Macramé is a form of textile art. It is created using knotting (rather than weaving or knitting) techniques.

The main knots of macramé are the square (or reef knot) and forms of "hitching" with many combinations of half hitches. It was long created by sailors. They often created ornamental knotting forms to cover anything from knife handles to bottles or parts of ships.

Cavandoli macramé is one type of macrame. It is used to form geometric and free-form patterns like weaving. The Cavandoli style is done mainly in a single knot, the double half-hitch knot.

Leather or fabric belts are items that are often created by macramé techniques.  Most friendship bracelets made by children and teens are created using macrame.
Textile arts

Macramé


Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck, M.D. (August 13, 1818 – November 13, 1895) was an American missionary physician, teacher and translator of the Protestant Bible into Arabic.

Life
Cornelius Van Alan Van Dyck was born at Kinderhook, New York, and educated at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which he graduated as M.D. in 1839.

In 1840, he was sent to Lebanon by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as a medical missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church, and he was stationed at Beirut, Abeih, Sidon, and Mount Tabor. He studied Arabic in Beirut under Butrus al-Bustani and Nasif al-Yaziji, both of whom later became famous Arab writers, and Yusuf al-Asir, with whom he would later collaborate in translating the Bible into Arabic. He married Julia Abbott, daughter of the former British consul-general in Beirut, in December 1842.

In June 1843, they moved to 'Abeih, where, with W. M. Thomson, he organized a secondary school for training evangelical ministers. Noting the scarcity of suitable teaching materials in Arabic, he proceeded to write Arabic textbooks on geography, navigation, natural history, and mathematics, which were long used in Syrian schools. He also studied theology and was ordained a minister by his fellow missionaries in 1846, shortly before the inauguration of the Abeih Seminary.

In 1849, he was abruptly transferred from 'Abeih to Sidon, where he was expected to open a new mission station, preach, and practice medicine. Upon returning to Beirut in 1857, he began to work on the Arabic Bible. After completing the translation in 1865, he went to New York to supervise its printing, also teaching Hebrew for two years at Union Theological Seminary and studying ophthalmology.

On returning to Beirut, Van Dyck became a professor of pathology and internal medicine in the medical school of the newly founded Syrian Protestant College, which later became the American University of Beirut. He also taught astronomy in its literary section, directed its observatory and meteorological station as well as the mission press, and edited its weekly journal al-Nashran. He wrote Arabic textbooks on chemistry, internal medicine, physical diagnosis, and astronomy, publishing some of them at his own expense.

He translated al-Razi's ninth-century treatise on smallpox and measles, adding a critical commentary. Often called al-Hakim during his lifetime, Van Dyck had a large medical practice in addition to his academic duties.

Lewis affair
He resigned from the Syrian Protestant College after the 1882 commencement address by Professor Edwin Lewis, which was censored by the college board for mildly favoring Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, considered heretical by most Protestants. He stayed in Beirut, practicing at the Hospital of St. George as its chief physician. He published more books in Arabic, including a translation of Lew Wallace's Ben Hur.

In 1890, Syrians of all sects celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his coming to their country. He retired in 1893 and died in Beirut.

Reputation
Van Dyck has long been respected by Arabs for his intimate knowledge of their history, culture, language, and proverbs, for his ability to work among Syrians without condescension, and especially for his contribution to the revival of Arabic literature in the nineteenth century.

Modern scholars give more credit for the renaissance to the Egyptian government and to some of Van Dyck's Arab collaborators, but he published more than twenty Arabic textbooks, and his translation of the Bible was used by Arabic-speaking Protestants for a century.

Rue Van Dyck is a street in Beirut that was named in his honor.

Family
State Senator Henry H. Van Dyck (1809–1888) was his brother.

References

Further reading
 Goldschmidt, Arthur. "Van Dyck, Cornelius Van Alen," American National Biography. available online at http://www.anb.org/articles/20/20-01044.html.
 van Kyck, E. A. 1961. "Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyck." The Bible Translator 12/4:200-201. Available online
 al-Muqattam (Cairo daily newspaper), November 16, 1895.
 Penrose, Stephen B. That They May Have Life: The Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941 (1941), pp. 36–37.
 Tibawi, A. L. American Interests in Syria, 1800-1901 (1966).
 Sarkis, Yusuf. Mu'jam al-Matbu'at al-'arabiyah wa al-mu'arrabah, Vol. 2 (1928), cols. 1462–4.
 Zaydan, Jurji. Tarajim mashahir al-sharq, vol. 2 (1903), pp. 39–53.
 al-Zirikli, Khayr al-Din, al-A'lam, 4th ed. (1980), vol. 5, p. 223.

External links

American Protestant missionaries
Christian medical missionaries
Protestant missionaries in Lebanon
Translators of the Bible into Arabic
American people of Dutch descent
1818 births
1895 deaths
Thomas Jefferson University alumni
Protestant missionaries in Palestine (region)
American expatriates in Lebanon
American members of the Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch Reformed Church missionaries
American University of Beirut
19th-century American translators
Missionary linguists

Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck


"Over" is the tenth episode of the second season of the American television action drama series Breaking Bad. It was written by Moira Walley-Beckett and directed by Phil Abraham.

Plot
Following his discovery that he is in remission, Walter White takes Skyler's advice to take the week off from work, but secretly meets with Jesse Pinkman. He tells Jesse the news, and that he is out of the drug trade now that he no longer has to pay for treatment. During Skyler's party celebrating the remission, Walt pours Walt Jr. some tequila that he and Hank Schrader are drinking. After Walt pours an excessive amount, Hank takes the bottle away from him. Walt angrily demands it back, leading to a tense standoff which is broken as Walt Jr. vomits into the pool.

The next day, Skyler refuses to answer Walt's calls in which he tries to apologize. In order to distract himself, he goes on a home improvement spree with his drug money, replacing their water heater, then creating a crawl space in the basement to fix a rot problem. At work, Skyler confides in Ted Beneke about Walt's condition. When Ted notices that she is purposefully staying late, she breaks down, saying that she doesn't feel optimistic because she knows that Walt still has cancer. Ted understands, having suffered physically while caring for his dying father. They tenderly hold hands. The next day, as Ted is leaving, Skyler creates a distraction in order to spend more time with him.

Meanwhile, Jesse clumsily makes breakfast for Jane Margolis and tells her they can spend the day together. She admires his drawings of superheroes, which she points out all look like him. They hear knocking on Jane's door, which turns out to be her father, the owner of the property. When Jesse goes outside to speak with him, Jane acts like she does not know him. Later, she tells him she was protecting him from her overbearing father, but Jesse is upset that she does not take their relationship seriously. He smokes meth to comfort himself, but brightens when Jane slides a drawing under his door: a superhero called "Apology Girl" that looks like her.

At the hardware store, Walt notices the cart of a young man buying materials to make drugs. He offers advice about what ingredients to get, causing the man to run away. Outside in the parking lot, Walt sees the young man and his partner are using an RV; he realizes he is being copied. He orders the two to "stay out of my territory". Frightened, they drive away as Walt watches in satisfaction.

Production
The episode was written by Moira Walley-Beckett, and directed by Phil Abraham. It aired on AMC in the United States and Canada on May 10, 2009.

Critical reception
Donna Bowman, writing for The A.V. Club, gave the episode an A rating. She praised the show's ability to create a contrast between "intensity" and "quieter character moments". It's the first appearance of Jane's father Donald Margolis (played by John de Lancie).

In 2019 The Ringer ranked "Over" 45th out of the 62 total Breaking Bad episodes.

References

External links
"Over" at the official Breaking Bad site

2009 American television episodes
Breaking Bad (season 2) episodes
Television episodes directed by Phil Abraham

Over (Breaking Bad)


Don Pomb Polye (born 1 February 1967) is a Papua New Guinean politician from Enga Province. He has been a Cabinet Minister under two Prime Ministers, and was briefly Deputy Prime Minister from July to December 2010. He has held Foreign Affairs, Immigration, Transport, Civil Aviation, Finance and Treasury portfolios.

Polye was first elected in 2002 to the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea representing the Kandep Open electorate as a member of the National Alliance Party. He was the Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation from July 2006 to August 2009. Sir Michael Somare, the Prime Minister, appointed Polye to that position in July 2006 as part of a Cabinet reshuffle. He was also Deputy Prime Minister from July 2006 until August 2007. As Minister for Civil Aviation he introduced an "open air" policy ensuring that Air Niugini faced competition from other airlines starting from 2007.

Polye was rushed from a political rally in his Kandep electorate in June 2007 after shots were fired. A rival candidate for his seat was later charged with attempted murder.

Polye was removed from his position as Member of Parliament on 14 August 2009 when the National Court determined that his victory in the 2007 General Election was invalid. The judge's ruling included the observation that it was hard to believe that some polling stations had returned a 100% vote for Polye. The by-election for the seat took place on 9 November 2009, and Polye ran as a candidate. He was successful in regaining his seat.

In July 2010, he replaced Puka Temu as deputy Prime Minister, when the latter tried unsuccessfully to unseat Prime Minister Somare through a parliamentary motion of no confidence. Polye himself was removed as Deputy Prime Minister on 7 December 2010, in an impromptu cabinet reshuffle conducted under what Australia's ABC News called "unusual circumstances". However he was appointed as Papua New Guinea's Foreign Minister later in December 2010, holding that position until another cabinet reshuffle in June 2011. He supported the Opposition when it brought down the government through a parliamentary motion of no confidence in August 2011, and was appointed Minister of Finance by new Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

In October, the National Alliance Party consequently sought to expel him from the party, but was prevented from doing so by a court order. Later that month, it was reported simultaneously that Polye, along with many others, had been expelled from the party "for conduct prejudicial to the interest of the party", and that he had been elected as party leader. In fact, the party split into factions, one of which was led by Polye. In January 2012, he announced that he was de-registering the National Alliance Party, despite the existence of a rival faction claiming to be the legitimate party. Polye and his faction launched a new party, the Triumph Heritage Empowerment Rural Party ("T.H.E. Party"), ahead of the June 2012 general election.

On 27 February 2012, Prime Minister Peter O'Neill relieved him of the Finance portfolio, taking it on himself, citing "the continuing lack of ability by the department and ministry of finance to contain expenditure overruns outside of the budget appropriations". Polye retained the Treasury portfolio, and gained that of Border Development. Following the results of the 2012 general election Polye retained his position as Treasurer under a new cabinet announced by O'Neill. On 10 March 2014, O'Neill sacked him again, accusing him of having a destabilising effect on the government.

In December 2014, he replaced Belden Namah as Leader of the Opposition to O'Neill's government.

Polye lost the Kandep election in 2017 to Alfred Manase but disputed the results and a serious of court cases took place until a recount was ordered.
After a recount, he was elected to the tenth Parliament in April 2021.

Polye stood again for the eleventh Parliament in 2022. He was declared elected by returning officer Henry Apakali after he had been instructed by Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai to stop the count due to integrity concerns. The declaration is pending legal review.

References

Deputy Prime Ministers of Papua New Guinea
Ministers of Finance of Papua New Guinea
Members of the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea
Living people
National Alliance Party (Papua New Guinea) politicians
Triumph Heritage Empowerment Party politicians
People from Enga Province
Papua New Guinean Seventh-day Adventists
Government ministers of Papua New Guinea
1967 births
21st-century Papua New Guinean politicians
Foreign Ministers of Papua New Guinea

Don Polye


Rancho San Miguel is a neighborhood in Walnut Creek, California. It is named after the Alta California Rancho Rancho Arroyo de Las Nueces y Bolbones which was also referred to as Rancho San Miguel. Until the mid-1950s the area consisted largely of walnut orchards, until developer Joseph Eichler built a subdivision north of Shell Ridge and Ygnacio Valley Road.

External links
Rancho San Miguel Homeowner's Association
Rancho San Miguel Swim Club
Diseño del Rancho San Miguel at The Bancroft Library

California ranchos
Neighborhoods in Walnut Creek, California

Rancho San Miguel


The Szeged witch trials, which took place in the city of Szeged in Hungary in 1728–1729, was perhaps the largest witch-hunt in Hungary. It led to the death of 14 people by burning, although witch trials had been banned by the decree of King Coloman in 1100.

The trials

The witch trial was instigated by the authorities, which decided on this measure to remove the problem of the public complaints about the drought and its consequences of famine and epidemics by laying the responsibility on people among them, which had fraternized with the Devil. If they were killed, the problems would be solved; God did not like the people, and thus they were being punished. A fear arose in the Habsburg empire that witches had begun to be organized like military units. A particular fear in Hungary was that witches were also vampires.

Among the people accused was the former judge and richest citizen of the town, 82-year-old Dániel Rózsa, said to be the leader of the witches, and Anna Nagy Kökényné, a midwife who had accused him of witchcraft.

On 23 July 1728, 12 people, six men and six women, were burned at the stake for witchcraft on a peninsula of the Tisza, called Boszorkánysziget (Island of Witches). 13 people were burned and 28 accused in total.

Witch trials had occurred in Hungary since the 16th century, but did not reach any high level until the 1710s and 1720s, when the real panic arrived. In 1756, Queen Maria Theresa ordered that all cases of witchcraft must be confirmed by the high court, which more or less ended the witch trials; the last person in Hungary was executed for witchcraft in 1777.

References

 Brian A. Pavlac: List of Important Events for the Witch Hunts
 Robert John Weston Evans: The making of the Habsburg monarchy, 1550-1700: an interpretation (1984)
 Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack, Roy Porter: Witchcraft and magic in Europe: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Hungary under Habsburg rule
Witch trials in Europe
1728 in law
1728 in Europe
Vampirism (crime)
Szeged
1728 in the Habsburg monarchy
18th century in Hungary
1729 in the Habsburg monarchy

Szeged witch trials


Mental health professionals often distinguish between generalized social phobia  and specific social phobia. People with generalized social phobia have great distress in a wide range of social situations. Those with specific social phobia may experience anxiety only in a few situations. The term "specific social phobia" may also refer to specific forms of non-clinical social anxiety.

The most common specific social phobia are glossophobia (the fear of public speaking) and stage fright (the fear of performance). Others include fears of intimacy or sexual encounters, using public restrooms (paruresis), attending social gatherings, using telephones, and dealing with authority figures.

Specific social phobia may be classified into performance fears and interaction fears, i.e., fears of acting in a social setting and interacting with other people, respectively. The cause of social phobia is not definite.

Symptoms of social phobia can occur in late adolescence when youths highly value the impressions they give off to their peers. Clinical experience of the prognosis of social phobia shows that it can prolong for many years but that it improves by mid life.

Treatment

Treatment of social phobia usually involves psychotherapy, medication, or both.

Psychotherapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is commonly used to treat social phobia. CBT uses various techniques in order to improve the individual (diagnosed with social phobia), ways of thinking, behaving and coping in social situations that lead the individual to distress.  CBT aims to make improvement in the individual's distress, fear, and anxiety through a social focus and environment.  CBT is typically done through individual sessions, but group sessions have been completed through CBT.

Medication
Anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication is commonly prescribed for treatment of social anxiety disorder. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as sertraline, fluvoxamine and paroxetine are sometimes used for treating social phobia, but are not known to be very effective. The MAOI Nardil (phenelzine sulfate) works extremely well in treating social phobia and is often referred to as the "gold standard" for social phobia due to its unique mechanism on increasing GABA.

Patients who have avoided certain situations should make a big effort to become exposed to these situations while at the same time taking antidepressant medication. Anxiolytic medication aids a patient to handle social or professional situations before more lasting treatment has had an effect and therefore it is a provider of short term relief, but anxiolytics have a risk of dependence. Beta-adrenergic antagonists help to control palpitations and tremors unresponsive to the treatment of anxiolytic medication. One must read the precautions of these drugs outlined in the manufacturer's literature and be careful to watch out for the contraindications of these drugs.

Prevalence
In the past, when the prevalence was estimated by sampling the psychiatric clinical cases, social phobia was thought to be a rare disorder. It is now recognized that this way of estimating is inappropriate, because people with social phobia rarely seek psychiatric help by the very nature of their disorder. A more reliable source used now is community surveys.

Various surveys show that the syndrome of glossophobia is the most prevalent type. An article based on a National Comorbidity Survey reported that 1/3 of people with lifetime social phobia had glossophobia Another survey of a community sample from a Canadian city reported that of people who believed being anxious in one or several social situations 55% feared speaking to a large audience, 25% feared speaking to a small group of familiar people, 23% feared dealing with authority, 14.5% feared social gatherings, 14% feared speaking to strangers, 7% feared eating and 5% feared writing in public.

See also
Specific phobia

References

External links
 Nardil.org - Information on drug treatment for people with social anxiety and depression
 Anxiety Disorders Association of America - Help for people with anxiety disorders, including social phobia and social anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorders
Phobias

Specific social phobia


Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort  (; July 23, 1912 – March 29, 1986) was a historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and an American Trotskyist until 1947.

Life
Jean van Heijenoort, a renowned mathematician and logician, was born in Creil, France. His parents had immigrated from the Netherlands before his birth. Unfortunately, when van Heijenoort was only two years old, his father passed away, leaving his family in financial hardship. Despite these challenges, he pursued his education and became proficient in French. Throughout his life, he maintained strong connections with his extended family and friends in France, making biannual visits after he obtained American citizenship in 1958.

Tragically, van Heijenoort met an untimely end in 1986 in Mexico City at the hands of his fourth spouse. However, his intellectual contributions and the impact he made in the fields of mathematics and logic continue to be recognized and valued.

Political views
In 1932, Van Heijenoort was recruited by Yvan Craipeau to join the Trotskyist movement. He joined the Communist League in the same year. After Trotsky was exiled, he hired van Heijenoort as a secretary and bodyguard, primarily because of his fluency in French, Russian, German, and English. Van Heijenoort spent seven years in Trotsky's household, during which he served as a translator, helped Trotsky write several books and carried on an extensive intellectual and political correspondence in several languages.

In 1939, van Heijenoort moved to New York City to be with his second wife, Beatrice "Bunny" Guyer. He was not involved in the circumstances leading to Trotsky's murder in 1940. In New York, he worked for the Socialist Workers Party (US) (SWP) and wrote a number of articles for the American Trotskyist press and other radical outlets. He was elected to the secretariat of the Fourth International in 1940 but resigned when Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, with whom he had sided, were expelled from the SWP. (Goldman subsequently joined the US Workers Party while Morrow did not join any other party or grouping.) In 1947, Van Heijenoort too was expelled from the SWP. In 1948, he published an article, entitled "A Century's Balance Sheet", in which he criticized that part of Marxism which saw the "proletariat" as the revolutionary class. He continued to hold other parts of Marxism as true.

Van Heijenoort was spared the ordeal of McCarthyism as everything he published in Trotskyist publications appeared under one of over a dozen pen names he used. According to Feferman (1993), Van Heijenoort the logician was quite reserved about his Trotskyist youth, and did not discuss politics. Nevertheless, he contributed to the Trotskyist movement until the last decade of his life, when he wrote his monograph With Trotsky in Exile (1978), and an edition of Trotsky's correspondence (1980). He advised and collaborated with the archivists at the Houghton Library in Harvard University, which holds many of Trotsky's papers from his years in exile.

Academic work
After completing a Ph.D. in mathematics at New York University in 1949 under the supervision of J. J. Stoker, Van Heijenoort began to teach mathematics at New York University, but moved to logic and philosophy of mathematics, largely under the influence of Georg Kreisel. He started teaching philosophy, first part-time at Columbia University, then full-time at Brandeis University from 1965 to 1977. He spent much of his last decade at Stanford University, writing and editing eight books, including parts of the Collected Works of Kurt Gödel.

From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic (van Heijenoort 1967) is an anthology of translations on the history of logic and the foundations of mathematics. It begins with the first complete translation of Frege's 1879 Begriffsschrift, followed by 45 short pieces on mathematical logic and axiomatic set theory, originally published between 1889 and 1931. The anthology ends with Gödel's landmark paper on the incompleteness of Peano arithmetic. For more information on the period covered by this anthology, see Grattan-Guinness (2000).

Nearly all the content of From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic had only been available in a few North American university libraries (e.g., even the Library of Congress did not acquire a copy of the Begriffsschrift until 1964), and all but four pieces had to be translated from one of six continental European languages. When possible, the authors of the original texts reviewed the translations, and suggested corrections and amendments. Each piece was supplied with editorial footnotes and an introduction (mostly by Van Heijenoort but some by Willard Quine and Burton Dreben); its references were combined into a comprehensive bibliography, and misprints, inconsistencies, and errors were corrected.

From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic contributed to advancing the view that modern logic begins with, and builds on, the Begriffsschrift. Grattan-Guinness (2000) argues that this perspective on the history of logic is mistaken, because Frege employed an idiosyncratic notation and was significantly less read than Peano. Ironically, van Heijenoort (1967) is often cited by those who prefer the alternative model theoretic stance on logic and mathematics. Much of the history of that stance, whose leading lights include George Boole, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ernst Schröder, Leopold Löwenheim, Thoralf Skolem, Alfred Tarski, and Jaakko Hintikka, is covered in Brady (2000). From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic underrated the algebraic logic of De Morgan, Boole, Peirce, and Schröder, but devoted more pages to Skolem than to anyone other than Frege, and included Löwenheim (1915), the founding paper on model theory.

Personal life
Van Heijenoort had children with two of his four wives. While living with Trotsky in Coyoacán, van Heijenoort's first wife left him after an argument with Trotsky's spouse. In 1986 he visited his estranged fourth wife, Anne-Marie Zamora, in Mexico City where she murdered him before taking her own life.

Van Heijenoort was also one of Frida Kahlo's lovers; in the film Frida, he is played by Felipe Fulop.

Selected works

Books which Van Heijenoort edited alone or with others:

References

Bibliography

External links

Perspectives on the History and Philosophy of Modern Logic: Van Heijenoort Centenary special issue of Logica Universalis for Jean Van Heijenoort Centenary with papers by Feferman, Feferman, Hintikka, Jan Wolenski etc.
The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet provides a biographical sketch and a selective bibliography [more complete than Feferman's] of Jean Van Heijenoort
A Guide to the Jean Van Heijenoort papers, 1946–1988
How the Fourth International Was Conceived by Jean Van Heijenoort, August 1944
Jean van Heijenoort Internet Archive

1912 births
1986 deaths
American Trotskyists
American logicians
American historians of mathematics
French Trotskyists
People murdered in Mexico
American people murdered abroad
French people murdered abroad
Philosophers of mathematics
French people of Dutch descent
French logicians
French expatriates in the United States

Jean van Heijenoort


The Mozambican Civil War was a civil war fought in Mozambique from 1977 to 1992. Like many regional African wars during the late twentieth century, the Mozambican Civil War was affected by the Cold War politics. The war was fought between Mozambique's ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and insurgent forces of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO).

he Mozambican Civil War destroyed much of Mozambique's rural infrastructure, including hospitals, rail lines, roads, and schools. FRELIMO's security forces and RENAMO insurgents were accused of committing numerous human rights abuses, including using child soldiers and salting a significant percentage of the countryside indiscriminately with land mines.

References

History of Mozambique
Civil wars involving Africa
1992 in Africa
Cold War
1970s conflicts
1980s conflicts
1990s conflicts
1977 in Africa
1978 in Africa
1979 in Africa

Mozambican Civil War


A meeting is a group of people who come together at one place to discuss something, make something, or play games together. Meetings can range from internet meetings (people who met on the internet who come together) to birthday parties for children. Meetings can be also on formal times, where businessmen come together to discuss. Furthermore, meetings can be political/religious. For instance, politicians meet from time to time to deliberate on issues, map up strategies and trash out issues. Likewise, religious leaders congregate to discuss developing issues, problems and successes chalked.Come to Jesus meetings are called in order to settle disputes between employers and employees as well as airing out personal matters.

References

Human communication

Meeting


The Church of the East () or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church  or the Nestorian Church, was an Eastern Christian church of the East Syriac Rite, based in Mesopotamia. It was one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, alongside the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedonian Church (whose Eastern branch would later become the Eastern Orthodox Church). During the early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three. Since the latter half of the 20th century, three churches in Iraq claim the heritage of the Church of the East. Meanwhile, the East Syriac churches in India claim the heritage of the Church of the East in India.

The Church of the East organized itself initially in the year 410 as the national church of the Sasanian Empire through the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In 424 it declared itself independent of the state church of the Roman Empire. The Church of the East was headed by the Catholicose of the East seated in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, continuing a line that, according to its tradition, stretched back to the Apostolic Age. According to its tradition, the Church of the East was established by Thomas the Apostle in the first century. Its liturgical rite was the East Syrian rite that employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari.

The Church of the East, which was part of the Great Church, shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431. Supporters of Nestorius took refuge in Sasanian Persia, where the Church refused to condemn Nestorius and became accused of Nestorianism, a heresy attributed to Nestorius. It was therefore called the Nestorian Church by all the other Eastern churches, both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian, and by the Western Church. Politically the Sassanian and Roman empires were at war with each other, which forced the Church of the East to distance itself from the churches within Roman territory. More recently, the "Nestorian" appellation has been called "a lamentable misnomer", and theologically incorrect by scholars. However, the Church of the East started to call itself Nestorian, it anathematized the Council of Ephesus, and in its liturgy Nestorius was mentioned as a saint. In 544, the general Council of the Church of the East approved the Council of Chalcedon at the Synod of Mar Aba I.

Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Sunni Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia (633–654), the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented the world's largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent, and in the Middle Ages was one of the three major Christian powerhouses of Eurasia alongside Latin Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy. It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala), the Mongol kingdoms and Turkic tribes in Central Asia, and China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries). In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.

Even before the Church of the East underwent a rapid decline in its field of expansion in Central Asia in the 14th century, it had already lost ground in its home territory. The decline is indicated by the shrinking list of active dioceses. Around the year 1000, there were more than sixty dioceses throughout the Near East, but by the middle of the 13th century there were about twenty, and after Timur Leng the number was further reduced to seven only. In the aftermath of the division of the Mongol Empire, the rising Buddhist and Islamic Mongol leaderships pushed out and nearly eradicated the Church of the East and its followers. Thereafter, Church of the East dioceses remained largely confined to Upper Mesopotamia and to the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians in the Malabar Coast (modern-day Kerala, India).

Divisions occurred within the church itself, but by 1830 two unified patriarchates and distinct churches remained: the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See). The Ancient Church of the East split from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1968. In 2017, the Chaldean Catholic Church had approximately 628,405 members and the Assyrian Church of the East had 323,300 to 380,000, while the Ancient Church of the East had 100,000.

Background

The Church of the East's declaration in 424 of the independence of its head, the Patriarch of the East, preceded by seven years the 431 Council of Ephesus, which condemned Nestorius and declared that Mary, mother of Jesus, can be described as Mother of God. Two of the generally accepted ecumenical councils were held earlier: the First Council of Nicaea, in which a Persian bishop took part, in 325, and the First Council of Constantinople in 381. The Church of the East accepted the teaching of these two councils, but ignored the 431 Council and those that followed, seeing them as concerning only the patriarchates of the Roman Empire (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem), all of which were for it "Western Christianity".

Theologically, the Church of the East adopted the dyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia that emphasised the "distinctiveness" of the divine and the human natures of Jesus; this doctrine was misleadingly labelled as 'Nestorian' by its theological opponents.

In the 6th century and thereafter, the Church of the East expanded greatly, establishing communities in India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians), among the Mongols in Central Asia, and in China, which became home to a thriving community under the Tang dynasty from the 7th to the 9th century. At its height, between the 9th and 14th centuries, the Church of the East was the world's largest Christian church in geographical extent, with dioceses stretching from its heartland in Upper Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean Sea and as far afield as China, Mongolia, Central Asia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula and India.

From its peak of geographical extent, the church entered a period of rapid decline that began in the 14th century, due largely to outside influences. The Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongols (1368) and ejected Christians and other foreign influences from China, and many Mongols in Central Asia converted to Islam. The Muslim Turco-Mongol leader Timur (1336–1405) nearly eradicated the remaining Christians in the Middle East. Nestorian Christianity remained largely confined to communities in Upper Mesopotamia and the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of the Malabar Coast in the Indian subcontinent.

In the early modern period, the schism of 1552 led to a series of internal divisions and ultimately to its branching into three separate churches: the Chaldean Catholic Church, in full communion with the Holy See, and the independent Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East.

Description as Nestorian

Nestorianism is a Christological doctrine that emphasises the distinction between the human and divine natures of Jesus. It was attributed to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, whose doctrine represented the culmination of a philosophical current developed by scholars at the School of Antioch, most notably Nestorius's mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia, and stirred controversy when Nestorius publicly challenged the use of the title Theotokos (literally, "Bearer of God") for Mary, mother of Jesus, suggesting that the title denied Christ's full humanity. He argued that Jesus had two loosely joined natures, the divine Logos and the human Jesus, and proposed Christotokos (literally, "Bearer of the Christ") as a more suitable alternative title. His statements drew criticism from other prominent churchmen, particularly from Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had a leading part in the Council of Ephesus of 431, which condemned Nestorius for heresy and deposed him as Patriarch.

After 431, the state authorities in the Roman Empire suppressed Nestorianism, a reason for Christians under Persian rule to favour it and so allay suspicion that their loyalty lay with the hostile Christian-ruled empire.

It was in the aftermath of the slightly later Council of Chalcedon (451), that the Church of the East formulated a distinctive theology. The first such formulation was adopted at the Synod of Beth Lapat in 484. This was developed further in the early seventh century, when in an at first successful war against the Byzantine Empire the Sasanid Persian Empire incorporated broad territories populated by West Syrians, many of whom were supporters of the Miaphysite theology of Oriental Orthodoxy which its opponents term "Monophysitism" (Eutychianism), the theological view most opposed to Nestorianism. They received support from Khosrow II, influenced by his wife Shirin. Shirin was a member of the Church of East, but later joined the miaphysite church of Antioch.

Drawing inspiration from Theodore of Mopsuestia, Babai the Great (551−628) expounded, especially in his Book of Union, what became the normative Christology of the Church of the East. He affirmed that the two  (a Syriac term, plural of qnoma, not corresponding precisely to Greek φύσις or οὐσία or ὑπόστασις) of Christ are unmixed but eternally united in his single  (from Greek πρόσωπον prosopon "mask, character, person"). As happened also with the Greek terms φύσις (physis) and ὐπόστασις (hypostasis), these Syriac words were sometimes taken to mean something other than what was intended; in particular "two " was interpreted as "two individuals". Previously, the Church of the East accepted a certain fluidity of expressions, always within a dyophysite theology, but with Babai's assembly of 612, which canonically sanctioned the "two  in Christ" formula, a final christological distinction was created between the Church of the East and the "western" Chalcedonian churches.

The justice of imputing Nestorianism to Nestorius, whom the Church of the East venerated as a saint, is disputed. David Wilmshurst states that for centuries "the word 'Nestorian' was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syrian theology, as a term of pride by many of its defenders [...] and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others. Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma". Sebastian P. Brock says: "The association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature, and to continue to call that church 'Nestorian' is, from a historical point of view, totally misleading and incorrect – quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners".

Apart from its religious meaning, the word "Nestorian" has also been used in an ethnic sense, as shown by the phrase "Catholic Nestorians".

In his 1996 article, "The 'Nestorian' Church: a lamentable misnomer", published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Sebastian Brock, a Fellow of the British Academy, lamented the fact that "the term 'Nestorian Church' has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church which in the past called itself 'The Church of the East', but which today prefers a fuller title 'The Assyrian Church of the East'. Such a designation is not only discourteous to modern members of this venerable church, but also − as this paper aims to show − both inappropriate and misleading".

Organisation and structure
At the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410, the Church of the East was declared to have at its head the bishop of the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon, who in the acts of the council was referred to as the Grand or Major Metropolitan, and who soon afterward was called the Catholicos of the East. Later, the title of Patriarch was used.

The Church of the East had, like other churches, an ordained clergy in the three traditional orders of bishop, priest (or presbyter), and deacon. Also like other churches, it had an episcopal polity: organisation by dioceses, each headed by a bishop and made up of several individual parish communities overseen by priests. Dioceses were organised into provinces under the authority of a metropolitan bishop. The office of metropolitan bishop was an important one, coming with additional duties and powers; canonically, only metropolitans could consecrate a patriarch. The Patriarch also has the charge of the Province of the Patriarch.

For most of its history the church had six or so Interior Provinces. In 410, these were listed in the hierarchical order of: Seleucia-Ctesiphon (central Iraq), Beth Lapat (western Iran), Nisibis (on the border between Turkey and Iraq), Prat de Maishan (Basra, southern Iraq), Arbela (Erbil, Kurdistan region of Iraq), and Karka de Beth Slokh (Kirkuk, northeastern Iraq). In addition it had an increasing number of Exterior Provinces further afield within the Sasanian Empire and soon also beyond the empire's borders. By the 10th century, the church had between 20 and 30 metropolitan provinces. According to John Foster, in the 9th century there were 25 metropolitans including those in China and India. The Chinese provinces were lost in the 11th century, and in the subsequent centuries other exterior provinces went into decline as well. However, in the 13th century, during the Mongol Empire, the church added two new metropolitan provinces in North China, one being Tangut, the other Katai and Ong.

Scriptures

The Peshitta, in some cases lightly revised and with missing books added, is the standard Syriac Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition: the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Maronites, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from Hebrew, although the date and circumstances of this are not entirely clear. The translators may have been Syriac-speaking Jews or early Jewish converts to Christianity. The translation may have been done separately for different texts, and the whole work was probably done by the second century. Most of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac, and the Wisdom of Sirach is held to have been translated from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint.

The New Testament of the Peshitta, which originally excluded certain disputed books (Second Epistle of Peter, Second Epistle of John, Third Epistle of John, Epistle of Jude, Book of Revelation), had become the standard by the early 5th century.

Iconography
It was often said in the 19th century that the Church of the East was opposed to religious images of any kind. The cult of the image was never as strong in the Syriac Churches as it was in the Byzantine Church, but they were indeed present in the tradition of the Church of the East. Opposition to religious images eventually became the norm due to the rise of Islam in the region, which forbade any type of depictions of Saints and biblical prophets. As such, the Church was forced to get rid of icons.

There is both literary and archaeological evidence for the presence of images in the church. Writing in 1248 from Samarkand, an Armenian official records visiting a local church and seeing an image of Christ and the Magi. John of Cora (), Latin bishop of Sultaniya in Persia, writing about 1330 of the East Syrians in Khanbaliq says that they had 'very beautiful and orderly churches with crosses and images in honour of God and of the saints'. Apart from the references, a painting of a Christian figure discovered by Aurel Stein at the Library Cave of the Mogao Caves in 1908 is probably a representation of Jesus Christ.

An illustrated 13th-century Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book written in Estrangela from northern Mesopotamia or Tur Abdin, currently in the State Library of Berlin, proves that in the 13th century the Church of the East was not yet aniconic. The Nestorian Evangelion preserved in the  contains an illustration depicting Jesus Christ in the circle of a ringed cross surrounded by four angels. Three Syriac manuscripts from early 19th century or earlier—they were published in a compilation titled The Book of Protection by Hermann Gollancz in 1912—contain some illustrations of no great artistic worth that show that use of images continued.

A life-size male stucco figure discovered in a late-6th-century church in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, beneath which were found the remains of an earlier church, also shows that the Church of the East used figurative representations.

Early history

Although the Nestorian community traced their history to the 1st century AD, the Church of the East first achieved official state recognition from the Sasanian Empire in the 4th century with the accession of Yazdegerd I (reigned 399–420) to the throne of the Sasanian Empire. The policies of the Sasanian Empire, which encouraged syncretic forms of Christianity, greatly influenced the Church of the East.

The early Church had branches that took inspiration from Neo-Platonism, other Near Eastern religions like Judaism, and other forms of Christianity.

In 410, the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, held at the Sasanian capital, allowed the church's leading bishops to elect a formal Catholicos (leader). Catholicos Isaac was required both to lead the Assyrian Christian community and to answer on its behalf to the Sasanian emperor.

Under pressure from the Sasanian Emperor, the Church of the East sought to increasingly distance itself from the Pentarchy (at the time being known as the church of the Eastern Roman Empire). Therefore, in 424, the bishops of the Sasanian Empire met in council under the leadership of Catholicos Dadishoʿ (421–456) and determined that they would not, henceforth, refer disciplinary or theological problems to any external power, and especially not to any bishop or church council in the Roman Empire.

Thus, the Mesopotamian churches did not send representatives to the various church councils attended by representatives of the "Western Church". Accordingly, the leaders of the Church of the East did not feel bound by any decisions of what came to be regarded as Roman Imperial Councils. Despite this, the Creed and Canons of the First Council of Nicaea of 325, affirming the full divinity of Christ, were formally accepted at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410. The church's understanding of the term hypostasis differs from the definition of the term offered at the Council of Chalcedon of 451. For this reason, the Assyrian Church has never approved the Chalcedonian definition.

The theological controversy that followed the Council of Ephesus in 431 proved a turning point in the Christian Church's history. The Council condemned as heretical the Christology of Nestorius, whose reluctance to accord the Virgin Mary the title Theotokos "God-bearer, Mother of God" was taken as evidence that he believed two separate persons (as opposed to two united natures) to be present within Christ.

The Sasanian Emperor, hostile to the Byzantines, saw the opportunity to ensure the loyalty of his Christian subjects and lent support to the Nestorian Schism. The Emperor took steps to cement the primacy of the Nestorian party within the Assyrian Church of the East, granting its members his protection, and executing the pro-Roman Catholicos Babowai in 484, replacing him with the Nestorian Bishop of Nisibis, Barsauma. The Catholicos-Patriarch Babai (497–503) confirmed the association of the Assyrian Church with Nestorianism.

Parthian and Sasanian periods

Christians were already forming communities in Mesopotamia as early as the 1st century under the Parthian Empire. In 266, the area was annexed by the Sasanian Empire (becoming the province of Asōristān), and there were significant Christian communities in Upper Mesopotamia, Elam, and Fars. The Church of the East traced its origins ultimately to the evangelical activity of Thaddeus of Edessa, Mari and Thomas the Apostle. Leadership and structure remained disorganised until 315 when Papa bar Aggai (310–329), bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, imposed the primacy of his see over the other Mesopotamian and Persian bishoprics which were grouped together under the Catholicate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon; Papa took the title of Catholicos, or universal leader. This position received an additional title in 410, becoming Catholicos and Patriarch of the East.

These early Christian communities in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Fars were reinforced in the 4th and 5th centuries by large-scale deportations of Christians from the eastern Roman Empire. However, the Persian Church faced several severe persecutions, notably during the reign of Shapur II (339–79), from the Zoroastrian majority who accused it of Roman leanings. Shapur II attempted to dismantle the catholicate's structure and put to death some of the clergy including the catholicoi Simeon bar Sabba'e (341), Shahdost (342), and Barba'shmin (346). Afterward, the office of Catholicos lay vacant nearly 20 years (346–363). In 363, under the terms of a peace treaty, Nisibis was ceded to the Persians, causing Ephrem the Syrian, accompanied by a number of teachers, to leave the School of Nisibis for Edessa still in Roman territory. The church grew considerably during the Sasanian period, but the pressure of persecution led the Catholicos, Dadisho I, in 424 to convene the Council of Markabta of the Arabs and declare the Catholicate independent from "the western Fathers".

Meanwhile, in the Roman Empire, the Nestorian Schism had led many of Nestorius' supporters to relocate to the Sasanian Empire, mainly around the theological School of Nisibis. The Persian Church increasingly aligned itself with the Dyophisites, a measure encouraged by the Zoroastrian ruling class. The church became increasingly Dyophisite in doctrine over the next decades, furthering the divide between Roman and Persian Christianity. In 484 the Metropolitan of Nisibis, Barsauma, convened the Synod of Beth Lapat where he publicly accepted Nestorius' mentor, Theodore of Mopsuestia, as a spiritual authority. In 489, when the School of Edessa in Mesopotamia was closed by Byzantine Emperor Zeno for its Nestorian teachings, the school relocated to its original home of Nisibis, becoming again the School of Nisibis, leading to a wave of Nestorian immigration into the Sasanian Empire. The Patriarch of the East Mar Babai I (497–502) reiterated and expanded upon his predecessors' esteem for Theodore, solidifying the church's adoption of Dyophisitism.

Now firmly established in the Persian Empire, with centres in Nisibis, Ctesiphon, and Gundeshapur, and several metropolitan sees, the Church of the East began to branch out beyond the Sasanian Empire. However, through the 6th century the church was frequently beset with internal strife and persecution from the Zoroastrians. The infighting led to a schism, which lasted from 521 until around 539, when the issues were resolved. However, immediately afterward Byzantine-Persian conflict led to a renewed persecution of the church by the Sasanian emperor Khosrau I; this ended in 545. The church survived these trials under the guidance of Patriarch Aba I, who had converted to Christianity from Zoroastrianism.

By the end of the 5th century and the middle of the 6th, the area occupied by the Church of the East included "all the countries to the east and those immediately to the west of the Euphrates", including the Sasanian Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, with minor presence in the Horn of Africa, Socotra, Mesopotamia, Media, Bactria, Hyrcania, and India; and possibly also to places called Calliana, Male, and Sielediva (Ceylon). Beneath the Patriarch in the hierarchy were nine metropolitans, and clergy were recorded among the Huns, in Persarmenia, Media, and the island of Dioscoris in the Indian Ocean.

The Church of the East also flourished in the kingdom of the Lakhmids until the Islamic conquest, particularly after the ruler al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir officially converted in c. 592.

Islamic rule

After the Sasanian Empire was conquered by Muslim Arabs in 644, the newly established Rashidun Caliphate designated the Church of the East as an official dhimmi minority group headed by the Patriarch of the East. As with all other Christian and Jewish groups given the same status, the church was restricted within the Caliphate, but also given a degree of protection. In order to resist the growing competition from Muslim courts, patriarchs and bishops of the Church of the East developed canon law and adapted the procedures used in the episcopal courts. Nestorians were not permitted to proselytise or attempt to convert Muslims, but their missionaries were otherwise given a free hand, and they increased missionary efforts farther afield. Missionaries established dioceses in India (the Saint Thomas Christians). They made some advances in Egypt, despite the strong Monophysite presence there, and they entered Central Asia, where they had significant success converting local Tartars. Nestorian missionaries were firmly established in China during the early part of the Tang dynasty (618–907); the Chinese source known as the Nestorian Stele describes a mission under a proselyte named Alopen as introducing Nestorian Christianity to China in 635. In the 7th century, the church had grown to have two Nestorian archbishops, and over 20 bishops east of the Iranian border of the Oxus River.

Patriarch Timothy I (780–823), a contemporary of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, took a particularly keen interest in the missionary expansion of the Church of the East. He is known to have consecrated metropolitans for Damascus, for Armenia, for Dailam and Gilan in Azerbaijan, for Rai in Tabaristan, for Sarbaz in Segestan, for the Turks of Central Asia, for China, and possibly also for Tibet. He also detached India from the metropolitan province of Fars and made it a separate metropolitan province, known as India. By the 10th century the Church of the East had a number of dioceses stretching from across the Caliphate's territories to India and China.

Nestorian Christians made substantial contributions to the Islamic Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, particularly in translating the works of the ancient Greek philosophers to Syriac and Arabic. Nestorians made their own contributions to philosophy, science (such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Qusta ibn Luqa, Masawaiyh, Patriarch Eutychius, Jabril ibn Bukhtishu) and theology (such as Tatian, Bar Daisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, Toma bar Yacoub). The personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty.

Expansion

After the split with the Western World and synthesis with Nestorianism, the Church of the East expanded rapidly due to missionary works during the medieval period. During the period between 500 and 1400 the geographical horizon of the Church of the East extended well beyond its heartland in present-day northern Iraq, north eastern Syria and south eastern Turkey. Communities sprang up throughout Central Asia, and missionaries from Assyria and Mesopotamia took the Christian faith as far as China, with a primary indicator of their missionary work being the Nestorian Stele, a Christian tablet written in Chinese found in China dating to 781 AD. Their most important conversion, however, was of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast in India, who alone escaped the destruction of the church by Timur at the end of the 14th century, and the majority of whom today constitute the largest group who now use the liturgy of the Church of the East, with around 4 million followers in their homeland, in spite of the 17th-century defection to the West Syriac Rite of the Syriac Orthodox Church. The St Thomas Christians were believed by tradition to have been converted by St Thomas, and were in communion with the Church of the East until the end of the medieval period.

India

The Saint Thomas Christian community of Kerala, India, who according to tradition trace their origins to the evangelizing efforts of Thomas the Apostle, had a long association with the Church of the East. The earliest known organised Christian presence in Kerala dates to 295/300 when Christian settlers and missionaries from Persia headed by Bishop David of Basra settled in the region. The Saint Thomas Christians traditionally credit the mission of Thomas of Cana, a Nestorian from the Middle East, with the further expansion of their community. From at least the early 4th century, the Patriarch of the Church of the East provided the Saint Thomas Christians with clergy, holy texts, and ecclesiastical infrastructure. And around 650 Patriarch Ishoyahb III solidified the church's jurisdiction in India. In the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organised the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India, one of the church's Provinces of the Exterior. After this point the Province of India was headed by a metropolitan bishop, provided from Persia, who oversaw a varying number of bishops as well as a native Archdeacon, who had authority over the clergy and also wielded a great amount of secular power. The metropolitan see was probably in Cranganore, or (perhaps nominally) in Mylapore, where the Shrine of Thomas was located.

In the 12th century Indian Nestorianism engaged the Western imagination in the figure of Prester John, supposedly a Nestorian ruler of India who held the offices of both king and priest. The geographically remote Malabar Church survived the decay of the Nestorian hierarchy elsewhere, enduring until the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in India. With the establishment of Portuguese power in parts of India, the clergy of that empire, in particular members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), determined to actively bring the Saint Thomas Christians into full communion with Rome under the Latin Church and its Latin liturgical rites.  After the Synod of Diamper in 1599, they installed Padroado Portuguese bishops over the local sees and made liturgical changes to accord with the Latin practice and this led to a revolt among the Saint Thomas Christians. The majority of them broke with the Catholic Church and vowed never to submit to the Portuguese in the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653. In 1661, Pope Alexander VII responded by sending a delegations of Carmelites headed by two Italians, one Fleming and one German priests to reconcile the Saint Thomas Christians to Catholic fold. These priests had two advantages – they were not Portuguese and they were not Jesuits. By the next year, 84 of the 116 Saint Thomas Christian churches had returned, forming the Syrian Catholic Church (modern day Syro-Malabar Catholic Church). The rest, which became known as the Malankara Church, soon entered into communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church. The Malankara Church also produced the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

Sri Lanka
Nestorian Christianity is said to have thrived in Sri Lanka with the patronage of King Dathusena during the 5th century. There are mentions of involvement of Persian Christians with the Sri Lankan royal family during the Sigiriya Period. Over seventy-five ships carrying Murundi soldiers from Mangalore are said to have arrived in the Sri Lankan town of Chilaw most of whom were Christians. King Dathusena's daughter was married to his nephew Migara who is also said to have been a Nestorian Christian, and a commander of the Sinhalese army. Maga Brahmana, a Christian priest of Persian origin is said to have provided advice to King Dathusena on establishing his palace on the Sigiriya Rock.

The Anuradhapura Cross discovered in 1912 is also considered to be an indication of a strong Nestorian Christian presence in Sri Lanka between the 3rd and 10th century in the then capitol of Anuradhapura of Sri Lanka.

China

Christianity reached China by 635, and its relics can still be seen in Chinese cities such as Xi'an. The Nestorian Stele, set up on 7 January 781 at the then-capital of Chang'an, attributes the introduction of Christianity to a mission under a Persian cleric named Alopen in 635, in the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang during the Tang dynasty. The inscription on the Nestorian Stele, whose dating formula mentions the patriarch Hnanisho II (773–80), gives the names of several prominent Christians in China, including Metropolitan Adam, Bishop Yohannan, 'country-bishops' Yazdbuzid and Sargis and Archdeacons Gigoi of Khumdan (Chang'an) and Gabriel of Sarag (Loyang). The names of around seventy monks are also listed.

Nestorian Christianity thrived in China for approximately 200 years, but then faced persecution from Emperor Wuzong of Tang (reigned 840–846). He suppressed all foreign religions, including Buddhism and Christianity, causing the church to decline sharply in China. A Syrian monk visiting China a few decades later described many churches in ruin. The church disappeared from China in the early 10th century, coinciding with the collapse of the Tang dynasty and the tumult of the next years (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period).

Christianity in China experienced a significant revival during the Mongol-created Yuan dynasty, established after the Mongols had conquered China in the 13th century. Marco Polo in the 13th century and other medieval Western writers described many Nestorian communities remaining in China and Mongolia; however, they clearly were not as active as they had been during Tang times.

Mongolia and Central Asia

The Church of the East enjoyed a final period of expansion under the Mongols. Several Mongol tribes had already been converted by Nestorian missionaries in the 7th century, and Christianity was therefore a major influence in the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but his sons took Christian wives from the powerful Kerait clan, as did their sons in turn. During the rule of Genghis's grandson, the Great Khan Mongke, Nestorian Christianity was the primary religious influence in the Empire, and this also carried over to Mongol-controlled China, during the Yuan dynasty. It was at this point, in the late 13th century, that the Church of the East reached its greatest geographical reach. But Mongol power was already waning as the Empire dissolved into civil war; and it reached a turning point in 1295, when Ghazan, the Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate, made a formal conversion to Islam when he took the throne.

Jerusalem and Cyprus

Rabban Bar Sauma had initially conceived of his journey to the West as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so it is possible that there was a Nestorian presence in the city ca.1300.  There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate. At Famagusta, Cyprus, a Nestorian community was established just before 1300, and a church was built for them .

Decline
The expansion was followed by a decline. There were 68 cities with resident Church of the East bishops in the year 1000; in 1238 there were only 24, and at the death of Timur in 1405, only seven. The result of some 20 years under Öljaitü, ruler of the Ilkhanate from 1304 to 1316, and to a lesser extent under his predecessor, was that the overall number of the dioceses and parishes was further reduced.

When Timur, the Turco-Mongol leader of the Timurid Empire, known also as Tamerlane, came to power in 1370, he set out to cleanse his dominions of non-Muslims. He annihilated Christianity in central Asia. The Church of the East "lived on only in the mountains of Kurdistan and in India". Thus, except for the Saint Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast, the Church of the East was confined to the area in and around the rough triangle formed by Mosul and Lakes Van and Urmia, including Amid (modern Diyarbakır), Mêrdîn (modern Mardin) and Edessa to the west, Salmas to the east, Hakkari and Harran to the north, and Mosul, Kirkuk, and Arbela (modern Erbil) to the south - a region comprising, in modern maps, northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and the northwestern fringe of Iran. Small Nestorian communities were located further west, notably in Jerusalem and Cyprus, but the Malabar Christians of India represented the only significant survival of the once-thriving exterior provinces of the Church of the East. The complete disappearance of the Nestorian dioceses in Central Asia probably stemmed from a combination of persecution, disease, and isolation: "what survived the Mongols did not survive the Black Death of the fourteenth century." In many parts of Central Asia, Christianity had died out decades before Timur's campaigns. The surviving evidence from Central Asia, including a large number of dated graves, indicates that the crisis for the Church of the East occurred in the 1340s rather than the 1390s. Several contemporary observers, including the Papal Envoy Giovanni de' Marignolli, mention the murder of a Latin bishop in 1339 or 1340 by a Muslim mob in Almaliq, the chief city of Tangut, and the forcible conversion of the city's Christians to Islam. Tombstones in two East Syriac cemeteries in Mongolia have been dated from 1342, some commemorating deaths during a Black Death outbreak in 1338. In China, the last references to Nestorian and Latin Christians date from the 1350s, shortly before the replacement in 1368 of the Mongol Yuan dynasty with the xenophobic Ming dynasty and the consequential self-imposed isolation of China from foreign influence including Christianity.

Schisms
From the middle of the 16th century, and throughout following two centuries, the Church of the East was affected by several internal schisms. Some of those schisms were caused by individuals or groups who chose to accept union with the Catholic Church. Other schisms were provoked by rivalry between various fractions within the Church of the East. Lack of internal unity and frequent change of allegiances led to the creation and continuation of separate patriarchal lines. In spite of many internal challenges, and external difficulties (political oppression by Ottoman authorities and frequent persecutions by local non-Christians), the traditional branches of the Church of the East managed to survive that tumultuous period and eventually consolidate during the 19th century in the form of the Assyrian Church of the East. At the same time, after many similar difficulties, groups united with the Catholic Church were finally consolidated into the Chaldean Catholic Church

Schism of 1552

Around the middle of the fifteenth century Patriarch Shemon IV Basidi made the patriarchal succession hereditarynormally from uncle to nephew. This practice, which resulted in a shortage of eligible heirs, eventually led to a schism in the Church of the East, creating a temporarily Catholic offshoot known as the Shimun line. The Patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb (1539–58) caused great turmoil at the beginning of his reign by designating his twelve-year-old nephew Khnanisho as his successor, presumably because no older relatives were available. Several years later, probably because Khnanisho had died in the interim, he designated as successor his fifteen-year-old brother Eliya, the future Patriarch Eliya VI (1558–1591). These appointments, combined with other accusations of impropriety, caused discontent throughout the church, and by 1552 Shemon VII Ishoyahb had become so unpopular that a group of bishops, principally from the Amid, Sirt and Salmas districts in northern Mesopotamia, chose a new patriarch. They elected a monk named Yohannan Sulaqa, the former superior of Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh, which was the seat of the incumbent patriarchs; however, no bishop of metropolitan rank was available to consecrate him, as canonically required. Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the Nestorians, and, using them as intermediaries, Sulaqa's supporters sought to legitimise their position by seeking their candidate's consecration by Pope Julius III (1550–5).

Sulaqa went to Rome, arriving on 18 November 1552, and presented a letter, drafted by his supporters in Mosul, setting out his claim and asking that the Pope consecrate him as Patriarch. On 15 February 1553 he made a twice-revised profession of faith judged to be satisfactory, and by the bull Divina Disponente Clementia of 20 February 1553 was appointed "Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria" or "Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of Mosul" (Chaldaeorum ecclesiae Musal Patriarcha). He was consecrated bishop in St. Peter's Basilica on 9 April. On 28 April Pope Julius III gave him the pallium conferring patriarchal rank, confirmed with the bull Cum Nos Nuper. These events, in which Rome was led to believe that Shemon VII Ishoyahb was dead, created within the Church of the East a lasting schism between the Eliya line of Patriarchs at Alqosh and the new line originating from Sulaqa. The latter was for half a century recognised by Rome as being in communion, but that reverted to both hereditary succession and Nestorianism and has continued in the Patriarchs of the Assyrian Church of the East.

Sulaqa left Rome in early July and in Constantinople applied for civil recognition. After his return to Mesopotamia, he received from the Ottoman authorities in December 1553 recognition as head of "the Chaldean nation after the example of all the Patriarchs". In the following year, during a five-month stay in Amid (Diyarbakır), he consecrated two metropolitans and three other bishops (for Gazarta, Hesna d'Kifa, Amid, Mardin and Seert). For his part, Shemon VII Ishoyahb of the Alqosh line consecrated two more underage members of his patriarchal family as metropolitans (for Nisibis and Gazarta). He also won over the governor of Amadiya, who invited Sulaqa to Amadiya, imprisoned him for four months, and put him to death in January 1555.

The Eliya and Shimun lines
This new Catholic line founded by Sulaqa maintained its seat at Amid and is known as the "Shimun" line. Wilmshurst suggests that their adoption of the name Shimun (after Simon Peter) was meant to point to the legitimacy of their Catholic line. Sulaqa's successor, Abdisho IV Maron (1555–1570) visited Rome and his Patriarchal title was confirmed by the Pope in 1562. At some point, he moved to Seert.

The Eliya-line Patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb (1539–1558), who resided in the Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh, continued to actively oppose union with Rome, and was succeeded by his nephew Eliya (designated as Eliya "VII" in older historiography, but renumbered as Eliya "VI" in recent scholarly works). During his Patriarchal tenure, from 1558 to 1591, the Church of the East preserved its traditional christology and full ecclesiastical independence.

The next Shimun Patriarch was likely Yahballaha IV, who was elected in 1577 or 1578 and died within two years before seeking or obtaining confirmation from Rome. According to Tisserant, problems posed by the "Nestorian" traditionalists and the Ottoman authorities prevented any earlier election of a successor to Abdisho. David Wilmshurst and Heleen Murre believe that, in the period between 1570 and the patriarchal election of Yahballaha, he or another of the same name was looked on as Patriarch. Yahballaha's successor, Shimun IX Dinkha (1580–1600), who moved away from Turkish rule to Salmas on Lake Urmia in Persia, was officially confirmed by the Pope in 1584. There are theories that he appointed his nephew, Shimun X Eliyah (1600–1638) as his successor, but others argue that his election was independent of any such designation. Regardless, from then until the 21st century the Shimun line employed a hereditary system of succession – the rejection of which was part of the reason for the creation of that line in the first place.

Two Nestorian patriarchs

The next Eliya Patriarch, Eliya VII (VIII) (1591–1617), negotiated on several occasions with the Catholic Church, in 1605, 1610 and 1615–1616, but without final resolution. This likely alarmed Shimun X, who in 1616 sent to Rome a profession of faith that Rome found unsatisfactory, and another in 1619, which also failed to win him official recognition. Wilmshurst says it was this Shimun Patriarch who reverted to the "old faith" of Nestorianism, leading to a shift in allegiances that won for the Eliya line control of the lowlands and of the highlands for the Shimun line. Further negotiations between the Eliya line and the Catholic Church were cancelled during the Patriarchal tenure of Eliya VIII (IX) (1617–1660).

The next two Shimun Patriarchs, Shimun XI Eshuyow (1638–1656) and Shimun XII Yoalaha (1656–1662), wrote to the Pope in 1653 and 1658, according to Wilmshurst, while Heleen Murre speaks only of 1648 and 1653. Wilmshurst says Shimun XI was sent the pallium, though Heleen Murre argues official recognition was given to neither. A letter suggests that one of the two was removed from office (presumably by Nestorian traditionalists) for pro-Catholic leanings: Shimun XI according to Heleen Murre, probably Shimun XII according to Wilmshurst.

Eliya IX (X) (1660–1700) was a "vigorous defender of the traditional [Nestorian] faith", and simultaneously the next Shimun Patriarch, Shimun XIII Dinkha (1662–1700), definitively broke with the Catholic Church. In 1670, he gave a traditionalist reply to an approach that was made from Rome, and by 1672 all connections with the Pope were ended. There were then two traditionalist Patriarchal lines, the senior Eliya line in Alqosh, and the junior Shimun line in Qochanis.

The Josephite line
As the Shimun line "gradually returned to the traditional worship of the Church of the East, thereby losing the allegiance of the western regions", it moved from Turkish-controlled territory to Urmia in Persia. The bishopric of Amid (Diyarbakır), the original headquarters of Shimun Sulaqa, became subject to the Alqosh Patriarch. In 1667 or 1668, Bishop Joseph of that see converted to the Catholic faith. In 1677, he obtained from the Turkish authorities recognition as holding independent power in Amid and Mardin, and in 1681 he was recognised by Rome as "Patriarch of the Chaldean nation deprived of its Patriarch" (Amid patriarchate). Thus was instituted the Josephite line, a third line of Patriarchs and the sole Catholic one at the time. All Joseph I's successors took the name "Joseph". The life of this Patriarchate was difficult: the leadership was continually vexed by traditionalists, while the community struggled under the tax burden imposed by the Ottoman authorities.

In 1771, Eliya XI (XII) and his designated successor (the future Eliya XII (XIII) Ishoyahb) made a profession of faith that was accepted by Rome, thus establishing communion. By then, acceptance of the Catholic position was general in the Mosul area. When Eliya XI (XII) died in 1778, Eliya XII (XIII) made a renewed profession of Catholic faith and was recognised by Rome as Patriarch of Mosul, but in May 1779 renounced that profession in favor of the traditional faith. His younger cousin Yohannan Hormizd was locally elected to replace him in 1780, but for various reasons was recognised by Rome only as Metropolitan of Mosul and Administrator of the Catholics of the Alqosh party, having the powers of a Patriarch but not the title or insignia. When Joseph IV of the Amid Patriarchate resigned in 1780, Rome likewise made his nephew, Augustine Hindi, whom he wished to be his successor, not Patriarch but Administrator. No one held the title of Chaldean Catholic patriarch for the next 47 years.

Consolidation of patriarchal lines

When Eliya XII (XIII) died in 1804, the Nestorian branch of the Eliya line died with him. With most of his subjects won over to union with Rome by Hormizd, they did not elect a new traditionalist Patriarch. In 1830, Hormizd was finally recognized as the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon, marking the last remnant of the hereditary system within the Chaldean Catholic Church.

This also ended the rivalry between the senior Eliya line and the junior Shimun line, as Shimun XVI Yohannan (1780–1820) became the sole primate of the traditionalist Church of the East, "the legal successor of the initially Uniate patriarchate of the [Shimun] line". In 1976, it adopted the name Assyrian Church of the East, and its patriarchate remained hereditary until the death in 1975 of Shimun XXI Eshai.

Accordingly, Joachim Jakob remarks that the original Patriarchate of the Church of the East (the Eliya line) entered into union with Rome and continues down to today in the form of the Chaldean [Catholic] Church, while the original Patriarchate of the Chaldean Catholic Church (the Shimun line) continues today in the Assyrian Church of the East.

See also

Explanatory notes

Citations

General and cited references

External links

1552 disestablishments in Asia
Christian organizations established in the 1st century

Church of the East


Antigua and Barbuda made its Paralympic Games début at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, sending a single representative (Jamol Pilgrim) to compete in athletics.

The Antigua and Barbuda Paralympic Committee (ABPC) was established on 15 March 2012. Its immediate purpose was to enable Pilgrim, "the nation's only Paralympic athlete", to compete at the 2012 Games, as this required his country having a National Paralympic Committee. Pilgrim had been a sprinter with Olympic aspirations until a car crash in 2009 had resulted in his right leg being amputated above the knee. Now running with a prosthetic, he met the 'A' standard qualifying time in 2011 to compete in London, in the men's 100m T42 sprint.

Full results for Antigua and Barbuda at the Paralympics

See also
 Antigua and Barbuda at the Olympics

References

Antigua and Barbuda at the Paralympics


The 1876–1877 Constantinople Conference (or 'Shipyard Palace Conference', from the conference venue) of the Great Powers (Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) was held in Istanbul (Constantinople) from 23 December 1876 until 20 January 1877.  Following the Herzegovinian Rebellion started in 1875 and the Bulgarian Uprising in April 1876, the Great Powers agreed on a project for political reforms both in Bosnia and in the Ottoman territories with a majority Bulgarian population.

Participants

The Great Powers were represented at the conference respectively by:

 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland:
 Lord Salisbury and Sir Henry Elliot;
 Russian Empire:
 Count Nikolay Ignatyev (historical spelling Nicolai Ignatieff);
 Kingdom of France:
 Count Jean-Baptiste de Chaudordy and Count François de Bourgoing;
 German Empire:
 Baron Karl von Werther;
 Austro-Hungarian Empire:
 Baron Heinrich von Calice and Count Ferenc Zichy;
 Kingdom of Italy:
 Count Luigi (Lodovico) Corti.

Of these, Lord Salisbury, Count de Chaudordy and Baron von Calice were Ambassadors Plenipotentiary to the conference, while Count Ignatyev, Sir Henry Elliot, Count de Bourgoing, Baron von Werther, Count Zichy and Count Corti were the resident Ambassadors of their countries in Constantinople.

The US Consul General in Constantinople, Eugene Schuyler also took an active part in drafting the conference decisions.

The Ottoman Empire was represented at the conference by:
 Mithat Pasha, Saffet Pasha and Edhem Pasha.

Mithat Pasha was the Grand Vizier (First Minister), and Saffet Pasha the Foreign Minister of Turkey.  Although the Turkish representatives participated in the plenaries of the conference, they were not invited to the preceding working sessions at which the Great Powers negotiated their agreement.

Lord Salisbury and Count Ignatyev played a leading role in the process.  Ignatyev was trying to dispel British misgivings about Russia's assumed role of a protector of the Orthodox Slavs being but a disguise of its drive to take over the Bosporus and Constantinople itself and thus – as Prime Minister Disraeli feared – potentially threaten the vital Mediterranean routes to British India.  On his part, Salisbury saw the conference as a promising opportunity for mapping out a comprehensive deal with Russia over their conflicting territorial ambitions in Central Asia.

Decisions

Bosnia

The conference envisaged the creation of an autonomous province including Bosnia and most of Herzegovina, while a southern part of the latter was to be ceded to Montenegro.

Bulgaria

The Great Powers agreed on a substantial Bulgarian autonomy to take the form of two new Ottoman provinces (vilayets) established for the purpose: Eastern, with capital Tarnovo, and Western, with capital Sofia.

The conference determined that, as of the late 19th century, the Bulgarian ethnic territories within the Ottoman Empire extended to the Danube Delta in the northeast, Kastoria in the southwest, Kirklareli and Edirne in the southeast, and Niš in the northwest.  These territories were to be incorporated into the two Bulgarian autonomous provinces as follows:

 Eastern Bulgarian autonomous province, including the Ottoman sandjaks – second level administrative divisions – of Tarnovo, Ruse, Tulcea, Varna, Sliven, Plovdiv (bar the kazas – third level administrative divisions – of Ardino and Smolyan), and part of the Edirne sandjak including the kazas of Kirklareli, Svilengrad and Elhovo.
 Western Bulgarian autonomous province, including the sandjaks of Sofia, Vidin, Niš, Skopje, Bitola (bar the kazas of Debar and Korçë), the Gotse Delchev, Melnik, and Sidirokastro kazas of the Serres sandjak, and the kazas of Strumica, Veles, Tikveš and Kastoria.
The Great Powers elaborated in detail the constitutional, legislative, executive, defense and law enforcement arrangements, cantonal administrative system, taxation, international supervision etc. for the proposed autonomous provinces.

Conclusion

The agreed decisions of the six Great Powers were formally handed over to the Ottoman Government on 23 December 1876, dismissing the opening Turkish suggestions that the Conference's mission might have been obviated by a new Ottoman Constitution approved by Sultan Abdul Hamid II that same day.  In the subsequent conference plenary sessions Turkey submitted objections and alternative reform proposals that were rejected by the Great Powers, and attempts to bridge the gap did not succeed.  Eventually, on 18 January 1877 Grand Vizier Mithat Pasha announced the definitive refusal of Turkey to accept the conference decisions.

Legacy

The failure of the Ottoman Government to implement the decisions of the Constantinople Conference triggered the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, depriving at the same time Turkey – in contrast to the preceding 1853–1856 Crimean War – from Western support.

Tsarigrad Peak in Imeon Range on Smith Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after the conference ('Tsarigrad' being the old Bulgarian name for Constantinople).

Related pages

 Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)

Notes

References
 R.W. Seton-Watson.  Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question: A Study in Diplomacy and Party Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1972. p. 108.
 George Washburn. Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1909. p. 115–119.

1870s in Europe
1876
1877
History of Turkey
Constantinople

Constantinople Conference


Women's Empowerment or Women Empowering is the process of giving women more power. It improves women's sense of self importance. It also improves the ability to decide about their lives themselves. This makes them to stand on their own feet. It also includes giving women legal rights to change their societies. Many developing and developed countries are talking about women's empowerment more. Empowering women economically make them to have their own jobs and incomes.  Then they can manage their own resources and wealth. This helps them plan for many risks in life. It also helps to improve their well-being socially, mentally, and physically.

Gender equality and women empowerment are two things that always go together.

There are many ideas for women's empowerment. There are seven well known purposes of the process. These are:

 Establishment of the high level collective leadership for gender equality.
 Equal treatment of men and women, along with respect and no discrimination or bias.
 To make sure of the health, safety and well-being of both men and women workers.
 Encouragement and development of women's education and access to the jobs.
 Applying for the development of companies and marketing practices.
 Encouraging the equality of rights through massive awareness and proper backing.
 Looking at the projects meant to make men and women more equal and telling the public whether or not they worked and by how much.

Currently, people want to strengthen women empowerment. It is increasing day by day, across the globe. It is to remove the current situation on bad treatment of females and gender bias. According to a report from the United Nations (UN), around 750 million women and girls were married before being eighteen years old. And in another report, around 250 million women have undergone Female genital mutilation (FGM) across the world.

Women hold more than 30 percent of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber[which country?]. It is one of the positive results of the dedicated efforts of women empowerment projects around the world.

Related articles
 Nari Shakti Puraskar

References

Human rights
Women

Women's empowerment


Alexander Ferdinand Grychtolik (born 6 September 1980 in Berlin) is a German harpsichordist, improviser, musicologist and academic.

Grychtolik is married to the harpsichordist Aleksandra Magdalena Grychtolik, with whom he has appeared in concert.

Career

Grychtolik graduated from the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt", Weimar, where he began research and work on his idea that it would be possible to digitally reconstruct selected works from Bach's Weimar period, creating a historical concert in a virtual church. Grychtolik received the school's Franz Liszt Prize in 2005. He studied the harpsichord with  and with Frédérick Haas at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He also studied architecture at Bauhaus-University Weimar, where he published an article about the concert halls of the GDR.

Grychtolik has played at several European early music festivals. He has lectured at various conservatories such as Frankfurt and taught Baroque improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt", Weimar, the first such teaching position in Germany.

He specializes in the field of early music, Baroque improvisation and composition. He has reconstructed various vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach which have received much attention.

Bach reconstructions
He edited the St. Mark Passion (performed in 1744) as a stylistically consistent reconstruction, published by Edition Peters. This work was lost, the last known copy having burned in 1945. It was completely reconstructed by Grychtolik.

The reconstruction of the St. Mark Passion was first performed on 1 April 2007 as part of the festival Thüringer Bachwochen (Thuringia's Weeks of Bach) in Weimar's town church St. Peter und Paul, where several of Bach's children were baptized.  conducted; Grychtolik played the harpsichord. It was again performed in the St. Jakob's church in Köthen, where Bach once lived and worked, as part of its 23rd Bach Festival (Köthener Bachfesttage). The day before the concert, Grychtolik participated in a panel discussion and had to answer questions about his Bach "parody" from Bach experts who are critical of his efforts.

He edited the first full reconstruction of the funeral cantata Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt, BWV 244a, also called Köthener Trauermusik, which Bach used as the base for his St Matthew Passion. The Köthener Trauermusik was performed in March 2010 by the Lautten Compagney in the Sophienkirche Berlin and the Kammermusiksaal of the Deutschlandfunk in Cologne and later broadcast on radio. A performance on 11 May 2010 was aired by Austrian broadcaster ORF.

At the Köthener Bachfesttage 2012 Grychtolik conducted the Mitteldeutsche Hofmusik ensemble in performances of the reconstructions of birthday cantatas Steigt freudig in die Luft, BWV 36a and Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück, BWV 66a.

Bach's O angenehme Melodei, BWV 210a, only survives as a fragment. However, because Bach used it for his wedding cantata O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit, BWV 210, it was possible to reconstruct the piece. Grychtolik's work makes it possible to perform the cantata in concert. Together with a reconstruction of Erwählte Pleißenstadt, BWV 216a it was recorded and released by Grychtolik in 2017.

References

External links

 Bach Bibliography – Publications by Alexander Grychtolik

1980 births
German harpsichordists
German classical organists
German male organists
Clavichordists
German performers of early music
Academic staff of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar
Musicians from Berlin
Living people
21st-century organists
21st-century German male musicians
Male classical organists

Alexander Grychtolik


Capt. Jacob Shoemaker House is a historic home located in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area at Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania.  It was built about 1810, and is a -story, fieldstone dwelling over a banked stone basement.  It has a gable roof with two dormers.  The rear of the building has a two-story porch.  It was the home of the locally prominent Shoemaker family.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
Houses completed in 1810
Houses in Monroe County, Pennsylvania
National Register of Historic Places in Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

Capt. Jacob Shoemaker House


Merciful Release is a record label started by Andrew Eldritch, frontman with Leeds band the Sisters of Mercy. As Eldritch stated in an early interview, he wanted to hear himself on the radio. He and Gary Marx (Mark Pairman) played and recorded on the Sisters of Mercy's initial single "Damage Done" and pressed one thousand copies. This record was something of a collector's item.

Throughout the early 1980s, the band released several singles on Merciful Release, controlling the format and image of the records, typically in a black sleeve with artwork centrally mounted and a head and star logo on the rear of sleeves. A notable example of this being Henri Matisse's Blue Nude in gold on black for the single Alice.

By 1984, the band had signed a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records (Elektra in the US) whilst still maintaining control of Merciful Release.

In the 1990s, a number of CDs were released on the Merciful Release label for the MK Ultra: their Beluga Pop and This Is This albums, and German band Scoda Blush.

List of releases

See also
 List of record labels

British record labels
The Sisters of Mercy
Goth record labels
Vanity record labels

Merciful Release


Marquis Léonel de Moustier (5 April 1882, in Paris – 10 May 1945) was a French businessman and politician.

Léonel Marie Ghislain Alfred de Moustier, son of Marquis Pierre de Moustier, was born in Paris. His father represented Doubs in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. His grandfather Lionel de Moustier was a diplomat under the Second Empire, and his great-grandfather was a member of the Chamber of Peers.

De Moustier served in the French Army during the First World War and received the Croix de guerre 1914-1918 and the Légion d'Honneur. He was mayor of Cubry as his father had been before him and in 1928 again followed his father, this time to represent Doubs in the Chamber of Deputies, sitting with the Republican Federation. While principally interested in economic and social affairs, he was later an opponent of any appeasement of Nazi Germany and called for increased military preparedness.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, he returned to service with the French Army, then aged 57. After the signing of the armistice with Germany in June 1940, he was one of the 80 who voted against the grant of special powers to Philippe Pétain and the creation of the Vichy régime. Moustier described the armistice as treason and Pétain as a traitor and was associated with the French Resistance. He was a district leader in the Organisation de résistance de l'armée, and provided assistance to the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service.

He was arrested by the Gestapo on 23 August 1943 and imprisoned first at Besançon and then at Compiègne, and was deported to Neuengamme concentration camp in the summer of 1944. He died there shortly after the camp was liberated. He was posthumously made a member of the Ordre de la Libération.

His son Roland de Moustier (1909–2001) was also a politician.

References

  Biography at the website of the Ordre de la Libération

1882 births
1945 deaths
Businesspeople from Paris
Politicians from Paris
Republican Federation politicians
Members of the 14th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 15th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 16th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
French military personnel of World War I
French Resistance members
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)
Officers of the Legion of Honour
French military personnel killed in World War II
People who died in Neuengamme concentration camp
Politicians who died in Nazi concentration camps
Military personnel who died in Nazi concentration camps
French people who died in Nazi concentration camps
Resistance members who died in Nazi concentration camps

Léonel de Moustier