Sumela Monastery (, Moní Panagías Soumelá; ) is a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to Mary located at Karadağ (Greek: Sou Melá, meaning "Black Mountain") within the Pontic Mountains, in the Maçka district of Trabzon Province in modern Turkey.

Nestled in a steep cliff at an altitude of about  facing the Altındere valley, it is a site of great historical and cultural significance, as well as a major tourist attraction within Altındere National Park. Due to an increase in rock falls, on 22 September 2015 the monastery was closed to the public for safety reasons for the duration of one year to resolve the problem; this was later extended to three years. It reopened to tourists 25 May 2019. The monastery is one of the most important historic and touristic venues in Trabzon.

Etymology
Soumela comes from the Greek 'Sou Melá', meaning "of black (mountain)" (as in the dark/black mountain).

History
It is not known when the monastery was founded, but the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism places the date around AD 386, during the reign of the emperor Theodosius I (375–395). According to William Miller, two Athenian monks named Barnabas and Sophronios founded the monastery. It became famous for an icon of the Theotokos known as the Panagia Gorgoepekoos, said to have been painted by the Apostle Luke.

During its long history, the monastery fell into ruin several times and was restored by various emperors. During the 6th century, it was restored and enlarged by the Byzantine general Belisarius at the behest of emperor Justinian.

It reached its present form in the 13th century after gaining prominence during the existence of the Empire of Trebizond. While the emperors Basil and John II had endowed the monastery richly, it was during the reign of Alexios III (1349–1390) that Sumela received its most important largess: according to legend, the young Alexios was saved from a storm by the Theotokos, and was bidden by her to restore the monastery. A chrysobull dated to 1365 confirms the freedom and autonomy of the monastery, together with all of its hereditary lands and dependents; exempts them from all taxes, except for one biannual tax; and restores to it the serfs whom the tax-collectors of Matzouka had illegally taken from it, listing 40 of the serfs by name. At that time, the monastery was granted an amount annually from imperial funds. During the time of Manuel III, son of Alexios III, and during the reigns of subsequent princes, Sumela gained further wealth from imperial grants.

Following the conquest by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1461, it was granted the sultan's protection and given rights and privileges that were renewed by following sultans. The monastery remained a popular destination for monks and travelers through the years.

In 1682 and for the following decades, the monastery housed the Phrontisterion of Trapezous, a well-known Greek educational institution of the region.

Modern period
Until the Russian occupation of Trabzon (1916–1918), the Sumela Monastery was active and was visited by monks and Christian and Muslim pilgrimages. In 1923, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and after the National War of Liberation, an independent Turkish Republic was founded by Ataturk. After 1923, the Sumela Monastery was abandoned following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey as laid down in the Treaty of Lausanne. In 1930, those who migrated founded a new monastery which they named as the new Panagia Sumela Monastery on the slopes of Mount Vermion, near the village of Kastania near Veria, in Macedonia, Greece. Some treasures from the old Sumela Monastery were carried to the new one in Greece.

In 1930, the wooden parts of the Sumela Monastery were destroyed by fire and in the years following other parts of the monastery were damaged and pillaged by treasure hunters.

As of 25 May 2019 the Sumela Monastery is a museum open to visitors. Restoration work is funded by the Government of Turkey. As of 2012, the Turkish government is funding reconstruction work, and the monastery is enjoying a revival in pilgrimage from Greece, Georgia and Russia. The monastery's primary function is as a tourist attraction. It overlooks forests and streams, making it popular for its aesthetics as well as its cultural and religious significance.

On 15 August 2010, Orthodox divine liturgy was allowed to take place in the monastery compound.  A special pass issued by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is required to visit on August 15, the day of the Dormition of the Theotokos or Feast of the Assumption, when a divine liturgy is held. Only 450 to 500 visitors are allowed inside the monastery, although widescreen televisions are available to observe the event at a nearby cafe.

On 22 September 2015, the Monastery was closed to visitors for three years due to necessary restoration and field work. It reopened on May 18, 2019.

In 2022, video footage showed modern music and dancing at the site. Amid outcry on the internet that the historic monastery was turned into a dance club, an explanation was given that this was done to promote tourism.

Construction and buildings

The principal elements of the Monastery complex are the Rock Church, several chapels, kitchens, student rooms, a guesthouse, a library, and a sacred spring revered by Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The large aqueduct at the entrance, which supplied water to the Monastery, is constructed against the side of the cliff. The aqueduct has many arches which have mostly been restored. The entrance to the Monastery leads up a long and narrow stairway. There is a guard-room next to the entrance. The stairs lead down from there to the inner courtyard. On the left, in front of a cave, there are several monastery buildings. The cave, which was converted into a church, constitutes the center of the monastery. The library is to the right.

The large building with a balcony on the front part of the cliff was used for the monks' cells and for housing guests. It dates from 1840.

The inner and outer walls of the Rock Church and the walls of the adjacent chapel are decorated with frescoes. Frescoes dating from the era of Alexios III of Trebizond line the inner wall of the Rock Church facing the courtyard.  The frescoes of the chapel which were painted on three levels in three different periods are dated to the beginning of the 18th century. The frescoes of the bottom band are of superior quality.
The frescoes of the monastery are seriously damaged due to vandalism. The main subject of the frescoes are biblical scenes telling the story of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

During the 2015–2017 restoration works, a secret tunnel was discovered which lead to a place which is believed to have served as a temple or chapel for Christians. Also, unseen frescoes were discovered depicting heaven and hell as well as life and death.

Gallery

See also
Hagia Sophia, Trabzon
Mokissos

References

External links

Turkish Government's website
The History of the icon of Panagia Soumela

VR Photography Inside of Panagia Soumela
Greek Orthodox Liturgy in Turkey: Uncovering the Country's Non-Muslim Cultural Heritage
Photos of Sumela Monastery
Photographic survey of Sumela Monastery

Greek Orthodox monasteries in Turkey
Byzantine architecture in Trabzon
Archaeological sites in the Black Sea Region
Museums in Trabzon Province
Empire of Trebizond
386 establishments
Christian monasteries established in the 4th century
Buildings and structures in Trabzon Province
Religious museums in Turkey
Landmarks in Turkey
Ruined churches in Turkey
World Heritage Tentative List for Turkey
4th-century establishments in the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine monasteries in Turkey
Pontic Greek culture
Cliff dwellings

Sumela Monastery


Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese Madeira Islands, off the coast of Africa. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own, as an apéritif, to sweet wines usually consumed with dessert. Cheaper cooking versions are often flavoured with salt and pepper for use in cooking, but these are not fit for consumption as a beverage.

The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history, dating back to the Age of Exploration (approximately from the end of the 15th century) when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. On the long sea voyages, the wines would be exposed to excessive heat and movement which transformed the flavour of the wine. This was discovered by the wine producers of Madeira when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip.

Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves oxidizing the wine through heat and ageing. The younger blends (three and five years old) are produced with artificial methods that heat and accelerate the aging process and the older blends, colheitas and frasqueiras are produced by the canteiro method. Because of these methods of producing these wines are very long-lived and those produced by the canteiro method will survive for decades and even centuries, even after being opened. Wines that have been in barrels for many decades are often removed and stored in demijohns where they may remain unharmed indefinitely.

Some wines produced in small quantities in Crimea, California, and Texas are also referred to as "Madeira" or "Madera"; however, most countries conform to the EU PDO regulations and limit the use of the term Madeira or Madère to only those wines that come from the Madeira Islands.

History of Madeira

Development and success (15th – 18th centuries)

The roots of Madeira's wine industry date back to the Age of Exploration, when Madeira was a regular port of call for ships travelling to the East Indies. By the 16th century, records indicate that a well-established wine industry on the island supplied these ships with wine for the long voyages across the sea. The earliest examples of Madeira were unfortified and had the habit of spoiling at sea. However, following the example of Port, a small amount of distilled alcohol made from cane sugar was added to stabilize the wine by boosting the alcohol content (the modern process of fortification using brandy did not become widespread until the 18th century). The Dutch East India Company became a regular customer, picking up large (112 gal/423 L) casks of wine known as "pipes" for their voyages to India.

The intense heat in the holds of the ships had a transforming effect on the wine, as discovered by Madeira producers when one shipment was returned to the island after a long trip. The customer was found to prefer the taste of this style of wine, and Madeira labeled as vinho da roda (wines that have made a round trip) became very popular. Madeira producers found that aging the wine on long sea voyages was very costly, so they began to develop methods on the island to produce the same aged and heated style. They began storing the wines on trestles at the winery or in special rooms known as estufas, where the heat of the island sun would age the wine.

With the increase of commercial treaties with England such as the Marriage Treaty in 1662, important English merchants settled on the island and, ultimately, controlled the increasingly important island wine trade. The English traders settled in the Funchal as of the seventeenth century, consolidating the markets from North America, the West Indies and England itself. Notable brands include Cossart and Gordon founded in 1745 and Blandy's in 1811.

The eighteenth century was the "golden age" for Madeira. The wine's popularity extended from the American colonies and Brazil in the New World to Great Britain, Russia, and Northern Africa. The American colonies, in particular, were enthusiastic customers, consuming as much as 95% of all wine produced on the island each year.

Early American history (17th – 18th centuries)

Madeira was a very important wine in the history of the United States of America. No wine-quality grapes were grown among the thirteen colonies, so imports were needed, with a great focus on Madeira. One of the major events on the road to the American Revolution in which Madeira played a key role was the British seizure of John Hancock's sloop  on 9 May 1768. Hancock's boat was seized after he had unloaded a cargo of 25 pipes () of Madeira, and a dispute arose over import duties. The seizure of Liberty caused riots to erupt among the people of Boston.

Madeira was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, and it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams are also said to have appreciated the qualities of Madeira. The wine was mentioned in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. On one occasion, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, of the great quantities of Madeira he consumed while a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress. A bottle of Madeira was used by visiting Captain James Sever to christen  in 1797. Chief Justice John Marshall was also known to appreciate Madeira, as were his cohorts on the early U.S. Supreme Court. Madeira and walnuts were often served together as a last course at dinner parties in Washington in the early decades of the 1800s.

Modern era (19th century – present)
The mid-19th century ushered an end to the industry's prosperity. First came the 1851 discovery of powdery mildew, which severely reduced production over the next three years. Just as the industry was recovering through the use of the copper-based Bordeaux mixture fungicide, the phylloxera epidemic that had plagued France and other European wine regions reached the island. By the end of the 19th century, most of the island's vineyards had been uprooted, and many were converted to sugar cane production. The majority of the vineyards that did replant chose to use American vine varieties, such as Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris or hybrid grape varieties rather than replant with the Vitis vinifera varieties that were previously grown.

By the turn of the 20th century, sales started to slowly return to normal, until the industry was rocked again by the Russian Civil War and American Prohibition, which closed off two of Madeira's biggest markets. After the repeal of Prohibition, improved shipping technology meant that ships no longer needed to stop off in Madeira, the island which was directly in the trade winds between Europe and America. The wine became known as The Forgotten Island Wine. The rest of the 20th century saw a downturn for Madeira, both in sales and reputation, as low-quality "cooking wine" became primarily associated with the island—much as it had for Marsala.

In 1988, the Symington family of Portugal invested in the Madeira Wine Company which owned many of the Madeira brand names. They asked Bartholomew Broadbent to re-launch Madeira and create a market for it again in America, which he did in 1989, establishing a firm rebirth of Madeira.

Towards the end of the 20th century, some producers started a renewed focus on quality—ripping out the hybrid and American vines and replanting with the "noble grape" varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malvasia. The "workhorse" varieties of Tinta Negra Mole now known officially as just Tinta Negra, and Complexa are still present and in high use, but hybrid grapes were officially banned from wine production in 1979. Today, Madeira's primary markets are in the Benelux countries, France, where it is entirely used for cooking, salt and pepper having been added prior to bottling, and Germany; emerging markets are growing in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Viticulture

Climate and geography

The island of Madeira has an oceanic climate with some tropical influences. With high rainfall and average mean temperature of 66 °F (19 °C), the threats of fungal grape diseases and botrytis rot are constant viticultural hazards. To combat these threats, Madeira vineyards are often planted on low trellises, known as latada, that raise the canopy of the vine off the ground similar to a style used in the Vinho Verde region of Portugal. The terrain of the mountainous volcanic island is difficult to cultivate, so vineyards are planted on man-made terraces of red and brown basaltic bedrock. These terraces, known as poios, are very similar to the terraces of the Douro that make Port wine production possible. The use of mechanical harvesting and vineyard equipment is near impossible, making wine grape growing a costly endeavor on the island. Many vineyards have in the past been ripped up for commercial tourist developments or replanted with such products as bananas for commercial concerns. Some replanting is taking place on the island; however, the tourist trade is generally seen as a more lucrative business than wine-making. Most of the grapes, grown by around 2100 grape growers are from vines planted on small plots of land off of which the grape growers survive by making an income from a variety of different inter-grown crops.

Grape varieties

Approximately 85% of Madeira is produced with the red grape, Negra Mole. The four major white grape varieties used for Madeira production are (from sweetest to driest) Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho, and Sercial. These varieties also lend their names to Madeira labelling, as discussed below. Occasionally one sees Terrantez, Bastardo and Moscatel varieties, although these are now increasingly rare on the island because of oidium and phylloxera. After the phylloxera epidemic, many wines were "mislabelled" as containing one of these noble grape varieties, which were reinterpreted as "wine styles" rather than true varietal names. Since the epidemic, Tinta Negra (or Negra Mole) and Complexa are the workhorse varieties on the island and are found in various concentrations in many blends and vintage wines. Bastardo, Complexa, and Tinta Negra are red grape varieties.

Grown exclusively on the neighboring island of Porto Santo, which is also permitted under the appellation law to provide grapes for Madeira wine, are the varietals Listrão (Palomino Fino) and Caracol. Listrão Madeira was formerly made by a few companies such as Blandy's and Artur de Barros e Sousa, the latter being the last old producer to utilize the varietal when they closed their doors in 2013, but Madeira Vintners founded in that year subsequently restarted production of, and released in 2020, a 5-year-old Listrão Reserve Madeira. Caracol, an obscure grape believed to be unique to Porto Santo and only used for the local production of dry table wine in the past, was turned into fortified Madeira for the first time by Madeira Vintners, becoming the first new grape in over a century to be used for high-quality single-varietal Madeira wine. The company's stocks are still aging as of 2023 and no wine is on the market yet.

Regulations enacted recently by the European Union have applied the rule that 85% of the grapes in the wine must be of the variety on the label. Thus, wines from before the late 19th century (pre-phylloxera) and after the late 20th century conform to this rule. Many "varietally labelled" Madeiras, from most of the 20th century, do not. Modern Madeiras which do not carry a varietal label are generally made from Negra Mole.

Other varieties planted on the island, though not legally permitted for Madeira production, include Arnsburger, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the American hybrids Cunningham and Jacquet.

Winemaking

The initial winemaking steps of Madeira start out like most other wines: grapes are harvested, crushed, pressed, and then fermented in either stainless steel or oak casks. The grape varieties destined for sweeter wines – Bual and Malvasia – are often fermented on their skins to leach more phenols from the grapes to balance the sweetness of the wine. The more dry wines – made from Sercial, Verdelho, and Negra Mole – are separated from their skins prior to fermentation. Depending on the level of sweetness desired, fermentation of the wine is halted at some point by the addition of neutral grape spirits.

The younger wines (typically 3 and 5 years old) undergo the estufagem aging process to produce Madeira's distinctive flavor by artificial heating, whereas the wines destined for long aging are barrel-aged using only the naturally high temperatures of the barrel storage rooms (see canteiro process).

Colourings such as caramel colouring have been used in the past to give some consistency (see also whiskey), although this practice is decreasing.

The aging process
 What makes Madeira wine production unique is how the wines are aged in relatively high temperatures, meant to duplicate the effect of a long sea voyage on the aging barrels through tropical climates. Three main methods are used to heat the wine during aging. The two processes belong to the estufagem process (estufa means hothouse or stove in Portuguese), in which artificial heat is used to accelerate the aging process of the wines, whereas the canteiro process is used for the older and more expensive wines and employs only the natural heat of the barrel warehouses.

Estufagem processes:
 Armazém de Calor: Only used by the Madeira Wine Company, this method involves storing the wine in large wooden casks in a specially designed room outfitted with steam-producing tanks or pipes that heat the room, creating a type of sauna. This process more gently exposes the wine to heat and can last from six months to over a year.
 Cuba de Calor: The most common, used for low-cost Madeira, is bulk aging in low stainless steel or concrete tanks surrounded by either heat coils or piping that allow hot water to circulate around the container. The wine is heated to temperatures as high as 130 °F (55 °C) for a minimum of 90 days as regulated by the Madeira Wine Institute. However, the Madeira is most commonly heated to approximately 115 °F (46 °C)

Barrel-aging process:
 Canteiro: Used for the highest quality Madeiras, these wines are aged without the use of any artificial heat, being stored by the winery in warm rooms that are heated only by the warm climate of the Madeira island. In cases such as Frasqueira (vintage) Madeira, this heating process can last from 20 years to even more than 100 years. The term Canteiro comes from canteiros - the wooden staves that keep the barrels in their places. Canteiro process is used by all of the top Madeira brands, including Blandy's, Borges, Broadbent, d'Oliveiras and Justino's.

Much of the characteristic flavour of Madeira is due to this practice, which hastens the mellowing of the wine and also tends to check secondary fermentation in as much as it is, in effect, a mild kind of pasteurization. Furthermore, the wine is deliberately exposed to air, causing it to oxidize. The resulting wine has a colour similar to a tawny port wine. Wine tasters sometimes describe a wine that has been exposed to excessive heat during its storage as being cooked or maderized.

Styles

The noble varieties
The four major styles of Madeira are synonymous with the names of the four best-known white grapes used to produce the wine. Ranging from the sweetest style to the driest style, the Madeira types are:
 Malvasia (also known as Malvazia or Malmsey) has its fermentation halted when its sugars are between 3.5 and 6.5° Baumé (63-117 g/L). This style of wine is characterised by its dark colour, rich texture, and coffee-caramel flavours. Like other Madeiras made from noble grape varieties, the Malvasia grape used in Malmsey production has naturally high levels of acidity in the wine, which balances with the high sugar levels so the wines do not taste cloyingly sweet.
 Bual (also called Boal) has its fermentation halted when its sugars are between 2.5 and 3.5° Baumé (45-63 g/L). This style of wine is characterized by its dark colour, medium-rich texture, and raisin flavours.
 Verdelho has its fermentation halted a little earlier than Sercial, when its sugars are between 1.5 and 2.5° Baumé (27-45 g/L). This style of wine is characterized by smokey notes and high acidity.
 Sercial is nearly fermented completely dry, with very little residual sugar (0.5 to 1.5° on the Baumé scale, or 9-27 g/L). This style of wine is characterised by high-toned colours, almond flavours, and high acidity.
A fifth noble grape, Terrantez, almost became extinct on the island but has been making a comeback.  Its style ranges in sweetness from that of Verdelho to that of Bual, never being quite as dry as Sercial nor quite as sweet as Malvasia.

Other labelling

Wines made from at least 85% of the noble varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malvasia are usually labelled based on the amount of time they were aged:
 Colheita or Harvest – This style includes wines from a single vintage, but aged for a shorter period than true Vintage Madeira. The wine can be labelled with a vintage date but includes the word colheita on it. Colheita must be a minimum of five years of age before being bottled and may be bottled any time after that. Effectively, most wineries would drop the word Colheita once bottling a wine at over 19 years of age because it is entitled to be referred to as vintage once it is 20 years of age. At that point, the wine can command a higher price than if it were still to be bottled as Colheita. This differs from Colheita Port which is a minimum of seven years of age before bottling.
 Extra Reserve (over 15 years) – This style is rare to produce, with many producers extending the aging to 20 years for a vintage or producing a colheita. It is richer in style than a Special Reserve Madeira.
 Reserve (five years) – This is the minimum amount of aging a wine labelled with one of the noble varieties are permitted to have.
 Special Reserve (10 years) – At this point, the wines are often aged naturally without any artificial heat source.
 Vintage or Frasqueira – This style must be aged at least 19 years in a cask and one year in bottle, therefore cannot be sold until it is at least 20 years of age. The word vintage does not appear on bottles of vintage Madeira because, in Portugal, the word "Vintage" is a trademark belonging to the Port traders.

A wine labeled as Finest has been aged for at least three years. This style is usually reserved for cooking.

The terms pale, dark, full, and rich can also be included to describe the wine's colour.

Madeira produced from Negra Mole grapes used to be legally restricted to use generic terms on the label to indicate the level of sweetness as seco (dry), meio seco (medium dry), meio doce (medium sweet) and doce (sweet). However, in 2015 the Madeira Wine Institute announced that producers may officially recognise Tinta Negra on their front labels and that all "expressions" must state their bottling date.

Wines listed with Solera were made in a style similar to sherry, with a fractional blending of wines from different vintages in a solera system. The Solera method of blending is most widely practiced in the sherry production of Spain. However, the rules for Madeira soleras are different. When it comes to sherry, as wine is used for bottling, new wine is added to the barrels of older wine and this continuous addition of young wine to old would result in very little wine being from the original vintage. With Madeira, approximately 50% of a bottle would likely be from the stated year because they are only allowed to add up to 10%, not more than 10 times. Another interesting peculiarity of old solera Madeiras is that they were initially developed as a result of trying to extend the stocks of vintages when the vines had stopped being productive due to Phylloxera. Therefore, as there was no younger wine to add to the vintage, it was usually older wines that were added. In recent years, vintage Madeiras have been commanding higher prices than soleras, but, from 1966 (when Michael Broadbent started wine auctions at Christie's), until about the end of the 20th century, solera Madeiras always fetched a premium at auction over the vintage ones.

Rainwater
A style called "Rainwater" is one of the largest-selling styles of Madeira in the United States, most commonly drunk as an apéritif. Nowadays it is almost always an inexpensive medium-dry style of wine made entirely from Tinta Negra grapes, and aged for around three years including a period in an estufa, but Barbeito continues to produce a more expensive Rainwater in the old pre-phylloxera style by blending Sercial and Verdelho grapes.

Accounts conflict as to how this style was developed. The most common name derives from the vineyards on the steep hillsides, where irrigation was difficult, and the vines were dependent on the local rainwater for survival. Another theory involves a shipment destined for the American colonies that was accidentally diluted by rainwater while it sat on the docks in Savannah, Georgia, or Funchal. Rather than dump the wines, the merchants tried to pass it off as a "new style" of Madeira and were surprised at its popularity among the Americans. Another theory as to how Rainwater was named was when a gentleman in Savannah, Georgia tasted a Madeira and declared "this is as fine as Rainwater."

Characteristics

Exposure to extreme temperature and oxygen accounts for Madeira's stability; an opened bottle will survive unharmed indefinitely. As long as a cork is put into the top of the bottle to prevent the effects of evaporation, fruit flies, and dust, a vintage Madeira, once opened, can last for decades. Properly sealed in bottles, it is one of the longest-lasting wines; Madeiras have been known to survive over 200 years in excellent condition. It is not uncommon to see 150-year-old Madeiras for sale at stores that specialize in rare wine. Vintages dating back to 1780 are known to exist. The oldest bottle that has come onto the market is a 1715 Terrantez.

Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, Madeira wine was particularly prized in areas where it was impractical to construct wine cellars (as in parts of the southern United States) because, unlike many other fine wines, it could survive being stored over hot summers without significant damage. In the Americas, Madeira was traditionally stored in the warm attics of houses.

Uses
Popular uses include apéritifs (pre-meal) and digestifs (post-meal). In Britain it has traditionally been associated with Madeira cake.

Madeira is also used as a flavouring agent in cooking. Lower-quality Madeira wines may be flavored with salt and pepper to prevent their sale as Madeira wine, and then exported for cooking purposes. Madeira wine is commonly used in tournedos Rossini and sauce madère (Madeira sauce). Unflavored Madeira may also be used in cooking, such as the dessert dish "Plum in madeira".

See also
 Have Some Madeira M'Dear
 History of Portuguese wine
 List of Portuguese wine regions
 Marsala wine
 Port wine
 Sherry
 Terras Madeirenses VR, a Vinho Regional designation for simpler, non-fortified wines from Madeira

References

Further reading
 Hancock, David (2009). Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste. Yale University Press.
 Liddell, Alex (1998). Madeira. Faber & Faber.

External links

 'The Wine-Dark Sea', review of David Hancock's Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste in the Oxonian Review of Books
 Images related to Madeira wine
 Madeira Wine Guide by Dr. Wolf Peter Reutter
 Madeira Wine History

Wine regions of Portugal
Fortified wine

Madeira wine


A bell stone (also bellstone) is a rock that produces a bell-like sound when struck. A type of lithophone, bell stones are significant in ethnography and are typically identified through local written history and folklore in combination with physical archeological details such as cup-shaped depressions.

Instances

In the Andes
Bell stones are present in the Andes, and feature in one local creation myth involving God and Supay.

In Mexico
People in and around San Lucas Xolos in Tizayuca, Hidalgo, Mexico tell stories of "stones that sound like bells" which ring when struck with other stones. Some such stones exist at the site of the first Xolotl Chichimeca capital, located near the town. The stones are located in an outcropping of andesite at the top of the hill, which is represented in the Codex Xolotl.

In Norway
Rocks that ring when struck are mentioned in historical documents from Norway; about 10 have been identified. One such stone near Lom is mentioned in 18th-century documents as the most treasured item in the parish, and is still locally known as the "Bell Stone" or "Singing Stone".

In South Africa
An ironstone rock near the grave of Ntsikana in the Eastern Cape of South Africa is known as , literally "Ntsikana's bell". Local legend states that Ntsikana struck the rock to produce bell tones at dawn and dusk every day between 1815 and his 1822 death, and that it produced the notes with which he composed his hymns. In the 1980s, the rock was found to be capable of producing three notes in the first inversion of a triad.

In the United States

Hawaii
Various phonolite stones were created by volcanic activity on Oahu. These stones are known in the Hawaiian language as  or .

The Wailua Bellstone, located near the Poliahu Heiau at the Wailua Complex of Heiaus and made of reddish basalt, produces a hollow bell-like sound when struck with a cobble. It was used to announce important events including the births of aliʻi and the approach of religious or royal processions.

Pennsylvania
A hill known as the Klingelberg or "Ringing Hill" near Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania was reported in 1945 to be covered with rock fragments which produced bell-like tones when struck with another stone. The report compared them to "the bell stone mentioned by Linnaeus in the Westgothische Reise".

Puerto Rico
A stone known as the  ("Bell Stone") in the Río Grande de Loíza near Gurabo, Puerto Rico stands on top of two other stones and is said to have been used as a bell by the indigenous people.

In Uruguay
Seams of diabase in southwestern Uruguay have produced some stones that vibrate with a bell-like tone when struck. Two large boulders of this material are located three meters apart in a forested area near the Arroyo de la Virgen; the smaller one produces two distinct tones separated by a minor third. Little is known about the possible use of the stones by the indigenous people of Uruguay.

See also
Rock gong

References

Lithophones
Ethnomusicology
Rocks
Rocks in religion

Bell stone


Hayk (Armenian:Հայկ, also known as Haik),  in Armenian legend, was the founder of the Armenian nation. His story is found mostly in the 5th century historian Moses Khorenatsi's book History of Armenia.

History
According to Moses Khorenatsi, Hayk is the son of Torgom (Togarmah), the son of Gomer, the son of Japheth. Hayk is also called the founder of the Haykazuni dynasty. According to the historian Juansher, Hayk "was prince of the seven brothers and stood in service to the giant Nimrod (Nebrovt') who first ruled the entire world as king.<ref>[http://rbedrosian.com/gc2.htm The Georgian Chronicle]</ref>"

Hayk is also the name of the constellation Orion in the Armenian Bible (Job 38:31)

According to Moses Khorenatsi, after Hayk the son of Torgom became father to Armeneak while living in Babylon, because the arrogant Titan Bel (who is Nimrod, according to Moses) has made himself king of the world, Hayk moves with his family and 300 others to the land of Ararat, and starts a village called Haykashen. On the way, he leaves one area for his grandson, Cadmus. Bel sends one of his sons to give Hayk a message, saying that he must return to Babylon, but Hayk answers that he will not. Then Bel marches against him with a great army, but Cadmus warns Hayk that he is coming. Hayk gathers his own army on the shore of Lake Van and tells them they must either defeat Bel or die trying, so they will not become his slaves.

After that, he finds Bel's army on a mountain. Moses says this mountain is found at Dastakert. Bel himself is seen in front of his army. In the middle of the battle, Hayk kills Bel with a lucky arrow and Bel's army becomes confused and defeated.

According to other writers, this battle was fought at Dyutsaznamart around Julamerk, southeast of Lake Van, in the year 2501 BC. Hayk builds a castle called Haykaberd'' and the village of Haykashen. He names the country where the battle was fought "Hayk" after himself, and today the name of Armenia is called "Hayastan" and the Armenian people are called "Hay", in their language. Also, in the ancient writings of the Hittites, there was a country called Hayasa in the area.

Sources

Vahan Kurkjian, "History of Armenia," Michigan, 1968

History of Armenia

Hayk


John Louis Engdahl (November 11, 1884 – November 21, 1932) was an American socialist journalist and newspaper editor. One of the leading journalists of the Socialist Party of America, Engdahl joined the Communist movement in 1921 and continued to employ his talents in that organization as the first editor of The Daily Worker. Engdahl was also a key leader of the International Red Aid (MOPR) organization based in Moscow, where he died in 1932.

Biography

Early years
The son of Swedish Lutheran immigrants, J. Louis Engdahl (who went by his middle name, "Louis") was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 11, 1884. Engdahl was intelligent and well educated, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1907, having paid his way through school by working as a telegraph operator and as City Editor of the Minneapolis Daily News.

Political career
Engdahl was a member of the Socialist Party from 1908. In 1909, he took a position as the Labor Editor of the Chicago Daily Socialist, assuming the mantle of Editor of that publication from 1910 until its termination in 1912.

Engdahl attended the Copenhagen Congress of the Socialist International in 1910 as a journalist on behalf of the Scandinavian Socialist Federation. He joined the Socialist Party of America in September 1912. Despite his traveling to Europe for the Scandinavian Federation, it does not seem that Engdahl ever directly participated in language federation politics in any way.

Louis Engdahl was a Socialist candidate for US Congress from Illinois in 1916; for the Chicago City Council in 1917; again for Congress in the Illinois 7th C.D. in 1918. He also was on the Organizing Committee of the Communist Propaganda League of Chicago from its origin in 1918 until its demise in 1919.

In 1914, Engdahl assumed the position of Editor of The American Socialist, the Chicago-based official organ of the SPA. He continued to edit this newspaper each week until it was suppressed by postal authorities in 1917. Thereafter, he moved to the successor weekly publication, The Eye Opener, which he continued to edit until 1919.

In February 1918, Engdahl's aggressive antimilitarism caused him to run afoul of the US Department of Justice, who targeted him as editor of the Socialist Party's weekly newspaper under the Espionage Act for undermining the American military conscription program. Along with his party comrades Adolph Germer, Victor L. Berger, Bill Kruse, and Irwin St. John Tucker, Engdahl was indicted by a grand jury. The quintet was brought to trial before the harsh Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis on December 6, 1918 (that is, after the war had ended), with the trial ending during the first week of January 1919. The jury found all five guilty as charged, and Judge Landis imposed a draconian sentence of 20 years in the Federal Penitentiary upon each. This sentence was later overturned on appeal for the reason of judicial bias.

Out pending appeal on $25,000 bond, Engdahl was a delegate from Illinois to the seminal 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party, refusing to either support Adolph Germer, James Oneal, and the party regulars or to bolt the convention to join either of the fledgling Communist organizations — the Communist Labor Party of America or the Communist Party of America. Instead, Engdahl remained in the Socialist Party as a leader of the Left Wing faction, which congealed as the Committee for the Third International in 1920. Engdahl served as Secretary of this faction until it departed the party in the aftermath of the 1921 Convention.

From 1920 until July 1921, Engdahl served as editor of the Chicago Socialist, publication of Local Cook County of the SPA, until he was finally removed for political reasons. He was also the Secretary of Local Cook County SPA until his resignation on July 21, 1921.

After the disappointment of the 1921 Convention of the SPA, the Committee for the Third International left the party to mark the world with a short-lived existence as part of the Workers Council group — a small group of Communist adherents who sought to turn their backs on the sectarian infighting of the underground Communist parties. This pro-Comintern/anti-underground position proved to be timely, as in December 1921, at the Comintern's request, a "Legal Political Party" called the Workers Party of America (WPA) was established at a convention in New York. The Workers Council group was absorbed into the WPA at this time. He was elected to the 7 member "Administrative Council" of the WPA on Oct. 10, 1921. He stood as the WPA's candidate for Congress in the New York 12th C.D. in 1922. In January 1923 he was elected by the 2nd Convention of the WPA to the party's Central Executive Committee and sat on the inner circle of this group called the Executive Council.

Engdahl was employed as Managing Editor of the WPA's organ, The Worker, from 1922. When that paper moved to daily status in January 1924, Engdahl wore the hat of Editor of The Daily Worker, although as an adherent of the minority Pepper-Ruthenberg-Lovestone faction, he was saddled with a co-editor from the majority Foster-Cannon-Lore faction in February. He continued as an Editor at The Daily Worker until 1928.

In his 1952 memoir, Whittaker Chambers described him thus:  The paper's nominal editor was J. Louis Engdahl, a Communist in his late forties or fifties, who seldom paid any attention to what was going on, for, at the time, he was a prey to both political and emotional stresses of great intensity. He sat at the front of the office, at one of the two windows, usually staring fixedly out. At long intervals, he would beat out a page or two of copy, which was dull but at least intelligible. Engdahl himself was not. If you asked him a simple question, he would turn away and stare out the window. When you had about decided that he had forgotten you, he would turn around and fix you with his big round lenses that magnified his eyes to a slightly mad expression. Then he would grunt. Sometimes he mumbled a few words, scarcely audible . I do not remember hearing him utter five coherent sentences.    In his prime, he had been a Socialist in Wisconsin. He was now a follower of Jay Lovestone and had received the editorship of the Daily Worker as a prize in some factional deal. He felt that he was slipping. He also lived in terror of the telephone, for that seemed to be his wife's preferred way of reaching him, and he did not wish to be reached. When it rang, he would stare at it gloomily, then have someone else answer it. We always knew who was calling when we heard: "Comrade Engdahl is out of the office. No, I don't think he will be back."

In February 1925, Engdahl was a candidate of the Workers (Communist) Party for Chicago City Alderman. He was the candidate of the W(C)P for Governor of Illinois in the fall of 1926.

From May 1927 through February 1928, Engdahl was a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, representing the Workers (Communist) Party of America. Engdahl remained in Moscow as the representative of the American Communist Party to ECCI until late in December 1928, when he was replaced by Bertram D. Wolfe.

In July 1929, Engdahl was appointed by the CEC of the Communist Party as National Secretary of International Labor Defense (ILD), the party's legal aid arm.. He was named to the Polburo of the Communist Party in 1930 and was the party's delegate to the Comintern in Moscow in that same year. In 1930, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York with William Z. Foster on the Communist ticket. He was also a member and later Chairman of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee, as well as a member of the Presidium of International Red Aid (MOPR) — the international umbrella organization of the ILD.

Death and legacy
In Moscow on MOPR business, Engdahl died of pneumonia at the age of 48 on November 21, 1932. He was buried on November 23 following a service attended by many prominent communists including future East German president Wilhelm Pieck.

Despite the fairly vast number of words he wrote throughout his career as a journalist, Louis Engdahl did not write any books and only a handful of pamphlets, including Debs and O'Hare in Prison (1919); The Tenth Year (1927); Gastonia: A Class Case and a Class Verdict (1929) and Sedition! (1930). He was also the subject of two pamphlets published by the Communist Party in 1932 and 1935, respectively.

Engdahl's papers are housed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

See also
1924 United States Senate election in Illinois
1926 United States Senate election in Illinois

References

Works

Books and pamphlets

Trade Unions and the Present Social Crisis. Chicago: National Office, Socialist Party,  1919.
Debs and O'Hare in Prison. Chicago: Literature Dept., Socialist Party,  1919.
100 Years — For What? Being the Addresses of Victor L. Berger, Adolph Germer, J. Louis Engdahl, William F. Kruse and Irwin St. John Tucker to the Court that Sentenced Them to Serve 100 years in Prison.  Chicago: National Office, Socialist Party,  1919.
The Tenth Year: The Story of the Rise and Achievements of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, November 7, 1917, to November 7, 1927.  New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1927.
Gastonia: A Class Case and a Class Verdict. New York:  International Labor Defense, 1929.
International Labor Defense. New York:  International Labor Defense, 1929.
Sedition!: To Protest and Organize Against War, Hunger and Unemployment. New York:  International Labor Defense, 1930.

Articles
 "The War Censor Arrives in America," The American Socialist, v. 2, no. 19, whole no. 159 (November 20, 1915), pg. 1.
 "Party Demands Capitalists Pay Expenses of Conflict," Milwaukee Leader, vol. 6, no. 109 (April 14, 1917), pp. 1, 12.
 "Rose Pastor Stokes Asks Privilege to Return to Socialist Party Ranks," The Eye Opener, v. 9, no. 26 (January 19, 1918), pg. 4.
 "Food Kaisers," Organizational Leaflet No. 15. Chicago: National Office of the Socialist Party of America, March 1918.
 "C.E. Ruthenberg Hurried from Canton Work House To Testify in Debs' Free Speech Trial," Milwaukee Leader, vol. 7, no. 235 (September 11, 1918), pp. 1–2.
 "Debs in Prison," in Debs and O'Hare in Prison. Chicago: National Office, Socialist Party, n.d. [1919]; pp. 11–23.
 "The Chicago Socialist Trial," in The American Labor Year Book, 1919-20. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1919.
 "A Reply to Debs," The Worker, vol. 5, whole no. 237 (August 26, 1922), pg. 2.
 "Capitalism's Howling Jackals Are Heralds of the New Day," The Worker, vol. 6, whole no. 269 (April 7, 1923), pg. 3.
 "An Open Letter to David Karsner," The Worker, vol. 6, whole no. 271 (April 21, 1923), pg. 6.
 "Romance in Journalism: From The Chicago Daily Socialist to The Daily Worker, The Liberator, whole no.  66, October 1923, pp. 16–17.

Further reading

 Elizabeth Lawson, Scottsboro's Martyr: J. Louis Engdahl. New York: International Labor Defense,  n.d. [1933].
 Harriet Silverman, J. Louis Engdahl: Revolutionary Working Class Leader New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1935.

External links
 Finding Aid for the J. Louis Engdahl Papers, Labadie Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan. Retrieved February 25, 2010.

1884 births
1932 deaths
University of Minnesota alumni
Writers from Minneapolis
American people of Swedish descent
Socialist Party of America politicians from Illinois
Members of the Communist Party USA
American socialists
American Marxists
American newspaper editors
People acquitted under the Espionage Act of 1917
Minnesota socialists
Deaths from pneumonia in the Soviet Union
Deaths from pneumonia in Russia

J. Louis Engdahl


Water treatment is treating water to make it suitable to be used.  Providing drinking water is one of the main uses of water treatment.

Many factories also need very clean water to make steam or to make high quality products. Some of this water has to be made very pure with almost no other chemicals dissolved in it.

Treating sewage so that it does not cause harm to the environment is another kind of water treatment.

Saline water can be treated by desalination to yield fresh water. Two main processes are used, reverse osmosis or distillation.  Both methods require more energy than water treatment of local surface waters, and are rarely used where good fresh water is available.

Methods

 Filtration - The clear water on top passes through filters composed of sand, gravel and charcoal to remove dissolved particles such as dust, parasites, bacteria, viruses and chemicals.
 Disinfection - Chlorine or chloramine is added to kill parasites, bacteria, viruses and germs.
 Coagulation / Flocculation. Coagulation is adding liquid aluminum sulfate or alum and/or polymer to raw or untreated water.

 Sedimentation. When water and flocs undergo the treatment process, they go into sedimentation basins.
 Filtration.
 Disinfection.
 Sludge Drying.
 Fluoridation.
 pH Correction.

References

Water infrastructure

Water treatment


Rincewind is a fictional character created by Terry Pratchett for his Discworld series. He is the protagonist of the early books.

The Colour of Magic
In the first Discworld book, The Colour of Magic, Rincewind was once a student at a magic university. He was very bad at being a wizard. His friends dared him to look in a dangerous forbidden spellbook called The Octavo. When Rincewind looked in the book, one of its eight spells jumped into his head. Because of this,he could never learn any new spells. It also made him forget all the spells he already knew. After this, Rincewind was banished from Unseen University. He started to earn money as a translator. He pretended to be a wizard who became a tour guide for Twoflower, the deuteragonist of the book.

The Light Fantastic
In the sequel The Light Fantastic, Rincewind has to stop an evil wizard named Trymon and save the Discworld from being destroyed.

Mort
Rincewind is in the book Mort but is not an important character.

Sourcery
Rincewind is the protagonist of the book Sourcery. In the book, he teams up with a warrior woman and a man who has no idea how to be a hero. They join together to stop the Discworld from being destroyed.

Eric
In the book, Eric which is a parody of Faust, Eric tries to raise a demon from Hell but gets Rincewind instead.

Interesting Times
In the book Interesting Times, Rincewind meets Twoflower again. Rincewind accidentally gets involved in a revolution on Twoflower's home continent.

The Last Continent
In the book The Last Continent, Rincewind accidentally ends up in the Discworld version of Australia while the other wizards are looking for him.

The Last Hero
In the novel, The Last Hero, Rincewind and Carrot are the characters who try to keep Cohen the Barbarian from giving fire back to the gods to keep the world from ending.

Unseen Academicals
In the book Unseen Academicals, Rincewind is a minor character, He is on the Unseen University soccer team.

Raising Steam
In the book Raising Steam, the second to last Discworld book, Rincewind is in a footnote.

Characters in written fiction

Rincewind


The Youth of Moses or The Trials of Moses is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli and his workshop, executed in 1481–1482 in the Sistine Chapel, Rome (modern-day Italy).

History

On 27 October 1480, Botticelli, together with other Florentine painters, left for Rome where he had been called as part of the reconciliation project between Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence, and Pope Sixtus IV. The Florentines started to work in the Sistine Chapel as early as the Spring of 1481, along with Pietro Perugino, who was already there.

The theme of the decoration was a parallel between the Stories of Moses and those of Christ, as a sign of continuity between the Old and the New Testament – a continuity also between the divine law of the Tables and the message of Jesus, who, in turn, chose Peter (the first alleged bishop of Rome) as his successor: this would finally result in a legitimation of the latter's successors, the popes of Rome.

Botticelli, helped by numerous assistants, painted three scenes. On 17 February 1482 his contract was renovated, including the other scenes to complete the chapel's decoration. However, on 20 February his father died: he returned to Florence, where he remained.

Description

The fresco shows several episodes of Moses' youth, taken from Exodus. It parallels the fresco on the opposite wall, also by Botticelli, which depicts the Temptations of Jesus. The frieze has the inscription  TEMPTATIO MOISI LEGIS SCRIPTAE LATORIS.

On the right is Moses killing the Egyptian who had harassed a Hebrew, and fleeing to the desert (a parallel with the episode of Jesus defeating the Devil). In the next episode Moses fights the shepherds who were preventing Jethro's daughters (including his future wife, Zipporah) to water their cattle at the pit, and then takes the water for them. In the third scene, in the upper left corner, Moses removes his shoes and then receives from God the task to return to Egypt and free his people. Finally, in the lower left corner, he drives the Jews to the Promised Land.

Moses is always distinguishable in the scenes by his yellow dress and the green cloak.

See also
 List of works by Sandro Botticelli

Sources

External links

1480s paintings
Paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Sistine Chapel wall frescoes
Paintings depicting Moses
Sheep in art

Youth of Moses


Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a
race, and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black nationalist activism revolves around the social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist their cultural assimilation into white culture (through integration or otherwise), and maintain a distinct black identity.

Black nationalists often promote black separatism, which posits the belief that black people should form territorially and politically separate nation-states. Without achieving this goal, some black separatists employ a "nation within a nation" approach, advocating various degrees of localized separation, which may be a response to several centuries of various forms of structural and cultural subjugation in many nation-states. Pan-African black nationalists variously advocate for continental African unity (aiming to eventually transition away from racial nationalism) or cultural unity among the African diaspora, which entails either a return to African or a sustained connection between Africa and American black nations. Rejecting black separatism, some US-based black nationalists conceive the black nation in cultural terms as part of American pluralism.

Some black nationalists promote black supremacy, which envisions black superiority over other racial groups. Black nationalists often reject the term and comparisons with white supremacists, characterizing their movement as an anti-racist reaction to white supremacy and colorblind white liberalism as racist. According to the American civil rights advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC):

The movement arose within the African American community in the United States. In the early 20th century, Garveyism, which was promoted by the U.S.-based Marcus Garvey, furthered black nationalist ideas. Black nationalist ideas also proved to be an influence on the Black Islam movement, particularly on groups like the Nation of Islam, which was founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad. During the 1960s, black nationalism influenced the Black Panther Party and the broader Black Power movement.

History

Early history
Martin Delany (1812–1885), an African American abolitionist, was arguably the first proponent of black nationalism. Delany is credited with the Pan-African slogan of "Africa for Africans."

Inspired by the success of the Haitian Revolution, the origins of black and indigenous African nationalism in political thought lie in the 19th and early 20th centuries with people such as Marcus Garvey, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, Henry McNeal Turner, Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Paul Cuffe, and others. The repatriation of African-American slaves to Liberia or Sierra Leone was a common black nationalist theme in the 19th century. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1910s and 1920s was the most powerful black nationalist movement to date, claiming millions of members. Garvey's movement was opposed by mainline black leaders, and crushed by government action. However, its many alumni remembered its inspiring rhetoric.

According to Wilson Jeremiah Moses, black nationalism as a philosophy can be examined from three different periods, giving rise to various ideological perspectives for what we can today consider black nationalism.

The first period of pre-classical black nationalism began when the first Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves through the American Revolutionary period.

The second period of black nationalism began after the Revolutionary War. This period refers to the time when a sizeable number of educated Africans within the colonies (specifically within New England and Pennsylvania) had become disgusted with the social conditions that arose out of the Enlightenment's ideas. From this way of thinking came the rise of individuals within the black community who sought to create organizations that would unite black people. The intention of these organizations was to group black people together so they could voice their concerns, and help their own community advance itself. This form of thinking can be found in historical personalities such as; Prince Hall, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, James Forten, Cyrus Bustill, William Gray through their need to become founders of certain organizations such as African Masonic lodges, the Free African Society, and Church Institutions such as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. These institutions served as early foundations to developing independent and separate organizations for their own people. The goal was to create groups to include those who so many times had been excluded from exclusively white communities and government-funded organizations.

The third period of black nationalism arose during the post-Reconstruction era, particularly among various African-American clergy circles. Separated circles were already established and accepted because African-Americans had long endured the oppression of slavery and Jim Crowism in the United States since its inception. The clerical phenomenon led to the birth of a modern form of black nationalism that stressed the need to separate blacks from non-blacks and build separate communities that would promote racial pride and collectivize resources. The new ideology became the philosophy of groups like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam. By 1930, Wallace Fard Muhammad had founded the Nation of Islam. His method to spread information about the Nation of Islam used unconventional tactics to recruit individuals in Detroit, Michigan. Later on, Elijah Muhammad would lead the Nation of Islam and become a mentor to people like Malcolm X. Although the 1960s brought a period of heightened religious, cultural and political nationalism, it was black nationalism that would lead the promotion of Afrocentrism.

Prince Hall
Prince Hall was an important social leader of Boston following the Revolutionary War. He is well known for his contribution as the founder of Black Freemasonry. His life and past are unclear, but he is believed to have been a former slave freed after twenty one years of enslavement. In 1775, Hall and fifteen other black men joined a freemason lodge of British soldiers. After the departure of the soldiers, they created their own lodge, African Lodge #1, and were granted full stature in 1784. Despite their stature other white freemason lodges in America did not treat them equal and so Hall began to help other black Masonic lodges across the country to help their own cause - to progress as a community together despite any difficulties brought to them by racists. Hall was best recognized for his contribution to the black community along with his petitions (many denied) in the name of black nationalism. In 1787 he unsuccessfully petitioned to the Massachusetts legislature to send blacks back to Africa (to obtain "complete" freedom from white supremacy). In 1788, Hall was a well known contributor to the passing of the legislation of the outlawing of the slave-trade and those involved. Hall continued his efforts to help his community, and in 1796 his petition for Boston to approve funding for black schools. Hall and other Black Bostonians wanted separate schools to distance themselves from White supremacy and create well-educated Black citizens. Despite the city's inability to provide a building, Hall lent his building for the school to run from. Until his death in 1807, Hall continued to work for black rights in issues of abolition, civil rights and the advancement of the community overall.

Free African Society

In 1787 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, black ministers of Pennsylvania, formed the Free African Society of Pennsylvania. The goal of this organization was to create a church that was free of restrictions of only one form of religion, and to pave the way for the creation of a house of worship exclusive to their community. They were successful in doing this when they created the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in 1793. The community included many members who were notably abolitionist men and former slaves. Allen, following his own beliefs that worship should be out loud and outspoken, left the organization two years later. He later received an opportunity to become the pastor of the church, but rejected the offer, leaving it to Jones. The society itself was a memorable charitable organization that allowed its members to socialize and network with other business partners, in an attempt to better their community. Its activity and open doors served as a motivational growth for the city, inspiring many other black mutual aid societies in the city to pop up. Additionally the society is well known for their aid during the yellow fever epidemic in 1793.

African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia

The African Church or the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1792 for those of African descent, as a foster church for the community with the goal to be interdenominational. In the beginning of the church's establishment its masses were held in homes and local schools. One of the founders of the Free African Society was also the first Episcopal priest of African American descent, Absalom Jones. The original church house was constructed at 5th and Adelphi Streets in Philadelphia, now St. James Place, and it was dedicated on July 17, 1794; other locations of the church included: 12th Street near Walnut, 57th and Pearl Streets, 52nd and Parrish Streets, and the current location, Overbrook and Lancaster Avenue in Philadelphia's historic Overbrook Farms neighborhood. The church is mostly African-American. The church and its members have played a key role in the abolition/anti-slavery and equal rights movement of the 1800s.

"Since 1960 St. Thomas has been involved in the local and national civil rights movement through its work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Union of Black Episcopalians, the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), Philadelphia Interfaith Action, and The Episcopal Church Women. Most importantly, it has been in the forefront of the movement to uphold the knowledge and value of the black presence in the Episcopal Church. Today, that tradition continues with a still-growing membership through a host of ministries such as Christian Formation, the Chancel Choir, Gospel Choir, Jazz Ensemble, Men's Fellowship, Young Adult and Youth Ministries, a Church School, Health Ministry, Caring Ministry, and a Shepherding Program."

20th century

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey encouraged African people around the world to be proud of their race and see beauty in their own kind. This form of black nationalism later became known as Garveyism. A central idea to Garveyism was that African people in every part of the world were one people and they would never advance if they did not put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and unite under their own shared history. He was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Booker T. Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner. Garvey used his own personal magnetism and the understanding of black psychology and the psychology of confrontation to create a movement that challenged bourgeois blacks for the minds and souls of African Americans. Marcus Garvey's return to America had to do with his desire to meet with the man who inspired him most, Booker T. Washington, however Garvey did not return in time to meet Washington. Despite this, Garvey moved forward with his efforts and two years later, a year after Washington's death, Garvey established a similar organization in America known as the United Negro Improvement Association otherwise known as the UNIA. Garvey's beliefs are articulated in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey as well as Message To The People: The Course of African Philosophy.

Nation of Islam

Wallace D. Fard founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s. Fard took as his student Elijah (Poole) Muhammad, who later became the leader of the organization. The basis of the group was the belief that Christianity was exclusively a white man's religion forced on black people during slavery, preaching that Islam is the original religion of black people. Deviating from mainstream Islam, Elijah Muhammad taught that Fard was a Messiah and that he himself was sent by God to prepare black people for global supremacy and destruction of "the white devil". The Nation of Islam promoted economic self-sufficiency for black people, seeking to establish a separate black nation in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

The members of the Nation of Islam are known as Black Muslims. As the group became more and more prominent with public figures such as Malcolm X as its orators, it received increasing attention from outsiders. In 1959 the group was the subject of a documentary named The Hate that Hate Produced, drawing negative media attention. When Elijah Muhammad died, his son Warith succeeded him as the organization's leader. Influenced by Malcolm X's departure, he converted the Nation of Islam to orthodox Sunni Islam, renaming the organization as the World Community of al-Islam in the West and later the American Muslim Mission, eventually abandoning black nationalism and the Fard's cult of personality. In 1985, Mohammed formally resigned and dissolved the American Muslim Mission, leading his followers into mainstream Muslim organizations. Several former members of the Nation of Islam, including Silias Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad's brother John Muhammad, rejected the conversion to orthodoxy, forming two new organizations that retained the Nation of Islam's original name and teachings of Elijah Muhammad.

Succeeding Malcolm X as leader of the New York Temple, Louis Farrakhan became the Nation of Islam's most prominent spokesperson, founding a third Nation of Islam in 1978. Beginning his organization with thousands of adherents, Farrakhan re-established its national prominence, eventually purchasing Elijah Muhammad's former mosque in Chicago to refurbish it as the organization's headquarters. Farrakhan expanded the organization internationally, opening chapters in England, France, Ghana, and the Caribbean islands, cultivating relations with foreign Muslim countries, and establishing a relationship with Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. He bolstered his prominence by supporting Jesse Jackson's 1988 US presidential campaign, sponsoring the Million Man March in 1995, and promoting social reform in African-American communities. After a near-death experience in 2000, Farrakhan sought to strengthen relationships with other US racial minority groups and Warith Muhammed, eventually reducing his role within the Nation of Islam and embracing Dianetics, a practice of Scientology.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) classifies the Nation of Islam as a hate group, stating: "Its theology of innate black superiority over whites and the deeply racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric of its leaders have earned the NOI a prominent position in the ranks of organized hate."

Malcolm X
Between 1953 and 1964, while most African leaders worked in the civil rights movement to integrate African-American people into mainstream American life, Malcolm X was an avid advocate of black independence and the reclaiming of black pride and masculinity. He maintained that there was hypocrisy in the purported values of Western culture – from its Judeo-Christian religious traditions to American political and economic institutions – and its inherently racist actions. He maintained that separatism and control of politics, and economics within its own community would serve blacks better than the tactics of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and mainstream civil rights groups such as the SCLC, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE. Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool", and that to achieve anything, African Americans would have to reclaim their national identity, embrace the rights covered by the Second Amendment, and defend themselves from white hegemony and extrajudicial violence. In response to Rev. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Malcolm X quipped, "While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare."

Prior to his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X believed that African Americans must develop their own society and ethical values, including the self-help, community-based enterprises, that the black Muslims supported. He also thought that African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with whites until they could achieve internal cooperation and unity. He prophetically believed that there "would be bloodshed" if the racism problem in America remained ignored, and he renounced "compromise" with whites. In April 1964, Malcolm X participated in a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca); Malcolm found himself restructuring his views and recanted several extremist opinions during his shift to mainstream Islam.Malcolm X returned from Mecca with moderate views that included an abandonment of his commitment to racial separatism. However, he still supported black nationalism and advocated that African Americans in the United States act proactively in their campaign for equal human rights, instead of relying on Caucasian citizens to change the laws that govern society. The tenets of Malcolm X's new philosophy are articulated in the charter of his Organization of Afro-American Unity (a secular Pan-Africanist group patterned after the Organization of African Unity), and he inspired some aspects of the future Black Panther movement.

In 1965, Malcolm X expressed reservations about black nationalism, saying, "I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary. So I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as black nationalism? And if you notice, I haven't been using the expression for several months."

Stokely Carmichael

In the 1967 Black Power, Stokely Carmichael introduces black nationalism. He illustrates the prosperity of the black race in the United States as being dependent on the implementation of black sovereignty. Under his theory, black nationalism in the United States would allow Blacks to socially, economically and politically be empowered in a manner that has never been plausible in American history. A Black nation would work to reverse the exploitation of the Black race in America, as Blacks would intrinsically work to benefit their own state of affairs. African Americans would function in an environment of running their own businesses, banks, government, media, and so on. Black nationalism is the opposite of integration, and Carmichael contended integration is harmful to the black population. As blacks integrate to white communities they are perpetuating a system in which blacks are inferior to whites. Blacks would continue to function in an environment of being second class citizens, he believes, never reaching equity to white citizens. Carmichael therefore uses the concept of black nationalism to promote an equality that would begin to dismantle institutional racism.

Frantz Fanon
While in France, Frantz Fanon wrote his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, an analysis of the impact of colonial subjugation on the African psyche. This book was a very personal account of Fanon's experience being black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education. Although Fanon wrote the book while still in France, most of his other work was written while in North Africa (in particular Algeria). It was during this time that he produced The Wretched of the Earth where Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for decolonization. In this work, Fanon expounded his views on the liberating role of violence for the colonized, as well as the general necessity of violence in the anti-colonial struggle. Both books established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World as one of the leading anti-colonial thinkers of the 20th century. In 1959 he compiled his essays on Algeria in a book called L'An Cinq: De la Révolution Algérienne.

21st century
According to the SPLC, black nationalist groups face a "categorically different" environment than white hate groups in the United States; while white supremacy has been championed by influential figures within the Donald Trump administration, black nationalists have "little or no impact on mainstream politics and no defenders in high office".

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, has called for racial reparations in the form of "financial restitution, land redistribution, political self-determination, culturally relevant education programs, language recuperation, and the right to return (or repatriation)" and cited Frantz Fanon's work for "understanding the current global context for Black individuals on the African continent and in our multiple diasporas."

The Not Fucking Around Coalition (NFAC) is a black nationalist organization in the United States. The group advocates for black liberation and separatism. It has been described by news outlets as a "Black militia". The NFAC gained prominence during the 2020–2021 United States racial unrest, making its first reported appearance at a May 12, 2020, protest near Brunswick, Georgia, over the February murder of Ahmaud Arbery, though they were identified by local media as "Black Panthers". Thomas Mockaitis, professor of history at DePaul University noted that  "In one sense it (NFAC) echoes the Black Panthers but they are more heavily armed and more disciplined... So far, they've coordinated with police and avoided engaging with violence."

John Fitzgerald Johnson, also known as Grand Master Jay and John Jay Fitzgerald Johnson, claims leadership of the group and has stated that it is composed of "ex military shooters". In 2019 Grand Master Jay told the Atlanta Black Star that the organization was formed to prevent another Greensboro Massacre. Johnson expressed black nationalist views, putting forth the view that the United States should either hand the state of Texas over to African-Americans so that they may form an independent country, or allow African-Americans to depart the United States to another country that would  provide land upon which to form an independent nation.

In 2016, an investigation into the online activities of Micah Johnson, perpetrator of the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers, uncovered his interest in Mauricelm-Lei Millere and Black nationalist groups. The SPLC and news outlets reported that Johnson "liked" the Facebook pages of Black nationalist organizations such as the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), Nation of Islam, and Black Riders Liberation Army, three groups which are listed by the SPLC as hate groups.

In 2022, Frank James, suspect of the 2022 New York City Subway attack beliefs have been linked to black nationalism.

Revolutionary Black nationalism
Revolutionary Black nationalism is an ideology that combines cultural nationalism with scientific socialism in order to achieve Black self-determination. Proponents of the ideology argue that revolutionary Black nationalism is a movement that rejects all forms of oppression, including class based exploitation under capitalism. Revolutionary Black nationalist organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary Action Movement also adopted a set of anti-colonialist politics inspired by the writings of notable revolutionary theorists including Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, and Kwame Nkrumah. In the words of Ahmad Muhammad (formerly known as Max Stanford) the national field chairman of the Revolutionary Action Movement:

Professor and author Harold Cruse saw revolutionary Black nationalism as a necessary and logical progression from other leftist ideologies, as he believed that non-Black leftists could not properly assess the particular material conditions of the Black community and other colonized people:

In Africa

Some African countries encode race in their nationality and citizenship laws. Liberia and Sierra Leone afford birthright citizenship exclusively to black people. Circa 1992, Malawi required birth to a Malawian citizen "of African race" for birthright citizenship. Similarly, Mali used to attribute birthright nationality only to children with a parent "of African origin" born in the country. Ghana provides the right of return for people of African descent. Ghana is the first African state to have enacted this policy, done via the Immigration Act 573 of 2000 in response to African-American immigrant lobbying. Some private Afrocentric travel and genetic ancestry tracing companies have collaborated with the governments of Ghana and Sierra Leone to promote African diasporic toursim and immigration there.

Robert Mugabe, former President and Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, encouraged the violent seizure of white-owned farmland, commenting that "[t]he white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans, Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans".

Criticism
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. characterized black nationalism with "hatred and despair", writing that support for black nationalism "would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare."

Norm R. Allen Jr., former director of African Americans for Humanism, calls black nationalism a "strange mixture of profound thought and patent nonsense":

Tunde Adeleke, Nigerian-born professor of History and Director of the African American Studies program at the University of Montana, argues in his book UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission that 19th-century African-American nationalism embodied the racist and paternalistic values of Euro-American culture and that black nationalist plans were not designed for the immediate benefit of Africans but to enhance their own fortunes.

Black feminists in the U.S., such as Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, and Frances Beal, have also lodged sustained criticism of certain strands of black nationalism, particularly the political programs advocated by cultural nationalists. Black cultural nationalists envisioned black women only in the traditional heteronormative role of the idealized wife-mother figure. Patricia Hill Collins criticizes the limited imagining of black women in cultural nationalist projects, writing that black women "assumed a particular place in Black cultural nationalist efforts to reconstruct authentic Black culture, reconstitute Black identity, foster racial solidarity, and institute an ethic of service to the Black community." A major example of black women as only the heterosexual wife and mother can be found in the philosophy and practice called Kawaida exercised by the Us Organization. Maulana Karenga established the political philosophy of Kawaida in 1965. Its doctrine prescribed distinct roles between black men and women. Specifically, the role of the black woman as "African Woman" was to "inspire her man, educate her children, and participate in social development." Historian of black women's history and radical politics Ashley Farmer records a more comprehensive history of black women's resistance to sexism and patriarchy within black nationalist organizations, leading many Black Power era associations to support gender equality.

Black nationalism and antisemitism
Scholars have studied the link between black nationalism and antisemitism. In the late 1950s, both Muslim and non-Muslim black nationalists often embraced antisemitism. Many of them taught that American Jews, as well as Israel, were "the central obstacle to black progress", and that Jews were "the most racist whites". During the late 1960s, black nationalists depicted Jews as "parasitic intruders who accumulated wealth by exploiting the toil of black people in America's ghettos and South Africa".

According to polls, a significantly greater number of African-Americans endorsed antisemitic tropes and that the animus was "strongest among younger, better-educated... blacks". A study conducted in 1970 ranked 73% of Blacks in their twenties, as opposed to 35% who were fifty and older, as high on its index of antisemitism. By 1978 a survey of "black leaders" found that 81% agreed that "Jews chose money over people". In 2005, 36% of African Americans held "strong antisemitic beliefs"—four times the percentage of White Americans. In 2020, 42% of "black liberals" versus 15% of "white liberals" endorsed antisemitic stereotypes.

Some black nationalists deny accusations of antisemitism by alleging that black people "are the original Semites" and, as such, cannot be antisemitic. Many black nationalists engage in Holocaust trivialization, while some are even Holocaust deniers. Notable black nationalist leaders who profess antisemitic sentiments include Amiri Baraka, Louis Farrakhan, Kwame Ture, Leonard Jeffries and Tamika Mallory among others.

See also
 African-American culture
 African-American history
 African-American Muslims
 African diaspora
 African nationalism
 Afrocentrism
 Back-to-Africa movement
 Basking in reflected glory
 Black genocide – the notion that African Americans have been subjected to genocide
 Black Hebrew Israelites
 Black is beautiful
 Black Lives Matter
 Black power
 Black power movement
 Black separatism
 Black supremacy
 Hoteps
 Korean ethnic nationalism
 Pan-Africanism

 Racism against African Americans
 Racism in the United States
 Religion of black Americans
 Secession in the United States
 Tulsa race massacre

References

Further reading
 Gavins, Raymond, ed. The Cambridge Guide to African American History (2015).
 Levy, Peter B. ed. The Civil Rights Movement in America: From Black Nationalism to the Women's Political Council (2015).
 Bush, Roderick D. We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American (2000)
 Moses, Wilson. Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (1996),  excerpt and text search
 Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (2019), excerpt and a text search
 Price, Melanye T. Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion (2009), excerpt and a text search
 Robinson, Dean E. Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought (2001)
 Taylor, James Lance. Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (Lynne Rienner Publishers; 2011)* ALA Award "Best of the Best"Book.
 Ture, Kwame. Black Power The Politics of Liberation (1967)

Black Power
Black separatism

Black nationalism


Alessandra Marianelli (born 1986) is an Italian soprano. She made her professional debut in 2002 as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro and went on to sing leading roles in the opera houses of her native country and internationally. Her recordings include Amour in Orphée et Eurydice for Decca Records and Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia for Naxos Records. She also appeared in Carlos Saura's 2009 film Io, Don Giovanni.

Life and career
Marianelli was born in Pontedera in the Province of Pisa. She began her vocal studies in Pisa with Marina Billieri and Pieralba Soroga, with further study at the Conservatorio Mascagni in Livorno. In 2001, at the age of 15 and never having seen a live opera performance, she placed second in the Cascinalirica singing competition in Livorno. The following year she made her professional debut as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro at Pisa's Teatro Verdi. She won the Premio Spiros Argiris in 2004 and in December of that year appeared in the small off-stage role of "La voce dal cielo" (voice from heaven) in Don Carlo at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze. She would return there seven years later as Musetta in La bohème.

From 2004 onwards, Marinelli made a series of other house and role debuts in Italy, Belgium, Peru, Spain, and Monaco and sang over 30 different roles. These included Serpina in La serva padrona and Collette in Le devin du village at the Festival Pergolesi Spontini (2004); Nanetta in Falstaff at La Monnaie, Brussels (2006); Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia at the Rossini Opera Festival (2007);  Gilda in Rigoletto at the Teatro Municipal Alejandro Granda, Lima; Amour in Orphée et Eurydice at the Teatro Real, Madrid (2008); Kseniya  in Boris Godunov at the Teatro Regio di Torino (2010);  Micaëla in Carmen at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (2010); Oscar in Un ballo in maschera at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo (2011); and Giulietta in Un giorno di regno at the Teatro Regio di Parma (2013).

Recordings

References

External links

Artist's page on Stage Door Artists' Management
Alessandra Marianelli on Operabase
Video: Alessandra Marianelli as Juliette and José Bros as Roméo in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, streamed from the Teatro Carlo Felice (2012).

Italian operatic sopranos
1986 births
People from Pontedera
Living people
21st-century Italian  women opera singers

Alessandra Marianelli


The Catholic Press was a Sydney-based newspaper that was first published on 9 November 1895 and ran until  26 February 1942, after which it amalgamated with the Catholic Freeman's Journal and was reborn as The Catholic Weekly.

History
Sydney clergy had heeded the urgings of Pope Leo XIII, who called for Catholic newspapers to "counteract the appalling efforts of torrents of infidel filth that deluge the homes of our people, that desecrate the sacred sanctuary of family life, that poison the fountain-springs of society", and sought to establish a second Catholic newspaper. Initially costing threepence an issue, the newspaper was seen as a cheaper alternative to The Freeman's Journal, which cost sixpence. Fr. Bunbury was the interim editor until first appointed editor, John F. Perrin, arrived from New Zealand in December 1895. Perrin had been editor of the New Zealand Tablet and a journalist in New Zealand for 20 years. John Tighe Ryan was the editor from 1897. The Catholic Press and Australian Workers' Union newspaper The Worker  were the only two newspapers in Australia to oppose conscription in 1916-17, and also supported home rule for Ireland after 1916. Ryan's editorial stance against conscription was contrary to the views of Michael Kelly, Archbishop of Sydney, yet the newspaper printed many of Kelly's sermons supporting conscription and the war. The paper's circulation in 1917 was double that of 1916 and Ryan remained editor until he died in 1922.

Archbishop Kelly and his successor Cardinal Norman Thomas Gilroy preferred there to be only one Catholic newspaper in Sydney and so, in 1942, the Catholic Press was amalgamated, after almost 50 years' publication, with the Freeman's Journal to become the Catholic Weekly.

Digitisation
The newspaper has been digitised as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, a project hosted by the National Library of Australia.

See also
 List of newspapers in New South Wales
 List of newspapers in Australia

References

External links

Defunct newspapers published in Sydney
Catholic newspapers

Catholic Press


St Michael's Church is an Anglican place of worship situated on Bailiffgate in the town of Alnwick in Northumberland, England. The current building dates from the 15th century but a 12th-century Norman chapel stood on the site prior to this; reports of an earlier 8th-century Saxon chapel are unconfirmed. The church is dedicated to St Michael the Archangel, in earlier times it was also dedicated to St Mary as well. It is a Grade I listed building.

History

Church founded
The first written mention of a church on the site is found in a charter of 1147 in which Eustace fitz John endowed the newly founded Alnwick Abbey with various gifts including the Chapel of Alnwick. Very few remnants of this Norman chapel are visible in the present day church, some surviving stones with a diaper pattern are built into the chancel. The 1863 restoration revealed some buried basements of pillars in the late Norman style of architecture which existed in the first half of the 12th century. Old foundations were also exposed by the 1863 restoration which confirmed that the Norman chapel had a long, narrow nave and a small apse. The church suffered severe damage from Scottish raids during the first half of the 14th century during the Wars of Scottish Independence. The second half of the century saw repair work undertaken which saw the present nave built and the addition of the north aisle as well as the construction of the north wall all in the Decorated style.

15th century
The 15th century saw the majority of the present day church built; evidence suggests that the old church was in a ruinous state by this time. Towards the end of the 14th century the Decorated style of architecture was replaced by the Perpendicular style and it is in this design that most of the new church was built. Financial aid for the rebuild came directly from the monarch King Henry VI who issued a charter in 1464 granting the burgesses of Alnwick a port at Alnmouth with tolls on exports from it, plus a fair and market at Alnwick so that besides doing other work they might "make and repair their church". The substantial money brought in from this royal grant enabled the Burgesses of Alnwick to turn St Michael's into "one of the finest examples of the perpendicular style of architecture in the north". The highlight of the 15th century work was the impressive and spacious chancel with its octagonal pillars which are elaborately sculptured.

Restorations of 1782 and 1818

There were no further changes to the church until the latter years of the 18th century when Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, after renovating Alnwick Castle, repaired the chancel using his own architect Vincent Shepherd (1750–1812) assisted by Italian craftsmen. The work included a new window in the middle of the east end, a fan vaulted plaster ceiling and oak stalls for the Duke and his family. A revival in church attendance in the early part of the 19th century led to a statement in 1811 by the church councillors that accommodation was insufficient. As a result of this, a sum of £2,000 was spent in 1818 increasing the capacity to 1,200; this was achieved by removing the small galleries and adding a large one at the west end. Funds for this project came from a large donation from Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland, and from money raised through the church rates and the sale of seats.

Salvin's restoration of 1863
When Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland, was restoring Alnwick Castle between 1854 and 1865 he agreed to finance the restoration of St Michael's. The restoration started in 1863 and was overseen by Anthony Salvin who was also directing the work on the castle. Salvin swept away many of the mistakes of the two previous restorations, removing the plaster ceilings and the gallery. He strengthened some areas of the church and reinstated four pillars and the pointed arches to the nave which had been removed in the 1818 renewal. He also replaced some of the windows with new ones in the Perpendicular style. The chancel aisle was filled with oak pews.

Features

Exterior

At the south-east corner of the building is a hexagonal turret which originally gave access, via a spiral staircase, to a four-story roof chamber, fifteen by thirteen feet wide. The walls of this chamber were largely destroyed by later reparations. The purpose of the turret and chamber are unknown, but they may have served a military function during the 15th-century border wars between England and Scotland. A nearby peel tower at Heiferlaw would have housed a beacon to warn of border incursions by the Scots, and the turret at St. Michael's may have been part of a relay chain connecting Heiferlaw with Alnwick Castle. On the other hand, the chamber may only have been intended to provide temporary accommodation for priests. The walls of the turret show evidence of having suffered damage from musket balls.

The main tower stands at the west end of the church, on foundations which extend 30 to 40 feet below the surface. It is squat-looking, with deep stepped buttresses, and is capped with battlements and four small pinnacles.

Interior

The interior features two statues which were dug up from the foundations during the 1818 restoration. They were minus the heads, and have been given modern replacements. One is of Henry VI and the other one is either Saint Sebastian or Maurice, a local saint martyred by the Danes. There are several medieval grave slabs built into the wall, the oldest of which dates from the 13th century.

Below the west window is the modern font, made from Kilkenny blue-black limestone by David Edwick of Hexham as a gift for the new millennium. A small window to the right of the west window has fragments of glass from the 15th century within it. The rest of the stained glass comes from the 19th century and contains what is described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "an uncommonly complete and enlightening survey of Victorian glass"; it includes work by well-known makers Clayton and Bell, Lavers and Barraud, James Powell and Sons and Ward and Hughes.

The east end of the church features St Catherine's Chapel and the altar. The chapel has an interesting pillar featuring the Percy and de Vesci arms and a carving of St Catherine and the wheel on which she was martyred. It is called the Hotspur Capital and remembers Harry Hotspur, the famous warrior and son of the First Earl.

References

Church of England church buildings in Northumberland
Grade I listed churches in Northumberland
Churches completed in 1464
15th-century church buildings in England

St Michael's Church, Alnwick


The Loch Ness Monster, also referred to as Nessie, is a supposed animal, said to live in the Scottish loch of Loch Ness, the second biggest loch in the country. The Loch Ness Monster story was big in the field of cryptozoology.

Most scientists believe that the Loch Ness Monster is not real, and they say that many of the sightings are either hoaxes or pictures of other mistaken existing animals. However, a popular theory among believers is that "Nessie" is a plesiosaur, an extinct meat-eating aquatic reptile that lived in the Mesozoic era. The Loch Ness monster has also been described as an elephant, eel, and other animals.

Surgeon's photograph' (1934)
The Surgeon's photograph was the only photographic evidence of a head and neck – all the others are humps or disturbances. Dr. Wilson claimed he was looking at the loch when he saw the monster, so grabbed his camera and snapped five photos. After the film was developed, only two exposures were clear. The first photo (the more publicised one) shows what was claimed to be a small head and back. The second one, a blurry image, attracted little publicity because it was difficult to interpret what was depicted.

The image was revealed as a hoax in 1994.
Supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, it was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934. Wilson's refusal to have his name associated with the photograph led to it being called "Surgeon's photograph".

The strangely small ripples on the photo fit the size and of circular pattern of small ripples as opposed to large waves when photographed up close. Analysis of the original uncropped image fostered further doubt. A year before the hoax was revealed, the makers of Discovery Communications's documentary Loch Ness Discovered analysed the uncropped image and found a white object was visible in every version of the photo. "It seems to be the source of ripples in the water, almost as if the object was towed by But science cannot rule out it was just a blemish on the negative", he continued. Additionally, analysis of the full photograph revealed the object was quite small, only about  long.

After Christian Spurling's confession, most agree it was what Spurling claimed – a toy submarine with a sculpted head attached. Details of how the photo was accomplished were published in the 1999 book, Nessie – the Surgeon's Photograph Exposed. Essentially, it was a toy submarine with a head and neck made of plastic wood, built by Christian Spurling.

Spurling was the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been publicly ridiculed in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that employed him. Spurling claimed that to get revenge, Marmaduke Wetherell committed the hoax. His co-conspirators were Spurling (a sculpture specialist), his son Ian Marmaduke, who bought the material for the fake Nessie, and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent). Chambers asked surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson to offer the pictures to the Daily Mail.

The hoax story was disputed by Henry Bauer. Unfortunately for Bauer, he claimed that plastic wood did not exist in 1934, when actually it was a popular DIY and modelling material from the 1920s.

No animal has ever been discovered in the loch which resembles the mythical monster.

Other websites
 nessie.co.uk

References

Scotland
Cryptozoology

Loch Ness Monster