The Princely Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy, also Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy, sometimes known with its German name Stablo, was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Princely power was exercised by the Benedictine abbot of the imperial double monastery of Stavelot and Malmedy, founded in 651. Along with the Duchy of  and the Prince-Bishopric of , it was one of only three principalities of the Southern Netherlands that were never part of the Spanish Netherlands, later the Austrian Netherlands, which after 1500 were assigned to the Burgundian Circle while the principalities were assigned to the Lower Rhenish Imperial Circle.

As a prince-abbot, the abbot of Stavelot-Malmedy sat on the Ecclesiastical Bench of the College of Ruling Princes of the Imperial Diet alongside the prince-bishops. Along with the handful of other prince-abbots, he cast a full vote (), in contrast to the majority of imperial abbots who were only entitled to collectively determine the votes of their respective curial benches.

In 1795, the principality was abolished and its territory was incorporated into the French  of . The Congress of Vienna in 1815 assigned Stavelot to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Malmedy became part of the Prussian district of . Both are currently parts of the Kingdom of Belgium—since the 1830 Belgian Revolution and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, respectively (Malmedy annexed to Belgium in 1925). In 1921 the Abbey church of Malmedy became the Cathedral of the short-lived Diocese of Eupen-Malmedy.

History

Establishment

Saint Remaclus founded the Abbey of Stavelot on the  river, circa 650, on lands along the border between the bishoprics of Cologne and , this territory belonged at that time to Grimoald, the Austrasian mayor of the palace and member of the Arnulfinger-Peppinid family. A charter of Sigebert III, king of Austrasia entrusted Remaclus with the monasteries of both Stavelot and Malmedy, which was located a few kilometres eastwards in the  forest, "a place of horror and solitary isolation which abounds with wild beasts". Sigebert granted forest land; charged his Mayor of the Palace, Grimoald the Elder, with furnishing money to build the two monasteries; and continued to foster these communities with personal gifts.

The site of Malmedy was probably already settled before the foundation of the abbey, despite etymology seeming to indicate Malmedy's unsuitability.  was "a place with winding waters", or, most probably, , a "bad confluency". The  was partially canalised and its banks strengthened, to prevent the flooding that Malmedy often experienced.  The abbey church in Malmedy was dedicated to St Benedict.
The monastery of Malmedy is considered by historians and hagiographers to be slightly older than the monastery of Stavelot, with the town claiming its foundation date as 648. Malmedy is listed on earlier maps than Stavelot, and the commission appointed in 670 by Childeric II, in order to delimit the abbey territory, started from Malmedy (). Afterwards, the territory of the abbey was enlarged westwards, so that Stavelot became the geographical centre and the capital of the principality.

The first church in Stavelot was built by abbot Godwin and, on 25 June 685, was dedicated to saints Martin, Peter, and Paul. The relics of Saint Remaclus were housed in this new church.

Development and the High Middle Ages

In 747, Carloman, Duke of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, enlarged the abbeys' lands with gifts from his own, on his abdication. Throughout the ninth century, the abbeys played an important cultural role in Lotharingia, particularly thanks to abbot Christian. Around 875, the relics of St Quirinus were translated from  to Malmedy Abbey after the intercession of Emperor Charles the Bald, partly to secure relics comparable to those of St. Remaclus at Stavelot.

Through the seventh and eighth centuries, the two abbeys followed their mission of evangelism, along with forest clearance. With the decline of the Carolingian Empire, however, the abbeys suffered the same decay as elsewhere, leaving the principality in the custody of lay abbots—temporal guardians—from 844 to 938, including Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, Adalard the Seneschal, and Reginar and Giselbert, dukes of Lorraine.

Welcoming pilgrims and the sick was a part of the monks' mission. The  mention the , the monastery's hospice, where poor pilgrims were granted hospitality, including food for almost eight days, whilst they made their devotions; this hospice differs from the abbey's hospital: . On 13 April 862, Lothair II of Lotharingia, while dealing with the distribution of property , ordered that local tithes be paid to the hospital , an order he confirmed on 10 June 873.

In December 881, Normans, including Godfrid, Duke of Frisia, invaded the area, burning both abbeys and causing the monks to flee with their treasures and relics. Several historical sources provide evidence of the raid of 881, which was well prepared and organised. The monks rushed to dig up the relics of Remaclus and fled to the county of  in present-day , in the French ; the surrounding region was largely unaffected by the invasion. Stavelot and Malmedy were both burned, with the monks not returning until just before Christmas 882, with a stay in , to allow them to repair the roofs of the monastic buildings. Relics from Aachen, which had been entrusted to the monks at Stavelot because of the Norman threat, were returned intact. In gratitude, on 13 November 882, Charles the Fat—Carolingian emperor and king of East Francia, Alemannia, and Italy—granted the abbeys the lands of , a dependency of , and restored to them the chapel in  (now a part of  in ).

In 885, Normans extracted ransom from  and passed through the Meuse valley, marching on , causing the monks of Stavelot to flee again, finding refuge in the county of  and ; the  details the flight from the invaders and follows the monks' wanderings. After the invasions, abbot Odilon began to rebuild the ruined abbey of Stavelot, with support from bishops of —including Notker, the first prince-bishop. The abbots Odilon and Werinfride rebuilt the abbeys, with new building; re-established the monastic community; re-organised the principality. By the time of the Ottonian dynasty in the early 10th century, the abbeys were once again of suitable Imperial stature. A new abbey church was built in Malmedy in 992, dedicated to St Quirinus; in 1007, a parish church was consecrated to Saint Gereon.

Another danger threatened the abbey—and the Western Empire—in the 10th century: the Hungarian invasions. Having been deposed as duke of Lotharingia, Conrad the Red invited the Hungarians to undermine his opponents, Bruno the Great, archbishop of Cologne, and Reginar III, Count of Hainaut. The  reports:  ["In the year 954, Hungarians ravage the regions of Gaul ... In the year 955, victory over the Hungarians"]. On 1 July 960, Eraclus, bishop of , driven by the fears of the time, granted the monks a place to build a refuge in , although five years earlier, the victory of emperor Otto I over the Hungarians at Lechfeld had removed the danger of Hungarian sack.

The key building period at the abbey of Stavelot corresponds to the rule of prince-abbot Poppo of Deinze, the second founder of the abbey, who was made abbot by Holy Roman Emperor Henry II in 1020. He built an imposing church over  in length, which was consecrated in the presence of Emperor Henry III on 5 June 1040. Thietmar was the lay patron who assembled carpenters and stonemasons to build the abbey church. As well as confirming the authenticity of the relics of St Quirinus at Malmedy in 1042, Poppo revived the cult of St Remaclus. Poppo died in 1048; his cult, which began almost immediately, focused on his resting place in the crypt. Malmedy developed around the monastery; until the end of the tenth century, the villagers used the chapel of Saint Laurent, an apsidiole of the abbey church, as their place of worship.

In 1065, controversy arose when Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne, named Tegernon of  abbot of Malmedy, on dubious authority—whilst Malmedy was in the archdiocese of Cologne, the two abbeys were linked and, thus, under the purview of the diocese of , where Stavelot lay. This occurred despite several previous Imperial bulls reinforcing the position that the two abbeys should be subject to a single abbot. The monks from Stavelot processed to Malmedy with the crosier and relics of St Remaclus to remind the rebellious monks of the traditional ordering of the abbeys that the saint had instituted. The relics and crosier were also transported to an Imperial Diet of Henry IV in Goslar. In 1066, they processed again, this time to Aachen and Fritzlar; they processed to Bitburg and Bamberg the following year. That their prayers were not answered apparently led the monks to despair that the relics were becoming impotent or that the monks were being punished by their patron; in 1067 and 1068, abbot Thierry even went to Rome to appeal to Pope Alexander II. This impasse lasted for a further three years, until Henry held court at Liège during Easter in 1071; with great ceremony, the monks processed with Remaclus's relics to meet with his legendary fellow bishop St Lambert, joined en route by the relics of St Symmetrus. Numerous miracles convinced the emperor to recognise the union of the two abbeys and reiterate the superiority of Stavelot, forcing Anno eventually to capitulate. A rejoiceful procession back to Stavelot paused en route to celebrate Mass on the banks of the Meuse; finally, the monks processed with Remaclus's relics to the abbey at Malmedy, to symbolise the restoration of his and their authority. This series of episodes is recounted in the heroic narrative of the Triumph of St Remaclus and confirmed by several contemporary sources.

In 1098, Wibald was born in the hamlet of , near Stavelot. Elected prince-abbot in 1130, he played a key role in the religious life of the region and the abbeys. In 1138, he granted permission for the castle to be built in , first mentioned in an 862 abbey charter. In the 12th to 15th centuries, however, the abbacy experienced a slow decline. In the 14th and 15th centuries, several Imperial edicts, initially issued by Emperor Charles IV, put the abbacy under the protection of the counts of Luxembourg.

Early Modern Age
In 1509, William of  organised a procession to induce the recalcitrant county of , a fief of the abbey, to submit to his jurisdiction. The cortège was pious, rather than fraught with tension; with Stavelot monks carrying the shrines of Remaclus and  with other reliquaries; and the monks of Malmedy with reliquaries of Quirinus, Just, Peter, and Philip; joined by parishioners from  with the relics of Symmetrus. In 1521, after the castle in  had been dismantled, William added "Count of " to the abbots' titles, with the county representing most of the western portion of the principality's territory.

The abbey church served as a monastic church and as a church of pilgrimage until the French Revolution. Its imposing gatehouse tower was rebuilt in 1534; (its ground floor and some further foundation still remain). Malmedy began to flourish particularly in the 16th century with the development of tannery; in 1544 there were only 216 houses with a thousand inhabitants, but that more than tripled by 1635.

After the death of abbot Christopher of Manderscheid, there was a series of absent abbots, including Maximilian Henry of Bavaria (also bishop of  and of ), who reformed the abbey in 1656. In the 17th century, Stavelot and Malmedy were major centres of tanning in Europe. Papermaking was particularly important to Malmedy, as was the manufacture of gunpowder. Other industries included cotton manufacturing, manufacture of chess sets and dominoes, and gingerbread baking. In 1659, a Capuchin convent was built in Stavelot.

Despite the abbacy's neutrality and the protection of the prince-abbots, the territory was invaded at least 50 times by troops passing through, whose depredations had disastrous consequences for the population, including the 4 October 1689 razing of both Stavelot and Malmedy on the orders of , general to Louis XIV of France, during the Nine Years' War. In Stavelot, the entire town, including over 360 houses, was destroyed, leaving just the abbey and its farmyard standing. In Malmedy, some 600 out of the 660 houses of the town were destroyed and it took more than a century to completely rebuild. Malmedy's 1601 city walls had previously been destroyed by French troops in 1658, during the 1635–59 Franco-Spanish War. The wars—and passage by troops of Brandenburg-Prussia, the Dutch Republic, France, and —had cost the principality the sum of 2.75 million . The abbey had to borrow 134 000 thalers from Liège and Verviers; another loan, shared amongst the communities, totalled 109 000 thalers, with annual interest of 14 161 thalers and arrears of 26 000 thalers.

By the start of the 18th century the principality had lost a third of its territory, as a result of war, fires, pillage, and unjust encroachments. The deputies to the Imperial Diet complained that, in the 16th century, the Spanish Netherlands had seized several territories and that the Bishopric of  had stolen over half a dozen  totalling over 2000 households; adding that the principality itself retained only 1693 households, having had 3780 households before the upheavals and that the suffering of the principality had caused some of the richest and most powerful families to emigrate. The Imperial Diet was moved to halve the  for the abbeys (reducing the sums and troops the abbeys needed to provide towards the Imperial army) and exempting any need for the abbeys to send troops to the Imperial army for three years, an exemption extended for four more years on 24 March 1715.

Abolition

During the French Revolutionary Wars, from 1793 to 1804, the abbey was abandoned by the monks and the principality extinguished. Stavelot was incorporated into the French Republic by a decree of 2 March 1793, along with  and . Despite opposition from local notables, Malmedy was similarly incorporated by a decree of  of the Year IV (1 October 1795). Stavelot abbey itself was sacked and the church sold and demolished; of the church just the western doorway remains, as a free-standing tower. Two cloisters—one secular, one for the monks—survive as the courtyards of the brick-and-stone 17th-century domestic ranges. The foundations of the abbey church are presented as a footprint, with walls and column bases that enable the visitor to visualize the scale of the Romanesque abbey.

Geography and administration

Based largely in the  and  river valleys, the principality occupied a substantial proportion of what is now the  of  in the province of . By the time of the French Revolution, the principality was bounded on the north by the duchy of Limburg, on the south and east by the duchy of Luxembourg and on the north-west by the marquisate of  and the . The principality was divided into three administrative districts: the  of Stavelot and Malmedy, and the county of , totalling around 28,000 inhabitants. The  of Stavelot contained 14 communities and that of Malmedy contained the town itself and the  of  and . The county of  was divided into four :  (7 communities),  (6),  (5) and  (2), with public assemblies being based in . In addition, six other communities were exclaves, and there were the  of Anthisnes and , in the . In 1768, these two  were exchanged with  for , , and .

Several sources note that there were disputes between the two abbeys, with Stavelot assuming primacy over Malmedy, to the latter's discontent; though new abbots were invested in Stavelot on behalf of both abbeys. Whilst an absolute principality, in some matters the prince-abbot would consult a general assembly or  of clergy, dignitaries, prince's officers, mayors, and aldermen, whose main role was to vote for taxes. Each of the three districts had its own provincial assembly and court, with a Princely Council for highly contested cases. As a court of last resort, citizens could appeal to the  (Imperial Chamber Court), created by Emperor Maximilian I (reigned 1508–19) on the model of the parliaments in Paris and Mechelen and headquartered in Frankfurt (1495–1527),  (1527–1693) and Wetzlar (1693–1806).

Shortly before the principality's extinction, it contributed just over 81 Reichsthaler per session for the maintenance of the Imperial Chamber Court, from annual revenues of around 25 000 Rhenish guilder.

Art
The abbeys at Stavelot and Malmedy commissioned some of the finest surviving works of Mosan art, one of the leading schools of Romanesque art, especially in goldsmith metalwork, which was then the most prestigious art form. Their collections were dispersed by wars and, finally, the French Revolution. Works from the abbeys are now in museums across the world. The illuminated manuscript Stavelot Bible (now in the British Library) was probably the abbey's main bible, and was created there by several hands over a four-year period ending in 1097 (other works have been identified as being from the same scriptorium). The bible has been described as "a perfect microcosm of the influences and interests that gave rise to the first Romanesque painting".  A group of manuscripts from the less productive scriptorium at Malmedy were donated to the Vatican Library in 1816 by Pope Pius VII, including the Malmedy Bible and two lectionaries from about 1300. Malmedy illuminations show a particular closeness with metalwork styles.

Abbot Wibald (ruled 1130–58) was an important Imperial minister and diplomat, and was regarded as one of the greatest patrons of Mosan art in its best period, although much of the evidence for this is circumstantial. Some of his surviving letters discuss works which may be identifiable with existing pieces, and an "aurifaber G", who some have identified with , a shadowy figure to whom many masterpieces are attributed. Several important commissions were certainly placed by Wibald with Mosan workshops of goldsmiths and metalworkers, and other works later connected with Stavelot are also presumed to have been commissioned by him.  The works, mostly  enamels of very high quality, include the Stavelot Triptych, a portable altar reliquary for two fragments of the True Cross, , (now in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York), the Stavelot Portable Altar of 1146, and a head-shaped reliquary of Pope Alexander II, , possibly by  (both now  Museum, Brussels).  A gold relief retable of the Pentecost (1160–70) is in the  in Paris. An important and more elaborate retable of Saint Remaclus, of about 1150, about nine square metres in extent, was broken up during the French Revolution; and only two round enamel plaques survive, in Berlin and Frankfurt, though a 17th-century drawing survives in .

Coat of arms
The coat of arms granted to the town of Stavelot, in 1819, is also that of the abbey—parted fesswise between an image of St Remaclus and the wolf, which in Stavelot's founding legend carried bricks for the building of the abbey after having killed Remaclus's donkey.

See also
 List of Carolingian monasteries
 Carolingian architecture

References

External links

 Official website of Stavelot Abbey
 History of Malmedy

Imperial abbeys
651 establishments
States and territories established in the 650s
Geographic history of Belgium
Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle
Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy
Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy
Principalities of the Holy Roman Empire
Prince-bishoprics of the Holy Roman Empire in Belgium
Southern Netherlands
Stavelot

Princely Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy


Saints' Rest was the second building erected on the campus of the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan (now Michigan State University). It was built in 1856 and served as the school's only dormitory until 1870, when Williams Hall was completed. Along with College Hall and a horse barn, it was one of three buildings completed when the college opened for classes in 1857.

As the campus's only residence hall, the building had no official name. Students had a variety of nicknames for it including "the hall", "the boarding hall", "old hall", or "the house". It was only after the hall burned that it acquired the moniker "Saints' Rest", which came from the Puritan devotional The Saints' Everlasting Rest, written by Richard Baxter in 1650.

The hall burned down during the December 1876 vacation despite the efforts of the Lansing fire department, which made the run all the way from Lansing in only 45 minutes.

On June 6, 2005, a team of Michigan State archeology professors and students began a six-week excavation on the site. The dig was part of MSU's 2005 sesquicentennial celebration.

References

External links
Official University website
Gone But Not Forgotten: Campus Buildings That No Longer Exist
M.A.C. - Saints' Rest

Michigan State University
1856 establishments in Michigan
School buildings completed in 1856
Buildings and structures demolished in 1876

Saints' Rest


(Latin: "Verses on Chess"), also known as the Einsiedeln Poem in some literature, is the title given to a 10th century Medieval Latin poem about chess. It is the first known European text to provide a technical description of chess for didactic purposes and it is considered a fundamental document to understand the development of chess in Europe.

Background
It was found on two manuscripts (Codex Einsidlensis 365 and 319) from Einsiedeln Abbey Library (where they are also currently preserved) located in Einsiedeln, Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland and it was dated to about AD 1000. The dating of the document makes the poem the earliest known reference to chess in a European text, as well as the earliest known document to mention the chess queen (called  in Latin), and the first reference to a bicolor board with dark and light colors (a pattern that was absent from boards in precursors such as Indian chaturanga and Perso-Arabic shatranj, both of which were single-color and were divided only by horizontal and vertical lines).

The poem occupies both written sides of a sheet, and was only extracted in 1839 by the then abbey archivist Gall Morel (1803-1872) who combined it together with other loose sheets to form a composite volume, catalogued in the abbey archives as "Einsiedeln 365". In 1877, professor and classical philologist Hermann Hagen (1844-1898) made the verses accessible to the general public in his medieval poetry compilation . In 1913, the English chess historian H. J. R. Murray (1868-1955) translated, printed, and interpreted the verses. However, it was not until 1954 that historian H.M. Gamer drew attention to their extraordinary historical importance. There exists, in addition, an early medieval copy (though not of the Codex Einsidlensis 365) of lines 65 to 98 with a somewhat more classical orthography, which is dated to 997 AD and is also preserved in the Einsiedeln Abbey Library.

The title of  is from Codex Einsidlensis 365. The poem most likely dates to the 10th century. Gamer (1954) argues that the text in Codex Einsidlensis 365 might date to shortly before AD 1000, and the one in Codex Einsidlensis 319 dates to about the same time, or possibly to a few years after AD 1000. The text in  Codex Einsidlensis 319 is incomplete, and entitled .

Content

The poem itself consists of 98 lines in elegiac couplets and written in Medieval Latin. The first ten verses justify the game as mental recreation, in which there is no malice (), no perjurious fraud, and no physical risk (), underlining also the advantage of playing without dice. Thus, the poem begins by expressing praise for the game of chess as a unique game that did not require gambling or dice. According to some chess historians, this initial statement was made in order to oppose common religious disapproval of games of chance that involved gambling.

In the next ten verses the alternative coloring of the squares on the board is mentioned for the first time, not yet in general use but used by some players () as a simple yet advantageous invention to better calculate the moves, besides giving players the ability to discover, more easily, mistakes or false moves. Between verses 21-44 the two sides, red and white (), are described, together with the pieces. The movement of the pieces as well as the main regulatory conditions of the game are near identical to shatranj (Perso-Arabic chess), except for the pawn-promotion rule. From the poetic descriptions of the pieces and their movements, it can be interpreted that the movements differ from modern chess and can be summarized as follows:

 (king): It can move to any adjacent square. Unlike other pieces, it can never be captured, but when it's under attack and surrounded so that it can no longer move, the game comes to an end.
 (queen): It can move only to a diagonal adjacent square, making it the second weakest piece.
 or  (meaning "count" or "aged one", today's bishop): It can move diagonally to the third square of its original color.
 (knight): It can move to the third square of a different color, two steps straight ahead, then one step on the diagonal.
 or  ("rook" or "marquis", respectively): It can move in a straight direction as far as the player wishes.
 or  ("soldier", today's pawn): It can only move to the square in front of it and captures another piece diagonally on an adjacent square of the same color, making it the weakest piece. If it reaches the eighth row then it's allowed to move like the queen but only if the original queen is out of the board.

According to chess historian H. J. R. Murray:

The most striking feature of this rather tedious poem is its freedom from Arabic terminology. The words check and mate are not used, and it is only the name of the game, scachi, in the title, and the word rochus that show that the writer is dealing with a game that is not of European invention. The nomenclature of the game is drawn from that of the state, and not from that of the army.

See also
History of chess
Chess in early literature
Scachs d'amor, a 15th-century Valencian poem containing the earliest documented chess game with the modern rules (i.e. queen and bishop movements)

Notes

References

 Hermann Hagen (1877). Carmina medii aevi maximam partem inedita, Bern, pp. 137–141.
 H. J. R. Murray (1913). A History of Chess, (Oxford University Press)
 Helena M. Gamer, "The Earliest Evidence of Chess in Western Literature: The Einsiedeln Verses," Speculum, Vol. 29, No. 4. (October 1954), pp. 734–750.

External links
 Versus de Scachis: When Chess Reached Europe: Analysis and English prose translation of the poem by Peter Hulse.

History of chess
Poems about chess
Medieval chess
Medieval Latin poetry
10th-century poems
10th-century Latin books
10th-century writers in Latin

Versus de scachis


Shuowen Jiezi () is an ancient Chinese dictionary compiled by Xu Shen during the Eastern Han dynasty (25 – 206 CE).  Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary (the Erya predates it), it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them, as well as the first to use the principle of organization by sections with shared components called .

Circumstances of compilation
Xu Shen, a Han Dynasty scholar of the Five Classics, compiled the Shuowen Jiezi. He finished editing it in 100 CE, but due to an unfavorable imperial attitude towards scholarship, he waited until 121 CE before having his son Xǔ Chōng present it to Emperor An of Han along with a memorial.

In analyzing the structure of characters and defining the words represented by them, Xu Shen strove to disambiguate the meaning of the pre-Han Classics, so as to render their usage by government unquestioned and bring about order, and in the process also deeply imbued his organization and analyses with his philosophy on characters and the universe. According to Boltz (1993:430), Xu's compilation of the Shuowen "cannot be held to have arisen from a purely linguistic or lexicographical drive." His motives were more pragmatic and political. During the Han era, the prevalent theory of language was Confucianist Rectification of Names, the belief that using the correct names for things was essential for proper government. Xu's postface (xù 敘) to the Shuowen Jiezi (tr. O'Neill 2013: 436) explains: "Now, as for writing systems and their offspring characters, these are the root of the classics, the origin of kingly government, what former men used to hand down to posterity, and what later men use to remember antiquity." Pre-Shuowen Chinese dictionaries like the Erya and the Fangyan were limited lists of synonyms loosely organized by semantic categories, which made it difficult to look up characters. Xu Shen analytically organized characters in the comprehensive Shuowen Jiezi through their shared graphic components, which Boltz (1993:431) calls "a major conceptual innovation in the understanding of the Chinese writing system."

Structure

Xu wrote the Shuowen Jiezi to analyze seal script (specifically xiǎozhuàn 小篆 "small seal") characters that evolved slowly and organically throughout the mid-to-late Zhou dynasty in the state of Qin, and which were then standardized during the Qin dynasty and promulgated empire-wide. Thus, Needham et al. (1986: 217) describe the Shuowen jiezi as "a paleographic handbook as well as a dictionary".

The dictionary includes a preface and 15 chapters. The first 14 chapters are character entries; the 15th and final chapter is divided into two parts: a postface and an index of section headers. Xǔ Shèn states in his postface that the dictionary has 9,353 character entries, plus 1,163 graphic variants, with a total length of 133,441 characters. The transmitted texts vary slightly in content, owing to omissions and emendations by commentators (especially Xú Xuàn, see below), and modern editions have 9,831 characters and 1,279 variants.

Sections

Xu Shen categorized Chinese characters into 540 sections, under "section headers" (bùshǒu, now the standard linguistic and lexicographical term for character radicals): these may be entire characters or simplifications thereof, which also serve as components shared by all the characters in that section.  The number of section headers, 540, numerologically equals 6 × 9 × 10, the product of the symbolic numbers of Yin and Yang and the number of the Heavenly Stems.  The first section header was 一 (yī "one; first") and the last was 亥 (hài, the last character of the Earthly Branches).

Xu's choice of sections appears in large part to have been driven by the desire to create an unbroken, systematic sequence among the headers themselves, such that each had a natural, intuitive relationship (e.g., structural, semantic or phonetic) with the ones before and after, as well as by the desire to reflect cosmology. In the process, he included many section headers that are not considered ones today, such as 炎 (yán "flame") and 熊 (xióng "bear"), which modern dictionaries list under the 火 or 灬 (huǒ "fire") heading. He also included as section headers all the sexagenary cycle characters, that is, the ten Heavenly Stems and twelve Earthly Branches. As a result, unlike modern dictionaries which attempt to maximize the number of characters under each section header, 34 Shuowen headers have no characters under them, while 159 have only one each. From a modern lexicographical perspective, Xu's system of 540 headings can seem "enigmatic" and "illogical". For instance, he included the singular section header 409 惢 (ruǐ "doubt"), with only one rare character (ruǐ 繠 "stamen"), instead of listing it under the common header 408 心 (xīn "heart; mind").

Character entries

The typical Shuowen format for a character entry consists of a seal graph, a short definition (usually a single synonym, occasionally in a punning way as in the Shiming), a pronunciation given by citing a homophone, and analysis of compound graphs into semantic and/or phonetic components. Individual entries can additionally include graphic variants, secondary definitions, information on regional usages, citations from pre-Han texts, and further phonetic information, typically in dúruò (讀若 "read like") notation.
In addition to the seal graph, Xu included two kinds of variant graphs when they differed from the standard seal, called ancient script (gǔwén 古文) and Zhòu script (Zhòuwén 籀文, not to be confused with the Zhou dynasty).

The Zhòu characters were taken from the no-longer extant Shizhoupian, an early copybook traditionally attributed to a Shĭ Zhòu, or Historian Zhou, in the court of King Xuan of Zhou (r. 827–782 BCE). Wang Guowei and Tang Lan argued that the structure and style of these characters suggested a later date, but some modern scholars such as Qiu Xigui argue for the original dating.

The guwen characters were based on the characters used in pre-Qin copies of the classics recovered from the walls of houses where they had been hidden to escape the burning of books ordered by Qin Shihuang.  Xu believed that these were the most ancient characters available, since Confucius would have used the oldest characters to best convey the meaning of the texts.  However, Wang Guowei and other scholars have shown that they were regional variant forms in the eastern areas during the Warring States period, from only slightly earlier than the Qin seal script.

Even as copyists transcribed the main text of the book in clerical script in the late Han, and then in modern standard script in the centuries to follow, the small seal characters continued to be copied in their own (seal) script to preserve their structure, as were the guwen and Zhouwen characters.

Character analysis

The title of the work draws a basic distinction between two types of characters, wén 文 and zì 字, the former being those composed of a single graphic element (such as shān 山 "mountain"), and the latter being those containing more than one such element (such as hǎo 好 "good" with 女 "woman" and 子 "child") which can be deconstructed into and analyzed in terms of their component elements. Note that the character 文 itself exemplifies the category wén 文, while 字 (which is composed of 宀 and 子) exemplifies zì 字. Thus, Shuōwén Jiězì means "commenting on" (shuō "speak; talk; comment; explain") the wén, which cannot be deconstructed, and "analyzing" (jiě "untie; separate; divide; analyze; explain; deconstruct") the zì.

Although the "six principles" of Chinese character classification (liùshū 六書 "six graphs") had been mentioned by earlier authors, Xu Shen's postface was the first work to provide definitions and examples. He uses the first two terms, simple indicatives (zhǐshì 指事) and pictograms (xiàngxíng 象形) to explicitly label character entries in the dictionary, e.g., in the typical pattern of "(character) (definition) ...simple indicative" (A B 也...指事 (也)). Logographs belonging to the third principle, phono-semantic compound characters (xíngshēng 形聲), are implicitly identified through the entry pattern A… from B, phonetically resembles C (A...從 B, C 聲), meaning that element B plays a semantic role in A, while C gives the sound. The fourth type, compound indicatives (huìyì 會意), are sometimes identified by the pattern A...from X from Y (A...從 X 從 Y), meaning that the compound A is given meaning through the graphic combination and interaction of both constituent elements. The last two of the six principles, borrowed characters (aka phonetic loan, jiǎjiè 假借) and derived characters (zhuǎnzhù 轉注), are not identifiable in the character definitions.

According to Imre Galambos, the function of the Shuowen was educational. Since Han studies of writing are attested to have begun by pupils of 8 years old, Xu Shen's categorization of characters was proposed to be understood as a mnemonic methodology for juvenile students.

Textual history and scholarship
Although the original Han dynasty Shuowen Jiezi text has been lost, it was transmitted through handwritten copies for centuries. The oldest extant trace of it is a six-page manuscript fragment from the Tang dynasty, amounting to about 2% of the entire text. The fragment, now in Japan, concerns the  section header. The earliest post-Han scholar known to have researched and emended this dictionary, albeit badly, was Li Yangbing (; ), who, according to Boltz, "is usually regarded as something of a bête noire of [Shuowen] studies, owing to his idiosyncratic and somewhat capricious editing of the text."

Shuowen Jiezi Xichuan
Shuowen scholarship improved greatly during the Southern Tang and Song dynasties, as well as during the later Qing dynasty. The most important Northern Song scholars were the brothers Xu Xuan (; 916–991) and Xu Kai (; 920–974). In 986, Emperor Taizong of Song ordered Xu Xuan and other editors to publish an authoritative edition of the dictionary, which became the Shuowen Jiezi Xichuan ().

Xu Xuan's textual criticism has been especially vital for all subsequent scholarship, since his restoration of the damage done by Li Yangbing resulted in the closest version we have to the original, and the basis for all later editions. Xu Kai, in turn, focused on exegetical study, analyzing the meaning of Xu Shen's text, appending supplemental characters, and adding fanqie pronunciation glosses for each entry. Among Qing-era Shuowen scholars, some like Zhu Junsheng (, 1788–1858), followed the textual criticism model of Xu Xuan, while others like Gui Fu (; 1736–1805) and Wang Yun (; 1784–1834) followed the analytical exegesis model of Xu Kai.

Later and contemporary study
The work of Qing scholar Duan Yucai is particular notable due to the quality of research in both areas. Duan's annotated Shuowen Jiezi Zhu is the edition most commonly used by students today.

Although the Shuowen Jiezi has had incalculable value to scholars and was traditionally relied upon as the most important early source on the structure of Chinese characters, many of its analyses and definitions have been eclipsed as vague or inaccurate since the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions in the late 19th century. It therefore can no longer be relied upon as the single, authoritative source for definitions and graphic derivations. Xu Shen lacked access to oracle bone and bronzeware inscriptions from the Shang and Western Zhou dynasty, to which scholars now have access; they are often critical for understanding the structures and origins of logographs. For instance, he put  under the  section heading,  and noted it had a phonetic of . However, the early bronze graphs for  have the  semantic component and  for a phonetic component, also seen in early forms of  and .

Scholarship in the 20th century offered new understandings and accessibility. Ding Fubao collected all available Shuowen materials, clipped and arranged them in the original dictionary order, and photo-lithographically printed a colossal edition. Notable advances in Shuowen research have been made by Chinese and Western scholars like Mǎ Zōnghuò (), Mǎ Xùlún (), William G. Boltz, Weldon South Coblin, Thomas B.I. Creamer, Paul Serruys, Roy A. Miller, and K.L. Thern.

See also
 List of Kangxi radicals – a later way to classify Chinese characters
 Shuowen Jiezi (television program)

References

Citations

Sources

 Atsuji Tetsuji (阿辻哲次). Kanjigaku: Setsumon kaiji no sekai 漢字学―説文解字の世界. Tôkyô: Tôkai daigaku shuppankai, 1985. ,

 Bottéro Françoise. (1996). «Sémantisme et classification dans l'écriture chinoise : Les systèmes de classement des caractères par clés du Shuowen Jiezi au Kangxi Zidian. Collège de France-IHEC. (Mémoires de l'Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises; 37).

 Creamer, Thomas B.I. (1989) "Shuowen Jiezi and Textual Criticism in China," International Journal of Lexicography 2:3, pp. 176–187.
 Ding Fubao (丁福保). 1932. Shuowen Jiezi Gulin (說文解字詁林 "A Forest of Glosses on the Shuowen Jiezi"). 16 vols. Repr. Taipei: Commercial Press. 1959. 12 vols.
 Duan Yucai (1815). "說文解字注" (Shuōwén Jĭezì Zhù, commentary on the Shuōwén Jíezì), compiled 1776–1807. This classic edition of Shuowen is still reproduced in facsimile by various publishers, e.g., in Taipei by Li-ming Wen-hua Co Tiangong Books (1980, 1998), which edition conveniently highlights the main entry seal characters in red ink, and adds the modern kǎi 楷 standard script versions of them at the tops of the columns, with bopomofo phoneticization alongside.

 (English translation of Wénzìxué Gàiyào 文字學概要, Shangwu, 1988.)
 Miller, Roy Andrew. 1953
Problems in the study of Shuo-wen chieh-tzu. PhD. Thesis, Columbia University.
 Needham, Joseph, Lu Gwei-djen, and Huang Hsing-Tsung (1986). Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 6 Biology and Biological Technology, Part 1 Botany. Cambridge University Press.
 O'Neill, Timothy (2013), "Xu Shen's Scholarly Agenda: A New Interpretation of the Postface of the Shuowen jiezi," Journal of the American Oriental Society 133.3: 413–440.
 Serruys, Paul L-M. (1984) "On the System of the Pu Shou 部首 in the Shuo-wen chieh-tzu 說文解字", Zhōngyāng Yánjiūyuàn Lìshǐ Yǔyán Yánjiùsuǒ Jíkān (中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊, Journal of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica), v.55:4, pp. 651–754.
  Wang Guowei (1979). "史籀篇敘錄" [Commentary on the Shĭ Zhoù Piān] and "史籀篇疏證序" [Preface to a Study of the Shĭ Zhòu Piān], in 海寧王靜安先生遺書‧觀堂集林 [The Collected works of Mr. Wáng Jìng-Ān of Hǎiníng (Guan Tang Ji Lin)]. Taipei: 商務印書館 Commercial Press reprint, pp. 239–295.
 Xu Zhongshu :zh:徐中舒. "丁山說文闕義箋" [Commentary on the errors in Shuowen by Ding Shan]

External links

 Explicatives

 pages 28–29 : List of the 540 radicals in Xiaozhuan.
 Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 – Chinaknowledge (Archive)
 「説文解字」の540部首系統図 – がらんどう文字講座, Shuōwén Jiězì radical chart (Archive)

 Copies
 《說文解字》, comparative database of different editions – Beijing Normal University
 《說文解字》, electronic edition – Chinese Text Project
 《说文解字注》 全文检索 – 许慎撰 段玉裁注, facsimile edition
Scanned editions at the Internet Archive:
 from the Siku Quanshu: chapters 1, 2–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–9, 10–11, 12–13 and 14–15.
 from the Siku Quanshu Huiyao: chapters 1–2, 3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–9, 10–11, 12–13 and 14–15.

 Various
 《說文解字》全文檢索測試版
 《說文解字》在线查询
 Chinese Etymology, online dictionary with Shuowens definitions – Richard Sears
  – 漢字データベースプロジェクト/Kanji Database Project
  Shuowen online text version with Duàn Yùcái "說文解字注", 釋名 Shiming, 爾雅 Erya, 方言 Fangyan, 廣韻 Guangyun définitions and glosses by Alain Lucas & Jean-Louis Schott and with "集韻 Jiyun" and "玉篇 Yupian" texts by Jean-Louis Schott.

Han dynasty texts
Chinese classic texts
Chinese dictionaries
Chinese characters
History of linguistics
2nd-century books

Shuowen Jiezi


Riversdale was the last home of William Butler Yeats. It is located in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham off the Ballyboden Road.

W. B. Yeats
He took a 13-year lease on the house in 1932. He lived there with his wife and children. It was at Riversdale that he mourned for Lady Gregory after her death, that he had his last meeting with Maud Gonne (1938) and that he met with Irish fascist Eoin O'Duffy.

Two of his poems, "What Then?" and "An Acre Of Grass" are about Riversdale.

Recent developments
Developers bought the house in the late 1990s and applied for planning permission to build "60 High Quality Residential Units" on the site. As a result of action by local residents the planning permission was refused.

Eventually the developers succeeded in getting planning permission for three four-bedroom luxury detached homes and three single storey two-bedroom mews-type houses.

External links
 Macarthy's Auctioneers Riversdale page - note this page refers to the original planning application. The completed development was significantly different.
 Irish Times article on Riversdale at time of its sale
 University of Delaware Library's WB Yeats page - The University of Delaware has correspondence of Yeats' from Riversdale.
 Yeats Chronology - Mentions Riversdale in passing.
 Article in Irish Architecture on Riversdale - This article refers to a planning permission which was later revoked. The final development was significantly different.

Rathfarnham
Country houses in Ireland

Riversdale, Rathfarnham


Team Chicky World was a Danish professional road bicycle racing team, which was active in the seasons 1998 to 1999. The main sponsor Danpo is a Danish producer of poultry products. Chicky World is a brand name of Danpo. Danpo decided not to renew the sponsorship due to the media focus on doping.

Kim Andersen, former yellow jersey rider in Tour de France, was sports director both years.
Norwegian Steffen Kjærgaard was the top rider of the team, winning great victories both years including Circuit de la Sarthe (1999), Bayern rundfahrt (1998) and Tour of Normandy (1999). He left the team to join US Postal Service in 2000. Swedish rider Martin Rittsel also won some great victories for the fantastic team including Tour of Argentina.

Michael Sandstød rode for the team in 1998.
Nicki Sørensen rode for the team in 1999.

External links
 Elmic's fan page Source for this article.

Defunct cycling teams based in Denmark
Cycling teams based in Denmark
Cycling teams established in 1998
Cycling teams disestablished in 1999

Team Chicky World


Dream Demon is a 1988 British horror film co-written and directed by Harley Cokeliss and starring Jemma Redgrave in her debut role opposite Kathleen Wilhoite, Jimmy Nail, Susan Fleetwood and Timothy Spall.

Plot

Diana Markham, an upper class schoolteacher in London, is preparing to marry her fiancé, the wealthy Oliver. Diana is plagued by nightmares which cast Oliver in violent roles, including ones in which he rapes her. Upon moving into her new home, she also has fiery visions of a young blonde girl adorned with angel wings. Diana is particularly frightened of the home's basement. Her therapist, Deborah, assures her the dreams are a result of stress regarding the pending wedding, especially the harassment Diana receives from the press attempting to cover the wedding.

While being assailed outside her home by photographer Peck and investigative journalist Paul, Diana is helped by Jenny, a tourist from Los Angeles who fights them off. Diana invites Jenny in for a drink, and Jenny soon confesses that she is visiting in hopes of unearthing her family origins: She was adopted as a young child but has no memory of her biological parents, who once lived at Diana's address. Diana takes a liking to Jenny, and the women agree to meet the following day. Later that night, Diana has a hallucinogenic nightmare in which Peck breaks into her home and attacks her.

In the morning, Jenny arrives and Diana explains her nightmare. Shortly after, the women find Paul in the basement of the home. He threatens Diana, and says that Peck has gone missing. After the incident, Jenny agrees to stay with Diana to comfort her. Diana confides her anxieties about her marriage, and admits to Jenny that she is a virgin. Some time later, Jenny experiences a hallucination in which she is attacked by a deformed Peck, and witnesses a young blonde girl being verbally abused by her father. She flees and manages to awaken Diana, who has fallen asleep on the couch, after which the apparent supernatural occurrences cease. The next morning, the women meet with Deborah, who proposes the idea that Jenny astral projected. The women realize that Diana's dreams have the power to impact waking life.

Upon returning to the home, both women are plagued by shared visions and frightening hallucinations anchored to the basement. Terrified, Jenny returns to her hotel, insisting that the home is haunted, and books a return flight to California. Diana falls asleep in Jenny's hotel room. Meanwhile, Paul arrives at the hotel, having been following the women, and confronts Jenny with information he has uncovered about Oliver: He is in financial ruin and is marrying Diana for economic security. Realizing that Diana is again dreaming, Jenny attempts to wake her, but Diana slips into another nightmare in which she is tormented by deformed versions of Paul and Peck.

Diana awakens in Jenny's hotel room, but is skeptical of whether she is experiencing a waking reality or another dream. The women become separated, and Diana experiences further disturbing visions of the young blonde girl, as well as Peck and Paul. Diana awakens again in her disheveled bedroom and is confronted by Oliver and Deborah, who drug her to fall back asleep. Later, Diana is hospitalized and affixed with a brainwave monitor. While astral projecting, Diana looks on as Deborah watches old footage of the young blonde girl in a hospital therapy session—the girl is in fact Jenny during her childhood, shortly before she was sent to live in the United States. In the astral plane, Diana returns to her home and saves Jenny, who has been trapped in a void. The two again become separated, and Jenny relives her repressed childhood trauma: Her widowed father, a violent and abusive artist, tied her to a sculpture in his basement art studio to use as a model. While sharpening a sculpting tool, he ignited a fire with a can of turpentine in which he was burned alive. An adult Jenny, bound to the sculpture, is saved by Diana. The women embrace before fleeing the home together.

Later, Diana and Jenny visit Jenny's father's gravestone, which features a stone cast of her with angel wings. Back in the empty home, which Diana has now put up for sale, the screams of a young Jenny echo from the basement.

Cast

Production
Cokeliss was inspired by Billy Wilder and surrealist films when designing the film's dream sequences. The film was shot on a budget of £2 million.

Release
The film was released theatrically in England on 14 October 1988.

Critical response
The Guardian criticized the film for failing to "follow its own logic," but conceded that the film is "often smartly made, and the special effects are excellent. The pity is that it could have been so much better had it stuck to what it is really about, which is people haunting themselves." The Sydney Morning Herald wrote: "The special effects won't rock your socks but the build-up of suspense and some sudden shocks are guaranteed to hold attention."

References

External links

1988 films
1988 horror films
1980s British films
1980s English-language films
Astral projection in popular culture
British horror films
British splatter films
Films about dreams
Films directed by Harley Cokeliss

Dream Demon


Charles Kirk Clarke (c. 1857 - January 20 1924) was a psychiatrist who had a major role in Canadian politics. He was born in Elora, Ontario, to a former parliamentarian. He went to college at the University of Toronto in 1879. He later went on to found the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Clarke first practised psychiatry at the 999 Queen Street institution in Toronto. In 1880 and then took a post at the Hamilton asylum.

Clarke was a student and brother-in-law of Joseph Workman, the superintendent of the Toronto Asylum. By 1905, Clarke had abandoned the movement, and many of the other leading psychiatrists would follow suit by the end of World War I since it was clear that eugenic measures did not have the desired effects.

1857 births
1924 deaths
Scientists from Ontario
Canadian psychiatrists
Medical researchers
University of Toronto alumni

Charles Kirk Clarke


The Austin Sheerline wis a luxury caur produced bi Austin Motor Company frae 1947 tae 1954.

The Sheerline wis designed bi Austin afore Warld War Twa but production did na begin until 1947 acause o the commitment tae war production. It wis a luxurious caur in the style o the contemporary Rolls-Royce or Bentley but at a much lawer price. Thare wur aboot 8000 biggit but it is nou becomin quite rare.

The first caurs, designated A110, haed a 3460 cc straucht 6 owerheid valve ingine but this wis suin increased tae 3995 cc wi 125 hp an the designation then became A125. Initially anerlie a Saloon version on a 9 feet 11 1/4 inch wheelbase chassis wis made but this wis jynt bi a (rare) Limousine version in 1950 on a stretched 11 ft chassis. Later on thare came mair versions includin a hearse an an ambulance. At 37 hundredweight (1850 kg) for the saloon an 2 tons (2000 kg) for the limousine this wis a hivy caur an tae maintain performance a law final drive ratio o 4.55:1 wi 16 inch tyres wis fitted. Suspension wis bi coil springs at the front an hauf elliptic leaf springs at the rear.  The saloon version haed a tap speed o 82 mph.

In 1954 production ceased wi the Austin luxury category passin tae the seemilar A135 Princess Mk II which haed an aa been in production syne 1947 an wad continue until 1956.

External links
 Austin Memories—History o Austin an Longbridge

References
The Cars o BMC. Graham Robson. Motor Racing Publications Ltd 1987. ISBN 0947981144

Sheerline
Vehicles introduced in 1947

Austin Sheerline


Impressive (April 15, 1969 – March 20, 1995) was an Appendix Quarter Horse, who earned his full AQHA registration in 1971. He was the 1974 World Champion Open Aged halter stallion, the first such World Champion in his breed, despite carrying only 48 halter points in total. He sired 2,251 foals, of which thirty went on to be World Champions themselves. The horse was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2022.

Showing and breeding

In his showing days, Impressive changed hands a number of times. One of his owners was Dean Landers, who also owned the halter stallions Two Eyed Jack, Coy's Bonanza, and Sonny Dee Bar. Although Impressive was sent to race training, he never raced. He was sent home and the next year he was excluded from any performance discipline due to pedal osteitis, leaving halter as his only choice. His groundbreaking 1974 World Championship soon cemented his role in that discipline. Each time Impressive was resold, his price rose quickly; at one point, an offer of $300,000 for him was refused by Brown, who said "ain't nobody in this world got enough money to buy this horse."

Impressive was highly sought after for breeding, despite at one time carrying a stud fee of $25,000. He sired a total of 2,251 foals, and as of 2003, was estimated to have in excess of 55,000 living descendants. He was bred for his muscular and refined form, which was passed on to his offspring often enough to make him at least the #5 all-time leading Quarter Horse sire when ranked by AQHA points earned by all progeny combined.

Hyperkalemic periodic paralysis

HYPP was first recognized in the 1980s, but it became evident that many horses descended from Impressive were afflicted with the genetic disease hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HYPP), and in 1992 Impressive was publicly linked to HYPP and considered the index case. As of 2009 there were 355,000 registered descendants of Impressive with approximately 4% affected with HYPP.

HYPP is a dominant gene, and as such, all animals with even one copy of the gene, identified as "N/H", will exhibit some symptoms of the disease. Horses with two copies, identified as "H/H." will always pass on the condition, and research suggests that H/H horses may have more severe symptoms than N/H horses.

After a number of years of debate, effective since January 1, 2007, the AQHA amended rule 205(c)(3) and rule Rule 227(e) to require all descendants of Impressive to be tested prior to being registered, and ban from registration all horses born after January 1, 2007 with HYPP genetics confirmed by DNA testing to be homozygous for the condition (H/H). Other breed registries that accept animals with Quarter Horse bloodlines, including the American Paint Horse Association and the Appaloosa Horse Club, have instituted testing requirements but have yet to bar animals with the condition. There is currently a widespread effort among many breeders to eliminate the disease by selective breeding, but there are those who continue to breed without regard for it, or even deliberately seeking the muscular enhancement correlated with it, and in doing so perpetuate the disease's existence.

Pedigree

References

External links
 Bringing Light to HyPP: Impressive
 Impressive data sheet and pedigree

American Quarter Horse show horses
American Quarter Horse sires
1968 animal births
1995 animal deaths

Impressive (horse)


Gunnhildr konungamóðir (mother of kings) or Gunnhildr Gormsdóttir, whose name is often Anglicised as Gunnhild (c. 910  –  c. 980) is a quasi-historical figure who appears in the Icelandic Sagas, according to which she was the wife of Eric Bloodaxe (king of Norway 930–34, 'King' of Orkney c. 937–54, and king of Jórvík 948–49 and 952–54). She appears prominently in sagas such as Fagrskinna, Egils saga, Njáls saga, and Heimskringla.

The sagas relate that Gunnhild lived during a time of great change and upheaval in Norway. Her father-in-law Harald Fairhair had recently united much of Norway under his rule. Shortly after his death, Gunnhild and her husband Eric Bloodaxe were overthrown and exiled. She spent much of the rest of her life in exile in Orkney, Jorvik and Denmark. A number of her many children with Eric became co-rulers of Norway in the late tenth century.

Historicity

Many of the details of her life are disputed, including her parentage. Although she is treated in the sagas as a historical person, even her historicity is a matter of some debate. What details of her life are known come largely from Icelandic sources, which generally asserted that the Icelandic settlers had fled from Harald's tyranny. While the historicity of sources as the Landnámabók is disputed, the perception that Harald had exiled or driven out many of their ancestors led to an attitude among Icelanders generally hostile to Erik and Gunnhild. Scholars such as Gwyn Jones therefore regard some of the episodes reported in them as suspect.

In the sagas, Gunnhild is most often depicted in a negative light, and depicted as a figure known for her "power and cruelty, admired for her beauty and generosity, and feared for her magic, cunning, sexual insatiability, and her goading", according to Jenny Jochens.

Her parentage was altered from Danish royalty to a farmer in Hålogaland in northern Norway. This made her native to a land neighboring Finnmark, and her tutelage in the magic arts by Finnish wizards became more plausible. This contrivance, Jones has argued, was the Icelandic saga-maker's attempt to mitigate the "defeats and expulsions of his own heroic ancestors" by ascribing magical abilities to the queen.

Origins
According to the 12th century Historia Norwegiæ, Gunnhild was the daughter of Gorm the Old, king of Denmark and Thyra, and Erik and Gunnhild met at a feast given by Gorm. Modern scholars have largely accepted this version as accurate. In their view, her marriage with Erik was a dynastic union between two houses, that of the Norwegian Ynglings and that of the early Danish monarchy, in the process of unifying and consolidating their respective countries. Erik himself was the product of such a union between Harald and Ragnhild, a Danish princess from Jutland. Gunnhild being the daughter of Gorm the old would explain why she would seek shelter in Denmark after the death of her husband.

Heimskringla and Egil's Saga, on the other hand, assert that Gunnhild was the daughter of Ozur Toti, a hersir from Halogaland. Accounts of her early life vary between sources. Egil's Saga relates that "Eirik fought a great battle on the Northern Dvina in Bjarmaland, and was victorious as the poems about him record. On the same expedition he obtained Gunnhild, the daughter of Ozur Toti, and brought her home with him."

Gwyn Jones regarded many of the traditions that grew up around Gunnhild in the Icelandic sources as fictional. However, both Theodoricus monachus and the Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum report that when Gunnhild was at the court of Harald Bluetooth after Erik's death, the Danish king offered marriage to her; if valid, these accounts call into question the identification of Gunnhild as Harald's sister, but their most recent editors follow Jones in viewing their accounts of Gunnhild's origins as unreliable.

Heimskringla relates that Gunnhild lived for a time in a hut with two Finnish wizards and learned magic from them. The two wizards demanded sexual favors from her, so she induced Erik, who was returning from an expedition to Bjarmaland, to kill them. Erik then took her to her father's house and announced his intent to marry Gunnhild. The older Fagrskinna, however, says simply that Erik met Gunnhild during an expedition to the Finnish north, where she was being "fostered and educated ... with Mǫttull, king of the Finns". Gunnhild's Finnish sojourn is described by historian Marlene Ciklamini as a "fable" designed to set the stage for placing the blame for Erik's future misrule on his wife.

Marriage with Eric

Eric's kinslaying and exile

Gunnhild and Eric are said to have had the following children: Gamle, the oldest; then Guthorm, Harald, Ragnfrod, Ragnhild, Erling, Gudrod, and Sigurd Sleva. Egil's Saga mentions a son named Rögnvald, but it is not known whether he can be identified with one of those mentioned in Heimskringla, or even whether he was Gunnhild's son or Eric's by another woman.

Gunnhild was widely reputed to have or otherwise employ magical powers. Prior to the death of Harald Fairhair, Erik's popular half-brother Halfdan Haraldsson the Black died mysteriously, and Gunnhild was suspected of having "bribed a witch to give him a death-drink." Shortly thereafter, Harald died and Eric consolidated his power over the whole country. He began to quarrel with his other brothers, egged on by Gunnhild, and had four of them killed, beginning with Bjørn Farmann and later Olaf and Sigrød in battle at Tønsberg.
As a result of Eric's tyrannical rule, he was expelled from Norway when the nobles of the country declared for his half-brother, Haakon the Good.

Orkney and Jorvik
According to the Icelandic sagas, Eric set sail with his family and his retainers to Orkney, where they settled for a number of years. During that time Eric was acknowledged as "King of Orkney" by its de facto rulers, the jarls Arnkel and Erlend Turf-Einarsson. Gunnhild went with Eric to Jorvik when, at the invitation of Bishop Wulfstan, the erstwhile Norwegian king settled as client king over northern England. At Jorvik, both Eric and Gunnhild may have been baptized.

Following Eric's loss of Jorvik and subsequent death at the Battle of Stainmore (954), the survivors of the battle brought word of the defeat to Gunnhild and her sons in Northumberland. Taking with them all that they could, they set sail for Orkney, where they exacted tribute from the new jarl, Thorfinn Skullsplitter.

Ultimately, however, Gunnhild decided to move on; marrying her daughter Ragnhild to Jarl Thorfinn's son Arnfinn, she took her other children and set sail for Denmark.

It is worth noting that some modern historians call into question the identification of the Eric who ruled over Jorvik with Eric Bloodaxe. None of the English sources for Eric's reign in Northumbria identify him as Norwegian or as the son of Harald Fairhair. A thirteenth-century letter from Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII identifies Eric as Scottish in origin. Lappenberg, Plummer and Todd, writing in the late nineteenth century, identified Eric as a son of Harald Bluetooth, a claim Downham discounts as untenable. Downham, however, regards Eric the king of Jorvik as a distinct individual from Eric Bloodaxe, and thus views Gunnhild's sojourn in Orkney and Jorvik as the construct of later saga-writers who conflated different characters between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

Conflict with Egill Skallagrímsson
Gunnhild was the nemesis of Egill Skallagrímsson, and his saga and poetry present her in a particularly negative light. Egil was introduced to Erik by his older brother Thorolf, who was a friend of the prince, and the brothers were originally on good terms with Eric and Gunnhild. However, during a sojourn in Norway around 930, Egil got into an inheritance dispute with certain members of Eric's court, during which he killed Bárðr of Atley, one of the king's  retainers.

Gunnhild ordered her two brothers to kill Egil and Thorolf. Egil killed the pair when they confronted him, greatly increasing the Queen's thirst for revenge.

Eric then declared Egil an outlaw in Norway. Berg-Önundr gathered a company of men to capture Egil, but was killed in his attempt to do so. During his escape from Norway, Egil killed Rögnvald Eriksson, Erik's son. He then cursed Eric and Gunnhild by setting a horse's head on a pole in a shamanic ritual (the pillar was a níðstöng or "níð-pole"; níð translates, roughly, to 'scorn' or 'curse'.) and saying:
"Here I set up a níð-pole, and declare this níð against King Erik and Queen Gunnhildr", — he turned the horse-head to face the mainland — "I declare this níð at the land-spirits there, and the land itself, so that all will fare astray, not to hold nor find their places, not until they wreak King Eric and Gunnhild from the land." He set up the pole of níð in the cliff-face and left it standing; he faced the horse's eyes on the land, and he rist runes upon the pole, and said all the formal words of the curse.

The last encounter between Egil and Gunnhild occurred around 948 in Jorvik. Egil was shipwrecked on a nearby shore and came before Eric, who sentenced him to death. But Egil composed a drápa called "Höfuðlausn" in Eric's praise over a single night. When he recited it in the morning, Eric gave him his freedom and forgave the killing of Rögnvald, against Gunnhild's wishes.

Life after Eric

In Denmark

After the death of her husband, Gunnhild took refuge with her sons at the court of Harald Bluetooth at Roskilde. Tradition ascribes to Gunnhild the commissioning of the skaldic poem Eiríksmál in honor of her fallen husband.

In Denmark, Gunnhild's son Harald was fostered by the king himself, and her other sons were given properties and titles. As King Harald was involved in a war against Haakon's Norway, he may have sought to use Gunnhild's sons as his proxies against the Norwegian king. One of her sons, Gamle, died fighting King Haakon around 960.

Return to Norway
Gunnhild returned to Norway in triumph when her remaining sons killed King Haakon at the Battle of Fitjar in 961. Ironically, the battle was a victory for Haakon's forces but his death left a power vacuum which Gunnhild's son Harald, with Danish aid, was able to exploit. With her sons now ensconced as the lords of Norway, Gunnhild was from this time known as konungamóðir, or "Mother of Kings."

During the reign of Harald Greyhide, Gunnhild dominated the court; according to Heimskringla she "mixed herself much in the affairs of the country." Gunnhild's sons killed or deposed many of the jarls and petty kings that had hitherto ruled the Norwegian provinces, seizing their lands. Famine, possibly caused or exacerbated by these campaigns, plagued the reign of Harald.

Among the kings slain (around 963) was Tryggve Olafsson whose widow Astrid Eriksdotter fled with her son Olaf Tryggvason to Sweden and then set out for the eastern Baltic. According to Heimskringla Astrid's flight and its disastrous consequences were in response to Gunnhild having sent soldiers to kidnap or kill her infant son.

Gunnhild was the patron and lover of Hrut Herjolfsson (or Hrútur Herjólfsson), an Icelandic chieftain who visited Norway during the reign of Gunnhild's son Harald. This dalliance was all the more scandalous given the difference in their ages; the fact that Gunnhild was a generation older than Hrut was considered noteworthy. Gunnhild engaged in public displays of affection with Hrut that were normally reserved for married couples, such as putting her arms around his neck in an embrace. Moreover, Gunnhild had Hrut sleep with her alone in "the upper chamber." Laxdaela Saga in particular describes the extent to which she became enamored of Hrut:

Gunnhild, the Queen, loved him so much that she held there was not his equal within the guard, either in talking or in anything else. Even when men were compared, and noblemen therein were pointed to, all men easily saw that Gunnhild thought that at the bottom there must be sheer thoughtlessness, or else envy, if any man was said to be Hrut's equal.

She helped Hrut take possession of an inheritance by arranging the death of a man named Soti at the hands of her servant, Augmund and her son Gudrod. When Hrut returned home, Gunnhild gave him many presents, but she cursed Hrut with priapism to ruin his marriage to Unn, daughter of Mord Fiddle; the two ultimately divorced.

Gunnhild also showed great favor to Olaf the Peacock, Hrut's nephew, who visited the Norwegian court after Hrut's return to Norway. She advised him on the best places and items to trade and even sponsored his trade expeditions.

Exile and death
Haakon Sigurdsson, jarl of Hlaðir, arranged the death of Harald Greyhide around 971 with the connivance of Harald Bluetooth, who had invited his foster-son to Denmark to be invested with new Danish fiefs. Civil war broke out between Jarl Haakon and the surviving sons of Erik and Gunnhild, but Haakon proved victorious and Gunnhild had to flee Norway once again, with her remaining sons Gudrod and Ragnfred. They went to Orkney, again imposing themselves as overlords over Jarl Thorfinn. However, it appears that Gunnhild was less interested in ruling the country than in having a place to live quietly, and her sons used the islands as a base for abortive raids on Haakon's interests; the government of Orkney was therefore firmly in the hands of Thorfinn.

According to the Jómsvíkinga saga, Gunnhild returned to Denmark around 977 but was killed at the orders of King Harald by being drowned in a bog. The Ágrip and Theodoricus Monachus's Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium contain versions of this account.

In 1835, the body of a murdered or ritually sacrificed woman, the so-called Haraldskær Woman, was unearthed in a bog in Jutland. Because of the account of Gunnhild's murder contained in the Jomsviking Saga and other sources, the body was mistakenly identified as that of Gunnhild. Based upon the belief of her royal personage, King Frederick VI commanded an elaborate sarcophagus be carved to hold her body.  This royal treatment of Haraldskær Woman's remains explains the excellent state of conservation of the corpse; conversely, Tollund Man, a later discovery, was not properly conserved and most of the body has been lost, leaving only the head as original material in his display. Later radiocarbon dating demonstrated that the Haraldskær Woman was not Gunnhild, but rather a woman who lived in the 6th century BCE.

Reputation for Sorcery in the Sagas
Gunnhild is often connected with sorcery, as seen throughout the Icelandic sagas. This magical ability may be recognized in part due to Gunnhild's affiliation with the Finns, having supposedly lived in a hut with two Finnish wizards in Finnmark and learned magic from them, according to Snorri in Heimskringla. Also as seen in Heimskringla, Eirík first made the acquaintance of Gunnhild when he was younger and off on a raid in northern Norway. His men had stumbled upon the Finns' hut where she was staying, and described her as "a woman so beautiful that they had never seen the like of her."  As stated in Heimskringla, Gunnhild convinced them to hide in the Finns' hut, and then spread the contents of a linen sack both inside and outside of the hut. It is thought that this action was an indication of magic, which upon the Finns' return, caused them to fall asleep without being easily awoken. Gunnhild completed her magic by covering their heads with seal skins, and then directing Eirík's men to kill them, after which they returned to Eirík. Gunnhild's Finnish sojourn is described by historian Marlene Ciklamini as a "fable" designed to set the stage for placing the blame for Eirik's misrule on his wife.

Other sources acting as examples of Gunnhild's sorcery include the story of King Hákon's death in Snorri's Heimskringla, as well as instances concerning Egil in Egil's Saga, and suspicion surrounding the death of Halfdan Haraldsson . Heimskringla describes Hákon's ascent to the Norwegian throne after hearing of the cruelties caused by Eirík's rule. Hákon found great support among the Norwegian people, and therefore forced Eirík and Gunnhild to flee to England. Naturally many battles for the throne ensued, which ultimately led to Gunnhild getting blamed for Hákon's death, when an arrow flew towards him in battle piercing into the muscle of his upper arm. According to Heimskringla, it is stated that "through the sorcery of Gunnhildr a kitchen boy wheeled round, crying: 'Make room for the king's slayer!' and let fly the arrow into the group coming toward him and wounding the king."  Marlene Ciklamini reasons that the unusualness of the mortal wound directs the origin to possible sorcery involved, presumably by Gunnhild.

The character of Egil in Egil's Saga is also cursed by being on Gunnhild's bad side after his many transgressions towards the Norwegian court. First attracting her attention and dislike at a feast when he became overly drunk and foolishly killed one of her supporters and after which escaped, Gunnhild placed a curse on Egil, "from ever finding peace in Iceland until she had seen him."   This curse of Gunnhild's is presumably the cause for Egil's later desire to travel to England, which was where Gunnhild and Eirík were at the time after being exiled. Egil ended up requesting to receive forgiveness from Eirík and Gunnhild, and was allowed a single night to compose a tributary poem to Eirík, or else face death. Gunnhild's second moment of sorcery in the saga appears later that night, when Egil was apparently distracted from his writing by a bird twittering at the window. This bird is reputed to be Gunnhild, who had shape-shifted into that form, as seen by Egil's companion Arinbjorn, who had "sat down near the attic window where the bird had been sitting, and saw a shape-shifter in the form of a bird leaving the other side of the house."

Legacy and reputation
Carolyne Larrington takes an interesting look into the comparative amount of power Gunnhild held, as well as her overall role as queen within the Norwegian court. Queenship as a concept emerged relatively late in Norway, and as Larrington points out, the most powerful women in Norwegian history were usually king's mothers rather than kings' wives. Gunnhild acts as one of the most important partial exceptions to this rule, as she was influential during both Eirík's and her sons' rules. Gunnhild became increasingly politically active in her own right after her husband, Eirík, died in battle, after which she later returned to Norway where she put her sons in power, and her son Harald on the throne. Gunnhild also arranged her daughter's marriage to the strategically important Earl of Orkney, displaying her awareness for political advantage. Gunnhild remained resilient to maintain power for the rest of her life, acting as Queen Regent to her son Harald, and continuing to be a major deciding factor and source for political advice.

Appearances in Media

Literature
Gunnhild was a villain in Robert Leighton's 1934 novel Olaf the Glorious, a fictionalized biography of Olaf Tryggvason. She is the central character of the novel Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson, (which makes her a granddaughter of Rognvald Eysteinsson, accepts the version of her living with the Finnish warlocks and emphasizes her being a witch) and also appears in Cecelia Holland's The Soul Thief. In The Demon of Scattery by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon, and illustrated by Michael Whelan and Alicia Austin, the main characters, the Viking Halldor and the Irish ex-nun Brigit, become Gunnhild's paternal grandparents. She is a central character in Robert Low's "Crowbone".

Television
She is played by Icelandic actress Ragnheiður Ragnarsdóttir in the television series Vikings.

Explanatory notes

References
Citations

Bibliography

 {{cite journal |last=Ciklamini |first=Marlene |title=The Folktale in Heimskringla (Hálfdanar saga svarta – Hákonar saga góða |journal=Folklore |volume=90 |number=2 |year=1979 |pages=204–216|doi=10.1080/0015587X.1979.9716143 }}

External links
Bodies of the Bogs: Haraldskaer Woman, Archaeology'', Archaeological Institute of America,  10 December 1997.
Caveats on Gunnhild's parentage
Egil's Saga online
Genealogy of Gunnhild
Heimskringla online
Leighton's Olaf the Glorious on Project Gutenberg.
History Detective Podcast: Gunnhild Mother of Kings

910s births
980 deaths
Fairhair dynasty
Norwegian royal consorts
Orkneyinga saga characters
Medieval women poets
10th-century Norwegian people
10th-century Norwegian women
Daughters of kings
Queen mothers

Gunnhild, Mother of Kings


Zeus is the god of the sky, lightning, and the thunder in Ancient Greek religion and mythology, and ruler of all the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the sixth child of Cronos and Rhea, king and queen of the Titans respectively. His father, Cronos, swallowed his children as soon as they were born for fear of a prophecy which foretold that one of them would overthrow him. When Zeus was born, Rhea hid him in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete, giving Cronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow instead. When Zeus was older he went to free his brothers and sisters; together with their allies, the Hekatonkheires and the Elder Cyclopes, Zeus and his siblings fought against the Titans in a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy. At the end of the war, Zeus took Kronos' scythe made of diamond and cut him into pieces, throwing his remains into Tartarus. He then became the king of gods.

The supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, Zeus was universally respected and revered throughout Ancient Greece; the ancient Olympic Games were held at the site of  Olympia every four years in honor of him. Highly temperamental, Zeus was armed with the mighty thunderbolt, said to be the most powerful weapon among the gods. Zeus was married to his sister, Hera, though he was infamous for his infidelity, taking on an almost innumerable amount of lovers and consorts, both mortal and divine including Karis and Hercules' mother. Zeus was known for throwing thunderbolts at people.

The god of honor and justice, Zeus was the one who both established and enforced law, and served as the standard for kings to follow, ensuring they did not abuse the power of their position. His symbols were the thunderbolt, a scepter, an oak tree, and the eagle and bull were his sacred animals. His Roman equivalent is Jupiter. Zeus was the strongest Greek god, the ruler of all gods. He also had a lot of children that he was not supposed to have.

Related pages
 Tinia - Etruscan mythology version of Zeus
 Jupiter - Roman mythology version of Zeus
Indra - Hindu mythology version of Zeus

References

Twelve Olympians
Gods and goddesses of the sky
Gods and goddesses of thunder

Zeus


Mickey's Touchdown is a 1933 short film in Larry Darmour's Mickey McGuire series starring a young Mickey Rooney. Directed by Jesse Duffy, the two-reel short was released to theaters on October 14, 1933 by Post Pictures Corp.

Plot
Mickey and the Gang are gearing up for a football game against Stinkey Davis and his pals. Because Mickey's team apparently have no chance of winning, they enlist the aid of college football coach Howard Jones for advice. Jealous, Stinkey decides to steal Mickey's clothes, dress up as him, and cause havoc in town. His plan manages to get Mickey stuck in a courtroom for the day and out of the game. It's up to Howard Jones and Mickey's pals to save the day.

Notes
First appearances of Douglas Scott and Shirley Jean Rickert who (respectively) took over for the roles of 'Stinkey Davis' and 'Tomboy Taylor'.

Cast
In Order by Credits:
Mickey Rooney - Mickey McGuire
Douglas Scott - "Stinkey" Davis
Marvin Stephens - Katrink'
Jimmie Robinson - "Hambone" Johnson
Billy Barty - Billy McGuire ("Mickey's Little Brother")
Shirley Jeane Rickert - "Tomboy" Taylor
Kit Guard - "Stinkey" Davis Coach
Howard Jones - Himself
Spec O'Donnell - Referee (uncredited)
Robert McKenzie - Judge (uncredited)

References

External links

1933 films
1933 comedy films
American black-and-white films
Mickey McGuire short film series
1933 short films
American comedy short films
1940s English-language films
1930s English-language films

Mickey's Touchdown


Carmichael v National Power plc [1999] UKHL 47 is a British labour law case on the contract of employment for the purpose of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Facts
Tour guides had complained that they hadn't received written statement of the employment contracts under s.1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. They worked at Blyth Power Stations in Northumberland, for the Central Electricity Generating Board. Their hiring contracts said 'I am pleased to note that you are agreeable to be employed by the C.E.G.B. at Blyth 'A' and 'B' power stations on a casual as required basis as a station guide.'

Judgment
The House of Lords decided that they were not employees for the purpose of s 1, because there was not sufficient 'mutuality of obligation' when the guides were not actually guiding. Lord Irvine of Lairg said that there would not have been an 'irreducible minimum of mutuality of obligation necessary to create a contract of service' (relying on Nethermere) between the times actually working (while working the situation would be different). Their claim failed on the basis that on many occasions they would be called up but say they could not work.

Lord Hoffmann stated, at 1233,

"…the terms of the contract are a question of fact. And of course the question of whether the parties intended a document or documents to be the exclusive record of the terms of their agreement is also a question of fact."

"The evidence of a party as to what terms he understood to have been agree is some evidence tending to show that those terms, in an objective sense, were agreed. Of course the tribunal may reject such evidence and conclude that the party misunderstood the effect of what was being said and done. But when both parties are agreed about what they understood their mutual obligations (or lack of them) to be, it is a strong thing to exclude their evidence from consideration."

See also
UK labour law

Notes

References
E McGaughey, A Casebook on Labour Law (Hart 2018) ch 3

External links
Text of the full judgment, 18 November 1999

United Kingdom labour case law
House of Lords cases
1999 in United Kingdom case law
Electric power in the United Kingdom

Carmichael v National Power plc


The adventitia ( ) is the outer layer of fibrous connective tissue surrounding an organ.

The outer layer of connective tissue that surrounds an artery, or vein – the tunica externa, is also called the tunica adventitia.

To some degree, its role is complementary to that of the serosa, which also provides a layer of tissue surrounding an organ. In the abdomen, whether an organ is covered in adventitia or serosa depends upon whether it is peritoneal or retroperitoneal:
 intraperitoneal organs are covered in serosa (a layer of mesothelium, the visceral peritoneum)
 retroperitoneal organs are covered in adventitia (loose connective tissue)

In the gastrointestinal tract, the muscular layer is bounded in most cases by serosa. However, at the oral cavity, thoracic esophagus, ascending colon, descending colon and the rectum, the muscular layer is instead bounded by adventitia. The muscular layer of the duodenum is bounded by both tissue types. Generally, if it is a part of the digestive tract that is free to move, it is covered by serosa, and if it is relatively rigidly fixed, it is covered by adventitia.

The connective tissue of the gallbladder is covered by adventitia where the gallbladder bounds the liver, but by serosa for the rest of its surface.

See also
 Lumen (anatomy)

References

External links
  - "Mammal, whole system (LM, Low)"
  (vermiform appendix)

Connective tissue

Adventitia


In medicine, a panacea is a drug that can cure all diseases. In the Middle Ages, alchemists tried to find such a drug. Because different diseases, have different causes, they need to be treated in different ways. For this reason, such a drug cannot exist.

Medicine
Alchemy

Panacea (medicine)


Beautiful But Dangerous (it: La donna più bella del mondo, fr: La belle des belles) is a 1956 French-Italian comedy drama romance film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. The picture is a biopic about Italian opera soprano Lina Cavalieri. The film was a co-production between Italy and France. For this film Gina Lollobrigida was awarded a David di Donatello for Best Actress.

Plot

Lina (Gina Lollobrigida) is an orphan, brought up by her adopted mother who trains her for music. Her mother becomes sick due to a heart attack on the stage, and Lina goes to the stage in place of her mother. A group teases her, by connecting her to her mother's name and will not allow her to perform. From the balcony, the prince of Russia, Sergio (Vittorio Gassman) comes down and makes the teaser group leave the theater and asks Lina to perform. It was a very good performance, but at the end, she finds out that her mother had another attack, and has been sent to the long distance hospital. By the night she wants to go, but there is no way to. Sergio offers her lift to the hospital, and on the way, they get to know each other. The prince does not tell Lina his real identity but will say only that he came there for horse competition in the local club, and he stays regularly in Paris and he is from Russia. After reaching the hospital, she leaves her handbag in the coach. Sergio puts money and his golden ring in the bag and gives it to Lina. She hurries into the hospital and discovers her mother has died.

	Next, she enters the horse riding club and finds out Sergio stood first in the competition. She also discovers that he is the prince. She returns the money and the ring back to him, but he says that he will take all the things in Paris. Let her come to Paris, and becoming a very famous singer, and he will find her out!

	With the dream she goes back to her music school in Rome and asks for the best teacher, she is ready to pay anything. They recommend Doria (Robert Alda) who trains her and brings her to Paris. Doria is in love with Lina, but Lina is in love with Sergio. She refuses Doria and leaves him. She struggles to get a chance and finally settles down to some extent with Carmela (Anne Vernon). One of the singers is jealous of her and finally is fired from the opera for her. They fight, and after seeing this one of the members gets the idea to make a live show of shored fighting in between the two ladies to earn money. Lina owns the competition, and there a famous music director Silvani (Mario Del Monaco) meets her and invites her to the theater. From that stage, Lina's name becomes famous as 'the knight'.

	One day Doria comes and expresses his love for her again, but she refuses. Before a stage show one day, she notices in the balcony the prince is there. She is thrilled. At the end of the show, she expects a bouquet of flower from the prince, but nothing is there. She is disappointed. Silvani comes and invites both the friends for a party at his house. As they agree to go, suddenly the representative of the Prince comes and sends the message that the prince has arranged a party in the honour of Lina. She accepts the offer and finally meets the prince.

	In an intimate situation, the Prince is trying to say something to Lina, but she is not in the mood to listen. Suddenly the friends of the prince knock on the door, and overhearing the words from them, Lina misunderstands the Prince and thinks that he is going to marry somebody else in Russia. She leaves him, and leaves Paris for an unknown place.

	In a village side nearby Paris, Lina, Carmela stay together and Silvani comes to teach her extensive lesions on opera music. One day, before leaving to Paris, Silvani says that he loves Lina, and she need not to answer him right then. If at all, any time in life she feels for him, he is there for her. Silvani, in Paris meets an opera whose music director was Doria, where they will arrange for Lina to sing. Again her name will spread like anything; Doria becomes jealous of Silvani.

	In between the show, one day Sergio comes and meets Lina in the dressing room. He refused his uncle's marriage proposal for him and came to spend life with Lina. Lina refuses him, because of her misconception of the prince and in front of Silvani says that she will marry him after the show. Doria appoints somebody to kill Silvani during the scene of a firing squad.
Silvani dies, Lina thinks Sergio killed him, and Doria understands that she doesn't suspect him. So now for him, the road is clear, he will take her to a stage show in a different part of the world. Finally, an invitation comes from the Tsar of Russia.

	On the way to Russia, due to snowfall, the train halts for two hours, and there Sergio meets her again. But this time she accuses him of the murder of Silvani. Extremely insulted, Sergio leaves.

	During the meeting with the Tsar and his wife, Lina sees Sergio, and she says that she wants to sing the new opera Tusca, the last performance with Silvani. Doria objects, but the Quinn shows her interest for that.

	During the performance, Doria is over tensed, because last time he arranged the murder of Silvani; Lina is doing extremely well because she is emotionally charged and the Prince Sergio feels disgusted because he thinks that Lina is creating pressure on him unnecessarily.  Finally at the time of shooting, suddenly Doria will scream and shout 'don't shoot, don't shoot'. He admits to Lina that it was he, who plotted the murder of Silvani out of jealousy.

	Finally, Lina goes back to the Prince and both of them walk away.

Cast

 Gina Lollobrigida: Lina Cavalieri
 Vittorio Gassman: Sergio
 Robert Alda: Doria
 Anne Vernon: Carmela
 Tamara Lees: Manolita
 Gino Sinimberghi: Silvani
 Nanda Primavera: Olimpia
 Nico Pepe: Louis
 Enzo Biliotti: Perret
 Valeria Fabrizi: Silvana
 Marco Tulli: Judge at the duel
 Annie Cordy

Release
In the US, the film was acquired by Howard Hughes for distribution by 20th Century Fox. The film was due for release in Boston in early 1957 but was denied a Production Code seal until a love scene was cut.

References

External links

1955 films
Italian romantic comedy-drama films
Italian biographical drama films
Biographical films about singers
Films about opera
Films set in the 1900s
Films set in Rome
Films set in Paris
Films shot in Rome
Films shot in Paris
Films set in Italy
Films shot in Italy
Films directed by Robert Z. Leonard
1950s romantic comedy-drama films
1950s biographical drama films
Musical films based on actual events
1955 comedy-drama films
Films scored by Renzo Rossellini
Cultural depictions of Italian women
1950s Italian films

Beautiful but Dangerous


Malcolm Quantrill (25 May 1931 – 22 September 2009) was a British architect, academic and architecture theorist. His best known books are The Environmental Memory – Man and Architecture in the Landscape of Ideas (1986) and Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition (1998). He was a specialist in the history of the modern architecture of Finland. He was the first person to write critical monographs in any language on three individual Finnish modernist architects, Alvar Aalto – Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study (1983) – Reima Pietilä – Reima Pietilä: Architecture, Context, Modernism (1985) – and Juha Leiviskä – Juha Leiviska and the Continuity of Finnish Modern Architecture (2001). Already during his lifetime, he acquired a reputation for thorough and innovative scholarship in architecture, bringing a questioning attitude to well-known figures and canonical architectural history.

Early life and education
Quantrill was born on 25 May 1931, in Norwich, the only child of Arthur William Quantrill, a shoe pattern maker, and Alice May Quantrill (née Newstead). He attended school at the City of Norwich School. He graduated with a BA in architecture from the University of Liverpool in 1954. He was a Fulbright Scholar and Albert Kahn Memorial Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, US, earning a master's degree in 1955. On his return to the UK, he worked in architects' offices in London, qualifying as an architect and becoming a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1961. He received a DSc in Urbanism from Wroclaw Technical University, Poland, in 1975.

Career and scholarship
Quantrill taught at the schools of architecture at the University of Jordan, the former University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST), University College, London, and the University of Liverpool before becoming director of the Architectural Association in London from 1967 to 1969. From 1973 to 1980 he was Head of Environmental Design at the Polytechnic of North London. He was appointed Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University in 1984. He was promoted to Distinguished Professor at the same university in 1986, and upon retirement in 2007 was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Quantrill's book on Alvar Aalto, Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study (1983), broke the mould of previous monographs that tended to be hagiographic eulogies of the master of modernist architecture. He set Aalto in his historical context, both in regard to world architecture history and that of Finnish architecture. It was therefore no surprise that this project led to further scholarship in to the history of Finnish architecture, the culmination being the wide history of Finnish modern architecture, Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition (1995).

Honours
Quantrill held visiting professorships at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, the University of Oulu, Finland, Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico, and Carleton University, Canada. In 1988, he was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland in recognition of his contributions to Finnish architecture. He was made a Distinguished Professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 1990. In 2003, he received the Haecker Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research Award from the Architectural Research Consortium of North America. He was invited to become a member of the Garrick Club, a gentleman's club in London in 1971.

Publications
 Ritual and Response in Architecture, London: Lund Humphries (1974)
 Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study, London: Secker & Warburg (1983)
 Reima Pietilä: Architecture, Context and Modernism, New York: Rizzoli (1985)
 The Environmental Memory – Man and Architecture in the Landscape of Ideas, New York: Schocken (1987)
 One Man's Odyssey in Search of Finnish Architecture: An Anthology in Honour of Reima Pietilä, Helsinki: Rakennustietosäätiö (1988)
 Urban Forms, Suburban Dreams, edited by Malcolm Quantrill and Bruce Webb. College Station (Tex.): Texas A & M University Press (1993)
 The Culture of Silence – Architecture's Fifth Dimension, edited by Malcolm Quantrill and Bruce Webb. College Station (Tex.): Texas A&M University Press (1998)
 Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition, London: Taylor & Francis (1995)
 The Norman Foster Studio: Consistency Through Diversity, London: Taylor & Francis (2000)
 Juha Leiviska and the Continuity of Finnish Modern Architecture, Chichester: Wiley-Academy (2001)
 Plain Modern: The Architecture of Brian MacKay-Lyons (New Voices in Architecture), New York: Princeton Architectural Press (2005)
 The Unmade Bed of Architecture, Malcolm Quantrill and Matti K. Makinen, Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing (2008)
 The Ark of Architecture: Selected Writings of Malcolm Quantrill, Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing (2009)

External links
 Malcolm Quantrill Obituary, Published in The Bryan-College Station Eagle, Sept. 27 2009.

Notes

People educated at the City of Norwich School
Architects from Norwich
British architecture writers
Alumni of the University of Liverpool
British expatriate academics in the United States
Texas A&M University faculty
1931 births
1999 deaths
Knights of the Order of the Lion of Finland
20th-century English architects

Malcolm Quantrill


Gilesgate is a suburb of Durham in County Durham, England. It had a population at the 2011 census of 8,074.

Gilesgate was originally the main street in a settlement associated with the Hospital of St Giles which was sited by the existing St Giles Church.  The street was divided in the 1960s by the construction of the A690 and the demolition of a number of houses, pubs and shops at the foot of Gilesgate Bank to construct a roundabout.  East of Gilesgate itself was Gilesgate Moor.  During the 19th century, housing extended along the Sherburn and Sunderland Roads and the colliery village of New Durham was built within the parish.  Additional housing was constructed along the Sherburn Road in the 1930s, including the Sherburn Road Estate, built to house residents from the slums of Framwelgate. Following the Second World War, a further council housing estate was constructed north of the Sunderland Road with the streets taking the names of war leaders and local recipients of the Victoria Cross.  In modern usage Gilesgate can refer to the street, the smaller area (partly following old council boundaries) consisting of the street above the roundabout and the Sunderland Road estate, Gilesgate Moor and High Grange Estate.

Modern Gilesgate
Gilesgate is now a suburb of Durham and has a wide arrange of shops such as a Tesco Extra and a number of pubs, including New Durham Club and the Queens Head.

The historic parish church of St Giles is a grade I listed building, with the Roman Catholic church of St Joseph located on Mill Lane. Local primary schools include Gilesgate, Laurel Avenue, St Hilds (Church of England) and St Joseph's (Roman Catholic). Gilesgate also has two retail parks, Dragonville and Durham retail parks.

See also

 Kepier Hospital

References
Margot Johnson. "Gilesgate and St. Mary Magdalene" in Durham: Historic and University City and surrounding area. Sixth Edition. Turnstone Ventures. 1992. . Page 15.

Areas of Durham, England
Unparished areas in County Durham

Gilesgate