouts", claimed they had a free speech right to send unwanted commercial messages, and labeled their opponents "anti-commerce radicals". The couple wrote a controversial book entitled "How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway".
An early example of nonprofit fundraising bulk posting via Usenet also occurred in 1994 on behalf of CitiHope, an NGO attempting to raise funds to rescue children at risk during the Bosnian War. However, as it was a violation of their terms of service, the ISP Panix deleted all of the bulk posts from Usenet, only missing three copies.
Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and anti-spam efforts) moved chiefly to email, where it remains today. By 1999, Khan C. Smith, a well known hacker at the time, had begun to commercialize the bulk email industry and rallied thousands into the business by building more friendly bulk email software and providing internet access illegally hacked from major ISPs such as Earthlink and Botnets.
By 2009 the majority of spam sent around the World was in the English language; spammers began using automatic translation services to send spam in other languages.
Email spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE), or junk mail, is the practice of sending unwanted email messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities. Spam in email started to become a problem when the Internet was opened for commercial use in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and by 2007 it constituted about 80% to 85% of all e-mail, by a conservative estimate. Pressure to make email spam illegal has resulted in legislation in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. The efforts taken by governing bodies, security systems and email service providers seem to be helping to reduce the volume of email spam. According to "2014 Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 19" published by Symantec Corporation, spam volume dropped to 66% of all email traffic.
An industry of email address harvesting is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases. Some of these address-harvesting approaches rely on users not reading the fine print of agreements, resulting in their agreeing to send messages indiscriminately to their contacts. This is a common approach in social networking spam such as that generated by the social networking site Quechup.
Instant messaging spam makes use of instant messaging systems. Although less prevalent than its e-mail counterpart, according to a report from Ferris Research, 500 million spam IMs were sent in 2003, twice the level of 2002.
Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups. Spamming of Usenet newsgroups actually pre-dates e-mail spam. Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, that is, the repeated posting of a message (or substantially similar messages). The prevalence of Usenet spam led to the development of the Breidbart Index as an objective measure of a message's "spamminess".
Forum spam is the creation of advertising messages on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots. Most forum spam consists of links to external sites, with the dual goals of increasing search engine visibility in highly competitive areas such as weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, and generating more traffic for these commercial websites. Some of these links contain code to track the spambot's identity; if a sale goes through, the spammer behind the spambot earns a commission.
Mobile phone spam is directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. This can be especially irritating to customers not only for the inconvenience, but also because of the fee they may be charged per text message received in some markets.
To comply with CAN-SPAM regulations in the US, SMS messages now must provide options of HELP and STOP, the latter to end communication with the advertiser via SMS altogether.
Despite the high number of phone users, there has not been so much phone spam, because there is a charge for sending SMS. Recently, there are also observations of mobile phone spam delivered via browser push notifications. These can be a result of allowing websites which are malicious or delivering malicious ads to send a user notifications.
Facebook and Twitter are not immune to messages containing spam links. Spammers hack into accounts and send false links under the guise of a user's trusted contacts such as friends and family. As for Twitter, spammers gain credibility by following verified accounts such as that of Lady Gaga; when that account owner follows the spammer back, it legitimizes the spammer.
Twitter has studied what interest structures allow their users to receive interesting tweets and avoid spam, despite the site using the broadcast model, in which all tweets from a user are broadcast to all followers of the user. Spammers, out of malicious intent, post either unwanted (or irrelevant) information or spread misinformation on social media platforms.
Spreading beyond the centrally managed social networking platforms, user-generated content increasingly appears on business, government, and nonprofit websites worldwide. Fake accounts and comments planted by computers programmed to issue social spam can infiltrate these websites.
Blog spam is spamming on weblogs. In 2003, this type of spam took advantage of the open nature of comments in the blogging software Movable Type by repeatedly placing comments to various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site.
Similar attacks are often performed against wikis and guestbooks, both of which accept user contributions.
Another possible form of spam in blogs is the spamming of a certain tag on websites such as Tumblr.
In actual video spam, the uploaded movie is given a name and description with a popular figure or event that is likely to draw attention, or within the video a certain image is timed to come up as the video's thumbnail image to mislead the viewer, such as a still image from a feature film, purporting to be a part-by-part piece of a movie being pirated, e.g. "Big Buck Bunny Full Movie Online - Part 1/10 HD", a link to a supposed keygen, trainer, ISO file for a video game, or something similar. The actual content of the video ends up being totally unrelated, a Rickroll, offensive, or simply on-screen text of a link to the site being promoted. In some cases, the link in question may lead to an online survey site, a password-protected archive file with instructions leading to the aforementioned survey (though the survey, and the archive file itself, is worthless and doesn't contain the file in question at all), or in extreme cases, malware. Others may upload videos presented in an infomercial-like format selling their product which feature actors and paid testimonials, though the promoted product or service is of dubious quality and would likely not pass the scrutiny of a standards and practices department at a television station or cable network.
VoIP spam is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) spam, usually using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). This is nearly identical to telemarketing calls over traditional phone lines. When the user chooses to receive the spam call, a pre-recorded spam message or advertisement is usually played back. This is generally easier for the spammer as VoIP services are cheap and easy to anonymize over the Internet, and there are many options for sending mass number of calls from a single location. Accounts or IP addresses being used for VoIP spam can usually be identified by a large number of outgoing calls, low call completion and short call length.
Academic search engines enable researchers to find academic literature and are used to obtain citation data for calculating performance metrics such as the H-index and impact factor. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and OvGU demonstrated that most (web-based) academic search engines, especially Google Scholar are not capable of identifying spam attacks. The researchers manipulated the citation counts of articles, and managed to make Google Scholar index complete fake articles, some containing advertising.
Spamming in mobile app stores include (i) apps that were automatically generated and as a result do not have any specific functionality or a meaningful description; (ii) multiple instances of the same app being published to obtain increased visibility in the app market; and (iii) apps that make excessive use of unrelated keywords to attract users through unintended searches.
E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political. Serdar Argic, for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages. A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud.
In 2011 the origins of spam were analyzed by Cisco Systems. They provided a report that shows spam volume originating from countries worldwide.
Hormel Foods Corporation, the maker of SPAM luncheon meat, does not object to the Internet use of the term "spamming". However, they did ask that the capitalized word "Spam" be reserved to refer to their product and trademark. By and large, this request is obeyed in forums that discuss spam.
The European Union's Internal Market Commission estimated in 2001 that "junk email" cost Internet users €10 billion per year worldwide. The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $13 billion in 2007, including lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem. Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. Large companies who are frequent spam targets utilize numerous techniques to detect and prevent spam.
The cost to providers of search engines is significant: "The secondary consequence of spamming is that search engine indexes are inundated with useless pages, increasing the cost of each processed query".
The costs of spam also include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming.
Email spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons: spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear the cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire email system, as operated in the past. Since email is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost may provide a sufficient conversion rate to keep the spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do a lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable.
Some companies and groups "rank" spammers; spammers who make the news are sometimes referred to by these rankings.
In all cases listed above, including both commercial and non-commercial, "spam happens" because of a positive cost-benefit analysis result; if the cost to recipients is excluded as an externality the spammer can avoid paying.
Cost is the combination of
Benefit is the total expected profit from spam, which may include any combination of the commercial and non-commercial reasons listed above. It is normally linear, based on the incremental benefit of reaching each additional spam recipient, combined with the conversion rate. The conversion rate for botnet-generated spam has recently been measured to be around one in 12,000,000 for pharmaceutical spam and one in 200,000 for infection sites as used by the Storm botnet.
The authors of the study calculating those conversion rates noted, "After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted."
Spam can be used to spread computer viruses, trojan horses or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft, or worse (e.g., advance fee fraud). Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed, while some attempts to take advantage of the victims' inexperience with computer technology to trick them (e.g., phishing).
One of the world's most prolific spammers, Robert Alan Soloway, was arrested by US authorities on May 31, 2007. Described as one of the top ten spammers in the world, Soloway was charged with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that Soloway used millions of "zombie" computers to distribute spam during 2003. This is the first case in which US prosecutors used identity theft laws to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name.
In an attempt to assess potential legal and technical strategies for stopping illegal spam, a study cataloged three months of online spam data and researched website naming and hosting infrastructures. The study concluded that: 1) half of all spam programs have their domains and servers distributed over just eight percent or fewer of the total available hosting registrars and autonomous systems, with 80 percent of spam programs overall being distributed over just 20 percent of all registrars and autonomous systems; 2) of the 76 purchases for which the researchers received transaction information, there were only 13 distinct banks acting as credit card acquirers and only three banks provided the payment servicing for 95 percent of the spam-advertised goods in the study; and, 3) a "financial blacklist" of banking entities that do business with spammers would dramatically reduce monetization of unwanted e-mails. Moreover, this blacklist could be updated far more rapidly than spammers could acquire new banking resources, an asymmetry favoring anti-spam efforts.
An ongoing concern expressed by parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union has to do with so-called "stealth blocking", a term for ISPs employing aggressive spam blocking without their users' knowledge. These groups' concern is that ISPs or technicians seeking to reduce spam-related costs may select tools that (either through error or design) also block non-spam e-mail from sites seen as "spam-friendly". Few object to the existence of these tools; it is their use in filtering the mail of users who are not informed of their use that draws fire.
Even though it is possible in some jurisdictions to treat some spam as unlawful merely by applying existing laws against trespass and conversion, some laws specifically targeting spam have been proposed. In 2004, United States passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that provided ISPs with tools to combat spam. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head who settled the lawsuit for several thousand U.S. dollars in June 2004. But the law is criticized by many for not being effective enough. Indeed, the law was supported by some spammers and organizations that support spamming, and opposed by many in the anti-spam community.
Earthlink won a $25 million judgment against one of the most notorious and active "spammers" Khan C. Smith in 2001 for his role in founding the modern spam industry which dealt billions in economic damage and established thousands of spammers into the industry. His email efforts were said to make up more than a third of all Internet email being sent from 1999 until 2002.
Sanford Wallace and Cyber Promotions were the target of a string of lawsuits, many of which were settled out of court, up through a 1998 Earthlink settlement that put Cyber Promotions out of business. Attorney Laurence Canter was disbarred by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1997 for sending prodigious amounts of spam advertising his immigration law practice. In 2005, Jason Smathers, a former America Online employee, pleaded guilty to charges of violating the CAN-SPAM Act. In 2003, he sold a list of approximately 93 million AOL subscriber e-mail addresses to Sean Dunaway who sold the list to spammers.
In 2007, Robert Soloway lost a case in a federal court against the operator of a small Oklahoma-based Internet service provider who accused him of spamming. U.S. Judge Ralph G. Thompson granted a motion by plaintiff Robert Braver for a default judgment and permanent injunction against him. The judgment includes a statutory damages award of about $10 million under Oklahoma law.
In June 2007, two men were convicted of eight counts stemming from sending millions of e-mail spam messages that included hardcore pornographic images. Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California was sentenced to six years in prison, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, was sentenced to 63 months. In addition, the two were fined $100,000, ordered to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL, and ordered to forfeit more than $1.1 million, the amount of illegal proceeds from their spamming operation. The charges included conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and transportation of obscene materials. The trial, which began on June 5, was the first to include charges under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, according to a release from the Department of Justice. The specific law that prosecutors used under the CAN-Spam Act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in spam.
In 2005, Scott J. Filary and Donald E. Townsend of Tampa, Florida were sued by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist for violating the Florida Electronic Mail Communications Act. The two spammers were required to pay $50,000 USD to cover the costs of investigation by the state of Florida, and a $1.1 million penalty if spamming were to continue, the $50,000 was not paid, or the financial statements provided were found to be inaccurate. The spamming operation was successfully shut down.
Edna Fiedler, 44, of Olympia, Washington, on June 25, 2008, pleaded guilty in a Tacoma court and was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and 5 years of supervised release or probation in an Internet $1 million "Nigerian check scam." She conspired to commit bank, wire and mail fraud, against US citizens, specifically using Internet by having had an accomplice who shipped counterfeit checks and money orders to her from Lagos, Nigeria, the previous November. Fiedler shipped out $609,000 fake check and money orders when arrested and prepared to send additional $1.1 million counterfeit materials. Also, the U.S. Postal Service recently intercepted counterfeit checks, lottery tickets and eBay overpayment schemes with a value of $2.1 billion.
In a 2009 opinion, "Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc.", 575 F.3d 1040, the Ninth Circuit assessed the standing requirements necessary for a private plaintiff to bring a civil cause of action against spam senders under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, as well as the scope of the CAN-SPAM Act's federal preemption clause.
In the first successful case of its kind, Nigel Roberts from the Channel Islands won £270 against Media Logistics UK who sent junk e-mails to his personal account.
In January 2007, a Sheriff Court in Scotland awarded Mr. Gordon Dick £750 (the then maximum sum that could be awarded in a Small Claim action) plus expenses of £618.66, a total of £1368.66 against Transcom Internet Services Ltd. for breaching anti-spam laws. Transcom had been legally represented at earlier hearings, but were not represented at the proof, so Gordon Dick got his decree by default. It is the largest amount awarded in compensation in the United Kingdom since Roberts v Media Logistics case in 2005.
Despite the statutory tort that is created by the Regulations implementing the EC Directive, few other people have followed their example. As the Courts engage in active case management, such cases would probably now be expected to be settled by mediation and payment of nominal damages.
In October 2008, an international internet spam operation run from New Zealand was cited by American authorities as one of the world's largest, and for a time responsible for up to a third of all unwanted e-mails. In a statement the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) named Christchurch's Lance Atkinson as one of the principals of the operation. New Zealand's Internal Affairs announced it had lodged a $200,000 claim in the High Court against Atkinson and his brother Shane Atkinson and courier Roland Smits, after raids in Christchurch. This marked the first prosecution since the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act (UEMA) was passed in September 2007.
The FTC said it had received more than three million complaints about spam messages connected to this operation, and estimated that it may be responsible for sending billions of illegal spam messages. The US District Court froze the defendants’ assets to preserve them for consumer redress pending trial.
U.S. co-defendant Jody Smith forfeited more than $800,000 and faces up to five years in prison for charges to which he pleaded guilty.
While most countries either outlaw or at least ignore spam, Bulgaria is the first and until now only one to legalize it. According to the Bulgarian E-Commerce act (Чл.5,6) anyone can send spam to mailboxes published as owned by a company or organization as long as there is a "clear and straight indication that the message is unsolicited commercial e-mail" ("да осигури ясното и недвусмислено разпознаване на търговското съобщение като непоискано") in the message body.
This made lawsuits against Bulgarian ISP's and public e-mail providers with antispam policy possible, as they are obstructing legal commerce activity and thus violate Bulgarian antitrust acts. While there are no such lawsuits until now, several cases of spam obstruction are currently awaiting decision in the Bulgarian Antitrust Commission (Комисия за защита на конкуренцията) and can end with serious fines for the ISPs in question.
The law contains other dubious provisions — for example, the creation of a nationwide public electronic register of e-mail addresses that do not want to receive spam. It is usually abused as the perfect source for e-mail address harvesting, because publishing invalid or incorrect information in such a register is a criminal offense in Bulgaria. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28368 |
Siddur
A siddur ( ; plural siddurim , ) is a Jewish prayer book, containing a set order of daily prayers. The word "siddur" comes from the Hebrew root meaning "order".
The earliest parts of Jewish prayer book are the "Shema Yisrael" ("Hear O Israel") (Deuteronomy 6:4 "et seq"), and the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26), which are in the Torah. A set of eighteen (currently nineteen) blessings called the "Shemoneh Esreh" or the "Amidah" (Hebrew, "standing [prayer]"), is traditionally ascribed to the Great Assembly in the time of Ezra, at the end of the Biblical period.
The name "Shemoneh Esreh", literally "eighteen", is a historical anachronism, since it now contains nineteen blessings. It was only near the end of the Second Temple period that the eighteen prayers of the weekday Amidah became standardized. Even at that time their precise wording and order was not yet fixed, and varied from locale to locale. Many modern scholars believe that parts of the Amidah came from the Hebrew apocryphal work Ben Sira.
According to the Talmud, soon after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a formal version of the Amidah was adopted at a rabbinical council in Yavne, under the leadership of Rabban Gamaliel II and his colleagues. However, the precise wording was still left open. The order, general ideas, opening and closing lines were fixed. Most of the wording was left to the individual reader. It was not until several centuries later that the prayers began to be formally fixed. By the Middle Ages the texts of the prayers were nearly fixed, and in the form in which they are still used today.
The siddur was printed by Soncino in Italy as early as 1486, though a siddur was first mass-distributed only in 1865. The siddur began appearing in the vernacular as early as 1538. The first English translation was published in London in 1738 by an author writing under the pseudonym Gamaliel ben Pedahzur; a different translation was released in the United States in 1837.
Readings from the Torah (five books of Moses) and the Nevi'im ("Prophets") form part of the prayer services. To this framework various Jewish sages added, from time to time, various prayers, and, for festivals especially, numerous hymns.
The earliest existing codification of the prayerbook was drawn up by Rav Amram Gaon of Sura, Babylon, about 850 CE. Half a century later Rav Saadia Gaon, also of Sura, composed a siddur, in which the rubrical matter is in Arabic. These were the basis of Simcha ben Samuel's Machzor Vitry (11th century France), which was based on the ideas of his teacher, Rashi. Another formulation of the prayers was that appended by Maimonides to the laws of prayer in his Mishneh Torah: this forms the basis of the Yemenite liturgy, and has had some influence on other rites. From this point forward all Jewish prayerbooks had the same basic order and contents.
Two authoritative versions of the Ashkenazi siddur were those of Shabbetai Sofer in the 16th century and Seligman Baer in the 19th century; siddurim have also been published reflecting the views of Jacob Emden and the Vilna Gaon.
There are differences among, amongst others, the Sephardic (including Spanish and Portuguese and Mizrachim), Teimani (Yemenite),
Chasidic, Ashkenazic (divided into German, Polish and other European and eastern-European rites), Bené Roma or Italkim, Romaniote (Greek, once extending to Turkey, Crimea and the southern Italian peninsula) and also Persian-, Kurdish-, Bukharian-, Georgian-, Mountain Jewish-, Ethiopian- and Cochin-Jewish liturgies. Most of these are slight differences in the wording of the prayers; for instance, Oriental Sephardic and some Hasidic prayer books state "חננו מאתך חכמה בינה ודעת", "Graciously bestow upon us from You wisdom ("ḥochmah"), understanding ("binah") and knowledge ("daat")", in allusion to the Kabbalistic sefirot of those names, while the Nusach Ashkenaz, as well as Western Sephardic and other Hasidic versions retain the older wording "חננו מאתך דעה בינה והשכל", "Graciously bestow upon us from You knowledge, understanding, and reason". In some cases, however, the order of the preparation for the Amidah is drastically different, reflecting the different halakhic and kabbalistic formulae that the various scholars relied on in assembling their siddurim, as well as the minhagim, or customs, or their locales.
Some forms of the Sephardi rite are considered to be very overtly kabbalistic, depending on how far they reflect the ritual of Isaac Luria. This is partly because the Tetragrammaton frequently appears with varying vowel points beneath the letters (unpronounced, but to be meditated upon) and different Names of God appear in small print within the final hei (ה) of the Tetragrammaton. In some editions, there is a Psalm in the preparations for the Amidah that is printed in the outline of a menorah, and the worshipper meditates on this shape as he recites the psalm.
The Ashkenazi rite is more common than the Sephardi rite in America. While Nusach Ashkenaz does contain some kabbalistic elements, such as acrostics and allusions to the sefirot ("To You, God, is the greatness [gedullah], and the might [gevurah], and the glory [tiferet], longevity [netzach]..." etc.), these are not easily seen unless the reader is already initiated. It is notable that although many other traditions avoid using the poem Anim Zemiroth on the Sabbath, for fear that its holiness would be less appreciated due to the frequency of the Sabbath, the poem is usually sung by Ashkenazi congregations before concluding the Sabbath Musaf service with the daily psalm. The ark is opened for the duration of the song.
Hasidim, though usually ethnically Ashkenazi, usually use liturgies with varying degrees of Sephardic influence, such as Nusach Sefard and Nusach Ari, in order to follow the order of the prayers set by Rabbi Isaac Luria, often called "Ari HaKadosh", or "The Holy Lion". Although the Ari himself was born Ashkenazi, he borrowed many elements from Sephardi and other traditions, since he felt that they followed Kabbalah and Halacha more faithfully. The Ari did not publish any siddur, but orally transmitted his particular usages to his students with interpretations and certain meditations. Many siddurim containing some form of the Sephardic rite together with the usages of the Ari were published, both by actual Sephardic communities and for the use of Hasidim and other Ashkenazim interested in Kabbalah. In 1803, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi compiled an authoritative siddur from the sixty siddurim that he checked for compliance with Hebrew grammar, Jewish law, and Kabbalah: this is what is known today as the "Nusach Ari", and is used by Lubavitch Hasidim. Those that use Nusach HaAri claim that it is an all-encompassing nusach that is valid for any Jew, no matter what his ancestral tribe or identity, a view attributed to the Maggid of Mezeritch.
The Mahzor of each rite is distinguished by hymns ("piyyutim") composed by authors ("payyetanim"). The most important writers are Yose ben Yoseh, probably in the 6th century, chiefly known for his compositions for Yom Kippur; Eleazar Kalir, the founder of the payyetanic style, perhaps in the 7th century; Saadia Gaon; and the Spanish school, consisting of Joseph ibn Abitur (died in 970), ibn Gabirol, Isaac Gayyath, Moses ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Ezra and Judah ha-Levi, Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) and Isaac Luria. In the case of Nusach HaAri, however, many of these High Holiday piyyutim are absent: the older piyyutim were not present in the Sephardic rite, on which Nusach HaAri was based, and the followers of the Ari removed the piyyutim composed by the Spanish school.
Some siddurim have only prayers for weekdays; others have prayers for weekdays and Shabbat. Many have prayers for weekdays, Shabbat, and the three Biblical festivals, Sukkot (the feast of Tabernacles), Shavuot (the feast of weeks) and Pesach (Passover). The latter are referred to as a "Siddur Shalem" ("complete siddur").
Below are listed many popular siddurim used by religious Jews. This list mostly excludes prayer books specifically for the High Holidays; see Machzor (Popular versions).
These siddurim follow the halakha of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) a Talmudic scholar, and authority on Jewish religious law, and spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas party. Yosef believed that the Sephardic halakhic tradition favoured leniency, and these principles are reflected in his siddurim.
please note, these siddurim are also for the Edot Ha-mizrach communities.
please note: there are siddurim for "women only" that are labeled "L'bat Yisrael" - these are not considered feminist. the rabbis (rabbi ovadia yosef, etc. ) created a siddur specifically for women's use only. because women in some cases, it is said, women do not have to pray or say G-ds name in tefillah so a special siddur was created for their use. the prayers are shortened, and more emphasis is put on things women do . men's prayers are missing, (although you can follow the prayer service.) and the tefillah is changed to suite a woman's way of speech. and it also has the book of psalms, or "tehillim" included in it.
some notable siddurim are:
"(Characterised by relative absence of Kabbalistic elements:)"
"(Usually characterised by presence of Kabbalistic elements:)"
"(Usually characterised by presence of Kabbalistic elements:)"
"(Usually characterised by presence of Kabbalistic elements:)"
The Baladi Jews (from Arabic "balad", country) follow the legal rulings of the "Rambam" (Maimonides) as codified in his work the "Mishneh Torah". Rabbi Yiḥye Tsalaḥ (Maharits) revised this liturgy to end friction between traditionalists (who followed Rambam's rulings and the siddur as it developed in Yemen) and Kabbalists who followed the innovations of the Ari. This siddur makes very few additions or changes and substantially follows the older Yemenite tradition as it had existed prior to this conflict.
The Shami Jews (from Arabic "ash-Sham", the north, referring to Palestine or Damascus) represent those who accepted the Sephardic rite, after being exposed to new inexpensive, typeset siddurs brought from Israel and the Sephardic diaspora by envoys and merchants in the late 17th century and 18th century. The "local rabbinic leadership resisted the new versions...Nevertheless, the new prayer books were widely accepted." As part of that process, the Shami modified their rites to accommodate the usages of the Ari to the maximum extent. The text of the Shami siddur now largely follows the Sephardic tradition, though the pronunciation, chant and customs are still Yemenite in flavour.
"Siddur Nashim", published by Margaret Wenig and Naomi Janowitz in 1976, was the first Jewish prayer book to refer to God using female pronouns and imagery.
Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert ("Reform Judaism", Winter 1991) commented:
Liberal prayerbooks tend increasingly to avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK Liberal movement's "Siddur Lev Chadash" (1995) does so, as does the UK Reform Movement's "Forms of Prayer" (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as “He” have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.)
Yoreh writes about his work: "I think prayer is communal and private expression of hopes, fears, an appreciation of aesthetic beauty, good attributes. But that has nothing to do with God.”
There are also some Karaite, Samaritan and Sabbatean prayer books. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28370 |
Santorini
Santorini (, ), officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα ) and classic Greek Thera (English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast of Greece's mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago, which bears the same name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km2 (28 sq mi) and a 2011 census population of 15,550. The municipality of Santorini includes the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia, as well as the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi and Christiana. The total land area is 90.623 km2 (34.990 sq mi). Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit.
The island was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred about 3,600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep. It may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, to the south, through a gigantic tsunami. Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis.
It is the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, though what remains today is chiefly a water-filled caldera. The volcanic arc is approximately long and wide. The region first became volcanically active around 3-4 million years ago, though volcanism on Thera began around 2 million years ago with the extrusion of dacitic lavas from vents around Akrotiri.
Santorini was named by the Latin Empire in the thirteenth century, and is a reference to Saint Irene, from the name of the old cathedral in the village of Perissa – the name Santorini is a contraction of the name Santa Irini. Before then, it was known as Kallístē (Καλλίστη, ""the most beautiful one""), Strongýlē (, ""the circular one""), or Thēra. The name "Thera" was revived in the nineteenth century as the official name of the island and its main city, but the colloquial name "Santorini" is still in popular use.
The present municipality of Thera (officially: ""Thira"", ), which covers all settlements on the islands of Santorini and Therasia, was formed at the 2011 local government reform, by the merger of the former Oia and Thera municipalities.
Oia is now called a (community), within the municipality of Thera, and it consists of the local subdivisions () of Therasia and Oia.
The municipality of Thera includes an additional 12 local subdivisions on Santorini island: Akrotiri, Emporio, Episkopis Gonia, Exo Gonia, Imerovigli, Karterados, Megalohori, Mesaria, Pyrgos Kallistis, Thera (the seat of the municipality), Vothon, and Vourvoulos.
Santorini's primary industry is tourism. Agriculture also forms part of its economy, and the island sustains a wine industry, based on the indigenous Assyrtiko grape variety. White varieties also include Athiri and Aidani, whereas red varieties include mavrotragano and mandilaria.
The Cyclades are part of a metamorphic complex that is known as the Cycladic Massif. The complex formed during the Miocene and was folded and metamorphosed during the Alpine orogeny around 60 million years ago. Thera is built upon a small, non-volcanic basement that represents the former non-volcanic island, which was approximately . The basement rock is primarily composed of metamorphosed limestone and schist, which date from the Alpine Orogeny. These non-volcanic rocks are exposed at Mikro Profititis Ilias, Mesa Vouno, the Gavrillos ridge, Pyrgos, Monolithos, and the inner side of the caldera wall between Cape Plaka and Athinios.
The metamorphic grade is a blueschist facies, which results from tectonic deformation by the subduction of the African Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate. Subduction occurred between the Oligocene and the Miocene, and the metamorphic grade represents the southernmost extent of the Cycladic blueschist belt.
Volcanism on Santorini is due to the Hellenic Trench subduction zone southwest of Crete. The oceanic crust of the northern margin of the African Plate is being subducted under Greece and the Aegean Sea, which is thinned continental crust. The subduction compels the formation of the Hellenic arc, which includes Santorini and other volcanic centres, such as Methana, Milos, and Kos.
The island is the result of repeated sequences of shield volcano construction followed by caldera collapse. The inner coast around the caldera is a sheer precipice of more than drop at its highest, and exhibits the various layers of solidified lava on top of each other, and the main towns perched on the crest. The ground then slopes outwards and downwards towards the outer perimeter, and the outer beaches are smooth and shallow. Beach sand colour depends on which geological layer is exposed; there are beaches with sand or pebbles made of solidified lava of various colours: such as the Red Beach, the Black Beach and the White Beach. The water at the darker coloured beaches is significantly warmer because the lava acts as a heat absorber.
The area of Santorini incorporates a group of islands created by volcanoes, spanning across Thera, Thirasia, Aspronisi, Palea, and Nea Kameni.
Santorini has erupted many times, with varying degrees of explosivity. There have been at least twelve large explosive eruptions, of which at least four were caldera-forming. The most famous eruption is the Minoan eruption, detailed below. Eruptive products range from basalt all the way to rhyolite, and the rhyolitic products are associated with the most explosive eruptions.
The earliest eruptions, many of which were submarine, were on the Akrotiri Peninsula, and active between 650,000 and 550,000 years ago. These are geochemically distinct from the later volcanism, as they contain amphiboles.
Over the past 360,000 years there have been two major cycles, each culminating with two caldera-forming eruptions. The cycles end when the magma evolves to a rhyolitic composition, causing the most explosive eruptions. In between the caldera-forming eruptions are a series of sub-cycles. Lava flows and small explosive eruptions build up cones, which are thought to impede the flow of magma to the surface. This allows the formation of large magma chambers, in which the magma can evolve to more silicic compositions. Once this happens, a large explosive eruption destroys the cone. The Kameni islands in the centre of the lagoon are the most recent example of a cone built by this volcano, with much of them hidden beneath the water.
The devastating volcanic eruption of Thera around 1600 B.C. has become the most famous single event in the Aegean before the fall of Troy. It may have been one of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth in the last few thousand years, with an estimated VEI (volcanic explosivity index) of 6 according to the last studies published in 2006, confirming the prior values.
The violent eruption was centred on a small island just north of the existing island of Nea Kameni in the centre of the caldera; the caldera itself was formed several hundred thousand years ago by the collapse of the centre of a circular island, caused by the emptying of the magma chamber during an eruption. It has been filled several times by ignimbrite since then, and the process repeated itself, most recently 21,000 years ago. The northern part of the caldera was refilled by the volcano, then collapsed once more during the Minoan eruption. Before the Minoan eruption, the caldera formed a nearly continuous ring with the only entrance between the tiny island of Aspronisi and Thera; the eruption destroyed the sections of the ring between Aspronisi and Therasia, and between Therasia and Thera, creating two new channels.
On Santorini, a deposit of white tephra thrown from the eruption is found lying up to thick, overlying the soil marking the ground level before the eruption, and forming a layer divided into three fairly distinct bands indicating different phases of the eruption. Archaeological discoveries in 2006 by a team of international scientists revealed that the Santorini event was much more massive than previously thought; it expelled of magma and rock into the Earth's atmosphere, compared to previous estimates of only in 1991, producing an estimated of tephra. Only the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815, the 181 AD eruption of Lake Taupo, and possibly Baekdu Mountain's 946 AD eruption have released more material into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 years.
In "The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Exodus Story", geologist Barbara J. Sivertsen seeks to establish a link between the eruption of Santorini (c. 1600 BC) and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Bible.
A 2006 documentary film by Simcha Jacobovici, "The Exodus Decoded", postulates that the eruption of the Santorini Island volcano (referred to as c. 1500 BC) caused all the biblical plagues described against Egypt. The documentary presents this date as corresponding to the time of the Biblical Moses. The film asserts that the Hyksos were the Israelites and that some of them may have originally been from Mycenae. The film also suggests that these original Mycenaean Israelites fled Egypt (which they had in fact ruled for some time) after the eruption, and went back to Mycenae. The Pharaoh of the Exodus is identified with Ahmose I. Rather than crossing the Red Sea, Jacobovici argues a marshy area in northern Egypt known as the Reed Sea would have been alternately drained and flooded by tsunamis caused by the caldera collapse, and could have been crossed during the Exodus.
Jacobovici's assertions in "The Exodus Decoded" have been extensively criticized by religious and other scholars. In a 2013 book on this connection, "Thera and the Exodus", a dissident from the consensus Riaan Booysen, tries to support Jacobovici's theory and claims the pharaoh of the Exodus to be Amenhotep III and the biblical Moses as Crown Prince Thutmose, Amenhotep's first-born son and heir to his throne.
Archaeological, seismological, and vulcanological evidence has been presented linking the Atlantis myth to Santorini. Speculation suggesting that Thera/Santorini was the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis began with the excavation of Akrotiri in the 1960s, and gained increased currency as reconstructions of the island's pre-eruption shape and landscape frescos located under the ash both strongly resembled Plato's description. The possibility has been more recently popularized by television documentaries such as The History Channel programme "Lost Worlds" (episode "Atlantis"), the Discovery Channel's "Solving History with Olly Steeds", and the BBC's "Atlantis, The Evidence", which suggests that Thera is Plato's Atlantis.
Post-Minoan eruptive activity is concentrated on the Kameni islands, in the centre of the lagoon. They have been formed since the Minoan eruption, and the first of them broke the surface of the sea in 197 BC Nine subaerial eruptions are recorded in the historical record since that time, with the most recent ending in 1950.
In 1707 an undersea volcano breached the sea surface, forming the current centre of activity at Nea Kameni in the centre of the lagoon, and eruptions centred on it continue—the twentieth century saw three such, the last in 1950. Santorini was also struck by a devastating earthquake in 1956. Although the volcano is dormant at the present time, at the current active crater (there are several former craters on Nea Kameni), steam and carbon dioxide are given off.
Small tremors and reports of strange gaseous odours over the course of 2011 and 2012 prompted satellite radar technological analyses and these revealed the source of the symptoms; the magma chamber under the volcano was swelled by a rush of molten rock by 10 to 20 million cubic metres between January 2011 and April 2012, which also caused parts of the island's surface to rise out of the water by a reported 8 to 14 centimetres. Scientists say that the injection of molten rock was equivalent to 20 years’ worth of regular activity.
Santorini has a semi-arid climate ("Bsh" in the Köppen climate classification) with Mediterranean characteristics. Total rainfall averages per year. In the summer season, strong winds can also be observed.
Excavations starting in 1967 at the Akrotiri site under the late Professor Spyridon Marinatos have made Thera the best-known Minoan site outside of Crete, homeland of the culture. The island was not known as Thera at this time. Only the southern tip of a large town has been uncovered, yet it has revealed complexes of multi-level buildings, streets, and squares with remains of walls standing as high as eight metres, all entombed in the solidified ash of the famous eruption of Thera. The site was not a palace-complex as found in Crete, but neither was it a conglomeration of merchants' warehousing, as its excellent masonry and fine wall-paintings show. A loom-workshop suggests organized textile weaving for export. This Bronze Age civilization thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, reaching its peak in the period between 2000 and 1630 BC.
Many of the houses in Akrotiri are major structures, some of them three stories high. Its streets, squares, and walls were preserved in the layers of ejecta, sometimes as tall as eight metres, indicating this was a major town. In many houses stone staircases are still intact, and they contain huge ceramic storage jars (pithoi), mills, and pottery. Noted archaeological remains found in Akrotiri are wall paintings or frescoes, which have kept their original colour well, as they were preserved under many metres of volcanic ash. The town also had a highly developed drainage system and, judging from the fine artwork, its citizens were clearly sophisticated and relatively wealthy people.
Pipes with running water and water closets found at Akrotiri are the oldest such utilities discovered. The pipes run in twin systems, indicating that Therans used both hot and cold water supplies; the origin of the hot water probably was geothermic, given the volcano's proximity. The dual pipe system, the advanced architecture, and the apparent layout of the Akrotiri find resemble Plato's description of the legendary lost city of Atlantis, further indicating the Minoans as the culture which primarily inspired the Atlantis legend.
Fragmentary wall-paintings at Akrotiri lack the insistent religious or mythological content familiar in Classical Greek décor. Instead, the Minoan frescoes depict "Saffron-Gatherers", who offer their crocus-stamens to a seated lady, perhaps a goddess. Crocus has been discovered to have many medicinal values including the relief of menstrual pain. This has led many archaeologists to believe that the fresco of the saffron/crocus gatherers is a coming of age fresco dealing with female pubescence. In another house are two antelopes, painted with a kind of confident, flowing, decorative, calligraphic line, the famous fresco of a fisherman with his double strings of fish strung by their gills, and the flotilla of pleasure boats, accompanied by leaping dolphins, where ladies take their ease in the shade of light canopies, among other frescoes.
The well preserved ruins of the ancient town are often compared to the spectacular ruins at Pompeii in Italy. The canopy covering the ruins collapsed in an accident in September 2005, killing one tourist and injuring seven more. The site was closed for almost seven years while a new canopy was built. The site was re-opened in April 2012.
The oldest signs of human settlement are Late Neolithic (4th millennium BC or earlier), but c. 2000–1650 BC Akrotiri developed into one of the Aegean's major Bronze Age ports, with recovered objects that came not just from Crete, but also from Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt, as well as from the Dodecanese and the Greek mainland.
The Minoan eruption provides a fixed point for the chronology of the second millennium BC in the Aegean, because evidence of the eruption occurs throughout the region and the site itself contains material culture from outside. The eruption occurred during the "Late Minoan IA" period at Crete and the "Late Cycladic I" period in the surrounding islands.
Archaeological evidence, based on the established chronology of Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures, dates the eruption to around 1500 BC. These dates, however, conflict with radiocarbon dating which indicates that the eruption occurred at about 1645–1600 BC. For those, and other, reasons, the date of the eruption is disputed. For discussion, see Minoan eruption#Eruption dating.
Santorini remained unoccupied throughout the rest of the Bronze Age, during which time the Greeks took over Crete. At Knossos, in a LMIIIA context (14th century BC), seven Linear B texts while calling upon "all the gods" make sure to grant primacy to an elsewhere-unattested entity called "qe-ra-si-ja" and, once, "qe-ra-si-jo". If the endings "-ia[s]" and "-ios" represent an ethnic suffix, then this means "The One From Qeras[os]". If the initial consonant were aspirated, then *Qhera- would have become "Thera-" in later Greek. "Therasia" and its ethnikon "Therasios" are both attested in later Greek; and, since "-sos" was itself a genitive suffix in the Aegean Sprachbund, *Qeras[os] could also shrink to *Qera. An alternate view takes "qe-ra-si-ja" and "qe-ra-si-jo" as proof of androgyny, and applies this name by similar arguments to the legendary seer, Tiresias, but these views are not mutually exclusive. If "qe-ra-si-ja" was an ethnikon first, then in following him/her/it the Cretans also feared whence it came.
Probably after what is called the Bronze Age collapse, Phoenicians founded a site on Thera. Herodotus reports that they called the island Callista and lived on it for eight generations. In the 9th century BC, Dorians founded the main Hellenic city on Mesa Vouno, above sea level. This group later claimed that they had named the city and the island after their leader, Theras. Today, that city is referred to as Ancient Thera.
In his "Argonautica", written in Hellenistic Egypt in the 3rd century BC, Apollonius Rhodius includes an origin and sovereignty myth of Thera being given by Triton in Libya to the Greek Argonaut Euphemus, son of Poseidon, in the form of a clod of dirt. After carrying the dirt next to his heart for several days, Euphemus dreamt that he nursed the dirt with milk from his breast, and that the dirt turned into a beautiful woman with whom he had sex. The woman then told him that she was a daughter of Triton named Kalliste, and that when he threw the dirt into the sea it would grow into an island for his descendants to live on. The poem goes on to claim that the island was named Thera after Euphemus' descendant Theras, son of Autesion, the leader of a group of refugee settlers from Lemnos.
The Dorians have left a number of inscriptions incised in stone, in the vicinity of the temple of Apollo, attesting to pederastic relations between the authors and their lovers (eromenoi). These inscriptions, found by , have been thought by some archaeologists to be of a ritual, celebratory nature, because of their large size, careful construction and – in some cases – execution by craftsmen other than the authors. According to Herodotus, following a drought of seven years, Thera sent out colonists who founded a number of cities in northern Africa, including Cyrene. In the 5th century BC, Dorian Thera did not join the Delian League with Athens; and during the Peloponnesian War, Thera sided with Dorian Sparta, against Athens. The Athenians took the island during the war, but lost it again after the Battle of Aegospotami. During the Hellenistic period, the island was a major naval base for Ptolemaic Egypt.
As with other Greek territories, Thera then was ruled by the Romans. When the Roman Empire was divided, the island passed to the eastern side of the Empire which today is known as the Byzantine Empire. According to George Cedrenus, the volcano erupted again in the summer of 727, the tenth year of the reign of Leo III the Isaurian. He writes: "In the same year, in the summer, a vapour like an oven's fire boiled up for days out of the middle of the islands of Thera and Therasia from the depths of the sea, and the whole place burned like fire, little by little thickening and turning to stone, and the air seemed to be a fiery torch." This terrifying explosion was interpreted as a divine omen against the worship of religious icons and gave the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian the justification he needed to begin implementing his Iconoclasm policy.
The name "Santorini" first appears in the work of the Muslim geographer al-Idrisi, as "Santurin", from the island's patron saint, Saint Irene. After the Fourth Crusade, it became a lordship of the Venetian Barozzi family, starting with Jacopo I Barozzi, until it was annexed to the Duchy of Naxos in by Niccolo Sanudo. In 1318–1331 and 1345–1360 it was raided by the Turkish principalities of Menteshe and Aydın, but did not suffer much damage. From the 15th century on, the suzerainty of the Republic of Venice over the island was recognized in a series of treaties by the Ottoman Empire, but this did not stop Ottoman raids, until it was captured by the Ottoman admiral Piyale Pasha in 1576, as part of a process of annexation of most remaining Latin possessions in the Aegean. It became part of the semi-autonomous domain of the Sultan's Jewish favourite, Joseph Nasi. Santorini retained its privileged position in the 17th century, but suffered in turn from Venetian raids during the frequent Ottoman–Venetian wars of the period, even though there were no Muslims on the island.
Santorini was captured briefly by the Russians under Alexey Orlov during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, but returned to Ottoman control after. Following the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence on the Greek mainland in March 1821, in May Santorini followed suit, although the local Catholic population had its reservations. The island became part of the fledgling Greek state, rebelled against Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1831, and became definitively part of the independent Kingdom of Greece in 1832, with the Treaty of Constantinople.
The island is still home to a Catholic community and the seat of a Catholic bishopric.
During the Second World War, Santorini was occupied in 1941 by Italian forces, and in 1943 by those of the Germans. In 1944, the German and Italian garrison on Santorini was raided by a group of British Special Boat Service Commandos, killing most of its men. Five locals were later shot in reprisal, including the mayor.
Santorini's primary industry is tourism, particularly in the summer months. The expansion of tourism has resulted in the growth of the economy and population. Akrotiri is a major archaeological site, with ruins from the Minoan era. Santorini was ranked the world's top island by many magazines and travel sites, including the "Travel+Leisure Magazine", the "BBC", as well as the "US News". An estimated 2 million tourists visit annually.
The island's pumice quarries have been closed since 1986, in order to preserve the caldera. In 2007, the cruise ship "MS Sea Diamond" ran aground and sank inside the caldera. As of 2019, Santorini is a particular draw for Asian couples who come to Santorini to have pre-wedding photos taken against the backdrop of the island's landscape.
Santorini has no rivers, and water is scarce. Until the early 1990s locals filled water cisterns from the rain that fell on roofs and courts, from small springs, and with imported assistance from other areas of Greece. In recent years a desalination plant has provided running, yet non-potable, water to most houses. Since rain is rare on the island from mid-spring to mid-autumn, many plants depend on the scant moisture provided by the common, early morning fog condensing on the ground as dew.
Because of its unique ecology and climate, and especially its volcanic ash soil, Santorini is home to unique and prized produce.
The island remains the home of a small, but flourishing, wine industry, based on the indigenous grape variety, Assyrtiko, with auxiliary cultivations of two other Aegean varietals, "Athiri" and "Aidani". The vines are extremely old and resistant to phylloxera (attributed by local winemakers to the well-drained volcanic soil and its chemistry), so the vines needed no replacement during the great phylloxera epidemic of the late 19th century. In their adaptation to their habitat, such vines are planted far apart, as their principal source of moisture is dew, and they often are trained in the shape of low-spiralling baskets, with the grapes hanging inside to protect them from the winds.
The viticultural pride of the island is the sweet and strong "Vinsanto" () (Visanto), a dessert wine made from the best sun-dried "Assyrtiko", "Athiri", and "Aidani" grapes, and undergoing long barrel aging (up to twenty or twenty-five years for the top "cuvées"). It matures to a sweet, dark amber-orange, unctuous dessert wine that has achieved worldwide fame, possessing the standard Assyrtiko aromas of citrus and minerals, layered with overtones of nuts, raisins, figs, honey and tea.
White wines from the island are extremely dry with a strong, citrus scent and mineral and iodide salt aromas contributed by the ashy volcanic soil, whereas barrel aging gives to some of the white wines a slight frankincense aroma, much like Vinsanto. It is not easy to be a winegrower in Santorini; the hot and dry conditions give the soil a very low productivity. The yield per hectare is only 10 to 20% of the yields that are common in France or California. The island's wines are standardised and protected by the "Vinsanto" and "Santorini" OPAP designations of origin.
A brewery, the Santorini Brewing Company, began operating out of Santorini in 2011, based in the island's wine region.
The traditional architecture of Santorini is similar to that of the other Cyclades, with low-lying cubical houses, made of local stone and whitewashed or limewashed with various volcanic ashes used as colours. The unique characteristic is the common utilisation of the "hypóskapha": extensions of houses dug sideways or downwards into the surrounding pumice. These rooms are prized because of the high insulation provided by the air-filled pumice, and are used as living quarters of unique coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. These are premium storage space for produce, especially for wine cellaring: the "Kánava" wineries of Santorini.
When strong earthquakes struck the island in 1956, half the buildings were completely destroyed and a large number suffered repairable damage. The underground dwellings along the ridge overlooking the caldera, where the instability of the soil was responsible for the great extent of the damage, needed to be evacuated. Most of the population of Santorini had to emigrate to Piraeus and Athens.
The island was featured in The 2005 film ”The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants“.
Santorini Film Festival held annually at the open air cinema, Cinema Kamari in Santorini.
American hip hop musician Rick Ross has a song titled Santorini Greece, and its 2017 music video was shot on the island.
Bus services link Fira to most parts of the island.
Santorini has two ports: Athinios (Ferry Port) and Skala (Old Port). Cruise ships anchor off Skala and passengers are transferred by local boatmen to shore at Skala where Fira is accessed by cable car, on foot or by donkey. Tour boats depart from Skala for Nea Kameni and other Santorini destinations.
Santorini is one of the few Cyclades Islands with a major airport, which lies about southeast of downtown Thera. The main asphalt runway (16L-34R) is in length, and the parallel taxiway was built to runway specification (16R-34L). It can accommodate Boeing 757, Boeing 737, Airbus 320 series, Avro RJ, Fokker 70, and ATR 72 aircraft. Scheduled airlines include the new Olympic Air, Aegean Airlines, and Ryanair, with chartered flights from other airlines during the summer, and with transportation to and from the air terminal available through buses, taxis, hotel car-pickups and rental cars.
Notes
Bibliography
Further reading | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28377 |
Sandler O'Neill and Partners
Sandler O'Neill + Partners, L.P., (Sandler O'Neill) was a full-service investment banking firm and broker-dealer specializing in the financial services sector. It was headquartered in New York City, and had offices in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta. The firm also operated a mortgage finance company and registered investment adviser based in Memphis.
Sandler O'Neill provided investment banking services to financial institutions and their investors. Its services include merger and acquisition advisory, capital markets, fixed income sales and trading, and equity sales and trading, equity research, balance sheet management, mortgage finance, and consulting services. The firm publishes research on about 300 financial institutions across the United States.
Despite shifts in the way similar Wall Street firms are run, Sandler O'Neill retained its private partnership structure, and was the largest private investment bank dedicated to the financial sector. It ranked among the top advisers on bank and thrift mergers as well as in capital raising.
In 2019, the company was acquired by Piper Sandler Companies.
Sandler O'Neill + Partners, L.P. was founded in 1988 by Herman S. Sandler and five other executives from the firm Bear Stearns. Though today it serves companies of all sizes, the firm was founded with an emphasis on community and mid-size banks, as its founders saw that smaller financial institutions were underserved by the existing advisement system.
Six months after the foundation of the firm, Christopher Quackenbush left Merrill Lynch to build Sandler's investment banking group.
Two years after Sandler's establishment it formed Sandler O'Neill Mortgage Finance, an affiliate of Sandler O'Neill + Partners. The affiliate is currently headquartered in Memphis but maintains an office in New York City separate from the firm's headquarters.
In 1993, the company moved to Two World Trade Center from Two Wall Street. The same year, Sandler O'Neill opened an equity sales and trading division. The following year, the firm began publishing equity research, focusing on community banks and other financial institutions.
Sandler O'Neill had four satellite offices in addition to its main office in New York City. The first was opened in Boston in 1998. Offices in Atlanta and San Francisco were opened in 2003. A final satellite office was opened in 2004 in Chicago.
The firm ranked among the best performing investment banking firms, advising financial firms on strategic and financial initiatives, including mergers and acquisitions and capital raising. It is one of the last privately held investment banks on Wall Street, after other firms went public, including Goldman Sachs in the early 2000s. In 2010, the firm sold a substantial minority to two private equity firms: the Carlyle Group and Kelso & Company. The firm was led by James J. Dunne III, who left Bear Stearns in 1988 to help found Sandler, and Jonathan Doyle, who joined the firm in 1990. Both served as senior managing principals of the firm. Sandler O'Neill celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2013.
In 2019, the company was acquired by Piper Sandler Companies.
On September 11, 2001 the firm which was headquartered on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center lost 68 of its 171 employees, 40 percent of its overall workforce. One third of the firm's partners, almost the entire equity desk, the entire syndicate desk, and all of the firm's bond traders died during the attack. Among those lost were Herman Sandler, and Christopher Quackenbush, two of the three senior executives who managed the firm. In addition to personnel, the company lost its entire computer system and nearly all of its records in the destruction.
On Sept. 19th, three days after the U.S. financial markets reopened, Dunne said on CNBC that Sandler O'Neill was open for business, having restarted operations as early as September 12. After the attacks, the firm operated temporarily out of the Solow Building, in space provided by Banc of America. In early 2002, Sandler O'Neill moved from the Solow Building to 919 Third Avenue. The firm remained in that building until another move in 2012. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28379 |
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (, tr. ; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films "Strike" (1925), "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) and "" (1928), as well as the historical epics "Alexander Nevsky" (1938) and "Ivan the Terrible" (1944, 1958). In its 2012 decennial poll, the magazine "Sight & Sound" named his "Battleship Potemkin" the 11th greatest movie of all time.
Sergei Eisenstein was born 22 January 1898 in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire in the Governorate of Livonia) was born to a middle-class family. His family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father, the famous architect Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, was born in Kiev Oblast, to a Jewish merchant father, Osip, and a Swedish mother.
The family had converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. She was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution of 1905, taking Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who joined them around 1910. Divorce followed and Julia left the family to live in France. Eisenstein was raised as an Orthodox Christian, but became an atheist later on.
At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Eisenstein studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. In 1918, he left school and joined the Red Army to serve the Bolshevik Revolution, although his father Mikhail supported the opposite side. This brought his father to Germany after the defeat of the Tsarist government, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a command position in Minsk, after success providing propaganda for the October Revolution. At this time, he was exposed to Kabuki theatre and studied Japanese, learning some 300 kanji characters, which he cited as an influence on his pictorial development.
Eisenstein moved to Moscow in 1920, and began his career in theatre working for Proletkult, an experimental Soviet artistic institution which aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms and create a revolutionary working-class aesthetic. His productions there were entitled "Gas Masks", "Listen Moscow", and "Wiseman". He worked as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold. Eisenstein began his career as a theorist in 1923, by writing "The Montage of Attractions" for art journal "LEF". His first film, "Glumov's Diary" (for the theatre production "Wiseman"), was also made in that same year with Dziga Vertov hired initially as an "instructor".
"Strike" (1925) was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film. "Battleship Potemkin" (also 1925) was critically acclaimed worldwide. Mostly owing to this international renown, he was then able to direct "" (also known as "Ten Days That Shook The World") as part of a grand tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917, and then "The General Line" (also known as "Old and New"). While critics outside Soviet Russia praised these works, Eisenstein's focus in the films on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements, and montage brought him and like-minded others such as Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexander Dovzhenko under fire from the Soviet film community. This forced him to issue public articles of self-criticism and commitments to reform his cinematic visions to conform to the increasingly specific doctrines of socialist realism.
In the autumn of 1928, with "October" still under fire in many Soviet quarters, Eisenstein left the Soviet Union for a tour of Europe, accompanied by his perennial film collaborator Grigori Aleksandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow the three to learn about sound motion pictures and to present themselves as Soviet artists in person to the capitalist West. For Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside the Soviet Union. He spent the next two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zürich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Tisse, entitled "Frauennot – Frauenglück".
In late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered Eisenstein the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000 ($1,500,000 in 2017 dollars) and arrived in Hollywood in May 1930, along with Aleksandrov and Tisse.
Eisenstein proposed a biography of munitions tycoon Basil Zaharoff and a film version of "Arms and the Man" by George Bernard Shaw, and more fully developed plans for a film of "Sutter's Gold" by Blaise Cendrars, but on all accounts failed to impress the studio's producers. Paramount proposed a film version of Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy". This excited Eisenstein, who had read and liked the work, and had met Dreiser at one time in Moscow. Eisenstein completed a script by the start of October 1930, but Paramount disliked it completely and, additionally, found themselves intimidated by Major Frank Pease, president of the Hollywood Technical Director's Institute. Pease, an anti-communist, mounted a public campaign against Eisenstein. On October 23, 1930, by "mutual consent", Paramount and Eisenstein declared their contract null and void, and the Eisenstein party were treated to return tickets to Moscow at Paramount's expense.
Eisenstein was thus faced with returning home a failure. The Soviet film industry was solving the sound-film issue without him; in addition, his films, techniques and theories, such as his formalist film theory, were becoming increasingly attacked as 'ideological failures'. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as "Eisenstein on Disney", have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world.
Eisenstein and his entourage spent considerable time with Charlie Chaplin, who recommended that Eisenstein meet with a sympathetic benefactor in the person of American socialist author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair's works had been accepted by and were widely read in the USSR, and were known to Eisenstein. The two admired each other, and between the end of October 1930 and Thanksgiving of that year, Sinclair had secured an extension of Eisenstein's absences from the USSR, and permission for him to travel to Mexico. The trip to Mexico was for Eisenstein to make a film produced by Sinclair and his wife Mary, and three other investors organized as the "Mexican Film Trust".
On 24 November 1930, Eisenstein signed a contract with the Trust "upon the basis of his desire to be free to direct the making of a picture according to his own ideas of what a Mexican picture should be, and in full faith in Eisenstein's artistic integrity." The contract also stipulated that the film would be "non-political", that immediately available funding came from Mary Sinclair in an amount of "not less than Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars", that the shooting schedule amounted to "a period of from three to four months", and most importantly that: "Eisenstein furthermore agrees that all pictures made or directed by him in Mexico, all negative film and positive prints, and all story and ideas embodied in said Mexican picture, will be the property of Mrs. Sinclair..." A codicil to the contract allowed that the "Soviet Government may have the [finished] film free for showing inside the U.S.S.R." Reportedly, it was verbally clarified that the expectation was for a finished film of about an hour's duration.
By 4 December, Eisenstein was "en route" to Mexico by train, accompanied by Aleksandrov and Tisse. Later he produced a brief synopsis of the six-part film; this would come, in one form or another, to be the final plan he would settle on for his project. The title for the project, "¡Que viva México!", was decided on some time later still. Whilst in Mexico, he mixed socially with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera; Eisenstein admired these artists and Mexican culture in general, and they inspired him to call his films "moving frescoes". The left-wing U.S. film community eagerly followed his progress within Mexico, as is chronicled within Chris Robe's book "Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Radical Film Culture".
After a prolonged absence, Joseph Stalin sent a telegram expressing the concern that Eisenstein had become a deserter. Under pressure, Eisenstein blamed Mary Sinclair's younger brother, Hunter Kimbrough, who had been sent along to act as a line producer, for the film's problems. Eisenstein hoped to pressure the Sinclairs to insinuate themselves between him and Stalin, so Eisenstein could finish the film in his own way. The furious Sinclairs shut down production and ordered Kimbrough to return to the United States with the remaining film footage and the three Soviets to see what they could do with the film already shot; estimates of the extent of this range from 170,000 lineal feet with "Soldadera" unfilmed, to an excess of 250,000 lineal feet.
For the unfinished filming of the "novel" of "Soldadera", without incurring any cost, Eisenstein had secured 500 soldiers, 10,000 guns, and 50 cannons from the Mexican Army, but this was lost due to Sinclair's cancelling of production. When Eisenstein arrived at the American border, a customs search of his trunk revealed sketches and drawings of Jesus caricatures amongst other lewd pornographic material. His re-entry visa had expired, and Sinclair's contacts in Washington were unable to secure him an additional extension. Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, and Tisse were allowed, after a month's stay at the U.S.-Mexico border outside Laredo, Texas, a 30-day "pass" to get from Texas to New York, and thence depart for Moscow, while Kimbrough returned to Los Angeles with the remaining film.
Eisenstein toured the American South on his way to New York. In mid-1932, the Sinclairs were able to secure the services of Sol Lesser, who had just opened his distribution office in New York, Principal Distributing Corporation. Lesser agreed to supervise post-production work on the miles of negative—at the Sinclairs' expense—and distribute any resulting product. Two short feature films and a short subject—"Thunder Over Mexico" based on the "Maguey" footage, "Eisenstein in Mexico", and "Death Day" respectively—were completed and released in the United States between the autumn of 1933 and early 1934. Eisenstein never saw any of the Sinclair-Lesser films, nor a later effort by his first biographer, Marie Seton, called "Time in the Sun", released in 1940. He would publicly maintain that he had lost all interest in the project. In 1978, Gregori Aleksandrov released – with the same name in contravention to the copyright – his own version, which was awarded the Honorable Golden Prize at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979. Later, in 1998, Oleg Kovalov edited a free version of the film, calling it "Mexican Fantasy".
Eisenstein's foray into the West made the staunchly Stalinist film industry look upon him with a suspicion that would never completely disappear. He apparently spent some time in a mental hospital in Kislovodsk in July 1933, ostensibly a result of depression born of his final acceptance that he would never be allowed to edit the Mexican footage. He was subsequently assigned a teaching position at the State Institute of Cinematography where he had taught earlier, and in 1933 and 1934 was in charge of writing the curriculum.
In 1935, Eisenstein was assigned another project, "Bezhin Meadow", but it appears the film was afflicted with many of the same problems as "¡Que viva México!". Eisenstein unilaterally decided to film two versions of the scenario, one for adult viewers and one for children; failed to define a clear shooting schedule; and shot film prodigiously, resulting in cost overruns and missed deadlines. Boris Shumyatsky, the "de facto" head of the Soviet film industry, finally called a halt to the filming and cancelled further production. What appeared to save Eisenstein's career at this point was that Stalin ended up taking the position that the "Bezhin Meadow" catastrophe, along with several other problems facing the industry at that point, had less to do with Eisenstein's approach to filmmaking as with the executives who were supposed to have been supervising him. Ultimately this came down on the shoulders of Shumyatsky, who in early 1938 was denounced, arrested, tried and convicted as a traitor, and shot.
Eisenstein was thence able to ingratiate himself with Stalin for 'one more chance', and he chose, from two offerings, the assignment of a biopic of "Alexander Nevsky", with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev. This time, he was assigned a co-scenarist, Pyotr Pavlenko, to bring in a completed script; professional actors to play the roles; and an assistant director, Dmitri Vasilyev, to expedite shooting.
The result was a film critically well received by both the Soviets and in the West, which won him the Order of Lenin and the Stalin Prize. It was an allegory and stern warning against the massing forces of Nazi Germany, well played and well made. The script had Nevsky utter a number of traditional Russian proverbs, verbally rooting his fight against the Germanic invaders in Russian traditions. This was started, completed, and placed in distribution all within the year 1938, and represented not only Eisenstein's first film in nearly a decade but also his first sound film.
Within months of its release, Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler, and "Alexander Nevsky" was promptly pulled from distribution. Eisenstein returned to teaching, and was assigned to direct Richard Wagner's "Die Walküre" at the Bolshoi Theatre. After the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941, "Alexander Nevsky" was re-released with a wide distribution and earned international success. With the war approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of many filmmakers evacuated to Alma-Ata, where he first considered the idea of making a film about Tsar Ivan IV. Eisenstein corresponded with Prokofiev from Alma-Ata, and was joined by him there in 1942. Prokofiev composed the score for Eisenstein's film and Eisenstein reciprocated by designing sets for an operatic rendition of "War and Peace" that Prokofiev was developing.
Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible, Part I", presenting Ivan IV of Russia as a national hero, won Stalin's approval (and a Stalin Prize), but the sequel, "Ivan The Terrible, Part II", was criticized by various authorities and went unreleased until 1958. All footage from "Ivan The Terrible, Part III" was confiscated whilst the film was still incomplete, and most of it was destroyed, though several filmed scenes exist.
In 1934, in the Soviet Union, Eisenstein married filmmaker and screenwriter Pera Atasheva (born Pearl Moiseyevna Fogelman; 1900 – 24 September 1965). There have been debates about Eisenstein's sexuality, with a film covering Eisenstein's homosexuality allegedly running into difficulties in Russia. Eisenstein never publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, but it has long been a subject of debate.
Eisenstein suffered a heart attack on 2 February 1946, and spent much of the following year recovering. He died of a second heart attack on 11 February 1948, at the age of 50. His body lay in state in the Hall of the Cinema Workers before being cremated on 13 February, and his ashes were buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Eisenstein was among the earliest film theorists. He briefly attended the film school established by Lev Kuleshov and the two were both fascinated with the power of editing to generate meaning and elicit emotion. Their individual writings and films are the foundations upon which Soviet montage theory was built, but they differed markedly in their understanding of its fundamental principles. Eisenstein's articles and books—particularly "Film Form" and "The Film Sense"—explain the significance of montage in detail.
His writings and films have continued to have a major impact on subsequent filmmakers. Eisenstein believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images—as Kuleshov maintained. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called "methods of montage":
Eisenstein taught film-making during his career at GIK where he wrote the curricula for the directors' course; his classroom illustrations are reproduced in Vladimir Nizhniĭ's "Lessons with Eisenstein". Exercises and examples for students were based on rendering literature such as Honoré de Balzac's "Le Père Goriot." Another hypothetical was the staging of the Haitian struggle for independence as depicted in Anatolii Vinogradov's "The Black Consul", influenced as well by John Vandercook's "Black Majesty".
Lessons from this scenario delved into the character of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, replaying his movements, actions, and the drama surrounding him. Further to the didactics of literary and dramatic content, Eisenstein taught the technicalities of directing, photography, and editing, while encouraging his students' development of individuality, expressiveness, and creativity. Eisenstein's pedagogy, like his films, was politically charged and contained quotes from Vladimir Lenin interwoven with his teaching.
In his initial films, Eisenstein did not use professional actors. His narratives eschewed individual characters and addressed broad social issues, especially class conflict. He used groups as characters, and the roles were filled with untrained people from the appropriate classes; he avoided casting stars. Eisenstein's vision of communism brought him into conflict with officials in the ruling regime of Stalin. Like many Bolshevik artists, Eisenstein envisioned a new society which would subsidize artists totally, freeing them from the confines of bosses and budgets, leaving them absolutely free to create, but budgets and producers were as significant to the Soviet film industry as the rest of the world. Due to the fledgling war, the revolution-wracked and isolated new nation didn't have the resources to nationalize its film industry at first. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28380 |
Poincaré conjecture
In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space.
The conjecture states: An equivalent form of the conjecture involves a coarser form of equivalence than homeomorphism called homotopy equivalence: if a 3-manifold is "homotopy equivalent" to the 3-sphere, then it is necessarily "homeomorphic" to it.
Originally conjectured by Henri Poincaré, the theorem concerns a space that locally looks like ordinary three-dimensional space but is connected, finite in size, and lacks any boundary (a closed 3-manifold). The Poincaré conjecture claims that if such a space has the additional property that each loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is necessarily a three-dimensional sphere. The analogous conjectures for all higher dimensions had already been proved.
After nearly a century of effort by mathematicians, Grigori Perelman presented a proof of the conjecture in three papers made available in 2002 and 2003 on arXiv. The proof built upon the program of Richard S. Hamilton to use the Ricci flow to attempt to solve the problem. Hamilton later introduced a modification of the standard Ricci flow, called "Ricci flow with surgery" to systematically excise singular regions as they develop, in a controlled way, but was unable to prove this method "converged" in three dimensions. Perelman completed this portion of the proof. Several teams of mathematicians verified that Perelman's proof was correct.
The Poincaré conjecture, before being proved, was one of the most important open questions in topology. In 2000, it was named one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, for which the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a $1 million prize for the first correct solution. Perelman's work survived review and was confirmed in 2006, leading to his being offered a Fields Medal, which he declined. Perelman was awarded the Millennium Prize on March 18, 2010. On July 1, 2010, he turned down the prize, saying that he believed his contribution in proving the Poincaré conjecture was no greater than Hamilton's. , the Poincaré conjecture is the only solved Millennium problem.
On December 22, 2006, the journal "Science" honored Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture as the scientific "Breakthrough of the Year", the first time this honor was bestowed in the area of mathematics.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Poincaré was working on the foundations of topology—what would later be called combinatorial topology and then algebraic topology. He was particularly interested in what topological properties characterized a sphere.
Poincaré claimed in 1900 that homology, a tool he had devised based on prior work by Enrico Betti, was sufficient to tell if a 3-manifold was a 3-sphere. However, in a 1904 paper he described a counterexample to this claim, a space now called the Poincaré homology sphere. The Poincaré sphere was the first example of a homology sphere, a manifold that had the same homology as a sphere, of which many others have since been constructed. To establish that the Poincaré sphere was different from the 3-sphere, Poincaré introduced a new topological invariant, the fundamental group, and showed that the Poincaré sphere had a fundamental group of order 120, while the 3-sphere had a trivial fundamental group. In this way he was able to conclude that these two spaces were, indeed, different.
In the same paper, Poincaré wondered whether a 3-manifold with the homology of a 3-sphere and also trivial fundamental group had to be a 3-sphere. Poincaré's new condition—i.e., "trivial fundamental group"—can be restated as "every loop can be shrunk to a point."
The original phrasing was as follows:
Poincaré never declared whether he believed this additional condition would characterize the 3-sphere, but nonetheless, the statement that it does is known as the Poincaré conjecture. Here is the standard form of the conjecture:
Note that "closed" here means, as customary in this area, the condition of being compact in terms of set topology, and also without boundary (3-dimensional Euclidean space is an example of a simply connected 3-manifold not homeomorphic to the 3-sphere; but it is not compact and therefore not a counter-example).
This problem seemed to lie dormant until J. H. C. Whitehead revived interest in the conjecture, when in the 1930s he first claimed a proof and then retracted it. In the process, he discovered some examples of simply-connected (indeed contractible, i.e homotopically equivalent to a point) non-compact 3-manifolds not homeomorphic to formula_1, the prototype of which is now called the Whitehead manifold.
In the 1950s and 1960s, other mathematicians attempted proofs of the conjecture only to discover that they contained flaws. Influential mathematicians such as Georges de Rham, R. H. Bing, Wolfgang Haken, Edwin E. Moise, and Christos Papakyriakopoulos attempted to prove the conjecture. In 1958 Bing proved a weak version of the Poincaré conjecture: if every simple closed curve of a compact 3-manifold is contained in a 3-ball, then the manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere. Bing also described some of the pitfalls in trying to prove the Poincaré conjecture.
Włodzimierz Jakobsche showed in 1978 that, if the Bing–Borsuk conjecture is true in dimension 3, then the Poincaré conjecture must also be true.
Over time, the conjecture gained the reputation of being particularly tricky to tackle. John Milnor commented that sometimes the errors in false proofs can be "rather subtle and difficult to detect." Work on the conjecture improved understanding of 3-manifolds. Experts in the field were often reluctant to announce proofs, and tended to view any such announcement with skepticism. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed some well-publicized fallacious proofs (which were not actually published in peer-reviewed form).
An exposition of attempts to prove this conjecture can be found in the non-technical book "Poincaré's Prize" by George Szpiro.
The classification of closed surfaces gives an affirmative answer to the analogous question in two dimensions. For dimensions greater than three, one can pose the Generalized Poincaré conjecture: is a homotopy "n"-sphere homeomorphic to the "n"-sphere? A stronger assumption is necessary; in dimensions four and higher there are simply-connected, closed manifolds which are not homotopy equivalent to an "n"-sphere.
Historically, while the conjecture in dimension three seemed plausible, the generalized conjecture was thought to be false. In 1961 Stephen Smale shocked mathematicians by proving the Generalized Poincaré conjecture for dimensions greater than four and extended his techniques to prove the fundamental h-cobordism theorem. In 1982 Michael Freedman proved the Poincaré conjecture in four dimensions. Freedman's work left open the possibility that there is a smooth four-manifold homeomorphic to the four-sphere which is not diffeomorphic to the four-sphere. This so-called smooth Poincaré conjecture, in dimension four, remains open and is thought to be very difficult. Milnor's exotic spheres show that the smooth Poincaré conjecture is false in dimension seven, for example.
These earlier successes in higher dimensions left the case of three dimensions in limbo. The Poincaré conjecture was essentially true in both dimension four and all higher dimensions for substantially different reasons. In dimension three, the conjecture had an uncertain reputation until the geometrization conjecture put it into a framework governing all 3-manifolds. John Morgan wrote:
Hamilton's program was started in his 1982 paper in which he introduced the Ricci flow on a manifold and showed how to use it to prove some special cases of the Poincaré conjecture. In the following years he extended this work, but was unable to prove the conjecture. The actual solution was not found until Grigori Perelman published his papers.
In late 2002 and 2003 Perelman posted three papers on the arXiv. In these papers he sketched a proof of the Poincaré conjecture and a more general conjecture, Thurston's geometrization conjecture, completing the Ricci flow program outlined earlier by Richard S. Hamilton.
From May to July 2006, several groups presented papers that filled in the details of Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture, as follows:
All three groups found that the gaps in Perelman's papers were minor and could be filled in using his own techniques.
On August 22, 2006, the ICM awarded Perelman the Fields Medal for his work on the conjecture, but Perelman refused the medal.
John Morgan spoke at the ICM on the Poincaré conjecture on August 24, 2006, declaring that "in 2003, Perelman solved the Poincaré Conjecture."
In December 2006, the journal "Science" honored the proof of Poincaré conjecture as the Breakthrough of the Year and featured it on its cover.
Hamilton's program for proving the Poincaré conjecture involves first putting a Riemannian metric on the unknown simply connected closed 3-manifold. The basic idea is to try to "improve" this metric; for example, if the metric can be improved enough so that it has constant positive curvature, then according to classical results in Riemannian geometry, it must be the 3-sphere. Hamilton prescribed the "Ricci flow equations" for improving the metric;
where "g" is the metric and "R" its Ricci curvature, and one hopes that as the time "t" increases the manifold becomes easier to understand. Ricci flow expands the negative curvature part of the manifold and contracts the positive curvature part.
In some cases Hamilton was able to show that this works; for example, his original breakthrough was to show that if the Riemannian manifold has positive Ricci curvature everywhere, then the above procedure can only be followed for a bounded interval of parameter values, formula_3 with formula_4, and more significantly, that there are numbers formula_5 such that as formula_6, the Riemannian metrics formula_7 smoothly converge to one of constant positive curvature. According to classical Riemannian geometry, the only simply-connected compact manifold which can support a Riemannian metric of constant positive curvature is the sphere. So, in effect, Hamilton showed a special case of the Poincaré conjecture: "if" a compact simply-connected 3-manifold supports a Riemannian metric of positive Ricci curvature, then it must be diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere.
If, instead, one only has an arbitrary Riemannian metric, the Ricci flow equations must lead to more complicated singularities. Perelman's major achievement was to show that, if one takes a certain perspective, if they appear in finite time, these singularities can only look like shrinking spheres or cylinders. With a quantitative understanding of this phenomena, he cuts the manifold along the singularities, splitting the manifold into several pieces, and then continues with the Ricci flow on each of these pieces. This procedure is known as Ricci flow with surgery.
Perelman provided a separate argument based on curve shortening flow to show that, on a simply-connected compact 3-manifold, any solution of the Ricci flow with surgery becomes extinct in finite time. An alternative argument, based on the min-max theory of minimal surfaces and geometric measure theory, was provided by Tobias Colding and William Minicozzi. Hence, in the simply-connected context, the above finite-time phenomena of Ricci flow with surgery is all that is relevant. In fact, this is even true if the fundamental group is a free product of finite groups and cyclic groups.
This condition on the fundamental group turns out to be necessary and sufficient for finite time extinction. It is equivalent to saying that the prime decomposition of the manifold has no acyclic components, and turns out to be equivalent to the condition that all geometric pieces of the manifold have geometries based on the two Thurston geometries "S"2×R and "S"3. In the context that one makes no assumption about the fundamental group whatsoever, Perelman made a further technical study of the limit of the manifold for infinitely large times, and in so doing, proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture: at large times the manifold has a thick-thin decomposition, whose thick piece has a hyperbolic structure, and whose thin piece is a graph manifold. Due to Perelman's and Colding and Minicozzi's results, however, these further results are unnecessary in order to prove the Poincaré conjecture.
On November 13, 2002, Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posted the first of a series of three eprints on arXiv outlining a solution of the Poincaré conjecture. Perelman's proof uses a modified version of a Ricci flow program developed by Richard S. Hamilton. In August 2006, Perelman was awarded, but declined, the Fields Medal (worth $15,000 CAD) for his proof. On March 18, 2010, the Clay Mathematics Institute awarded Perelman the $1 million Millennium Prize in recognition of his proof. Perelman rejected that prize as well.
Perelman proved the conjecture by deforming the manifold using the Ricci flow (which behaves similarly to the heat equation that describes the diffusion of heat through an object). The Ricci flow usually deforms the manifold towards a rounder shape, except for some cases where it stretches the manifold apart from itself towards what are known as singularities. Perelman and Hamilton then chop the manifold at the singularities (a process called "surgery") causing the separate pieces to form into ball-like shapes. Major steps in the proof involve showing how manifolds behave when they are deformed by the Ricci flow, examining what sort of singularities develop, determining whether this surgery process can be completed and establishing that the surgery need not be repeated infinitely many times.
The first step is to deform the manifold using the Ricci flow. The Ricci flow was defined by Richard S. Hamilton as a way to deform manifolds. The formula for the Ricci flow is an imitation of the heat equation which describes the way heat flows in a solid. Like the heat flow, Ricci flow tends towards uniform behavior. Unlike the heat flow, the Ricci flow could run into singularities and stop functioning. A singularity in a manifold is a place where it is not differentiable: like a corner or a cusp or a pinching. The Ricci flow was only defined for smooth differentiable manifolds. Hamilton used the Ricci flow to prove that some compact manifolds were diffeomorphic to spheres and he hoped to apply it to prove the Poincaré Conjecture. He needed to understand the singularities.
Hamilton created a list of possible singularities that could form but he was concerned that some singularities might lead to difficulties. He wanted to cut the manifold at the singularities and paste in caps, and then run the Ricci flow again, so he needed to understand the singularities and show that certain kinds of singularities do not occur. Perelman discovered the singularities were all very simple: essentially three-dimensional cylinders made out of spheres stretched out along a line. An ordinary cylinder is made by taking circles stretched along a line. Perelman proved this using something called the "Reduced Volume" which is closely related to an eigenvalue of a certain elliptic equation.
Sometimes an otherwise complicated operation reduces to multiplication by a scalar (a number). Such numbers are called eigenvalues of that operation. Eigenvalues are closely related to vibration frequencies and are used in analyzing a famous problem: can you hear the shape of a drum? Essentially an eigenvalue is like a note being played by the manifold. Perelman proved this note goes up as the manifold is deformed by the Ricci flow. This helped him eliminate some of the more troublesome singularities that had concerned Hamilton, particularly the cigar soliton solution, which looked like a strand sticking out of a manifold with nothing on the other side. In essence Perelman showed that all the strands that form can be cut and capped and none stick out on one side only.
Completing the proof, Perelman takes any compact, simply connected, three-dimensional manifold without boundary and starts to run the Ricci flow. This deforms the manifold into round pieces with strands running between them. He cuts the strands and continues deforming the manifold until eventually he is left with a collection of round three-dimensional spheres. Then he rebuilds the original manifold by connecting the spheres together with three-dimensional cylinders, morphs them into a round shape and sees that, despite all the initial confusion, the manifold was in fact homeomorphic to a sphere.
One immediate question posed was how one could be sure that infinitely many cuts weren't necessary. This was raised due to the cutting potentially progressing forever. Perelman proved this can't happen by using minimal surfaces on the manifold. A minimal surface is essentially a soap film. Hamilton had shown that the area of a minimal surface decreases as the manifold undergoes Ricci flow. Perelman verified what happened to the area of the minimal surface when the manifold was sliced. He proved that eventually the area is so small that any cut after the area is that small can only be chopping off three-dimensional spheres and not more complicated pieces. This is described as a battle with a Hydra by Sormani in Szpiro's book cited below. This last part of the proof appeared in Perelman's third and final paper on the subject. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23798 |
Power set
In mathematics, the power set (or powerset) of any set is the set of all subsets of , including the empty set and itself, variously denoted as (), 𝒫(), ℘() (using the "Weierstrass p"), , , or, identifying the powerset of with the set of all functions from to a given set of two elements, . In axiomatic set theory (as developed, for example, in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is postulated by the axiom of power set.
Any subset of () is called a "family of sets" over .
If is the set , then the subsets of are
and hence the power set of is .
If is a finite set with elements, then the number of subsets of is . This fact, which is the motivation for the notation , may be demonstrated simply as follows,
Cantor's diagonal argument shows that the power set of a set (whether infinite or not) always has strictly higher cardinality than the set itself (informally the power set must be larger than the original set). In particular, Cantor's theorem shows that the power set of a countably infinite set is uncountably infinite. The power set of the set of natural numbers can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of real numbers (see Cardinality of the continuum).
The power set of a set , together with the operations of union, intersection and complement can be viewed as the prototypical example of a Boolean algebra. In fact, one can show that any "finite" Boolean algebra is isomorphic to the Boolean algebra of the power set of a finite set. For "infinite" Boolean algebras this is no longer true, but every infinite Boolean algebra can be represented as a subalgebra of a power set Boolean algebra (see Stone's representation theorem).
The power set of a set forms an abelian group when considered with the operation of symmetric difference (with the empty set as the identity element and each set being its own inverse) and a commutative monoid when considered with the operation of intersection. It can hence be shown (by proving the distributive laws) that the power set considered together with both of these operations forms a Boolean ring.
In set theory, is the set of all functions from to . As "2" can be defined as (see natural number), (i.e., ) is the set of all functions from to {0,1}. By identifying a function in with the corresponding preimage of , we see that there is a bijection between and (), where each function is the characteristic function of the subset in () with which it is identified. Hence and () could be considered identical set-theoretically. (Thus there are two distinct notational motivations for denoting the power set by : the fact that this function-representation of subsets makes it a special case of the notation and the property, mentioned above, that .)
This notion can be applied to the example above in which to see the isomorphism with the binary numbers
from 0 to with being the number of elements in the set.
In , a "1" in the position corresponding to the location in the enumerated set indicates the presence of the element. So .
For the whole power set of we get:
Such bijective mapping of "S" to integers is arbitrary, so this representation of subsets of "S" is not unique, but the sort order of the enumerated set does not change its cardinality.
However, such finite binary representation is only possible if "S" can be enumerated (this is possible even if "S" has an infinite cardinality, such as the set of integers or rationals, but not for example if "S" is the set of real numbers, in which we cannot enumerate all irrational numbers to assign them a defined finite location in an ordered set containing all irrational numbers).
The power set is closely related to the binomial theorem. The number of subsets with elements in the power set of a set with elements is given by the number of combinations, , also called binomial coefficients.
For example, the power set of a set with three elements, has:
Using this relationship we can compute formula_3 using the formula:
formula_4
Therefore, one can deduce the following identity, assuming formula_5:
formula_6
If formula_7 is a finite set, there is a recursive definition of formula_8.
In words:
The set of subsets of of cardinality less than or equal to is sometimes denoted by or , and the set of subsets with cardinality strictly less than is sometimes denoted or . Similarly, the set of non-empty subsets of might be denoted by or .
A set can be regarded as an algebra having no nontrivial operations or defining equations. From this perspective the idea of the power set of as the set of subsets of generalizes naturally to the subalgebras of an algebraic structure or algebra.
Now the power set of a set, when ordered by inclusion, is always a complete atomic Boolean algebra, and every complete atomic Boolean algebra arises as the lattice of all subsets of some set. The generalization to arbitrary algebras is that the set of subalgebras of an algebra, again ordered by inclusion, is always an algebraic lattice, and every algebraic lattice arises as the lattice of subalgebras of some algebra. So in that regard subalgebras behave analogously to subsets.
However, there are two important properties of subsets that do not carry over to subalgebras in general. First, although the subsets of a set form a set (as well as a lattice), in some classes it may not be possible to organize the subalgebras of an algebra as itself an algebra in that class, although they can always be organized as a lattice. Secondly, whereas the subsets of a set are in bijection with the functions from that set to the set {0,1} = 2, there is no guarantee that a class of algebras contains an algebra that can play the role of 2 in this way.
Certain classes of algebras enjoy both of these properties. The first property is more common, the case of having both is relatively rare. One class that does have both is that of multigraphs. Given two multigraphs and , a homomorphism consists of two functions, one mapping vertices to vertices and the other mapping edges to edges. The set of homomorphisms from to can then be organized as the graph whose vertices and edges are respectively the vertex and edge functions appearing in that set. Furthermore, the subgraphs of a multigraph are in bijection with the graph homomorphisms from to the multigraph definable as the complete directed graph on two vertices (hence four edges, namely two self-loops and two more edges forming a cycle) augmented with a fifth edge, namely a second self-loop at one of the vertices. We can therefore organize the subgraphs of as the multigraph , called the power object of .
What is special about a multigraph as an algebra is that its operations are unary. A multigraph has two sorts of elements forming a set of vertices and of edges, and has two unary operations giving the source (start) and target (end) vertices of each edge. An algebra all of whose operations are unary is called a presheaf. Every class of presheaves contains a presheaf that plays the role for subalgebras that 2 plays for subsets. Such a class is a special case of the more general notion of elementary topos as a category that is closed (and moreover cartesian closed) and has an object , called a subobject classifier. Although the term "power object" is sometimes used synonymously with exponential object , in topos theory is required to be .
In category theory and the theory of elementary topoi, the universal quantifier can be understood as the right adjoint of a functor between power sets, the inverse image functor of a function between sets; likewise, the existential quantifier is the left adjoint. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23799 |
Procedural programming
Procedural programming is a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based on the concept of the "procedure call". Procedures, also known as routines, subroutines, or functions, simply contain a series of computational steps to be carried out. Any given procedure might be called at any point during a program's execution, including by other procedures or itself. The first major procedural programming languages appeared circa 1957–1964, including Fortran, ALGOL, COBOL, PL/I and BASIC. Pascal and C were published circa 1970–1972.
Computer processors provide hardware support for procedural programming through a stack register and instructions for calling procedures and returning from them. Hardware support for other types of programming is possible, but no attempt was commercially successful (for example Lisp machines or Java processors).
Modularity is generally desirable, especially in large, complicated programs. Inputs are usually specified syntactically in the form of "arguments" and the outputs delivered as "return values".
Scoping is another technique that helps keep procedures modular. It prevents the procedure from accessing the variables of other procedures (and vice versa), including previous instances of itself, without explicit authorization.
Less modular procedures, often used in small or quickly written programs, tend to interact with a large number of variables in the execution environment, which other procedures might also modify.
Because of the ability to specify a simple interface, to be self-contained, and to be reused, procedures are a convenient vehicle for making pieces of code written by different people or different groups, including through programming libraries.
Procedural programming languages are also imperative languages, because they make explicit references to the state of the execution environment. This could be anything from "variables" (which may correspond to processor registers) to something like the position of the "turtle" in the Logo programming language.
Often, the terms "procedural programming" and "imperative programming" are used synonymously. However, procedural programming relies heavily on blocks and scope, whereas imperative programming as a whole may or may not have such features. As such, procedural languages generally use reserved words that act on blocks, such as codice_1, codice_2, and codice_3, to implement control flow, whereas non-structured imperative languages use goto statements and branch tables for the same purpose.
The focus of procedural programming is to break down a programming task into a collection of variables, data structures, and subroutines, whereas in object-oriented programming it is to break down a programming task into objects that expose behavior (methods) and data (members or attributes) using interfaces. The most important distinction is that while procedural programming uses procedures to operate on data structures, object-oriented programming bundles the two together, so an "object", which is an instance of a class, operates on its "own" data structure.
Nomenclature varies between the two, although they have similar semantics:
The principles of modularity and code reuse in practical functional languages are fundamentally the same as in procedural languages, since they both stem from structured programming. So for example:
The main difference between the styles is that functional programming languages remove or at least deemphasize the imperative elements of procedural programming. The feature set of functional languages is therefore designed to support writing programs as much as possible in terms of pure functions:
Many functional languages, however, are in fact impurely functional and offer imperative/procedural constructs that allow the programmer to write programs in procedural style, or in a combination of both styles. It is common for input/output code in functional languages to be written in a procedural style.
There do exist a few esoteric functional languages (like Unlambda) that eschew structured programming precepts for the sake of being difficult to program in (and therefore challenging). These languages are the exception to the common ground between procedural and functional languages.
In logic programming, a program is a set of premises, and computation is performed by attempting to prove candidate theorems. From this point of view, logic programs are declarative, focusing on what the problem is, rather than on how to solve it.
However, the backward reasoning technique, implemented by SLD resolution, used to solve problems in logic programming languages such as Prolog, treats programs as goal-reduction procedures. Thus clauses of the form:
have a dual interpretation, both as procedures
and as logical implications:
Experienced logic programmers use the procedural interpretation to write programs that are effective and efficient, and they use the declarative interpretation to help ensure that programs are correct. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23801 |
Pareto index
In economics the Pareto index, named after the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is a measure of the breadth of income or wealth distribution. It is one of the parameters specifying a Pareto distribution and embodies the Pareto principle. As applied to income, the Pareto principle is sometimes stated in popular expositions by saying 20% of the population has 80% of the income. In fact, Pareto's data on British income taxes in his "Cours d'économie politique" indicates that about 20% of the population had about 80% of the income.
One of the simplest characterizations of the Pareto distribution, when used to model the distribution of incomes, says that the proportion of the population whose income exceeds any positive number "x" > "x"m is
where "x"m is a positive number, the minimum of the support of this probability distribution (the subscript m stands for "minimum"). The Pareto index is the parameter α. Since a proportion must be between 0 and 1, inclusive, the index α must be positive, but in order for the total income of the whole population to be finite, α must also be greater than 1. The larger the Pareto index, the smaller the proportion of very high-income people.
Given a formula_2 rule, with formula_3, the Pareto index is given by:
If formula_5, this simplifies to
Alternatively, in terms of odds, X:Y
so X:1 yields
For example, the 80–20 (4:1) rule corresponds to α = log(5)/log(4) ≈ 1.16, 90–10 (9:1) corresponds to α = log(10)/log(9) ≈ 1.05, and 99–1 corresponds to α = log(100)/log(99) ≈ 1.002, whereas the 70–30 rule corresponds to α = log(0.3)/log(0.3/0.7) ≈ 1.42 and 2:1 (67–33) corresponds to α = log(3)/log(2) ≈ 1.585.
Mathematically, the formula above entails that all incomes are at least the lower bound "x"m, which is positive. At this income the probability density suddenly jumps up from zero and then starts decreasing, which is clearly unrealistic. Economists therefore sometimes state that the Pareto law as stated here applies only to the upper tail of the distribution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23802 |
Pope Leo III
Pope Leo III (; 12 June 816) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 26 December 795 to his death. Protected by Charlemagne from the supporters of his predecessor, Adrian I, Leo subsequently strengthened Charlemagne's position by crowning him emperor. The coronation was not approved in Constantinople, although the Byzantines, occupied with their own defenses, were in no position to offer much opposition.
Leo was of a modest family in southern Italy, the son of Atyuppius and Elizabeth. He was made cardinal-priest of Santa Susanna by Pope Adrian I, and seemingly also vestiarius, or chief of the pontifical treasury, or wardrobe.
He was elected on 26 December 795, the day Adrian I was buried, and consecrated on the following day. It is quite possible that this haste may have been due to a desire on the part of the Romans to prevent any interference by the Franks. With the letter informing the Frankish ruler Charlemagne that he had been unanimously elected pope, Leo sent him the keys of the confession of St. Peter, and the standard of the city, and requested an envoy. This he did to show that he regarded the Frankish king as the protector of the Holy See. In return, Charlemagne sent letters of congratulation and a great part of the treasure which the king had captured from the Avars.
Charlemagne's gift enabled Leo to be a great benefactor to the churches and charitable institutions of Rome. While Charlemagne's letter is respectful and even affectionate, it also exhibits his concept of the coordination of the spiritual and temporal powers, and he does not hesitate to remind the pope of his grave spiritual obligations. Charlemagne's reply stated that it was his role to defend the Church, and the role of the pope to pray for the realm and for the victory of his army.
Prompted by jealousy or ambition, or the thought that only someone of the nobility should hold the office of pope, a number of relatives of Adrian I formed a plot to render Leo unfit to hold his office. On the occasion of the procession of the Greater Litanies, 25 April 799, when the pope was making his way towards the Flaminian Gate, he was suddenly attacked by armed men. He was dashed to the ground, and an effort was made to root out his tongue and tear out his eyes which left him injured and unconscious. He was rescued by two of Charlemagne's "missi dominici", who came with a considerable force. Duke Winiges of Spoleto sheltered the fugitive pope, who went later to Paderborn, where Charlemagne's camp then was. He was received by the Frankish king with the greatest honour at Paderborn. This meeting forms the basis of the epic poem "Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa".
Leo was accused by his enemies of adultery and perjury. Charlemagne ordered them to Paderborn, but no decision could be made. He then had Leo escorted back to Rome. In November 800, Charlemagne himself went to Rome, and on 1 December held a council there with representatives of both sides. Leo, on 23 December, took an oath of purgation concerning the charges brought against him, and his opponents were exiled.
Charlemagne's father, Pepin the Short, defended the papacy against the Lombards and issued the Donation of Pepin, which granted the land around Rome to the pope as a fief. In 754 Pope Stephen II had conferred on Charles's father the dignity of "Patricius Romanus", which implied primarily the protection of the Roman Church in all its rights and privileges; above all in its temporal authority which it had gradually acquired (notably in the former Byzantine Duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna) by just titles in the course of the two preceding centuries.
Two days after his oath, on Christmas Day 800, Leo crowned Charlemagne as emperor. According to Charlemagne's biographer, Einhard, Charles had no suspicion of what was about to happen, and if informed would not have accepted the imperial crown. There is, however, no reason to doubt that for some time previous the elevation of Charlemagne had been discussed, both at home and at Rome, especially since the imperial throne in Constantinople was controversially occupied by a woman, Irene of Athens, and since the Carolingian dynasty had firmly established its power and prestige. The coronation offended Constantinople, which had seen itself still as the rightful defender of Rome, but Empress Irene, like many of her predecessors since Justinian I, was too weak to offer protection to the city or its much reduced citizenry.
In 808, Leo committed Corsica to Charlemagne for safe-keeping because of Muslim raids, originating from Al-Andalus, on the island. Nonetheless, Corsica, along with Sardinia, would still go on to be occupied by Muslim forces in 809 and 810.
Leo helped restore King Eardwulf of Northumbria and settled various matters of dispute between the archbishops of York and Canterbury. He also reversed Adrian I's decision in regards to the granting of the pallium to Bishop Hygeberht of Lichfield. He believed that the English episcopate had been misrepresented before Adrian and that therefore his act was invalid. In 803, Lichfield was a regular diocese again.
When asked to confirm the decision of the 809 Council of Aachen, Leo, though affirming the orthodoxy of the term "Filioque" and approving of its use in catechesis and personal professions of the faith, explicitly disapproved the addition of the "filioque" to the Creed of 381. Around this time, he ordered two heavy silver shields, containing the original text of the Creed in both Greek and Latin, to be made and placed in St. Peter's Basilica, adding: "Haec Leo posui amore et cautela orthodoxae fidei" ("I, Leo, put these here for love and protection of orthodox faith").
Leo III died in 816 after a reign of more than 20 years. He was originally buried in his own monument. However, some years after his death, his remains were put into a tomb that contained the first four popes named Leo. In the 18th century, the relics of Leo the Great were separated from his namesakes, and he was given his own chapel.
Leo III was canonized by Clement X, who, in 1673, had Leo's name entered in the Roman Martyrology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23803 |
Pope Adrian I
Pope Adrian I (; died 25 December 795) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 1 February 772 to his death. He was the son of Theodore, a Roman nobleman.
Adrian and his predecessors had to contend with periodic attempts by the Lombards to expand their holdings in Italy at the expense of the papacy. Not receiving any support from Constantinople, the popes looked for help to the Franks. Adrian's tenure saw the culmination of on-going territorial disputes between Charlemagne and his brother Carloman. The Lombard king Desiderius supported the claims of Carloman's sons to their late father's land, and requested Pope Adrian crown Carloman's sons "Kings of the Frank". When the Pope failed to do so, Desiderius invaded Papal territory and seized the Duchy of the Pentapolis. Charlemagne besieged Pavia and took the Lombard crown for himself. He then restored the Pentapolis to the Papacy as well as some of the captured Lombard territory.
Shortly after Adrian's accession in 772, the territory ruled by the papacy was invaded by Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and Adrian was compelled to seek the assistance of the Frankish king Charlemagne, who entered Italy with a large army. Charlemagne besieged Desiderius in his capital of Pavia. After taking the town, he banished the Lombard king to the Abbey of Corbie in France, and adopted the title "King of the Lombards" himself. The pope, whose expectations had been aroused, had to content himself with some additions to the Duchy of Rome, the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Pentapolis in the Marches, which consisted of the "five cities" on the Adriatic coast from Rimini to Ancona with the coastal plain as far as the mountains. He celebrated the occasion by striking the earliest papal coin, and in a mark of the direction the mediaeval papacy was to take, no longer dated his documents by the Emperor in the east, but by the reign of Charles, king of the Franks.
A mark of such newly settled conditions in the Duchy of Rome is the "Domusculta Capracorum", the central Roman villa that Adrian assembled from a nucleus of his inherited estates and acquisitions from neighbors in the countryside north of Veii. The villa is documented in "Liber Pontificalis", but its site was not rediscovered until the 1960s, when excavations revealed the structures on a gently-rounded hill that was only marginally capable of self-defense, but fully self-sufficient for a mixed economy of grains and vineyards, olives, vegetable gardens and piggery with its own grain mill, smithies and tile-kilns. During the 10th century villages were carved out of Adrian's Capracorum estate: Campagnano, mentioned first in 1076; Formello, mentioned in 1027; Mazzano, mentioned in 945; and Stabia (modern Faleria), mentioned in 998.
While the Lombards had always been openly respectful of the papacy, the popes distrusted them. The popes had sought aid from the Eastern Roman Empire to keep them in check. Adrian continued this policy. Because the East could offer no direct aid, Adrian then looked to the Franks to offset the power of the Lombards.
Upon the death of Pepin the Short in 768, his kingdom was left to his sons Charlemagne and Carloman I. Relations between the brothers is said to have been strained. In 770 Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria married a Lombard princess, Liutperga, daughter of King Desiderius, to confirm the traditional alliance between Lombardy and Bavaria. That same year, Charlemagne concluded a treaty with Duke Tassilo, and married Liutperga's sister, Desiderata, to surround Carloman with his own allies. Less than a year later, Charlemagne repudiated Desiderata and married Hildegard, the daughter of Count Gerold of Kraichgau and his wife Emma, daughter, in turn, of Duke Nebe (Hnabi) of Alemannia. Hildegard's father had extensive possessions in the territory under Carloman's dominion. This marriage was advantageous to Charlemagne because it allowed him to strengthen his position east of the Rhine and also bind the Alemannian nobility to his side. With Desiderata's return to her father's court at Pavia, Desiderius was grievously insulted, and appears to have made an alliance with Carloman against Charlemagne and the Papacy, which looked to the Franks for protection against Lombard incursions into Papal territory..
Carloman died in December 771, and when Charlemagne seized his brother's territory, Carloman's widow, Gerberga, and their two sons fled for refuge to the Lombard court at Pavia. Desiderius made overtures to Pope Adrian, requesting that he acknowledge Carloman's sons' right to succeed their father, and crown them as Kings of the Franks. With Charlemagne occupied with a campaign against the Saxons, Desiderius saw an opportunity to take all of Italy. He invaded the Duchy of the Pentapolis which had been given to the papacy in 756 by Charlemagne's father. Desiderius's support of the claims of Carloman's sons posed a potential challenge to the legitimacy of Charlemagne's possession of his brother's lands. In 773, he cut short a military campaign near Paderborn, crossed the Alps, and laid siege to Pavia. In exchange for their lives, the Lombards surrendered and Desiderius was sent to the abbey of Corbie. Charlemagne assumed the title "King of the Lombards".
From 781 Adrian began dating papal documents by the years of Charlemagne's reign, instead of the reign of the Byzantine Emperor.
Friendly relations between pope and king were not disturbed by the theological dispute about the veneration of icons. In 787, Second Council of Nicaea, approved by Pope Adrian, had confirmed the practice and excommunicated the iconoclasts. Charlemagne, however, who had received the Council's decisions only in a bad Latin translation, consulted with his theologians and sent the Pope the "Capitulare contra synodum" (792), a response critical of several passages found in the council's acts. He also had his theologians, including Theodulf of Orleans, compose the more comprehensive "Libri Carolini". Pope Adrian reacted to the Capitulare with a defense of the Council. In 794, a synod held at Frankfurt in 794 discussed the issue but refused to receive the Libri and contented itself with condemning extreme forms of veneration of icons.
In 787 Adrian elevated the English diocese of Lichfield to an archdiocese at the request of the English bishops and King Offa of Mercia to balance the ecclesiastic power in that land between Kent and Mercia. He gave the Lichfield bishop Hygeberht the pallium in 788.
Regarding the Muslims, he maintained the prohibition of Pope Zachary of selling slaves to Muslims, whom Adrian described as "the unspeakable race of Saracens," in order to guarantee a labor pool and to keep the power of Muslim rivals in check. He also encouraged Charlemagne to lead his troops into Spain against the Muslims there and was generally interested in expanding Christian influence and eliminating Muslim control.
An epitaph written by Alcuin in verse, in which he styles Adrian "father", is still to be seen at the door of the Vatican basilica. Adrian restored some of the ancient aqueducts of Rome and rebuilt the churches of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, decorated by Greek monks fleeing from the iconoclast persecutions, and of San Marco in Rome. At the time of his death at the age of 95, his was the longest pontificate since Saint Peter (the first pope) until it was surpassed by the 24-year papacy of Pius VI in the late 18th century. Only three other popes – Pius IX, Leo XIII, and John Paul II – have reigned for longer periods since. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23804 |
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (; ; ; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 to 2005. He was elected pope by the second papal conclave of 1978, which was called after Pope John Paul I, who had been elected in August to succeed Pope Paul VI, died after 33 days. Cardinal Wojtyła was elected on the third day of the conclave and adopted the name of his predecessor in tribute to him. John Paul II is recognised as helping to end Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe.
John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, and the Eastern Orthodox Church. He upheld the Church's teachings on such matters as the right to life, artificial contraception, the ordination of women, and a celibate clergy, and although he supported the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, he was seen as generally conservative in their interpretation. He was one of the most travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 and canonised 483 people, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. By the time of his death, he had named most of the College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated many of the world's bishops, and ordained many priests.
John Paul II was the second longest-serving pope in modern history after Pope Pius IX. Born in Poland, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since the 16th-century Pope Adrian VI. John Paul II's cause for canonisation commenced one month after his death with the traditional five-year waiting period waived. On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed venerable by his successor, Benedict XVI, and was beatified on 1 May 2011 (Divine Mercy Sunday) after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attributed one miracle to his intercession, the healing of a French nun called Marie Simon Pierre from Parkinson's disease. A second miracle was approved on 2 July 2013, and confirmed by Pope Francis two days later. John Paul II was canonised on 27 April 2014 (again Divine Mercy Sunday), together with Pope John XXIII. On 11 September 2014, Pope Francis added these two optional memorials to the worldwide General Roman Calendar of saints. It is traditional to celebrate saints' feast days on the anniversary of their deaths, but that of John Paul II (22 October) is celebrated on the anniversary of his papal inauguration. Posthumously, he has been referred to by some Catholics as "St. John Paul the Great", although the title has no official recognition.
Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in the Polish town of Wadowice. He was the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtyła (1879–1941), an ethnic Pole, and Emilia Kaczorowska (1884–1929), who was of distant Lithuanian heritage. Emilia, who was a schoolteacher, died from a heart attack and kidney failure in 1929 when Wojtyła was eight years old. His elder sister Olga had died before his birth, but he was close to his brother Edmund, nicknamed Mundek, who was 13 years his senior. Edmund's work as a physician eventually led to his death from scarlet fever, a loss that affected Wojtyła deeply.
As a boy, Wojtyła was athletic, often playing football as goalkeeper. During his childhood, Wojtyła had contact with Wadowice's large Jewish community. School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła often played on the Jewish side. "I remember that at least a third of my classmates at elementary school in Wadowice were Jews. At elementary school there were fewer. With some I was on very friendly terms. And what struck me about some of them was their Polish patriotism." It was around this time that the young Karol had his first serious relationship with a girl. He became close to a girl called Ginka Beer, described as "a Jewish beauty, with stupendous eyes and jet black hair, slender, a superb actress."
In mid-1938, Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at the Jagiellonian University. While studying such topics as philology and various languages, he worked as a volunteer librarian and was required to participate in compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but he refused to fire a weapon. He performed with various theatrical groups and worked as a playwright. During this time, his talent for language blossomed, and he learned as many as 12 languages — Polish, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, German, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and Esperanto, nine of which he used extensively as pope.
In 1939, the German occupation forces closed the university after invading Poland. Able-bodied males were required to work, so from 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry and for the Solvay chemical factory, to avoid deportation to Germany. In February 1940, he met Jan Tyranowski who introduced him to Carmelite mysticism and the “Living Rosary” youth groups. Also in 1940 he was struck by a tram, suffering a fractured skull. The same year he was hit by a lorry in a quarry, which left him with one shoulder higher than the other and a permanent stoop. His father, a former Austro-Hungarian non-commissioned officer and later officer in the Polish Army, died of a heart attack in 1941, leaving Wojtyła as the immediate family's only surviving member. "I was not at my mother's death, I was not at my brother's death, I was not at my father's death," he said, reflecting on these times of his life, nearly forty years later, "At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved."
After his father's death, he started thinking seriously about the priesthood. In October 1942, while the war continued, he knocked on the door of the Bishop's Palace in Kraków and asked to study for the priesthood. Soon after, he began courses in the clandestine underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha. On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was hit by a German truck. German Wehrmacht officers tended to him and sent him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. It seemed to him that this accident and his survival was a confirmation of his vocation. On 6 August 1944, a day known as "Black Sunday", the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to curtail the uprising there, similar to the recent uprising in Warsaw. Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above. More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's Palace, where he remained until after the Germans had left.
On the night of 17 January 1945, the Germans fled the city, and the students reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the toilets. Wojtyła also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer, who had escaped from a Nazi labour camp in Częstochowa. Edith had collapsed on a railway platform, so Wojtyła carried her to a train and stayed with her throughout the journey to Kraków. Edith credits Wojtyła with saving her life that day. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said that Wojtyła helped protect many other Polish Jews from the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a Jewish family sent their son, Stanley Berger, to be hidden by a Gentile Polish family. Berger's biological Jewish parents died during the Holocaust, and after the war Berger's new Christian parents asked Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, to baptise the boy. Wojtyła refused, saying that the child should be raised in the Jewish faith of his birth parents and nation, not as a Catholic. He did everything he could to ensure that Berger leave Poland to be raised by his Jewish relatives in the United States. In April 2005, shortly after John Paul II's death, the Israeli government created a commission to honour the legacy of John Paul II. One of the ways of honour, proposed by Emmanuelle Pacifici, the head of Italy's Jewish community, was the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. In Wojtyła's last book, "Memory and Identity", he described the 12 years of the Nazi régime as "bestiality", quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher Konstanty Michalski.
After finishing his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. Sapieha sent Wojtyła to Rome's Pontifical International Athenaeum "Angelicum", the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, to study under the French Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange beginning on 26 November 1946. He resided in the Belgian Pontifical College during this time, under presidency of Mgr Maximilien de Furstenberg. Wojtyła earned a licence in July 1947, passed his doctoral exam on 14 June 1948, and successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled "Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce" (The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross) in philosophy on 19 June 1948. The "Angelicum" preserves the original copy of Wojtyła's typewritten thesis. Among other courses at the "Angelicum", Wojtyła studied Hebrew with the Dutch Dominican Peter G. Duncker, author of the "Compendium grammaticae linguae hebraicae biblicae".
According to Wojtyła's schoolmate the future Austrian Cardinal Alfons Stickler, in 1947 during his sojourn at the "Angelicum" Wojtyła visited Padre Pio, who heard his confession and told him that one day he would ascend to "the highest post in the Church". Cardinal Stickler added that Wojtyła believed that the prophecy was fulfilled when he became a Cardinal.
Wojtyła returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 for his first pastoral assignment in the village of Niegowić, from Kraków, at the Church of the Assumption. He arrived at Niegowić at harvest time, where his first action was to kneel and kiss the ground. He repeated this gesture, which he adapted from the French saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, throughout his papacy.
In March 1949, Wojtyła was transferred to the parish of Saint Florian in Kraków. He taught ethics at Jagiellonian University and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. While teaching, he gathered a group of about 20 young people, who began to call themselves "Rodzinka", the "little family". They met for prayer, philosophical discussion, and to help the blind and sick. The group eventually grew to approximately 200 participants, and their activities expanded to include annual skiing and kayaking trips.
In 1953, Wojtyła's habilitation thesis was accepted by the Faculty of Theology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1954, he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, evaluating the feasibility of a Catholic ethic based on the ethical system of the phenomenologist Max Scheler with a dissertation titled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler" (Ocena możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założeniach systemu Maksa Schelera). Scheler was a German philosopher who founded a broad philosophical movement that emphasised the study of conscious experience. However, the Communist authorities abolished the Faculty of Theology at the Jagellonian University, thereby preventing him from receiving the degree until 1957. Wojtyła developed a theological approach, called phenomenological Thomism, that combined traditional Catholic Thomism with the ideas of personalism, a philosophical approach deriving from phenomenology, which was popular among Catholic intellectuals in Kraków during Wojtyła's intellectual development. He translated Scheler's "Formalism and the Ethics of Substantive Values". In 1961, he coined "Thomistic Personalism" to describe Aquinas's philosophy.
During this period, Wojtyła wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper, "Tygodnik Powszechny" (""Universal Weekly""), dealing with contemporary church issues. He focused on creating original literary work during his first dozen years as a priest. War, life under Communism, and his pastoral responsibilities all fed his poetry and plays. Wojtyła published his work under two pseudonyms—"Andrzej Jawień" and "Stanisław Andrzej Gruda"—to distinguish his literary from his religious writings (under his own name), and also so that his literary works would be considered on their merits. In 1960, Wojtyła published the influential theological book "Love and Responsibility", a defence of traditional Church teachings on marriage from a new philosophical standpoint.
While a priest in Kraków, groups of students regularly joined Wojtyła for hiking, skiing, bicycling, camping and kayaking, accompanied by prayer, outdoor Masses and theological discussions. In Stalinist-era Poland, it was not permitted for priests to travel with groups of students. Wojtyła asked his younger companions to call him "Wujek" (Polish for "Uncle") to prevent outsiders from deducing he was a priest. The nickname gained popularity among his followers. In 1958, when Wojtyła was named auxiliary bishop of Kraków, his acquaintances expressed concern that this would cause him to change. Wojtyła responded to his friends, "Wujek will remain Wujek," and he continued to live a simple life, shunning the trappings that came with his position as Bishop. This beloved nickname stayed with Wojtyła for his entire life and continues to be affectionately used, particularly by the Polish people.
On 4 July 1958, while Wojtyła was on a kayaking holiday in the lakes region of northern Poland, Pope Pius XII appointed him as the Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków. He was then summoned to Warsaw to meet the Primate of Poland,
Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, who informed him of his appointment. He agreed to serve as Auxiliary Bishop to Kraków's Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak, and he received episcopal consecration (as Titular Bishop of Ombi) on 28 September 1958. Baziak was the principal consecrator. Principal co-consecrators were Bishop Boleslaw Kominek (Titular Bishop of Sophene and Vågå, auxiliary of the Catholic Archdiocese of Wrocław, and future Cardinal and Archbishop of Wrocław) and then-Auxiliary Bishop Franciszek Jop of the Catholic Diocese of Sandomierz (Titular Bishop of Daulia; later Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Wrocław and then Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Opole). At the age of 38, Wojtyła became the youngest bishop in Poland.
In 1959, Bishop Wojtyla began an annual tradition of saying a Midnight Mass on Christmas Day in an open field at Nowa Huta, the so-called model workers’ town outside Kraków that was without a church building. Baziak died in June 1962 and on 16 July Wojtyła was selected as "Vicar Capitular" "(temporary administrator)" of the Archdiocese until an Archbishop could be appointed.
In October 1962, Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), where he made contributions to two of its most historic and influential products, the "Decree on Religious Freedom" (in Latin, "Dignitatis humanae") and the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" ("Gaudium et spes"). Wojtyła and the Polish bishops contributed a draft text to the Council for "Gaudium et spes". According to the historian John W. O'Malley, the draft text "Gaudium et spes" that Wojtyła and the Polish delegation sent "had some influence on the version that was sent to the council fathers that summer but was not accepted as the base text". According to John F. Crosby, as pope, John Paul II used the words of "Gaudium et spes" later to introduce his own views on the nature of the human person in relation to God: man is "the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake", but man "can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself".
He also participated in the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops. On 13 January 1964, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Karol Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals. Wojtyła was named Cardinal-Priest of the titulus of San Cesareo in Palatio.
In 1967, he was instrumental in formulating the encyclical "Humanae vitae", which dealt with the same issues that forbid abortion and artificial birth control.
According to a contemporary witness, Cardinal Wojtyła was against the distribution of a letter around Kraków in 1970, stating that the Polish Episcopate was preparing for the 50th anniversary of the Polish–Soviet War.
In 1973, Cardinal Wojtyła met philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, the wife of Hendrik S. Houthakker, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Harvard University, and member of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers Tymieniecka collaborated with Wojtyła on a number of projects including an English translation of Wojtyła's book "Osoba i czyn" ("Person and Act"). "Person and Act", one of Pope John Paul II's foremost literary works, was initially written in Polish. Tymieniecka produced the English-language version. They corresponded over the years, and grew to be good friends. When Wojtyła visited New England in the summer of 1976, Tymieniecka put him up as a guest in her family home. Wojtyła enjoyed his holiday in Pomfret, Vermont kayaking and enjoying the outdoors, as he had done in his beloved Poland. Photos of the two friends on holiday together, skiing, camping, and picnicking, show Cardinal Wojtyła in his shorts, in his most relaxed state.
During Wojtyła's visits to Pomfret, Tymieniecka also organised his meeting with the American Cardinals through her husband’s connections. These same Cardinals would be the ones who would give him most support at his eventual election to the papacy.
During 1974–1975, then Cardinal Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Kraków, served Pope Paul VI as consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, as recording secretary for the 1974 synod on evangelism and by participating extensively in the original drafting of the 1975 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi.
In August 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Wojtyła voted in the papal conclave, which elected Pope John Paul I. John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, triggering another conclave.
The second conclave of 1978 started on 14 October, ten days after the funeral. It was split between two strong candidates for the papacy: Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the conservative Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a close friend of John Paul I.
Supporters of Benelli were confident that he would be elected, and in early ballots, Benelli came within nine votes of success. However, both men faced sufficient opposition for neither to be likely to prevail. Giovanni Colombo, the Archbishop of Milan was considered as a compromise candidate among the Italian cardinal-electors, but when he started to receive votes, he announced that, if elected, he would decline to accept the papacy. Franz Cardinal König, Archbishop of Vienna, suggested to his fellow electors another compromise candidate: the Polish Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła. Wojtyła won on the eighth ballot on the third day (16 October)—coincidentally the day that the American evangelical preacher Billy Graham had just concluded a 10-day pilgrimage to Poland—with, according to the Italian press, 99 votes from the 111 participating electors.
Among those cardinals who rallied behind Wojtyła were supporters of Giuseppe Siri, Stefan Wyszyński, most of the American cardinals (led by John Krol), and other moderate cardinals. He accepted his election with the words: "With obedience in faith to Christ, my Lord, and with trust in the Mother of Christ and the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept. " The pope, in tribute to his immediate predecessor, then took the regnal name of "John Paul II", also in honor of the late Pope Paul VI, and the traditional white smoke informed the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square that a pope had been chosen. There had been rumors that the new pope wished to be known as "Pope Stanislaus" in honor of the Polish saint of the name, but was convinced by the cardinals that it was not a Roman name. When the new pontiff appeared on the balcony, he broke tradition by addressing the gathered crowd:
Dear brothers and sisters, we are saddened at the death of our beloved Pope John Paul I, and so the cardinals have called for a new bishop of Rome. They called him from a faraway land—far and yet always close because of our communion in faith and Christian traditions. I was afraid to accept that responsibility, yet I do so in a spirit of obedience to the Lord and total faithfulness to Mary, our most Holy Mother. I am speaking to you in your—no, our Italian language. If I make a mistake, please "corrict"me ..."[deliberately mispronouncing the word 'correct']"
Wojtyła became the 264th pope according to the chronological list of popes, the first non-Italian in 455 years. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope since Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was 54. Like his predecessor, John Paul II dispensed with the traditional Papal coronation and instead received ecclesiastical investiture with a simplified Papal inauguration on 22 October 1978. During his inauguration, when the cardinals were to kneel before him to take their vows and kiss his ring, he stood up as the Polish prelate Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński knelt down, stopped him from kissing the ring, and simply hugged him.
During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II made trips to 129 countries, travelling more than while doing so. He consistently attracted large crowds, some among the largest ever assembled in human history, such as the Manila World Youth Day, which gathered up to four million people, the largest Papal gathering ever, according to the Vatican. John Paul II's earliest official visits were to the Dominican Republic and Mexico in January 1979.
While some of his trips (such as to the United States and the Holy Land) were to places previously visited by Pope Paul VI, John Paul II became the first pope to visit the White House in October 1979, where he was greeted warmly by then-President Jimmy Carter. He was the first pope ever to visit several countries in one year, starting in 1979 with Mexico and Ireland. He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. While in Britain he also visited Canterbury Cathedral and knelt in prayer with Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the spot where Thomas à Becket had been killed, as well as holding several large-scale open air masses, including one at Wembley Stadium, which was attended by some 80,000 people.
He travelled to Haiti in 1983, where he spoke in Creole to thousands of impoverished Catholics gathered to greet him at the airport. His message, "things must change in Haiti," referring to the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, was met with thunderous applause. In 2000, he was the first modern pope to visit Egypt, where he met with the Coptic pope, Pope Shenouda III and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. He was the first Catholic pope to visit and pray in an Islamic mosque, in Damascus, Syria, in 2001. He visited the Umayyad Mosque, a former Christian church where John the Baptist is believed to be interred, where he made a speech calling for Muslims, Christians and Jews to live together.
On 15 January 1995, during the X World Youth Day, he offered Mass to an estimated crowd of between five and seven million in Luneta Park, Manila, Philippines, which was considered to be the largest single gathering in Christian history. In March 2000, while visiting Jerusalem, John Paul became the first pope in history to visit and pray at the Western Wall. In September 2001, amid post-11 September concerns, he travelled to Kazakhstan, with an audience largely consisting of Muslims, and to Armenia, to participate in the celebration of 1,700 years of Armenian Christianity.
In June 1979, Pope John Paul II travelled to Poland, where ecstatic crowds constantly surrounded him. This first papal trip to Poland uplifted the nation's spirit and sparked the formation of the Solidarity movement in 1980, which later brought freedom and human rights to his troubled homeland.
Poland's Communist leaders intended to use the pope's visit to show the people that although the pope was Polish it did not alter their capacity to govern, oppress, and distribute the goods of society. They also hoped that if the pope abided by the rules they set, that the Polish people would see his example and follow them as well. If the pope's visit inspired a riot, the Communist leaders of Poland were prepared to crush the uprising and blame the suffering on the pope.
According to John Lewis Gaddis, one of the most influential historians of the Cold War, the trip led to the formation of Solidarity and would begin the process of Communism's demise in Eastern Europe:
On later trips to Poland, he gave tacit support to the Solidarity organisation. These visits reinforced this message and contributed to the collapse of East European Communism that took place between 1989/1990 with the reintroduction of democracy in Poland, and which then spread through Eastern Europe (1990–1991) and South-Eastern Europe (1990–1992).
As an extension of his successful work with youth as a young priest, John Paul II pioneered the international World Youth Days. John Paul II presided over nine of them: Rome (1985 and 2000), Buenos Aires (1987), Santiago de Compostela (1989), Częstochowa (1991), Denver (1993), Manila (1995), Paris (1997), and Toronto (2002). Total attendance at these signature events of the pontificate was in the tens of millions.
Keenly aware of the rhythms of time and the importance of anniversaries in the Church’s life, John Paul II led nine “dedicated years” during the twenty-six and a half years of his pontificate: the Holy Year of the Redemption in 1983–84, the Marian Year in 1987–88, the Year of the Family in 1993–94, the three Trinitarian years of preparation for the Great Jubilee of 2000, the Great Jubilee itself, the Year of the Rosary in 2002–3, and the Year of the Eucharist, which began on 17 October 2004, and concluded six months after the Pope’s death.
The Great Jubilee of 2000 was a call to the Church to become more aware and to embrace her missionary task for the work of evangelization.
From the beginning of my Pontificate, my thoughts had been on this Holy Year 2000 as an important appointment. I thought of its celebration as a providential opportunity during which the Church, thirty-five years after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, would examine how far she had renewed herself, in order to be able to take up her evangelising mission with fresh enthusiasm.
As pope, John Paul II wrote 14 papal encyclicals and taught about sexuality in what is referred as the "Theology of the Body". Some key elements of his strategy to "reposition the Catholic Church" were encyclicals such as "Ecclesia de Eucharistia", "Reconciliatio et paenitentia" and "Redemptoris Mater". In his "At the beginning of the new millennium" ("Novo Millennio Ineunte"), he emphasised the importance of "starting afresh from Christ": "No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person." In "The Splendour of the Truth" ("Veritatis Splendor"), he emphasised the dependence of man on God and His Law ("Without the Creator, the creature disappears") and the "dependence of freedom on the truth". He warned that man "giving himself over to relativism and scepticism, goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself". In "Fides et Ratio" ("On the Relationship between Faith and Reason") John Paul promoted a renewed interest in philosophy and an autonomous pursuit of truth in theological matters. Drawing on many different sources (such as Thomism), he described the mutually supporting relationship between faith and reason, and emphasised that theologians should focus on that relationship. John Paul II wrote extensively about workers and the social doctrine of the Church, which he discussed in three encyclicals: "Laborem exercens", "Sollicitudo rei socialis", and "Centesimus annus". Through his encyclicals and many Apostolic Letters and Exhortations, John Paul II talked about the dignity and the equality of women. He argued for the importance of the family for the future of humanity. Other encyclicals include "The Gospel of Life" ("Evangelium Vitae") and "Ut Unum Sint" ("That They May Be One"). Though critics accused him of inflexibility in explicitly re-asserting Catholic moral teachings against abortion and euthanasia that have been in place for well over a thousand years, he urged a more nuanced view of capital punishment. In his second encyclical "Dives in misericordia" he stressed that divine mercy is the greatest feature of God, needed especially in modern times.
John Paul II was considered a conservative on doctrine and issues relating to human sexual reproduction and the ordination of women.
While he was visiting the United States in 1977, the year before becoming pope, Wojtyla said: "All human life, from the moments of conception and through all subsequent stages, is sacred."
A series of 129 lectures given by John Paul II during his Wednesday audiences in Rome between September 1979 and November 1984 were later compiled and published as a single work titled "Theology of the Body", an extended meditation on human sexuality. He extended it to the condemnation of abortion, euthanasia and virtually all capital punishment, calling them all a part of a struggle between a "culture of life" and a "culture of death". He campaigned for world debt forgiveness and social justice. He coined the term "social mortgage", which related that all private property had a social dimension, namely, that "the goods of this are originally meant for all." In 2000, he publicly endorsed the Jubilee 2000 campaign on African debt relief fronted by Irish rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono, once famously interrupting a U2 recording session by telephoning the studio and asking to speak to Bono.
Pope John Paul II, who was present and very influential at the 1962–65 Second Vatican Council, affirmed the teachings of that Council and did much to implement them. Nevertheless, his critics often wished that he would embrace the so-called "progressive" agenda that some hoped would evolve as a result of the Council. In fact, the Council did not advocate "progressive" changes in these areas; for example, they still condemned abortion as an unspeakable crime. Pope John Paul II continued to declare that contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts were gravely sinful, and, with Joseph Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI), opposed liberation theology.
Following the Church's exaltation of the marital act of sexual intercourse between a baptised man and woman within sacramental marriage as proper and exclusive to the sacrament of marriage, John Paul II believed that it was, in every instance, profaned by contraception, abortion, divorce followed by a 'second' marriage, and by homosexual acts. In 1994, John Paul II asserted the Church's lack of authority to ordain women to the priesthood, stating that without such authority ordination is not legitimately compatible with fidelity to Christ. This was also deemed a repudiation of calls to break with the constant tradition of the Church by ordaining women to the priesthood. In addition, John Paul II chose not to end the discipline of mandatory priestly celibacy, although in a small number of unusual circumstances, he did allow certain married clergymen of other Christian traditions who later became Catholic to be ordained as Catholic priests.
Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa. In 1985, while visiting the Netherlands, he gave an impassioned speech condemning apartheid at the International Court of Justice, proclaiming that "No system of apartheid or separate development will ever be acceptable as a model for the relations between peoples or races." In September 1988, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to ten Southern African countries, including those bordering South Africa, while demonstratively avoiding South Africa. During his visit to Zimbabwe, John Paul II called for economic sanctions against South Africa's government. After John Paul II's death, both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised the pope for defending human rights and condemning economic injustice.
Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, although previous popes had accepted the practice. At a papal mass in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States he said:
A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.
During that visit, John Paul II convinced the then governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, to reduce the death sentence of convicted murderer Darrell J. Mease to life imprisonment without parole. John Paul II's other attempts to reduce the sentence of death-row inmates were unsuccessful. In 1983, John Paul II visited Guatemala and unsuccessfully asked the country's president, Efraín Ríos Montt, to reduce the sentence for six left-wing guerrillas sentenced to death.
In 2002, John Paul II again travelled to Guatemala. At that time, Guatemala was one of only two countries in Latin America (the other being Cuba) to apply capital punishment. John Paul II asked the Guatemalan president, Alfonso Portillo, for a moratorium on executions.
Pope John Paul II pushed for a reference to Europe's Christian cultural roots in the draft of the European Constitution. In his 2003 apostolic exhortation "Ecclesia in Europa", John Paul II wrote that he "fully (respected) the secular nature of (European) institutions". However, he wanted the EU Constitution to enshrine religious rights, including acknowledging the rights of religious groups to organise freely, recognise the specific identity of each denomination and allow for a "structured dialogue" between each religious community and the EU, and extend across the European Union the legal status enjoyed by religious institutions in individual member states. "I wish once more to appeal to those drawing up the future European Constitutional Treaty so that it will include a reference to the religion and in particular to the Christian heritage of Europe," John Paul II said. The pope's desire for a reference to Europe's Christian identity in the Constitution was supported by non-Catholic representatives of the Church of England and Eastern Orthodox Churches from Russia, Romania, and Greece. John Paul II's demand to include a reference to Europe's Christian roots in the European Constitution was supported by some non-Christians, such as Joseph Weiler, a practising Orthodox Jew and renowned constitutional lawyer, who said that the Constitution's lack of a reference to Christianity was not a "demonstration of neutrality," but, rather, "a Jacobin attitude".
At the same time, however, John Paul II was an enthusiastic supporter of European integration; in particular, he supported his native Poland's entry into the bloc. On 19 May 2003, three weeks before a referendum was held in Poland on EU membership, the Polish pope addressed his compatriots and urged them to vote for Poland's EU membership at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City State. While some conservative, Catholic politicians in Poland opposed EU membership, John Paul II said:
I know that there are many in opposition to integration. I appreciate their concern about maintaining the cultural and religious identity of our nation. However, I must emphasise that Poland has always been an important part of Europe. Europe needs Poland. The Church in Europe needs the Poles' testimony of faith. Poland needs Europe.
The Polish pope compared Poland's entry into the EU to the Union of Lublin, which was signed in 1569 and united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into one nation and created an elective monarchy.
On 22 October 1996, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary session at the Vatican, John Paul II said of evolution that "this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory." John Paul II's embrace of evolution was enthusiastically praised by American palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, with whom he had an audience in 1984.
Although generally accepting the theory of evolution, John Paul II made one major exception—the human soul. "If the human body has its origin in living material which pre-exists it, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God."
In 2003 John Paul II criticised the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, saying in his State of the World address "No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity." He sent Pío Cardinal Laghi, the former Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United States, to talk with George W. Bush, the US president, to express opposition to the war. John Paul II said that it was up to the United Nations to solve the international conflict through diplomacy and that a unilateral aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law. The pope's opposition to the Iraq War led to him being a candidate to win the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, which was ultimately awarded to Iranian attorney/judge and noted human rights advocate, Shirin Ebadi.
In 1984 and 1986, through Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, John Paul II officially condemned aspects of liberation theology, which had many followers in Latin America.
Visiting Europe, Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a Vatican condemnation of the right-wing El Salvador's regime for violations of human rights during the Salvadoran Civil War and its support of death squads, and expressed his frustration in working with clergy who cooperated with the government. He was encouraged by John Paul II to maintain episcopal unity as a top priority.
In his travel to Managua, Nicaragua, in 1983, John Paul II harshly condemned what he dubbed the "popular Church" (i.e. "ecclesial base communities" supported by the CELAM), and the Nicaraguan clergy's tendencies to support the leftist Sandinistas, reminding the clergy of their duties of obedience to the Holy See. During that visit Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and minister in the Sandinista government, knelt to kiss his hand. John Paul withdrew it, wagged his finger in Cardenal's face, and told him, "You must straighten out your position with the church."
John Paul II was the first pontiff to denounce Mafia violence in Southern Italy. In 1993, during a pilgrimage to Agrigento, Sicily, he appealed to the Mafiosi: "I say to those responsible: 'Convert! One day, the judgment of God will arrive!'" In 1994, John Paul II visited Catania and told victims of Mafia violence to "rise up and cloak yourself in light and justice!" In 1995, the Mafia bombed two historical churches in Rome. Some believed that this was the mob's vendetta against the pope for his denunciations of organised crime.
Between 1990 and 1991, a 34-nation coalition led by the United States waged a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which had invaded and annexed Kuwait. Pope John Paul II was a staunch opponent of the Gulf War. Throughout the conflict, he appealed to the international community to stop the war, and after it was over led diplomatic initiatives to negotiate peace in the Middle East. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II harshly condemned the conflict:
No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war.
In April 1991, during his "Urbi et Orbi" Sunday message at St. Peter's Basilica, John Paul II called for the international community to "lend an ear" to "the long-ignored aspirations of oppressed peoples". He specifically named the Kurds, a people who were fighting a civil war against Saddam Hussein's troops in Iraq, as one such people, and referred to the war as a "darkness menacing the earth". During this time, the Vatican had expressed its frustration with the international ignoring of the pope's calls for peace in the Middle East.
John Paul II was the first world leader to describe as genocide the massacre by Hutus of Tutsis in the mostly Catholic country of Rwanda, which started in 1990 and reached its height in 1994. He called for a ceasefire and condemned the massacres on 10 April and 15 May 1990. In 1995, during his third visit to Kenya before an audience of 300,000, John Paul II pleaded for an end to the violence in Rwanda and Burundi, pleading for forgiveness and reconciliation as a solution to the genocide. He told Rwandan and Burundian refugees that he "was close to them and shared their immense pain". He said:
What is happening in your countries is a terrible tragedy that must end. During the African Synod, we, the pastors of the church, felt the duty to express our consternation and to launch an appeal for forgiveness and reconciliation. This is the only way to dissipate the threats of ethnocentrism that are hovering over Africa these days and that have so brutally touched Rwanda and Burundi.
While taking a traditional position on human sexuality, maintaining the Church's moral opposition to homosexual acts, John Paul II asserted that people with homosexual inclinations possess the same inherent dignity and rights as everybody else. In his book "Memory and Identity" he referred to the "strong pressures" by the European Parliament to recognise homosexual unions as an alternative type of family, with the right to adopt children. In the book, as quoted by Reuters, he wrote: "It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family." A 1997 study determined that 3% of the pope's statements were about the issue of sexual morality.
In 1986, the Pope approved the release of a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons". While not neglecting to comment on homosexuality and moral order, the letter issued multiple affirmations of the dignity of homosexual persons.
John Paul II completed a full-scale reform of the Catholic Church's legal system, Latin and Eastern, and a reform of the Roman Curia.
On 18 October 1990, when promulgating the "Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches", John Paul II stated
In 1998 Pope John Paul II issued the motu proprio "Ad tuendam fidem", which amended two canons (750 and 1371) of the 1983 Code of Canon Law and two canons (598 and 1436) of the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.
On 25 January 1983, with the Apostolic Constitution "Sacrae disciplinae leges" John Paul II promulgated the current Code of Canon Law for all members of the Catholic Church who belonged to the Latin Church. It entered into force the first Sunday of the following Advent, which was 27 November 1983. John Paul II described the new Code as "the last document of Vatican II". Edward N. Peters has referred to the 1983 Code as the "Johanno-Pauline Code" ("Johannes Paulus" is Latin for "John Paul"), paralleling the "Pio-Benedictine" 1917 code that it replaced.
Pope John Paul II promulgated the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO) on 18 October 1990, by the document "Sacri Canones". The CCEO came into force of law on 1 October 1991. It is the codification of the common portions of the Canon Law for the 23 of the 24 "sui iuris" churches in the Catholic Church that are the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is divided into 30 titles and has a total of 1540 canons.
John Paul II promulgated the apostolic constitution "Pastor bonus" on 28 June 1988. It instituted a number of reforms in the process of running the Roman Curia. "Pastor bonus" laid out in considerable detail the organisation of the Roman Curia, specifying precisely the names and composition of each dicastery, and enumerating the competencies of each dicastery. It replaced the previous special law, "Regimini Ecclesiæ universæ", which was promulgated by Paul VI in 1967.
On 11 October 1992, in his apostolic constitution "Fidei depositum" ("The Deposit of Faith"), John Paul ordered the publication of the "Catechism of the Catholic Church".
He declared the publication to be "a sure norm for teaching the faith … a sure and authentic reference text for teaching Catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms". It was "meant to encourage and assist in the writing of new local catechisms [both applicable and faithful]" rather than replacing them.
Pope John Paul II has been credited with inspiring political change that not only led to the collapse of Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Eastern Europe, but also in many countries ruled by dictators. In the words of Joaquín Navarro-Valls, John Paul II's press secretary:
The single fact of John Paul II's election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began. Not in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. Then the whole thing spread. Why in 1980 did they lead the way in Gdansk? Why did they decide, now or never? Only because there was a Polish pope. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out. On many of those occasions, people would come here to the Vatican thanking the Holy Father for changing things.
Before John Paul II's pilgrimage to Latin America, during a meeting with reporters, he criticised Augusto Pinochet's regime as "dictatorial". In the words of "The New York Times", he used "unusually strong language" to criticise Pinochet and asserted to journalists that the Church in Chile must not only pray, but actively fight for the restoration of democracy in Chile.
During his visit to Chile in 1987, John Paul II asked Chile's 31 Catholic bishops to campaign for free elections in the country. According to George Weigel and Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, he encouraged Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of the regime, and may even have called for his resignation According to Monsignor Sławomir Oder, the postulator of John Paul II's beatification cause, John Paul's words to Pinochet had a profound impact on the Chilean dictator. The pope confided to a friend: "I received a letter from Pinochet in which he told me that as a Catholic he had listened to my words, he had accepted them, and he had decided to begin the process to change the leadership of his country."
During his visit to Chile, John Paul II supported the Vicariate of Solidarity, the Church-led pro-democracy, anti-Pinochet organisation. John Paul II visited the Vicariate of Solidarity's offices, spoke with its workers, and "called upon them to continue their work, emphasizing that the Gospel consistently urges respect for human rights". While in Chile, Pope John Paul II made gestures of public support of Chile's anti-Pinochet democratic opposition. For instance, he hugged and kissed Carmen Gloria Quintana, a young student who had been nearly burned to death by Chilean police and told her that "We must pray for peace and justice in Chile." Later, he met with several opposition groups, including those that had been declared illegal by Pinochet's government. The opposition praised John Paul II for denouncing Pinochet as a "dictator", for many members of Chile's opposition were persecuted for much milder statements. Bishop Carlos Camus, one of the harshest critics of Pinochet's dictatorship within the Chilean Church, praised John Paul II's stance during the papal visit: "I am quite moved, because our pastor supports us totally. Never again will anyone be able to say that we are interfering in politics when we defend human dignity." He added: "No country the Pope has visited has remained the same after his departure. The Pope's visit is a mission, an extraordinary social catechism, and his stay here will be a watershed in Chilean history."
Some have erroneously accused John Paul II of affirming Pinochet's regime by appearing with the Chilean ruler in public. However, Cardinal Roberto Tucci, the organiser of John Paul II's visits, revealed that Pinochet tricked the pontiff by telling him he would take him to his living room, while in reality he took him to his balcony. Tucci says that the pontiff was "furious".
Pope John Paul II visited Haiti on 9 March 1983, when the country was ruled by Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. He bluntly criticised the poverty of the country, directly addressing Baby Doc and his wife, Michèle Bennett in front of a large crowd of Haitians:
Yours is a beautiful country, rich in human resources, but Christians cannot be unaware of the injustice, the excessive inequality, the degradation of the quality of life, the misery, the hunger, the fear suffered by the majority of the people.
John Paul II spoke in French and occasionally in Creole, and in the homily outlined the basic human rights that most Haitians lacked: "the opportunity to eat enough, to be cared for when ill, to find housing, to study, to overcome illiteracy, to find worthwhile and properly paid work; all that provides a truly human life for men and women, for young and old." Following John Paul II's pilgrimage, the Haitian opposition to Duvalier frequently reproduced and quoted the pope's message. Shortly before leaving Haiti, John Paul II called for social change in Haiti by saying: "Lift up your heads, be conscious of your dignity of men created in God's image..."
John Paul II's visit inspired massive protests against the Duvalier dictatorship. In response to the visit, 860 Catholic priests and Church workers signed a statement committing the Church to work on behalf of the poor. In 1986, Duvalier was deposed in an uprising.
The collapse of the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay was linked, among other things, to Pope John Paul II's visit to the South American country in May 1988. Since Stroessner's taking power through a coup d'état in 1954, Paraguay's bishops increasingly criticised the regime for human rights abuses, rigged elections, and the country's feudal economy. During his private meeting with Stroessner, John Paul II told the dictator:
Politics has a fundamental ethical dimension because it is first and foremost a service to man. The Church can and must remind men—and in particular those who govern—of their ethical duties for the good of the whole of society. The Church cannot be isolated inside its temples just as men's consciences cannot be isolated from God.
Later, during a Mass, Pope John Paul II criticised the regime for impoverishing the peasants and the unemployed, saying that the government must give people greater access to the land. Although Stroessner tried to prevent him from doing so, Pope John Paul II met opposition leaders in the one-party state.
By the late 1970s the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been predicted by some observers. John Paul II has been credited with being instrumental in bringing down Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, by being the spiritual inspiration behind its downfall and catalyst for "a peaceful revolution" in Poland. Lech Wałęsa, the founder of Solidarity and the first post-Communist President of Poland, credited John Paul II with giving Poles the courage to demand change. According to Wałęsa, "Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of Communism. In Warsaw, in 1979, he simply said: 'Do not be afraid', and later prayed: 'Let your Spirit descend and change the image of the land … this land'." It has also been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank covertly funded Solidarity.
In 1984 President Ronald Reagan opened diplomatic relations with the Vatican for the first time since 1870. In sharp contrast to the long history of strong domestic opposition, this time there was very little opposition from Congress, the courts, and Protestant groups. Relations between Reagan and John Paul II were close especially because of their shared anti-communism and keen interest in forcing the Soviets out of Poland. Reagan's correspondence with the pope reveals "a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U.S. policies. Perhaps most surprisingly, the papers show that, as late as 1984, the pope did not believe the Communist Polish government could be changed."
The British historian Timothy Garton Ash, who describes himself as an "agnostic liberal", said shortly after John Paul II's death:
No one can prove conclusively that he was a primary cause of the end of communism. However, the major figures on all sides—not just Lech Wałęsa, the Polish Solidarity leader, but also Solidarity's arch-opponent, General Wojciech Jaruzelski; not just the former American president George Bush Senior but also the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev—now agree that he was. I would argue the historical case in three steps: without the Polish Pope, no Solidarity revolution in Poland in 1980; without Solidarity, no dramatic change in Soviet policy towards eastern Europe under Gorbachev; without that change, no velvet revolutions in 1989.
In December 1989, John Paul II met with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican and each expressed his respect and admiration for the other. Gorbachev once said "The collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II." On John Paul II's death, Mikhail Gorbachev said: "Pope John Paul II's devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us."
On 4 June 2004 US President George W. Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour, to John Paul II during a ceremony at the Apostolic Palace. The president read the citation that accompanied the medal, which recognised "this son of Poland" whose "principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple communism and tyranny".
After receiving the award, John Paul II said, "May the desire for freedom, peace, a more humane world symbolised by this medal inspire men and women of goodwill in every time and place."
In 1983 Poland's Communist government unsuccessfully tried to humiliate John Paul II by falsely saying he had fathered an illegitimate child. Section D of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), the security service, had an action named "Triangolo" to carry out criminal operations against the Catholic Church; the operation encompassed all Polish hostile actions against the pope. Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, one of the murderers of beatified Jerzy Popiełuszko, was the leader of section D. They drugged Irena Kinaszewska, the secretary of the Kraków-based weekly Catholic magazine "Tygodnik Powszechny" where Karol Wojtyła had worked, and unsuccessfully attempted to make her admit to having had sexual relations with him.
The SB then attempted to compromise Cracow priest Andrzej Bardecki, an editor of "Tygodnik Powszechny" and one of the closest friends of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła before he became pope, by planting false memoirs in his dwelling, but Piotrowski was exposed and the forgeries were found and destroyed before the SB could "discover" them.
John Paul II travelled extensively and met with believers from many divergent faiths. At the World Day of Prayer for Peace, held in Assisi on 27 October 1986, more than 120 representatives of different religions and denominations spent a day of fasting and prayer.
John Paul II had good relations with the Church of England. He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He preached in Canterbury Cathedral and received Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said that he was disappointed by the Church of England's decision to ordain women and saw it as a step away from unity between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.
In 1980, John Paul II issued a Pastoral Provision allowing married former Episcopal priests to become Catholic priests, and for the acceptance of former Episcopal Church parishes into the Catholic Church. He allowed the creation of the Anglican Use form of the Latin Rite, which incorporates the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He helped establish Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church, together with Archbishop Patrick Flores of San Antonio, Texas, as the inaugural parish for the Anglican Use liturgy.
In his book-length interview "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" with the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori published in 1995, John Paul II draws parallels between animism and Christianity. He says:
… it would be helpful to recall … the animist religions which stress ancestor worship. It seems that those who practice them are particularly close to Christianity, and among them, the Church's missionaries also find it easier to speak a common language. Is there, perhaps, in this veneration of ancestors a kind of preparation for the Christian faith in the Communion of Saints, in which all believers—whether living or dead—form a single community, a single body? […] There is nothing strange, then, that the African and Asian animists would become believers in Christ more easily than followers of the great religions of the Far East.
In 1985, the pope visited the African country of Togo, where 60 per cent of the population espouses animist beliefs. To honour the pope, animist religious leaders met him at a Catholic Marian shrine in the forest, much to the pontiff's delight. John Paul II proceeded to call for the need for religious tolerance, praised nature, and emphasised common elements between animism and Christianity, saying:
Nature, exuberant and splendid in this area of forests and lakes, impregnates spirits and hearts with its mystery and orients them spontaneously toward the mystery of He who is the author of life. It is this religious sentiment that animates you and one can say that animates all of your compatriots.
During the investiture of President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin as a titled Yoruba chieftain on 20 December 2008, the reigning Ooni of Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Olubuse II, referred to Pope John Paul II as a previous recipient of the same royal honour.
John Paul II had good relations with the Armenian Apostolic Church. In 1996, he brought the Catholic Church and the Armenian Church closer by agreeing with Armenian Archbishop Karekin II on Christ's nature. During an audience in 2000, John Paul II and Karekin II, by then the Catholicos of All Armenians, issued a joint statement condemning the Armenian genocide. Meanwhile, the pope gave Karekin the relics of St. Gregory the Illuminator, the first head of the Armenian Church that had been kept in Naples, Italy, for 500 years. In September 2001, John Paul II went on a three-day pilgrimage to Armenia to take part in an ecumenical celebration with Karekin II in the newly consecrated St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Yerevan. The two Church leaders signed a declaration remembering the victims of the Armenian genocide.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, visited John Paul II eight times. The two men held many similar views and understood similar plights, both coming from nations affected by Communism and both serving as heads of major religious bodies. As Archbishop of Kraków, long before the 14th Dalai Lama was a world-famous figure, Wojtyła held special Masses to pray for the Tibetan people's non-violent struggle for freedom from Maoist China. During his 1995 visit to Sri Lanka, a country where a majority of the population adheres to Theravada Buddhism, John Paul II expressed his admiration for Buddhism:
In particular I express my highest regard for the followers of Buddhism, the majority religion in Sri Lanka, with its … four great values of … loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity; with its ten transcendental virtues and the joys of the Sangha expressed so beautifully in the Theragathas. I ardently hope that my visit will serve to strengthen the goodwill between us, and that it will reassure everyone of the Catholic Church's desire for interreligious dialogue and cooperation in building a more just and fraternal world. To everyone I extend the hand of friendship, recalling the splendid words of the Dhammapada: "Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace..."
In May 1999, John Paul II visited Romania on the invitation from Patriarch Teoctist Arăpaşu of the Romanian Orthodox Church. This was the first time a pope had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054. On his arrival, the Patriarch and the President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, greeted the pope. The Patriarch stated, "The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity."
On 23–27 June 2001, John Paul II visited Ukraine, another heavily Orthodox nation, at the invitation of the President of Ukraine and bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Pope spoke to leaders of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, pleading for "open, tolerant and honest dialogue". About 200 thousand people attended the liturgies celebrated by the Pope in Kiev, and the liturgy in Lviv gathered nearly one and a half million faithful. John Paul II said that an end to the Great Schism was one of his fondest wishes. Healing divisions between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches regarding Latin and Byzantine traditions was clearly of great personal interest. For many years, John Paul II sought to facilitate dialogue and unity stating as early as 1988 in "Euntes in mundum", "Europe has two lungs, it will never breathe easily until it uses both of them."
During his 2001 travels, John Paul II became the first pope to visit Greece in 1291 years. In Athens, the pope met with Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Church of Greece. After a private 30-minute meeting, the two spoke publicly. Christodoulos read a list of "13 offences" of the Catholic Church against the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Great Schism, including the pillaging of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204, and bemoaned the lack of apology from the Catholic Church, saying "Until now, there has not been heard a single request for pardon" for the "maniacal crusaders of the 13th century".
The pope responded by saying "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness", to which Christodoulos immediately applauded. John Paul II said that the sacking of Constantinople was a source of "profound regret" for Catholics. Later John Paul II and Christodoulos met on a spot where Saint Paul had once preached to Athenian Christians. They issued a 'common declaration', saying "We shall do everything in our power, so that the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian soul may be preserved... We condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism and fanaticism, in the name of religion." The two leaders then said the Lord's Prayer together, breaking an Orthodox taboo against praying with Catholics.
The pope had said throughout his pontificate that one of his greatest dreams was to visit Russia, but this never occurred. He attempted to solve the problems that had arisen over centuries between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, and in 2004 gave them a 1730 copy of the lost icon of Our Lady of Kazan.
John Paul II made considerable efforts to improve relations between Catholicism and Islam.
On 6 May 2001, he became the first Catholic pope to enter and pray in a mosque, namely the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. Respectfully removing his shoes, he entered the former Byzantine era Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist, who is also revered as a prophet of Islam. He gave a speech including the statement: "For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness." He kissed the Qur'an in Syria, an act that made him popular among Muslims but that disturbed many Catholics.
In 2004, John Paul II hosted the "Papal Concert of Reconciliation", which brought together leaders of Islam with leaders of the Jewish community and of the Catholic Church at the Vatican for a concert by the Kraków Philharmonic Choir from Poland, the London Philharmonic Choir from the United Kingdom, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from the United States, and the Ankara State Polyphonic Choir of Turkey. The event was conceived and conducted by Sir Gilbert Levine, KCSG and was broadcast throughout the world.
John Paul II oversaw the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which makes a special provision for Muslims; therein, it is written, "together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."
In 1995, Pope John Paul II held a meeting with 21 Jains, organised by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. He praised Mohandas Gandhi for his "unshakeable faith in God", assured the Jains that the Catholic Church will continue to engage in dialogue with their religion and spoke of the common need to aid the poor. The Jain leaders were impressed with the pope's "transparency and simplicity", and the meeting received much attention in the Gujarat state in western India, home to many Jains.
Relations between Catholicism and Judaism improved dramatically during the pontificate of John Paul II. He spoke frequently about the Church's relationship with the Jewish faith.
In 1979, John Paul II visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where many of his compatriots (mostly Jews) had perished during the German occupation there in World War II, the first pope to do so. In 1998, he issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah", which outlined his thinking on the Holocaust. He became the first pope known to have made an official papal visit to a synagogue, when he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on 13 April 1986.
On 30 December 1993, John Paul II established formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, acknowledging its centrality in Jewish life and faith.
On 7 April 1994, he hosted the "Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocaust". It was the first-ever Vatican event dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews murdered in World War II. This concert, which was conceived and conducted by US conductor Gilbert Levine, was attended by the Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff, the President of Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, and survivors of the Holocaust from around the world. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, actor Richard Dreyfuss and cellist Lynn Harrell performed on this occasion under Levine's direction. On the morning of the concert, the pope received the attending members of survivor community in a special audience in the Apostolic Palace.
In March 2000, John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Israel, and later made history by touching one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, placing a letter inside it (in which he prayed for forgiveness for the actions against Jews). In part of his address he said: "I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church … is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place," he added that there were "no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust." Israeli cabinet minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, who hosted the pope's visit, said he was "very moved" by the pope's gesture.
It was beyond history, beyond memory.
We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.
In October 2003, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a statement congratulating John Paul II on entering the 25th year of his papacy. In January 2005, John Paul II became the first pope known to receive a priestly blessing from a rabbi, when Rabbis Benjamin Blech, Barry Dov Schwartz, and Jack Bemporad visited the Pontiff at Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace.
Immediately after John Paul II's death, the ADL said in a statement that he had revolutionised Catholic-Jewish relations, saying, "more change for the better took place in his 27-year Papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before." In another statement issued by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, Director Dr Colin Rubenstein said, "The Pope will be remembered for his inspiring spiritual leadership in the cause of freedom and humanity. He achieved far more in terms of transforming relations with both the Jewish people and the State of Israel than any other figure in the history of the Catholic Church."
In an interview with the Polish Press Agency, Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, said that never in history did anyone do as much for Christian-Jewish dialogue as Pope John Paul II, adding that many Jews had a greater respect for the late pope than for some rabbis. Schudrich praised John Paul II for condemning anti-Semitism as a sin, which no previous pope had done.
On John Paul II's beatification the Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" that "John Paul II was revolutionary because he tore down a thousand-year wall of Catholic distrust of the Jewish world." Meanwhile, Elio Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome, said that:
Remembrance of the Pope Karol Wojtyła will remain strong in the collective Jewish memory because of his appeals to fraternity and the spirit of tolerance, which excludes all violence. In the stormy history of relations between Roman popes and Jews in the ghetto in which they were closed for over three centuries in humiliating circumstances, John Paul II is a bright figure in his uniqueness. In relations between our two great religions in the new century that was stained with bloody wars and the plague of racism, the heritage of John Paul II remains one of the few spiritual islands guaranteeing survival and human progress.
From 15 to 19 November 1980, John Paul II visited West Germany on his first trip to a country with a large Lutheran Protestant population. In Mainz, he met with leaders of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and with representatives of other Christian denominations.
On 11 December 1983, John Paul II participated in an ecumenical service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rome, the first papal visit ever to a Lutheran church. The visit took place 500 years after the birth of Martin Luther, German Augustinian monk and Protestant Reformer.
In his apostolic pilgrimage to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden of June 1989, John Paul II became the first pope to visit countries with Lutheran majorities. In addition to celebrating Mass with Catholic believers, he participated in ecumenical services at places that had been Catholic shrines before the Reformation: Nidaros Cathedral in Norway; near St. Olav's Church at Thingvellir in Iceland; Turku Cathedral in Finland; Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark; and Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden.
On 31 October 1999, (the 482nd anniversary of Reformation Day, Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses), representatives of the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, as a gesture of unity. The signing was a fruit of a theological dialogue that had been going on between the LWF and the Vatican since 1965.
As he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience on 13 May 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant fascist group Grey Wolves. The assassin used a Browning 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, shooting the pope in the abdomen and perforating his colon and small intestine multiple times. John Paul II was rushed into the Vatican complex and then to the Gemelli Hospital. On the way to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Even though the two bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta, he lost nearly three-quarters of his blood. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his wounds. Surgeons performed a colostomy, temporarily rerouting the upper part of the large intestine to let the damaged lower part heal. When he briefly regained consciousness before being operated on, he instructed the doctors not to remove his Brown Scapular during the operation. One of the few people allowed in to see him at the Gemelli Clinic was one of his closest friends philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, who arrived on Saturday 16 May and kept him company while he recovered from emergency surgery. The pope later stated that the Blessed Virgin Mary helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.
Could I forget that the event in St. Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.
Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun and other bystanders until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas in 1983, John Paul II visited Ağca in prison. John Paul II and Ağca spoke privately for about twenty minutes. John Paul II said, "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust."
Numerous other theories were advanced to explain the assassination attempt, some of them controversial. One such theory, advanced by Michael Ledeen and heavily pushed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency at the time of the assassination but never substantiated by evidence, was that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt on John Paul II's life in retaliation for the pope's support of Solidarity, the Catholic, pro-democratic Polish workers' movement. This theory was supported by the 2006 Mitrokhin Commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi and headed by "Forza Italia" senator Paolo Guzzanti, which alleged that Communist Bulgarian security departments were utilised to prevent the Soviet Union's role from being uncovered, and concluded that Soviet military intelligence "(Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije)", not the KGB, were responsible. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov called the accusation "absurd". The pope declared during a May 2002 visit to Bulgaria that the country's Soviet-bloc-era leadership had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. However, his secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, alleged in his book "A Life with Karol", that the pope was convinced privately that the former Soviet Union was behind the attack. It was later discovered that many of John Paul II's aides had foreign-government attachments; Bulgaria and Russia disputed the Italian commission's conclusions, pointing out that the pope had publicly denied the Bulgarian connection.
A second assassination attempt was made on 12 May 1982, just a day before the anniversary of the first attempt on his life, in Fátima, Portugal when a man tried to stab John Paul II with a bayonet. He was stopped by security guards. Stanisław Dziwisz later said that John Paul II had been injured during the attempt but managed to hide a non-life-threatening wound. The assailant, a traditionalist Catholic Spanish priest named Juan María Fernández y Krohn, had been ordained as a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of the Society of Saint Pius X and was opposed to the changes made by the Second Vatican Council, saying that the pope was an agent of Communist Moscow and of the Marxist Eastern Bloc. Fernández y Krohn subsequently left the priesthood and served three years of a six-year sentence. The ex-priest was treated for mental illness and then expelled from Portugal to become a solicitor in Belgium.
The Al-Qaeda-funded Bojinka plot planned to kill John Paul II during a visit to the Philippines during World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On 15 January 1995 a suicide bomber was planning to dress as a priest and detonate a bomb when the pope passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati City. The assassination was supposed to divert attention from the next phase of the operation. However, a chemical fire inadvertently started by the cell alerted police to their whereabouts, and all were arrested a week before the pope's visit, and confessed to the plot.
In 2009 John Koehler, a journalist and former army intelligence officer, published "Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union's Cold War Against the Catholic Church". Mining mostly East German and Polish secret police archives, Koehler says the assassination attempts were "KGB-backed" and gives details. During John Paul II's papacy there were many clerics within the Vatican who on nomination, declined to be ordained, and then mysteriously left the church. There is wide speculation that they were, in reality, KGB agents.
John Paul II apologised to many groups that had suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church through the years. Before becoming pope he had been a prominent editor and supporter of initiatives such as the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops from 1965. As pope, he officially made public apologies for over 100 wrongdoings, including:
The Great Jubilee of the year 2000 included a day of Prayer for Forgiveness of the Sins of the Church on March 12, 2000.
On 20 November 2001, from a laptop in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II sent his first e-mail apologising for the Catholic sex abuse cases, the Church-backed "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children in Australia, and to China for the behaviour of Catholic missionaries in colonial times.
When he became pope in 1978 at the age of 58, John Paul II was an avid sportsman. He was extremely healthy and active, jogging in the Vatican gardens, weight training, swimming, and hiking in the mountains. He was fond of football. The media contrasted the new pope's athleticism and trim figure to the poor health of John Paul I and Paul VI, the portliness of John XXIII and the constant claims of ailments of Pius XII. The only modern pope with a fitness regimen had been Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), who was an avid mountaineer. An "Irish Independent" article in the 1980s labelled John Paul II the "keep-fit pope".
However, after over twenty-five years as pope, two assassination attempts, one of which injured him severely, and a number of cancer scares, John Paul's physical health declined. In 2001 he was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's disease. International observers had suspected this for some time, but it was only publicly acknowledged by the Vatican in 2003. Despite difficulty speaking more than a few sentences at a time, trouble hearing, and severe osteoarthrosis, he continued to tour the world although rarely walking in public.
Pope John Paul II was hospitalised with breathing problems caused by a bout of influenza on 1 February 2005. He left the hospital on 10 February, but was subsequently hospitalised again with breathing problems two weeks later and underwent a tracheotomy.
On 31 March 2005, following a urinary tract infection, he developed septic shock, a form of infection with a high fever and low blood pressure, but was not hospitalised. Instead, he was monitored by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication by the pope, and those close to him, that he was nearing death; it would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day, Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. The day before his death, one of his closest personal friends, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka visited him at his bedside. During the final days of the pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. Tens of thousands of people assembled and held vigil in St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying pope was said to have stated: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."
On Saturday, 2 April 2005, at approximately 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words in Polish, ""Pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca"" ("Allow me to depart to the house of the Father"), to his aides, and fell into a coma about four hours later. The Mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter commemorating the canonisation of Saint Maria Faustina on 30 April 2000, had just been celebrated at his bedside, presided over by Stanisław Dziwisz and two Polish associates. Present at the bedside was a cardinal from Ukraine, who served as a priest with John Paul in Poland, along with Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household. Pope John Paul II died in his private apartment at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC) of heart failure from profound hypotension and complete circulatory collapse from septic shock, 46 days before his 85th birthday. His death was verified when an electrocardiogram that ran for 20 minutes showed a flatline.
He had no close family by the time of his death; his feelings are reflected in his words written in 2000 at the end of his Last Will and Testament. Stanisław Dziwisz later said he had not burned the pontiff's personal notes despite the request being part of the will.
The death of the pontiff set in motion rituals and traditions dating back to medieval times. The Rite of Visitation took place from 4 April 2005 to 7 April 2005 at St. Peter's Basilica. John Paul II's testament, published on 7 April 2005, revealed that the pontiff contemplated being buried in his native Poland but left the final decision to The College of Cardinals, which in passing, preferred burial beneath St. Peter's Basilica, honouring the pontiff's request to be placed "in bare earth".
The Requiem Mass held on 8 April 2005 was said to have set world records both for attendance and number of heads of state present at a funeral. "(See: List of Dignitaries.)" It was the single largest gathering of heads of state up to that time, surpassing the funerals of Winston Churchill (1965) and Josip Broz Tito (1980). Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions attended. An estimated four million mourners gathered in and around Vatican City. Between 250,000 and 300,000 watched the event from within the Vatican's walls.
The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, conducted the ceremony. John Paul II was interred in the grottoes under the basilica, the Tomb of the Popes. He was lowered into a tomb created in the same alcove previously occupied by the remains of Pope John XXIII. The alcove had been empty since John XXIII's remains had been moved into the main body of the basilica after his beatification.
Upon the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen began referring to the late pontiff as "John Paul the Great" — in theory only the fourth pope to be so acclaimed. Cardinal Angelo Sodano specifically referred to John Paul as "the Great" in his published written homily for the pope's funeral Mass of Repose. The South African Catholic newspaper "The Southern Cross" has referred to him in print as "John Paul II the Great". Some Catholic educational institutions in the US have additionally changed their names to incorporate "the Great", including John Paul the Great Catholic University and schools called some variant of John Paul the Great High School.
Scholars of canon law say that there is no official process for declaring a pope "Great"; the title simply establishes itself through popular and continued usage, as was the case with celebrated secular leaders (for example, Alexander III of Macedon became popularly known as Alexander the Great). The three popes who today commonly are known as "Great" are Leo I, who reigned from 440–461 and persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw from Rome; Gregory I, 590–604, after whom the Gregorian Chant is named; and Pope Nicholas I, 858–867, who consolidated the Catholic Church in the Western world in the Middle Ages.
John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, has not used the term directly in public speeches, but has made oblique references to "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, at the 20th World Youth Day in Germany 2005 when he said in Polish: "As the great Pope John Paul II would say: Keep the flame of faith alive in your lives and your people"; and in May 2006 during a visit to Poland where he repeatedly made references to "the great John Paul" and "my great predecessor".
Inspired by calls of ""Santo Subito!"" ("[Make him a] Saint Immediately!") from the crowds gathered during the funeral Mass that he celebrated, Benedict XVI began the beatification process for his predecessor, bypassing the normal restriction that five years must pass after a person's death before beginning the beatification process. In an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome, who was responsible for promoting the cause for canonisation of any person who died within that diocese, cited "exceptional circumstances", which suggested that the waiting period could be waived. This decision was announced on 13 May 2005, the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima and the 24th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II at St. Peter's Square.
In early 2006, it was reported that the Vatican was investigating a possible miracle associated with John Paul II. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun and member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards, confined to her bed by
Parkinson's disease, was reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II". , Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, then 46, was working again at a maternity hospital run by her religious institute.
"I was sick and now I am cured," she told reporter Gerry Shaw. "I am cured, but it is up to the church to say whether it was a miracle or not."
On 28 May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass before an estimated 900,000 people in John Paul II's native Poland. During his homily, he encouraged prayers for the early canonisation of John Paul II and stated that he hoped canonisation would happen "in the near future".
In January 2007, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz announced that the interview phase of the beatification process, in Italy and Poland, was nearing completion. In February 2007, second class relics of Pope John Paul II—pieces of white papal cassocks he used to wear—were freely distributed with prayer cards for the cause, a typical pious practice after a saintly Catholic's death. On 8 March 2007, the Vicariate of Rome announced that the diocesan phase of John Paul's cause for beatification was at an end. Following a ceremony on 2 April 2007—the second anniversary of the Pontiff's death—the cause proceeded to the scrutiny of the committee of lay, clerical, and episcopal members of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to conduct a separate investigation. On the fourth anniversary of Pope John Paul's death, 2 April 2009, Cardinal Dziwisz, told reporters of a presumed miracle that had recently occurred at the former pope's tomb in St. Peter's Basilica. A nine-year-old Polish boy from Gdańsk, who was suffering from kidney cancer and was completely unable to walk, had been visiting the tomb with his parents. On leaving St. Peter's Basilica, the boy told them, "I want to walk," and began walking normally. On 16 November 2009, a panel of reviewers at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted unanimously that Pope John Paul II had lived a life of heroic virtue. On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI signed the first of two decrees needed for beatification and proclaimed John Paul II "Venerable", asserting that he had lived a heroic, virtuous life. The second vote and the second signed decree certifying the authenticity of the first miracle, the curing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun, from Parkinson's disease. Once the second decree is signed, the "positio" (the report on the cause, with documentation about his life and writings and with information on the cause) is complete. He can then be beatified. Some speculated that he would be beatified sometime during (or soon after) the month of the 32nd anniversary of his 1978 election, in October 2010. As Monsignor Oder said, this course would have been possible if the second decree were signed in time by Benedict XVI, stating that a posthumous miracle directly attributable to his intercession had occurred, completing the positio.
The Vatican announced on 14 January 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed the miracle involving Sister Marie Simon-Pierre and that John Paul II was to be beatified on 1 May, the Feast of Divine Mercy. 1 May is commemorated in former communist countries, such as Poland, and some Western European countries as May Day, and John Paul II was well known for his contributions to communism's relatively peaceful demise. In March 2011 the Polish mint issued a gold 1,000 Polish złoty coin (equivalent to US$350), with the Pope's image to commemorate his beatification.
On 29 April 2011, John Paul II's coffin was disinterred from the grotto beneath St. Peter's Basilica ahead of his beatification, as tens of thousands of people arrived in Rome for one of the biggest events since his funeral. John Paul II's remains, which were not exposed, were placed in front of the Basilica's main altar, where believers could pay their respect before and after the beatification mass in St. Peter's Square on 1 May 2011. On 3 May 2011 his remains were reinterred in the marble altar in Pier Paolo Cristofari's Chapel of St. Sebastian, where Pope Innocent XI was buried. This more prominent location, next to the Chapel of the Pietà, the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and statues of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, was intended to allow more pilgrims to view his memorial.
In July 2012, a Colombian man, Marco Fidel Rojas, the former mayor of Huila, Colombia, testified that he was "miraculously cured" of Parkinson's disease after a trip to Rome where he met John Paul II and prayed with him. Dr. Antonio Schlesinger Piedrahita, a renowned neurologist in Colombia, certified Fidel's healing. The documentation was then sent to the Vatican office for sainthood causes.
To be eligible for canonisation (being declared a saint) by the Catholic Church, two miracles must be attributed to a candidate.
The first miracle attributed to John Paul was the above mentioned healing of a man’s Parkinson's disease, which was recognised during the beatification process. According to an article on the Catholic News Service (CNS) dated 23 April 2013, a Vatican commission of doctors concluded that a healing had no natural (medical) explanation, which is the first requirement for a claimed miracle to be officially documented.
The second miracle was deemed to have taken place shortly after the late pope's beatification on 1 May 2011; it was reported to be the healing of Costa Rican woman Floribeth Mora of an otherwise terminal brain aneurysm. A Vatican panel of expert theologians examined the evidence, determined that it was directly attributable to the intercession of John Paul II, and recognised it as miraculous. The next stage was for Cardinals who compose the membership of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to give their opinion to Pope Francis to decide whether to sign and promulgate the decree and set a date for canonisation.
On 4 July 2013, Pope Francis confirmed his approval of John Paul II's canonisation, formally recognising the second miracle attributed to his intercession. He was canonised together with Pope John XXIII. The date of the canonisation was on 27 April 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday.
The canonisation Mass for Blessed Popes John Paul II and John XXIII, was celebrated by Pope Francis (with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), on 27 April 2014 in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (Pope John Paul had died on vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005). About 150 cardinals and 700 bishops concelebrated the Mass, and at least 500,000 people attended the Mass, with an estimated 300,000 others watching from video screens placed around Rome.
On 10 October 2019, the Archdiocese of Krakow and the Polish Bishops' Conference approved "nihil obstat" the opening of the beatification cause of the parents of its patron saint Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła Sr. and Emilia Kaczorowska. It currently awaits the approval from the Holy See to open the diocesan phase of the cause.
John Paul II was widely criticised for a variety of his views, including his opposition to the ordination of women and use of contraception, his support for the Second Vatican Council and its reform of the liturgy, and his response to child sexual abuse within the Church.
John Paul II was criticised by representatives of the victims of clergy sexual abuse for failing to respond quickly enough to the Catholic sex abuse crisis. In his response, he stated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." The Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees and, because a significant majority of victims were boys, disallowing ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". They now require dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty. In 2008, the Church asserted that the scandal was a very serious problem and estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent' " (or 5,000) of the over 500,000 Catholic priests worldwide.
In April 2002, John Paul II, despite being frail from Parkinson's disease, summoned all the American cardinals to the Vatican to discuss possible solutions to the issue of sexual abuse in the American Church. He asked them to "diligently investigate accusations". John Paul II suggested that American bishops be more open and transparent in dealing with such scandals and emphasised the role of seminary training to prevent sexual deviance among future priests. In what "The New York Times" called "unusually direct language", John Paul condemned the arrogance of priests that led to the scandals:
Priests and candidates for the priesthood often live at a level both materially and educationally superior to that of their families and the members of their own age group. It is therefore very easy for them to succumb to the temptation of thinking of themselves as better than others. When this happens, the ideal of priestly service and self-giving dedication can fade, leaving the priest dissatisfied and disheartened.
The pope read a statement intended for the American cardinals, calling the sex abuse "an appalling sin" and said the priesthood had no room for such men.
In 2002, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, the Catholic Archbishop of Poznań, was accused of molesting seminarians. Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation, and placed sanctions on him, prohibiting Paetz from exercising his ministry as bishop. These restrictions were lifted in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI.
In 2003, John Paul II reiterated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." In April 2003, a three-day conference was held, titled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.
In 2004, John Paul II recalled Bernard Francis Law to be Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. Law had previously resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 in response to the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases after Church documents were revealed that suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. Law resigned from this position in November 2011.
John Paul II was a firm supporter of the Legion of Christ, and in 1998 discontinued investigations into sexual misconduct by its leader Marcial Maciel, who in 2005 resigned his leadership and was later requested by the Vatican to withdraw from his ministry. However, Maciel's trial began in 2004 during the pontificate of John Paul II, but the Pope died before it ended and the conclusions were known.
John Paul II was criticised for his support of the Opus Dei prelature and the 2002 canonisation of its founder, Josemaría Escrivá, whom he called "the saint of ordinary life". Other movements and religious organisations of the Church went decidedly under his wing Legion of Christ, the Neocatechumenal Way, Schoenstatt, the charismatic movement, etc. And he was accused repeatedly of taking a soft hand with them, especially in the case of Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ.
In 1984 John Paul II appointed Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a member of Opus Dei, as Director of the Vatican Press Office. An Opus Dei spokesman said that "the influence of Opus Dei in the Vatican has been exaggerated". Of the nearly 200 cardinals in the Catholic Church, only two are known to be members of Opus Dei.
Pope John Paul was alleged to have links with Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi, and his membership in the illegal Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). The Vatican Bank was Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder, and the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 is rumoured to be linked to the Ambrosiano scandal.
Calvi, often referred to as "God's Banker", was also involved with the Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, and was close to Bishop Paul Marcinkus, the bank's chairman. Ambrosiano also provided funds for political parties in Italy, and for both the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and its Sandinista opposition. It has been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank provided money for Solidarity in Poland.
Calvi used his complex network of overseas banks and companies to move money out of Italy, to inflate share prices, and to arrange massive unsecured loans. In 1978, the Bank of Italy produced a report on Ambrosiano that predicted future disaster. On 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi had written a letter of warning to Pope John Paul II, stating that such a forthcoming event would "provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage". On 18 June 1982 Calvi's body was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and contained cash valued at US$14,000, in three different currencies.
In addition to all the criticism from those demanding modernisation, some Traditionalist Catholics denounced him as well. These issues included demanding a return to the Tridentine Mass and repudiation of the reforms instituted after the Second Vatican Council, such as the use of the vernacular language in the formerly Latin Roman Rite Mass, ecumenism, and the principle of religious liberty. In 1988, the controversial traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X (1970), was excommunicated under John Paul II because of the unapproved ordination of four bishops, which Cardinal Ratzinger called a "schismatic act".
The World Day of Prayer for Peace, with a meeting in Assisi, Italy, in 1986, in which the pope prayed only with the Christians, was criticised for giving the impression that syncretism and indifferentism were openly embraced by the Papal Magisterium. When a second 'Day of Prayer for Peace in the World' was held, in 2002, it was condemned as confusing the laity and compromising to false religions. Likewise criticised was his kissing of the Qur'an in Damascus, Syria, on one of his travels on 6 May 2001. His call for religious freedom was not always supported; bishops like Antônio de Castro Mayer promoted religious tolerance, but at the same time rejected the Vatican II principle of religious liberty as being liberalist and already condemned by Pope Pius IX in his "Syllabus errorum" (1864) and at the First Vatican Council.
John Paul's position against artificial birth control, including the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, was harshly criticised by doctors and AIDS activists, who said that it led to countless deaths and millions of AIDS orphans. Critics have also said that large families are caused by lack of contraception and exacerbate Third World poverty and problems such as street children in South America. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development published a paper stating, "Any strategy that enables a person to move from a higher-risk towards the lower end of the continuum, [we] believe, is a valid risk reduction strategy."
There was strong criticism of the pope for the controversy surrounding the alleged use of charitable social programmes as a means of converting people in the Third World to Catholicism. The pope created an uproar in the Indian subcontinent when he suggested that a great harvest of faith would be witnessed on the subcontinent in the third Christian millennium.
John Paul visited General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's military ruler. According to the United Press International, "Pope John Paul II preached the need for peaceful change and greater participation up and down Chile...but stayed away from direct confrontation with Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military regime...disappointing Pinochet's opponents who had hoped the pope would publicly condemn the regime and bless their campaign for a return to democracy."
John Paul endorsed Pío Cardinal Laghi, who critics say supported the "Dirty War" in Argentina and was on friendly terms with the Argentine generals of the military dictatorship, playing regular tennis matches with Navy’s representative in the junta, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera.
In 1988, when Pope John Paul II was delivering a speech to the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, shouted "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and held up a red banner reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST". Otto von Habsburg (the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary), an MEP for Germany, snatched Paisley's banner, tore it up and, along with other MEPs, helped eject him from the chamber. The pope continued with his address after Paisley had been ejected.
A number of quotes about the apparitions of Međugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have been attributed to John Paul II. In 1998, when a certain German gathered various statements that were supposedly made by the pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, and then forwarded them to the Vatican in the form of a memorandum, Ratzinger responded in writing on 22 July 1998: "The only thing I can say regarding statements on Međugorje ascribed to the Holy Father and myself is that they are complete invention."
Some Catholic theologians disagreed with the call for the beatification of John Paul II. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor José María Castillo and Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni, said that his stance against contraception and the ordination of women as well as the Church scandals during his pontificate presented "facts which according to their consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification". Some traditionalist Catholics opposed his beatification and canonisation for his views on liturgy and participation in prayer with non-Christians.
Karol Wojtyła was a Cracovia football team supporter (club retired number 1 in his honour).
Having played the game himself as a goalkeeper, John Paul II was a fan of English football team Liverpool, where his compatriot Jerzy Dudek played in the same position.
In 1973, while still the archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła befriended a Polish-born, later American philosopher, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The thirty-two-year friendship (and occasional academic collaboration) lasted until his death. She served as his host when he visited New England in 1976 and photos show them together on skiing and camping trips. Letters that he wrote to her were part of a collection of documents sold by Tymieniecka's estate in 2008 to the National Library of Poland. According to the BBC the library had initially kept the letters from public view, partly because of John Paul's path to sainthood, but a library official announced in February 2016 the letters would be made public. In February 2016 the BBC documentary program "Panorama" reported that John Paul II had apparently had a 'close relationship' with the Polish-born philosopher. The pair exchanged personal letters over 30 years, and Stourton believes that Tymieniecka had confessed her love for Wojtyła. The Vatican described the documentary as "more smoke than mirrors", and Tymieniecka denied being involved with John Paul II.
Writers Carl Bernstein, the veteran investigative journalist of the Watergate scandal, and Vatican expert Marco Politi, were the first journalists to talk to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in the 1990s about her importance in John Paul's life. They interviewed her and dedicated 20 pages to her in their 1996 book "His Holiness". Bernstein and Politi even asked her if she had ever developed any romantic relationship with John Paul II, "however one-sided it might have been." She responded, "No, I never fell in love with the cardinal. How could I fall in love with a middle-aged clergyman? Besides, I'm a married woman." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23805 |
Patanjali
Amongst the more important authors called Patañjali are:
Patanjali continues to be honoured with invocations and shrines in some forms of modern postural yoga, such as Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.
According to Monier Monier-Williams, the word "Patañjali" is a compound name from "patta" (Sanskrit: पत, "falling, flying") and "añj" (अञ्ज्, "honor, celebrate, beautiful") or "añjali" (अञ्जलि, "reverence, joining palms of the hand").
Louis Renou was among the many scholars who have suggested that the Patañjali who wrote on Yoga was a different person than the Patanjali who wrote a commentary on Panini's grammar. In 1914, James Wood proposed that they were the same person. In 1922, Surendranath Dasgupta presented a series of arguments to tentatively propose that the famed Grammar text and the Yoga text author may be identical.
The view that these were likely two different authors is generally accepted, but some Western scholars consider them as a single entity.
Some in the Indian tradition have held that one Patañjali wrote treatises on grammar, medicine and yoga. This has been memorialised in a verse by Bhoja at the start of his commentary on the Yogasutras called "Rājamārttanda" (11th century), and the following verse found in Shivarama's 18th-century text:
This tradition is discussed by Meulenbeld who traces this "relatively late" idea back to Bhoja (11th century), who was perhaps influenced by a verse by Bhartṛhari (ca. 5th century) that speaks of an expert in yoga, medicine and grammar who, however, is not named. No known Sanskrit text prior to the 10th century states that the one and the same Patanjali was behind all the three treatises.
The sage Patañjali is said to have attained Samadhi through yogic meditation at the Brahmapureeswarar Temple located at Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu, India. Jeeva Samadhi of sage Patanjali, which is now an enclosed meditation hall, can be seen near the Brahma's shrine within Brahmapureeswarar Temple complex.
In the grammatical tradition, Patañjali is believed to have lived in the second century BCE. He wrote a "Mahabhasya" on Panini's sutras, in a form that quoted the commentary of Kātyāyana's "vārttikas". This is a major influential work on Sanskrit grammar and linguistics. The dating of Patanjali and his "Mahabhasya" is established by a combination of evidence, those from the Maurya Empire period, the historical events mentioned in the examples he used to explain his ideas, the chronology of ancient classical Sanskrit texts that respect his teachings, and the mention of his text or his name in ancient Indian literature. Of the three ancient grammarians, the chronological dating of Patanjali to mid 2nd century BCE is considered as "reasonably accurate" by mainstream scholarship.
The text influenced Buddhist grammatical literature, as well as memoirs of travellers to India. For example, the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing mentions that the "Mahabhasya" is studied in India and advanced scholars learn it in three years.
In the Yoga tradition, Patañjali is a revered name. This Patañjali's oeuvre comprises the sutras about Yoga ("Yogasūtra") and the commentary integral to the sutras, called the "Bhāṣya". Some consider the sutras and the Bhaṣya to have had different authors, the commentary being ascribed to "an editor" (Skt. "vyāsa"). According to Phillipp Maas, the same person named Patanjali composed the sutras and the "Bhāṣya" commentary.
Radhakrishnan and Moore attribute the text to the grammarian Patañjali, dating it as 2nd century BCE, during the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE). Maas estimates Patañjali's Yogasutra's date to be about 400 CE, based on tracing the commentaries on it published in the first millennium CE. Edwin Bryant, on the other hand, surveys the major commentators in his translation of the "Yoga Sūtras". He states that "most scholars date the text shortly after the turn of the Common Era (circa first to second century), but that it has been placed as early as several centuries before that." Bryant concludes that "A number of scholars have dated the "Yoga Sūtras" as late as the fourth or fifth century C.E., but these arguments have all been challenged", and late chronology for this Patanjali and his text are problematic.
Regarding his early years, a Tamil Saiva Siddhanta tradition from around 10th century AD holds that Patañjali learned Yoga along with seven other disciples from the great Yogic Guru Nandhi Deva, as stated in Tirumular's "Tirumandiram" (Tantra 1).
"Nandhi arulPetra Nadharai Naadinom"
"Nandhigal Nalvar Siva Yoga MaaMuni"
"Mandru thozhuda Patañjali Vyakramar"
"Endrivar Ennodu (Thirumoolar) Enmarumaame"
Translation
We sought the feet of the God who graced Nandikesvara
The Four Nandhis,
Sivayoga Muni, Patañjali, Vyaghrapada and I (Thirumoolar)
We were these eight.
Whether the two works, the Yoga Sutras and the Mahābhāṣya, are by the same author has been the subject of considerable debate. The authorship of the two is first attributed to the same person in Bhojadeva's "Rajamartanda", a relatively late (10th century) commentary on the Yoga Sutras, as well as several subsequent texts. As for the texts themselves, the Yoga Sutra iii.44 cites a sutra as that from Patanjali by name, but this line itself is not from the Mahābhāṣya. This 10th-century legend of single-authorship is doubtful. The literary styles and contents of the Yogasūtras and the Mahābhāṣya are entirely different, and the only work on medicine attributed to Patañjali is lost. Sources of doubt include the lack of cross-references between the texts, and no mutual awareness of each other, unlike other cases of multiple works by (later) Sanskrit authors. Also, some elements in the Yoga Sutras may date from as late as the 4th century AD, but such changes may be due to divergent authorship, or due to later additions which are not atypical in the oral tradition. Most scholars refer to both works as "by Patanjali", without meaning that they are by the same author.
In addition to the Mahābhāṣya and Yoga Sūtras, the 11th-century commentary on Charaka by the Bengali scholar Chakrapani Datta, and the 16th-century text "Patanjalicarita" ascribes to Patañjali a medical text called the "Carakapratisaṃskṛtaḥ" (now lost) which is apparently a revision ("pratisaṃskṛtaḥ") of the medical treatise by Caraka. While there is a short treatise on yoga in the medical work called the Carakasaṃhitā (by Caraka), towards the end of the chapter called śārīrasthāna, it is notable for not bearing much resemblance to the Yoga Sūtras, and in fact presents a form of eightfold yoga that is completely different from that laid out by Patañjali in the Yoga Sūtras and the commentary Yogasūtrabhāṣya.
The "Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali" are 196 Indian sutras (aphorisms) on Yoga. It was the most translated ancient Indian text in the medieval era, having been translated into about forty Indian languages and two non-Indian languages: Old Javanese and Arabic. The text fell into obscurity for nearly 700 years from the 12th to 19th century, and made a comeback in late 19th century due to the efforts of Swami Vivekananda and others. It gained prominence again as a comeback classic in the 20th century.
Before the 20th century, history indicates the Indian yoga scene was dominated by other Yoga texts such as the "Bhagavad Gita", "Yoga Vasistha" and "Yoga Yajnavalkya". Scholars consider the "Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali" formulations as one of the foundations of classical Yoga philosophy of Hinduism.
The ("great commentary") of Patañjali on the of is a major early exposition on Pāṇini, along with the somewhat earlier "Varttika" by Katyayana. Patanjali relates to how words and meanings are associated – Patanjali claims "shabdapramâNaH" – that the evidentiary value of words is inherent in them, and not derived externally – the word-meaning association is natural. These issues in the word-meaning relation (symbol) would be elaborated in the Sanskrit linguistic tradition, in debates between the Mimamsa, Nyaya and Buddhist schools over the next fifteen centuries.
Patanjali also defines an early notion of sphota, which would be elaborated considerably by later Sanskrit linguists like Bhartrihari. In Patanjali, a "sphoTa" (from "sphuT", spurt/burst) is the invariant quality of speech. The noisy element ("dhvani", audible part) can be long or short, but the sphoTa remains unaffected by individual speaker differences. Thus, a single letter or 'sound' ("varNa") such as "k", "p" or "a" is an abstraction, distinct from variants produced in actual enunciation. This concept has been linked to the modern notion of phoneme, the minimum distinction that defines semantically distinct sounds. Thus a phoneme is an abstraction for a range of sounds. However, in later writings, especially in Bhartrihari (6th century CE), the notion of "sphoTa" changes to become more of a mental state, preceding the actual utterance, akin to the lemma.
Patañjali's writings also elaborate some principles of morphology ("prakriyā"). In the context of elaborating on Pāṇini's aphorisms, he also discusses Kātyāyana's commentary, which are also aphoristic and "sūtra"-like; in the later tradition, these were transmitted as embedded in Patañjali's discussion. In general, he defends many positions of Pāṇini which were interpreted somewhat differently in Katyayana.
Unlike Pāṇini's objectives in the Ashtyadhyayi, which is to distinguish correct forms and meanings from incorrect ones ("shabdaunushasana"), Patanjali's objectives are more metaphysical. These include the correct recitations of the scriptures ("Agama"), maintaining the purity of texts ("raksha"), clarifying ambiguity ("asamdeha"), and also the pedagogic goal of providing an easier learning mechanism ("laghu"). This stronger metaphysical bent has also been indicated by some as one of the unifying themes between the Yoga Sutras and the Mahābhāṣya, although a close examination
of actual Sanskrit usage by Woods showed no similarities in language or terminology.
The text of the "" was first critically edited by the 19th-century orientalist Franz Kielhorn, who also developed philological criteria for distinguishing Kātyāyana's "voice" from Patañjali's. Subsequently, a number of other editions have come out, the 1968 text and translation by S.D. Joshi and J.H.F. Roodbergen often being considered definitive. Regrettably, the latter work is incomplete.
Patanjali also writes with a light touch. For example, his comment on the conflicts between the orthodox Brahminic ("Astika") groups, versus the heterodox, "nAstika" groups (Buddhism, Jainism, and atheists) seems relevant for religious conflict even today: the hostility between these groups was like that between a mongoose and a snake. He also sheds light on contemporary events, commenting on the recent Greek incursion, and also on several tribes that lived in the Northwest regions of the subcontinent.
Patanjali is also the reputed author of a medical text called "Patanjalah", also called "Patanjala" or "Patanjalatantra". This text is quoted in many yoga and health-related Indian texts. Patanjali is called a medical authority in a number of Sanskrit texts such as "Yogaratnakara", "Yogaratnasamuccaya", "Padarthavijnana", "Cakradatta bhasya". Some of these quotes are unique to "Patanjala", but others are also found in major Hindu medical treatises such as "Charaka Samhita" and "Sushruta Samhita".
There is a fourth scholar also named Patanjali, who likely lived in 8th-century CE and wrote a commentary on "Charaka Samhita" and this text is called "Carakavarttika". The two medical scholars named Patanjali may be the same person, but generally accepted to be completely different person than the Patanjali who wrote the Sanskrit grammar classic "Mahabhasya".
Patanjali is honoured with invocations and shrines in some modern schools of yoga, including Iyengar Yoga and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. The yoga scholar David Gordon White writes that yoga teacher training often includes "mandatory instruction" in the "Yoga Sutra". White calls this "curious to say the least", since the text is in his view essentially irrelevant to "yoga as it is taught and practiced today", commenting that the "Yoga Sutra" is "nearly devoid of discussion of postures, stretching, and breathing". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23806 |
Pope John XXIII
Pope John XXIII (; ; born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, ; 25 November 18813 June 1963) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 28 October 1958 to his death in 1963; he was canonized on 27 April 2014. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was one of thirteen children born to a family of sharecroppers who lived in a village in Lombardy. He was ordained to the priesthood on 10 August 1904 and served in a number of posts, as nuncio in France and a delegate to Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. In a consistory on 12 January 1953 Pope Pius XII made Roncalli a cardinal as the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Prisca in addition to naming him as the Patriarch of Venice. Roncalli was unexpectedly elected pope on 28 October 1958 at age 76 after 11 ballots. Pope John XXIII surprised those who expected him to be a caretaker pope by calling the historic Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the first session opening on 11 October 1962.
John XXIII made many passionate speeches during his pontificate. His views on equality were summed up in his statement, "We were all made in God's image, and thus, we are all Godly alike." He made a major impact on the Catholic Church, opening it up to dramatic unexpected changes promulgated at the Vatican Council and by his own dealings with other churches and nations. In Italian politics, he prohibited bishops from interfering with local elections, and he helped the Christian Democratic Party to cooperate with the socialists. In international affairs, his "Ostpolitik" engaged in dialogue with the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. He especially reached out to the Eastern Orthodox churches. His overall goal was to modernize the Church by emphasizing its pastoral role, and its necessary involvement with affairs of state. He dropped the traditional rule of 70 cardinals, increasing the size to 85. He used the opportunity to name the first cardinals from Africa, Japan, and the Philippines. He promoted ecumenical movements in cooperation with other Christian faiths. In doctrinal matters, he was a traditionalist, but he ended the practice of automatically formulating social and political policies on the basis of old theological propositions.
He did not live to see the Vatican Council to completion. His cause for canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 by his successor, Pope Paul VI, who declared him a Servant of God. On 5 July 2013, Pope Francis – bypassing the traditionally required second miracle – declared John XXIII a saint, based on his virtuous, model lifestyle, and because of the good which had come from his having opened the Second Vatican Council. He was canonised alongside Pope John Paul II on 27 April 2014. John XXIII today is affectionately known as the "Good Pope" and in Italian, "il Papa buono".
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on 25 November 1881 in Sotto il Monte, a small country village in the Bergamo province of the Lombardy region of Italy. He was the eldest son of Giovanni Battista Roncalli (1854 – July 1935) and his wife Marianna Giulia Mazzolla (1855 – 20 February 1939), and fourth in a family of 13. His siblings were:
His family worked as sharecroppers, as did most of the people of Sotto il Monte – a striking contrast to that of his predecessor, Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII), who came from an ancient aristocratic family long connected to the papacy. Roncalli was nonetheless a descendant of an Italian noble family, albeit from a secondary and impoverished branch; "(he) derived from no mean origins but from worthy and respected folk who can be traced right back to the beginning of the fifteenth century". The Roncallis maintained a vineyard and cornfields, and kept cattle.
In 1889, Roncalli received both his First Communion and Confirmation at the age of 8.
On 1 March 1896, Luigi Isacchi, the spiritual director of his seminary, enrolled him into the Secular Franciscan Order. He professed his vows as a member of that order on 23 May 1897.
In 1904, Roncalli completed his doctorate in Canon Law and was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church of Santa Maria in Monte Santo in Piazza del Popolo in Rome on 10 August. Shortly after that, while still in Rome, Roncalli was taken to Saint Peter's Basilica to meet Pope Pius X. After this, he would return to his town to celebrate mass for the Assumption.
In 1905, Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, the new Bishop of Bergamo, appointed Roncalli as his secretary. Roncalli worked for Radini-Tedeschi until the bishop's death on 22 August 1914, two days after the death of Pope Pius X. Radini-Tedeschi's last words to Roncalli were "Angelo, pray for peace". The death of Radini-Tedeschi had a deep effect on Roncalli.
During this period Roncalli was also a lecturer in the diocesan seminary in Bergamo.
During World War I, Roncalli was drafted into the Royal Italian Army as a sergeant, serving in the medical corps as a stretcher-bearer and as a chaplain. After being discharged from the army in early 1919, he was named spiritual director of the seminary.
On 6 November 1921, Roncalli travelled to Rome where he was scheduled to meet the Pope. After their meeting, Pope Benedict XV appointed him as the Italian president of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Roncalli would recall Benedict XV as being the most sympathetic of the popes he had met.
In February 1925, the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri summoned him to the Vatican and informed him of Pope Pius XI's decision to appoint him the Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria (1925–1935). On 3 March, Pius XI also appointed him titular archbishop of Areopolis, Jordan. Roncalli was initially reluctant about a mission to Bulgaria, but he soon relented. His nomination as apostolic visitor was made official on 19 March. Roncalli was consecrated a bishop by Giovanni Tacci Porcelli in the church of San Carlo alla Corso in Rome.
On 30 November 1934, he was appointed Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece and titular archbishop of Mesembria, Bulgaria. He became known in Turkey's predominantly Muslim society as "the Turcophile Pope". Roncalli took up this post in 1935 and used his office to help the Jewish underground in saving thousands of refugees in Europe, leading some to consider him to be a Righteous Gentile (see Pope John XXIII and Judaism). In October 1935, he led Bulgarian pilgrims to Rome and introduced them to Pope Pius XI on 14 October.
In February 1939, he received news from his sisters that his mother was dying. On 10 February 1939, Pope Pius XI died. Roncalli was unable to see his mother for the end as the death of a pontiff meant that he would have to stay at his post until the election of a new pontiff. Unfortunately, she died on 20 February 1939, during the nine days of mourning for the late Pius XI. He was sent a letter by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, and Roncalli later recalled that it was probably the last letter Pacelli sent until his election as Pope Pius XII on 2 March 1939. Roncalli expressed happiness that Pacelli was elected, and, on radio, listened to the coronation of the new pontiff. In 1939, Roncalli was made head of the Vatican Jewish Agency in Geneva.
Roncalli remained in Bulgaria at the time that World War II commenced, optimistically writing in his journal in April 1939, "I don't believe we will have a war". At the time that the war did in fact commence, he was in Rome, meeting with Pope Pius XII on 5 September 1939. In 1940, Roncalli was asked by the Vatican to devote more of his time to Greece; therefore, he made several visits there in January and May that year. The same year, Roncalli departed as head of the Vatican Jewish Agency and migrated to Turkey. However, Roncalli still maintained close relations with the Jews and also intervened to convince Bulgaria King Boris III to cancel deportations of Greek Jews during the Nazi occupation of Greece.
As nuncio, Roncalli made various efforts during the Holocaust in World War II to save refugees, mostly Jewish people, from the Nazis. Among his efforts were:
In 1965, the Catholic Herald newspaper quoted Pope John XXIII as saying:
On 7 September 2000, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation launched the International Campaign for the Acknowledgement of the humanitarian actions undertaken by Vatican Nuncio Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli for people, most of whom were Jewish, persecuted by the Nazi regime. The launching took place at the Permanent Observation Mission of the Vatican to the United Nations, in the presence of Vatican State Secretary Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has carried out exhaustive historical research related to different events connected with interventions of Nuncio Roncalli in favour of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. As of September 2000 three reports have been published compiling different studies and materials of historical research about the humanitarian actions carried out by Roncalli when he was nuncio.
In 2011, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation submitted a massive file (the Roncalli Dossier) to Yad Vashem, with a strong petition and recommendation to bestow upon him the title of Righteous among the Nations.
After 1944 he played an active role in gaining Catholic Church support for the establishment of the state of Israel. His support for Zionism and the establishment of Israel was the result of his cultural and religious openness toward other faiths and cultures, and especially concern with the fate of Jews after the war. He was one of the Vatican's most sympathetic diplomats toward Jewish immigration to Palestine, which he saw as a humanitarian issue, and not a matter of Biblical theology.
On 22 December 1944, during World War II, Pope Pius XII named him to be the new Apostolic Nuncio to recently liberated France. In this capacity he had to negotiate the retirement of bishops who had collaborated with the German occupying power.
Roncalli was chosen among several other candidates, one of whom was Archbishop Joseph Fietta. Roncalli met with Domenico Tardini to discuss his new appointment, and their conversation suggested that Tardini did not approve of it. One curial prelate referred to Roncalli as an "old fogey" while speaking with a journalist.
Roncalli left Ankara on 27 December 1944 on a series of short-haul flights that took him to several places, such as Beirut, Cairo and Naples. He ventured to Rome on 28 December and met with both Tardini and his friend Giovanni Battista Montini. He left for France the next day to commence his newest role.
Roncalli received a message from Mgr. Montini on 14 November 1952 asking him if he would want to become the new Patriarch of Venice in light of the nearing death of Carlo Agostini. Furthermore, Montini said to him via letter on 29 November 1952 that Pius XII had decided to raise him to the cardinalate. Roncalli knew that he would be appointed to lead the patriarchy of Venice due to the death of Agostini, who was to have been raised to the rank of cardinal.
On 12 January 1953, he was appointed Patriarch of Venice and raised to the rank of Cardinal-Priest of Santa Prisca by Pope Pius XII. Roncalli left France for Venice on 23 February 1953 stopping briefly in Milan and then to Rome. On 15 March 1953, he took possession of his new diocese in Venice. As a sign of his esteem, the President of France, Vincent Auriol, claimed the ancient privilege possessed by French monarchs and bestowed the red biretta on Roncalli at a ceremony in the Élysée Palace. It was around this time that he, with the aid of Monsignor Bruno Heim, formed his coat of arms with a lion of Saint Mark on a white ground. Auriol also awarded Roncalli three months later with the award of Commander of the Legion of Honour.
Roncalli decided to live on the second floor of the residence reserved for the patriarch, choosing not to live in the first floor room once resided in by Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, who later became Pope Pius X. On 29 May 1954, the late Pius X was canonized and Roncalli ensured that the late pontiff's patriarchal room was remodelled into a 1903 (the year of the new saint's papal election) look in his honor. With Pius X's few surviving relatives, Roncalli celebrated a mass in his honor.
His sister Ancilla would soon be diagnosed with stomach cancer in the early 1950s. Roncalli's last letter to her was dated on 8 November 1953 where he promised to visit her within the next week. He could not keep that promise, as Ancilla died on 11 November 1953 at the time when he was consecrating a new church in Venice. He attended her funeral back in his hometown. In his will around this time, he mentioned that he wished to be buried in the crypt of Saint Mark's in Venice with some of his predecessors rather than with the family in Sotto il Monte.
Following the death of Pope Pius XII on 9 October 1958, Roncalli watched the live funeral on his last full day in Venice on 11 October. His journal was specifically concerned with the funeral and the abused state of the late pontiff's corpse. Roncalli left Venice for the conclave in Rome well aware that he was "papabile", and after eleven ballots, was elected to succeed the late Pius XII, so it came as no surprise to him, though he had arrived at the Vatican with a return train ticket to Venice.
Many had considered Giovanni Battista Montini, the Archbishop of Milan, a possible candidate, but, although he was the archbishop of one of the most ancient and prominent sees in Italy, he had not yet been made a cardinal. Though his absence from the 1958 conclave did not make him ineligible – under Canon Law any Catholic male who is capable of receiving priestly ordination and episcopal consecration may be elected – the College of Cardinals usually chose the new pontiff from among the Cardinals who attend the papal conclave. At the time, as opposed to modern practice, the participating Cardinals did not have to be below age 80 to vote, there were few Eastern-rite Cardinals, and some Cardinals were just priests at the time of their elevation.
Roncalli was summoned to the final ballot of the conclave at 4:00 pm. He was elected pope at 4:30 pm with a total of 38 votes. After the long pontificate of Pope Pius XII, the cardinals chose a man who – it was presumed because of his advanced age – would be a short-term or "stop-gap" pope. They wished to choose a candidate who would do little during the new pontificate. Upon his election, Cardinal Eugène Tisserant asked him the ritual questions of whether he would accept and if so, what name he would take for himself. Roncalli gave the first of his many surprises when he chose "John" as his regnal name. Roncalli's exact words were "I will be called John". This was the first time in over 500 years that this name had been chosen; previous popes had avoided its use since the time of the Antipope John XXIII during the Western Schism several centuries before.
On the choice of his papal name, Pope John XXIII said to the cardinals:
Upon his choosing the name, there was some confusion as to whether he would be known as John XXIII or John XXIV; in response, he declared that he was John XXIII, thus affirming the antipapal status of antipope John XXIII.
Before this antipope, the most recent popes called John were John XXII (1316–1334) and John XXI (1276–1277). However, there was no Pope John XX, owing to confusion caused by medieval historians misreading the Liber Pontificalis to refer to another Pope John between John XIV and John XV.
After his election, he confided in Cardinal Maurice Feltin that he had chosen the name "in memory of France and in the memory of John XXII who continued the history of the papacy in France".
After he answered the two ritual questions, the traditional Habemus Papam announcement was delivered by Cardinal Nicola Canali to the people at 6:08 pm, an exact hour after the white smoke appeared. A short while later, he appeared on the balcony and gave his first Urbi et Orbi blessing to the crowds of the faithful below in Saint Peter's Square. That same night, he appointed Domenico Tardini as his Secretary of State. Of the three cassocks prepared for whomever the new pope was, even the largest was not enough to fit his five-foot-two, 200-plus-pound frame, which had to be let out in certain places and only to be held together with great effort by bobby pins. When he first saw himself in the mirror in his new vestments, he said with an apprising and critical look that "this man will be a disaster on television!", while later saying he felt his first appearance before the globe was as if he were a "newborn babe in swaddling clothes".
His coronation took place on 4 November 1958, on the feast of Saint Charles Borromeo, and it occurred on the central loggia of the Vatican. He was crowned with the 1877 Palatine Tiara. His coronation ran for the traditional five hours.
In John XXIII's first consistory on 15 December of that same year, Montini was created a cardinal and would become John XXIII's successor in 1963, taking the name of Paul VI. That consistory was notable for being the first to expand the Sacred College membership beyond the then-traditional 70.
Following his election the new pope told the tale of how in his first weeks he was walking when he heard a woman exclaim in a loud voice: "My God, he's so fat!" The new pope casually remarked: "Madame, the holy conclave isn't exactly a beauty contest!"
On 25 December 1958, he became the first pope since 1870 to make pastoral visits in his Diocese of Rome, when he visited children infected with polio at the Bambino Gesù Hospital and then visited Santo Spirito Hospital. The following day, he visited Rome's Regina Coeli prison, where he told the inmates: "You could not come to me, so I came to you." These acts created a sensation, and he wrote in his diary: "... great astonishment in the Roman, Italian and international press. I was hemmed in on all sides: authorities, photographers, prisoners, wardens..."
During these visits, John XXIII put aside the normal papal use of the formal "we" when referring to himself, such as when he visited a reformatory school for juvenile delinquents in Rome telling them "I have wanted to come here for some time". The media noticed this and reported that "He talked to the youths in their own language".
In international affairs, his "Ostpolitik" ["Eastern policy"] engaged in dialogue with the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. He worked to reconcile the Vatican with the Russian Orthodox Church to settle tensions between the local churches. The Second Vatican Council did not condemn Communism and did not even mention it, in what some have called a secret agreement between the Holy See and the Soviet Union. In "Pacem in terris", John XXIII also sought to prevent nuclear war and tried to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. He began a policy of dialogue with Soviet leaders in order to seek conditions in which Eastern Catholics could find relief from persecution.
One of the first acts of Pope John XXIII, in 1960, was to eliminate the description of Jews as "perfidius" (Latin for "perfidious" or "faithless") in the prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy. He interrupted the first Good Friday liturgy in his pontificate to address this issue when he first heard a celebrant refer to the Jews with that word. He also made a confession for the Church of the sin of anti-semitism through the centuries.
While Vatican II was being held, John XXIII tasked Cardinal Augustin Bea with the creation of several important documents that pertained to reconciliation with Jewish people.
Far from being a mere "stopgap" pope, to great excitement, John XXIII called for an ecumenical council fewer than ninety years after the First Vatican Council (Vatican I's predecessor, the Council of Trent, had been held in the 16th century). This decision was announced on 25 January 1959 at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, remarked to Giulio Bevilacqua that "this holy old boy doesn't realise what a hornet's nest he's stirring up". From the Second Vatican Council came changes that reshaped the face of Catholicism: a comprehensively revised liturgy, a stronger emphasis on ecumenism, and a new approach to the world.
Prior to the first session of the council, John XXIII visited Assisi and Loreto on 4 October 1962 to pray for the new upcoming council as well as to mark the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. He was the first pope to travel outside of Rome since Pope Pius IX. Along the way, there were several halts at Orte, Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Fabriano, Iesi, Falconara and Ancona where the crowds greeted him.
In 1963, John XXIII established a commission of six non-theologians to investigate questions of birth control.
John XXIII was an advocate for human rights which included the unborn and the elderly. He wrote about human rights in his "Pacem in terris". He wrote, "Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood."
In regards to the topic of divorce, John XXIII said that human life is transmitted through the family which is founded on the sacrament of marriage and is both one and indissoluble as a union in God, therefore, it is against the teachings of the church for a married couple to divorce.
Pope John XXIII was the last pope to use full papal ceremony, some of which was abolished after Vatican II, while the rest fell into disuse. His papal coronation ran for the traditional five hours (Pope Paul VI, by contrast, opted for a shorter ceremony, while later popes declined to be crowned). Pope John XXIII, like his predecessor Pius XII, chose to have the coronation itself take place on the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica, in view of the crowds assembled in Saint Peter's Square below.
He wore a number of papal tiaras during his papacy. On the most formal of occasions would he don the 1877 Palatine tiara he received at his coronation, but on other occasions, he used the 1922 tiara of Pope Pius XI, which was used so often that it was associated with him quite strongly. The people of Bergamo gave him an expensive silver tiara, but he requested that the number of jewels used be halved and that the money be given to the poor.
Maintaining continuity with his predecessors, John XXIII continued the gradual reform of the Roman liturgy, and published changes that resulted in the 1962 Roman Missal, the last typical edition containing the Tridentine Mass established in 1570 by Pope Pius V at the request of the Council of Trent.
John XXIII beatified four individuals in his reign: Elena Guerra (26 April 1959), Innocenzo da Berzo (12 November 1961), Elizabeth Ann Seton (17 March 1963) and Luigi Maria Palazzolo (19 March 1963).
He also canonized a small number of individuals: he canonized Charles of Sezze and Joaquina Vedruna de Mas on 12 April 1959, Gregorio Barbarigo on 26 May 1960, Juan de Ribera on 12 June 1960, Maria Bertilla Boscardin on 11 May 1961, Martin de Porres on 6 May 1962, and Antonio Maria Pucci, Francis Mary of Camporosso and Peter Julian Eymard on 9 December 1962. His final canonization was that of Vincent Pallotti on 20 January 1963.
John XXIII proclaimed Saint Lawrence of Brindisi as a Doctor of the Church on 19 March 1959.
The pope created 52 cardinals in five consistories that included his successor Pope Paul VI. John XXIII decided to expand the size of the College of Cardinals beyond its limit of seventy that Pope Sixtus V established in 1586. The pope also reserved three additional cardinals "in pectore" which meant he secretly named cardinals without revealing their identities. The pope died before he could reveal these names, therefore meaning that these appointments were never legitimized.
John XXIII also issued a rule in 1962 mandating that all cardinals should be bishops; he himself consecrated the twelve non-bishop cardinals himself in April 1962.
On 11 October 1962, the first session of the Second Vatican Council was held in the Vatican. He gave the Gaudet Mater Ecclesia speech, which served as the opening address for the council. The day was basically electing members for several council commissions that would work on the issues presented in the council. On that same night following the conclusion of the first session, the people in Saint Peter's Square chanted and yelled with the sole objective of getting John XXIII to appear at the window to address them.
Pope John XXIII did indeed appear at the window and delivered a speech to the people below, and told them to return home and hug their children, telling them that it came from the pope. This speech would later become known as the so-called 'Speech of the Moon'.
The first session ended in a solemn ceremony on 8 December 1962 with the next session scheduled to occur in 1963 from 12 May to 29 June – this was announced on 12 November 1962. John XXIII's closing speech made subtle references to Pope Pius IX, and he had expressed the desire to see Pius IX beatified and eventually canonized. In his journal in 1959 during a spiritual retreat, John XXIII made this remark: "I always think of Pius IX of holy and glorious memory, and by imitating him in his sacrifices, I would like to be worthy to celebrate his canonization".
On 23 September 1962, Pope John XXIII was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The diagnosis, which was kept from the public, followed nearly eight months of occasional stomach hemorrhages, and reduced the pontiff's appearances. Looking pale and drawn during these events, he gave a hint to his ultimate fate in April 1963, when he said to visitors, "That which happens to all men perhaps will happen soon to the Pope who speaks to you today."
Pope John XXIII offered to mediate between US President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Both men applauded the pope for his deep commitment to peace. Khrushchev would later send a message via Norman Cousins and the letter expressed his best wishes for the pontiff's ailing health. John XXIII personally typed and sent a message back to him, thanking him for his letter. Cousins, meanwhile, travelled to New York City and ensured that John would become "Time" magazine's 'Man of the Year'. John XXIII became the first Pope to receive the title, followed by John Paul II in 1994 and Francis in 2013.
On 10 February 1963, John XXIII officially opened the process of beatification for the late Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan from 1894 to 1921. This conferred upon him the title of Servant of God.
On 7 March 1963, the feast of the University's patron Saint Thomas Aquinas, Pope John XXIII visited the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum" and with the "motu proprio" "Dominicanus Ordo", raised the "Angelicum" to the rank of Pontifical University. Thereafter it would be known as the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the City.
On 10 May 1963, John XXIII received the Balzan Prize in private at the Vatican but deflected achievements of himself to the five popes of his lifetime, Pope Leo XIII to Pius XII. On 11 May, the Italian President Antonio Segni officially awarded Pope John XXIII with the Balzan Prize for his engagement for peace. While in the car en route to the official ceremony, he suffered great stomach pains but insisted on meeting with Segni to receive the award in the Quirinal Palace, refusing to do so within the Vatican. He stated that it would have been an insult to honour a pontiff on the remains of the crucified Saint Peter. It was the pope's last public appearance.
On 25 May 1963, the pope suffered another haemorrhage and required several blood transfusions, but the cancer had perforated the stomach wall and peritonitis soon set in. The doctors conferred in a decision regarding this matter and John XXIII's aide Loris F. Capovilla broke the news to him saying that the cancer had done its work and nothing could be done for him. Around this time, his remaining siblings arrived to be with him. By 31 May, it had become clear that the cancer had overcome the resistance of John XXIII – it had left him confined to his bed.
"At 11 am Petrus Canisius Van Lierde as Papal Sacristan was at the bedside of the dying pope, ready to anoint him. The pope began to speak for the very last time: ""I had the great grace to be born into a Christian family, modest and poor, but with the fear of the Lord. My time on earth is drawing to a close. But Christ lives on and continues his work in the Church. Souls, souls, ut omnes unum sint."" Van Lierde then anointed his eyes, ears, mouth, hands and feet. Overcome by emotion, Van Lierde forgot the right order of anointing. John XXIII gently helped him before bidding those present a last farewell.
John XXIII died of peritonitis caused by a perforated stomach at 19:49 local time on 3 June 1963 at the age of 81, ending a historic pontificate of four years and seven months. He died just as a Mass for him finished in Saint Peter's Square below, celebrated by Luigi Traglia. After he died, his brow was ritually tapped to see if he was dead, and those with him in the room said prayers. Then the room was illuminated, thus informing the people of what had happened. He was buried on 6 June in the Vatican grottos. Two wreaths, placed on the two sides of his tomb, were donated by the prisoners of the Regina Coeli prison and the Mantova jail in Verona. On 22 June 1963, one day after his friend and successor Pope Paul VI was elected, the latter prayed at his tomb.
On 3 December 1963, US President Lyndon B. Johnson posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award, in recognition of the good relationship between Pope John XXIII and the United States of America. In his speech on 6 December 1963, Johnson said: "I have also determined to confer the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously on another noble man whose death we mourned 6 months ago: His Holiness, Pope John XXIII. He was a man of simple origins, of simple faith, of simple charity. In this exalted office he was still the gentle pastor. He believed in discussion and persuasion. He profoundly respected the dignity of man.
He gave the world immortal statements of the rights of man, of the obligations of men to each other, of their duty to strive for a world community in which all can live in peace and fraternal friendship. His goodness reached across temporal boundaries to warm the hearts of men of all nations and of all faiths".
The citation for the medal reads:
"His Holiness Pope John XXIII, dedicated servant of God. He brought to all citizens of the planet a heightened sense of the dignity of the individual, of the brotherhood of man, and of the common duty to build an environment of peace for all human kind."
He was known affectionately as the "Good Pope". His cause for canonization was opened under Pope Paul VI during the final session of the Second Vatican Council on 18 November 1965, along with the cause of Pope Pius XII. On 3 September 2000, John XXIII was declared "Blessed" alongside Pope Pius IX by Pope John Paul II, the penultimate step on the road to sainthood after a miracle of curing an ill woman was discovered. He was the first pope since Pope Pius X to receive this honour. Following his beatification, his body was moved from its original burial place in the grottoes below the Vatican to the altar of St. Jerome and displayed for the veneration of the faithful.
At the time, the body was observed to be extremely well preserved—a condition which the Church ascribes to embalming and the lack of air flow in his sealed triple coffin rather than a miracle. When John XXIII's body was moved in 2001, it was once again treated to prevent deterioration. The original vault above the floor was removed and a new one built beneath the ground; it was here that the body of Pope John Paul II was entombed from 9 April 2005 to April 2011, before being moved for his beatification on 1 May 2011.
The 50th anniversary of his death was celebrated on 3 June 2013 by Pope Francis, who visited his tomb and prayed there, then addressing the gathered crowd and spoke about the late pope. The people that gathered there at the tomb were from Bergamo, the province where the late pope came from. A month later, on 5 July 2013, Francis approved Pope John XXIII for canonization, along with Pope John Paul II without the traditional second miracle required. Instead, Francis based this decision on John XXIII's merits for the Second Vatican Council. On Sunday, 27 April 2014, John XXIII and Pope John Paul II were declared saints on Divine Mercy Sunday.
The date assigned for the liturgical celebration of John XXIII is not 3 June, the anniversary of his death as would be usual, but 11 October, the anniversary of his opening of the Second Vatican Council. He is also commemorated in the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and some other organizations with a feast day of 4 June, changed originally from 3 June.
From his teens when he entered the seminary, he maintained a diary of spiritual reflections that was subsequently published as the "Journal of a Soul". The collection of writings charts Roncalli's goals and his efforts as a young man to "grow in holiness" and continues after his election to the papacy; it remains widely read.
The opening titles of Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964) dedicate the film to the memory of John XXIII.
John XXIII College (Perth) in Western Australia is a Catholic school named after John XXIII, Pope John Senior High School and Junior Seminary in Koforidua, Ghana and the Catholic Learning Community of John XXIII, a primary school in Sydney. Roncalli College is located in Timaru, New Zealand. There are also Roncalli High Schools in Indianapolis, Indiana, Aberdeen, South Dakota, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Omaha, Nebraska.
During an event held on 6 May 2019 in Bulgaria, Pope Francis invoked John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in terris as a "code of conduct" for peace between Catholics and other religions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23807 |
Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII (), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (; 2 March 18769 October 1958), was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2 March 1939 to 1958 when he died. Before his election to the papacy, he served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to Germany, and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with European and Latin American nations, such as the "Reichskonkordat" with Nazi Germany.
While the Vatican was officially neutral during World War II, the "Reichskonkordat" and his leadership of the Catholic Church during the war remain the subject of controversy—including allegations of public silence and inaction about the fate of the Jews. After the war, he advocated peace and reconciliation, including lenient policies towards former Axis and Axis-satellite nations.
During his papacy, the Church issued the Decree against Communism, declaring that Catholics who profess Communist doctrine are to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. The Church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the Eastern Bloc. He explicitly invoked "ex cathedra" papal infallibility with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his Apostolic constitution "Munificentissimus Deus". His magisterium includes almost 1,000 addresses and radio broadcasts. His forty-one encyclicals include "Mystici corporis", the Church as the Body of Christ; "Mediator Dei" on liturgy reform; and "Humani generis", in which he instructed theologians to adhere to episcopal teaching and allowed that the human body might have evolved from earlier forms. He eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals in 1946.
After he died in 1958, Pope Pius XII was succeeded by John XXIII. In the process toward sainthood, his cause for canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 by Paul VI during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. He was made a Servant of God by John Paul II in 1990 and Benedict XVI declared Pius XII Venerable on 19 December 2009.
Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born on 2 March 1876 in Rome into a family of intense Catholic piety with a history of ties to the papacy (the "Black Nobility"). His parents were Filippo Pacelli (1837–1916) and Virginia (née Graziosi) Pacelli (1844–1920). His grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, had been Under-Secretary in the Papal Ministry of Finances and then Secretary of the Interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851 to 1870 and helped found the Vatican's newspaper, "L'Osservatore Romano" in 1861. His cousin, Ernesto Pacelli, was a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XIII; his father, Filippo Pacelli, a Franciscan tertiary, was the dean of the Roman Rota; and his brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a lay canon lawyer and the legal advisor to Pope Pius XI, in which role he negotiated the Lateran Treaty in 1929 with Benito Mussolini, bringing an end to the Roman Question.
Together with his brother Francesco and his two sisters, Giuseppina and Elisabetta, he grew up in the Parione district in the centre of Rome. Soon after the family had moved to Via Vetrina in 1880 he began school at the convent of the French Sisters of Divine Providence in the Piazza Fiammetta. The family worshipped at Chiesa Nuova. Eugenio and the other children made their First Communion at this church and Eugenio served there as an altar boy from 1886. In 1886 too he was sent to the private school of Professor Giuseppe Marchi, close to the Piazza Venezia. In 1891 Pacelli's father sent Eugenio to the Liceo Ennio Quirino Visconti Institute, a state school situated in what had been the Collegio Romano, the premier Jesuit university in Rome.
In 1894, aged 18, Pacelli began his theology studies at Rome's oldest seminary, the Almo Collegio Capranica, and in November of the same year, registered to take a philosophy course at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University and theology at the Pontifical Roman Athenaeum S. Apollinare. He was also enrolled at the State University, La Sapienza where he studied modern languages and history. At the end of the first academic year however, in the summer of 1895, he dropped out of both the Capranica and the Gregorian University. According to his sister Elisabetta, the food at the Capranica was to blame. Having received a special dispensation he continued his studies from home and so spent most of his seminary years as an external student. In 1899 he completed his education in Sacred Theology with a doctoral degree awarded on the basis of a short dissertation and an oral examination in Latin.
While all other candidates from the Rome diocese were ordained in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pacelli was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899 alone in the private chapel of a family friend the Vicegerent of Rome, Mgr Paolo Cassetta. Shortly after ordination he began postgraduate studies in canon law at Sant'Apollinaire. He received his first assignment as a curate at Chiesa Nuova. In 1901 he entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Monsignor Pietro Gasparri, the recently appointed undersecretary at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, had underscored his proposal to Pacelli to work in the "Vatican's equivalent of the Foreign office" by highlighting the "necessity of defending the Church from the onslaughts of secularism and liberalism throughout Europe". Pacelli became an "apprendista", an apprentice, in Gasparri's department. In January 1901 he was also chosen, by Pope Leo XIII himself, according to an official account, to deliver condolences on behalf of the Vatican to King Edward VII of the UK after the death of Queen Victoria.
By 1904 Pacelli received his doctorate. The theme of his thesis was the nature of concordats and the function of canon law when a concordat falls into abeyance. Promoted to the position of "minutante", he prepared digests of reports that had been sent to the Secretariat from all over the world and in the same year became a papal chamberlain. In 1905 he received the title domestic prelate. From 1904 until 1916, he assisted Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in his codification of canon law with the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. According to John Cornwell "the text, together with the Anti-Modernist Oath, became the means by which the Holy See was to establish and sustain the new, unequal, and unprecedented power relationship that had arisen between the papacy and the Church".
In 1908, Pacelli served as a Vatican representative on the International Eucharistic Congress, accompanying Rafael Merry del Val to London, where he met Winston Churchill. In 1911, he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George V.
Pacelli became the under-secretary in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912 (a position he received under Pope Pius X and retained under Pope Benedict XV), and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in February 1914. On 24 June 1914, just four days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, Pacelli, together with Cardinal Merry del Val, represented the Vatican when the Serbian Concordat was signed. Serbia's success in the First Balkan War against Turkey in 1912 had increased the number of Catholics within greater Serbia. At this time Serbia, encouraged by Russia, was challenging Austria-Hungary's sphere of influence throughout the Balkans. Pius X died on 20 August 1914. His successor Benedict XV named Gasparri as secretary of state and Gasparri took Pacelli with him into the Secretariat of State, making him undersecretary. During World War I, Pacelli maintained the Vatican's registry of prisoners of war and worked to implement papal relief initiatives. In 1915, he travelled to Vienna to assist Monsignor Raffaele Scapinelli, nuncio to Vienna, in his negotiations with Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria regarding Italy.
Pope Benedict XV appointed Pacelli as nuncio to Bavaria on 23 April 1917, consecrating him as titular Archbishop of Sardis in the Sistine Chapel on 13 May 1917. After his consecration, Eugenio Pacelli left for Bavaria. As there was no nuncio to Prussia or Germany at the time, Pacelli was, for all practical purposes, the nuncio to all of the German Empire.
Once in Munich, he conveyed the papal initiative to end the war to German authorities. He met with King Ludwig III on 29 May, and later with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, who replied positively to the Papal initiative. However, Bethmann-Hollweg was forced to resign and the German High Command, hoping for a military victory, delayed the German reply until 20 September.
Sister Pascalina later recalled that the Nuncio was heartbroken that the Kaiser turned a "deaf ear to all his proposals". She later wrote, "Thinking back today on that time, when we Germans still all believed that our weapons would be victorious and the Nuncio was deeply sorry that the chance had been missed to save what there was to save, it occurs to me over and over again how clearly he foresaw what was to come. Once as he traced the course of the Rhine with his finger on a map, he said sadly, 'No doubt this will be lost as well'. I did not want to believe it, but here, too, he was to be proved right."
For the remainder of the Great War, Pacelli concentrated on Benedict's humanitarian efforts especially among Allied POWs in German custody. In the upheaval following the Armistice, a disconcerted Pacelli sought Benedict XV's permission to leave Munich, where Kurt Eisner had formed the Free State of Bavaria, and he left for a while to Rorschach, and a tranquil Swiss sanatorium run by nuns. Monsignor Schioppa, the "uditore", was left in Munich.
"His recovery began with a 'rapport with the 24-year-old Sister Pascalina Lehnert—she would soon be transferred to Munich when Pacelli "pulled strings at the highest level".
When he returned to Munich, following Eisner's assassination by an anti-Semitic extreme nationalist, Count Anton von Arco auf Valley, he informed Gasparri-using Schioppa's eye-witness testimony of the chaotic scene at the former royal palace as the trio of Max Levien, Eugen Levine, and Towia Axelrod sought power: "the scene was indescribable [-] the confusion totally chaotic [-] in the midst of all this, a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews like the rest of them hanging around [-] the boss of this female rabble was Levien's mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and a divorcée [-] and it was to her that the nunciature was obliged to pay homage in order to proceed [-] Levien is a young man, also Russian and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, vulgar, repulsive ..." John Cornwell alleges that a worrying impression of anti-Semitism is discernible in the "catalogue of epithets describing their physical and moral repulsiveness" and Pacelli's "constant harping on the Jewishness of this party of power usurpers" chimed with the "growing and widespread belief among Germans that the Jews were the instigators of the Bolshevik revolution, their principal aim being the destruction of Christian civilization". Also according to Cornwell, Pacelli informed Gasparri that "the capital of Bavaria, is suffering under a harsh Jewish-Russian revolutionary tyranny".
According to Sister Pascalina Lehnert, the Nuncio was repeatedly threatened by emissaries of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Once, in a violation of international law, the Bavarian Revolutionary Government attempted to confiscate the Nunciature's car at gunpoint. Despite their demands, however, Pacelli refused to leave his post.
After the Munich Soviet Republic was defeated and toppled by Freikorps and Reichswehr troops, the Nuncio focused on, according to Lehnert, "alleviating the distress of the postwar period, consoling, supporting all in word and deed".
Pacelli was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Germany on 23 June 1920, and—after the completion of a Bavarian concordat—his nunciature was moved to Berlin in August 1925. Many of Pacelli's Munich staff stayed with him for the rest of his life, including his advisor Robert Leiber and Sister Pascalina Lehnert—housekeeper, cook, friend, and adviser for 41 years. In Berlin, Pacelli was Dean of the Diplomatic Corps and active in diplomatic and many social activities. He was aided by the German priest Ludwig Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and was a full-time politician, politically active in the Catholic Centre Party, a party he led following Wilhelm Marx's resignation in October 1928. While in Germany, he travelled to all regions, attended Katholikentag (national gatherings of the faithful), and delivered some 50 sermons and speeches to the German people. In Berlin he lived in the Tiergarten quarter and threw parties for the official and diplomatic elite. Paul von Hindenburg, Gustav Stresemann, and other members of the Cabinet were regular guests.
In post-war Germany, in the absence of a nuncio in Moscow, Pacelli worked also on diplomatic arrangements between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. He negotiated food shipments for Russia, where the Church was persecuted. He met with Soviet representatives including Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin, who rejected any kind of religious education, the ordination of priests and bishops, but offered agreements without the points vital to the Vatican.
Despite Vatican pessimism and a lack of visible progress, Pacelli continued the secret negotiations, until Pius XI ordered them to be discontinued in 1927. Pacelli supported German diplomatic activity aimed at rejection of punitive measures from victorious former enemies. He blocked French attempts for an ecclesiastical separation of the Saar region, supported the appointment of a papal administrator for Danzig and aided the reintegration of priests expelled from Poland. A Prussian Concordat was signed on 14 June 1929. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the beginnings of a world economic slump appeared, and the days of the Weimar Republic were numbered. Pacelli was summoned back to Rome at this time—the call coming by telegram when he was resting at his favourite retreat, the Rorschach convent sanatorium. He left Berlin on 10 December 1929. David Dalin wrote "of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology". In 1935 he wrote a letter to the bishop of Cologne describing the Nazis as "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer". and as "bearers of a new faith and a new Evangile" who were attempting to create "a mendacious antimony between faithfulness to the Church and the Fatherland". Two years later at Notre Dame in Paris he named Germany as "that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race".
Pacelli was made a Cardinal-Priest of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI, and within a few months, on 7 February 1930, Pius XI appointed him Cardinal Secretary of State, responsible for foreign policy and state relations throughout the world. In 1935, Pacelli was named Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.
As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli signed concordats with a number of countries and states. Immediately on becoming Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli and Ludwig Kaas took up negotiations on a Baden Concordat which continued until the spring and summer of 1932. Papal fiat appointed a supporter of Pacelli and his concordat policy, Conrad Gröber, the new Archbishop of Freiburg, and the treaty was signed in August
1932. Others followed: Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). The Lateran treaties with Italy (1929) were concluded before Pacelli became Secretary of State. Catholicism had become the sole recognized religion; the powerful democratic Catholic Popular Party, in many ways similar to the Centre Party in Germany, had been disbanded, and in place of political Catholicism the Holy See encouraged Catholic Action, "an anaemic form of clerically dominated religious rally-rousing". It was permitted only so long as it developed "its activity outside every political party and in direct dependence upon the Church hierarchy for the dissemination and implementation of Catholic principles". Such concordats allowed the Catholic Church to organize youth groups, make ecclesiastical appointments, run schools, hospitals, and charities, or even conduct religious services. They also ensured that canon law would be recognized within some spheres (e.g., church decrees of nullity in the area of marriage).
As the decade began Pacelli wanted the Centre Party in Germany to turn away from the socialists. In the summer of 1931 he clashed with Catholic chancellor Heinrich Bruning, who frankly told Pacelli he believed that he "misunderstood the political situation in Germany and the real character of the Nazis". Following Bruning's resignation in May 1932 Pacelli, like the new Catholic chancellor Franz von Papen, wondered if the Centre Party should look to the Right for a coalition, "that would correspond to their principles". He made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936 where he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed a personal envoy—who did not require Senate confirmation—to the Holy See in December 1939, re-establishing a diplomatic tradition that had been broken since 1870 when the pope lost temporal power.
Pacelli presided as Papal Legate over the International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 10–14 October 1934, and in Budapest in 25–30 May 1938. At this time, anti-semitic laws were in the process of being formulated in Hungary. Pacelli made reference to the Jews "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today". This traditional adversarial relationship with Judaism would be reversed in "Nostra aetate" issued during the Second Vatican Council. According to Joseph Bottum, Pacelli in 1937 "warned A. W. Klieforth, the American consul to Berlin, that Hitler was 'an untrustworthy scoundrel and fundamentally wicked person', to quote Klieforth, who also wrote that Pacelli 'did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, and ... fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand'. This was matched with the discovery of Pacelli's anti-Nazi report, written the following year for President Roosevelt and filed with Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, which declared that the Church regarded compromise with the Third Reich as 'out of the question'."
Historian Walter Bussmann argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, dissuaded Pope Pius XI—who was nearing death at the time—from condemning the "Kristallnacht" in November 1938, when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin.
The draft encyclical "Humani generis unitas" ("On the Unity of the Human Race") was ready in September 1938 but, according to those responsible for an edition of the document and other sources, it was not forwarded to the Holy See by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledóchowski. The draft encyclical contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism, racial persecution and antisemitism. Historians Passelecq and Suchecky have argued that Pacelli learned about the existence of the draft only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope. He did use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical "Summi Pontificatus", which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society". His various positions on Church and policy issues during his tenure as Cardinal Secretary of State were made public by the Holy See in 1939. Most noteworthy among the 50 speeches is his review of Church-State issues in Budapest in 1938.
The "Reichskonkordat" was an integral part of four concordats Pacelli concluded on behalf of the Vatican with German States. The state concordats were necessary because the German federalist Weimar constitution gave the German states authority in the area of education and culture and thus diminished the authority of the churches in these areas; this diminution of church authority was a primary concern of the Vatican. As Bavarian Nuncio, Pacelli negotiated successfully with the Bavarian authorities in 1925. He expected the concordat with Catholic Bavaria to be the model for the rest of Germany. Prussia showed interest in negotiations only after the Bavarian concordat. However, Pacelli obtained less favorable conditions for the Church in the Prussian concordat of 1929, which excluded educational issues. A concordat with the German state of Baden was completed by Pacelli in 1932, after he had moved to Rome. There he also negotiated a concordat with Austria in 1933. A total of 16 concordats and treaties with European states had been concluded in the ten-year period 1922–1932.
The "Reichskonkordat", signed on 20 July 1933, between Germany and the Holy See, while thus a part of an overall Vatican policy, was controversial from its beginning. It remains the most important of Pacelli's concordats. It is debated, not because of its content, which is still valid today, but because of its timing. A national concordat with Germany was one of Pacelli's main objectives as secretary of state, because he had hoped to strengthen the legal position of the Church. Pacelli, who knew German conditions well, emphasized in particular protection for Catholic associations (§31), freedom for education and Catholic schools, and freedom for publications.
As nuncio during the 1920s, he had made unsuccessful attempts to obtain German agreement for such a treaty, and between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German governments, but the opposition of Protestant and Socialist parties, the instability of national governments and the care of the individual states to guard their autonomy thwarted this aim. In particular, the questions of denominational schools and pastoral work in the armed forces prevented any agreement on the national level, despite talks in the winter of 1932.
Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and sought to gain international respectability and to remove internal opposition by representatives of the Church and the Catholic Centre Party. He sent his vice chancellor Franz von Papen, a Catholic nobleman, to Rome to offer negotiations about a Reichskonkordat. On behalf of Pacelli, Prelate Ludwig Kaas, the outgoing chairman of the Centre Party, negotiated first drafts of the terms with Papen. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on 20 July and ratified on 10 September 1933. Bishop Preysing cautioned against compromise with the new regime, against those who saw the Nazi persecution of the church as an aberration that Hitler would correct.
Between 1933 and 1939, Pacelli issued 55 protests of violations of the "Reichskonkordat". Most notably, early in 1937, Pacelli asked several German cardinals, including Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber to help him write a protest of Nazi violations of the "Reichskonkordat"; this was to become Pius XI's 1937 encyclical, "Mit brennender Sorge". The encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin of official Catholic Church documents. Secretly distributed by an army of motorcyclists and read from every German Catholic Church pulpit on Palm Sunday, it condemned the paganism of the National Socialism ideology. Pius XI credited its creation and writing to Pacelli. It was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization and resulted in persecution of the Church by the infuriated Nazis who closed all the participating presses and "took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy". On 10 June 1941, the pope commented on the problems of the "Reichskonkordat" in a letter to the Bishop of Passau, in Bavaria: "The history of the Reichskonkordat shows, that the other side lacked the most basic prerequisites to accept minimal freedoms and rights of the Church, without which the Church simply cannot live and operate, formal agreements notwithstanding".
Cardinal Pacelli gave a lecture entitled "La Presse et L'Apostolat" at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum" on 17 April 1936.
Pope Pius XI died on 10 February 1939. Several historians have interpreted the conclave to choose his successor as facing a choice between a diplomatic or a spiritual candidate, and they view Pacelli's diplomatic experience, especially with Germany, as one of the deciding factors in his election on 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, after only one day of deliberation and three ballots. He was the first cardinal Secretary of State to be elected pope since Clement IX in 1667. He was one of only two men known to have served as Camerlengo immediately prior to being elected as pope (the other being Pope Leo XIII). According to rumours, he asked for another ballot to be taken to ensure the validity of his election. After his election was indeed confirmed, he chose the name Pius XII in honour of his immediate predecessor.
His coronation took place on 12 March 1939. Upon being elected pope he was also formally the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches and prefect of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation. There was however a Cardinal-Secretary to run these bodies on a day-to-day basis.
Pacelli took the same papal name as his predecessor, a title used exclusively by . He was quoted as saying "I call myself Pius; my whole life was under Popes with this name, but especially as a sign of gratitude towards Pius XI." On 15 December 1937, during his last consistory, Pius XI strongly hinted to the cardinals that he expected Pacelli to be his successor, saying "He is in your midst." He had previously been quoted as saying: "When today the Pope dies, you'll get another one tomorrow, because the Church continues. It would be a much bigger tragedy, if Cardinal Pacelli dies, because there is only one. I pray every day, God may send another one into one of our seminaries, but as of today, there is only one in this world."
After his election, he made Luigi Maglione his successor as Cardinal Secretary of State. Cardinal Maglione, a seasoned Vatican diplomat, had reestablished diplomatic relations with Switzerland and was for many years nuncio in Paris. Yet, Maglione did not exercise the influence of his predecessor Pacelli, who as Pope continued his close relation with Monsignors Montini (later Pope Paul VI) and Domenico Tardini. After the death of Maglione in 1944, Pius left the position open and named Tardini head of its foreign section and Montini head of the internal section. Tardini and Montini continued serving there until 1953, when Pius XII decided to appoint them cardinals, an honor which both turned down. They were then later appointed to be Pro-Secretary with the privilege to wear Episcopal Insignia. Tardini continued to be a close co-worker of the Pope until the death of Pius XII, while Montini became archbishop of Milan, after the death of Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster.
Pius XII slowly eroded the Italian monopoly on the Roman Curia; he employed German and Dutch Jesuit advisors, Robert Leiber, Augustin Bea, and Sebastian Tromp. He also supported the elevation of Americans such as Cardinal Francis Spellman from a minor to a major role in the Church. After World War II, Pius XII appointed more non-Italians than any Pope before him. American appointees included Joseph P. Hurley as regent of the nunciature in Belgrade, Gerald P. O'Hara as nuncio to Romania, and Monsignor Muench as nuncio to Germany. For the first time, numerous young Europeans, Asians and "Americans were trained in various congregations and secretariats within the Vatican for eventual service throughout the world".
Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new cardinals, in contrast to Pius XI, who had done so 17 times in as many years. Pius XII chose not to name new cardinals during World War II, and the number of cardinals shrank to 38, with Dennis Joseph Dougherty of Philadelphia being the only living U.S. cardinal. The first occasion on 18 February 1946—which has become known as the "Grand Consistory"—yielded the elevation of a record 32 new cardinals, almost 50 percent of the College of Cardinals and reaching the canonical limit of 70 cardinals. In the 1946 consistory, Pius XII, while maintaining the maximum size of the College of Cardinals at 70, named cardinals from China, India, the Middle East and increased the number of Cardinals from the Americas, proportionally lessening the Italian influence.
In his second consistory on 12 January 1953, it was expected that his closest co-workers, Msgrs. Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Montini would be elevated and Pius XII informed the assembled cardinals that both of them were originally on the top of his list, but they had turned down the offer, and were rewarded instead with other promotions. Both Montini and Tardini would become Cardinals shortly after Pius' death; Montini later became Pope Paul VI. The two consistories of 1946 and 1953 brought an end to over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College of Cardinals.
With few exceptions, Italian prelates accepted the changes positively; there was no protest movement or open opposition to the internationalization efforts.
In his encyclical "Mediator Dei", Pius XII links liturgy with the last will of Jesus Christ.
The Church has, therefore, according to Pius XII, a common aim with Christ himself, teaching all men the truth, and offering to God a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice. This way, the Church re-establishes the unity between the Creator and His creatures. The Sacrifice of the Altar, being Christ's own actions, conveys and dispenses divine grace from Christ to the members of the Mystical Body.
Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, a long-time critic of Pius XII's policies during World War II and an opponent of clerical celibacy and the use of Latin as language of the liturgy, was excommunicated by Pius XII on 2 July 1945.
The numerous reforms of Pius XII show two characteristics: renewal and rediscovery of old liturgical traditions, such as the reintroduction of the Easter Vigil, and a more structured atmosphere within the Church buildings.
Decentralized authority and increased independence of the Uniate Churches were aimed at in the Canon Law/Codex Iuris Canonici (CIC) reform. In its new constitutions, Eastern Patriarchs were made almost independent from Rome (CIC Orientalis, 1957) Eastern marriage law (CIC Orientalis, 1949), civil law (CIC Orientalis, 1950), laws governing religious associations (CIC Orientalis, 1952) property law (CIC Orientalis, 1952) and other laws. These reforms and writings of Pius XII were intended to establish Eastern Orientals as equal parts of the mystical body of Christ, as explained in the encyclical "Mystici corporis".
With the Apostolic constitution "Sedis Sapientiae", Pius XII added social sciences, sociology, psychology and social psychology, to the pastoral training of future priests. Pius XII emphasised the need to systematically analyze the psychological condition of candidates to the priesthood to ensure that they are capable of a life of celibacy and service. Pius XII added one year to the theological formation of future priests. He included a "pastoral year", an introduction into the practice of parish work.
Pius XII wrote in "Menti Nostrae" that the call to constant interior reform and Christian heroism means to be above average, to be a living example of Christian virtue. The strict norms governing their lives are meant to make them models of Christian perfection for lay people. Bishops are encouraged to look at model saints like Boniface, and Pope Pius X. Priests were encouraged to be living examples of the love of Christ and his sacrifice.
Pius XII explained the Catholic faith in 41 encyclicals and almost 1000 messages and speeches during his long pontificate. Mediator Dei clarified membership and participation in the Church. The encyclical "Divino afflante Spiritu" opened the doors for biblical research. His magisterium was far larger and is difficult to summarize. In numerous speeches Catholic teaching is related to various aspects of life, education, medicine, politics, war and peace, the life of saints, Mary, the Mother of God, things eternal and contemporary. Theologically, Pius XII specified the nature of the teaching authority of the Church. He also gave a new freedom to engage in theological investigations.
The encyclical "Divino afflante Spiritu", published in 1943, emphasized the role of the Bible. Pius XII freed biblical research from previous limitations. He encouraged Christian theologians to revisit original versions of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. Noting improvements in archaeology, the encyclical reversed Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, which had only advocated going back to the original texts to resolve ambiguity in the Latin Vulgate. The encyclical demands a much better understanding of ancient Hebrew history and traditions. It requires bishops throughout the Church to initiate biblical studies for lay people. The Pontiff also requests a reorientation of Catholic teaching and education, relying much more on sacred scriptures in sermons and religious instruction.
This theological investigative freedom does not, however, extend to all aspects of theology. According to Pius, theologians, employed by the Church, are assistants, to teach the official teachings of the Church and not their own private thoughts. They are free to engage in empirical research, which the Church generously supports, but in matters of morality and religion, they are subjected to the teaching office and authority of the Church, the Magisterium. "The most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, ... in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church." The deposit of faith is authentically interpreted not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the teaching authority of the Church.
As a young boy and in later life, Pacelli was an ardent follower of the Virgin Mary. He was consecrated as a bishop on 13 May 1917, the very first day of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima. Based on the Portuguese mystic Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar requests, he consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942. His remains were to be buried in the crypt of Saint Peter's Basilica on the feast day of Our Lady of Fátima, 13 October 1958.
On 1 November 1950, Pius XII invoked papal infallibility for the first time since 1854 by defining the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, namely that she "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory". To date this is the last time full papal infallibility has been used. The dogma was preceded by the 1946 encyclical "Deiparae Virginis Mariae", which requested all Catholic bishops to express their opinion on a possible dogmatization. On 8 September 1953, the encyclical "Fulgens corona" announced a Marian year for 1954, the centennial of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In the encyclical Ad caeli reginam he promulgated the Queenship of Mary feast. "Mystici corporis" summarizes his mariology. On 15 August 1954, the Feast of the Assumption, he initiated the practice of leading the Angelus every Sunday before address to the crowd assembled at Castel Gandolfo.
Pius XII delivered numerous speeches to medical professionals and researchers. He addressed doctors, nurses, midwives, to detail all aspects of rights and dignity of patients, medical responsibilities, moral implications of psychological illnesses and the uses of psycho pharmaca. He also took on issues like the uses of medicine in terminally ill persons, medical lies in face of grave illness, and the rights of family members to make decisions against expert medical advice. Pope Pius XII often reconsidered previously accepted truth, thus he was first to determine that the use of pain medicine in terminally ill patients is justified, even if this may shorten the life of the patient, as long as life shortening is not the objective itself.
Pope Pius XII developed an extensive theology of the family, taking issue with family roles, sharing of household duties, education of children, conflict resolution, financial dilemmas, psychological problems, illness, taking care of older generations, unemployment, marital holiness and virtue, common prayer, religious discussions and more. He accepted the rhythm method as a moral form of family planning, although only in limited circumstances, within the context of family.
To Pius XII, science and religion were heavenly sisters, different manifestations of divine exactness, who could not possibly contradict each other over the long term. Regarding their relation, his advisor Professor Robert Leiber wrote: "Pius XII was very careful not to close any doors prematurely. He was energetic on this point and regretted that in the case of Galileo".
In 1950, Pius XII promulgated "Humani generis", which acknowledged that evolution might accurately describe the biological origins of the human form, but at the same time criticized those who "imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution ... explains the origin of all things". Catholics must believe that the human soul was created immediately by God. Since the soul is a spiritual substance, it is not brought into being through transformation of matter, but directly by God, whence the special uniqueness of each person. Fifty years later, Pope John Paul II, stating that scientific evidence now seemed to favour the evolutionary theory, upheld the distinction of Pius XII regarding the human soul. "Even if the human body originates from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is spontaneously created by God."
In an address given on 14 September 1952, Pope Pius XII said that the Church does not regard the execution of criminals as a violation by the State of the universal right to life:
When it is a question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual's right to life. In this case it is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of his right to live.
The Church regards criminal penalties as both "medicinal", preventing the criminal from re-offending, and "vindictive", providing retribution for the offense committed. Pius defended the authority of the State to carry out punishment, up to and including the death penalty.
Pius XII taught that the masses were a threat to true democracy. In such a democracy, liberty is the individual's moral duty and equality is the right of all people to honorably live in the place and station that God has assigned them.
Pius XII issued 41 encyclicals during his pontificate—more than all his successors in the past 50 years taken together—along with many other writings and speeches. The pontificate of Pius XII was the first in Vatican history that published papal speeches and addresses in vernacular language on a systematic basis. Until then, papal documents were issued mainly in Latin in "Acta Apostolicae Sedis" since 1909. Because of the novelty of it all, and a feared occupation of the Vatican by the German Wehrmacht, not all documents exist today. In 1944, a number of papal documents were burned or "walled in", to avoid detection by the advancing German army. Insisting that all publications must be reviewed by him on a prior basis to avoid any misunderstanding, several speeches by Pius XII, who did not find sufficient time, were never published or appeared only once issued in the Vatican daily, "Osservatore Romano".
Several encyclicals addressed the Eastern Catholic Churches. "Orientalis Ecclesiae" was issued in 1944 on the 15th centenary of the death of Cyril of Alexandria, a saint common to Eastern Christianity and Latin Churches. Pius XII asks for prayer for better understanding and unification of the Churches. "Orientales omnes Ecclesias", issued in 1945 on the 350th anniversary of the reunion, is a call to continued unity of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, threatened in its very existence by the authorities of the Soviet Union. "Sempiternus Rex" was issued in 1951 on the 1500th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. It included a call to oriental communities adhering to Miaphysite theology to return to the Catholic Church. "Orientales Ecclesias" was issued in 1952 and addressed to the Eastern Churches, protesting the continued Stalinist persecution of the Church. Several Apostolic Letters were sent to the bishops in the East. On 13 May 1956, Pope Pius addressed all bishops of the Eastern Rite. Mary, the mother of God, was the subject of encyclical letters to the people of Russia in "Fulgens corona", as well as a papal letter to the people of Russia.
Pius XII made two substantial interventions on the media. His 1955 discourse "The Ideal Movie", originally given in two parts to members of the Italian cinema industry, offered a "sophisticated analysis of the film industry and the role of cinema in modern society". Compared to his predecessor's teaching, the encyclical "Miranda Prorsus" (1957) shows a "high regard for the importance of cinema, television, and radio".
In 1958, Pope Pius XII declared the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday) for all Catholics. The first medal of the Holy Face, produced by Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli, based on the image on the Shroud of Turin had been offered to Pius XII who approved the medal and the devotion based on it. The general devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus had been approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885 before the image on the Turin Shroud had been photographed.
Pope Pius XII canonized numerous people, including Pope Pius X—"both were determined to stamp out, as far as possible, all traces of dangerous heterodoxy"—and Maria Goretti. He beatified Pope Innocent XI. The first canonizations were two women, the founder of a female order, Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, and a young laywoman, Gemma Galgani. Pelletier had a reputation for opening new ways for Catholic charities, helping people in difficulties with the law, who had been neglected by the system and the Church. Galgani was a virtuous woman in her twenties, said to have the stigmata.
During World War II Pius saw his primary obligation as being to ensure the continuation of the "Church visible" and its divine mission. Pius XII lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak of World War II and then expressed his dismay that war had come in his October 1939 "Summi Pontificatus" encyclical. He followed a strict public policy of Vatican neutrality for the duration of the conflict mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV.
In 1939, Pius XII turned the Vatican into a centre of aid which he organized from various parts of the world. At the request of the Pope, an information office for prisoners of war and refugees operated in the Vatican under Giovanni Battista Montini, which in the years of its existence from 1939 until 1947 received almost 10 million (9,891,497) information requests and produced over 11 million (11,293,511) answers about missing persons.
McGoldrick (2012) concludes that during the war:
Pius XII had genuine affection for Germany, though not the criminal element into whose hands it had fallen; he feared Bolshevism, an ideology dedicated to the annihilation of the church of which he was head, but his sympathies lay with the Allies and the democracies, especially the United States, into whose war economy he had transferred and invested the Vatican's considerable assets.
"Summi Pontificatus" was the first papal encyclical issued by Pope Pius XII, in October 1939 and established some of the themes of his pontificate. During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the German/Soviet invasion of Catholic Poland—the "dread tempest of war is already raging despite all Our efforts to avert it". The papal letter denounced antisemitism, war, totalitarianism, the attack on Poland and the Nazi persecution of the Church.
Pius XII reiterated Church teaching on the "principle of equality"—with specific reference to Jews: "there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision". The forgetting of solidarity "imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men" was called "pernicious error". Catholics everywhere were called upon to offer "compassion and help" to the victims of the war. The Pope declared determination to work to hasten the return of peace and trust in prayers for justice, love and mercy, to prevail against the scourge of war. The letter also decried the deaths of noncombatants.
Following themes addressed in Non abbiamo bisogno (1931); Mit brennender Sorge (1937) and Divini redemptoris (1937), Pius wrote against "anti-Christian movements" and needing to bring back to the Church those who were following "a false standard ... misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, [who] have strayed away from faith in the true God". Pius wrote of "Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact" having shown "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, and endorsed resistance:
Pius wrote of a persecuted Church and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a "right" to compassion. Against the invasion of Poland and killing of civilians he wrote:
With Italy not yet an ally of Hitler in the war, Italians were called upon to remain faithful to the Church. Pius avoided explicit denunciations of Hitlerism or Stalinism, establishing the "impartial" public tone which would become controversial in later assessment of his pontificate: "A full statement of the doctrinal stand to be taken in face of the errors of today, if necessary, can be put off to another time unless there is disturbance by calamitous external events; for the moment We limit Ourselves to some fundamental observations."
In "Summi Pontificatus", Pius expressed dismay at the killing of non-combatants in the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland and expressed hope for the "resurrection" of that country. The Nazis and Soviets commenced a persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland. In April 1940, the Vatican advised the US government that its efforts to provide humanitarian aid had been blocked by the Germans and that the Holy See had been forced to seek indirect channels through which to direct its aid. Michael Phayer, a critic of Pius XII, assesses his policy as having been to "refuse to censure" the "German" invasion and annexation of Poland. This, Phayer wrote, was regarded as a "betrayal" by many Polish Catholics and clergy, who saw his appointment of Hilarius Breitinger as the apostolic administrator for the Wartheland in May 1942, an "implicit recognition" of the breakup of Poland; the opinions of the "Volksdeutsche", mostly German Catholic minorities living in occupied Poland, were more mixed. Phayer argues that Pius XII—both before and during his papacy—consistently "deferred to Germany at the expense of Poland", and saw Germany—not Poland—as critical to "rebuilding a large Catholic presence in Central Europe". In May 1942, Kazimierz Papée, Polish ambassador to the Vatican, complained that Pius had failed to condemn the recent wave of atrocities in Poland; when Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione replied that the Vatican could not document individual atrocities, Papée declared, "when something becomes notorious, proof is not required". Although Pius XII received frequent reports about atrocities committed by and/or against Catholics, his knowledge was incomplete; for example, he wept after the war on learning that Cardinal Hlond had banned German liturgical services in Poland.
There was a well-known case of Jewish Rabbis who, seeking support against the Nazi persecution of Polish Jews in the General Government (Nazi-occupied Polish zone), complained to the representatives of the Catholic Church. The Church's attempted intervention caused the Nazis to retaliate by arresting rabbis and deporting them to the death camp. Subsequently, the Catholic Church in Poland abandoned direct intervention, instead focusing on organizing underground aid, with huge international support orchestrated by Pope Pius XII and his Holy See. The Pope was informed about Nazi atrocities committed in Poland by both officials of the Polish Church and the Polish Underground. Those intelligence materials were used by Pius XII on 11 March 1940 during a formal audience with Joachim von Ribbentrop (Hitler's foreign affairs adviser) when Pope was "listing the date, place, and precise details of each crime" as described by Joseph L. Lichten after others.
With Poland overrun, but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Pius continued to hope for a negotiated peace to prevent the spread of the conflict. The similarly-minded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-established American diplomatic relations with the Vatican after a seventy-year hiatus and dispatched Myron C. Taylor as his personal representative. Pius warmly welcomed Roosevelt's envoy and peace initiative, calling it "an exemplary act of fraternal and hearty solidarity... in defence against the chilling breath of aggressive and deadly godless anti-Christian tendencies". American correspondence spoke of "parallel endeavours for peace and the alleviation of suffering". Despite the early collapse of peace hopes, the Taylor mission continued at the Vatican.
According to Hitler biographer John Toland, following the November 1939 assassination attempt by Johann Georg Elser, Hitler said Pius would have wanted the plot to succeed: "he's no friend of mine". In the spring of 1940, a group of German generals seeking to overthrow Hitler and make peace with the British approached Pope Pius XII, who acted as an interlocutor between the British and the abortive plot. According to Toland, Munich lawyer, Joseph Muller, made a clandestine trip to Rome in October 1939, met with Pius XII and found him willing to act as intermediary. The Vatican agreed to send a letter outlining the bases for peace with England and the participation of the Pope was used to try to persuade senior German Generals Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch to act against Hitler.
Pius warned the Allies of the planned German invasion of the Low Countries in 1940. In Rome in 1942, US envoy Myron C. Taylor, thanked the Holy See for the "forthright and heroic expressions of indignation made by Pope Pius XII when Germany invaded the Low countries". After Germany invaded the Low Countries during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When Mussolini learned of the warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. Mussolini's foreign minister claimed that Pius XII was "ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp, rather than do anything against his conscience".
When in 1940, the Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop led the only senior Nazi delegation permitted an audience with Pius XII and asked why the Pope had sided with the Allies, Pius replied with a list of recent Nazi atrocities and religious persecutions committed against Christians and Jews, in Germany, and in Poland, leading the New York Times to headline its report "Jews Rights Defended" and write of "burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop about religious persecution". During the meeting, Ribbentrop suggested an overall settlement between the Vatican and the Reich government in exchange for Pius XII instructing the German bishops to refrain from political criticism of the German government, but no agreement was reached.
At a special mass at St Peters for the victims of the war, held in November 1940, soon after the commencement of the London Blitz bombing by the Luftwaffe, Pius preached in his homily: "may the whirlwinds, that in the light of day or the dark of night, scatter terror, fire, destruction, and slaughter on helpless folk cease. May justice and charity on one side and on the other be in perfect balance, so that all injustice be repaired, the reign of right restored". Later he appealed to the Allies to spare Rome from aerial bombing, and visited wounded victims of the Allied bombing of 19 July 1943.
Pius attempted, unsuccessfully, to dissuade the Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini from joining Hitler in the war. In April 1941, Pius XII granted a private audience to Ante Pavelić, the leader of the newly proclaimed Croatian state (rather than the diplomatic audience Pavelić had wanted). Pius was criticised for his reception of Pavelić: an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius as "the greatest moral coward of our age". The Vatican did not officially recognise Pavelić's regime. Pius XII did not publicly condemn the expulsions and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated on Serbs by Pavelić; however, the Holy See did expressly repudiate the forced conversions in a memorandum dated 25 January 1942, from the Vatican Secretariat of State to the Yugoslavian Legation. The pope was well-informed of Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše regime, even possessing a list of clergymembers who had "joined in the slaughter", but decided against condemning the regime or taking action against the clergy involved, fearing that it would lead to schism in the Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state. Pius XII would elevate Aloysius Stepinac—a Croatian archbishop convicted of collaborating with the Ustaše by the newly established Yugoslav Communist regime—to the cardinalate in 1953. Phayer agrees that Stepinac's was a "show trial", but states "the charge that he [Pius XII] supported the Ustaša regime was, of course, true, as everyone knew", and that "if Stepinac had responded to the charges against him, his defense would have inevitably unraveled, exposing the Vatican's support of the genocidal Pavelić". Throughout 1942, the Yugoslav government in exile sent letters of protest to Pius XII requesting him to use all possible means to stop the massacres against the Serbs in the NDH, however Pius XII did nothing.
In 1941, Pius XII interpreted "Divini Redemptoris", an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, which forbade Catholics to help communists, as not applying to military assistance to the Soviet Union. This interpretation assuaged American Catholics who had previously opposed Lend-Lease arrangements with the Soviet Union.
In March 1942, Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire and received ambassador Ken Harada, who remained in that position until the end of the war.
In June 1942, diplomatic relations were established with the Nationalist government of China. This step was envisaged earlier, but delayed due to Japanese pressure to establish relations with the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei government. The first Chinese Minister to the Vatican, Hsieh Shou-kang, was only able to arrive at the Vatican in January 1943, due to difficulties of travel resulting from the war. He remained in that position until late 1946.
The Pope employed the new technology of radio and a series of Christmas messages to preach against selfish nationalism and the evils of modern warfare and offer sympathy to the victims of the war. Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address via Vatican Radio voiced concern at human rights abuses and the murder of innocents based on race. The majority of the speech spoke generally about human rights and civil society; at the very end of the speech, Pius XII mentioned "the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline". According to Rittner, the speech remains a "lightning rod" in debates about Pius XII. The Nazis themselves responded to the speech by stating that it was "one long attack on everything we stand for. ... He is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews. ... He is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." The New York Times wrote that "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. ... In calling for a 'real new order' based on 'liberty, justice and love', ... the pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism." Historian Michael Phayer claims, however, that "it is still not clear "whose" genocide or "which" genocide he was referring to". Speaking on the 50th anniversary of Pius's death in 2008, the German Pope Benedict XVI recalled that the Pope's voice had been "broken by emotion" as he "deplored the situation" with a "clear reference to the deportation and extermination of the Jews".
Several authors have alleged a plot to kidnap Pius XII by the Nazis during their occupation of Rome in 1943 (Vatican City itself was not occupied); British historian Owen Chadwick and the Jesuit ADSS editor Rev. Robert Graham each concluded such claims were an intentional creation of the Political Warfare Executive. However, in 2007, subsequent to those accounts, Dan Kurzman published a work which he maintains establishes that the plot was a fact.
In 1944, Pius XII issued a Christmas message in which he warned against rule by the masses and against secular conceptions of liberty and equality.
As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders in an effort to prevent what he perceived to be the mistakes made at the end of World War I. On 23 August 1944, he met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was visiting Rome. At their meeting, the Pope acknowledged the justice of punishing war criminals, but expressed a hope that the people of Italy would not be punished, preferring that they be made "full allies" in the remaining war effort.
During the Second World War, after Nazi Germany commenced its mass executions of Jews in occupied Soviet territory, Pius XII employed diplomacy to aid victims of the Holocaust and directed the Church to provide discreet aid to Jews. Upon his death in 1958, among many Jewish tributes, the Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff, said: "Jews will always remember what the Catholic Church did for them by order of the Pope during the Second World War. When the war was raging, Pius spoke out very often to condemn the false race theory." This is disputed by commentator John Cornwell, who in his book, "Hitler's Pope", argues that the pope was weak and vacillating in his approach to Nazism. Cornwell asserts that the pope did little to challenge the progressing holocaust of the Jews out of fear of provoking the Nazis into invading Vatican City.
In his 1939 "Summi Pontificatus" first papal encyclical, Pius reiterated Catholic teaching against racial persecution and antisemitism and affirmed the ethical principles of the "Revelation on Sinai". At Christmas 1942, once evidence of mass executions of Jews had emerged, Pius XII voiced concern at the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of "faultless" people because of their "nationality or race" and intervened to attempt to block Nazi deportations of Jews in various countries. Upon his death in 1958, Pius was praised emphatically by the Israeli Foreign Minister, and other world leaders. But his insistence on Vatican neutrality and avoidance of naming the Nazis as the evildoers of the conflict became the foundation for contemporary and later criticisms from some quarters. His strongest public condemnation of genocide was considered inadequate by the Allied Powers, while the Nazis viewed him as an Allied sympathizer who had dishonored his policy of Vatican neutrality. Hitler biographer John Toland, while scathing of Pius's cautious public comments in relation to the mistreatment of Jews, concluded that the Allies' own record of action against the Holocaust was "shameful", while "The Church, under the Pope's guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined".
In 1939, the newly elected Pope Pius XII appointed several prominent Jewish scholars to posts at the Vatican after they had been dismissed from Italian universities under Fascist leader Benito Mussolini's racial laws. In 1939, the Pope employed a Jewish cartographer, Roberto Almagia, to work on old maps in the Vatican library. Almagia had been at the University of Rome since 1915 but was dismissed after Benito Mussolini's antisemitic legislation of 1938. The Pope's appointment of two Jews to the Vatican Academy of Science as well as the hiring of Almagia were reported by "The New York Times" in the editions of 11 November 1939 and 10 January 1940.
Pius later engineered an agreement—formally approved on 23 June 1939—with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas to issue 3,000 visas to "non-Aryan Catholics". However, over the next 18 months Brazil's Conselho de Imigração e Colonização (CIC) continued to tighten the restrictions on their issuance, including requiring a baptismal certificate dated before 1933, a substantial monetary transfer to the Banco do Brasil, and approval by the Brazilian Propaganda Office in Berlin. The program was cancelled 14 months later, after fewer than 1,000 visas had been issued, amid suspicions of "improper conduct" (i.e., continuing to practice Judaism) among those who had received visas.
In April 1939, after the submission of Charles Maurras and the intervention of the Carmel of Lisieux, Pius XII ended his predecessor's ban on Action Française, a virulently antisemitic organization.
Following the German/Soviet invasion of Poland, the Pope's first encyclical, "Summi Pontificatus" reiterated Catholic teaching against racial persecution and rejected antisemitism, quoting scripture singling out the "principle of equality"—with specific reference to Jews: "there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision" and direct affirmation of the Jewish "Revelation on Sinai". The forgetting of solidarity "imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men" was called "pernicious error". Catholics everywhere were called upon to offer "compassion and help" to the victims of the war. The Pope declared determination to work to hasten the return of peace and trust in prayers for justice, love and mercy, to prevail against the scourge of war. The letter also decried the deaths of noncombatants.
Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi of Palestine Isaac Herzog in the spring of 1940 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews about to be deported to Germany. Pius called Ribbentrop on 11 March, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews. In 1940, Pius asked members of the clergy, on Vatican letterhead, to do whatever they could on behalf of interned Jews.
In 1941, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna. Later that year, when asked by French Marshal Philippe Pétain if the Vatican objected to antisemitic laws, Pius responded that the church condemned antisemitism, but would not comment on specific rules. Similarly, when Philippe Pétain's regime adopted the "Jewish statutes", the Vichy ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard (a French politician), was told that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings. Valerio Valeri, the nuncio to France, was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Pétain and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione who confirmed the Vatican's position. In June 1942, Pius XII personally protested against the mass deportations of Jews from France, ordering the papal nuncio to protest to Pétain against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews". In September 1941, Pius XII objected to a Slovak Jewish Code, which, unlike the earlier Vichy codes, prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. In October 1941, Harold Tittmann, a US delegate to the Vatican, asked the pope to condemn the atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral", reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.
In 1942, the Slovak chargé d'affaires told Pius that Slovak Jews were being sent to concentration camps. On 11 March 1942, several days before the first transport was due to leave, the chargé d'affaires in Bratislava reported to the Vatican: "I have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of ... Prime Minister (Tuka), who confirmed the plan ... he dared to tell me—he who makes such a show of his Catholicism—that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it ... the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race."
On 18 September 1942, Pius XII received a letter from Monsignor Montini (future Pope Paul VI), saying "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms". Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European atrocities, a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland. Myron C. Taylor passed a US Government memorandum to Pius on 26 September 1942, outlining intelligence received from the Jewish Agency for Palestine which said that Jews from across the Nazi Empire were being systematically "butchered". Taylor asked if the Vatican might have any information which might "tend to confirm the reports", and if so, what the Pope might be able to do to influence public opinion against the "barbarities". Cardinal Maglione handed Harold Tittmann a response to the letter on 10 October. The note thanked Washington for passing on the intelligence, and confirmed that reports of severe measures against the Jews had reached the Vatican from other sources, though it had not been possible to "verify their accuracy". Nevertheless, "every opportunity is being taken by the Holy See, however, to mitigate the suffering of these unfortunate people". In December 1942, when Tittmann asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities". Pius XII directly explained to Tittman that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks.
Following the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland, Pius XII's "Summi Pontificatus" called for the sympathy of the whole world towards Poland, where "the blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants" was being spilled. Pius never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1,800,000–1,900,000 Poles, overwhelmingly Catholic (including 2,935 members of the Catholic clergy). In late 1942, Pius XII advised German and Hungarian bishops to speak out against the massacres on the Eastern Front. In his 1942 Christmas Eve message, he expressed concern for "those hundreds of thousands, who ... sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction. On 7 April 1943, Msgr. Tardini, one of Pius XII's closest advisors, advised Pius XII that it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Slovak Jews.
In January 1943, Pius XII declined to denounce publicly the Nazi discrimination against the Jews, following requests to do so from Władysław Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, and Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin. According to Toland, in June 1943, Pius XII addressed the issue of mistreatment of Jews at a conference of the Sacred College of Cardinals and said: "Every word We address to the competent authority on this subject, and all Our public utterances have to be carefully weighed and measured by Us in the interests of the victims themselves, lest, contrary to Our intentions, We make their situation worse and harder to bear".
On 26 September 1943, following the German occupation of northern Italy, Nazi officials gave Jewish leaders in Rome 36 hours to produce of gold (or the equivalent) threatening to take 300 hostages. Then Chief Rabbi of Rome Israel Zolli recounts in his memoir that he was selected to go to the Vatican and seek help. The Vatican offered to loan 15 kilos, but the offer proved unnecessary when the Jews received an extension. Soon afterward, when deportations from Italy were imminent, 477 Jews were hidden in the Vatican itself and another 4,238 were protected in Roman monasteries and convents. Eighty percent of Roman Jews were saved from deportation. Phayer argues that the German diplomats in Rome were the "initiators of the effort to save the city's Jews", but holds that Pius XII "cooperated in this attempt at rescue", while agreeing with Zuccotti that the pope "did not give orders" for any Catholic institution to hide Jews.
On 30 April 1943, Pius XII wrote to Bishop Graf von Preysing of Berlin to say: "We give to the pastors who are working on the local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisals and of various forms of oppression occasioned by episcopal declarations ... "ad maiora mala vitanda" (to avoid worse) ... seem to advise caution. Here lies one of the reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches; the experience, that we made in 1942 with papal addresses, which We authorized to be forwarded to the Believers, justifies our opinion, as far as We see. ... The Holy See has done whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance. To say nothing of the substantial sums which we spent in American money for the fares of immigrants."
On 28 October 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German Ambassador to the Vatican, telegraphed Berlin that "the Pope has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the deportation of the Roman Jews. ... Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed."
In March 1944, through the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, the pope urged the Hungarian government to moderate its treatment of the Jews. The pope ordered Rotta and other papal legates to hide and shelter Jews. These protests, along with others from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, the United States, and Britain led to the cessation of deportations on 8 July 1944. Also in 1944, Pius appealed to 13 Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports", although it also took the intervention of the U.S. State Department for those countries to honor the documents. The Kaltenbrunner Report to Hitler, dated 29 November 1944, against the backdrop of the 20 July 1944 Plot to assassinate Hitler, states that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically naming Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII), as being a party in the attempt.
In 2005, "Corriere della Sera" published a document dated 20 November 1946 on the subject of Jewish children baptized in war-time France. The document ordered that baptized children, if orphaned, should be kept in Catholic custody and stated that the decision "has been approved by the Holy Father". Nuncio Angelo Roncalli (who became Pope John XXIII, and was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations) ignored this directive. Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who had himself been baptized as a child and had undergone a custody battle afterwards, called for an immediate freeze on Pius's beatification process until the relevant Vatican Secret Archives and baptismal records were opened. Two Italian scholars, Matteo Luigi Napolitano and Andrea Tornielli, confirmed that the memorandum was genuine although the reporting by the "Corriere della Sera" was misleading, as the document had originated in the French Catholic Church archives rather than the Vatican archives and strictly concerned itself with children without living blood relatives who were supposed to be handed over to Jewish organizations.
After World War II, Pope Pius XII focused on material aid to war-torn Europe, an internal internationalization of the Catholic Church, and the development of its worldwide diplomatic relations. His encyclicals, "Evangelii praecones" and "Fidei donum", issued on 2 June 1951 and 21 April 1957, respectively, increased the local decision-making of Catholic missions, many of which became independent dioceses. Pius XII demanded recognition of local cultures as fully equal to European culture. Though his language retained old conceptions – Africa, for example, merited special attention since the church there worked 'to forward her work among the heathen multitudes' – in 1956 he expressed solidarity with the 'non-Europeans who aspire to full political independence'. Continuing the line of his predecessors, Pius XII supported the establishment of local administration in Church affairs: in 1950, the hierarchy of Western Africa became independent; in 1951, Southern Africa; and in 1953, British East Africa. Finland, Burma and French Africa became independent dioceses in 1955.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Pius XII elevated a number of high-profile resistors of Nazism to the College of Cardinals in 1946, among them the German Bishops Joseph Frings of Cologne, Clemens von Galen of Münster and Konrad von Preysing of Berlin. From elsewhere in the liberated Nazi Empire Pius selected other resistors: Dutch Archbishop Johannes de Jong; Hungarian Bishop József Mindszenty; Polish Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha; and French Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège. In 1946 and 1953, respectively, he named as cardinals Thomas Tien of China and Valerian Gracias of India – the first indigenous Catholics of their respective nations to sit in the College of Cardinals. Italian Papal diplomat Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) and Polish Archbishop Stefan Wyszyński were others among those elevated in 1953.
A German contingent dominated his inner circle at this period – the German Jesuits Robert Leiber, Wilhelm Hentrich and Ivo Zeiger. His personal confessor Augustin Bea was a German Jesuit and Mother Pascalina Lehnert and the other German speaking sisters of the papal household added to this element. The American bishop Aloisius Muench wrote in November 1948 that Pius XII was 'more interested in affairs of the Church in Germany than in any other part of the Church' and resolved to make the postwar German crisis a top priority – 'its refugee crisis, poverty, hunger and disease, the fate of prisoners-of-war and accused war criminals, the disruption to the internal organization and communal life of German Catholicism, and Germany's uncertain political future'.
He was concerned too about the potential spread of Communism in Western Europe and the Americas. As he sought to secure resources from abroad to aid post-war recovery, believing deprivation fuelled political agitation, so he also sought to influence Italian politics. In January 1948, Luigi Gedda, of Italy's Catholic Action movement, was called to the Vatican as the campaign for the first parliament of Italy's post-fascist republic was underway. The Communists and Socialists seemed headed for victory and Pius XII wanted Catholic Action, an organization of Catholic laity, to mobilise the Catholic vote against parties of the Left. In July 1949 he approved a controversial move by the Holy Office to threaten with excommunication anyone with known Communist affiliations. A group of Jesuits around the journal "La Civilta Cattolica", active in Vatican circles, further spread alarm that "fifth columns" of Soviet Communism were active in Western Europe poised to exploit popular discontent to aid Soviet expansionism. He was responsible for giving the appellative title, The Catholic University of the Philippines to the then Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas.
Pius XII was rather distrustful of Alcide de Gasperi and Italy's Christian Democrats, considering the party indecisive and fractious – reformist currents within it particularly, which tended to the moderate Left – represented by the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo for example – he considered too accommodating to the Left. On the eve of the 1952 local elections in Rome, in which again the Communist and Socialist parties threatened to win out, he used informal connections to make his views known. Pius XII stated that the war against communism was a holy war and excommunicated members of the Communist Party. Having decided to encourage the Christian Democrats to consider a political alliance with the Rightist parties as part of an anti-left coalition, he asked the Jesuit, Father Riccardo Lombardi, to speak with de Gasperi to consider such an alliance – an electoral alliance with those even of monarchist and neo-fascist tendencies -including the Italian Social Movement. Adopting a domino theory he warned that, if "the Communists win in Rome, in Italy, it will cast a shadow on the entire world: France would become Communist, and then Spain and then all of Europe'. de Gasperi rejected the idea as politically dangerous to the long term fortunes of a centrist Catholic party.
A long illness in late 1954 caused the Pope to consider abdication. Afterwards, changes in his work habit became noticeable. The Pope avoided long ceremonies, canonizations and consistories and displayed hesitancy in personnel matters. He found it increasingly difficult to chastise subordinates and appointees such as his physician, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who after numerous indiscretions was excluded from Papal service for the last years, but, keeping his title, was able to enter the papal apartments to make photos of the dying Pope, which he sold to French magazines. Pius underwent three courses of cellular rejuvenation treatment administered by Paul Niehans, the most important in 1954 when Pacelli was gravely ill. Side-effects of the treatment included hallucinations, from which the Pope suffered in his last years. "These years were also plagued by horrific nightmares. Pacelli's blood-curdling screams could be heard throughout the papal apartments."
Pius XII often elevated young priests as bishops, such as Julius Döpfner (35 years) and Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II, 38 years), one of his last appointees in 1958. He took a firm stand against pastoral experiments, such as "worker-priests", who worked full-time in factories and joined political parties and unions. He continued to defend the theological tradition of Thomism as worthy of continued reform, and as superior to modern trends such as phenomenology or existentialism.
With frequent absences from work, Pope Pius XII had come to depend heavily on a few close colleagues, especially his aide Domenico Tardini, his speechwriter Robert Leiber, and his long-serving housekeeper Pascalina Lehnert. The Pope still addressed lay people and groups about a wide range of topics. Sometimes he answered specific moral questions, which were addressed to him. To professional associations he explained specific occupational ethics in light of Church teachings. Robert Leiber helped him occasionally with his speeches and publications. Cardinal Augustine Bea SJ was his personal confessor. Sister Pasqualina was for forty years his "housekeeper, muse and lifelong companion".
On 5 October 1958, at his summer residence Castel Gandolfo, the Pope suffered painful complications, but tried to continue his duties between intervals of rest. Next morning, the doctors came to pump his stomach, apparently with success, but he lost consciousness and was given the last rites. Presently he awoke, and the nuns opened the door to the Papal Chapel so he could see and hear them praying the rosary. The next day, he appeared to improve and received visitors. When they opened the window in the evening, he looked out at the stars and said quietly "Look, how beautiful, how great is our Lord”. On the last full day of his life, his temperature rose steadily and his breathing became difficult. At 3.52 a.m. on 9 October, he gave a smile, lowered his head and died. The cause of death was recorded as acute heart failure. Monsignor Domenico Tardini prayed the "Magnificat Anima mea dominum", the Virgin Mary's praise of the Lord, in Latin. His doctor Gaspanini said afterwards: "The Holy Father did not die because of any specific illness. He was completely exhausted. He was overworked beyond limit. His heart was healthy, his lungs were good. He could have lived another 20 years, had he spared himself."
Pius XII's physician, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, reported that the pontiff's body was embalmed in the room where he died using a novel process invented by Oreste Nuzzi.
Pope Pius XII did not want the vital organs removed from his body, demanding instead that it be kept in the same condition "in which God created it". According to Galeazzi-Lisi, this was the reason why he and Nuzzi, an embalmer from Naples, used an atypical approach with the embalming procedure. In a controversial press conference, Galeazzi-Lisi described in great detail the embalming of the body of the late pontiff. He claimed to have used the same system of oils and resins with which the body of Jesus Christ was preserved.
Galeazzi-Lisi asserted that the new process would "preserve the body indefinitely in its natural state". However, whatever chance the new embalming process had of efficaciously preserving the body was obliterated by intense heat in Castel Gandolfo during the embalming process. As a result, the body decomposed rapidly and the viewing of the faithful had to be terminated abruptly.
Galeazzi-Lisi reported that heat in the halls, where the body of the late Pope lay in state, caused chemical reactions which required it to be treated twice after the original preparation. Swiss Guards stationed around Pius XII's body were reported to have become ill during their vigil.
His funeral procession into Rome was the largest congregation of Romans as of that date. Romans mourned "their" pope, who was born in their own city, especially as a hero in the time of war. Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (later to be Pope John XXIII) wrote in his diary on 11 October 1958 that probably no Roman emperor had enjoyed such a triumph, which he viewed as a reflection of the spiritual majesty and religious dignity of the late Pius XII.
The late pope lay in state on a bier surrounded by four Swiss Guards, and was then placed in the coffin for burial. Pius XII was buried in the grottos beneath St. Peter's Basilica in a simple tomb in a small chapel.
The Testament of Pope Pius XII was published immediately after his death. Pope Pius XII's cause of canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 by Pope Paul VI during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. In May 2007, the congregation recommended that Pius XII should be declared Venerable. Pope Benedict XVI did so on 19 December 2009, simultaneously making the same declaration in regard to Pope John Paul II.
For Venerable status The Congregation for the Causes of Saints certifies the "heroic virtues" of the candidate. Making Pius XII Venerable met with various responses, most centred on the papal words and actions during World War II. Benedict's signature on the Decree of Heroic Virtue was regarded by some as a public relations blunder, though acceptance of Pius XII as a saviour of Europe's Jews is regarded as 'proof of fidelity to the Church, the "pope" and the Tradition' by neoconservative Catholic groups. On the other hand, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center said, "...there would be a great distortion of history" if Pius XII were canonized. Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, the head of Sydney's Great Synagogue, said: "How can one venerate a man who ... seemed to give his passive permission to the Nazis as the Jews were prised from his doorstep in Rome?" A counterpoint to such comments is the case of Israel Zolli, the Chief Rabbi in Rome from 1939 to 1945, who became a Catholic and took the name of Eugenio in honor of Pius XII.
Father Peter Gumpel, the relator of the Pius XII's cause for canonization, claims that there are already several miracles attributable to Pius XII, including "one quite extraordinary one".
On 1 August 2013, an anonymous "source who works for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints" said Pope Francis is considering canonization without a miracle, "us[ing] the formula of "scientia certa"".
Pope Francis also announced his intention in January 2014 to open the Vatican Secret Archives to scholars so that an evaluation of the late pontiff's role in the war can be determined before canonization. This has been met with praise by the Jewish community. However, it was said that it could take up to a year to gather all the documents and then analyze them.
On 26 May 2014 on his way back from the Holy Land to Vatican City, Pope Francis stated that the late pope would not be beatified because the cause has stalled. The pope said that he checked the progress of the cause for the controversial pope and said that there were no miracles attributed to his intercession, which was the main reason that the cause had halted.
Father Peter Gumpel stated, on a 12 January 2016 documentary on the late pope, that there was consultation of the Vatican Secret Archives which were carried out in secret; in short it means that there are no controversies surrounding the late pontiff that could impede the potential beatification. In that same documentary, the cause's vice-postulator Marc Lindeijer stated that several miracles attributed to the late pope are reported to the postulation every year but the individuals' related to the healings do not come forward to enact diocesan proceedings of investigation. Lindeijer explained that this was the reason that the cause has stalled in the past as none have come forward to assist the postulation in their investigations.
Reports from 2014 indicate a potential miracle from the United States attributed to the intercession of the late pope that was reported to the postulation. The miracle pertains to a male plagued with severe influenza and pneumonia that could have proven to be fatal; the individual was said to have been healed in full after a novena to Pius XII.
During the war, "Time" magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organised power". During the war he was also praised editorially by "The New York Times" for opposing Nazi anti-Semitism and aggression. According to Paul O'Shea, "The Nazis demonised the Pope as the agent of international Jewry; the Americans and British were continually frustrated because he would not condemn Nazi aggression; and the Russians accused him of being an agent of Fascism and the Nazis."
On 21 September 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions." After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius XII how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them. "My only regret", the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews".
Pius XII was also criticised during his lifetime. Leon Poliakov wrote in 1950 that Pius XII had been a tacit supporter of Vichy France's anti-Semitic laws, calling him "less forthright" than Pope Pius XI either out of "Germanophilia" or the hope that Hitler would defeat communist Russia.
After Pius XII's death on 9 October 1958 many Jewish organisations and newspapers around the world paid tribute to his legacy. At the United Nations, Golda Meir, Israel's Foreign Minister, said, "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict." "The Jewish Chronicle" (London) stated on 10 October that "Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Pius XII faced the responsibilities of his exalted office with courage and devotion. Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, Fascism and Communism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion". In the Canadian Jewish Chronicle (17 October), Rabbi J. Stern stated that Pius XII "made it possible for thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism and Fascism to be hidden away..." In 6 November edition of the Jewish Post in Winnipeg, William Zukerman, the former American Hebrew columnist, wrote that no other leader "did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope". Other prominent Jewish figures, such as Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog expressed their public gratitude to Pius XII.
Some early works echoed the favourable sentiments of the war period, including Polish historian Oskar Halecki's "Pius XII: Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace" (1954) and Nazareno Padellaro's "Portrait of Pius XII" (1949).
Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, estimated controversially in "Three Popes and the Jews" that Pius "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands". Some historians have questioned this often cited number, which Lapide reached by "deducting all reasonable claims of rescue" by non-Catholics from the total number of European Jews surviving the Holocaust. A Catholic scholar, Kevin Madigan, has interpreted this and other praise from prominent Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir, as less than sincere, an attempt to secure Vatican recognition of the State of Israel.
In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama "Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel" ("The Deputy, a Christian tragedy", released in English in 1964) portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained silent about the Holocaust. The depiction is described as lacking "credible substantiation" by the Encyclopædia Britannica. Books such as Joseph Lichten's "A Question of Judgment" (1963), written in response to "The Deputy", defended Pius XII's actions during the war. Lichten labelled any criticism of the pope's actions during World War II as "a stupefying paradox" and said, "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation". Critical scholarly works like Guenter Lewy's controversial "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany" (1964) also followed the publication of "The Deputy". Lewy's conclusion was that "the Pope and his advisers—influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles—did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid". In 2002 the play was adapted into the film, "Amen.". An article on "La Civilità Cattolica" in March 2009 indicated that the accusations that Hochhuth's play made widely known originated not among Jews but in the Communist bloc. It was on Moscow Radio, on 2 June 1945, that the first accusation directly against Pius XII of refusing to speak out against the exterminations in Nazi concentration camps. It was also the first medium to call him "Hitler's Pope".
The former high-ranking Securitate General Ion Mihai Pacepa alleged in 2007 that Hochhuth's play and numerous publications attacking Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer were fabrications that were part of a KGB and Eastern bloc Marxist secret services disinformation campaign, named Seat 12, to discredit the moral authority of the Church and Christianity in the west. Pacepa indicated that he was involved in contacting eastern bloc agents close the Vatican in order to fabricate the story to be used for the attack against the wartime pope.
In the aftermath of the controversy surrounding "The Deputy", in 1964, Pope Paul VI authorized Jesuit scholars to access the Vatican State Department Archives, which are normally not opened for seventy-five years. Original documents in French and Italian, "Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale", were published in eleven volumes between 1965 and 1981. The volumes were edited by Four Jesuits: Angelo Martini, Burkhart Schneider, Robert Graham and Pierre Blet. Blet also published a summary of the eleven volumes.
In 1999, British author John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" criticised Pius XII for his actions and inactions during the Holocaust. Cornwell argued that Pius XII subordinated opposition to the Nazis to his goal of increasing and centralising the power of the Papacy. Further, Cornwell accused Pius XII of anti-Semitism. The Encyclopædia Britannica described Cornwell's depiction of Pius XII as anti-Semitic as lacking "credible substantiation". Kenneth L. Woodward stated in his review in "Newsweek" that "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page". Paul O'Shea summarized the work by saying it was "disappointing because of its many inaccuracies, selective use of sources, and claims that do not bear any scrutiny. However, [Cornwell] has rendered a service by insisting Pacelli be re-examined thoroughly and placed firmly within the context of his times". Five years after the publication of "Hitler's Pope", Cornwell stated: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following "Hitler's Pope", that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany".
Cornwell's work was the first to have access to testimonies from Pius XII's beatification process as well as to many documents from Pacelli's nunciature which had just been opened under the 75-year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives. Susan Zuccotti's "" (2000) and Michael Phayer's "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965" (2000) and "Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War" (2008) provided further critical, though more scholarly analysis of Pius's legacy. Daniel Goldhagen's "A Moral Reckoning" and David Kerzer's "The Pope Against the Jews" denounced Pius, while Ralph McInery and José Sanchez wrote more nuanced critical assessments of Pius XII's pontificate.
In specific riposte to Cornwell's criticism, American Rabbi and historian David Dalin published "The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis" in 2005. He reaffirmed previous accounts of Pius having been a saviour of thousands of Europe's Jews. In a review of the book, another Jewish scholar—Churchill biographer, Martin Gilbert—wrote that Dalin's work was "an essential contribution to our understanding of the reality of Pope Pius XII's support for Jews at their time of greatest danger. Hopefully, his account will replace the divisively harmful version of papal neglect, and even collaboration, that has held the field for far too long". Dalin's book also argued that Cornwell and others were liberal Catholics and ex-Catholics who "exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today" and that Pius XII was responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jews.
A number of other scholars replied with favourable accounts of Pius XII, including Margherita Marchione's "Yours Is a Precious Witness: Memoirs of Jews and Catholics in Wartime Italy" (1997), "Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace" (2000) and "Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII" (2002); Pierre Blet's "Pius XII and the Second World War, According to the Archives of the Vatican" (1999); and Ronald J. Rychlak's "Hitler, the War and the Pope" (2000). Ecclesiastical historian William Doino (author of "The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII"), concluded that Pius was "emphatically "not" silent". Other important works challenging the negative characterization of Pius's legacy were written by Eamon Duffy, Clifford Longley, Cardinal Winning, Michael Burleigh, Paul Johnson, and Denis Mack Smith.
In his 2003 book, "A Moral Reckoning", Daniel Goldhagen, asserted that Pius XII "chose again and again not to mention the Jews publicly... [In] public statements by Pius XII ... any mention of the Jews is conspicuously absent." In a review of Goldhagen's book, Mark Riebling counters that Pius used the word "Jew" in his first encyclical, "Summi Pontificatus", published on 20 October 1939. "There Pius insisted that all human beings be treated charitably—for, as Paul had written to the Colossians, in God's eyes "there is neither Gentile nor Jew". In saying this, the Pope affirmed that Jews were full members of the human community—which is Goldhagen's own criterion for establishing 'dissent from the anti-Semitic creed'."
In "Pius XII, The Hound of Hitler", Catholic journalist Gerard Noel dismissed accusations that Pius was "anti-semitic" or "pro-Nazi", but accused him of "silence" based on fear of retaliation and wrote that " Hitler played the Pope with consummate expertise". Gerald Steinacher's "Nazis on the Run" accused Pius of turning a blind eye to the activities of Vatican priests assisting "denazification through conversion" – which, he said, helped ex-Nazi anticommunists to escape justice.
A Berlin Jewish couple, Mr. and Mrs. Wolfsson, argued in defense of the pope: "None of us wanted the Pope to take an open stand. We were all fugitives, and fugitives do not wish to be pointed at. The Gestapo would have become more excited and would have intensified its inquisitions. If the Pope had protested, Rome would have become the center of attention. It was better that the Pope said nothing. We all shared this opinion at the time, and this is still our conviction today." There were examples when Church reaction to Nazi brutality only intensified SS persecutions of both Jews and the Church.
In 1999, in an attempt to address some of this controversy, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (Historical Commission), a group of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars was appointed, respectively, by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (Holy See's Commission) and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), to whom a preliminary report was issued in October 2000.
The Commission did not discover any documents, but had the agreed-upon task to review the existing Vatican volumes, that make up the "Actes et Documents du Saint Siege (ADSS)" The commission was internally divided over the question of access to additional documents from the Holy See, access to the news media by individual commission members, and, questions to be raised in the preliminary report. It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report. In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgment of the Pope and his advisors but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust.
The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents, mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge", which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli. (b) Fourteen questions dealt with themes of individual volumes, such as the question how Pius viewed the role of the Church during the war. (c) Six general questions, such as the absence of any anti-communist sentiments in the documents. The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up under the Holy See's 70-year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the commission in 2001 on friendly terms. Unsatisfied with the findings, Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish members of the commission, said the commission "ran up against a brick wall ... It would have been really helpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."
Peter Stanford, a Catholic journalist and writer, wrote, regarding "Fatal Silence: the pope, the resistance and the German occupation of Rome" (written by Robert Katz; ; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003):
Katz's book also discusses how the Pope's view of the anti-Nazi resistance—as harbingers of Communism—meant he chose not to intervene in the Ardeatine Caves Massacre.
In "The Real Odessa. How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina" (2002), the Argentine journalist Uki Goñi described how the Argentinean government dealt with war criminals that entered Argentina. However, during his research Goñi accidentally stumbled on documents of the British Foreign Office about the involvement of Vatican personnel in the smuggling of war criminals, the so-called post-war "ratlines". Goñi found out that the British Envoy D'Arcy Osborne had intervened with Pope Pius XII to put an end to these illegal activities. Furthermore, he discovered "that the Pope secretly pleaded with Washington and London on behalf of notorious criminals and Nazi collaborators". Suzanne Brown-Fleming's "The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany" (2006) underlines Goñi's findings. In her remarkable study, Brown-Fleming clearly demonstrated how Pius XII intervened on behalf of rather vicious German war criminals (e.g. Otto Ohlendorf). Brown-Fleming's main source was the archive of Pope Pius XII's representative in post-war Germany, Cardinal Aloisius Muench. Then, Phayer's "Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War" (2008) makes use of many documents that have recently come to light thanks to Bill Clinton's 1997 executive order declassifying wartime and postwar documents, many of which are currently at the US National Archives and Holocaust Memorial Museum. These documents include diplomatic correspondence, American espionage, and even decryptions of German communications. Relevant documents have also been released by the Argentine government and the British Foreign Office and other information sources have become available, including the diary of Bishop Hurley. These documents reveal new information about Pius XII's actions regarding the Ustaše regime, the genocides in Poland, the finances of the wartime church, the deportation of the Roman Jews, and the ratlines for Nazis and fascists fleeing Europe. According to Phayer, "the face of Pope Pius that we see in these documents is not the same face we see in the eleven volumes the Vatican published of World War II documents, a collection which, though valuable, is nonetheless critically flawed because of its many omissions".
On 19 September 2008, Pope Benedict XVI held a reception for conference participants during which he praised Pius XII as a pope who made every effort to save Jews during the war. A second conference was held from 6–8 November 2008 by the Pontifical Academy of Life.
On 9 October 2008, the 50th anniversary of Pius XII's death, Benedict XVI celebrated pontifical Mass in his memory. Shortly before and after the Mass, dialectics continued between the Jewish hierarchy and the Vatican as Rabbi Shear Yeshuv Cohen of Haifa addressed the Synod of Bishops and expressed his disappointment towards Pius XII's "silence" during the war.
On 16 June 2009, the Pave the Way Foundation announced that it would release of 2,300 pages of documents in Avellino, Italy, dating from 1940 to 1945, which the organisation claims show that Pius XII "worked diligently to save Jews from Nazi tyranny"; the organisation's founder, Krupp has accused historians of harbouring "private agendas" and having "let down" the public. The foundation's research led to the publication of the book "Pope Pius XII and World War II: the documented truth", authored by Krupp; the book reproduces 225 pages of the new documents produced by the foundation's research.
Mark Riebling argued in his 2015 book "Church of Spies" that Pius XII was involved in plots to overthrow Hitler since mid-October 1939 and was prepared to mediate a peace between the Allies and the Axis in the event of a regime change in Germany. The courier between the resistance group under Admiral Canaris and the Pope was the Bavarian lawyer and Catholic politician Joseph Müller.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the election of Pius XII as Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis announced during an audience for staff of the Vatican Secret Archives on 4 March 2019 that Vatican archival materials pertaining to Pius’ pontificate will be accessible to scholars beginning on 2 March 2020. While this announcement was welcome by researchers, much of it has been clouded by the role of Pope Pius XII with regard to the Holocaust. However, archival research of this period should inform a much broader shift within global Christianity, from Europe to the global South.
More than 150 people have applied to access the archives, although only 60 can be accommodated in the offices at one time. Among the first to view the documents will be representatives of the Jewish community in Rome, and scholars from Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
David Kertzer, an American expert on the relationship between the Catholic church and fascism said there were “signs of nervousness” at the Vatican about what would emerge from the archives. The Vatican archives would provide an “immense amount of fresh material from many millions of pages” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23808 |
Pope Agatho
Pope Agatho (died January 681) served as the bishop of Rome from 27 June 678 until his death. He heard the appeal of Wilfrid of York, who had been displaced from his See by the division of the Archdiocese ordered by Theodore of Canterbury. During Agatho's tenure, the Sixth Ecumenical Council was convened which dealt with the monothelitism controversy. He is venerated as a saint by both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Little is known of Agatho before his papacy but he may have been among the many Sicilian clergy in Rome at that time, due to the Caliphate's attacks on Sicily in the mid-7th century. He served several years as treasurer of the church of Rome. He succeeded Donus in the pontificate.
Shortly after Agatho became pope, Bishop Wilfrid of York arrived in Rome to invoke the authority of the Holy See on his behalf. Wilfrid had been deposed from his see by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, who had carved up Wilfrid's diocese and appointed three bishops to govern the new sees. At a synod which Pope Agatho convoked in the Lateran to investigate the affair, it was decided that Wilfrid's diocese should indeed be divided, but that Wilfrid himself should name the bishops.
The major event of his pontificate was the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), following the end of the Muslim Siege of Constantinople, which suppressed Monothelism, which had been tolerated by previous popes (Honorius I among them). The council began when Emperor Constantine IV, wanting to heal the schism that separated the two sides, wrote to Pope Donus suggesting a conference on the matter, but Donus was dead by the time the letter arrived. Agatho was quick to seize the olive branch offered by the Emperor. He ordered councils held throughout the West so that legates could present the universal tradition of the Western Church. Then he sent a large delegation to meet the Easterners at Constantinople.
The legates and patriarchs gathered in the imperial palace on 7 November 680. The Monothelites presented their case. Then a letter of Pope Agatho was read that explained the traditional belief of the Church that Christ was of two wills, divine and human. Patriarch George of Constantinople accepted Agatho's letter, as did most of the bishops present. The council proclaimed the existence of the two wills in Christ and condemned Monothelitism, with Pope Honorius I being included in the condemnation. When the council ended in September 681 the decrees were sent to the Pope, but Agatho had died in January. The Council had not only ended Monothelism, but also had healed the schism.
Agatho also undertook negotiations between the Holy See and Constantine IV concerning the interference of the Byzantine court in papal elections. Constantine promised Agatho to abolish or reduce the tax that the popes had to pay to the imperial treasury on their consecration.
Anastatius says, that the number of his miracles procured him the title of Thaumaturgus. He died in 681, having held the pontificate about two years. He is venerated as a saint by both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. His feast day in Western Christianity is on 10 January. Eastern Christians, including Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Churches, commemorate him on 20 February. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23811 |
Pope Joan
Pope Joan ("Ioannes Anglicus"; 855–857) was, according to legend, a woman who reigned as pope for a few years during the Middle Ages. Her story first appeared in chronicles in the 13th century and subsequently spread throughout Europe. The story was widely believed for centuries, but most modern scholars regard it as fictional.
Most versions of her story describe her as a talented and learned woman who disguised herself as a man, often at the behest of a lover. In the most common accounts, due to her abilities, she rose through the church hierarchy and was eventually elected pope. Her gender was revealed when she was caught having sex when she was supposed to be doing a service, and she died shortly after, either through murder or of natural causes. The accounts state that later church processions avoided this spot and that the Vatican removed the female pope from its official lists and crafted a ritual to ensure that future popes were male. In the 16th century, Siena Cathedral featured a bust of Joan among other pontiffs; this was removed after protests in 1600.
Jean de Mailly's chronicle, written around 1250, contains the first mention of an unnamed female pope, and it inspired several more accounts over the next several years. The most popular and influential version is that interpolated into Martin of Opava's "Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum", later in the 13th century. Martin introduced details that the female pope's birth name was John Anglicus of Mainz, that she reigned in the 9th century, and that she entered the church to follow her lover. The legend was generally accepted as true until the 16th century, when a widespread debate among Catholic and Protestant writers called the story into question; various writers noted the implausibly long gap between Joan's supposed lifetime and her first appearance in texts. Protestant scholar David Blondel ultimately demonstrated the impossibility of the story. Pope Joan is now widely considered fictional, though the legend remains influential in cultural depictions.
The earliest mention of a female pope appears in the Dominican Jean de Mailly's chronicle of Metz, "Chronica Universalis Mettensis", written in the early 13th century. In his telling, the female pope is not named, and the events are set in 1099. According to Jean:
Jean de Mailly's story was picked up by his fellow Dominican Stephen of Bourbon, who adapted it for his work on the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost". However, the legend gained its greatest prominence when it appeared in the third "recension" (edited revision) of Martin of Opava's "Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum" later in the 13th century. This version, which may have been by Martin himself, is the first to attach a name to the figure, indicating that she was known as "John Anglicus" or "John of Mainz." It also changes the date from the 11th to the 9th century, indicating that Joan reigned between Leo IV and Benedict III in the 850s. According to the "Chronicon":
One version of the "Chronicon" gives an alternative fate for the female pope. According to this, she did not die immediately after her exposure, but was confined and deposed, after which she did many years of penance. Her son from the affair eventually became Bishop of Ostia, and ordered her entombment in his cathedral when she died.
Other references to the female pope are attributed to earlier writers, though none appears in manuscripts that predate the "Chronicon". The one most commonly cited is Anastasius Bibliothecarius (d. 886), a compiler of "Liber Pontificalis", who was a contemporary of the female Pope by the "Chronicon"'s dating. However, the story is found in only one unreliable manuscript of Anastasius. This manuscript, in the Vatican Library, bears the relevant passage inserted as a footnote at the bottom of a page. It is out of sequence, and in a different hand, one that dates from after the time of Martin of Opava. This "witness" to the female pope is likely to be based upon Martin's account, and not a possible source for it. The same is true of Marianus Scotus's "Chronicle of the Popes", a text written in the 11th century. Some of its manuscripts contain a brief mention of a female pope named Johanna (the earliest source to attach to her the female form of the name), but all these manuscripts are later than Martin's work. Earlier manuscripts do not contain the legend.
Some versions of the legend suggest that subsequent popes were subjected to an examination whereby, having sat on a so-called "sedia stercoraria" or "dung chair" containing a hole, a cardinal had to reach up and establish that the new pope had testicles, before announcing ""Duos habet et bene pendentes"" ("He has two, and they dangle nicely"), or ""habet"" ("he has them") for short.
There were associated legends as well. In the 1290s, the Dominican Robert of Uzès recounted a vision in which he saw the seat "where, it is said, the pope is proved to be a man". Pope Joan has been associated with marvelous happenings. Petrarch (1304–74) wrote in his "Chronica de le Vite de Pontefici et Imperadori Romani" that after Pope Joan had been revealed as a woman:
However, the attribution of this work to Petrarch may be incorrect.
From the mid-13th century onward, the legend was widely disseminated and believed. Joan was used as an "exemplum" in Dominican preaching. Bartolomeo Platina, the scholar who was prefect of the Vatican Library, wrote his "Vitæ Pontificum Platinæ historici liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum qui hactenus ducenti fuere et XX" in 1479 at the behest of his patron, Pope Sixtus IV. The book contains the following account of the female Pope:
Pope John VIII: John, of English extraction, was born at Mentz (Mainz) and is said to have arrived at popedom by evil art; for disguising herself like a man, whereas she was a woman, she went when young with her paramour, a learned man, to Athens, and made such progress in learning under the professors there that, coming to Rome, she met with few that could equal, much less go beyond her, even in the knowledge of the scriptures; and by her learned and ingenious readings and disputations, she acquired so great respect and authority that upon the death of Pope Leo IV (as Martin says) by common consent she was chosen pope in his room. As she was going to the Lateran Church between the Colossean Theatre (so called from Nero's Colossus) and St. Clement's her travail came upon her, and she died upon the place, having sat two years, one month, and four days, and was buried there without any pomp. This story is vulgarly told, but by very uncertain and obscure authors, and therefore I have related it barely and in short, lest I should seem obstinate and pertinacious if I had admitted what is so generally talked. I had better mistake with the rest of the world, though it be certain, that what I have related may be thought not altogether incredible.
References to the female Pope abound in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about her in "De Mulieribus Claris" (1353). The "Chronicon" of Adam of Usk (1404) gives her a name, Agnes, and furthermore mentions a statue in Rome that is said to be of her. This statue had never been mentioned by any earlier writer anywhere; presumably it was an actual statue that came to be taken to be of the female pope. A late-14th-century edition of the "Mirabilia Urbis Romae", a guidebook for pilgrims to Rome, tells readers that the female Pope's remains are buried at St. Peter's. It was around this time that a long series of busts of past Popes was made for the Duomo of Siena, which included one of the female pope, named as "Johannes VIII, Foemina de Anglia" and included between Leo IV and Benedict III.
At his trial in 1415, Jan Hus argued that the Church does not necessarily need a pope, because, during the pontificate of "Pope Agnes" (as he also called her), it got on quite well. Hus's opponents at this trial insisted that his argument proved no such thing about the independence of the Church, but they did not dispute that there had been a female pope at all.
In 1587, Florimond de Raemond, a magistrate in the parlement de Bordeaux and an antiquary, published his first attempt to deconstruct the legend, "Erreur Populaire de la Papesse Jeanne" (also subsequently published under the title "L'Anti-Papesse"). The tract applied humanist techniques of textual criticism to the Pope Joan legend, with the broader intent of supplying sound historical principles to ecclesiastical history, and the legend began to come apart, detail by detail. Raemond's "Erreur Populaire" went through successive editions, reaching a fifteenth as late as 1691.
In 1601, Pope Clement VIII declared the legend of the female pope to be untrue. The famous bust of her, inscribed "Johannes VIII, Femina ex Anglia," which had been carved for the series of papal figures in the Duomo di Siena about 1400 and was noted by travelers, was either destroyed or recarved and relabeled, replaced by a male figure, that of Pope Zachary.
The legend of Pope Joan was "effectively demolished" by David Blondel, a mid-17th-century Protestant historian, who suggested that Pope Joan's tale may have originated in a satire against Pope John XI, who died in his early 20s. Blondel, through detailed analysis of the claims and suggested timings, argued that no such events could have happened.
The 16th-century Italian historian Onofrio Panvinio, commenting on one of Bartolomeo Platina's works that refer to Pope Joan, theorized that the story of Pope Joan may have originated from tales of Pope John XII; John reportedly had many mistresses, including one called Joan, who was very influential in Rome during his pontificate.
At the time of the Reformation, various Protestant writers took up the Pope Joan legend in their anti-Catholic writings, and the Catholics responded with their own polemic. According to Pierre Gustave Brunet, Various authors, in the 16th and 17th centuries, occupied themselves with Pope Joan, but it was from the point of view of the polemic engaged in between the partisans of Lutheran or Calvinist reform and the apologists of Catholicism.
An English writer, Alexander Cooke, wrote a book entitled "Pope Joane: A Dialogue between a Protestant and a Papist", which purported to prove the existence of Pope Joan by reference to Catholic traditions. It was republished in 1675 as "A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan, Plainly Proving Out of the Printed Copies, and Manscriptes of Popish Writers and Others, That a Woman called Joan, Was Really Pope of Rome, and Was There Deliver'd of a Bastard Son in the Open Street as She Went in Solemn Procession". The book gives an account of Pope Joan giving birth to a son in plain view of all those around, accompanied by a detailed engraving showing a rather surprised looking baby peeking out from under the Pope's robes. Even in the 19th century, authors such as Ewaldus Kist and Karl Hase discussed the story as a real occurrence. However, other Protestant writers, such as David Blondel and Gottfried Leibniz, rejected the story.
Most modern scholars dismiss Pope Joan as a medieval legend. British historian John Julius Norwich dismissed the myth with a logical assessment of evidence. The "Oxford Dictionary of Popes" declares that there is "no contemporary evidence for a female Pope at any of the dates suggested for her reign", but nonetheless acknowledges that Pope Joan's legend was widely believed for centuries, even by Catholics.
The 1910 "Catholic Encyclopedia" elaborated on the historical timeline problem:
Between Leo IV and Benedict III, where Martinus Polonus places her, she cannot be inserted, because Leo IV died 17 July 855, and immediately after his death Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome; but, owing to the setting up of an Antipope, in the person of the deposed Cardinal Anastasius, he was not consecrated until 29 September. Coins exist which bear both the image of Benedict III and of Emperor Lothair, who died 28 September 855; therefore Benedict must have been recognized as pope before the last-mentioned date. On 7 October 855, Benedict III issued a charter for the Abbey of Corvey. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, informed Nicholas I that a messenger whom he had sent to Leo IV learned on his way of the death of this Pope, and therefore handed his petition to Benedict III, who decided it (Hincmar, ep. xl in P.L., CXXXVI, 85). All these witnesses prove the correctness of the dates given in the lives of Leo IV and Benedict III, and there was no interregnum between these two Popes, so that at this place there is no room for the alleged Popess.
It has also been noted that enemies of the papacy in the 9th century make no mention of a female pope. For example, Photios I of Constantinople, who became Patriarch in 858 and was deposed by Pope Nicholas I in 863, was an enemy of the pope. He vehemently asserted his own authority as patriarch over that of the pope in Rome, and would have made the most of any scandal of that time regarding the papacy; but he never mentions the story once in any of his voluminous writings. Indeed, at one point he mentions "Leo and Benedict, successively great priests of the Roman Church".
Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe, authors of "The Female Pope: The Mystery of Pope Joan", theorize that if a female pope did exist, a more plausible time frame is 1086 and 1108, when there were several antipopes; during this time the reign of the legitimate popes Victor III, Urban II, and Paschal II was not always established in Rome, since the city was occupied by Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and later sacked by the Normans. This also agrees with the earliest known version of the legend, by Jean de Mailly, as he places the story in the year 1099. De Mailly's account was acknowledged by his companion Stephen of Bourbon.
Peter Stanford, a British writer and former editor of "The Catholic Herald", concluded in "The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth" (2000) "Weighing all th[e] evidence, I am convinced that Pope Joan was an historical figure, though perhaps not all the details about her that have been passed on down the centuries are true". Stanford's work has been criticised as "credulous" by one mainstream historian.
Against the lack of historical evidence to her existence, the question remains as to why the Pope Joan story has been popular and widely believed. Philip Jenkins in "" suggests that the periodic revival of what he calls this "anti-papal legend" has more to do with feminist and anti-Catholic wishful thinking than historical accuracy.
The "sede stercoraria", the throne with a hole in the seat, now at St. John Lateran (the formal residence of the popes and center of Catholicism), is to be considered. This and other toilet-like chairs were used in the consecration of Pope Pascal II in 1099. In fact, one is still in the Vatican Museums, another at the Musée du Louvre. The reason for the configuration of the chair is disputed. It has been speculated that they originally were Roman bidets or imperial birthing stools, which because of their age and imperial links were used in ceremonies by Popes intent on highlighting their own imperial claims (as they did also with their Latin title, "Pontifex Maximus").
Alain Boureau quotes the humanist Jacopo d'Angelo de Scarparia, who visited Rome in 1406 for the enthronement of Gregory XII. The pope sat briefly on two "pierced chairs" at the Lateran: "... the vulgar tell the insane fable that he is touched to verify that he is indeed a man", a sign that this corollary of the Pope Joan legend was still current in the Roman street.
Medieval popes, from the 13th century onward, did indeed avoid the direct route between the Lateran and St Peter's, as Martin of Opava claimed. However, there is no evidence that this practice dated back any earlier. The origin of the practice is uncertain, but it is quite likely that it was maintained because of widespread belief in the Joan legend, and it was thought genuinely to date back to that period.
Although some medieval writers referred to the female pope as "John VIII", a genuine Pope John VIII reigned between 872 and 882. Due to the Dark Ages' lack of records, confusion often reigns in the evaluation of events. The Pope Joan legend is also conflated with the gap in the numbering of the Johns. In the 11th century, Pope John XIV was mistakenly counted as two popes. When Petrus Hispanus was elected pope in 1276, he believed that there had already been twenty popes named John, so he skipped the number XX and numbered himself John XXI.
Pope Joan has remained a popular subject for fictional works. Plays include Ludwig Achim von Arnim's "Päpstin Johanna" (1813), a fragment by Bertolt Brecht (in "Werke". Bd. 10), and a monodrama, "Pausin Johanna" by Cees van der Pluijm (1996).
The Greek author Emmanuel Rhoides' 1866 novel, "The Papess Joanne", was admired by Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry and freely translated by Lawrence Durrell as "The Curious History of Pope Joan" (1954). The American Donna Woolfolk Cross's 1996 historical romance, "Pope Joan", was recently made into a German musical as well as the movie described below. Other novels include Wilhelm Smets's "Das Mährchen von der Päpstin Johanna auf’s Neue erörtert" (1829), Marjorie Bowen's "Black Magic" (1909), Ludwig Gorm's "Päpstin Johanna" (1912), Yves Bichet's "La Papesse Jeanne" (2005), and Hugo N. Gerstl's "Scribe: The Story of the Only Female Pope" (2005). Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robbin Hood" contains a reference"."
There have been two films based on the story of Pope Joan: "Pope Joan" (1972), directed by Michael Anderson, was titled "The Devil's Imposter" in the US. In 2009, it was recut to include more of John Briley's original script and released as "She... who would be Pope". Also in 2009, another film with the title "Pope Joan" was released, this one a German, British, Italian and Spanish production directed by Sönke Wortmann and produced by Bernd Eichinger, based on Cross's novel.
The play "Top Girls" by Caryl Churchill featured Pope Joan as a character, who was invited to a restaurant along with other historically important women in the past by a modern-day woman, Marlene, to discuss the restriction of feminism in the past.
Pope Joan is referenced in the video game "Persona 5", as the inspiration for Johanna, one of the titular personas (cognitive beings used by humans to battle demons) belonging to Makoto Niijima.
In July 2019, a theatric show was held in Malta at Mdina ditch featuring Pope Joan as the main character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23815 |
Prospero Alpini
Prospero Alpini (also known as Prosper Alpinus, Prospero Alpinio and Latinized as Prosperus Alpinus) (23 November 15536 February 1617) was a Venetian physician and botanist. He travelled around Egypt and served as the fourth prefect in charge of the botanical garden of Padua. He wrote several botanical treatises which covered exotic plants of economic and medicinal value. His description of coffee and banana plants are considered the oldest in European literature. The ginger-family genus "Alpinia" was named in his honour by Carolus Linnaeus.
Born at Marostica, a town near Vicenza, the son of Francesco, a physician, Alpini served in his youth for a time in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he went to study medicine at Padua. After taking his doctor's degree in 1578, he settled as a physician in Campo San Pietro, a small town in the Paduan territory. But his tastes were botanical and influenced by Melchiorre Guilandino, and to extend his knowledge of exotic plants he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician to George Emo or Hemi, the Venetian consul in Cairo. The position was obtained with help from Antonio Morosini. From 1587 to 1590 he worked in Venice, Bassano and then at Genoa as physician to Giovanni Andrea Doria.
In Egypt he spent three years, and from a practice in the management of datepalms, which he observed in that country, he learned of sexual difference in plants, which was later to become important in the foundation of the Linnaean taxonomy system. He says that "the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers".
On his return, he resided for some time at Genoa as physician to Andrea Doria, and in 1593 he was appointed professor of botany at Padua. In 1603, following the death of Giacomo Antonio Cortuso (1513-1603), he was appointed prefect for the botanical garden at Padua. His knowledge of medicinal plants made him a much sought after physician consulted by others such as Fabrici of Acquapendente and Alessandro Massaria. Towards the end of his life he suffered from arthritis, skin inflammation and receptive aphasia. He died on 6 February 1617 and is buried in the Basilica of Saint Antonio. He was succeeded in the botanical chair by his son Alpino Alpini (died 1637).
Alpini's best-known botanical work is "De Plantis Aegypti liber" (Venice, 1592). This work introduced a number of plant species previously unknown to European botanists including "Abrus, Abelmoschus, Lablab," and "Melochia," each of which are native to tropical areas and were cultivated with artificial irrigation in Egypt at the time. Other species included "Sesban" "Sesbania sesban" and the baobab tree (which he spelled "bahobab"). Early adopters of Alpini's new botanical names included the botanists Carolus Clusius (died 1609), Johann Bauhin (died 1613), Caspar Bauhin (died 1624) and Johann Veslingius (visited Egypt in the 1620s; died 1649).
Prospero Alpini's ' was published in 1629 after his death. It has an expansion of the material in ' plus some other material. His "De Plantis Aegypti liber" (Venice, 1593) is said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe although the German traveller Leonhard Rauwolf tasted coffee at Aleppo in 1573 and described its effects in 1582. His book "De balsamo dialogus" (1581, 1592) was among the first books to specialize on a single group of plants. He wrote on the prognosis of diseases in his "De praesagienda vita et morti aegrotanti" (1601) which led Kurt Sprengel to consider him as a modern father of diagnostic science. Another work that took nearly a decade was the "De medicina methodica libri tredecim" (1611) which sought a revival of the Methodic school of medicine. His works "De plantis exoticis" and the "Rerum Aegyptiarum libri IV" were published posthumously.
The genus "Alpinia", belonging to the order Zingiberaceae (ginger family), was named after him by Linnaeus. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23819 |
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring (, ) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in
Czechoslovakia as a Communist state after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968, when the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members invaded the country to suppress the reforms.
The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. After national discussion of dividing the country into a federation of three republics, Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia and Slovakia, Dubček oversaw the decision to split into two, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic. This dual federation was the only formal change that survived the invasion.
The reforms, especially the decentralization of administrative authority, were not received well by the Soviets, who, after failed negotiations, sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy the country. "The New York Times" cited reports of 650,000 men equipped with the most modern and sophisticated weapons in the Soviet military catalogue. A massive wave of emigration swept the nation. Resistance was mounted throughout the country, involving attempted fraternization, sabotage of street signs, defiance of curfews, etc. While the Soviet military had predicted that it would take four days to subdue the country, the resistance held out for eight months until it was finally circumvented by diplomatic maneuvers. It became a high-profile example of civilian-based defense; there were sporadic acts of violence and several protest suicides by self-immolation (the most famous being that of Jan Palach), but no military resistance. Czechoslovakia remained controlled by the Soviet Union until 1989, when the Velvet Revolution peacefully ended the communist regime; the last Soviet troops left the country in 1991.
After the invasion, Czechoslovakia entered a period known as "normalization" (Czech: "normalizace"), in which new leaders attempted to restore the political and economic values that had prevailed before Dubček gained control of the KSČ. Gustáv Husák, who replaced Dubček as First Secretary and also became President, reversed almost all of the reforms. The Prague Spring inspired music and literature including the work of Václav Havel, Karel Husa, Karel Kryl and Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".
The process of de-Stalinization in Czechoslovakia had begun under Antonín Novotný in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but had progressed more slowly than in most other states of the Eastern Bloc. Following the lead of Nikita Khrushchev, Novotný proclaimed the "completion of socialism", and the new constitution accordingly adopted the name "Czechoslovak Socialist Republic". The pace of change, however, was sluggish; the rehabilitation of Stalinist-era victims, such as those convicted in the Slánský trials, may have been considered as early as 1963, but did not take place until 1967.
, Czechoslovakia underwent an economic downturn. The Soviet model of industrialization applied poorly to Czechoslovakia since the country was already quite industrialized before World War II and the Soviet model mainly took into account less developed economies. Novotný's attempt at restructuring the economy, the 1965 "New Economic Model", spurred increased demand for political reform as well.
In May 1963, some Marxist intellectuals organized the "Liblice Conference" that discussed Franz Kafka's life, marking the beginning of the cultural democratization of Czechoslovakia which ultimately led to the 1968 "Prague Spring," an era of political liberalization. This conference was unique because it symbolized Kafka's rehabilitation in the Eastern Bloc after having been heavily criticized, led to a partial opening up of the regime and influenced the relaxation of censorship. It also had an international impact as a representative from all Eastern Bloc countries were invited to the Conference; only the Soviet Union did not send any representative. This conference had a revolutionary effect and paved the way for the reforms while making Kafka the symbol of the renaissance of Czechoslovakian artistic and intellectual freedom.
As the strict regime eased its rules, the "Union of Czechoslovak Writers" (Cz: "Československých spisovatelů") cautiously began to air discontent. In "Literární noviny," the union's previously hard-line communist weekly, members suggested that literature should be independent of Party doctrine.
In June 1967, a small fraction of the union sympathized with radical socialists, especially Ludvík Vaculík, Milan Kundera, Jan Procházka, Antonín Jaroslav Liehm, Pavel Kohout and Ivan Klíma.
A few months later, at a meeting of Party leaders, it was decided that administrative actions against the writers who openly expressed support of reformation would be taken. Since only a small group of the union held these beliefs, the remaining members were relied upon to discipline their colleagues. Control over "Literární noviny" and several other publishers was transferred to the "Ministry of Culture", and even some leaders of the Party who later became major reformers—including Dubček—endorsed these moves.
As President Antonín Novotný was losing support, Alexander Dubček, "First Secretary" of the Communist Party of Slovakia, and economist Ota Šik challenged him at a meeting of the "Central Committee" of the Party. Novotný then invited the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, to Prague that December, seeking support; Brezhnev, however, was surprised at the extent of the opposition to Novotný and so he rather supported his removal. Dubček replaced Novotný as First Secretary on 5 January 1968. On 22 March Novotný resigned from presidency and was replaced by Ludvík Svoboda, who later gave consent to the reforms.
Early signs of change were few. In an interview with KSČ Presidium member Josef Smrkovský published in the Party journal "Rudé Právo" with the title "What Lies Ahead", he insisted that Dubček's appointment at the January Plenum would further the goals of socialism and maintain the "working class" nature of the Party.
However, right after Dubček assumed power, the scholar Eduard Goldstücker became chairman of the "Union of Czechoslovak Writers" and thus editor-in-chief of the "Literární noviny", which under Novotny had been filled with party loyalists. Goldstücker tested the boundaries of Dubček's devotion to freedom of the press when on 4 February he appeared in a television interview as the new head of the union. During the interview he openly criticized Novotny, exposing all of Novotny's previously unreported policies and explaining how they were preventing progress in Czechoslovakia.
Goldstücker suffered no repercussions, Dubček instead began to build a sense of trust among the media, the government, and the citizens. It was under Goldstücker that the journal's name was changed to "Literární listy", and on 29 February, the Union published the first copy of the censor-free journal. By August, "Literární listy" had a circulation of 300,000, making it the most published periodical in Europe.
At the 20th anniversary of Czechoslovakia's "Victorious February", Dubček delivered a speech explaining the need for change following the triumph of socialism. He emphasized the need to "enforce the leading role of the party more effectively" and acknowledged that, despite Klement Gottwald's urgings for better relations with society, the Party had too often made heavy-handed rulings on trivial issues. Dubček declared the party's mission was "to build an advanced socialist society on sound economic foundations ... a socialism that corresponds to the historical democratic traditions of Czechoslovakia, in accordance with the experience of other communist parties ..."
One of the most important steps towards the reform was the reduction and later abolition of the censorship on 4 March 1968. It was for the first time in Czech history the censorship was abolished and it was also probably the only reform fully implemented, although only for a short period. Changing from an instrument of party propaganda, media quickly became the instrument of criticism of the regime.
In April, Dubček launched an "Action Programme" of liberalizations, which included increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement, with economic emphasis on consumer goods and the possibility of a multiparty government. The programme was based on the view that "Socialism cannot mean only liberation of the working people from the domination of exploiting class relations, but must make more provisions for a fuller life of the personality than any bourgeois democracy." It would limit the power of the secret police and provide for the federalization of the ČSSR into two equal nations. The programme also covered foreign policy, including both the maintenance of good relations with Western countries and cooperation with the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations. It spoke of a ten-year transition through which democratic elections would be made possible and a new form of democratic socialism would replace the status quo.
Those who drafted the Action Programme were careful not to criticize the actions of the post-war Communist regime, only to point out policies that they felt had outlived their usefulness. For instance, the immediate post-war situation had required "centralist and directive-administrative methods" to fight against the "remnants of the bourgeoisie." Since the "antagonistic classes" were said to have been defeated with the achievement of socialism, these methods were no longer necessary. Reform was needed for the Czechoslovak economy to join the "scientific-technical revolution in the world", rather than relying on Stalinist-era heavy industry, labour power, and raw materials. Furthermore, since internal class conflict had been overcome, workers could now be duly rewarded for their qualifications and technical skills without contravening Marxism-Leninism. The Programme suggested it was now necessary to ensure important positions were "filled by capable, educated socialist expert cadres" in order to compete with capitalism.
Although it was stipulated that reform must proceed under KSČ direction, popular pressure mounted to implement reforms immediately. Radical elements became more vocal: anti-Soviet polemics appeared in the press on 26 June 1968, the Social Democrats began to form a separate party, and new unaffiliated political clubs were created. Party conservatives urged repressive measures, but Dubček counselled moderation and re-emphasized KSČ leadership. At the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April, Dubček announced a political programme of "socialism with a human face". In May, he announced that the Fourteenth Party Congress would convene in an early session on 9 September. The congress would incorporate the Action Programme into the party statutes, draft a federalization law, and elect a new Central Committee.
Dubček's reforms guaranteed freedom of the press, and political commentary was allowed for the first time in mainstream media. At the time of the Prague Spring, Czechoslovak exports were declining in competitiveness, and Dubček's reforms planned to solve these troubles by mixing planned and market economies. Within the party, there were varying opinions on how this should proceed; certain economists wished for a more mixed economy while others wanted the economy to remain mostly planned. Dubček continued to stress the importance of economic reform proceeding under Communist Party rule.
On 27 June Ludvík Vaculík, a leading author and journalist, published a manifesto titled "The Two Thousand Words". It expressed concern about conservative elements within the KSČ and so-called "foreign" forces. Vaculík called on the people to take the initiative in implementing the reform programme. Dubček, the party Presidium, the National Front, and the cabinet denounced this manifesto.
Dubček's relaxation of censorship ushered in a brief period of freedom of speech and the press. The first tangible manifestation of this new policy of openness was the production of the previously hard-line communist weekly "Literární noviny", renamed "Literární listy".
Freedom of the press also opened the door for the first honest look at Czechoslovakia's past by Czechoslovakia's people. Many of the investigations centered on the country's history under communism, especially in the instance of the Joseph Stalin-period. In another television appearance, Goldstücker presented both doctored and undoctored photographs of former communist leaders who had been purged, imprisoned, or executed and thus erased from communist history. The Writers' Union also formed a committee in April 1968, headed by the poet Jaroslav Seifert, to investigate the persecution of writers after the Communist takeover in February 1948 and rehabilitate the literary figures into the Union, bookstores and libraries, and the literary world. Discussions on the current state of communism and abstract ideas such as freedom and identity were also becoming more common; soon, non-party publications began appearing, such as the trade union daily "Prace" (Labour). This was also helped by the Journalists' Union, which by March 1968 had already persuaded the Central Publication Board, the government censor, to allow editors to receive uncensored subscriptions to foreign papers, allowing for a more international dialogue around the news.
The press, the radio, and the television also contributed to these discussions by hosting meetings where students and young workers could ask questions of writers such as Goldstücker, Pavel Kohout, and Jan Prochazka and political victims such as Josef Smrkovský, Zdenek Hejzlar, and Gustav Husak. Television also broadcast meetings between former political prisoners and the communist leaders from the secret police or prisons where they were held. Most importantly, this new freedom of the press and the introduction of television into the lives of everyday Czechoslovak citizens moved the political dialogue from the intellectual to the popular sphere.
Initial reaction within the Communist Bloc was mixed. Hungary's János Kádár was highly supportive of Dubček's appointment in January, but Leonid Brezhnev and the "hardliners" grew concerned about the reforms, which they feared might weaken the position of the Bloc in the Cold War.
At a meeting in Dresden, East Germany on 23 March, leaders of the "Warsaw Five" (USSR, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and East Germany) questioned the Czechoslovak delegation over the planned reforms, suggesting any talk of "democratization" was a veiled criticism of the Soviet model. The Polish Party leader Władysław Gomułka and János Kádár were less concerned with the reforms themselves than with the growing criticisms levelled by the Czechoslovak media, and worried that the situation might be "similar to the prologue of the "Hungarian counterrevolution". Some of the language in the Action Programme may have been chosen to assert that no "counterrevolution" was planned, but Kieran Williams suggests that Dubček was perhaps surprised at, but not resentful of, Soviet suggestions.
The Soviet leadership tried to stop, or at least limit the changes in the ČSSR through a series of negotiations. The Soviet Union agreed to bilateral talks with Czechoslovakia in July at Čierna nad Tisou, near the Soviet border. At the meeting, from 29 July to 1 August, with attendance of Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgorny, Mikhail Suslov and others on the Soviet side and Dubček, Svoboda, Oldřich Černík, Smrkovský and others on the Czechoslovak side, Dubček defended the proposals of the reformist wing of the KSČ while pledging commitment to the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. The KSČ leadership, however, was divided between vigorous reformers (Smrkovský, Černík, and František Kriegel) and hardliners (Vasil Biľak, Drahomír Kolder, and Oldřich Švestka) who adopted an anti-reformist stance.
Brezhnev decided on compromise. The KSČ delegates reaffirmed their loyalty to the Warsaw Pact and promised to curb "anti-socialist" tendencies, prevent the revival of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party and control the press more effectively. The Soviets agreed to withdraw their armed forces still in Czechoslovakia after manoeuvres in June and permit the 9 September "Party Congress".
On 3 August representatives from the "Warsaw Five" and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration. The declaration affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces. The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in any Warsaw Pact country if a "bourgeois" system—a pluralist system of several political parties representing different factions of the "capitalist classes"—was ever established. After the conference, the Soviet troops left Czechoslovak territory but remained along its borders.
As these talks proved unsatisfactory, the Soviets began to consider a military alternative. The Soviet policy of compelling the socialist governments of its satellite states to subordinate their national interests to those of the Eastern Bloc (through military force if needed) became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. On the night of 20–21 August, Eastern Bloc armies from four Warsaw Pact countries—the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary—invaded the ČSSR.
That night, 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks entered the country. They first occupied the Ruzyně International Airport, where air deployment of more troops was arranged. The Czechoslovak forces were confined to their barracks, which were surrounded until the threat of a counter-attack was assuaged. By the morning of 21 August Czechoslovakia was occupied.
Neither Romania nor Yugoslavia and Albania took part in the invasion. Soviet command refrained from drawing upon East German troops for fear of reviving memories of the Nazi invasion in 1938. During the invasion 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed (19 of those in "Slovakia"), 266 severely wounded and another 436 slightly injured. Alexander Dubček called upon his people not to resist. Nevertheless, there was scattered resistance in the streets. Road signs in towns were removed or painted over—except for those indicating the way to Moscow. Many small villages renamed themselves "Dubcek" or "Svoboda"; thus, without navigational equipment, the invaders were often confused.
On the night of the invasion the "Czechoslovak Presidium" declared that Warsaw Pact troops had crossed the border without the knowledge of the ČSSR government, but the Soviet Press printed an unsigned request—allegedly by Czechoslovak party and state leaders—for "immediate assistance, including assistance with armed forces". At the "14th KSČ Party Congress" (conducted secretly, immediately following the intervention), it was emphasized that no member of the leadership had invited the intervention. More recent evidence suggests that conservative KSČ members (including Biľak, Švestka, Kolder, Indra, and Kapek) did send a request for intervention to the Soviets. The invasion was followed by a previously unseen wave of emigration, which was stopped shortly thereafter. An estimated 70,000 citizens fled the country immediately with an eventual total of some 300,000.
Until recently there was some uncertainty as to what provocation, if any, occurred to make the Warsaw Pact armies invade. Preceding the invasion was a rather calm period without any major events taking place in Czechoslovakia.
In Czechoslovakia, especially in the week following the invasion, popular opposition was expressed in numerous spontaneous acts of nonviolent resistance. Civilians purposely gave wrong directions to invading soldiers, while others identified and followed cars belonging to the secret police. On 16 January 1969, student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest against the renewed suppression of free speech.
The generalized resistance caused the Soviet Union to abandon its original plan to oust the First Secretary. Dubček, who had been arrested on the night of 20 August, was taken to Moscow for negotiations. There, he and several other leaders (including all the highest-ranked officials, President Svoboda, Prime Minister Černík and Chairman of the National Assembly Smrkovský) signed the Moscow Protocol, under heavy psychological pressure from Soviet politicians, and it was agreed that Dubček would remain in office and a programme of moderate reform would continue.
On 25 August citizens of the Soviet Union who did not approve of the invasion protested in Red Square; seven protesters opened banners with anti-invasion slogans. The demonstrators were brutally beaten and arrested by security forces, and later punished by a secret tribunal; the protest was dubbed "anti-Soviet" and several people were detained in psychiatric hospitals.
A more pronounced effect took place in Romania, where Nicolae Ceaușescu, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, already a staunch opponent of Soviet influences and a self-declared Dubček supporter, gave a public speech in Bucharest on the day of the invasion, depicting Soviet policies in harsh terms. Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in opposition, calling the invasion an act of "social imperialism". In Finland, a country under some Soviet political influence, the occupation caused a major scandal.
Like the Italian and French Communist parties, the majority of the Communist Party of Finland denounced the occupation. Nonetheless, Finnish president Urho Kekkonen was the very first Western politician to officially visit Czechoslovakia after August 1968; he received the highest Czechoslovakian honours from the hands of President Ludvík Svoboda, on 4 October 1969. The Portuguese communist secretary-general Álvaro Cunhal was one of few political leaders from western Europe to have supported the invasion for being counter-revolutionary. along with the Luxembourg party and conservative factions of the Greek party.
Most countries offered only vocal criticism following the invasion. The night of the invasion, Canada, Denmark, France, Paraguay, the United Kingdom and the United States requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. At the meeting, the Czechoslovak ambassador Jan Muzik denounced the invasion. Soviet ambassador Jacob Malik insisted the Warsaw Pact actions were "fraternal assistance" against "antisocial forces".
One of the nations that most vehemently condemned the invasion was China, which objected furiously to the so-called "Brezhnev Doctrine" that declared the Soviet Union alone had the right to determine what nations were properly Communist and could invade those Communist nations whose communism did not meet the Kremlin's approval. Mao Zedong saw the Brezhnev doctrine as the ideological basis for a Soviet invasion of China, and launched a massive propaganda campaign condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia, despite his own earlier opposition to the Prague Spring. Speaking at a banquet at the Romanian embassy in Beijing on 23 August 1968, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai denounced the Soviet Union for "fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism", going on to compare the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the American war in Vietnam and more pointedly to the policies of Adolf Hitler towards Czechoslovakia in 1938–39. Zhou ended his speech with a barely veiled call for the people of Czechoslovakia to wage guerrilla war against the Red Army.
The next day, several countries suggested a United Nations resolution condemning the intervention and calling for immediate withdrawal. Eventually, a UN vote was taken with ten members supporting the motion; Algeria, India, and Pakistan abstained; the USSR (with veto power) and Hungary opposed. Canadian delegates immediately introduced another motion asking for a UN representative to travel to Prague and work toward the release of the imprisoned Czechoslovak leaders.
By 26 August a new Czechoslovak representative requested the whole issue be removed from the Security Council's agenda. Shirley Temple Black visited Prague in August 1968 to prepare for becoming the US Ambassador for a free Czechoslovakia. However, after the 21 August invasion she became part of a U.S. Embassy-organized convoy of vehicles that evacuated U.S. citizens from the country. In August 1989, she returned to Prague as U.S. Ambassador, three months before the Velvet Revolution that ended 41 years of Communist rule.
In April 1969, Dubček was replaced as first secretary by Gustáv Husák, and a period of "normalization" began. Dubček was expelled from the KSČ and given a job as a forestry official.
Husák reversed Dubček's reforms, purged the party of its liberal members, and dismissed from public office professional and intellectual elites who openly expressed disagreement with the political transformation. Husák worked to reinstate the power of the police and strengthen ties with the rest of the Communist bloc. He also sought to re-centralize the economy, as a considerable amount of freedom had been granted to industries during the Prague Spring. Commentary on politics was forbidden in mainstream media, and political statements by anyone not considered to have "full political trust" were also banned. The only significant change that survived was the federalization of the country, which created the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic in 1969.
In 1987, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika owed a great deal to Dubček's "socialism with a human face". When asked what the difference was between the Prague Spring and Gorbachev's own reforms, a Foreign Ministry spokesman replied, "Nineteen years."
Dubček lent his support to the Velvet Revolution of December 1989. After the collapse of the Communist regime that month, Dubček became chairman of the federal assembly under the Havel administration. He later led the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia, and spoke against the dissolution of Czechoslovakia before his death in November 1992.
The Warsaw Pact invasion included attacks on media establishments, such as Radio Prague and Czechoslovak Television, almost immediately after the initial tanks rolled into Prague on 21 August 1968. While both the radio station and the television station managed to hold out for at least enough time for initial broadcasts of the invasion, what the Soviets did not attack by force they attacked by reenacting party censorship. In reaction to the invasion, on 28 August 1968, all Czechoslovak publishers agreed to halt production of newspapers for the day to allow for a "day of reflection" for the editorial staffs. Writers and reporters agreed with Dubcek to support a limited reinstitution of the censorship office, as long as the institution was to only last three months. Finally, by September 1968, the Czechoslovak Communist Party plenum was held to instate the new censorship law. In the words of the Moscow-approved resolution, "The press, radio, and television are first of all the instruments for carrying into life the policies of the Party and state."
While this was not yet the end of the media's freedom after the Prague Spring, it was the beginning of the end. During November, the Presidium, under Husak, declared that the Czechoslovak press could not make any negative remarks about the Soviet invaders or they would risk violating the agreement they had come to at the end of August. When the weeklies "Reporter" and "Politika" responded harshly to this threat, even going so far as to not so subtly criticize the Presidium itself in "Politika", the government banned "Reporter" for a month, suspended "Politika" indefinitely, and prohibited any political programs from appearing on the radio or television.
The intellectuals were stuck at a bypass; they recognized the government's increasing normalization, but they were unsure whether to trust that the measures were only temporary or demand more. For example, still believing in Dubcek's promises for reform, Milan Kundera published the article "Cesky udel" (Our Czech Destiny) in "Literarni listy" on 19 December. He wrote: "People who today are falling into depression and defeatism, commenting that there are not enough guarantees, that everything could end badly, that we might again end up in a marasmus of censorship and trials, that this or that could happen, are simply weak people, who can live only in illusions of certainty."
In March 1969, however, the new Soviet-backed Czechoslovakian government instituted full censorship, effectively ending the hopes that normalization would lead back to the freedoms enjoyed during the Prague Spring. A declaration was presented to the Presidium condemning the media as co-conspirators against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in their support of Dubcek's liberalization measures. Finally, on 2 April 1969, the government adopted measures "to secure peace and order" through even stricter censorship, forcing the people of Czechoslovakia to wait until the thawing of Eastern Europe for the return of a free media.
Former students from Prague, including Constantine Menges, and Czech refugees from the crisis, who were able to escape or resettle in Western Countries continued to advocate for human rights, religious liberty, freedom of speech and political asylum for Czech political prisoners and dissidents. Many raised concerns about the Soviet Union and Red Army's continued military occupation of the Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of Communism in Moscow and Eastern Europe.
The Prague Spring deepened the disillusionment of many Western leftists with Soviet views. It contributed to the growth of Eurocommunist ideas in Western communist parties, which sought greater distance from the Soviet Union, and eventually led to the dissolution of many of these groups.
A decade later, a period of Chinese political liberalization became known as the Beijing Spring. It also partly influenced the Croatian Spring in Communist Yugoslavia. In a 1993 Czech survey, 60% of those surveyed had a personal memory linked to the Prague Spring while another 30% were familiar with the events in another form. The demonstrations and regime changes taking place in North Africa and the Middle East from December 2010 have frequently been referred to as an "Arab Spring".
The event has been referenced in popular music, including the music of Karel Kryl, Luboš Fišer's "Requiem", and Karel Husa's "Music for Prague 1968".
The Israeli song "Prague", written by Shalom Hanoch and performed by Arik Einstein at the Israel Song Festival of 1969, was a lamentation on the fate of the city after the Soviet invasion and mentions Jan Palach's Self-immolation.
"They Can't Stop The Spring", a song by Irish journalist and songwriter John Waters, represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007. Waters has described it as "a kind of Celtic celebration of the Eastern European revolutions and their eventual outcome", quoting Dubček's alleged comment: "They may crush the flowers, but they can't stop the Spring."
The Prague Spring is featured in several works of literature. Milan Kundera set his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" during the Prague Spring. It follows the repercussions of increased Soviet presence and the dictatorial police control of the population. A film version was released in 1988. "The Liberators", by Viktor Suvorov, is an eyewitness description of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, from the point of view of a Soviet tank commander. "Rock 'n' Roll", a play by award-winning Czech-born English playwright Tom Stoppard, references the Prague Spring, as well as the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Heda Margolius Kovály also ends her memoir "Under a Cruel Star" with a first hand account of the Prague Spring and the subsequent invasion, and her reflections upon these events.
In film there has been an adaptation of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", and also the movie "Pelíšky" from director Jan Hřebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovský, which depicts the events of the Prague Spring and ends with the invasion by the Soviet Union and their allies. The Czech musical film, "Rebelové" from Filip Renč, also depicts the events, the invasion and subsequent wave of emigration.
The number "68" has become iconic in the former Czechoslovakia. Hockey player Jaromír Jágr, whose grandfather died in prison during the rebellion, wears the number because of the importance of the year in Czechoslovak history. A former publishing house based in Toronto, 68 Publishers, that published books by exiled Czech and Slovak authors, took its name from the event.
Anarchist Colin Ward argues that a significantly anarchist street culture developed during the Prague Spring as citizens became increasingly defiant of government authorities and began to occupy workplaces while creating mutual aid networks between telephone workers, truck drivers and university students. Furthermore, during the Soviet invasion, anarchists took to the streets and battled tanks and soldiers with rocks, molotov cocktails and improvised weapons.
The photographs taken in Vinohradská Avenue and Wenceslas Square are widely represented in the photographic archive of the 1968 invasion while other sites of protests are missing. The memory of the Prague Spring is marked by the Czech republic's and Slovakia's desire to avoid unpleasant collective memories leading to a process of historical amnesia and narrative whitewashing. Photographs taken by Josef Koudelka portray memories of the invasion such as a memorial to the victims set up in Wenceslas Square. There are many omnipresent signs of memorial of the soviet invasion in the city of Prague.
During the invasion, protesters set up several memorials to record the location of the victims’ death. The Jan Palach memorial is a monument remembering the suicide of a student in 1969. This place is often called the "boulevard of history" Palach was the first to kill himself in Wenceslas Square but was not the last, he was belonging to a student pact of resistance. There is also the memorial for the victims of communism in Prague is a narrowing staircase along which seven male bronze silhouettes descend. The first one, the one at the bottom, is complete, while the others gradually disappear. It aims at representing the same person at different phases of the destruction caused by communist ideology.
The Prague Spring has deeply marked the history of communism in Eastern Europe even though its outcomes were modest. Rather than remembering the cultural democratization, the opening of the press and its impact on the emergence of a new form of socialism, history textbooks consider the Prague Spring as one of the major crises of Socialism in the Soviet bloc. The memory has acquired a negative significance as marking disillusion of political hopes within Eastern European communism. Indeed, long hidden and rejected from the collective memory, the Prague Spring of 1968 is rarely commemorated in Prague and is often considered a painful defeat, symbol of disappointed hope and a surrender that heralds twenty years of 'normalisation'. It was not until the 2000s, following the publication of texts dating from 1968, such as Milan Kundera, "Cesky udel" (The Czech Fate), and Vaclav Havel, ""Cesky udel?"" published in 2007 in the weekly magazine "Literarni Noviny (52/1)" , that the debate on the Prague Spring resumed. Indeed, the posterity of the Prague Spring remains first and foremost the memory of the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact as well as the failure of a reform within a communist regime, which definitely discredited the Dubcekian "revisionist" perspective in the East. The memory of the Prague Spring is thus largely obscured and often overviewed. Indeed, the Prague Spring also deeply impacted the Czech society and should also be remembered for the cultural momentum that accompanied and illustrated this movement, of which there are still films, novels, and plays. The Prague Spring also influenced a renewal of the Prague artistic and cultural scene as well as a liberalization of society which deeply marked the following years. The 1960s indeed saw the emergence of a major shift in Czechoslovakia with cultural changes and movement coming from the West, notably rock music and sub-cultural movements which are the symbol of a cultural renewal for Czechoslovakia. The Czech sixties were thus a process of emancipation of culture from the constraints of existing political structures, and were the prelude to the upheavals of 1968. In fact, the regime's political crisis did not begin with Dubcek's election as party leader on 5 January 1968, but with the break-up speeches delivered at the Writers' Congress in June 1967 by Ludvik Vaculik, Milan Kundera and Antonin Liehm. In addition, the revitalization of the society was also an essential component of the Prague Spring. Indeed, the great achievements of the Prague Spring, i. e. the abolition of censorship, the restoration of individual and collective freedoms... have revitalized society, which has begun to express itself more freely. Although the Prague Spring only restored what had existed thirty years earlier in Czechoslovakia, the spring of 1968 had a profound and long lasting impact on the society.
Recently, the anniversary of the 50 years of the conflict raised the question of the memory of the Prague Spring. The European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, himself a Slovak, reminded us on the occasion that ""we should never tolerate a breach of international law, crushing people's legitimate yearning for freedom and democracy"." The European justice commissioner Věra Jourová also made a speech. However, the memory is still very conflicted as demonstrated when the Czech Republic's pro-Russian President Miloš Zeman refused to attend any ceremony remembering the Prague Spring, and didn't give any speech in memory of the numerous deaths.
The memory of the Prague Spring is also transmitted through testimonies of former Czechoslovak citizens. In a 2018 article, Radio Free Europe collected testimonies of four women who witnessed the Warsaw Pact troops invasion and bravely acted. Stanislava Draha who volunteered to help some of the 500 wounded testifies says that the invasion had a major impact on her life. Besides, Vera Homolova, a radio reporter broadcasting the invasion from a covert studio testifies " I experienced the Soviet-led troops shooting recklessly into the Czechoslovak Radio's building, into windows" . In the aftermath, Vera Roubalova, who reacted as a student to the occupation by demonstrating posters, that tensions were still present towards the countries that occupied Czechoslovakia. On the night of August 20–21, 137 Czechoslovaks died during the invasion.
European University Press, 2011). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23821 |
Princetown
Princetown is a village in the Dartmoor national park in the English county of Devon. It is the principal settlement of the civil parish of Dartmoor Forest.
The village has its origins in 1785, when Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, leased a large area of moorland from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, hoping to convert it into good farmland. He encouraged people to live in the area and suggested that a prison be built there. He called the settlement Princetown after the Prince of Wales.
Princetown is the site of Dartmoor Prison. At around 1,430 feet (435 m) above sea level, it is the highest settlement on the moor, and one of the highest in the United Kingdom. It is also the largest settlement located on the high moor. The Princetown Railway, closed in 1956, was also the highest railway line in England: its Princetown terminus was also 1,430 feet above sea level.
In 1780, a farm was reclaimed on the site of an ancient tenement near the Two Bridges, and in 1785, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt set about improving the moor at a place which he named Tor Royal (present day Tor Royal Farm), about south-east of Princetown. The Plume of Feathers Inn also bears this date on its sign. He made an estate and built a house in 1798. Later the road from Tavistock to Princetown was built, as well as the other roads that now cross the moor.
He also proposed that a prison be built on Dartmoor to house the thousands of captives of the Napoleonic Wars and the later War of 1812, who had become too numerous to lodge in the prisons and prison-ships at Plymouth. The site was given by the Prince of Wales, who held the lands of the Duchy of Cornwall to which the whole moor belonged. This is why the settlement is named Princetown. Dartmoor Prison was built in 1806 at a cost of £130,000. At one time it had a capacity of between 7,000 and 9,000 prisoners, but its current capacity is only 640.
A small town grew up near the prison. Two large inns were built during the war - the current Prince of Wales and the former Devil's Elbow / Railway Inn. Many of the prisoners had prize money to come from their own country; many others made their own money in their hammocks at night, even forging Bank of England and local bank notes, which they passed off in the great daily market held in the prison. With the closing of the prison in 1816, the town almost collapsed, but the completion of the Princetown Railway in 1823 brought back many people to the granite quarries. The prison remained derelict until 1851, when it was reopened for prisoners serving long sentences. It has since been considerably extended and although other Victorian era prisons are to remain in service, Dartmoor is now scheduled to close in 2023.
In the 1880s an Officers' Club building was constructed as a rest room for officers and their families. It was extended during the 1970s and remained in use until closure in 2001, largely because very few prison officers lived in Princetown by that date, but commuted in from Plymouth or Tavistock in the main.
The terrace of houses now called Moor Crescent was constructed in 1912 as housing for prison officers of fairly senior rank, in which role it served until the 1980s. After falling into near-derelict condition, it was renovated and is now private housing. Hessary Terrace, which backs onto Moor Crescent, was also constructed as housing for prison officers, as was Heather Terrace.
There is a sports field, now used by Princetown Football Club and known as Legend Park, which formerly belonged to the prison. The sports field and pavilion (now Princetown Pavilion Youth Club) date from the 1890s and were constructed for use by the prison warders. A tennis pavilion was laid out in the 1920s as a base for the tennis court for officers and their families. It was demolished in the 1960s due to its poor state. The bowling green and pavilion were built around the turn of the century and visiting teams of prison staff played matches on many occasions. This was also demolished in the 1960s.
The village is located on the B3212 road between Yelverton and Two Bridges and is surrounded by moorland. Several footpaths across the moor pass through the village, including one leading west to Sampford Spiney and one leading south to Nun's Cross and Erme Head.
Tor Royal Lane is a dead end road which leads down from the village to the site of the disused Whiteworks tin mine, about 2 miles or 3 km to the south-east, which overlooks Fox Tor Mires, the presumed site of the Grimpen Mire to be found in Arthur Conan Doyle's tale "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Conan Doyle stayed at the former Duchy Hotel whilst writing and researching the story with his friend, Bertram Fletcher Robinson. The hotel has long since closed and the building now houses the National Park Visitor Centre which is an all-weather centre and activity hub, with interactive displays, films, exhibitions and a children's discovery area.
Other points of interest in the village include the prison museum which was formerly the prison dairy and behind the prison, two cemeteries - one for French prisoners of war and the other for American prisoners of war who died in the prison when it was a war depot during the Napoleonic War in the 19th century. The cemetery around the Church of St Michael and All Angels includes the graves of convicts who died during their incarceration in the prison. The Church of St Michael has the distinction of being the only one in England constructed by POWs and is dedicated, as are many churches in high locations, to St. Michael. It was taken out of use due to structural problems and damp and is now maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust, although the building has been stabilised and made safe. The United Church of Princetown can be found at the other end of the village.
The village is overlooked from the north-west by North Hessary Tor upon which is a tall transmitting mast that provides a useful guide point for walkers from miles around.
The village is mainly made up of white British people living in a mix of social and private housing. There are currently 74 children enrolled at the primary school which was rated 'Good' by Ofsted in 2019. The school itself was constructed in 1874 for the children of prison officers. A further 17 children attend the pre-school, which is contained within the Community Centre in its own purpose-built wing. In 2016 the official population estimate was 1447, with a further 640 inmates of the prison. Most people living in Princetown commute to work in Plymouth or Tavistock, but with the expansion of the brewery a few more jobs have been created locally. The population is projected to keep increasing in the future mainly due to the improved amenities within the village itself and the relatively high percentage of young people living there.
Princetown is undergoing significant regeneration and expansion, with new private housing built at several sites in the village and a football pitch with car parking built behind the Community Centre. High Moorland Visitor Centre has been renamed as the National Park Visitor Centre, and the area outside the centre altered to include artwork and new seating areas.
In terms of tourism, Princetown is a popular destination and hub for people traversing the moors, and the sight of large groups of hikers and walkers is especially common during the summer months. A bunkhouse, bed and breakfast and camping facilities are available in the village and there are also a handful of local shops. The Dartmoor Ultra Marathon takes place annually, as does the charity Tour de Moor cycle race.
Princetown has a brewery producing the appropriately named Jail Ale, Legend, Dartmoor IPA, Dartmoor Gold, Dartmoor Best, Dragon's Breath and Three Hares. This used to be housed in the Prince of Wales pub, but now occupies a modern purpose-built building on the edge of the village, close to the former railway. The other pub is the Plume of Feathers (the Railway Inn – "The Devils Elbow" – closed as a pub in 2009). In April 2017 the go-ahead was given for the construction of a whisky distillery, which invoked controversy due to the destruction of buildings that this would entail. These are the 'Pocket Power Station' (the world's first unmanned power station) and the 'Pressed Men Building'. As of November 2019, construction of the building is in progress.
There are also two cafés, one of which is in the former police station, the other of which is the Fox Tor cafe.
Four businesses now operate from Tavistock Road, opposite the visitor centre and adjacent to Duchy Square.
Ice Warrior performs expedition training and supplies outdoor gear, Dewerstone is a coffee and clothing shop and Hunt The Moon is a screen printing supplies and t-shirt printing shop.
The unit next to Hunt The Moon houses the village charity shop, which supports both the Community Centre and other local causes.
In recent years Princetown has seen the opening of both the Princetown Centre for Creativity in Duchy Square, on the site of the former village supermarket, which closed in 2011 but has now re-opened as the Duchy Square Centre, housing business tenants, and a new village community centre opened in 2008, which also houses a GP surgery, library and pre-school.
Princetown, like the rest of Dartmoor, experiences colder and wetter weather than most of Devon, especially because of its high altitude. Snow is uncommon but is usually heavy when it does fall.
A summer bus service, the Transmoor link (no. 82 bus) between Plymouth and Exeter, used to pass through the village but has now been axed. There is a daytime service (no. 98 bus) linking Princetown to Yelverton and Tavistock, but only three times a day. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23823 |
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the Ingres database developed at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, the project was renamed to PostgreSQL to reflect its support for SQL. After a review in 2007, the development team decided to keep the name PostgreSQL and the alias Postgres.
PostgreSQL features transactions with Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (ACID) properties, automatically updatable views, materialized views, triggers, foreign keys, and stored procedures. It is designed to handle a range of workloads, from single machines to data warehouses or Web services with many concurrent users. It is the default database for macOS Server, and is also available for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows.
PostgreSQL evolved from the Ingres project at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1982, the leader of the Ingres team, Michael Stonebraker, left Berkeley to make a proprietary version of Ingres. He returned to Berkeley in 1985, and began a post-Ingres project to address the problems with contemporary database systems that had become increasingly clear during the early 1980s. He won the Turing Award in 2014 for these and other projects, and techniques pioneered in them.
The new project, POSTGRES, aimed to add the fewest features needed to completely support data types. These features included the ability to define types and to fully describe relationships something used widely, but maintained entirely by the user. In POSTGRES, the database understood relationships, and could retrieve information in related tables in a natural way using "rules". POSTGRES used many of the ideas of Ingres, but not its code.
Starting in 1986, published papers described the basis of the system, and a prototype version was shown at the 1988 ACM SIGMOD Conference. The team released version 1 to a small number of users in June 1989, followed by version 2 with a re-written rules system in June 1990. Version 3, released in 1991, again re-wrote the rules system, and added support for multiple storage managers and an improved query engine. By 1993, the number of users began to overwhelm the project with requests for support and features. After releasing version 4.2 on June 30, 1994 primarily a cleanup the project ended. Berkeley released POSTGRES under an MIT License variant, which enabled other developers to use the code for any use. At the time, POSTGRES used an Ingres-influenced POSTQUEL query language interpreter, which could be interactively used with a console application named "monitor".
In 1994, Berkeley graduate students Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen replaced the POSTQUEL query language interpreter with one for the SQL query language, creating Postgres95. "monitor" was also replaced by psql. Yu and Chen announced the first version (0.01) to beta testers on May 5, 1995. Version 1.0 of Postgres95 was announced on September 5, 1995, with a more liberal license that enabled the software to be freely modifiable.
On July 8, 1996, Marc Fournier at Hub.org Networking Services provided the first non-university development server for the open-source development effort. With the participation of Bruce Momjian and Vadim B. Mikheev, work began to stabilize the code inherited from Berkeley.
In 1996, the project was renamed to PostgreSQL to reflect its support for SQL. The online presence at the website PostgreSQL.org began on October 22, 1996. The first PostgreSQL release formed version 6.0 on January 29, 1997. Since then developers and volunteers around the world have maintained the software as The PostgreSQL Global Development Group.
The project continues to make releases available under its free and open-source software PostgreSQL License. Code comes from contributions from proprietary vendors, support companies, and open-source programmers.
PostgreSQL manages concurrency through multiversion concurrency control (MVCC), which gives each transaction a "snapshot" of the database, allowing changes to be made without affecting other transactions. This largely eliminates the need for read locks, and ensures the database maintains ACID principles. PostgreSQL offers three levels of transaction isolation: Read Committed, Repeatable Read and Serializable. Because PostgreSQL is immune to dirty reads, requesting a Read Uncommitted transaction isolation level provides read committed instead. PostgreSQL supports full serializability via the serializable snapshot isolation (SSI) method.
PostgreSQL includes built-in binary replication based on shipping the changes (write-ahead logs (WAL)) to replica nodes asynchronously, with the ability to run read-only queries against these replicated nodes. This allows splitting read traffic among multiple nodes efficiently. Earlier replication software that allowed similar read scaling normally relied on adding replication triggers to the master, increasing load.
PostgreSQL includes built-in synchronous replication that ensures that, for each write transaction, the master waits until at least one replica node has written the data to its transaction log. Unlike other database systems, the durability of a transaction (whether it is asynchronous or synchronous) can be specified per-database, per-user, per-session or even per-transaction. This can be useful for workloads that do not require such guarantees, and may not be wanted for all data as it slows down performance due to the requirement of the confirmation of the transaction reaching the synchronous standby.
Standby servers can be synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous standby servers can be specified in the configuration which determines which servers are candidates for synchronous replication. The first in the list that is actively streaming will be used as the current synchronous server. When this fails, the system fails over to the next in line.
Synchronous multi-master replication is not included in the PostgreSQL core. Postgres-XC which is based on PostgreSQL provides scalable synchronous multi-master replication. It is licensed under the same license as PostgreSQL. A related project is called Postgres-XL. Postgres-R is yet another fork. Bidirectional replication (BDR) is an asynchronous multi-master replication system for PostgreSQL.
Tools such as repmgr make managing replication clusters easier.
Several asynchronous trigger-based replication packages are available. These remain useful even after introduction of the expanded core abilities, for situations where binary replication of a full database cluster is inappropriate:
YugabyteDB is a database which uses the front-end of PostgreSQL with a more NoSQL-like backend. While it can be thought of as a different database, it is essentially PostgreSQL with a different storage backend. It addresses the replication issues with an implementation of the ideas from Google Spanner. Such databases are called NewSQL and include CockroachDB, and TiDB among others.
PostgreSQL includes built-in support for regular B-tree and hash table indexes, and four index access methods: generalized search trees (GiST), generalized inverted indexes (GIN), Space-Partitioned GiST (SP-GiST) and Block Range Indexes (BRIN). In addition, user-defined index methods can be created, although this is quite an involved process. Indexes in PostgreSQL also support the following features:
In PostgreSQL, a schema holds all objects, except for roles and tablespaces. Schemas effectively act like namespaces, allowing objects of the same name to co-exist in the same database. By default, newly created databases have a schema called "public", but any further schemas can be added, and the public schema isn't mandatory.
A setting determines the order in which PostgreSQL checks schemas for unqualified objects (those without a prefixed schema). By default, it is set to ( refers to the currently connected database user). This default can be set on a database or role level, but as it is a session parameter, it can be freely changed (even multiple times) during a client session, affecting that session only.
Non-existent schemas listed in search_path are silently skipped during objects lookup.
New objects are created in whichever valid schema (one that presently exists) appears first in the search_path.
A wide variety of native data types are supported, including:
In addition, users can create their own data types which can usually be made fully indexable via PostgreSQL's indexing infrastructures GiST, GIN, SP-GiST. Examples of these include the geographic information system (GIS) data types from the PostGIS project for PostgreSQL.
There is also a data type called a "domain", which is the same as any other data type but with optional constraints defined by the creator of that domain. This means any data entered into a column using the domain will have to conform to whichever constraints were defined as part of the domain.
A data type that represents a range of data can be used which are called range types. These can be discrete ranges (e.g. all integer values 1 to 10) or continuous ranges (e.g., any time between and ). The built-in range types available include ranges of integers, big integers, decimal numbers, time stamps (with and without time zone) and dates.
Custom range types can be created to make new types of ranges available, such as IP address ranges using the inet type as a base, or float ranges using the float data type as a base. Range types support inclusive and exclusive range boundaries using the / and / characters respectively. (e.g., represents all integers starting from and including 4 up to but not including 9.) Range types are also compatible with existing operators used to check for overlap, containment, right of etc.
New types of almost all objects inside the database can be created, including:
Tables can be set to inherit their characteristics from a "parent" table. Data in child tables will appear to exist in the parent tables, unless data is selected from the parent table using the ONLY keyword, i.e. . Adding a column in the parent table will cause that column to appear in the child table.
Inheritance can be used to implement table partitioning, using either triggers or rules to direct inserts to the parent table into the proper child tables.
, this feature is not fully supported yet in particular, table constraints are not currently inheritable. All check constraints and not-null constraints on a parent table are automatically inherited by its children. Other types of constraints (unique, primary key, and foreign key constraints) are not inherited.
Inheritance provides a way to map the features of generalization hierarchies depicted in entity relationship diagrams (ERDs) directly into the PostgreSQL database.
PostgreSQL can link to other systems to retrieve data via foreign data wrappers (FDWs).
These can take the form of any data source, such as a file system, another relational database management system (RDBMS), or a web service. This means that regular database queries can use these data sources like regular tables, and even join multiple data-sources together.
For connecting to applications, PostgreSQL includes the built-in interfaces libpq (the official C application interface) and ECPG (an embedded C system). Third-party libraries for connecting to PostgreSQL are available for many programming languages, including C++, Java, Python, Node.js, Go, and Rust.
Procedural languages allow developers to extend the database with custom subroutines (functions), often called "stored procedures". These functions can be used to build database triggers (functions invoked on modification of certain data) and custom data types and aggregate functions. Procedural languages can also be invoked without defining a function, using a DO command at SQL level.
Languages are divided into two groups: Procedures written in "safe" languages are sandboxed and can be safely created and used by any user. Procedures written in "unsafe" languages can only be created by superusers, because they allow bypassing a database's security restrictions, but can also access sources external to the database. Some languages like Perl provide both safe and unsafe versions.
PostgreSQL has built-in support for three procedural languages:
In addition, PostgreSQL allows procedural languages to be loaded into the database through extensions. Three language extensions are included with PostgreSQL to support Perl, Python (by default Python 2, or Python 3 possible) and Tcl. There are external projects to add support for many other languages, including Java, JavaScript (PL/V8), R, Ruby, and others.
Triggers are events triggered by the action of SQL data manipulation language (DML) statements. For example, an INSERT statement might activate a trigger that checks if the values of the statement are valid. Most triggers are only activated by either INSERT or UPDATE statements.
Triggers are fully supported and can be attached to tables. Triggers can be per-column and conditional, in that UPDATE triggers can target specific columns of a table, and triggers can be told to execute under a set of conditions as specified in the trigger's WHERE clause. Triggers can be attached to views by using the INSTEAD OF condition. Multiple triggers are fired in alphabetical order. In addition to calling functions written in the native PL/pgSQL, triggers can also invoke functions written in other languages like PL/Python or PL/Perl.
PostgreSQL provides an asynchronous messaging system that is accessed through the NOTIFY, LISTEN and UNLISTEN commands. A session can issue a NOTIFY command, along with the user-specified channel and an optional payload, to mark a particular event occurring. Other sessions are able to detect these events by issuing a LISTEN command, which can listen to a particular channel. This functionality can be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as letting other sessions know when a table has updated or for separate applications to detect when a particular action has been performed. Such a system prevents the need for continuous polling by applications to see if anything has yet changed, and reducing unnecessary overhead. Notifications are fully transactional, in that messages are not sent until the transaction they were sent from is committed. This eliminates the problem of messages being sent for an action being performed which is then rolled back.
Many connectors for PostgreSQL provide support for this notification system (including libpq, JDBC, Npgsql, psycopg and node.js) so it can be used by external applications.
PostgreSQL can act as an effective, persistent "pub/sub" server or job server by combining LISTEN with FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED, a combination which has existed since PostgreSQL version 9.5
Rules allow the "query tree" of an incoming query to be rewritten. "Query Re-Write Rules" are attached to a table/class and "Re-Write" the incoming DML (select, insert, update, and/or delete) into one or more queries that either replace the original DML statement or execute in addition to it. Query Re-Write occurs after DML statement parsing, but before query planning.
PostgreSQL server is process-based (not threaded), and uses one operating system process per database session. Multiple sessions are automatically spread across all available CPUs by the operating system. Starting with PostgreSQL 9.6, many types of queries can also be parallelized across multiple background worker processes, taking advantage of multiple CPUs or cores. Client applications can use threads and create multiple database connections from each thread.
PostgreSQL manages its internal security on a per-role basis. A role is generally regarded to be a user (a role that can log in), or a group (a role of which other roles are members). Permissions can be granted or revoked on any object down to the column level, and can also allow/prevent the creation of new objects at the database, schema or table levels.
PostgreSQL's SECURITY LABEL feature (extension to SQL standards), allows for additional security; with a bundled loadable module that supports label-based mandatory access control (MAC) based on Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) security policy.
PostgreSQL natively supports a broad number of external authentication mechanisms, including:
The GSSAPI, SSPI, Kerberos, peer, ident and certificate methods can also use a specified "map" file that lists which users matched by that authentication system are allowed to connect as a specific database user.
These methods are specified in the cluster's host-based authentication configuration file (pg_hba.conf), which determines what connections are allowed. This allows control over which user can connect to which database, where they can connect from (IP address, IP address range, domain socket), which authentication system will be enforced, and whether the connection must use Transport Layer Security (TLS).
PostgreSQL claims high, but not complete, conformance with the SQL standard. One exception is the handling of unquoted identifiers like table or column names. In PostgreSQL they are folded internal to lower case characters whereas the standard says that unquoted identifiers should be folded to upper case. Thus, should be equivalent to not according to the standard.
Many informal performance studies of PostgreSQL have been done. Performance improvements aimed at improving scalability began heavily with version 8.1. Simple benchmarks between version 8.0 and version 8.4 showed that the latter was more than 10 times faster on read-only workloads and at least 7.5 times faster on both read and write workloads.
The first industry-standard and peer-validated benchmark was completed in June 2007, using the Sun Java System Application Server (proprietary version of GlassFish) 9.0 Platform Edition, UltraSPARC T1-based Sun Fire server and PostgreSQL 8.2. This result of 778.14 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard compares favourably with the 874 JOPS@Standard with Oracle 10 on an Itanium-based HP-UX system.
In August 2007, Sun submitted an improved benchmark score of 813.73 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard. With the system under test at a reduced price, the price/performance improved from $84.98/JOPS to $70.57/JOPS.
The default configuration of PostgreSQL uses only a small amount of dedicated memory for performance-critical purposes such as caching database blocks and sorting. This limitation is primarily because older operating systems required kernel changes to allow allocating large blocks of shared memory. PostgreSQL.org provides advice on basic recommended performance practice in a wiki.
In April 2012, Robert Haas of EnterpriseDB demonstrated PostgreSQL 9.2's linear CPU scalability using a server with 64 cores.
Matloob Khushi performed benchmarking between Postgresql 9.0 and MySQL 5.6.15 for their ability to process genomic data. In his performance analysis he found that PostgreSQL extracts overlapping genomic regions eight times faster than MySQL using two datasets of 80,000 each forming random human DNA regions. Insertion and data uploads in PostgreSQL were also better, although general searching ability of both databases was almost equivalent.
PostgreSQL is available for the following operating systems: Linux (all recent distributions), 64-bit installers available for macOS (OS X) version 10.6 and newer Windows (with installers available for 64-bit version; tested on latest versions and back to Windows 2012 R2, while for PostgreSQL version 10 and older a 32-bit installer is available and tested down to 32-bit Windows 2008 R1; compilable by e.g. Visual Studio, version 2013 up up to most recent 2019 version) FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and UnixWare; and not officially tested: DragonFly BSD, BSD/OS, IRIX, OpenIndiana, OpenSolaris, OpenServer, and Tru64 UNIX. Most other Unix-like systems could also work; most modern do support.
PostgreSQL works on any of the following instruction set architectures: x86 and x86-64 on Windows and other operating systems; these are supported on other than Windows: IA-64 Itanium (external support for HP-UX), PowerPC, PowerPC 64, S/390, S/390x, SPARC, SPARC 64, ARMv8-A (64-bit) and older ARM (32-bit, including older such as ARMv6 in Raspberry Pi), MIPS, MIPSel, and PA-RISC. It was also known to work on some other platforms (while not been tested on for years, i.e. for latest versions).
Open source front-ends and tools for administering PostgreSQL include:
A number of companies offer proprietary tools for PostgreSQL. They often consist of a universal core that is adapted for various specific database products. These tools mostly share the administration features with the open source tools but offer improvements in data modeling, importing, exporting or reporting.
Notable organizations and products that use PostgreSQL as the primary database include:
Some notable vendors offer PostgreSQL as software as a service: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23824 |
Pope Agapetus II
Pope Agapetus II (died 8 November 955) was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 10 May 946 to his death. A nominee of the princeps of Rome, Alberic II of Spoleto, his pontificate occurred during the period known as the "Saeculum obscurum".
Agapetus was born to a Roman father (a descendant of Consul Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius) and a Greek mother. He was elected pope on 10 May 946 after the death of Marinus II. The existence of an independent republic of Rome, ruled by Alberic II of Spoleto, meant that Agapetus was prevented from exercising any temporal or secular power in Rome and the Papal States. The struggle between Berengar II and Otto I for the Kingdom of Italy allowed Alberic to exercise complete control over Rome and Agapetus, meaning the pope was largely limited to managing internal church affairs. Even Agapetus’ invitation to Otto to intervene in Italian affairs in 951 was done at the instigation of Alberic, who was growing concerned at Berengar's growing power. However, when Otto's envoys, the bishops of Mainz and Chur, were sent to the pope to discuss Otto's reception in Rome and other more important questions, they were turned away by Alberic.
Agapetus was forced to intervene in the dispute over the occupancy of the See of Reims. He ordered a synod to be held at Ingelheim in June 948 to resolve the rights of the rival claimants, Hugh of Vermandois and Artald of Reims. He sent his legate Marinus of Bomarzo to act on his behalf, while Agapetus wrote to a number of bishops, asking them to be present at the council. Through his legate the pope indicated his support for King Louis IV of France, and gave his support for reinstalling Artald as bishop of Reims. This council was followed up by another one at Trier, where Agapetus was again represented by Marinus of Bomarzo. In 949, Agapetus held a synod in Rome, which confirmed the rulings of the two councils. It condemned the former bishop Hugh and it excommunicated his father, Count Herbert II of Vermandois, for his opposition to King Louis IV.
After receiving requests from both Louis IV of France and Otto I of Germany, Agapetus granted privileges to monasteries and nunneries within their respective kingdoms. He also was sympathetic towards Otto's plans to restructure the bishoprics within Germany, which were eventually aborted due to pressure exerted by William of Mainz. Around 948, Agapetus, granted the Archbishop of Hamburg the right of consecrating bishops in Denmark and other northern European countries instead of the pope. The pope was also allegedly asked by a Danish king named Frode, now considered legendary, to send missionaries to his kingdom.
Agapetus was also asked to intervene in a dispute between Herhold, archbishop of Salzburg and Gerard, bishop of Lauriacum, who both claimed the title of metropolitan of all Pannonia. Agapetus dispatched a letter to the two claimants, in which he stated that the diocese of Lauriacum had been the metropolitan church of all Pannonia before the invasion of the Huns. However, following the ravages inflicted by them, the metropolitan had transferred his see to another city, and since that time Salzburg had been raised to an archbishopric. Consequently, both lawfully occupied their respective sees, and both were to retain their rank and diocese. Agapetus ruled that jurisdiction over western Pannonia would rest with Herhold, while the eastern part, along with the regions occupied by the Avars and the Moravians, would fall under Gerard.
In Italy, Agapetus wrote to the dukes of Beneventum and Capua, demanding that monasteries be returned to the monks whom they had displaced. He also deposed the bishops of Termoli and Trivento who were accused of simony. Hoping to rejuvenate the religious life of the clerics in Italy, Agapetus, with the blessing of Alberic, asked for the abbot of Gorze Abbey to send some of his monks down and join the monastic community attached to the church of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.
Agapetus died on 8 November 955, and was succeeded by Alberic's son, Octavian, who took the papal name of John XII. He was buried in the Lateran basilica, behind the apse, and close to the tombs of Leo V and Paschal II. Agapetus was noted for his caution and for the sanctity with which he led his life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23827 |
Pope Adrian IV
Pope Adrian IV (; born Nicholas Breakspear (or Brekespear); 1 September 1159, also Hadrian IV), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 4 December 1154 to his death in 1159. Born in Hertfordshire, England, his father may have been a clerk and a monk called Robert, but his mother is unknown, and he may have been illegitimate. Although he does not appear to have received a great degree of schooling, while still a youth he travelled to France where he was schooled in Arles, studying law. He then travelled to Avignon, in the south, where he joined the abbey of St Ruf. There he became a canon regular and was eventually appointed abbot. He travelled to Rome several times, where he appears to have caught the attention of Pope Eugenius III. Eugenius sent him on a mission to Catalonia, where the Reconquista was attempting to reclaim land from the Muslim Al-Andalus. Around this time his abbey complained to Eugenius that Breakspear was too heavy a disciplinarian, and in order to make use of him as a papal legate as well as to pacify his monks, the Pope appointed Breakspear Bishop of Albano some time around 1149.
As Bishop, Breakspear was soon sent on another diplomatic mission, this time to Scandinavia. In the middle of a civil war, Breakspear reorganised the church in Norway and then moved on to Sweden. Here he was very much acclaimed by the people, and when he left, chroniclers called him a saint. Breakspear returned to Rome in 1154; the Pope had died only a few weeks previously. For reasons now unknown, but possibly at his predecessor's request, Breakspear was elected next pope by the cardinals. He took the name Adrian IV. He was unable to complete his coronation service, however, because of the parlous state of politics in Rome, which at the time was a den of heresy and republicanism. Adrian decisively restored the papal authority there, but his other major policy issue—relations with the newly-crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I—started off badly and got progressively worse. Each party, as a result of a particular aggravating incident, found something to condemn the other for. As a result, Adrian entered into an alliance with the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Komnenos who was keen to re-assert his authority in the south of Italy, but was unable to do so due to the Norman Kings' occupation of the region, now under William I of Sicily.
Adrian's alliance with the Byzantine emperor came to nothing, as William decisively defeated Manuel and forced Adrian to come to terms at the Treaty of Benevento. This alienated Emperor Frederick even more, as he saw it as a repudiation of their existing treaty. Relations soured further when Frederick laid claim to a large swathe of territory in northern Italy. Adrian's relations with his country of birth, however, seem to have remained generally good. Certainly he showered St Albans Abbey with privileges, and he appears to have forwarded King Henry II's policies where he could. Most famously, in 1158 Adrian is supposed to have granted Henry the papal bull "Laudabiliter", which is thought to have authorised Henry to invade Ireland. Henry did not do so, however, for another 14 years, and scholars are uncertain whether the bull ever existed.
Following Adrian's death at Anagni, there was uncertainty as to who to succeed him, with both pro- and anti-imperial cardinals voting for different candidates. Although Pope Alexander III officially took over, the concomitant election of an antipope led to a 22-year-long schism. Scholars have debated Adrian's pontificate widely. Much of a positive nature—his building programme and reorganisation of papal finances, for example—has been identified, particularly in the context of such a short reign. He was also up against powerful forces out of his control, which, while he never overcame them, he managed effectively.
The son of Richard Breakspear, his family was a relatively humble one. The exact year of his birth is unknown but he was probably around 55 years old on his election. Little is known of his background, and that which is, comments Brooke, "savour[s] of gossip rather than sober history. He was probably born in or around the Hertfordshire town of St Albans. As a result, much of that that is thought to be known may well be mythological "tradition woven at the great abbey" there. Much of what is known is brought to historians by the writings of Cardinal Boso and William of Newburgh, both of whom were, however, writing over 30 years after Breakspear's death. As a result, notes Poole, there is a dearth of information—and especially dates—for Breakspear's life until his election as pope, and "all that can be said is that the dates commonly given are in every instance wrong". The contemporary English chronicler Matthew Paris says he came from Abbots Langley, although Paris mistakenly ascribes to his father the name Robert de Camera. Robert may have been a clerk although Sayers suggests that Paris' claim that Robert was a priest is probably correct, as is the likelihood that he later became a monk. As such, there are grounds for believing him to have been illegitimate. Nicholas had a brother called either Ranulf or Randall, a clerk in Feering, Essex. Paris is also the source for Nicholas' surname being Breakspear.
Paris recounts a story that Nicholas was rejected by Abbot Robert de Gorron from taking his novitiate at the abbey, although as Poole points out, the story is demonstrably incorrect as Robert did not become abbot until 1151. Sayers, suggests that, true or not, during and after Breakspear's pontificate, "certainly St Albans fed upon the story of the local boy who had made good". William of Newburgh reports that Nicholas was too poor to receive anything more than a rudimentary education, and Brooke speculates that he travelled to France to learn the skills of a clerk. This was, he notes, a normal path to preferment in the 12th century, although it was more unusual for those that did so to have Breakspear's inauspicious background. He may have become a canon at the Augustinian priory in Merton, Surrey. Poole subscribes to this theory, citing a letter to Breakspear when pope in which he is reminded that "your worship was wont to speak" of Merton in conversation.
The next point at which Breakspear can be positively identified is in the French town of Arles, where he continued his studies in canon law, and probably under the masters of Roman law also. On completion of his studies, he travelled south and became a canon regular at the priory of St Ruf, Avignon. He was soon appointed prior and then abbot. While still a canon, in 1140 he appears to have written a charter in Barcelona. However, there appear to have been complaints that he was overly strict, and the monks rebelled. As a result, he was summoned to Rome; a temporary peace was established, but it was not long until the monks rebelled again. Breakspear may have visited Rome three times while at St Ruf—"each time with more conspicuous success"—and which would have consumed many months of his time.
Sayers suggests that it was while Breakspear was at St Ruf that he attracted the attention of Pope Eugenius III, who saw in him useful leadership qualities. It is known that in 1147, while Eugenius was in Vico he granted one "N. abbot of St Rufus". It was probably in 1148 that Breakspear met who would become his good friend, John of Salisbury, in Rheims, and soon after when Eugenius appointed hi Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, making Adrian at the time only the second Englishman to have been promoted to that rank. in which capacity he attended the Council of Reims in November 1148. Poole suggests that Breakspear's promotion was Eugenius' method of alleviating the monks' complaints, as Eugenius told them to "go forth [and] elect you a father with whom ye can or will live in peace; he [Breakspear] shall no longer be a burthen to you". When Breakspear was later pope, however, he seemed to favour St Ruf well, for example authorising them to send a delegation to the chapter of Pisa Cathedral to cut stone and columns. The chapter was requested, says Egger, to "help them in every possible way to conduct their business".
Poole questions the reasoning for Breakspear's episcopal promotion. Not only was his abbey an obscure one, with little political value or great endowment, but Breakspear's reasons for attending the Papal court were unlikely to have enabled him to make a name for himself. Indeed, on at least one occasion it was in response to a summons concerning his behaviour. However, suggest Poole, a possible explanation may have its roots in Breakspear's residency at Merton. Duggan notes that the Cardinal Bishopric of Albino was part of the Pope's inner circle, which she suggests makes his rapid elevation to such a sensitive position all the more remarkable and indicative of the now-unrecognisable qualities that Eugenius saw in him.
It was probably at the Council of Reims that Eugenius selected Breakspear for a mission to Catalonia, possibly as a kind of unofficial legate to the crusaders. Breakspear met Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona who had been waging the latest campaign against the Moors since 1147. Although no records exist to show Breakspear was involved in the campaign itself, he was heavily involved in the reorganisation and administration of the Cistercian Order, as well as arbitrating disputes within its congregation. It is likely that he was present at the Siege of Lleida during the summer of 1149. He is less likely to have still been there in October, when it fell, as e had returned to Rome by December. However, he may well have brought news of another successful siege—that of Tortosa—which would have been particularly welcome to the "bruised and battered" papacy of Eugenius, says Damian Smith. Smith also notes that Breakspear's lengthy absence from St Ruf may have been a source of complaint by his monks, "but this was surely not of prime importance to the Pope". Egger suggests, however, that Breakspear's Catalonian mission was of great benefit to St Ruf, which became the blueprint for the religious houses created by Berenguer in the wake of the retreating Muslim empire.
Around mid-1152, he was despatched to Scandinavia as Papal legate.
Former Canon residentiary of St Albans Abbey, Andes Bergquist has described Breakspear's journey to northern Europe as "one of the better documented" of his career. It is possible that Boso—from whom much of the information comes—was in his entourage, although this is not certain. On his arrival, Norway was in a state of civil war and the authority of the King, Inge I, was neither strong nor respected. Breakspear reconciled the warring factions—albeit temporarily—and restored the monarchy. although no official record of his instructions survives, Bergquist suggests that they can be inferred from his actions: to divide the existing Archbishopric of Lund—which covered both Norway and Sweden–into two distinct national metropolitans, to arrange payment of Peter's Pence and to generally reorganise the church along Italian and European lines.
Breakspear may have travelled to Norway via France and England—where, Sayers speculates, he could have recruited merchant contacts who knew the region. His mission may have been kept quiet, as Bergquist notes his arrival seems t have been unexpected: Archbishop Eskil of Lund had recently left to visit France, and the King of Norway was on a military campaign. His first stop was Norway. At some point, Breakspear presided over a council at Nidaros. This council, says Robinson, "strengthened the economic position of the church and the social status of the clergy". Its timing though is difficult to ascertain, says Bergquist: Autumn 1152 seems to allow too little time to organise such a major council following his arrival, yet much later and the depth of a Norwegian winter is even more unlikely.
The focal point of the cult of St Olaf, Nidaros had until that point been only an episcopate. Adrian's council was intended to promulgate canons. To this end Breakspear made Nidaros a geographically-extensive ecclesiastical province, covering the whole of Norway, Iceland and Greenland, as well as the Faroe, Orkney and Shetland Islands. Breakspear also authorised the expansion of what was to become Europe's most northerly medieval cathedral, and its largest. While in Norway he founded three cathedral schools, at Nidaros in 1152 and two more at Bergen and Hamar the following year. His work in Norway earned him the praise of contemporary Norwegian writer and politician, Snorri Sturluson.
If the Council of Nidaros was held in the early months of 1153, suggests Bergquist, then it appears that Breakspear sailed to Sweden as soon as it was concluded. His activities in Sweden followed a similar course to those in Norway. He called another council, this time at Linköping, which reorganised the Swedish church under the Archbishop of Lund (it had previously been subject to German patriarchy). He also received permission from the Swedish monarchy to introduce Peter's pence and to reduce the influence of the lay community on the church generally. His visit to Sweden was recorded by contemporary chroniclers and published in the 13th century. Similarly to what he had done in Norway with Trondheim, Adrian attempted to create an archepiscopal see for Sweden. This was opposed by one of the three provinces, Gothland, and the venture came to nothing. According to Bergquist, Breakspear ""was taken aback by this unseemly conflict, and declared that neither people deserved this highest ecclesiastical honour". Indeed, he suggests that it is possible that Breakspear's plans fell through thanks to the machinations of the recently returned Archbishop Eskil. Eskil, having discovered that he had lost half his archepiscopate in his absence, may have stirred up the Swedes' and Goths' rivalries to ensure against losing any more. In the event, Breakspear appears to have repaired relations with Eskil, assuring him that Eskil would receive far more than he had lost. As a result, he placed Eskil in charge of the new Swedish metropolitan.
Duggan describes Adrian's legation in the north has a "diplomatic triumph", being so successful, says Sayers, "that he was later seen as the apostle of Scandinavia". Boso later lauded how Breakspear brought "peace to the kingdoms, law to the barbarians, tranquillity to the monasteries, order to the churches, discipline to the clergy and a people pleasing to God, devoted to good works". He successfully introduced a new Scandinavian tythe—the "denarium sancti Petri", or payment to St Peter—a financial acknowledgement by the Scandinavian church of Papal primacy. Breakspear, argues the scholar Andrew Beck, "gave the Swedish church its hierarchy and its attachment to Rome". He left Scandinavia in autumn 1154; he seems to have left a generally good impression in the region: A later saga refers to Breaksperare as "the good cardinal...now considered a saint". On his return to Rome he found Pope Eugenius had died the previous year, and that his successor had followed him only a few weeks before; the College of Cardinals was seeking a successor.
Discussing the broader political context of the time, the historian Anne Duggan argues that "the Pope was not master of his own house". Likewise, Walter Ullmann has argued that the age was a radical one, in which the temporal power—specifically, the "educated lay element"—was encroaching upon traditional spiritual realms.
Eugenius had died in July 1153. His successor, Anastasius IV, had been already elderly when elected to succeed him, and only ruled for a year. Comparing the two, the popular historian John Julius Norwich comments that the former "was old and ineffectual, concerned chiefly with his own self-glorification"; Adrian, though, was "a man of very different calibre". Anastasius died on 3 December 1154, and by which time, Breakspear had returned to Rome. Even before the death of Eugenius, argues Barber, "a new and formidable figure had appeared" on the political scene. The Hohenstaufen Frederick Barbarossa had been elected Holy Roman Emperor on 4 March 1152. Barbarossa and Eugenius had contracted, at the Treaty of Constance, to unite against both William of Sicily and the Roman Commune.
Ullmann has identified four major areas of concern for Adrian at the beginning of his pontificate: the city of Rome under Arnold of Brescia, the new emperor who was marching towards Rome for his coronation, his counterpart in the east whose army had recently invaded southern Italy, and restlessness among the Pope's own vassals in his patrimony. By the time of Adrian's consecration, the city of Rome was a major player in Papal-Aristocatric regional politics. Under the governance of a republican commune since 1144, Pope Eugenius had recognised it the following year. While the city was usually happy to acknowledge the feudal lordship of the Pope, it was—even compared to other Italian city states—both "unusually self-aware, and also unusually idiosyncratic" compared to others. The commune was hostile to the Papacy.
The Papacy was weak in the city of Rome. The heretic, Arnold of Brescia, had ruled since 1146 and was popular. He also had the support of the Roman Commune. The popularity of Arnold directly translated into hostility towards the popes. Chichele Professor Chris Wickham describes the relationship between the Pope and the lords of his Patrimony as one in which, because "their lords did not by any means all look to Rome [they] had to be coaxed back or brought back by force". Papal politics was beset by problems at home and abroad. The election of Adrian IV as Pope, comments the papal scholar Ian S. Robinson—and, indeed, the elections of his immediate predecessors—"took place in the shadow of the communal revolution in Rome".
From Eugenius, Adrian inherited what Walter Ullmann has called a "mutual assistance pact" with the Emperor, the Treaty of Constance, signed the year of Eugenius' death. For the popes, its most important aspect was the stipulation that the crowning of the next emperor was contingent on expelling Arnold of Brescia from Rome. It also assured each party of the other's support against both King William in Sicily and the Byzantine Empire when necessary. The treaty was confirmed by Adrian in January 1155. Eugenius was a believer in the Gregorian doctrine of Papal supremacy, stating that Christ "gave to St Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the power of both the earthly and the heavenly empire". From the beginning of his reign, Barbarossa sought to present himself as the heir to a long, established line of Roman Emperors, and likewise that his empire was a continuation of theirs. The historian Anne A. Latowsky explains how this was the cause of tension in the European polity:
Norwich argues that, by now, whatever the public statements of wither Papal or Imperial party, they were mutually antagonistic, and had been for many years. Even before Adrian's pontificate, he says, no peace treaty was strong enough to unite them for long: "The days when it had been realistic to speak of the two swords of Christendom were gone—gone since Gregory VII and Henry IV had hurled depositions and anathemas at each other nearly a hundred years before". The situation, suggest Duggan, was "a minefield", for the Pope, and Adrian had to negotiate it.
It was the ambition of the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, Manuel I Kommenus, to reunite both Empires under one crown, and, as such, he wished to be crowned by the Pope in Rome, as Western emperors were. The death of Roger II presented Manuel with an opportunity he could not afford to let by, argues Professor Paul Magdalino. The Kingdom of Sicily had been recognised by Innocent II in 1143, notes the Italianist Graham Loud, but "relations with the Papacy remained fraught". The previous King of Sicily, Roger II, had ruled his kingdom with an iron fist, and his nobility chafed, particularly the large number he had effectively dispossessed. His son was less interested than his father in the minutiae of government, and when Roger died in 1154 they took advantage of the new king and rebelled. This was of interest to the Papacy as the rebels were willing to ally themselves with anyone for their purpose.
It was Breakspear's being "in the right place at the right time", suggests the Papal librarian Bradford Lee Eden, that led to his election as pope on Saturday, 4 December 1154, although Duggan argues that he must also have had exceptional qualities, both to reach the rank he had and as seen in his Scandinavian trip—or as William of Newburgh later wrote, "raised as if from the dust to sit in the midst of princes. Events moved rapidly: the period was one of great crisis for the papacy. Adrian was enthroned on the 5th and crowned in St Peter's on the 6th. His election, said Boso, "happened—not without divine council—that they unanimously agreed" on Adrian. To date, Adrian has been the only English pope. He was one of the few popes of his era who did not need consecrating on his election, as he was already a bishop.
According to Boso, Breakspear had to be forced "against his will" into the Papal throne. He took the name Adrian IV, possibly in honour of Adrian I, who revered St Alban and first granted the abbey of that name its privileges. It was, suggests Julius Norwich, " wise choice, for energy and force were desperately needed". Although he had been elected unanimously from among the cardinals, the role of the Roman people was ignored. Thus relations between the Pope and his city were poor from the beginning, as were relations between Adrian and the King of Sicily, who controlled much of southern Italy. Relations with the commune were so bad that Adrian was forced to remain in the Leonine city and was thus unable to immediately complete the enthronement ceremony, as tradition dictated, by making his "adventus" into Rome itself. In the event, Adrian was required to remain there for the next four months. As a result, although he had been consecrated, he had not been crowned in the ceremony "dies coronae" at the Lateran which gave him not his title but gave him feudal title of the papal lands. It is probable that, due to problematic relations with the Romans, he did not receive his crown until the following Easter.
Due to Arnold's presence in Rome, there were a number of acts of religious significance that it was impossible to perform, such as the ceremony of the "sede stercoraria", the physical claiming of the curule seats of Saints Peter and Paul. Soon after Adrian's election, a cardinal was badly beaten up by Roman republicans. Adrian was no more popular with the people or Commune of Rome than his immediate predecessors, so at Easter the next year he departed for Viterbo. His "primary task", argues Sayers, "was to control the Emperor" Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa had only recently been elected to the Imperial throne and for their own reasons, Pope and Emperor needed each other. Adrian needed Barbarossa's military support against William, (known as "The Bad") King of Sicily, who was threatening the Papal patrimony. For his part, the Emperor needed Adrian to perform the traditional imperial coronation service.
Adrian took a hardline against the Roman commune. He threatened to place the city under interdict for protecting Arnold, whom the hierarchy condemned as a heretic. This strategy successfully drove a wedge between the commune and Arnold, who was expelled. He followed through with this threat following the beating of one of his cardinals Norwich has called this "an act of breath-taking courage", considering that Adrian was a foreign Pope of only a few weeks' tenure, who "knew the city and its increasingly xenophobic inhabitants hardly at all and was able to rely on little or no popular support". on the Via Sacra. Rome was forced to submit to the Pope, and Arnold of Brescia was expelled. Although he had managed to restore Papal authority in the city, he was unable to eradicate the principle of republicanism, and the commune remained as the governing body.
Adrian angled for the support of the Emperor in capturing the heretic Arnold. Arnold was captured by Imperial troops in summer 1155. Arrested and tried in a Papal court for rebellion rather than heresy, he was hanged and his body burnt. Adrian claimed that Arnold's execution had been on the initiative of the prefect of Rome, but some contemporary observers, such as Gerhoh of Reichersberg, suspected Adrian of ordering the execution himself. The Emperor's willingness to assist the Pope in his own city, and help him crush his enemies, was an explicit recognition from Barbarossa of the Pope's possession of Rome. Adrian's success against Rome, suggests the scholar D. P. Curtin, was offset by the King of Sicily's raid on Campania, part of the Papal patrimony in the south. Papal relations with the lords of Campania were already tense, as they, in the Pope's view, were little more than robber barons, who both fought among each other and robbed pilgrims from the south on their way to Rome.
Barbarossa had received the Iron Crown of Lombardy—as King of Italy—in Pavia, but also wished to receive his Imperial Crown from the Pope. Adrian originally saw the Emperor as protector and defender of the church. Both parties, notes Ullmann, were unpopular in Rome:
To this end, Adrian and Barbarossa met at Sutri in early June 1155. This soon, says Sayers, "turned out to be a spectacular contest between the two to gain propagandist supremacy". Adrian, reports an Imperial chronicler, was there "with the entire Roman Church, met us joyfully, paternally offered us holy consecration and complained to us of the injuries he had suffered at the hands of the Roman populace". Barbarossa later recalled the ceremony in a letter to the Eastern Emperor in 1189:
Adrian may have been caught off-balance by the Emperor's swift entry into Italy and the speed with which he approached Rome. The dispute was sparked by Barbarossa's unwillingness to act as the Pope's strator; lead the Pope's horse by the bridle—or to assist Adrian in dismounting—as was traditionally expected. In response, the Pope refused the Emperor the kiss of peace; the Emperor was still willing to perform the duty of kissing Adrian's feet, though. These were minor affronts at best, says Barber, "but in an age so highly conscious of symbolic acts", took on a greater political import.
The confusion at Sutri may have been accidental, but Frederick also took offence at a mural in the Lateran of his predecessor Luthar which described the Emperor as a liegeman of the Pope. The painting was inscribed with the verse
The king comes before the gates, first swearing to
Then he becomes the liegeman of the pope;
Indignant, Barbarossa made a "friendly reproach" to the Pope. In a letter to a German bishop, he explained, "it began with a picture. The picture became an inscription. The inscription seeks to become an authoritative utterance. We shall not endure it, we shall not submit to it." Adrian told Barbarossa he would have it removed, "lest so trifling a matter might afford the greatest men in the world an occasion for dispute and discord. In the event, Adrian did not, and by 1158 Imperial commentators were describing the matter of the painting and its inscription as the fundamental cause of the dispute between Pope and Emperor. Adrian, says Freed, was "perplexed" at the Emperor's refusal to offer him squire service: he "dismounted and seated himself on a folding stool". Barbarossa, if he wished to be crowned, had limited options against the Pope. He took advice from councillors based on records of "the more ancient princes and especially those who had come with King Lothar to Pope Innocent". An entire day was spent inspecting both "old documents", and hearing from those of his entourage who had been present at the 1131 ceremony. The Pope's party saw this as a sign of aggression, and deserted Adrian for the security of a nearby castle.
The Emperor was, though, eventually persuaded, performed the necessary services. He was eventually crowned in Nepi on 18 June. Peace was maintained at Nepi, however, and both Pope and Emperor dined together, wearing their crowns in a joint celebration of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. There was much rejoicing, and contemporaries went so far as to proclaim that "a single state had been created from two princely courts". Ullmann, on the other hand, argues that, not only was the Emperor's power clearly derivative of the Pope but that Adrian himself had further diluted it in his rendition of the coronation ceremony. Nor was there an official enthronement for the new emperor.
This ceremony, says Sayers, was arguably a new version of the traditional one, which now "highlight[ed] the difference between the anointing of a mere layman and that of a priest". Previously, Emperors had been anointed on the head, as a priest was; this time, Adrian anointed Barbarossa between the shoulders. Further, the Pope invested him with a sword, which emphasised the Emperor's role—as Adrian saw it—as the defender of the Papacy and its privileges. Adrian, on the other hand, disallowed his chancery from addressing the Emperor by either of his preferred titles, "augustus semper" or "semper augustus". It may be that Adrian had been frightened by the Emperor's decisive approach on Rome—Duggan notes he "impos[ed] obedience on recalcitrant cities and proclaim[ed] the resumption of Imperial rights" as he did. If so, that may have led him to over-reacting the face of a perceived slight, however small.
Following the Imperial coronation, both sides appear to have taken extra care to ensure they abided by the Treaty of Constance. Barbarossa, for example, refused to entertain an embassy from the Roman commune. He did not, however, further perform as Adrian hoped, and did not defend the Papacy. Indeed, he stayed in Rome only enough time to be crowned, and then left immediately: "dubious protection" for the Pope, comments Barber. Before he left, however, his army was drawn into a bloody clash with Rome's citizens, incensed at what they saw as a display of Imperial authority in their city. Over 1,000 Romans died. The Senate continued revolting in Rome and William of Sicily remained entrenched in the Patrimony. Adrian was trapped between King and Emperor. Freed suggests that Barbarossa's failure to suppress the Roman commune for Adrian led the Pope to believe the Emperor had broken the Treaty of Constance. Further, on the Emperor's march north, his army sacked and razed the town of Spoleto. Adrian left Rome also, as his relations with the commune were still too fragile for him to be able to guarantee his safety following the Emperor's departure. As a result, the Pope was left in "virtual exile" in Viterbo, and relations between the two declined further.
Probably as a result, he responded positively to overtures from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I, and also the native barons of Southern Italy, who saw in Adrian's support a chance for them to overthrow William, whom Adrian had recently excommunicated for invading the Papal patrimony. The rebellion had started off promisingly, with rebel victories at Bari, Trani and Andria. They had already found themselves a powerful ally in Manuel, the Byzantine Emperor, and welcomed anyone—including Adrian—who was hostile to William. Their leader, Count Robert of Loritello, had been charged with treason by William but had managed to escape north. William was temporarily struck down with an unknown illness, as the scholar Joshua C. Birk explains, "this brought the enemies of the kingdom of Sicily out of the woodwork"; among them, Adrian excommunicated William. By 1154, William had captured important towns in the Patrimony. In summer 1155 rebellion broke out in southern Italy by the native nobility against their lord, the King of Sicily. One group of rebels, having gained the support of Emperor Manuel, overran Ancona. By winter 1155, suggests Norwich, few contemporaries "would have held out much hope for the future of the Sicilian monarchy". According to Boso, the rebels asked Adrian to come to them as their feudal lord, to act as their spiritual advisor and bless them in their endeavours. Adrian, believing that William's kingdom would collapse imminently, tried to exploit William's weakness and allied with the rebels in September. As it turned out, this was a miscalculation. William had already asked Adrian for a peace conference, which the Pope had ("scornfully") rejected.
Emperor Manuel I had launched his own military operation against William in southern Italy in 1154. He found Adrian a willing ally. The Russian historian Alexander Vasiliev notes that Adrian "expressed his desire 'to help in bringing all the brethren into one church' and compared the eastern church with lost "drachma", wandering sheep, and the dead Lazarus". Adrian's isolation led directly to his concordat with the Eastern Empire in 1156, although Duggan emphasises that he was reacting to external political pressures rather than deliberately initiating a new policy. As a result, says Barber, he "became involved in a fruitless Byzantine plan to overcome the Normans which ended, as so often before when the popes had ventured south in arms, in Norman victory". Adrian—as if, says Partner, "the unhappy experiences of at least three popes ha taught the papacy nothing"—organised a papal army comprising Roman and Campagnan nobility and crossed the border into Apulia in September 1155.
Although it has been suggested that Manuel offered to pay Adrian a large sum of money in return for ceding him certain Apulian cities, it seems unlikely that this was ever actioned; certainly, notes Duggan, Adrian was wholly against the creation of a Byzantine kingdom on his own doorstep. This was in spite of Manuel deliberately not pressing his ancestor's historical claim to south Italy as a whole, and was interested primarily in the coastal areas. Initially, his campaign succeeded, and by 1155 he had occupied the area from Ancona to tarento. Byzantine funding enabled Adrian to temporarily restore his vassal Robert, Count of Loritello, although on one occasion William was able to capture of gold from Manuel that had been destined for the Pope's war chest. There was some discussion of an alliance between Roman Pope and Eastern Emperor, and Adrian despatched Anselm of Havelberg east to arrange it, although in the event negotiations came to nothing. Magdalino argues that Adrian would not have been interested in an alliance "without the lure of Byzantine gold". Although the Byzantine Emperor had sent his army to support the Pope in Italy—and indeed, had subdued the troublesome region of the Balkans—Adrian, argues Sayers, "could not accept any power for the emperor that was not dependent on the pope". Ullmann argues that although Adrian was receptive to Manuel's ambition of uniting the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, he did not appreciate the manner in which the offer was made. He was particularly averse to Manuel's suggestion that the pope's sword was merely a spiritual force, and, suggests Ullmann, "received Manuel's overtures with that scepticism which they deserved". Adrian, though, while agreeing on the basic tenet of a single emperor and a single church, believed that it was not a case of the Western church joining that of the East, but the latter returning to the former with the "obedience due to a mother", as he put it in a letter to Manuel. In other words, all Christians, East or West, should be subjugated to the church of St Peter.
Strategically, King William's position was not looking good, and he offered Adrian large sums in financial compensation for the Pope to withdraw his forces. However, the majority of Adrian's curia were averse to holding negotiations with the Sicilians, and the King's offer was rejected somewhat haughtily. This turned out to be a bad mistake. William soon won decisive victories over both Greek and Apulian armies in mid-1456, culminating in the final defeat of the Eastern Empire at the Battle of Brindisi. When William soundly defeated the rebels, Adrian—who was by now, even more, bogged down in the problem of Rome and without allies—had to sue for peace on the King's terms. This was yet another external event—indeed, probably the single most important event of the pontificate she argues—that Adrian had had no way of influencing but had to deal with its consequences, notes Duggan. He was effectively captured and forced to come to terms at Benevento three weeks later. Ths one event, says Duggan, changed Adrian's policy for good, whether or not he liked it. As a result, at the Concordat of Benevento, Adrian had to invest William with the lands he claimed in southern Italy, symbolised by the presentation of the Pope's own pennoned lances and the kiss of peace. The Pope was accepted as William's feudal overlord, while being forbidden from entering Sicily without an invitation from the King, thereby granting William effectively Legatine authority over the church in his own land. For his part, William gave the Pope his homage and contracted to pay an annual tribute and provide military support on request. The treaty conferred extended powers on the Kings of Sicily that they would enjoy for at least the next 40 years, and included powers over ecclesiastical appointments traditionally held by the Popes as the region's feudal lord. Adrian's treaty with William angered the Emperor, who took it as a personal slight that Adrian had treated with the two Imperial rivals to Italy and confirmed his view of Adrian's Papal arrogance. This, suggests Robinson, sowed the seeds of the disputed election following Adrian's death.
The defeat of Manuel's army left the Pope vulnerable, and in June 1156 Adrian was forced to come to terms with the Sicilian King. This was, however, suggests Robinson, on generous terms, including "homage and fealty, reparation for the recent encroachments on the papal patrimony, help against the Romans, freedom from royal control for the Sicilian church". Adrian's new alliance with William exacerbated relations with Barbarossa, who believed that Adrian had broken the Treaty of Constance twice over, by allying with both King William and the Byzantine Emperor. Relations between Pope and Emperor were, argues Latowsky, "irreparably damaged. Adrian probably acted as mediator the following year in concluding a peace treaty between William and Manuel. The Emperor attempted to prevent the treaty by sending his most experienced diplomat, Abbot Wibald to intervene, as he probably saw a Sicilian–Byzantine alliance as being directed against him.
The alliance with William had probably been strengthened by the Pope’s belief that Barbarossa had already broken the Treaty of Constance. At the Treaty of Benevento, Adrian was represented by the Cardinals Ubald, Julius and Roland; the Papacy was forced to cede much valuable land, rights and income to William. The Emperor felt personally betrayed: according to the contemporary chronicler Geoffrey of Viterbo, the Pope, "wish[ed] to be an enemy of Caesar". Duggan, however, suggests that the Imperial alliance with the papacy had only ever been a flag of convenience, "ready to be discarded when it had served its purpose". Bolton, meanwhile, suggests that, as Benevento was an Imperial town, the fact that following the treaty he stayed there for eight more months indicates that Adrian was asserting his power.
By 1157, suggests Whalen, having secured the border with the south (by his alliance with Sicily) and the commune as peaceful as it had been for some time, Adrian was able to reside in Rome again and "stood in a more secure position than any of his predecessors had for decades". They were made worse in 1157 when, in a letter to the Emperor, Adrian referred to the Empire by the Latin term "beneficium", which some of Barbarossa's councillors translated as fief, rather than benefice. This, they claimed, implied that the Pope saw the Empire as subordinate to the Papacy. The Emperor had to personally hold back Otto of Wittelsbach from assaulting the Pope's messengers. Ullmann, however, argues that Adrian's use of the word was "harmless enough...that he conferred the Imperial crown as a favour". Duggan too describes the incident as "at best a diplomatic incident—a "faux pas"—which suggests carelessness on the part of the drafter". Historians have disagreed as to the degree of deliberation behind the use of the word. Peter Munz, for example, believes it to have been a deliberate provocation, engineered by an anti-Imperial faction within the curia, designed to justify Adrian's treaty with King William. Anne Duggan, on the other hand, suggests this view is "scarcely credible": not only was Adrian in no position of strength from which to threaten Frederick, but he was also aware that the Emperor was planning a campaign against Milan for the following year, and would hardly wish to provoke him into marching on towards the Papal States.
In October 1157, Barbarossa was celebrating his wedding in Besançon with an Imperial Diet, when he was visited by Papal legates Roland and Bernard. Theirs was an important mission bringing personal letters from Adrian, and the were met "with honour and kindness, claiming (as they did) to be the bearers of good tidings". The Pope complained about the lack of activity in discovering who attacked Eskil, Archbishop of Lund while he travelled through Imperial territory. Eskil, complained Adrian, had been captured somewhere "in the German lands...by certain godless and infamous men", and Frederick had made no attempt to secure his release. Adrian's letter, suggests Godman, both upbraids the Emperor for "dissimulation" and "negligence" while accusing Reinald of Dessel of being a "wicked counsellor ", although Duggan describes it more as a "mild rebuke". Barber comments that "the tone is that of one who is surprised and a little hurt that, having treated Frederick so affectionately and honourably, he had not had a better response, but the actual words used to express these sentiments gave rise to immediate offence". Adrian's defence of Eskil of Lund contributed further to the decline in his relationship with Barbarossa. Adrian's choice of occasion on which to rebuke the Emperor was bound to offend him, argues Norwich. But even if unintentional, argues Freed, the Pope should have instructed his delegates to meet with Barbarossa privately rather than in the open. Equally provocative, Freed suggests, was Adrian's later assertion that letters which criticised the Emperor's behaviour were somehow to his advantage. Adrian's "sharp" words also contributed to the Emperor's advisors increasing discontent with his messengers. The Pope had also ordered that, before any negotiations took place, the Emperor's council would accept Adrian's letters "without any hesitation...as though proceeding from our mouth". The cardinals appear to have worsened their reception by calling Frederick "brother".
The Emperor was also exasperated to find, on ordering the legates' quarters searched, blank parchments with the Papal seal attached. This he understood to mean that the legates had intended to present supposedly direct instructions from the Pope when they felt it necessary. Barbarossa claimed that he held his crowns directly from God and that Adrian "did not understand his Petrine commission if he thought otherwise". Following promulgation of Adrian' letter, says Godman, "there was uproar". Worse, says Barbarossa's contemporary chronicler Otto of Freising, the legates compounded the insult by asking those present "from whom the does he have the empire, if not from our lord the pope?" The two ecclesiasts were then nearly beaten up, but the Emperor enabled their swift escape.
In June 1158, representatives of both sides met in the Imperial town of Augsberg. Adrian attempted to pacify the Emperor and claimed that he meant, not "fief", but "good deed": "Among us "beneficium" means not a fief but a good deed", he wrote. Barber suggests, though, that "his explanation was far from convincing". On the other hand, notes the Emperor's biographer John Freed, Barbarossa was illiterate, and required everything translated. He was thus in constant danger of relying on mistranslations, and it is possible that this happened at Besançon. Taken at face value, this phrase appeared to assert that Adrian was the Emperor's feudal overlord.
Latowsky argues that the mistranslation was a deliberate ploy by Barbarossa's Archchancellor Rainald of Dassel—whom she describes as a "multilingual provocateur"—whose Chancery was waging a propaganda war against Adrian. The Pope had earlier condemned Reinauld's election as Archbishop of Cologne believed Rainauld to be nothing less than the Devil's agent.
Latowsky suggests that Rainauld had intended to cause trouble between Emperor and Pope. If this was the case, he succeeded, as Barbarossa was only just restrained from sending an army against Adrian. The Emperor did make a public declaration against Adrian, though, calling for his deposition on the grounds that, as the son of a priest, he was an uncanonical pope. Ullmann notes that canonicity "was indubitably a double-edged weapon; if Adrian was an uncanonical pope, then Frederick was an uncanonical emperor, and that seems the only reason why this point was not pressed further". Duggan summarises Adrian's Augsberg letter as being concomitant to one's interpretation of the original offence, noting that "the context...determines everything". While Munz views the Augsberg issuement as a "humiliating" retreat by Adrian, Duggan argues that, if one does not view the Besançon letter as deliberately provocative, "then there was no withdrawal from that provocation".
Adrian's choice of words may also have been a "calculated ambiguity", suggests Abulafia, and in the event, Adrian never publicly acknowledged which of the interpretations he had actually intended. This would have allowed him to suggest the Emperor has misunderstood him while allowing the Pope to intimate to his own church that the Emperor was indeed a Papal vassal. Adrian "trivialised" Barbarossa's anger with irony, commenting that "this should not have vexed the heart of even one in lowly station, to say nothing of so great a man". The Augsburg meeting seems to have improved relations between Pope and Emperor. As Freed notes, though, "the fundamental question...remained unresolved", and any improvement in relations was temporary, as they fell out again later that year over the appointment of the next Archbishop of Ravenna. This revived the question of their respective roles, as the nominations were split between each sides' preferences; in the event, the Imperial candidate—Guido of Biandrate—was elected against Adrian's wishes. There was also increasing disagreement over the traditional "fodrum" Imperial taxation levied in north Italy.
Adrian's opposition to Guido of Biandrate's appointment had so incensed the Emperor that he no longer placed the Pope's name before his own in their correspondence, as had been a traditional sign of honour. Furthermore, he began aggressively asserting his claims over Lombardy, and in 1159 the Diet of Roncaglia issued a series of decrees claiming extensive lands in north Italy. This caused sufficient concern that the cities of Milan—which Barbarossa had already "half-destroyed", says Ullmann—Brescia, Piacenza and Crema (which had also suffered a "brutal siege", notes Duggan) approached Adrian for aid. Since the lands concerned were part of the Papal fiefdom, Adrian, in Bologna, rejected Barbarossa's claim and gave him 40 days in which to withdraw them, on pain of excommunication. However, Adrian's intervention in a quarrel between the Emperor and the Lombard towns may, suggests the classicist Peter Partner, "may have been inevitable, but it was to be one of the most explosive issues of its age".
Duggan has emphasised the severity of the situation facing Adrian: accepting Frederick's claims, she says, would have entailed Adrian effectively "abandoning the whole Italian church". Adrian also had counter-demands. Frederick was to desist from sending envoys to Rome without papal permission, that he should only be paid the Imperial tax from his Italian lands while in Italy and that those papal lands in north Italy be returned to the church. Adrian, says Duggan, "received short thrift". In the event Adrian died before his 40-day term expired. As relations between Emperor and Pope worsened, Barbarossa took to placing his own name before that of Adrian in their correspondence, as well as addressing the Pope in the singular. By now, suggests Duggan, Adrian was viewed with contempt by the Emperor.
Pope Adrian, comments Sayers, "was not unmindful of the interests and well-being of his English homeland", and Robinson identifies his pontificate as "the period in which
English influence was strongest in the papal curia". Adrian remained faithful to the cult of St Alban and often promoted King Henry's political ambitions when he could. For example, suggests Brooke, following his lengthy stay with Adrian, John of Salisbury seems to have acquired the belief that he would at some point receive a cardinalate. However, John fell out with King Henry for a now-unknown reason, and Adrian—probably wishing to promote his friend but essentially a diplomat and a realist—could not afford to alienate his only major supporter in northern Europe. Adrian also favourably received at least two curial embassies from St Albans in 1156 and 1157. In 1156 Adrian ordered King Henry II to appoint an otherwise unknown Hugh to a London prebend. He wrote to Roger, Archbishop of York two months after Adrian's election confirming the Papal Legates in their offices.
Adrian had been absent from England since 1120, and it should not be assumed that he bore an automatic affection for the country which, in Richard Southern's words, had given him "no reasons to cherish warm feelings" about it. However, in 1156, when John of Salisbury—"in circumstances which otherwise remain obscure"—had fallen into disgrace with the English King, Adrian regularly petitioned Henry for his friend's reinstatement. This was eventually won, but had taken a year to achieve. Anne Duggan, of King's College, London, describes Anglo-Papal relations at this time as "not so much to a policy, perhaps, but to persistent intervention...and to a degree of acceptance, willing or not, on the part of Church authorities". However, Adrian was willing to intervene in English church affairs when it suited, as in February 1156 when he threatened Nigel, Bishop of Ely with suspension from office over what the art historian C. R. Dodwell has called Nigel's having "stripped-down, sold, or used as security, a quite astounding number of Ely's monastic treasures".
Among other patronages, he confirmed the nuns of St Mary's Priory, Neasham in possession of their church. and granted St Albans Abbey "a large dossier of privileges and directives" exempting it from the jurisdiction of its episcopal master, Robert de Chesney, Bishop of Lincoln. He also confirmed the primacy of the Archbishop of York over Scottish bishops and his independence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also granted papal protection—"free and immune from all subjection except to the Roman pontiff"—to Scottish towns, such as that of Kelso in 1155. He also, on occasion, sent his young protégés to the court of King Henry to learn the aristocratic arts of hunting, falconry and the martial arts.
Adrian, suggests the papal scholar Brenda M. Bolton, had a particularly "special relationship" with his "home abbey" of St Albans, demonstrated in his generous and wide-ranging privilege "Incomprehensibilis", published in Benevento on 5 February 1156. With this grant, Adrian allowed the abbot the right to wear pontificals, thereby effectively removing the abbot from the jurisdiction of Robert de Chesney, his bishop. The monks were also allowed to elect the abbot of their choosing without deference to the bishop. Neither could they be forced by him to allow him or his agents entry to the abbey, or to attend episcopal synods. In two follow up letters, Adrian gave the Abbot of St Albans authority to replace the clerks in churches under his jurisdiction with his preferred candidates. Brooke describes Adrian as "rain[ing] privilege after privilege upon the abbey.
Probably Adrian's "most striking" donation to England, however, was the Papal Bull "Laudabiliter" of 1155. This was supposedly made either while Adrian was in Benevento or had moved on to Florento. John of Salisbury later claimed credit, writing how "at my request [Adrian] conceded and gave Ireland as a hereditary possession to the illustrious king of the English, Henry II". This granted the island of Ireland to Henry II in fee simple. Adrian's justification was that, since the Donation of Constantine, countries within Christendom were the Pope's to distribute as he would. The claim of "Vicarius Christi" which Adrian inherited allowed him, he believed, to wield the temporal power of his subjects through them. Sayers suggests that "while some kind of Irish mission" was clearly intended by Adrian, the precise nature of the grant remains unclear. Duggan, also notes that neither Henry or Adrian ever seems to have referred to it in their own letters again: "whatever Adrian granted, and he did grant something, there is no reliable evidence" as to its nature or what it comprised.
King Henry claimed to be motivated by a wish to civilise the supposedly unruly Irish. The Victorian historian Kate Norgate, however, has noted that the spiritual community in 12th-century Ireland "flourished", and that the Pope must have known this, as it was only a few years earlier that the Irish church had been reorganised into Archdioceses, thus making it a national church in its own right. Norgate argues that Adrian's grant was made, not because the church in Ireland needed protecting, but because the Irish lacked a single king and for Christian society to have no single head was an anathema. She also notes that it has misleadingly be called a Bull, when it is, in fact, sufficiently informal in its style to be "nothing more than a commendatory letter". Simple in its approach, the Pope exhorts Henry—if he is to invade Ireland—to do so in the name of the church. Other scholars have argued that, whether or not it was an out and out forgery by Gerald of Wales, Adrian was more likely to have been lukewarm at the idea of invasion at best, as he was equally unenthusiastic at the notion of a Franco-English crusade to the East at the same time.
The Bull "granted and gave Ireland to King Henry II to hold by hereditary right, as his letters witness unto this day", and was accompanied by a gold Papal ring "as a token of investiture". In the early 14th century it was claimed ("by the ordinary [i.e. English] people of Ireland") that Pope had been persuaded—"improperly"—to grant "Laudabiliter", not on the persuasion of Henry II, but on that from the Irish themselves. If he did issue the bull, Adrian may have been influenced by the fact that the Irish church did not pay Peter's Pence, which was a major source of the Papacy's income. He would almost certainly, too, have been aware of Bernard of Clairvaux's letter of 1149, in which he wrote that
Notes Summerson, "the consequences of the bull were still invisible when Adrian died". As early as 1317, Adrian's grant to Henry was linked in Ireland to his nationality, and Domnall, King of Tír Eoghain complained that Adrian should be known as "Anti-Christ rather than true Pope". The Irish called him "a man not only of English descent but also of English inclinations", who "backed his compatriots in what they regarded as the first major confrontation between the two nations", whereas the Bishop of Thessaloniki praised Adrian as a pastor ("which is how", comments the scholar Averil Cameron, "the Byzantines liked to see the Popes").
In 1155 the city state of Genoa approached Adrian and sought him to help them defend their trading rights in the East. The same year Adrian issued the decretal "Dignum est" which allowed serfs to marry without having to obtain their lord's permission as had traditionally been the case. Adrian's reasoning was that a sacrament outweighed a feudal due and that no Christian had the right to stand in the way of another's receiving of a sacrament. This was to become the definitive statement of marriage as a sacrament, and remained such until the recodification of Canon Law in 1917. The same year, Adrian consecrated the Bishop of Grado, Enrico Dandolo as Primate of Dalmatia. Two years later, Adrian granted him primacy over all the Venetian churches in the Eastern Empire. This has been described as "a remarkable move": The historian Thomas F. Madden notes that not only was this the first occasion on which one metropolitan had been given jurisdiction over another, but in doing so Adrian had created the equivalent of an Eastern Patriarch in the west. He also confirmed the degradation of Baume Abbey imposed by Eugenius for its failure to obey a Papal legate.
Adrian confirmed the prerogatives of the Knights Templar and documented in the "Liber Censuum". He also enforced the rules against unfree ecclesiastical elections and condemned ecclesiastics who used physical force against the church. Perhaps reflecting his earlier career, he also promulgated several bulls in favour of the Austin canons. Again, he particularly focussed on houses of his personal association; St Ruf, for example, received at least 10 bulls of privilege. In one of these, he expressed a "special bond of affection" for his old abbey, which he said had been like a mother to him.
Adrian argued that, in the troubled succession to Alfonso I of Aragon, even though Alfonso had legally nominated an heir—his brother—because he had not had a son, his brother was not a direct heir to the Kingdom. This was the context for the projected crusade into Spain as suggested by the Kings of England and France, which Adrian rejected. He did, however, welcome their new friendship.
It was probably Adrian who canonised Sigfrid of Sweden around 1158, thus making Sigfrid Sweden's apostle. Robinson notes that Adrian's fascination with Scandinavia continued into his pontificate, particularly in his efforts to create a Swedish metropolis. He was also keen to defend its church against lay encroachment. In January 1157 Archbishop Eskil personally presented a petition to Adrian in Rome, requesting protection from King Swein of Denmark. Adrian both appointed the Bishop of Lund his Legate in the region and recognised him as primate over both Sweden and Denmark.
Other cardinalate appointments of Adrian's included that of Alberto di Morra in 1156. Di Mora, also a canon regular like Adrian, later reigned briefly as Pope Gregory VIII in 1187. Boso, already papal chamberlain since 1154, was appointed the same year. Adrian also elevated one Walter to the Pope's own Cardinal Bishopric of Albano; Walter is thought to have been an Englishman—possible also from St Ruf—but very little record of his career has survived. In contrast, his appointment of Raymond des Arénes in 1158 was of a well-known lawyer with an established career under Adrian's predecessors. These were all worthy additions to the Curial office, argues Duggan, being all men of "experience, academic learning and administrative and diplomatic skill", which in turn reflects the wisdom of the appointer. He may have received the hermit and later saint Silvester of Troina, whose only recorded journey was from Siciliy to Rome during Adrian's pontificate.
Adrian continued the reform of the Papacy's finances that had begun under his predecessor in an attempt at boosting revenue, although he regularly had to resort to requesting large loans from major noble families such as the Corsi and Frangipane. His appointment of Boso as Chamberlain—or camerarius—of the Papal patrimony did much to improve the Papacy's finances by way of streamlining its financial bureaucracy. However, he also recognised the expense that the Papay was put to defending its own, commenting "nemo potest sine stipendiis militare", or "no-one can make war without pay". Adrian also consolidated the Papacy's position as the feudal lord of the regional baronage; indeed, his success n doing so has been described as "never less than impressive". In 1157, for example, Adrian made Oddone Frangipane donate his castle to him, which Adrian then granted back to Oddone in fee. occasionally Adrian simply purchased castles and lordships for the papacy, as he did Corchiano. Adrian received the personal oaths of fealty of a number of north-Roman nobles, thus making them vassals of St Peter. In 1158, for example, for fighting in the "Reconquista"—"subduing the barbarous peoples and the savage nations, that is, the fury of the Saracens"—Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona was accepted "under St Peter's and our protection". In 1159 Adrian ratified an agreement with the civic leadership of Ostia—an otherwise semi-independent town—agreed to pay the Pope an annual feudal rent for his lordship. Adrian's vassals, and their family and vassals, took oaths of fealty to the Pope, and in doing so the vassal absolved his own vassals of their oaths to him. All now became direct vassals of the Papacy. One of Adrian's greatest achievements, believed Boso, was acquiring Orvieto as a Papal fief, because this city had "for a very long time withdrawn itself from the jurisdiction of St Peter" Adrian, in 1156, was the first Pope to enter Orvieto, emphasised Boso, and to "have any temporal power there".
Adrian appears to have been an advocate of the crusade since his abbacy of St Ruf, and was equally keen to rekindle the crusading spirit among Christian rulers as Pope. The most recent crusade had ended, poorly, in 1150, but Adrian made what has been called a "novel approach" to launching a new one. In 1157 he announced that, whereas previously indulgences were available to those who fought in the East, from now on they would be also available to those who supported the war effort without necessarily campaigning abroad. This opened the benefits of crusading up to those who supplied money, men or materiel. However, his proposal, novel or otherwise, appears to have met with little interest, and no further crusading was to take place until 1189. He did not, however, approve of Crusading within Christendom itself, as when the French and English kings both proposed a crusade into Muslim Spain, he urged cation upon them. In his January 1159 letter "Satis laudabiliter", while flattering both kings diplomatically, he advised that "it would seem to be neither wise nor safe to enter a foreign land without first seeking the advice of the princes and people of the area". Indeed, Adrian reminded Henry and Louis of the consequences of badly planned and mismanaged crusades by reference to the Second Crusade—of which Louis had been a leader—reminding him that, there too, Louis had invaded "without consulting the people of the area".
Adrian also undertook a building program throughout Rome and the patrimony, although Duggan notes that the shortness of his pontificate reduced the amount of his work that remains visible in the 21st century. The work ranged from the restoration of public buildings and spaces to the city's physical defence. Boso reported how, for example, "in the church of St Peter [Adrian] richly restored the roof of St. Processo which he found collapsed", while in the Lateran, he "he caused to be made a very necessary and extremely large cistern". Due to the peripatetic nature of his pontificate he also built a large number of summer palaces across the patrimony, including at Segni, Ferentino, Alatri, Anagni and Rieti. Much of this fortification and building work—particularly in the vicinity of Rome—was for the protection of pilgrims, the safety of whom Adrian was both spiritually and physically reliable for.
Although his pontificate was a relatively short one—four years, six months and 28 days—he spent nearly half that time outside of Rome, either in the enclave of Benevento or journeying around the Papal States and patrimony. Particularly in the early years of the reign, his travels reflected the political context, consisting of "short bursts" as he sought to either meet or avoid the Emperor or William of Sicily as the situation required.
The Pope was conscious, comments Sayers, "of the crushing responsibilities" of his office, telling John of Salisbury that he felt his Papal tiara to be "splendid because it burned with fire". He was also highly conscious of the historicity of the Petrine tradition; as much as any of his predecessors, says Duggan, Adrian upheld the "unifying and an co-ordinating role of the Papal office", and regularly expressed himself on how he viewed his position as that akin to being a steward: He also recognised his own smallness within that tradition, telling John of Salisbury that "the Lord has long since placed me between the hammer and the anvil, and now he must support the burden he has placed upon me, for I cannot carry it". This explains his use of the epithet "Servus servorum Dei", comments Duggan: more than purely rhetorical, it amalgamated his concept of "stewardship, duty and usefulness" in three words.
Adrian was keen to emphasise the superiority of the Western Church over that of the East, and lost no opportunity to tell members of that body so.
Adrian described his approach to relations with his political rivals in a letter to the Archbishop of Thessaloniki. St Peter's authority was indivisible and could not be shared with temporal rulers, he argued. As such—as the descendent of St Peter—neither should he. Central to Adrian's view of his Papacy, says Sayers, was the conviction that his court was the highest court in Christendom and, so, the final court of appeal, and he encouraged appeals from many countries. In an early letter, defending the principle of Papal Monarchy, he compares Christendom to the human body: all the parts can only function as they should if they have an overarching guide and facilitator. To Adrian, Christian Europe was the body, and the Pope the head. The historian Neil Hegarty has suggested that, on the assumption that "Laudabiliter" as is extant can be believed, Adrian firmly believed in "enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion". Adrian was keen to know what people thought of the Roman Church, and often asked the question of John of Salisbury. John also recorded Adrian's view's on the Papacy accepting gifts from Christians, which some viewed as simonaical and evidence of corruption. Adrian, reported John, replied with reference to the fable of the belly. The European analyst Andreas Musolff explains the Pope's position as "deducing from it the church’s right to receive, and allocate, the nourishment to the Christian body according to merit and utility".
Adrian, argues Ullmann, was a man of action with little "inclination towards lengthy theoretical discussions", although Norwich argues that he could still be hesitant. For instance, following his radical change of Papal policy at Benevento, he may still not have grasped the significance of what he had done, and certainly not to the extent of radically exploiting the new policy. Partner suggests that Adrian was "an able administrator who used able agents". He was also a traditionalist; a firm follower of Pope Gregory VII, Adrian believed it his duty to not just believe in those ideals, but to enforce them. He also believed in the necessity of reform, as his clarification of the marriage sacrament and enforcement of free episcopal elections demonstrates. He was also, like Eugenius had been before him, a firm believer in the supremacy of the Bishops of Rome over both the Empire and other churches, writing how the Papacy,
The 16th century jesuit commentator Augustino Oldoini, in his re-edition of Alphonsus Ciacconius' "Papal History", that Adrian had authored a number of works prior to his election. These included a treatise "De Conceptione Beatissimae Virginis", a monograph, "De Legationae sua" and a catechism for the Scandinavian church. Some of his correspondence survives. One such letter, from Hildegarde, exhorts him to crush the Roman commune. Joseph Baird and Radd Ehrman, editors of a collection of Hildegard's letters, note that it was "perhaps unneeded", as Adrian placed the city under Interdict almost immediately. Much of Adrian's correspondence with both Archbishop Theobald and John of Salisbury has also been published in collections of the latter's letters.
Adrian's episcopal registry is now lost, although some decretals—formal rulings—survive. These covered such questions as to whether it was possible to restore a priest to his office when he had been responsible for the death of an apprentice, the payment of tithes, and the marriage of the unfree. Adrian's thoughts on tithe payment also made their way into the body of Canon Law, and were, according to Duggan, "recognised by contemporaries as having special significance, and so included in the collections of canon law being assembled at the time".
The historian Colin Morris notes that Adrian's character appears contradictory: "Some historians have seen him as tough and inflexible, but others as a relatively mild man" who could be manipulated by those around him. Duggan disputes that he was either a cypher to be manipulated by the cardinals or a "prima donna". Rather, she suggests, he was "a man of discipline, who fitted in with the norms and routines already in place...a man of affairs who had no fixed program, but who responded judiciously to the problems brought before his court.
Adrian's chamberlain, Boso—who later wrote Adrian's "Vita"—described the Pope as "mild and kindly in bearing, of high character and learning, famous as a preacher, and renowned for his fine voice". Julius Norwich describes Adrian as being eloquent, able and with "outstanding good looks". The German antiquarian Ferdinand Gregorovius believed that by nature Adrian was "as firm and as unyielding as the granite of his tomb", while Norwich tempers this suggestion, believing that, at least after Benevento, he must have been far more open to the possibilities of change. Duggan wonders whether he deliberately utilised these traits to forward his career. Boso's characterisation, she suggests, "could imply that he was ready to ingratiate himself with the powerful, to make friends and influence people by accommodation and charm". Sayers also suggests that something similar is detectable in the accounts from John of Salisbury, a close friend to the Pope since the days of Adrian's curial visits.
Adrian's own view of his office, suggests Sayers, is summed up in his own words: his "pallium was full of thorns and the burnished mitre seared his head", would have supposedly preferred the simple life of a canon at St Ruf. However, he also respected those who worked beneath him in the curia's officialdom; on one occasion he instructed that "we ought to reward such persons with ecclesiastical benefices when we conveniently can". This approach is reflected in the elevation of fellow Englishmen—Walter, and potentially John of Salisbury—to high office. Brooke suggests that, ultimately, Adrian "had not forgot his origins; he liked to have Englishmen about him".
In his struggles with the Emperor and William of Sicily, suggests Curtin, he demonstrated talents of "skill, resoluteness and decision". His increasing control over Rome and the Patrimony demonstrate that he was an effective organiser and administrator, argues the scholar Edward Whalen. Duggan argues that Adrian's strength of personality can be seen in his very election: in spite of being an outsider, a newcomer and lacking the support or patronage of an Italian noble house he attained the apotheosis of his church. And, she says, these were the qualities that made him independent.
His biographer, Cardinal Boso, was a close friend who visited Adrian at Rome between November 1155 and June the following year. John's feelings for Adrian were strong enough, indeed, for them to have been compared with, for example, that of Richard the Lionheart for Philip of France. Boswell notes that in John's "Metalogicon", he used terms reminiscent of those used by chroniclers to describe relations between the Kings.
Modern historiography has not always been complimentary to Adrian. Freed argues that Adrian was capable of both shameful and specious arguments in his dispute with Barbarossa. Likewise, David Abulafia has called Adrian "petulant", and Latowsky has criticised his "sarcastic" manner towards Barbarossa.
By autumn 1159 it may have been clear to Adrian's household and companions that he had not long to live. This may have been at least in part caused by the stresses of his pontificate, suggests Norwich, which although short, were difficult years. Pope Adrian died in Anagni—to where he had retired for security against the Emperor—from quinsy on 1 September 1159. He died, says Norwich, "as many Popes had died before him, an embittered exile; and when death came to him, he welcomed it as a friend". He was buried three days later in an "undistinguished third-century sarcophagus" porphyry tomb of his own choosing. In 1607, the Italian archaeologist Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi excavated the crypt and in the process opened Adrian's tomb. He described the body, still well preserved, as that of an "undersized man, wearing Turkish slippers on his feet and, on his hand, a ring with a large emerald", and dressed in a dark Chasuble.
At the time of Adrian's death, argues Partner, "imperial pressure on the papacy was stronger than it had been since the time of Henry V, and it is not surprising that the cardinals were unable to agree about his successor". It is likely that in the months presaging his death the cardinals were aware of the likelihood of a schism occurring soon afterwards; Freed suggests that thanks to Adrian's own policies, "a split in the College of Cardinals was thus almost preordained", regardless of the Emperor's input. Ullmann suggests that it was the ideological positions of individual cardinals which was shaping—and introducing faction to—the Curia in the last months of Adrian's pontificate.
In September 1159—now leading the Emperor's opponents—Adrian had agreed ("but did not swear") to excommunicate Barbarossa. He also did not have time to judge the request of Scottish Legates who had been in Rome since that summer, who were requesting the Diocese of St Andrews be made a metropolitan, and the beatification of Waltheof of Melrose. One of his final acts was the blessing of his preferred successor, Bernard, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, testified Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg to the Conclave. This, suggests Sayers, could have been Adrian's "masterstroke". The election of Bernard—as a candidate acceptable to the Emperor—may have avoided the future schism. That the Cardinals ended up agreeing with Adrian's choice indicates he had chosen wisely, argues Baumgartner.
Pope Adrian was buried in St Peter's on 4 September 1159. Present were three Imperial ambassadors who had been in attendance on the Pope when he died. They were Otto of Wittelsbach—who had tried to beat up up Cardinal Roland at Besançon—Guido of Biandrate and Heribert of Aachen. However, as soon as the Emperor heard of the Pope's death, says Madden, he "sent a group of agents and a great deal of money to Rome" in an attempt to secure the election of a successor with pro-Imperial sympathies.
The meeting between Hadrian and the city envoys of June 1159 may have discussed the next Papal election, as Adrian was known to have been accompanied by 13 cardinals who supported his pro-Sicilian policy. Cardinal Roland's election to succeed Adrian saw both the conflict with the Empire intensify and the alliance with William of Sicily solidify. The schism had a knock-on effect with regard to Papal policy in Italy, making it little more than a passive observer to events on its own doorstep. Papal scholar Frederic Baumgartner argues that a disputed election was the inevitable consequence whenever pope and emperor had a falling out. Relations between Barbarossa and Manuel, already poor—Manuel saw his western counterpart as an "embarrassment", suggests Magdalino, after his falling out with Adrian—ended completely following the death of Manuel's German wife, Bertha of Sulzbach, earlier in 1159.
Following Adrian's death, comments Barber, "the consequence for the church was another long and bitter schism". Tensions between different parties led to a double election, with "mutually unacceptable candidates". This led to what Frank Barlow has called "disgraceful scenes" taking place in Rome, but, with neither side powerful enough to overcome the other, each appealed to the European powers.
Although the Papal forces were insufficient to defeat Barbarossa outright, the war in Lombardy gradually turned against the Emperor, and following the recognition of the Kings of France and England, the military situation became more evenly balanced. However, peace was not established between the Papacy, the Empire, Sicily and the Byzantine Emperor until Barbarossa was defeated at the Battle of Legnano in 1176 and the following year's Treaty of Venice. The schism continued until the election of Pope Alexander III in 1180. During this time the Emperor's chancery distributed a series of fake letters—some of which purported to have been written by Adrian—in defence of the Imperial candidate. One such letter, supposedly to Archbishop Hillin of Trier, comments Latowsky, "is of particular interest since it contains a deliberately erroneous rewriting of Charlemagne’s assumption of the imperial title".In it, Adrian launches into a diatribe, condemning the German kings who owe everything to the Papacy yet refuse to understand that. This letter, argues Latowsky, was clearly intended to enrage its Imperial audience. Another letter, from the Emperor to Archbishop, called Adrian's church as "a sea of snakes", a "den of thieves and a house of demons" and Adrian himself as "he who claims to be the Vicar of Peter, but is not". Adrian, in turn, says the Emperor is "out of his mind". Containing as they did summaries of each sides' arguments at Besançon, they are most interesting, argues Freed, for indicating what Barbarossa to have believed to have been the most important of his and Adrian's arguments.
Further afield, war was threatening between England and France. Lands lost by Adrian to Sicily at the Treaty of Benevento were eventually regained by Pope Innocent III early in the next century, by which time the Kingdom of Sicily had merged with the Empire. Innocent saw Adrian's original grant as detracting from the privilege of the Apostolic See, and made concerted and eventually successful efforts to evict the Empire from southern Italy.
The 1159 papal election was disputed, and the College of Cardinals split along sectarian lines, between the "Sicilian"—so-called as its members wished to continue the pro-William policy of Adrian—and "Imperial" sympathisers. The former supported the candidacy of Cardinal Roland; the latter that of Ottaviano de Monticelli. Roland was elected Pope Alexander III. The result was not accepted by his opponents, who elected an Antipope, Victor IV, whom John of Salisbury had previously mocked. The Imperial party disagreed with the new policy of "rapprochement" with Sicily and favoured the traditional alliance with the Empire. A missive of the Imperial party of electors claimed that Adrian was a "dupe" of the Sicilian faction within the cardinals. Indicative of Barbarossa's attitude towards his candidate was his willingness to serve Victor as he had objected to serving Adrian, for example by holding the Antipope's horse and kissing his feet.The conclave to elect Adrian's successor, says Ullmann, was a "riotous and undignified spectacle". Alexander was elected by two-thirds of the college, while Victor's support declined from nine to five cardinals. Two further antipopes were elected before Alexander's death in 1181 and a unity candidate was found. Alexander was left a problematic legacy by Adrian, who had guaranteed a powerful enemy for the Papacy in the Emperor. Alexander managed to negotiate successive crises, however, and held its own. Within a year, Emperor Manuel had recognised Alexander, as had the English King Henry, although the latter waited nine months to do so. Although Octavian received less curial support in the conclave, he had the support of the Roman commune. As a result, Alexander and his supporters were forced into the sanctuary of the Leonine Borgho.
In the 14th century Adrian was recorded in St Albans' "Book of Benefactors", which, suggests Bolton, "ensured that the memory of the English Pope would remain forever". The 19th-century antiquarian Bishop Stubbs described Adrian IV as, in his view, "a great pope; that is a great constructive pope, not a controversial one, like those who preceded and followed". Walter Ullmann argues that Adrian's pontificate "left an imprint upon contemporary Europe which is not yet fully recognised". One reviewer has described Adrian's pontificate as, traditionally, "largely remembered as the answer to a trivia question (who was the only English pope?) or as a footnote in Anglo-Irish history". On the other hand, the Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Christopher N. L. Brooke argues that, on account of the number of different countries he dwelt in over the years, he illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of 12th-century religion.
The timing of Adrian's pontificate, suggests Ullmann, was significant because it made him the first pope on which what Ullmann calls "newly released forces"—the recently crowned King Henry and Emperor Frederick. On the other hand, argues Egger, Adrian—by rejecting the request of Kings Louis and Henry to crusade in Spain—undoubtedly prevented the secular power from embarrassing themselves: "one can only speculate about what might have happened, but it is not improbable that Adrianspard the Iberian peninsular a disaster on the scale of the second crusade to the East".
Morris argues that while "in a short pontificate, Hadrian did more than any of his predecessors to secure the papal position in central Italy...he was much less successful in his conduct of relations with the empire". Norwich too strikes a cautionary note. While agreeing that Adrian was "the greatest pope since Urban II", he argues that it would be difficult not to "tower...above the string of mediocrities who occupied the throne of St Peter during the first half of the century, just as he himself is overshadowed by his magnificent successor". Duggan argues that, although "the future of the papacy was to be determined by other men and other events, but he had played his part in guiding it securely through an extremely critical phase of its long history".
Ullmann has called Adrian "diplomatically very well versed and experienced, dispassionate and purposeful in his government". Adrian—"the pope of action", says Ullmann—was Papal theory "become eminently practical". He was not, however, a dictator. Likewise, suggests the historian Christopher Tyerman, Adrian's new approach to drumming up support for a crusade in 1157 became "a pivotal feature of crusading from the reign of Innocent III onwards". Innocent himself recognised the debt which he owed to Adrian's pontificate, argues Ullmann. Innocent codified Adrian's changes to the Imperial coronation as official procedure. Even the Besançon affair, suggests Ullmann, casts him in a positive light, and "by his dignified stand against Staufen attacks appears like a rock in comparison with the clamorous Germans".
The period immediately preceding Adrian's pontificate, argues Malcolm Barber, was one where "even without a direct imperial threat, Roman feuds, Norman ambitions and incompetently led crusades could reduce grandiose papal plans to ashes". The Papacy itself was one of permanent struggle and conflict, although scholars disagree as to the degree of culpability the papacy had for this. Curtin, for example, argues that Adrian's problems were mostly "of his own seeking", while Duggan, conversely, suggests that "no fair judgment should be reached without recognising the vulnerability" of the papacy itself. His policy, if he can be said to have one, she says, was shaped by events rather than shaping them. Ullmann argues that there was "a perfect concordance between Adrian's symbolic actions and his acts of government". Adrian and his pro-Scicillian cardinals, suggests Duggan, became scapegoats in 1159 for the subsequent conflict.
Sayers describes Adrian IV as "a true son of the reforming papacy". However, the Papal reform movement does not appear to have had faith that Adrian would carry out its program, as leading reformers of the day—such as Gerhoh of Reichersberg and Hildegard of Bingen, for example—sought the church's renewal other ways. Chris Wickham credits Adrian with beginning the process by which the popes expanded their Patrimony. Adrian brought Rome brought back under firm Papal control—with considerable success, argues Wickham, and also expanded the Papal estate around the city, particularly in the northern Lazio region.
Although his Papacy was shorter than either Eugenius III or Alexander III he bought more castles and lordships within papal jurisdiction than either of them, and in a more onerous political context. He was also a tougher pope than his two immediate predecessors, says Wickham and his was an "extremely formative" Papacy, says Sayers, and his policy of reform was a legacy taken up again by reforming popes of the 13th century. His Papacy though, suggests Eden, was "fraught with political intrigue and conflict". Adrian has been described as having "theocratic pretensions", although it was also during his pontificate that the term "Vicar of Christ" became a common synonym for the Pope.
Henry Summerson suggests that on his death, Adrian "left a high reputation", and quotes the "Dictionary of National Biography" in saying that he also became "something of a role model for later popes". The scholar Michael Frassetto suggests that blame for the poor relations between Adrian and Frederick can be placed as much upon their advisors—Roland and Reinald specifically—who both "stressed principle over compromise". Summerson also notes that although England provided no subsequent popes, relations between that country and the Papacy remained strong after Adrian's death and into the 13th century. Adrian's generous treatment of St Albans also had repercussions. He had granted it privileges of such breadth and grandeur—which were confirmed by his successors—that they caused rancour and jealousy in the English church.
Ullman suggests that it was Adrian who began the restoration of the Papal monarchy that would reach its apotheosis under Innocent III, while Bolton argues that "only Innocent, the great Roman, realised the value to the papacy of following where Adrian, the unique Englishman, had led". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23828 |
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