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+This category is for states of the United States. To locate categories in a particular state, click on that state, or use the text links below.
+
+
+
+This category has the following 62 subcategories, out of 62 total.
+
+The following 53 pages are in this category, out of  53 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).

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+Cologne Cathedral  (German: Kölner Dom, officially Hohe Domkirche Sankt Petrus, English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and was declared a World Heritage Site[4] in 1996.[5] It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day.[6] At 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is currently the tallest twin-spired church in the world,  the second tallest church in Europe after Ulm Minster, and the third tallest church in the world.[7]
+It is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires. The towers for its two huge spires give the cathedral the largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height to width ratio, 3.6:1, of any medieval church.[8]
+
+Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560,[9] unfinished. Work did not restart until the 1840s, and the edifice was completed to its original Medieval plan in 1880.[10]
+
+Cologne's medieval builders had planned a grand structure to house the reliquary of the Three Kings and fit its role as a place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor. Despite having been left incomplete during the medieval period, Cologne Cathedral eventually became unified as "a masterpiece of exceptional intrinsic value" and "a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence of Christian belief in medieval and modern Europe".[4]
+
+When construction began on the present Cologne Cathedral in 1248 with foundation stone, the site had already been occupied by several previous structures. The earliest may have been for grain storage and possibly was succeeded by a Roman temple built by Mercurius Augustus. From the 4th century on, however, the site was occupied by Christian buildings, including a square edifice known as the "oldest cathedral" that was commissioned by Maternus, the first bishop of Cologne. A free-standing baptistery dating back to the 7th century was located at the east end of the present cathedral but was demolished in the 9th century to build the second cathedral. During excavations of the present cathedral, graves were discovered in the location of the oldest portion of the building; including that of a boy that was richly adorned with grave goods and another of a woman, popularly thought to be Wisigard. Both graves are thought to be from the 6th century. Only ruins of the baptistery and the octagonal baptismal font remain today.[citation needed]
+
+The second church, called the "Old Cathedral", was completed in 818. It was destroyed by fire on 30 April 1248, during demolition work to prepare for a new cathedral.
+
+In 1164, the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainald of Dassel, acquired the relics of the Three Kings which the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, had taken from the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, Milan, Italy. (Parts of the relics have since been returned to Milan.) The relics have great religious significance and drew pilgrims from all over Christendom. It was important to church officials that they be properly housed, and thus began a building program in the new style of Gothic architecture, based in particular on the French cathedral of Amiens.[citation needed]
+
+The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1248, by Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden.[11] The eastern arm was completed under the direction of Master Gerhard, was consecrated in 1322 and sealed off by a temporary wall so it could be used as the work continued. Eighty-four misericords in the choir date from this building phase.
+
+In the mid 14th century work on the west front commenced under Master Michael. This work ceased in 1473, leaving the south tower complete to the belfry level and crowned with a huge crane that remained in place as a landmark of the Cologne skyline for 400 years.[12] Some work proceeded intermittently on the structure of the nave between the west front and the eastern arm, but during the 16th century this also stopped.[13]
+
+With the 19th century romantic enthusiasm for the Middle Ages, and spurred by the discovery of the original plan for the façade, it was decided, with the commitment of the Protestant Prussian Court, to complete the cathedral. It was achieved by civic effort; the Central-Dombauverein, founded in 1842, raised two-thirds of the enormous costs, while the Prussian state supplied the remaining third.[citation needed] The state saw this as a way to improve its relations with the large number of Catholic subjects it had gained in 1815, but especially after 1871, it was regarded as a project to symbolize German nationhood.[14]
+
+Work resumed in 1842 to the original design of the surviving medieval plans and drawings, but utilizing more modern construction techniques, including iron roof girders. The nave was completed and the towers were added. The bells were installed in the 1870s. The largest bell is St. Petersglocke.
+
+The completion of Germany's largest cathedral was celebrated as a national event on 14 August 1880, 632 years after construction had begun.[15] The celebration was attended by Emperor Wilhelm I. With a height of 157.38 metres (516.3 ft), it was the tallest building in the world for four years until the completion of Washington Monument.[citation needed]
+
+The cathedral suffered fourteen hits by aerial bombs during World War II. Badly damaged, it nevertheless remained standing in an otherwise completely flattened city. The twin spires were an easily recognizable navigational landmark for Allied aircraft bombing.
+
+On 6 March 1945, an area west of the cathedral (Marzellenstrasse/Trankgasse) was the site of intense combat between American tanks of the 3rd Armored Division and a Panther Ausf. A of Panzer brigade 106 Feldherrnhalle. The Panther successfully knocked out a Sherman, killing three men, before it was destroyed by a T26E3 Pershing hours later. Footage of that battle survives. The destroyed Panther was later put on display at the base of the cathedral for the remainder of the war in Europe.[16]
+
+Repairs of the war damage were completed in 1956. An emergency repair to the base of the northwest tower, carried out in 1944 using poor-quality brick taken from a nearby ruined building, remained visible as a reminder of the war until 2005, when it was decided to restore the section to its original appearance.
+
+Repair and maintenance work is constantly being carried out in one or another section of the building, which is rarely completely free of scaffolding, as wind, rain, and pollution slowly eat away at the stones. The Dombauhütte, established to build the cathedral and keep it in repair, is said[by whom?] to employ the best stonemasons in the Rhineland. Half the costs of repair and maintenance are still borne by the Dombauverein.[citation needed]
+
+On 18 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI visited the cathedral during his apostolic visit to Germany, as part of World Youth Day 2005 festivities. An estimated one million pilgrims visited the cathedral during this time. Also as part of the events of World Youth Day, Cologne Cathedral hosted a televised gala performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir conducted by Sir Gilbert Levine.[17]
+
+On 25 August 2007, the cathedral received a new stained glass window in the south transept. The 113 square metres (1,220 sq ft) glass work was created by the German artist Gerhard Richter with the €400,000 cost paid by donations. It is composed of 11,500 identically sized pieces of colored glass resembling pixels, randomly arranged by computer, which create a colorful "carpet". Since the loss of the original window in World War II, the space had been temporarily filled with plain glass.[18] The then archbishop of the cathedral, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who had preferred a figurative depiction of 20th-century Catholic martyrs for the window, did not attend the unveiling.[19] Holder of the office since 2014 is Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
+On 5 January 2015, the cathedral remained dark as floodlights were switched off to protest a demonstration by PEGIDA.[20]
+
+Unfinished cathedral, 1856 with 15th-century crane on south tower.
+
+The west front of the completed cathedral in 1911
+
+US soldier and destroyed Panther tank, 4 April 1945.
+
+In 1996, the cathedral was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List of culturally important sites.[21] In 2004, it was placed on the "World Heritage in Danger" list, as the only Western site in danger, due to plans to construct several high-rise buildings nearby, which would have visually impacted the site.[22][23] The cathedral was removed from the list in 2006, following the authorities' decision to limit the heights of buildings constructed near and around the cathedral.[24]
+
+As a World Heritage Site and host to the Shrine of the Three Kings, Cologne Cathedral is a major attraction for tourists and pilgrims, and is one of the oldest and most important pilgrimage sites of Northern Europe.[25]
+
+Visitors can climb 533 stone steps of the spiral staircase to a viewing platform about 100 m (330 ft) above the ground.[26] The platform gives a scenic view over the Rhine.
+
+There is ongoing conservation at the cathedral to address the problem of the black discoloration caused by the sandstone reacting with sulfuric acid during rainfall. The acidic rain is a consequence of air pollution. [27]
+
+St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. was modeled after the cathedral.[28]
+
+The design of Cologne Cathedral was based quite closely on that of Amiens Cathedral in terms of ground plan, style and the width to height proportion of the central nave. The plan is in the shape of a Latin Cross, as is usual with Gothic cathedrals. It has two aisles on either side, which help to support one of the very highest Gothic vaults in the world, being nearly as tall as that of the Beauvais Cathedral, much of which collapsed. Externally the outward thrust of the vault is taken by flying buttresses in the French manner. The eastern end has a single ambulatory, the second aisle resolving into a chevet of seven radiating chapels.[citation needed]
+
+Internally, the medieval choir is more varied and less mechanical in its details than the 19th-century building. It presents a French style arrangement of very tall arcade, a delicate narrow triforium gallery lit by windows and with detailed tracery merging with that of the windows above. The clerestory windows are tall and retain some old figurative glass in the lower sections. The whole is united by the tall shafts that sweep unbroken from the floor to their capitals at the spring of the vault. The vault is of plain quadripartite arrangement.
+
+The choir retains a great many of its original fittings, including the carved stalls, which is made the more surprising by the fact that French Revolutionary troops had desecrated the building. A large stone statue of St Christopher looks down towards the place where the earlier entrance to the cathedral was, before its completion in the late 19th century.
+
+The nave has many 19th century stained glass windows. A set of five on the south side, called the Bayernfenster, were a gift from Ludwig I of Bavaria, and strongly represent the painterly German style of that date.
+
+Externally, particularly from a distance, the building is dominated by its huge spires, which are entirely Germanic in character, being openwork like those of Ulm, Vienna, Strasbourg and Regensburg Cathedrals.[29]
+
+A "Bird's eye view" shows the cruciform plan
+
+The cathedral from the south
+
+The exterior of one of the spires
+
+The main entrance shows the 19th century decoration
+
+The flying buttresses and pinnacles of the Medieval east end
+
+The nave looking east
+
+Interior of the Medieval east end, showing the extreme height
+
+This "swallows' nest" organ was built into the gallery in 1998, to celebrate the cathedral's 750 years
+
+One of the treasures of the cathedral is the High Altar, which was installed in 1322. It is constructed of black marble, with a solid slab 15 feet (4.6 m) long forming the top. The front and sides are overlaid with white marble niches into which are set figures, with the Coronation of the Virgin at the centre.[30]
+
+The most celebrated work of art in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Three Kings, commissioned by Philip von Heinsberg, archbishop of Cologne from 1167 to 1191 and created by Nicholas of Verdun, begun in 1190. It is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, whose relics were acquired by Frederick Barbarossa at the conquest of Milan in 1164.   The shrine takes the form a large reliquary in the shape of a basilican church, made of bronze and silver, gilded and ornamented with architectonic details, figurative sculpture, enamels and gemstones.  The shrine was opened in 1864 and was found to contain bones and garments.
+
+Near the sacristy is the Gero-Kreuz,[31] a large crucifix carved in oak and with traces of paint and gilding. Believed to have been commissioned around 960 for Archbishop Gero, it is the oldest large crucifix north of the Alps and the earliest-known large free-standing Northern sculpture of the medieval period.[32][full citation needed]
+
+In the Sacrament Chapel is the Mailänder Madonna ("Milan Madonna"), dating from around 1290, a wooden sculpture depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The altar of the patron saints of Cologne with an altarpiece by the International Gothic painter Stefan Lochner is in the Marienkapelle ("St. Mary's Chapel"). 
+After completion in 1265, the radiating chapels were immediately taken into service as burial place. The relics of Saint Irmgardis found a final resting place in the St. Agnes’ Chapel. Her trachyte sarcophagus is considered to be created by the cathedral masons’ guild around 1280.[33]
+Other works of art are in the Cathedral Treasury.
+
+Embedded in the interior wall are a pair of stone tablets on which are carved the provisions formulated by Archbishop Englebert II (1262–67) under which Jews were permitted to reside in Cologne.[34]
+
+The Crucifix of Bishop Gero, 10th century, the oldest known large crucifix
+
+The Shrine of the Three Kings
+
+Medieval statue of St. Christopher
+
+Petrus- und Wurzel Jesse-Fenster, 1509
+
+Anbetungs-Fenster, 1846
+
+Modern stained glass window by Gerhard Richter
+
+Cologne Cathedral has two pipe organs by Klais Orgelbau: the Transept Organ, built in 1948, and the Nave Organ, built in 1998. Cathedral organists have included Josef Zimmermann, Clemens Ganz (1985–2001) and Winfried Bönig (2001).
+
+The cathedral has eleven church bells, four of which are medieval. The first was the 3.8-tonne Dreikönigsglocke ("Bell of the Three Kings"), cast in 1418, installed in 1437, and recast in 1880. Two of the other bells, the Pretiosa (10.5 tonnes; at that time the largest bell in the Western world) and the Speciosa (5.6 tonnes) were installed in 1448 and remain in place today.
+
+During the 19th century, as the building neared completion, there was a desire to extend the number of bells. This was facilitated by Kaiser Wilhelm I who gave French bronze cannon, captured in 1870–71, for this purpose. The 22 pieces of artillery were displayed outside the cathedral on 11 May 1872. Andreas Hamm in Frankenthal used them to cast a bell of over 27,000 kilos on 19 August 1873. The tone was not harmonious and another attempt was made on 13 November 1873. The Central Cathedral Association, which had agreed to take over the costs, did not want this bell either. Another attempt took place on 3 October 1874. The colossal bell was shipped to Cologne and on 13 May 1875, installed in the cathedral. This Kaiserglocke was eventually melted in 1918 to support the German war effort. The Kaiserglocke was the largest free-swinging bell in history.
+
+The 24-tonne St. Petersglocke ("Bell of St. Peter", "Decke Pitter" in the Kölsch language or in common parlance known as "Dicker Pitter"), was cast in 1922 and was the largest free-swinging bell in the world, until a new bell was cast in Innsbruck for the People's Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest in Romania.[35]

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+
+Florence (/ˈflɔːrəns/ FLORR-ənss; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] (listen))[a] is a city in central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.[4]
+
+Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era.[5] It is considered by many academics[6] to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages".[7] Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions.[8] From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[9] due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.
+
+The city attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.[10] The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.[11] Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, Forbes has ranked it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.[12]
+
+Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion,[11] and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor;[13] furthermore, it is a major national economic centre,[11] as well as a tourist and industrial hub. In 2008 the city had the 17th-highest average income in Italy.[14]
+
+Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. It was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries.[10]
+
+The language spoken in the city during the 14th century came to be accepted as the model for what would become the Italian language. Thanks especially to the works of the Tuscans Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, was adopted as the basis for a national literary language.[15]
+
+Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War. They similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome.
+
+Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII. The Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
+
+Roman Empire 27 BC–AD 285 
+ Western Roman Empire 285–476 
+ Kingdom of Odoacer 476–493 
+ Ostrogothic Kingdom 493–553 
+ Eastern Roman Empire 553–568 
+ Lombard Kingdom 570–773 
+ Carolingian Empire 774–797 
+ Regnum Italiae 797–1001 
+ March of Tuscany 1002–1115 
+ Republic of Florence 1115–1532 
+ Duchy of Florence 1532–1569 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1569–1801 
+ Kingdom of Etruria 1801–1807 
+ First French Empire 1807–1815 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1815–1859 
+ United Provinces of Central Italy 1859–1860 
+ Kingdom of Italy 1861–1946
+
+The Etruscans initially formed in the 9th–8th century BC  the small settlement of Fiesole (Faesulae in Latin),[16] which was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome.[citation needed] The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named originally Fluentia, owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, which was later changed to Florentia ("flowering").[17] It was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre.
+
+In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was often troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county.[18]
+
+Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD. The Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune", meaning a city state. The city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry (mainly textile industry), and access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community. The Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation (e.g. bills of exchange,[19] double-entry bookkeeping system) to medieval fairs. This period also saw the eclipse of Florence's formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406), and the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice (1293).[20]
+
+At the height of demographic expansion around 1325, the urban population may have been as great as 120,000, and the rural population around the city was probably close to 300,000.[21] The Black Death of 1348 reduced it by over half,[22][23] about 25,000 are said to have been supported by the city's wool industry: in 1345 Florence was the scene of an attempted strike by wool combers (ciompi), who in 1378 rose up in a brief revolt against oligarchic rule in the Revolt of the Ciompi. After their suppression, Florence came under the sway (1382–1434) of the Albizzi family, who became bitter rivals of the Medici.
+
+In the 15th century, Florence was among the largest cities in Europe with a population of 60,000 and was considered rich and economically successful.[24] Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family member to essentially control the city from behind the scenes. Although the city was technically a democracy of sorts, his power came from a vast patronage network along with his alliance to the new immigrants, the gente nuova (new people). The fact that the Medici were bankers to the pope also contributed to their ascendancy. Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero, who was, soon after, succeeded by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo in 1469. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Lorenzo was an accomplished poet and musician and brought composers and singers to Florence, including Alexander Agricola, Johannes Ghiselin, and Heinrich Isaac. By contemporary Florentines (and since), he was known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent" (Lorenzo il Magnifico).
+
+Following Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1492, he was succeeded by his son Piero II. When the French king Charles VIII invaded northern Italy, Piero II chose to resist his army. But when he realised the size of the French army at the gates of Pisa, he had to accept the humiliating conditions of the French king. These made the Florentines rebel, and they expelled Piero II. With his exile in 1494, the first period of Medici rule ended with the restoration of a republican government.
+
+During this period, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had become prior of the San Marco monastery in 1490. He was famed for his penitential sermons, lambasting what he viewed as widespread immorality and attachment to material riches. He praised the exile of the Medici as the work of God, punishing them for their decadence. He seized the opportunity to carry through political reforms leading to a more democratic rule. But when Savonarola publicly accused Pope Alexander VI of corruption, he was banned from speaking in public. When he broke this ban, he was excommunicated. The Florentines, tired of his extreme teachings, turned against him and arrested him. He was convicted as a heretic and burned at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498.
+
+A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimisation of political expediency and even malpractice. In other words, Machiavelli was a political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook, titled The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power. Commissioned by the Medici, Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories, the history of the city. Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic on 16 May 1527. Restored twice with the support of both Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the Medici in 1532 became hereditary dukes of Florence, and in 1569 Grand Dukes of Tuscany, ruling for two centuries. In all Tuscany, only the Republic of Lucca (later a Duchy) and the Principality of Piombino were independent from Florence.
+
+The extinction of the Medici dynasty and the accession in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, led to Tuscany's temporary inclusion in the territories of the Austrian crown. It became a secundogeniture of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who were deposed for the House of Bourbon-Parma in 1801. From 1801 to 1807 Florence was the capital of the Napoleonic client state Kingdom of Etruria. The Bourbon-Parma were deposed in December 1807 when Tuscany was annexed by France. Florence was the prefecture of the French département of Arno from 1808 to the fall of Napoleon in 1814. The Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was restored on the throne of Tuscany at the Congress of Vienna but finally deposed in 1859. Tuscany became a region of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
+
+Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in 1865 and, in an effort to modernise the city, the old market in the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and many medieval houses were pulled down and replaced by a more formal street plan with newer houses. The Piazza (first renamed Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, then Piazza della Repubblica, the present name) was significantly widened and a large triumphal arch was constructed at the west end. This development was unpopular and was prevented from continuing by the efforts of several British and American people living in the city.[citation needed] A museum recording the destruction stands nearby today.
+
+The country's second capital city was superseded by Rome six years later, after the withdrawal of the French troops allowed the capture of Rome.
+
+During World War II the city experienced a year-long German occupation (1943–1944) being part of the Italian Social Republic. Hitler declared it an open city on July 3, 1944 as troops of the British 8th Army closed in.[25] In early August, the retreating Germans decided to demolish all the bridges along the Arno linking the district of Oltrarno to the rest of the city, making it difficult for troops of the 8th Army to cross. However, at the last moment Charles Steinhauslin, at the time consul of 26 countries in Florence, convinced the German general in Italy that the Ponte Vecchio was not to be destroyed due to its historical value.[citation needed] Instead, an equally historic area of streets directly to the south of the bridge, including part of the Corridoio Vasariano, was destroyed using mines. Since then the bridges have been restored to their original forms using as many of the remaining materials as possible, but the buildings surrounding the Ponte Vecchio have been rebuilt in a style combining the old with modern design. Shortly before leaving Florence, as they knew that they would soon have to retreat, the Germans executed many freedom fighters and political opponents publicly, in streets and squares including the Piazza Santo Spirito.[citation needed]
+
+Florence was liberated by New Zealand, South African and British troops on 4 August 1944 alongside partisans from the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation (CTLN). The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city (Americans about nine kilometres (5.6 miles) south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno).
+
+At the end of World War II in May 1945, the US Army's Information and Educational Branch was ordered to establish an overseas university campus for demobilised American service men and women in Florence, Italy. The first American University for service personnel was established in June 1945 at the School of Aeronautics in Florence, Italy. Some 7,500 soldier-students were to pass through the University during its four one-month sessions (see G. I. American Universities).[26]
+
+In November 1966, the Arno flooded parts of the centre, damaging many art treasures. Around the city there are tiny placards on the walls noting where the flood waters reached at their highest point.
+
+Florence lies in a basin formed by the hills of Careggi, Fiesole, Settignano, Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale and Bellosguardo (Florence). The Arno river, three other minor rivers (Mugnone,[27] Ema and Greve) and some streams flow through it.[28]
+
+Florence has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), tending to Mediterranean (Csa).[29] It has hot summers with moderate or light rainfall and cool, damp winters. As Florence lacks a prevailing wind, summer temperatures are higher than along the coast. Rainfall in summer is convectional, while relief rainfall dominates in the winter. Snow flurries happen almost every year,[30] but often result in no accumulation.[31] The highest officially recorded temperature was 42.6 °C (108.7 °F) on 26 July 1983 and the lowest was −23.2 °C (−9.8 °F) on 12 January 1985.[32]
+
+The traditional boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The 5 administrative boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council (Consiglio Comunale), which is composed of 36 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed by 7 assessors, that is nominated and presieded over by a directly elected Mayor. The current mayor of Florence is Dario Nardella.
+
+The municipality of Florence is subdivided into five administrative Boroughs (Quartieri). Each Borough is governed by a Council (Consiglio) and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition they are supplied with an autonomous founding in order to finance local activities. The Boroughs are:
+
+All of the five boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party.
+
+The former Italian Prime Minister (2014–2016), Matteo Renzi, served as mayor from 2009 to 2014.
+
+Florence is known as the "cradle of the Renaissance" (la culla del Rinascimento) for its monuments, churches, and buildings. The best-known site of Florence is the domed cathedral of the city, Santa Maria del Fiore, known as The Duomo, whose dome was built by Filippo Brunelleschi. The nearby Campanile (partly designed by Giotto) and the Baptistery buildings are also highlights. The dome, 600 years after its completion, is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world.[37] In 1982, the historic centre of Florence (Italian: centro storico di Firenze) was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.[38] The centre of the city is contained in medieval walls that were built in the 14th century to defend the city. At the heart of the city, in Piazza della Signoria, is Bartolomeo Ammannati's Fountain of Neptune (1563–1565), which is a masterpiece of marble sculpture at the terminus of a still functioning Roman aqueduct.
+
+The layout and structure of Florence in many ways harkens back to the Roman era, where it was designed as a garrison settlement.[10] Nevertheless, the majority of the city was built during the Renaissance.[10] Despite the strong presence of Renaissance architecture within the city, traces of medieval, Baroque, Neoclassical and modern architecture can be found. The Palazzo Vecchio as well as the Duomo, or the city's Cathedral, are the two buildings which dominate Florence's skyline.[10]
+
+The river Arno, which cuts through the old part of the city, is as much a character in Florentine history as many of the people who lived there. Historically, the locals have had a love-hate relationship with the Arno – which alternated between nourishing the city with commerce, and destroying it by flood.
+
+One of the bridges in particular stands out — the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), whose most striking feature is the multitude of shops built upon its edges, held up by stilts. The bridge also carries Vasari's elevated corridor linking the Uffizi to the Medici residence (Palazzo Pitti). Although the original bridge was constructed by the Etruscans, the current bridge was rebuilt in the 14th century. It is the only bridge in the city to have survived World War II intact. It is the first example in the western world of a bridge built using segmental arches, that is, arches less than a semicircle, to reduce both span-to-rise ratio and the numbers of pillars to allow lesser encumbrance in the riverbed (being in this much more successful than the Roman Alconétar Bridge).
+
+The church of San Lorenzo contains the Medici Chapel, the mausoleum of the Medici family—the most powerful family in Florence from the 15th to the 18th century. Nearby is the Uffizi Gallery, one of the finest art museums in the world – founded on a large bequest from the last member of the Medici family.
+
+The Uffizi is located at the corner of Piazza della Signoria, a site important for being the centre of Florence's civil life and government for centuries. The Palazzo della Signoria facing it is still home of the municipal government. Many significant episodes in the history of art and political changes were staged here, such as:
+
+The Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria is the location of a number of statues by other sculptors such as Donatello, Giambologna, Ammannati and Cellini, although some have been replaced with copies to preserve the originals.
+
+Florence contains several palaces and buildings from various eras. The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence and also an art museum. This large Romanesque crenellated fortress-palace overlooks the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo's David statue as well as the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the Palazzo della Signoria, after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, it was also given several other names: Palazzo del Popolo, Palazzo dei Priori, and Palazzo Ducale, in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno to the Palazzo Pitti. It is linked to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti through the Corridoio Vasariano.
+
+Palazzo Medici Riccardi, designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo il Vecchio, of the Medici family, is another major edifice, and was built between 1445 and 1460. It was well known for its stone masonry that includes rustication and ashlar. Today it is the head office of the Metropolitan City of Florence and hosts museums and the Riccardiana Library. The Palazzo Strozzi, an example of civil architecture with its rusticated stone, was inspired by the Palazzo Medici, but with more harmonious proportions. Today the palace is used for international expositions like the annual antique show (founded as the Biennale dell'Antiquariato in 1959), fashion shows and other cultural and artistic events. Here also is the seat of the Istituto Nazionale del Rinascimento and the noted Gabinetto Vieusseux, with the library and reading room.
+There are several other notable places, including the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino; the Palazzo Davanzati, which houses the museum of the Old Florentine House; the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, designed in the Neo-Renaissance style in 1871; the Palazzo Spini Feroni, in Piazza Santa Trinita, a historic 13th-century private palace, owned since the 1920s by shoe-designer Salvatore Ferragamo; as well as various others, including the Palazzo Borghese, the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, the Palazzo Antinori, and the Royal building of Santa Maria Novella.
+
+Florence contains numerous museums and art galleries where some of the world's most important works of art are held. The city is one of the best preserved Renaissance centres of art and architecture in the world and has a high concentration of art, architecture and culture.[39] In the ranking list of the 15 most visited Italian art museums, ⅔ are represented by Florentine museums.[40] The Uffizi is one of these, having a very large collection of international and Florentine art. The gallery is articulated in many halls, catalogued by schools and chronological order. Engendered by the Medici family's artistic collections through the centuries, it houses works of art by various painters and artists. The Vasari Corridor is another gallery, built connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace passing by the Uffizi and over the Ponte Vecchio. The Galleria dell'Accademia houses a Michelangelo collection, including the David. It has a collection of Russian icons and works by various artists and painters. Other museums and galleries include the Bargello, which concentrates on sculpture works by artists including Donatello, Giambologna and Michelangelo; the Palazzo Pitti, containing part of the Medici family's former private collection. In addition to the Medici collection, the palace's galleries contain many Renaissance works, including several by Raphael and Titian, large collections of costumes, ceremonial carriages, silver, porcelain and a gallery of modern art dating from the 18th century. Adjoining the palace are the Boboli Gardens, elaborately landscaped and with numerous sculptures.
+
+There are several different churches and religious buildings in Florence. The cathedral is Santa Maria del Fiore. The San Giovanni Baptistery located in front of the cathedral, is decorated by numerous artists, notably by Lorenzo Ghiberti with the Gates of Paradise. Other churches in Florence include the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, located in Santa Maria Novella square (near the Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station) which contains works by Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio; the Basilica of Santa Croce, the principal Franciscan church in the city, which is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres (2,600 feet) south east of the Duomo, and is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Rossini, thus it is known also as the Temple of the Italian Glories (Tempio dell'Itale Glorie); the Basilica of San Lorenzo, which is one of the largest churches in the city, situated at the centre of Florence's main market district, and the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III; Santo Spirito, in the Oltrarno quarter, facing the square with the same name; Orsanmichele, whose building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele, now demolished; Santissima Annunziata, a Roman Catholic basilica and the mother church of the Servite order; Ognissanti, which was founded by the lay order of the Umiliati, and is among the first examples of Baroque architecture built in the city; the Santa Maria del Carmine, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, which is the location of the Brancacci Chapel, housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, later finished by Filippino Lippi; the Medici Chapel with statues by Michelangelo, in the San Lorenzo; as well as several others, including Santa Trinita, San Marco, Santa Felicita, Badia Fiorentina, San Gaetano, San Miniato al Monte, Florence Charterhouse, and Santa Maria del Carmine. The city additionally contains the Orthodox Russian church of Nativity, and the Great Synagogue of Florence, built in the 19th century.
+
+Florence contains various theatres and cinemas. The Odeon Cinema of the Palazzo dello Strozzino is one of the oldest cinemas in the city. Established from 1920 to 1922[41] in a wing of the Palazzo dello Strozzino, it used to be called the Cinema Teatro Savoia (Savoy Cinema-Theatre), yet was later called Odeon. The Teatro della Pergola, located in the centre of the city on the eponymous street, is an opera house built in the 17th century. Another theatre is the Teatro Comunale (or Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele, which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. There are several other theatres, such as the Saloncino Castinelli, the Teatro Puccini, the Teatro Verdi, the Teatro Goldoni and the Teatro Niccolini.
+
+Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.
+
+Aside from such monuments, Florence contains numerous major squares (piazze) and streets. The Piazza della Repubblica is a square in the city centre, location of the cultural cafés and bourgeois palaces. Among the square's cafés (like Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski or the Hard Rock Cafè), the Giubbe Rosse café has long been a meeting place for artists and writers, notably those of Futurism. The Piazza Santa Croce is another; dominated by the Basilica of Santa Croce, it is a rectangular square in the centre of the city where the Calcio Fiorentino is played every year. Furthermore, there is the Piazza Santa Trinita, a square near the Arno that mark the end of the Via de' Tornabuoni street.
+
+Other squares include the Piazza San Marco, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Piazza Beccaria and the Piazza della Libertà. The centre additionally contains several streets. Such include the Via Camillo Cavour, one of the main roads of the northern area of the historic centre; the Via Ghibellina, one of central Florence's longest streets; the Via dei Calzaiuoli, one of the most central streets of the historic centre  which links Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Signoria, winding parallel to via Roma and Piazza della Repubblica; the Via de' Tornabuoni, a luxurious street in the city centre that goes from Antinori square to ponte Santa Trinita, across Piazza Santa Trinita, characterised by the presence of fashion boutiques; the Viali di Circonvallazione, 6-lane boulevards surrounding the northern part of the historic centre; as well as others, such as Via Roma, Via degli Speziali, Via de' Cerretani, and the Viale dei Colli.
+
+Florence also contains various parks and gardens. Such include the Boboli Gardens, the Parco delle Cascine, the Giardino Bardini and the Giardino dei Semplici, amongst others.
+
+In 1200 the city was home to 50,000 people.[42] By 1300 the population of the city proper was 120,000, with an additional 300,000 living in the Contado.[43] Between 1500 and 1650 the population was around 70,000.[44][45]
+
+As of 31 October 2010[update], the population of the city proper is 370,702, while Eurostat estimates that 696,767 people live in the urban area of Florence. The Metropolitan Area of Florence, Prato and Pistoia, constituted in 2000 over an area of roughly 4,800 square kilometres (1,853 sq mi), is home to 1.5 million people. Within Florence proper, 46.8% of the population was male in 2007 and 53.2% were female. Minors (children aged 18 and less) totalled 14.10 percent of the population compared to pensioners, who numbered 25.95 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Florence resident is 49 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Florence grew by 3.22 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent.[46] The birth rate of Florence is 7.66 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
+
+As of 2009[update], 87.46% of the population was Italian. An estimated 6,000 Chinese live in the city.[47] The largest immigrant group came from other European countries (mostly Romanians and Albanians): 3.52%, East Asia (mostly Chinese and Filipino): 2.17%, the Americas: 1.41%, and North Africa (mostly Moroccan): 0.9%.[48]
+
+Much like the rest of Italy most of the people in Florence are Roman Catholic, with more than 90% of the population belonging to the Archdiocese of Florence.[49][50]
+
+Tourism is, by far, the most important of all industries and most of the Florentine economy relies on the money generated by international arrivals and students studying in the city.[10] The value tourism to the city totalled some €2.5 billion in 2015 and the number of visitors had increased by 5.5% from the previous year.[51]
+
+In 2013, Florence was listed as the second best world city by Condé Nast Traveler.[52]
+
+Manufacturing and commerce, however, still remain highly important. Florence is also Italy's 17th richest city in terms of average workers' earnings, with the figure being €23,265 (the overall city's income is €6,531,204,473), coming after Mantua, yet surpassing Bolzano.[53]
+
+Florence is a major production and commercial centre in Italy, where the Florentine industrial complexes in the suburbs produce all sorts of goods, from furniture, rubber goods, chemicals, and food.[10] However, traditional and local products, such as antiques, handicrafts, glassware, leatherwork, art reproductions, jewellery, souvenirs, elaborate metal and iron-work, shoes, accessories and high fashion clothes also dominate a fair sector of Florence's economy.[10] The city's income relies partially on services and commercial and cultural interests, such as annual fairs, theatrical and lyrical productions, art exhibitions, festivals and fashion shows, such as the Calcio Fiorentino. Heavy industry and machinery also take their part in providing an income. In Nuovo Pignone, numerous factories are still present, and small-to medium industrial businesses are dominant. The Florence-Prato-Pistoia industrial districts and areas were known as the 'Third Italy' in the 1990s, due to the exports of high-quality goods and automobile (especially the Vespa) and the prosperity and productivity of the Florentine entrepreneurs. Some of these industries even rivalled the traditional industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto due to high profits and productivity.[10]
+
+In the fourth quarter of 2015, manufacturing increased by 2.4% and exports increased by 7.2%. Leading sectors included mechanical engineering, fashion, pharmaceutics, food and wine. During 2015, permanent employment contracts increased by 48.8 percent, boosted by nationwide tax break.[51]
+
+Tourism is the most significant industry in central Florence. From April to October, tourists outnumber local population. Tickets to the Uffizi and Accademia museums are regularly sold out and large groups regularly fill the basilicas of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, both of which charge for entry. Tickets for The Uffizi and Accademia can be purchased online prior to visiting.[54] In 2010, readers of Travel + Leisure magazine ranked the city as their third favourite tourist destination.[55] In 2015, Condé Nast Travel readers voted Florence as the best city in Europe.[56]
+
+Studies by Euromonitor International have concluded that cultural and history-oriented tourism is generating significantly increased spending throughout Europe.[57]
+
+Florence is believed to have the greatest concentration of art (in proportion to its size) in the world.[58] Thus, cultural tourism is particularly strong, with world-renowned museums such as the Uffizi selling over 1.93 million tickets in 2014.[59] The city's convention centre facilities were restructured during the 1990s and host exhibitions, conferences, meetings, social forums, concerts and other events all year.
+
+In 2016, Florence had 20,588 hotel rooms in 570 facilities. International visitors use 75% of the rooms; some 18% of those were from the U.S.[60] In 2014, the city had 8.5 million overnight stays.[61] A Euromonitor report indicates that in 2015 the city ranked as the world's 36th most visited in the world, with over 4.95 million arrivals for the year.[62]
+
+Tourism brings revenue to Florence, but it creates certain problems. The Ponte Vecchio, The San Lorenzo Market and Santa Maria Novella are plagued by pickpockets.[63] The province of Florence receives roughly 13 million visitors per year[64] and in peak seasons, that can lead to over crowding at popular locations.[65] Mayor Dario Nardella is particularly concerned about visitors who arrive on buses, stay only a few hours, spend little money but contribute significantly to overcrowding. "No museum visit, just a photo from the square, the bus back and then on to Venice... We don’t want tourists like that," he said.[66]
+
+Some tourists are less than respectful of the city's cultural heritage, according to Nardella. In June 2017, he instituted a programme of spraying church steps with water to prevent tourists from using such areas as picnic spots. While he values the benefits of tourism, there has been "an increase among those who  sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them," he explained.[67] To boost the sale of traditional foods, the mayor had introduced legislation (enacted in 2016) that requires restaurants to use typical Tuscan products and rejected McDonald's application to open a location in the  Piazza del Duomo.[68]
+
+Food and wine have long been an important staple of the economy. The Chianti region is just south of the city, and its Sangiovese grapes figure prominently not only in its Chianti Classico wines but also in many of the more recently developed Supertuscan blends. Within 32 km (20 mi) to the west is the Carmignano area, also home to flavourful sangiovese-based reds. The celebrated Chianti Rufina district, geographically and historically separated from the main Chianti region, is also few kilometres east of Florence. More recently, the Bolgheri region (about 150 km (93 mi) southwest of Florence) has become celebrated for its "Super Tuscan" reds such as Sassicaia and Ornellaia.[69]
+
+Florence was the birthplace of High Renaissance art, which lasted from 1450–1527. While Medieval art focused on basic story telling of the Bible, Renaissance art focused on naturalism and human emotion.[70] Medieval art was abstract, formulaic, and largely produced by monks whereas Renaissance art was rational, mathematical, individualistic, consisted of linear perspective and shading (Chiaroscuro)[70] and produced by specialists (Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael). Religion was important, but with this new age came the humanization[71][72] of religious figures in art, such as Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1470s), and Madonna Della Seggiola; People of this age began to understand themselves as human beings, which reflected in art.[72] The Renaissance marked the rebirth of classical values in art and society as people studied the ancient masters of the Greco-Roman world;[71] Art became focused on realism as opposed to idealism.[72]
+
+Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance, Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.[73][74]
+
+Their works, together with those of many other generations of artists, are gathered in the several museums of the town: the Uffizi Gallery, the Palatina gallery with the paintings of the "Golden Ages",[75] the Bargello with the sculptures of the Renaissance, the museum of San Marco with Fra Angelico's works, the Academy, the chapels of the Medicis[76] Buonarroti's house with the sculptures of Michelangelo, the following museums: Bardini, Horne, Stibbert, Romano, Corsini, The Gallery of Modern Art, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum of Silverware and the museum of Precious Stones.[77]
+Several monuments are located in Florence: the Florence Baptistery with its mosaics; the Cathedral with its sculptures, the medieval churches with bands of frescoes; public as well as private palaces: Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Davanzati; monasteries, cloisters, refectories; the "Certosa". In the archaeological museum includes documents of Etruscan civilisation.[78] In fact the city is so rich in art that some first time visitors experience the Stendhal syndrome as they encounter its art for the first time.[79]
+
+Florentine architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1466) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) were among the fathers of both Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture.[80]
+
+The cathedral, topped by Brunelleschi's dome, dominates the Florentine skyline. The Florentines decided to start building it – late in the 13th century, without a design for the dome. The project proposed by Brunelleschi in the 14th century was the largest ever built at the time, and the first major dome built in Europe since the two great domes of Roman times – the Pantheon in Rome, and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore remains the largest brick construction of its kind in the world.[81][82] In front of it is the medieval Baptistery. The two buildings incorporate in their decoration the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In recent years, most of the important works of art from the two buildings – and from the nearby Giotto's Campanile, have been removed and replaced by copies. The originals are now housed in the Museum dell'Opera del Duomo, just to the east of the Cathedral.
+
+Florence has large numbers of art-filled churches, such as San Miniato al Monte, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Trinita, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, the Annunziata, Ognissanti and numerous others.[10]
+
+Artists associated with Florence range from Arnolfo di Cambio and Cimabue to Giotto, Nanni di Banco, and Paolo Uccello; through Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Donatello and Massaccio and the della Robbia family; through Fra Angelico and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca, and on to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Others include Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, Benozzo Gozzoli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippo Lippi, Bernardo Buontalenti, Orcagna, Pollaiuolo, Filippino Lippi, Verrocchio, Bronzino, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelozzo, the Rossellis, the Sangallos, and Pontormo. Artists from other regions who worked in Florence include Raphael, Andrea Pisano, Giambologna, Il Sodoma and Peter Paul Rubens.
+
+Picture galleries in Florence include the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Two superb collections of sculpture are in the Bargello and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. They are filled with the creations of Donatello, Verrochio, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelangelo and others. The Galleria dell'Accademia has Michelangelo's David – perhaps the best-known work of art anywhere, plus the unfinished statues of the slaves Michelangelo created for the tomb of Pope Julius II.[83][84] Other sights include the medieval city hall, the Palazzo della Signoria (also known as the Palazzo Vecchio), the Archeological Museum, the Museum of the History of Science, the Garden of Archimedes, the Palazzo Davanzatti, the Stibbert Museum, St. Marks, the Medici Chapels, the Museum of the Works of Santa Croce, the Museum of the Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the Zoological Museum ("La Specola"), the Bardini, and the Museo Horne. There is also a collection of works by the modern sculptor, Marino Marini, in a museum named after him. The Strozzi Palace is the site of special exhibits.[85]
+
+Florentine (fiorentino), spoken by inhabitants of Florence and its environs, is a Tuscan dialect and the immediate parent language to modern Italian.
+
+Although its vocabulary and pronunciation are largely identical to standard Italian, differences do exist. The Vocabolario del fiorentino contemporaneo (Dictionary of Modern Florentine) reveals lexical distinctions from all walks of life.[86] Florentines have a highly recognisable accent in phonetic terms due to the so-called gorgia toscana): "hard c" /k/ between two vowels is pronounced as a fricative [h] similar to an English h, so that dico 'I say' is phonetically [ˈdiːho], i cani 'the dogs' is [iˈhaːni]. Similarly, t between vowels is pronounced [θ] as in English thin, and p in the same position is the bilabial fricative [ɸ]. Other traits include using a form of the subjunctive mood last commonly used in medieval times,[citation needed] a frequent usage in everyday speech of the modern subjunctive, and a shortened pronunciation of the definite article, [i] instead of "il", causing doubling of the consonant that follows, so that il cane 'the dog', for example, is pronounced [ikˈkaːne].
+
+Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio pioneered the use of the vernacular[87] instead of the Latin used for most literary works at the time.
+
+Despite Latin being the main language of the courts and the Church in the Middle Ages, writers such as Dante Alighieri[87] and many others used their own language, the Florentine vernacular descended from Latin, in composing their greatest works. The oldest literary pieces written in Florentine go as far back as the 13th century. Florence's literature fully blossomed in the 14th century, when not only Dante with his Divine Comedy (1306–1321) and Petrarch, but also poets such as Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni composed their most important works.[87] Dante's masterpiece is the Divine Comedy, which mainly deals with the poet himself taking an allegoric and moral tour of Hell, Purgatory and finally Heaven, during which he meets numerous mythological or real characters of his age or before. He is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil, whose non-Christian beliefs damned him to Hell. Later on he is joined by Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven.[87]
+
+In the 14th century, Petrarch[88] and Giovanni Boccaccio[88] led the literary scene in Florence after Dante's death in 1321. Petrarch was an all-rounder writer, author and poet, but was particularly known for his Canzoniere, or the Book of Songs, where he conveyed his unremitting love for Laura.[88] His style of writing has since become known as Petrarchism.[88] Boccaccio was better known for his Decameron, a slightly grim story of Florence during the 1350s bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, when some people fled the ravaged city to an isolated country mansion, and spent their time there recounting stories and novellas taken from the medieval and contemporary tradition. All of this is written in a series of 100 distinct novellas.[88]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, Florence was the home town of political writer and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, whose ideas on how rulers should govern the land, detailed in The Prince, spread across European courts and enjoyed enduring popularity for centuries. These principles became known as Machiavellianism.
+
+Florence became a musical centre during the Middle Ages and music and the performing arts remain an important part of its culture. The growth of Northern Italian Cities in the 1500s likely contributed to its increased prominence. During the Renaissance, there were four kinds of musical patronage in the city with respect to both sacred and secular music: state, corporate, church, and private. It was here that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging the result—in other words, the first operas, setting the wheels in motion not just for the further development of the operatic form, but for later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony and concerto.  After the year 1600, Italian trends prevailed across Europe, by 1750 it was the primary musical language. The genre of the Madrigal, born in Italy, gained popularity in Britain and elsewhere. Several Italian cities were "larger on the musical map than their real-size for power suggested. Florence, was once such city which experienced a fantastic period in the early seventeenth Century of musico-theatrical innovation, including the beginning and flourishing of opera.[89]
+
+Opera was invented in Florence in the late 16th century when Jacobo Peri's Dafne an opera in the style of monody, was premiered.  Opera spread from Florence throughout Italy and eventually Europe.  Vocal Music in the choir setting was also taking new identity at this time.  At the beginning of the 17th century, two practices for writing music were devised, one the first practice or Stile Antico/Prima Prattica the other the Stile Moderno/Seconda Prattica.  The Stile Antico was more prevalent in Northern Europe and Stile Moderno was practiced more by the Italian Composers of the time.[90]
+
+Composers and musicians who have lived in Florence include Piero Strozzi (1550 – after 1608), Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) and Mike Francis (1961–2009). Giulio Caccini's book Le Nuove Musiche was significant in performance practice technique instruction at the time.[89]  The book specified a new term, in use by the 1630s, called monody which indicated the combination of voice and basso continuo and connoted a practice of stating text in a free, lyrical, yet speech-like manner.  This would occur while an instrument, usually a keyboard type such as harpsichord, played and held chords while the singer sang/spoke the monodic line.[91]
+
+Florence has been a setting for numerous works of fiction and movies, including the novels and associated films, such as Light in the Piazza, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No, Calmi Cuori Appassionati, Hannibal, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini, Virgin Territory and Inferno. The city is home to renowned Italian actors and actresses, such as Roberto Benigni, Leonardo Pieraccioni and Vittoria Puccini.
+
+Florence has appeared as a location in video games such as Assassins Creed II.[92] The Republic of Florence also appears as a playable nation in Paradox Interactive's grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV.
+
+16th century Florence is the setting of the Japanese manga and anime series Arte.
+
+Florentine food grows out of a tradition of peasant eating rather than rarefied high cooking. The majority of dishes are based on meat. The whole animal was traditionally eaten; tripe (trippa) and stomach (lampredotto) were once regularly on the menu and still are sold at the food carts stationed throughout the city. Antipasti include crostini toscani, sliced bread rounds topped with a chicken liver-based pâté, and sliced meats (mainly prosciutto and salame, often served with melon when in season). The typically saltless Tuscan bread, obtained with natural levain frequently features in Florentine courses, especially in its soups, ribollita and pappa al pomodoro, or in the salad of bread and fresh vegetables called panzanella that is served in summer. The bistecca alla fiorentina is a large (the customary size should weigh around 1.2 to 1.5 kg [40 to 50 oz]) – the "date" steak – T-bone steak of Chianina beef cooked over hot charcoal and served very rare with its more recently derived version, the tagliata, sliced rare beef served on a bed of arugula, often with slices of Parmesan cheese on top. Most of these courses are generally served with local olive oil, also a prime product enjoying a worldwide reputation.[93] Among the desserts, schiacciata alla fiorentina, a white flatbread cake, is one of the most popular; it is a very soft cake, prepared with extremely simple ingredients, typical of Florentine cuisine, and is especially eaten at Carnival.
+
+Research institutes and university departments are located within the Florence area and within two campuses at
+Polo di Novoli and Polo Scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino[94] as well as in the Research Area of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.[95]
+
+Florence has been an important scientific centre for centuries, notably during the Renaissance with scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+Florentines were one of the driving forces behind the Age of Discovery. Florentine bankers financed Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese explorers who pioneered the route around Africa to India and the Far East. It was a map drawn by the Florentine Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a student of Brunelleschi, that Christopher Columbus used to sell his "enterprise" to the Spanish monarchs, and which he used on his first voyage. Mercator's "Projection" is a refined version of Toscanelli's – taking into account the Americas, of which the Florentine was, obviously, ignorant.
+
+Galileo and other scientists pioneered the study of optics, ballistics, astronomy, anatomy, and so on. Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo Bruni, Machiavelli, and many others laid the groundwork for our understanding of science.
+
+By the year 1300 Florence had become a centre of textile production in Europe. Many of the rich families in Renaissance Florence were major purchasers of locally produced fine clothing, and the specialists of fashion in the economy and culture of Florence during that period is often underestimated.[96] Florence is regarded by some as the birthplace and earliest centre of the modern (post World War Two) fashion industry in Italy. The Florentine "soirées" of the early 1950s organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini were events where several Italian designers participated in group shows and first garnered international attention.[97] Florence has served as the home of the Italian fashion company Salvatore Ferragamo since 1928. Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, and Emilio Pucci are also headquartered in Florence. Other major players in the fashion industry such as Prada and Chanel have large offices and stores in Florence or its outskirts. Florence's main upscale shopping street is Via de' Tornabuoni, where major luxury fashion houses and jewellery labels, such as Armani and Bulgari, have their elegant boutiques. Via del Parione and Via Roma are other streets that are also well known for their high-end fashion stores.[98]
+
+The Scoppio del Carro ("Explosion of the Cart") is a celebration of the First Crusade. During the day of Easter, a cart, which the Florentines call the Brindellone and which is led by four white oxen, is taken to the Piazza del Duomo between the Baptistery of St. John the Baptist (Battistero di San Giovanni) and the Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore). The cart is connected by a rope to the interior of the church. Near the cart there is a model of a dove, which, according to legend, is a symbol of good luck for the city: at the end of the Easter mass, the dove emerges from the nave of the Duomo and ignites the fireworks on the cart.
+
+Calcio Storico Fiorentino ("Historic Florentine Football"), sometimes called Calcio in costume, is a traditional sport, regarded as a forerunner of soccer, though the actual gameplay most closely resembles rugby. The event originates from the Middle Ages, when the most important Florentine nobles amused themselves playing while wearing bright costumes. The most important match was played on 17 February 1530, during the siege of Florence. That day Papal troops besieged the city while the Florentines, with contempt of the enemies, decided to play the game notwithstanding the situation. The game is played in the Piazza di Santa Croce. A temporary arena is constructed, with bleachers and a sand-covered playing field. A series of matches are held between four teams representing each quartiere (quarter) of Florence during late June and early July.[99] There are four teams: Azzurri (light blue), Bianchi (white), Rossi (red) and Verdi (green). The Azzurri are from the quarter of Santa Croce, Bianchi from the quarter of Santo Spirito, Verdi are from San Giovanni and Rossi from Santa Maria Novella.
+
+In association football Florence is represented by ACF Fiorentina, which plays in Serie A, the top league of Italian league system.
+ACF Fiorentina has won two Italian Championships, in 1956 and 1969, and 6 Italian cup,[100]  since their formation in 1926. They play their games at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which holds 47,282.
+The female squad of ACF Fiorentina have won the women's association football Italian Championship of the 2016–17 season.
+
+The city is home of the Centro Tecnico Federale di Coverciano, in Coverciano, Florence, the main training ground of the Italian national team, and the technical department of the Italian Football Federation.
+
+Florence was selected to host the 2013 UCI World Road Cycling Championships.
+
+Since 2017 Florence is also represented in Eccellenza, the top tier of rugby union league system in Italy, by I Medicei, which is a club established in 2015 by the merging of the senior squads of I Cavalieri (of Prato) and Firenze Rugby 1931.
+I Medicei won the Serie A Championship in 2016–17 and were promoted to Eccellenza for the 2017–18 season.
+
+Rari Nantes Florentia is a successful water polo club based in Florence; both its male and female squads have won several Italian championships and the female squad has also European titles in their palmarès.
+
+The University of Florence was first founded in 1321, and was recognized by Pope Clement VI in 1349. In 2019, over 50,000 students were enrolled at the university.
+
+Several American universities host a campus in Florence. Including New York University, Marist College, Pepperdine, Stanford, Florida State and James Madison. Over 8,000 American students are enrolled for study in Florence.[101]
+
+The private school, Centro Machiavelli which teaches Italian language and culture to foreigners, is located in Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence.
+
+The centre of Florence is closed to through-traffic, although buses, taxis and residents with appropriate permits are allowed in. This area is commonly referred to as the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato), which is divided into several subsections.[102] Residents of one section, therefore, will only be able to drive in their district and perhaps some surrounding ones. Cars without permits are allowed to enter after 7.30 pm, or before 7.30 am. The rules shift during the tourist-filled summers, putting more restrictions on where one can get in and out.[103]
+
+The principal public transit network in the city is run by the ATAF and Li-nea bus company. Individual tickets, or a pass called Carta Agile with multiple rides, should be purchased in advance and are available at local tobacconists, bars and newspaper stalls and must be validated once on board. These tickets may be used on ATAF and Li-nea buses, Tramvia and second-class local trains only within city railway stations. Train tickets must be validated before boarding. The main bus station is next to Santa Maria Novella railway station. Trenitalia runs trains between the railway stations within the city, and to other destinations around Italy and Europe. The central railway station, Santa Maria Novella, is about 500 m (1,600 ft) northwest of the Piazza del Duomo. There are two other important stations: Campo di Marte and Rifredi. Most bundled routes are Firenze—Pisa, Firenze—Viareggio and Firenze-Arezzo (along the main line to Rome). Other local railways connect Florence with Borgo San Lorenzo in the Mugello area (Faentina railway) and Siena.
+
+Long distance 10 km (6.21 mi) buses are run by the SITA, Copit, CAP companies. The transit companies also accommodate travellers from the Amerigo Vespucci Airport, which is 5 km (3.1 mi) west of the city centre, and which has scheduled services run by major European carriers.
+
+In an effort to reduce air pollution and car traffic in the city, a multi-line tram network called Tramvia is under construction. The first line began operation on 14 February 2010 and connects Florence's primary intercity railway station (Santa Maria Novella) with the southwestern suburb of Scandicci. This line is 7.4 km (4.6 mi) long and has 14 stops. The construction of a second line began on 5 November 2011, construction was stopped due to contractors' difficulties and restarted in 2014 with the new line opening on February 11, 2019. This second line connects Florence's airport with the city centre. A third line (from Santa Maria Novella to the Careggi area, where the most important hospitals of Florence are located) is also under construction.[104][105][106]
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Firenze, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 59 min. 13% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 min, while 22% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.1 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.[107]
+
+Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station is the main national and international railway station in Florence and is used by 59 million people every year.[108] The building, designed by Giovanni Michelucci, was built in the Italian Rationalism style and it is one of the major rationalist buildings in Italy. It is located in Piazza della Stazione, near the Fortezza da Basso (a masterpiece of the military Renaissance architecture[109]) and the Viali di Circonvallazione, and in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's apse from which it takes its name. As well as numerous high speed trains to major Italian cities Florence is served by international overnight sleeper services to Munich and Vienna operated by Austrian railways ÖBB.
+
+A new high-speed rail station is under construction and is contracted to be operational by 2015.[110] It is planned to be connected to Vespucci airport, Santa Maria Novella railway station, and to the city centre by the second line of Tramvia.[111] The architectural firms Foster + Partners and Lancietti Passaleva Giordo and Associates designed this new rail station.[112]
+
+The Florence Airport, Peretola, is one of two main airports in the Tuscany region though it is not widely used by popular airlines. The other airport in the Tuscany region is the Galileo Galilei International Airport in Pisa.
+
+Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike sharing company, has been operating in Florence since July 2017. As of 2019, the company operates 4,000 bikes in Florence. The users scan the QR code on the bike using the Mobike app, and end the ride by parking curbside. The bikes have a fixed rate of €1 every 20 minutes. Since Mobike is a dock-less bike-sharing system, it does not provide stations, therefore the bikes can be left almost anywhere.
+
+Florence is twinned with:[113]
+
+
+
+L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata
+
+Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
+
+Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche
+
+Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily
+
+Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto
+

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+
+
+Abel Janszoon Tasman (Dutch: [ˈɑbəl ˈjɑnsoːn ˈtɑsmɑn]; 1603 – 10 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Fiji and New Zealand.
+
+Abel Tasman was born in 1603 in Lutjegast, a small village in the province of Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands.  The oldest available source mentioning him is dated 27 December 1631 when, as a seafarer living in Amsterdam, the 28-year-old became engaged to marry 21-year-old Jannetje Tjaers, of Palmstraat in the Jordaan district of the city.[3][4]
+
+Employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Tasman sailed from Texel to Batavia in 1633 taking the southern Brouwer Route. During this period, Tasman took part in a voyage to Seram Island; the locals had sold spices to other European nationalities than the Dutch. He had a narrow escape from death, when in an incautious landing several of his companions were killed by people of Seram.[5]
+
+In August 1637, Tasman was back in Amsterdam, and the following year he signed on for another ten years and took his wife with him to Batavia. On 25 March 1638 he tried to sell his property in the Jordaan, but the purchase was cancelled.
+
+He was second-in-command of a 1639 exploration expedition in the north Pacific under Matthijs Quast. The fleet included the ships Engel and Gracht and reached Fort Zeelandia (Dutch Formosa) and Deshima.
+
+In August 1642, the Council of the Indies, consisting of Antonie van Diemen, Cornelis van der Lijn, Joan Maetsuycker, Justus Schouten, Salomon Sweers, Cornelis Witsen, and Pieter Boreel in Batavia despatched Tasman and Franchoijs Jacobszoon Visscher on a voyage of exploration to little-charted areas east of the Cape of Good Hope, west of Staten Land (near Cape Horn, South America) and south of the Solomon Islands.[6]
+
+One of the objectives was to obtain knowledge of "all the totally unknown" Provinces of Beach.[7] This was a purported yet non-existent landmass alleged to have plentiful gold, which had appeared on European maps since the 15th century, as a result of an error in some editions of Marco Polo's works.
+
+The expedition was to use two small ships, Heemskerck and Zeehaen.
+
+In accordance with Visscher's directions, Tasman sailed from Batavia on 14 August 1642[8] and arrived at Mauritius on 5 September 1642, according to the captain's journal.[9] The reason for this was the crew could be fed well on the island; there was plenty of fresh water and timber to repair the ships. Tasman got the assistance of the governor Adriaan van der Stel.
+
+Because of the prevailing winds Mauritius was chosen as a turning point. After a four-week stay on the island both ships left on 8 October using the Roaring Forties to sail east as fast as possible. (No-one had gone as far as Pieter Nuyts in 1626/27.) On 7 November snow and hail influenced the ship's council to alter course to a more north-eastern direction,[10] expecting to arrive one day at the Solomon Islands.
+
+On 24 November 1642, Tasman reached and sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour.[11] He named his discovery Van Diemen's Land, after Antonio van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.
+
+Proceeding south, Tasman skirted the southern end of Tasmania and turned north-east. He then tried to work his two ships into Adventure Bay on the east coast of South Bruny Island where he was blown out to sea by a storm. This area he named Storm Bay. Two days later, on December 1, Tasman anchored to the north of Cape Frederick Hendrick just north of the Forestier Peninsula. On December 2, two ship's boats under the command of the Pilot, Major Visscher, rowed through the Marion Narrows into Blackman Bay, and across the west to the outflow of Boomer Creek where they gathered some edible "greens".[12]  Tasman named Frederick Hendrik Bay, which included the present North Bay, Marion Bay and the inlet Blackman Bay (the name Frederick Henry Bay was mistakenly transferred to its present location by Marion Dufresne in 1772). The next day, an attempt was made to land in North Bay. However, because the sea was too rough, the carpenter swam through the surf and planted the Dutch flag. Tasman then claimed formal possession of the land, on 3 December 1642.[13]
+
+For two more days, he continued to follow the east coast northward to see how far it went. When the land veered to the north-west at Eddystone Point,[14] he tried to keep in with it but his ships were suddenly hit by the Roaring Forties howling through Bass Strait.[15] The impenetrable wind wall indicated that here was a strait, not a bay. Tasman was on a mission to find the Southern Continent, not more islands, so he abruptly turned away to the east and continued his continent-hunting.[16]
+
+After some exploration, Tasman had intended to proceed in a northerly direction but as the wind was unfavourable he steered east. The expedition endured an extremely rough voyage and in one of his diary entries Tasman credited his compass, claiming it was the only thing that had kept him alive.
+
+On 13 December 1642 they sighted land on the north-west coast of the South Island, New Zealand, becoming the first Europeans to sight New Zealand.[18] Tasman named it Staten Landt "in honour of the States General" (Dutch parliament).[19] He wrote, "it is possible that this land joins to the Staten Landt but it is uncertain",[20] referring to Isla de los Estados, a landmass of the same name at the southern tip of South America, encountered by the Dutch navigator Jacob Le Maire in 1616.[21] However, in 1643 Brouwer's expedition to Valdivia found out that Staaten Landt was separated by sea from any the hypothetical Southern Land.[22][23][24] Tasman continued: "We believe that this is the mainland coast of the unknown Southland."[25] Tasman thought he had found the western side of the long-imagined Terra Australis that stretched across the Pacific to near the southern tip of South America.[26]
+
+After sailing north, then east for five days, the expedition anchored about 7 km from the coast off what is now believed to have been Golden Bay. Tasman sent ship's boats to gather water, but one of his boats was attacked by Māori in a double-hulled waka (canoe) and four of his men were killed with mere (clubs).
+
+In the evening about one hour after sunset we saw many lights on land and four vessels near the shore, two of which betook themselves towards us. When our two boats returned to the ships reporting that they had found not less than thirteen fathoms of water, and with the sinking of the sun (which sank behind the high land) they had been still about half a mile from the shore. After our people had been on board about one glass, people in the two canoes began to call out to us in gruff, hollow voices. We could not in the least understand any of it; however, when they called out again several times we called back to them as a token answer. But they did not come nearer than a stone's shot. They also blew many times on an instrument, which produced a sound like the moors' trumpets. We had one of our sailors (who could play somewhat on the trumpet) play some tunes to them in answer."[9]
+
+As Tasman sailed out of the bay he observed 22 waka near the shore, of which "eleven swarming with people came off towards us." The waka approached the Zeehaen which fired and hit a man in the largest waka holding a small white flag. Canister shot also hit the side of a waka.[9][27] Archaeological research has shown the Dutch had tried to land at a major agricultural area, which the Māori may have been trying to protect.[28] Tasman named the area "Murderers' Bay".
+
+The expedition then sailed north, sighting Cook Strait, which it mistook for a bight and named "Zeehaen's Bight". Two names that the expedition gave to landmarks in the far north of New Zealand still endure: Cape Maria van Diemen and Three Kings Islands.  (Kaap Pieter Boreels was renamed Cape Egmont by Captain James Cook 125 years later.)
+
+En route back to Batavia, Tasman came across the Tongan archipelago on 20 January 1643. While passing the Fiji Islands Tasman's ships came close to being wrecked on the dangerous reefs of the north-eastern part of the Fiji group. He charted the eastern tip of Vanua Levu and Cikobia before making his way back into the open sea.
+
+The expedition turned north-west towards New Guinea and arrived at Batavia on 15 June 1643.[13]
+
+Tasman left Batavia on 30 January 1644 on his second voyage with three ships (Limmen, Zeemeeuw and the tender Braek). He followed the south coast of New Guinea eastwards in an attempt to find a passage to the eastern side of New Holland. However, he missed the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia, probably due to the numerous reefs and islands obscuring potential routes, and continued his voyage by following the shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria westwards along the north Australian coast. He mapped the north coast of Australia making observations on New Holland, and its people.[29] He arrived back in Batavia in August 1644.
+
+From the point of view of the Dutch East India Company, Tasman's explorations were a disappointment: he had neither found a promising area for trade nor a useful new shipping route. Although received modestly, the company was upset to a degree that Tasman did not fully explore the lands he found, and decided that a more "persistent explorer" should be chosen for any future expeditions.[30] For over a century, until the era of James Cook, Tasmania and New Zealand were not visited by Europeans – mainland Australia was visited, but usually only by accident.
+
+On 2 November 1644 Abel Tasman was appointed a member of the Council of Justice at Batavia. He went to Sumatra in 1646, and in August 1647 to Siam (now Thailand) with letters from the company to the King. In May 1648 he was in charge of an expedition sent to Manila to try to intercept and loot the Spanish silver ships coming from America, but he had no success and returned to Batavia in January 1649. In November 1649 he was charged and found guilty of having in the previous year hanged one of his men without trial, was suspended from his office of commander, fined, and made to pay compensation to the relatives of the sailor. On 5 January 1651 he was formally reinstated in his rank and spent his remaining years at Batavia. He was in good circumstances, being one of the larger landowners in the town. He died at Batavia on 10 October 1659 and was survived by his second wife and a daughter by his first wife. His property was divided between his wife and his daughter by his first marriage. In his testimony (dating from 1657[31]) he left 25 guilders to the poor of his village Lutjegast.[32]
+
+Although Tasman's pilot, Frans Visscher, published Memoir concerning the discovery of the South land in 1642, Tasman's detailed journal was not published until 1898; however, some of his charts and maps were in general circulation and used by subsequent explorers.[29]
+
+Tasman's ten-month voyage in 1642–43 had significant consequences. By circumnavigating Australia (albeit at a distance) Tasman proved that the small fifth continent was not joined to any larger sixth continent, such as the long-imagined Southern Continent. Further, Tasman's suggestion that New Zealand was the western side of that Southern Continent was seized upon by many European cartographers who, for the next century, depicted New Zealand as the west coast of a Terra Australis rising gradually from the waters around Tierra del Fuego. This theory was eventually disproved when Captain Cook circumnavigated New Zealand in 1769.[33]
+
+Multiple places have been named after Tasman, including:
+
+Also named after Tasman are:
+
+His portrait has been on 4 New Zealand postage stamp issues, on a 1992 5 NZD coin, and on 1963, 1966[34] and 1985 Australian postage stamps.[35]
+
+In the Netherlands many streets are named after him. In Lutjegast, the village he was born, there is a museum dedicated to his life and travels.
+
+Held within the collection of the State Library of New South Wales is the Tasman Map, thought to have been drawn by Isaac Gilsemans, or completed under the supervision of Franz Jacobszoon Visscher.[36] The map is also known as the Bonaparte map, as it was once owned by Prince Roland Bonaparte, the great-nephew of Napoleon.[37] The map was completed sometime after 1644 and is based on the original charts drawn during Tasman's first and second voyages.[38] As none of the journals or logs composed during Tasman's second voyage have survived, the Bonaparte map remains as an important contemporary artefact of Tasman's voyage to the northern coast of the Australian continent.[38]
+
+The Tasman map largely reveals the extent of understanding the Dutch had of the Australian continent at the time.[39] The map includes the western and southern coasts of Australia, accidentally encountered by Dutch voyagers as they journeyed by way of the Cape of Good Hope to the VOC  headquarters in Batavia.[37] In addition, the map shows the tracks of Tasman's two voyages.[37] Of his second voyage, the map shows the area of the Banda Islands, the southern coast of New Guinea and much of the northern coast of Australia. However, the area of the Torres Strait is shown unexamined; this is despite having been given orders by VOC Council at Batavia to explore the possibility of a channel between New Guinea and the Australian continent.[38][39]
+
+There is debate as to the origin of the map.[40] It is widely believed that the map was produced in Batavia; however, it has also been argued that the map was produced in Amsterdam.[37][40] The authorship of the map has also been debated: while the map is commonly attributed to Tasman, it is now thought to have been the result of a collaboration, probably involving Franchoijs Visscher and Isaack Gilsemans, who took part in both of Tasman's voyages.[7][40] Whether the map was produced in 1644 is also subject to debate, as a VOC company report in December 1644 suggests that at that time no maps showing Tasman's voyages were yet complete.[40]
+
+In 1943, a mosaic version of the map, composed of coloured marble and brass, was inlaid into the vestibule floor of the Mitchell Library in Sydney.[41] The work was commissioned by the Principal Librarian William Ifould, and completed by the Melocco Brothers of Annandale, who also worked on ANZAC War Memorial in Hyde Park and the crypt at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney.[42][36]

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+
+
+Aikido (合気道, aikidō, Japanese pronunciation: [aikiꜜdoː], kyūjitai: 合氣道) is a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy and religious beliefs. Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attackers from injury.[1][2] Aikido is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) life energy"[3] or as "the way of harmonious spirit".[4] According to the founder's philosophy, the primary goal in the practice of aikido is to overcome oneself instead of cultivating violence or aggressiveness.[5] Morihei Ueshiba used the phrase "masakatsu agatsu katsuhayabi" (Japanese: 正勝吾勝勝速日) ("true victory, final victory over oneself, here and now") to refer to this principle.[6]
+
+Aikido's fundamental principles include: irimi[7] (entering), atemi,[8][9] kokyu-ho (breathing control), sankaku-ho (triangular principle) and tenkan (turning) movements that redirect the opponent's attack momentum. Its curriculum comprises various techniques, primarily throws and joint locks.[10] It also includes a weapons system encompassing the bokken, tantō and jō.
+
+Aikido derives mainly from the martial art of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, but began to diverge from it in the late 1920s, partly due to Ueshiba's involvement with the Ōmoto-kyō religion. Ueshiba's early students' documents bear the term aiki-jūjutsu.[11]
+
+Ueshiba's senior students have different approaches to aikido, depending partly on when they studied with him. Today, aikido is found all over the world in a number of styles, with broad ranges of interpretation and emphasis. However, they all share techniques formulated by Ueshiba and most have concern for the well-being of the attacker.
+
+The word "aikido" is formed of three kanji:
+
+The term aiki does not readily appear in the Japanese language outside the scope of budō. This has led to many possible interpretations of the word.
+合 is mainly used in compounds to mean 'combine, unite, join together, meet', examples being 合同 (combined/united), 合成 (composition), 結合 (unite/combine/join together), 連合 (union/alliance/association), 統合 (combine/unify), and 合意 (mutual agreement). There is an idea of reciprocity, 知り合う (to get to know one another), 話し合い (talk/discussion/negotiation), and 待ち合わせる (meet by appointment).
+
+気 is often used to describe a feeling, as in X気がする ('I feel X', as in terms of thinking but with less cognitive reasoning), and 気持ち (feeling/sensation); it is used to mean energy or force, as in 電気 (electricity) and 磁気 (magnetism); it can also refer to qualities or aspects of people or things, as in 気質 (spirit/trait/temperament).
+
+The term dō is also found in martial arts such as judo and kendo, and in various non-martial arts, such as Japanese calligraphy (shodō), flower arranging (kadō) and tea ceremony (chadō or sadō).
+
+Therefore, from a purely literal interpretation, aikido is the "Way of combining forces" or "Way of unifying energy", in which the term aiki refers to the martial arts principle or tactic of blending with an attacker's movements for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort.[12] One applies aiki by understanding the rhythm and intent of the attacker to find the optimal position and timing to apply a counter-technique.
+
+Aikido was created by Morihei Ueshiba (植芝 盛平 Ueshiba Morihei, 1883–1969), referred to by some aikido practitioners as Ōsensei (Great Teacher).[13] The term aikido was coined in the twentieth century.[14] Ueshiba envisioned aikido not only as the synthesis of his martial training, but as an expression of his personal philosophy of universal peace and reconciliation. During Ueshiba's lifetime and continuing today, aikido has evolved from the aiki that Ueshiba studied into a variety of expressions by martial artists throughout the world.[10]
+
+Ueshiba developed aikido primarily during the late 1920s through the 1930s through the synthesis of the older martial arts that he had studied.[15] The core martial art from which aikido derives is Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu, which Ueshiba studied directly with Takeda Sōkaku, the reviver of that art. Additionally, Ueshiba is known to have studied Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū with Tozawa Tokusaburō in Tokyo in 1901, Gotōha Yagyū Shingan-ryū under Nakai Masakatsu in Sakai from 1903 to 1908, and judo with Kiyoichi Takagi (高木 喜代市 Takagi Kiyoichi, 1894–1972) in Tanabe in 1911.[16]
+
+The art of Daitō-ryū is the primary technical influence on aikido. Along with empty-handed throwing and joint-locking techniques, Ueshiba incorporated training movements with weapons, such as those for the spear (yari), short staff (jō), and possibly the bayonet (銃剣, jūken). Aikido also derives much of its technical structure from the art of swordsmanship (kenjutsu).[4][17]
+
+Ueshiba moved to Hokkaidō in 1912, and began studying under Takeda Sokaku in 1915; His official association with Daitō-ryū continued until 1937.[15] However, during the latter part of that period, Ueshiba had already begun to distance himself from Takeda and the Daitō-ryū. At that time Ueshiba referred to his martial art as "Aiki Budō". It is unclear exactly when Ueshiba began using the name "aikido", but it became the official name of the art in 1942 when the Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society (Dai Nippon Butoku Kai) was engaged in a government sponsored reorganization and centralization of Japanese martial arts.[10]
+
+After Ueshiba left Hokkaidō in 1919, he met and was profoundly influenced by Onisaburo Deguchi, the spiritual leader of the Ōmoto-kyō religion (a neo-Shinto movement) in Ayabe.[18] One of the primary features of Ōmoto-kyō is its emphasis on the attainment of utopia during one's life. This idea was a great influence on Ueshiba's martial arts philosophy of extending love and compassion especially to those who seek to harm others. Aikido demonstrates this philosophy in its emphasis on mastering martial arts so that one may receive an attack and harmlessly redirect it. In an ideal resolution, not only is the receiver unharmed, but so is the attacker.[19]
+
+In addition to the effect on his spiritual growth, the connection with Deguchi gave Ueshiba entry to elite political and military circles as a martial artist. As a result of this exposure, he was able to attract not only financial backing but also gifted students. Several of these students would found their own styles of aikido.[20]
+
+Aikido was first introduced to the rest of the world in 1951 by Minoru Mochizuki with a visit to France, where he demonstrated aikido techniques to judo students.[21] He was followed by Tadashi Abe in 1952, who came as the official Aikikai Hombu representative, remaining in France for seven years. Kenji Tomiki toured with a delegation of various martial arts through 15 continental states of the United States in 1953.[20][22] Later that year, Koichi Tohei was sent by Aikikai Hombu to Hawaii for a full year, where he set up several dōjō. This trip was followed by several subsequent visits and is considered the formal introduction of aikido to the United States. The United Kingdom followed in 1955; Italy in 1964 by Hiroshi Tada; and Germany in 1965 by Katsuaki Asai. Designated the "Official Delegate for Europe and Africa" by Morihei Ueshiba, Masamichi Noro arrived in France in September 1961. Seiichi Sugano was appointed to introduce aikido to Australia in 1965. Today there are aikido dōjō throughout the world.
+
+The largest aikido organization is the Aikikai Foundation, which remains under the control of the Ueshiba family. However, aikido has developed into many styles, most of which were formed by Morihei Ueshiba's major students.[20]
+
+The earliest independent styles to emerge were Yoseikan Aikido, begun by Minoru Mochizuki in 1931,[21] Yoshinkan Aikido, founded by Gozo Shioda in 1955,[23] and Shodokan Aikido, founded by Kenji Tomiki in 1967.[24] The emergence of these styles pre-dated Ueshiba's death and did not cause any major upheavals when they were formalized. Shodokan Aikido, however, was controversial, since it introduced a unique rule-based competition that some felt was contrary to the spirit of aikido.[20]
+
+After Ueshiba's death in 1969, two more major styles emerged. Significant controversy arose with the departure of the Aikikai Hombu Dojo's chief instructor Koichi Tohei, in 1974. Tohei left as a result of a disagreement with the son of the founder, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, who at that time headed the Aikikai Foundation. The disagreement was over the proper role of ki development in regular aikido training. After Tohei left, he formed his own style, called Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, and the organization that governs it, the Ki Society (Ki no Kenkyūkai).[25]
+
+A final major style evolved from Ueshiba's retirement in Iwama, Ibaraki and the teaching methodology of long term student Morihiro Saito. It is unofficially referred to as the "Iwama style", and at one point a number of its followers formed a loose network of schools they called Iwama Ryu. Although Iwama style practitioners remained part of the Aikikai until Saito's death in 2002, followers of Saito subsequently split into two groups.  One remained with the Aikikai and the other formed the independent Shinshin Aikishuren Kai in 2004 around Saito's son Hitohiro Saito.
+
+Today, the major styles of aikido are each run by a separate governing organization, have their own headquarters (本部道場, honbu dōjō) in Japan, and are taught throughout the world.[20]
+
+The study of ki is an important component of aikido. The term does not specifically refer to either physical or mental training, as it encompasses both. The kanji for ki normally is written as 気. It was written as 氣 until the writing reforms after World War II, and this older form still is seen on occasion.
+
+The character for ki is used in everyday Japanese terms, such as "health" (元気, genki), or "shyness" (内気, uchiki). Ki has many meanings, including "ambience", "mind", "mood", and "intention", however, in traditional martial arts it is often used to refer to "life energy". Gōzō Shioda's Yoshinkan Aikido, considered one of the "hard styles", largely follows Ueshiba's teachings from before World War II, and surmises that the secret to ki lies in timing and the application of the whole body's strength to a single point.[26] In later years, Ueshiba's application of ki in aikido took on a softer, more gentle feel. This concept was known as Takemusu Aiki, and many of his later students teach about ki from this perspective. Koichi Tohei's Ki Society centers almost exclusively around the study of the empirical (albeit subjective) experience of ki, with students' proficiency in aikido techniques and ki development ranked separately.[27]
+
+In aikido, as in virtually all Japanese martial arts, there are both physical and mental aspects of training. The physical training in aikido is diverse, covering both general physical fitness and conditioning, as well as specific techniques.[28] Because a substantial portion of any aikido curriculum consists of throws, beginners learn how to safely fall or roll.[28] The specific techniques for attack include both strikes and grabs; the techniques for defense consist of throws and pins. After basic techniques are learned, students study freestyle defense against multiple opponents, and techniques with weapons.
+
+Physical training goals pursued in conjunction with aikido include controlled relaxation, correct movement of joints such as hips and shoulders, flexibility, and endurance, with less emphasis on strength training. In aikido, pushing or extending movements are much more common than pulling or contracting movements. This distinction can be applied to general fitness goals for the aikido practitioner.[4]
+
+In aikido, specific muscles or muscle groups are not isolated and worked to improve tone, mass, or power. Aikido-related training emphasizes the use of coordinated whole-body movement and balance similar to yoga or pilates. For example, many dōjōs begin each class with warm-up exercises (準備体操, junbi taisō), which may include stretching and ukemi (break falls).[29]
+
+Aikido training is based primarily on two partners practicing pre-arranged forms (kata) rather than freestyle practice. The basic pattern is for the receiver of the technique (uke) to initiate an attack against the person who applies the technique—the 取り tori, or shite 仕手 (depending on aikido style), also referred to as 投げ nage (when applying a throwing technique), who neutralises this attack with an aikido technique.[30]
+
+Both halves of the technique, that of uke and that of tori, are considered essential to aikido training.[30] Both are studying aikido principles of blending and adaptation. Tori learns to blend with and control attacking energy, while uke learns to become calm and flexible in the disadvantageous, off-balance positions in which tori places them. This "receiving" of the technique is called ukemi.[30] Uke continuously seeks to regain balance and cover vulnerabilities (e.g., an exposed side), while tori uses position and timing to keep uke off-balance and vulnerable. In more advanced training, uke will sometimes apply reversal techniques (返し技, kaeshi-waza) to regain balance and pin or throw tori.
+
+Ukemi (受身) refers to the act of receiving a technique. Good ukemi involves attention to the technique, the partner, and the immediate environment—it is considered an active part of the process of learning aikido. The method of falling itself is also important, and is a way for the practitioner to receive an aikido technique safely and minimize risk of injury.
+
+Aikido techniques are usually a defense against an attack, so students must learn to deliver various types of attacks to be able to practice aikido with a partner. Although attacks are not studied as thoroughly as in striking-based arts, attacks with intent (such as a strong strike or an immobilizing grab) are needed to study correct and effective application of technique.[4]
+
+Many of the strikes (打ち, uchi) of aikido resemble cuts from a sword or other grasped object, which indicate its origins in techniques intended for armed combat.[4] Other techniques, which explicitly appear to be punches (tsuki), are practiced as thrusts with a knife or sword. Kicks are generally reserved for upper-level variations; reasons cited include that falls from kicks are especially dangerous, and that kicks (high kicks in particular) were uncommon during the types of combat prevalent in feudal Japan.
+
+Some basic strikes include:
+
+Beginners in particular often practice techniques from grabs, both because they are safer and because it is easier to feel the energy and the direction of the movement of force of a hold than it is for a strike. Some grabs are historically derived from being held while trying to draw a weapon, whereupon a technique could then be used to free oneself and immobilize or strike the attacker while they are grabbing the defender.[4] The following are examples of some basic grabs:
+
+The following are a sample of the basic or widely practiced throws and pins. Many of these techniques derive from Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, but some others were invented by Morihei Ueshiba. The precise terminology for some may vary between organisations and styles; the following are the terms used by the Aikikai Foundation. Note that despite the names of the first five techniques listed, they are not universally taught in numeric order.[31]
+
+Aikido makes use of body movement (tai sabaki) to blend the movement of tori with the movement of uke. For example, an "entering" (irimi) technique consists of movements inward towards uke, while a "turning" (転換, tenkan) technique uses a pivoting motion.[37]
+Additionally, an "inside" (内, uchi) technique takes place in front of uke, whereas an "outside" (外, soto) technique takes place to their side; a "front" (表, omote) technique is applied with motion to the front of uke, and a "rear" (裏, ura) version is applied with motion towards the rear of uke, usually by incorporating a turning or pivoting motion. Finally, most techniques can be performed while in a seated posture (seiza). Techniques where both uke and tori are standing are called tachi-waza, techniques where both start off in seiza are called suwari-waza, and techniques performed with uke standing and tori sitting are called hanmi handachi (半身半立).[38]
+
+From these few basic techniques, there are numerous of possible implementations. For example, ikkyō can be applied to an opponent moving forward with a strike (perhaps with an ura type of movement to redirect the incoming force), or to an opponent who has already struck and is now moving back to reestablish distance (perhaps an omote-waza version). Specific aikido kata are typically referred to with the formula "attack-technique(-modifier)"; katate-dori ikkyō, for example, refers to any ikkyō technique executed when uke is holding one wrist. This could be further specified as katate-dori ikkyō omote (referring to any forward-moving ikkyō technique from that grab).
+
+Atemi (当て身) are strikes (or feints) employed during an aikido technique. Some view atemi as attacks against "vital points" meant to cause damage in and of themselves. For instance, Gōzō Shioda described using atemi in a brawl to quickly down a gang's leader.[26] Others consider atemi, especially to the face, to be methods of distraction meant to enable other techniques; a strike, even if it is blocked, can startle the target and break their concentration. Additionally, the target may also become unbalanced while attempting to avoid a strike (by jerking the head back, for example) which may allow for an easier throw.[38]
+Many sayings about atemi are attributed to Morihei Ueshiba, who considered them an essential element of technique.[39]
+
+Weapons training in aikido traditionally includes the short staff (jō) (these techniques closely resemble the use of the bayonet, or Jūkendō), the wooden sword (bokken), and the knife (tantō).[40] Some schools incorporate firearm-disarming techniques, where either weapon-taking and/or weapon-retention may be taught. Some schools, such as the Iwama style of Morihiro Saito, usually spend substantial time practicing with both bokken and jō, under the names of aiki-ken, and aiki-jō, respectively.
+
+The founder developed many of the empty-handed techniques from traditional sword, spear and bayonet movements. Consequently, the practice of the weapons arts gives insight into the origin of techniques and movements, and reinforces the concepts of distance, timing, foot movement, presence and connectedness with one's training partner(s).[41]
+
+One feature of aikido is training to defend against multiple attackers, often called taninzudori, or taninzugake. Freestyle practice with multiple attackers called randori (乱取) is a key part of most curricula and is required for the higher level ranks.[42] Randori exercises a person's ability to intuitively perform techniques in an unstructured environment.[42] Strategic choice of techniques, based on how they reposition the student relative to other attackers, is important in randori training. For instance, an ura technique might be used to neutralise the current attacker while turning to face attackers approaching from behind.[4]
+
+In Shodokan Aikido, randori differs in that it is not performed with multiple persons with defined roles of defender and attacker, but between two people, where both participants attack, defend, and counter at will. In this respect it resembles judo randori.[24][43]
+
+In applying a technique during training, it is the responsibility of tori to prevent injury to uke by employing a speed and force of application that is appropriate with their partner's proficiency in ukemi.[30] When injuries (especially to the joints) occur, they are often the result of a tori misjudging the ability of uke to receive the throw or pin.[44][45]
+
+A study of injuries in the martial arts showed that the type of injuries varied considerably from one art to the other.[46]
+Soft tissue injuries are one of the most common types of injuries found within aikido,[46] as well as joint strain and stubbed fingers and toes.[45] Several deaths from head-and-neck injuries, caused by aggressive shihōnage in a senpai/kōhai hazing context, have been reported.[44]
+
+Aikido training is mental as well as physical, emphasizing the ability to relax the mind and body even under the stress of dangerous situations.[47] This is necessary to enable the practitioner to perform the 'enter-and-blend' movements that underlie aikido techniques, wherein an attack is met with confidence and directness.[48] Morihei Ueshiba once remarked that one "must be willing to receive 99% of an opponent's attack and stare death in the face" in order to execute techniques without hesitation.[49] As a martial art concerned not only with fighting proficiency but with the betterment of daily life, this mental aspect is of key importance to aikido practitioners.[50]
+
+Aikido practitioners (commonly called aikidōka outside Japan) generally progress by promotion through a series of "grades" (kyū), followed by a series of "degrees" (dan), pursuant to formal testing procedures. Some aikido organizations use belts to distinguish practitioners' grades, often simply white and black belts to distinguish kyu and dan grades, though some use various belt colors. Testing requirements vary, so a particular rank in one organization is not comparable or interchangeable with the rank of another.[4] Some dōjōs have an age requirement before students can take the dan rank exam.
+
+The uniform worn for practicing aikido (aikidōgi) is similar to the training uniform (keikogi) used in most other modern martial arts; simple trousers and a wraparound jacket, usually white. Both thick ("judo-style"), and thin ("karate-style") cotton tops are used.[4] Aikido-specific tops are available with shorter sleeves which reach to just below the elbow.
+
+Most aikido systems add a pair of wide pleated black or indigo trousers called a hakama (used also in Naginatajutsu, kendo, and iaido). In many schools, its use is reserved for practitioners with dan ranks or for instructors, while others allow all practitioners to wear a hakama regardless of rank.[4]
+
+The most common criticism of aikido is that it suffers from a lack of realism in training. The attacks initiated by uke (and which tori must defend against) have been criticized as being "weak", "sloppy", and "little more than caricatures of an attack".[51][52] Weak attacks from uke allow for a conditioned response from tori, and result in underdevelopment of the skills needed for the safe and effective practice of both partners.[51] To counteract this, some styles allow students to become less compliant over time but, in keeping with the core philosophies, this is after having demonstrated proficiency in being able to protect themselves and their training partners. Shodokan Aikido addresses the issue by practising in a competitive format.[24] Such adaptations are debated between styles, with some maintaining that there is no need to adjust their methods because either the criticisms are unjustified, or that they are not training for self-defense or combat effectiveness, but spiritual, fitness or other reasons.[53]
+
+Another criticism pertains to the shift in training focus after the end of Ueshiba's seclusion in Iwama from 1942 to the mid-1950s, as he increasingly emphasized the spiritual and philosophical aspects of aikido. As a result, strikes to vital points by tori, entering (irimi) and initiation of techniques by tori, the distinction between omote (front side) and ura (back side) techniques, and the use of weapons, were all de-emphasized or eliminated from practice. Some Aikido practitioners feel that lack of training in these areas leads to an overall loss of effectiveness.[54]
+
+Conversely, some styles of aikido receive criticism for not placing enough importance on the spiritual practices emphasized by Ueshiba. According to Minoru Shibata of Aikido Journal, "O-Sensei's aikido was not a continuation and extension of the old and has a distinct discontinuity with past martial and philosophical concepts."[55] That is, that aikido practitioners who focus on aikido's roots in traditional jujutsu or kenjutsu are diverging from what Ueshiba taught. Such critics urge practitioners to embrace the assertion that "[Ueshiba's] transcendence to the spiritual and universal reality were the fundamentals  [sic] of the paradigm that he demonstrated."[55]
+

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+A cathedral is a church that contains the cathedra (Latin for '"seat"') of a bishop,[1] thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate.[2] Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and some Lutheran churches.[2] Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches and episcopal residences.
+
+Following the Protestant Reformation, the Christian church in several parts of Western Europe, such as Scotland, the Netherlands, certain Swiss Cantons and parts of Germany, adopted a Presbyterian polity that did away with bishops altogether. Where ancient cathedral buildings in these lands are still in use for congregational worship, they generally retain the title and dignity of "cathedral", maintaining and developing distinct cathedral functions, but void of hierarchical supremacy. From the 16th century onwards, but especially since the 19th century, churches originating in Western Europe have undertaken vigorous programmes of missionary activity, leading to the founding of large numbers of new dioceses with associated cathedral establishments of varying forms in Asia, Africa, Australasia, Oceania and the Americas. In addition, both the Catholic Church and Orthodox churches have formed new dioceses within formerly Protestant lands for converts and migrant co-religionists. Consequently, it is not uncommon to find Christians in a single city being served by three or more cathedrals of differing denominations.
+
+The word "cathedral" is derived from the French cathédrale, from the Latin cathedra ("seat"), from the Greek καθέδρα kathédra, "seat, bench", from κατά kata "down" and ἕδρα hedra "seat, base, chair."
+
+The word refers to the presence and prominence of the bishop's or archbishop's chair or throne, raised above both clergy and laity, and originally located facing the congregation from behind the High Altar. In the ancient world, the chair, on a raised dais, was the distinctive mark of a teacher or rhetor and thus symbolises the bishop's role as teacher. A raised throne within a basilican hall was also definitive for a Late Antique presiding magistrate; and so the cathedra also symbolises the bishop's role in governing his diocese.
+
+The word "cathedral", as the seat of a bishop, is found in most languages; however in Europe a cathedral church can be referred to as a Duomo (for example in Italian, Spanish) or Dom (e.g. German, Dutch, etc.), from the Latin term domus ecclesiae or domus episcopalis. While the terms are not synonymous (a duomo is a collegiate church, cognate with the English "Minster") many cathedral churches are also collegiate churches, so that Duomo, or Dom, has become the common name for a cathedral in those countries.
+In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the English word "cathedral" commonly translates as katholikon (sobor in Slavic languages), meaning "assembly", but this title is also applied to monastic and other major churches without episcopal responsibilities. When the church at which an archbishop or "metropolitan" presides is specifically intended, the term kathedrikós naós (literally: "cathedral temple") is used.
+
+The episcopal throne embodies the principle that only a bishop makes a cathedral, and this still applies even in those churches that no longer have bishops, but retain cathedral dignity and functions in ancient churches over which bishops formerly presided. But the throne can also embody the principle that a cathedral makes a bishop; both specifically, in that the bishop is elected within the cathedral and is inaugurated by being enthroned within the cathedral by acclamation of clergy and laity; and also generally, in that the bishops' essential qualifications of regular prayer, higher learning and musical worship were for many centuries, primarily accessible through cathedral functions. In this there is a distinction between those church traditions, predominantly those of Eastern Orthodox Christianity but formerly also including  Celtic churches in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, whose bishops came to be made in monasteries; and those church traditions whose bishops have tended predominantly to arise through the ranks of cathedral clergy.[3]
+
+In the Catholic or Roman Catholic tradition, the term "cathedral" correctly applies only to a church that houses the seat of the bishop of a diocese. The abbey church of a territorial abbacy serves the same function (that is, houses the seat of the abbot), but does not acquire the title. In any other jurisdiction canonically equivalent to a diocese but not canonically erected as such (prelature, vicariate, ordinariate, prefecture, apostolic administration), the church that serves this function is correctly called the "principal church" of the respective entity—though some have coopted the term "cathedral" anyway.  The Catholic Church also uses the following terms.
+
+The cathedral church of a metropolitan bishop is called a metropolitan cathedral.
+
+The term "cathedral" actually carries no implication as to the size or ornateness of the building.  Nevertheless, most cathedrals are particularly impressive edifices.  Thus, the term "cathedral" is often applied colloquially to any large and impressive church, regardless of whether it functions as a cathedral, (e.g. the Arctic Cathedral in Tromsø, Norway).
+
+The history of cathedrals  starts in the year 313, when the emperor Constantine the Great personally adopted Christianity and initiated the Peace of the Church. Indeed, in strict terminology, there could not have been "cathedrals" before that date, as before the 4th century there were no Christian "cathedrae"; bishops were never seated when leading congregational worship, but instead presided standing on a raised platform or pulpitum. In the third century, the phrase "ascending the platform", ad pulpitum venire, becomes the standard term for Christian ordination. During the siege of Dura Europos in 256, a complete Christian house church, or domus ecclesiae was entombed in a defensive bank, surviving when excavated, in places to wall-top height. The Dura church had been converted out of a large urban courtyard house of standard form, in which two rooms had been knocked together to make an assembly hall, capable of holding 60-75 standing; while a tank had been inserted in a room on the opposite side of the courtyard as a baptistery, with rich wall paintings above it.  The large room was indeed found to have a raised pulptum at one end, big enough for one person in turn to read, preach and preside from; but too low to have been surmounted by a throne, and too small to have contained an altar. Otherwise the large room had no decoration or distinctive features at all.
+
+In 269, soon after Dura fell to the Persian army, a body of clerics assembled a charge sheet against the bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, in the form of an open letter. Amongst the accusations was that Paul, who had received the civil rank of ducenarius due to contacts in the imperial court, had improperly erected an enclosure, or secretum, for himself in the church of Antioch; that within this enclosure he had erected a throne from which he presided in worship; and that he had trained a female choir to sing hymns of his own devising.  These practices were all condemned as innovations, improperly importing the symbols of his secular Roman magistracy into church ritual; while presumptuously and blasphemously asserting that the person of the bishop in eucharistic worship is seated in the place of Christ himself. Still in a hundred years, all bishops in the Mediterranean world had cathedrals, all sat on thrones within an enclosed sanctuary space, and all had established trained choirs to enhance eucharistic worship.
+
+The driving principle underlying this change was the acceptance by bishops, more or less willingly, of an imperial invitation to adopt and maintain the duties, dignity and insignia proper to a public magistrate.[4]  Characteristically a Roman magistrate presided from a raised throne in a large, richly decorated and aisled rectangular hall called a basilica; and now bishops would do the same.  The earliest of these new basilican cathedrals of which substantial remains are still visible (and maybe amongst the very earliest to be built) is below the Cathedral of Aquileia on the northern tip of the Adriatic sea.  Dated from a mosaic inscription between 313 and 319, the complex consisted of two parallel east-west aisled halls of similar size; with a third smaller north-south cross-hall connecting them, which has been interpreted as the presence hall of the episcopium or bishop's residence.  The three halls create an open courtyard, in which was originally located a separate baptistery.  Surviving from both large basilican halls are rich mosaic pavements showing (amongst other scenes) Jonah and the Whale, and a series of, mainly female, donor portraits. It appears that similar cathedrals of double-basilica and baptistry were soon afterwards erected in Milan, Trier and Pavia; but that subsequently single-basilican churches became the more common cathedral model.
+
+Constantine's declaration of imperial favour towards Christianity transformed all aspects of Christian life in the Roman Empire.  From being a minority religion, largely confined to urban areas and restricted social groupings, and subject to official hostility and occasional persecution; Christianity acquired greatly expanded numbers of potential adherents of all classes, initially still within city areas, but eventually extending out to the pagus, the city's rural hinterland. The consequence was a radical expansion in the buildings, funding and personnel of associated Church establishments throughout the 4th century.  The first cathedrals represent this expansion in material form.
+
+The location and layout of the first cathedrals varied substantially from city to city, although most, as at Aquileia, tended to be sited within the city walls but away from the urban centre; but certain elements are almost always found.
+
+Basilican halls had previously been characteristic of major civic complexes and military headquarters buildings; but now became the standard structure for accommodating large Christian congregations. From now on, the term basilica denotes any substantial church building.  These new basilicas were wholly different in scale from earlier Christian assembly halls, as they were also different in form from any Roman non-Christian temple or religious structure.  The halls were longitudinal, aisled, and flooded with light from large clerestory windows. Floors and walls were richly decorated with mosaic and inlay – usually in abstract or floral patterns.  The two original double basilicas at Aquileia had both been about 37m by 17m in size, but within 30 years one hall was quadrupled to 73m by 31m.  This expanded basilica now demonstrated three additional features that became characteristic of early cathedrals; an enclosure at the eastern end of the church surrounding the altar; a synthronos east of the altar facing west, and consisting of a raised dais with a centrally place bishop's throne and benches either side for the clergy of his familia; and a paritioned off narthex at the western end into which  catechumens would withdraw during the central act of the Eucharistic liturgy.
+
+The baptistery in the Dura church was about 1m square and 1m deep; baptismal candidates could stand in it, but could not be immersed.  In the new cathedrals, as had been the case before, only bishops baptised; and ceremonies were held not more than twice a year to allow for suitable periods of instruction.  So baptisteries needed to be greatly increased in size, with associated accommodation to ensure privacy in undressing, anointing and redressing; and the baptismal tank, commonly octagonal, was now fully deep enough for total immersion, and wide enough to accommodate both the candidate and an assisting male or female deacon. Baptisteries commonly adopted centralised plan forms derived from funerary chapels; and are invariably separate from the congregational basilica.
+
+No one lived in the house church at Dura; such residential facilities as the latrine and kitchen were removed in the conversion. But cathedral complexes always included an episcopal residence. Prominent amongst the charges that had been directed against Paul of Samosata had been his alleged over-familiarity with pious women.  As was common, Paul had been married when elected bishop; and again, as was universally expected for a bishop, he had then ceased sexual contact with his wife and no longer cohabited with her.  But his accusers charged that, by continuing to associate with other women (even without any indication of actual impropriety) he was creating an unacceptable potential for scandal. To avoid similar such occasions arising, it was necessary for the new cathedrals to create male-only living quarters for the bishop and his entire establishment; and since, in churches in the West, all presbyters and deacons were also expected to live apart from their wives after ordination, these living quarters, the episcopium, were necessarily substantial in extent. In addition to eating and sleeping quarters for ordained boys and men, the episcopium also commonly provided private dining halls for the hospitality expected of the bishop's enhanced social status, a private oratory or chapel for the bishop, and often a bath house.
+
+Just as the episcopal residence was integral within the complex of cathedral buildings, so too there was no distinction between episcopal, diocesan and cathedral property and endowments.  In principle, all diocesan income was paid into a common fund, and divided into four fixed shares for each main area of expenditure; the Bishop himself; the cathedral clergy; the fabric and lighting of cathedral and city churches; and charitable donations.  Many diocese already held substantial endowments, but income increased enormously with the Peace of the Church; partly due to imperial subsidies in kind, but mainly from private bequests and regular private benefactions (often called 'first fruits');  although at this date, tithe was never paid to the church.  In addition, many individual landowners supported private chapels and oratories on their own property; and endowed independent charitable institutions, and eventually monasteries and nunneries too.
+
+Augustine of Hippo estimated his personal income as being 20 times that of his father, a minor civil servant; and Augustine was by no means the wealthiest bishop in North Africa.  But in accepting from Constantine the status of civil magistrates, bishops were now also committed to substantial expenditure to maintain their new style and status; and also to fulfil the associated duties, for instance in employing qualified legal assessors to support them when sitting as civil judges.
+
+All ordained clerics attached to the cathedral were paid through stipends from the general fund. This applied both to the clergy working directly within the cathedral itself, and also to the clergy, called canonici  attached to churches founded by the bishop within the city.  From the end of the 4th century, as the mission of the church extended more into rural areas, 'baptistery churches' were founded in more distant villages, so that rural populations could receive the bishop's baptism locally; and the clergy in these churches also counted as canonici and drew a regular stipend.
+
+Plentiful donor inscriptions show that most new church building programmes; mosaics, roofs, furnishings, were financed by private donations.  The costs of maintenance and lighting, however, fell on the general fund.  This also applied to the churches, known as tituli, served directly by the bishop's clergy, generally also including any surviving house churches from the period before the Peace of the Church and the rural baptistery churches; but not to the chapels, called parochiae, established by rural landowners for the convenience of their tenants. The bishop, in respect of his civil status, was expected to contribute to public works of general benefit; aqueducts, bridges, watercourses.
+
+In all cities, bishops dedicated substantial sums to the support of widows, orphans and the poor.  Such donations had been a strong feature of the church in earlier centuries, but tended then to be specifically directed to the Christian needy.  Now the charitable compass became general. Bishops were especially expected to take responsibility for raising ransom funds, where local persons had fallen captive. In addition, it was expected that each diocese would support a xenodochium, a hostel for the homeless and strangers.
+
+Just as the status of the bishop was transfomed at the Peace of the Church; so too was that of the male clergy. With the bishop now resident in the episcopium the other male clergy came to be recognised as his formal familia, in mark of which male clergy now received the tonsure by shaving of their heads; this being originally a Roman badge of adoption.  The early church had recognised the orders of bishop, presbyter (priest) and deacon, but a range of minor orders had since grown up in addition; and all were tonsured.  These orders now tended to be understood as clerical 'ranks', equivalent to those in the military, such that the male clergy are now often referred to as a "clerical militia".  And as in the Roman military or civil service, promotion was expected to follow the principle of cursus honorum, rising through the ranks, with the expectation that ideally, a minimum period would be served in each.  The female orders of virgin, widow and (female) deacon remained explicitly outside the bishop's familia; and so they did not receive the tonsure and nor did they progress through the cursus honorum.  But all orders of cathedral clergy, male and female, increased dramatically in numbers.  Around 540 Justinian ordered that the clerical payroll of Hagia Sophia should be strictly limited to 60 presbyters, 100 male deacons, 90 subdeacons, 110 lectors, 25 singers, 100 doorkeepers and 40 female deacons; 525 in all.
+
+Bishops were at the head of the local church; but not explicitly within the cursus honorum, as appointment was by election from the local clergy and people.  Not surprisingly, the clergy tended to favour appointment of bishops from within the ranks of cathedral presbyters; but local lay choice often tended rather to outsiders, either a spectacular holy man, hermit or ascetic; or otherwise a senior civil servant or diplomat, who might have favourable contacts to exploit at court.  But most bishops came from the curial class, that is those holding the hereditary rank of decurion with the obligation to serve on the city council, as only persons of this class and above would be likely to have a full rhetorical education in Greek and Latin grammar; without which it was not possible for a boy raised with a knowledge only of Late Antique vernacular speech to express himself in approved classical linguistic forms.
+
+It was expected that the normal president at both the Eucharist and Baptism would be the bishop; who would celebrate in the cathedral and in titular churches in turn. But, in practice, the bishop needed deputies for eucharistic worship and also for the Divine Office of daily prayer, and this duty fell to the presbyters. The bishop selected a senior presbyter as archpriest who acted as his official deputy in all ritual matters and as head of the familia. The archpriest was also responsible for the cathedral school. After the 5th century, there were no longer state-supported secular teachers of rhetoric and grammar in the West (other than in parts of Italy) and so the church would have to educate its own.
+
+Just as the presbyters deputised for the bishop in ritual matters, so the deacons deputised in administrative and financial matters, especially in the raising and delivering of charity.  At the head of the diaconate was the archdeacon; the bishop's main deputy in managerial affairs.  Originally inferior in rank to the archpriest, the archdeacon by the sixth century had established clear pre-eminence. Subdeacons assisted the deacons, but unlike them were allowed to marry after ordination; consequently many clerics stopped the cursus honorum at this point, and it was not unusual for a subdeacon to be elected bishop; and even Pope.
+
+In practice, the first three of these orders tended to be given together, and were typically applied to boys as young as seven.  These boy lectors were too young for the grammar school, but were valued as choristers, and so were included in the Schola Cantorum or choir school.  Originally under the responsibility of the deacons, the organisation of choirs was reformed by Pope Gregory the Great, who introduced the office of primicerius or head cantor for this purpose.  This proved a vital reform; as without any comprehensive system of musical notation, the only way that sacred music could be maintained and passed on was through professional choirs of sound musical training undertaking cathedral worship – and such skills are not guaranteed to be present in high-ranking ecclesiastics.
+
+These orders had been of considerable importance in earlier centuries; but tended to be sidelined in cathedrals from the 4th century onwards.  So long as adult baptism continued as a regular occurrence, female deacons would continue to be needed for that service; but otherwise the main factor maintaining these orders was a knock-on effect from the rule of continence applied to bishops, presbyters and deacons.  When a man became ordained, and moved into the episcopium with the rest of the bishop's familia; then there would usually also be a requirement for support to their mothers, wives and daughters; and the orders of widows and virgins respectively continued largely for this purpose.
+
+Notwithstanding wide differences over time in institutional structures and wider historical contexts; the key functions established for the first cathedrals have tended to remain as distinctive cathedral functions down the centuries; a regular cycle of choral prayer; providing a forum for civic leadership; a commitment to higher learning; and the promotion and dissemination of music.
+
+The history of the body of clergy attached to the cathedral church is obscure, and in each case local considerations affected its development, however the main features were more or less common to all.
+
+Originally the bishop and cathedral clergy formed a kind of religious community, which, while not in the true sense a monastery, was nevertheless often called a monasterium, the word not having the restricted meaning that it afterwards acquired. In this lies the reason for the apparent anomaly that churches like York Minster and Lincoln Cathedral, which never had any monks attached to them, have inherited the name of minster or monastery. In these early communities the clergy often lived apart in their own dwellings, and were not infrequently married.
+
+In the 8th century Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (743-766), compiled a code of rules for the clergy of the cathedral churches, which, though widely accepted in Germany and other parts of the continent, gained little acceptance in England.
+
+According to Chrodegang's rule, the cathedral clergy were to live under a common roof, occupy a common dormitory and submit to the authority of a special officer. The rule of Chrodegang was, in fact, a modification of the Benedictine rule. Gisa, a native of Lorraine, who was bishop of Wells from 1061 to 1088, introduced it into England, and imposed its observance on the clergy of his cathedral church, but it was not followed for long there, or elsewhere in England.
+
+During the 10th and 11th centuries, the cathedral clergy became more definitely organised and were divided into two classes. One was that of a monastic establishment of some recognised order of monks, often the Benedictines, while the other class was that of a college of clergy, bound by no vows except those of their ordination, but governed by a code of statutes or canons: hence the name of "canon". In this way arose the distinction between the monastic and secular cathedral churches. Outside Great Britain, monastic cathedrals are known only at Monreale in Sicily and Downpatrick in Ireland.[5]
+
+In the case of monastic cathedral churches, the internal government was that of the religious order to which the chapter belonged and all the members kept perpetual residence.
+
+The alternative of this was the cathedral ruled by a secular chapter; the dignities of provost, dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, etc., came into being for the regulation and good order of the church and its services, while the non-residence of the canons, rather than their perpetual residence, became the rule, and led to their duties being performed by a body of "vicars", who officiated for them at the services of the church.
+
+Prior to the Reformation all cathedrals of Western Europe were of the Roman Catholic Church. In England, much of the structure of the monastic and cathedral system was reconstituted during the English Reformation. Although the cathedrals were retained by the now independent and established Church of England, the monastic cathedral chapters were dissolved by King Henry VIII and, with the exceptions of Bath and Coventry,[6] were refounded by him as chapters of canons with a dean as the head and other clergy as minor canons.
+
+In Germany and other parts of Europe, with the spread of the Lutheran Church, some ancient churches, like Nidaros Cathedral, Norway, and Lübeck Cathedral, Germany, became the seats of Protestant bishops, as in England. Many new churches were built which serve the regional administrative function of a cathedral. However, not all churches that function as the seat of a bishop are known as "cathedral", the custom varying from place to place, according to local tradition. Some are simply designated "church", as occurs at Budolfi Church, the Lutheran cathedral of Aalborg in Denmark.
+
+In most of Europe, the earliest head of a secular church seems to have been the provost (praepositus, probst, etc.), who was charged not only with the internal regulation of the church and oversight of the members of the chapter and control of the services, but was also the steward or seneschal of the lands and possessions of the church. The latter often mainly engaged his attention, to the neglect of his domestic and ecclesiastical duties, and complaints were soon raised that the provost was too much mixed in worldly affairs, and was too frequently absent from his spiritual duties.
+
+This led, in many cases, to the institution of a new officer called the "dean", who had charge of that portion of the provost's duties that related to the internal discipline of the chapter and the services of the church.
+
+In some cases, the office of provost was abolished, but in others it was continued: the provost, who was occasionally an archdeacon as well, remaining head of the chapter. This arrangement was most commonly followed in Germany. In England the provost was almost unknown. Bishop Gisa introduced a provost as head of the chapter of Wells Cathedral, but the office was afterwards subordinated to the other dignities and the provost became simply the steward of certain of the prebendal lands. The provost of the collegiate church of Beverley Minster was the most notable instance of such an officer in England, but at Beverley he was an external officer with authority in the government of the church, no stall in the choir and no vote in chapter.
+
+In Germany and Scandinavia, and in a few of the cathedral churches in the south of France, the provost was the ordinary head of the cathedral chapter, but the office was not common elsewhere. As regards France, of 136 cathedral churches existing at the Revolution, 38 only, and those either on the borders of Germany or in the extreme south, had a provost as the head of the chapter. In others the provost existed as a subordinate officer. There were two provosts at Autun, and Lyon and Chartres had four each, all as subordinate officers.
+
+The normal constitution of the chapter of a secular cathedral church comprised four dignitaries (there might be more), in addition to the canons. These are the dean, the precentor, the chancellor and the treasurer. These four dignitaries, occupying the four corner stalls in the choir, are called in many of the statutes the quatuor majores personae of the church.
+
+The role of dean (from decanus) seems to have derived its designation from the Benedictine "dean" who had ten monks under his charge. The role of dean came into existence to supply the place of the provost in the internal management of the church and chapter. In England every secular cathedral church was headed by a dean who was originally elected by the chapter and confirmed in office by the bishop. The dean is president of the chapter, and within the cathedral has charge of the performance of the services, taking specified portions of them by statute on the principal festivals. The dean sits in the chief stall in the choir, which is usually at the west end of the south side.
+
+Next to the dean (as a rule) is the precentor (primicerius, cantor, etc.), whose special duty is that of regulating the musical portion of the services. The precentor presides in the dean's absence, and occupies the corresponding stall on the north side, although there are exceptions to this rule, where, as at St Paul's, the archdeacon of the cathedral city ranks second and occupies what is usually the precentor's stall.
+
+The third dignitary is the chancellor (scholasticus, écoldtre, capiscol, magistral, etc.), who must not be confounded with the chancellor of the diocese. The chancellor of the cathedral church is charged with the oversight of its schools, ought to read divinity lectures, and superintend the lections in the choir and correct slovenly readers. The chancellor is often the secretary and librarian of the chapter. In the absence of the dean and precentor, the chancellor is president of the chapter, and within the cathedral is usually assigned the easternmost stall, on the dean's side of the choir.
+
+The fourth dignitary is the treasurer (custo, sacrisla, cheficier) who is guardian of the fabric, and of all the furniture and ornaments of the church, and whose duty was to provide bread and wine for the Eucharist, and candles and incense. The treasurer also regulated such matters as the ringing of the bells. The treasurer's stall is opposite to that of the chancellor.
+
+In many cathedral churches are additional dignitaries, as the praelector, subdean, vice-chancellor, succentor-canonicorum, and others, whose roles came into existence to supply the places of the other absent dignitaries, for non-residence was the fatal blot of the secular churches, and in this they contrasted very badly with the monastic churches, where all the members were in continuous residence. Besides the dignitaries there were the ordinary canons, each of whom, as a rule, held a separate prebend or endowment, besides receiving his share of the common funds of the church.
+
+For the most part the canons also speedily became non-resident, and this led to the distinction of residentiary and non-residentiary canons, till in most churches the number of resident canons became definitely limited in number, and the non-residentiary canons, who no longer shared in the common funds, became generally known as prebendaries only, although by their non-residence they did not forfeit their position as canons, and retained their votes in chapter like the others.
+
+This system of non-residence led also to the institution of vicars choral, each canon having his own vicar, who sat in his stall in his absence, and when the canon was present, in the stall immediately below, on the second form. The vicars had no place or vote in chapter, and, though irremovable except for offences, were the servants of their absent canons whose stalls they occupied, and whose duties they performed. Outside Britain they were often called demi-prebendaries. As time went on the vicars were themselves often incorporated as a kind of lesser chapter, or college, under the supervision of the dean and chapter.
+
+There was no distinction between the monastic cathedral chapters and those of the secular canons, in their relation to the bishop or diocese. In both cases the chapter was the bishop's consilium that he was bound to consult on all important matters and without doing so he could not act. Thus, a judicial decision of a bishop needed the confirmation of the chapter before it could be enforced. He could not change the service books, or "use" of the church or diocese, without capitular consent, and there are episcopal acts, such as the appointment of a diocesan chancellor, or vicar general, which still need confirmation by the chapter, but the older theory of the chapter as the bishop's council in ruling the diocese has become a thing of the past, in Europe.
+
+In its corporate capacity the chapter takes charge sede vacante of a diocese. In England, however (except as regards Salisbury and Durham),[8] this custom has never obtained, the two archbishops having, from time immemorial, taken charge of the vacant dioceses in their respective provinces. When, however, either of the sees of Canterbury or York is vacant the chapters of those churches take charge, not only of the diocese, but of the province as well, and incidentally, therefore, of any of the dioceses of the province that may be vacant at the same time.
+
+The role of the cathedral is chiefly to serve God in the community, through its hierarchical and organisational position in the church structure. The building itself, by its physical presence, symbolises both the glory of God and of the church. A cathedral, its bishop and dignitaries have traditional functions that are mostly religious in nature, but may also be closely associated with the civil and communal life of the city and region.
+
+The cathedral is frequently the most imposing building, and one of the most ancient buildings in its town. The great size and splendor of the cathedral may be out of all proportion to the town itself. The money and talents expended on the building are seen as honoring God, and may also demonstrate both the devotion and the status of the patrons.
+
+Cathedrals are very often oriented east/west, so that the worshipers look towards the rising sun, symbolizing the Risen Christ. The architectural form of the building most frequently has the ground plan of a cross. This form is both functional and symbolic, its symbolism referring to the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The form is liturgically functional as it allows the building to be divided into sections where different activities take place, or that are occupied by different people, such as the clergy, the choir and the laity.
+
+The main body of the building, making the longer arm of the cross, is called the nave, and is where worshipers congregate; the term is from the Latin word for ship. The cathedral is symbolically a ship bearing the people of God through the storms of life.[9] The nave is also used for major processions, which gather or enter at the furthest door (liturgically generally called the West Door). The aisles on each side of the nave facilitate the movement of people within the building, without disrupting worshipers in the central space.
+
+The arms of the cross are called the transepts and often contain a number of chapels. Farthest from the main entry is the sanctuary where the Blessed Sacrament is laid on the altar or communion table for the consecration. "Sanctuary" means "Holy Place". The word has passed into modern English with an altered meaning because traditionally a criminal who could gain access to this area without capture was thereby given the sanctuary of the church.
+
+Cathedral buildings of the Western European tradition symbolize the progression of the Christian soul towards Salvation. Many cathedrals of Eastern European tradition are centrally planned. These churches are almost always domed. The symbolism in these cathedral structures is of the hierarchy of Earth and Heaven, and often reveals its meaning through the internal decoration of the building with frescoes or mosaics.
+
+Apart from its organisational function as the seat of the bishop, and the meeting place for the chapter of the diocese, the cathedral has a liturgical function in offering daily church services. Most cathedrals have at least three services of worship every day, often taking the form of matins, Holy Communion and an evening service which is often sung by the precentor and choir. There are often additional services on Sunday. Cathedrals generally have an area dedicated to the performance of choral services and with seating specifically for the choir and dignitories of the church and town. This part of the building is called the Choir or Quire, and is generally located between the sanctuary and the nave. Because music often plays an important part in the performance of the liturgy, cathedrals generally have a pipe organ to accompany the choir.
+
+Cathedrals always have a font or water basin at which the rite of Baptism is performed, in which a person is formally accepted into the Christian church. The font is often placed towards the door because the Baptism signifies entry into the community of the church. In some cathedrals, most particularly in Italy, the rite of Baptism is performed in a separate building.
+
+One of the functions of the cathedral is the reading and expounding upon the Holy Scripture. The cathedral generally has a lectern from which the scripture is read. This often takes the form of an eagle of brass or carved wood which supports the book on its outstretched wings and is the symbol of John the Evangelist. However, some cathedrals retain elaborate medieval structures on either side of the church, one for the reading of the Gospel and the other for the reading of the Epistle.
+
+The function of expounding on the scriptures is traditionally performed from the pulpit, which is generally constructed in such a way that the voice of the preacher is projected out to the congregation. The pulpit is often decorated with the winged figures of a man, a lion, a bull and an eagle, representing the Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.[10]
+
+The services that are held within the cathedral follow an annual cycle. The designated scriptural readings for each day of the church's year establish a pattern that alternates periods of introspection and penitence with periods of celebration, and is punctuated by the two great celebrations of Christmas and Easter.
+
+Many cathedrals are places of pilgrimage to which people travel in order to worship or venerate a holy object or the reliquary of a saint. Many cathedrals are regarded as places that have provided rewarding religious experiences, where prayers have been answered or miracles have taken place. Pilgrimage was particularly popular in the late medieval period. Some cathedrals such as Santiago de Compostela continue to attract pilgrims.
+
+The formal cathedral services are linked to the cycle of the year and respond to the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere, Christmas falling in the winter and Easter in the spring. Cathedrals often hold a service of thanksgiving called Harvest Festival in the autumn.
+
+Births, marriages and deaths are often celebrated by services at cathedrals and the cathedral often acts as a repository of local history by recording these events. The cathedral marks times of national and local civic celebration and sadness with special services. The funerals of those famous within the community are invariably held at cathedrals. People who have served the community or the church are often buried within the cathedral with which they are associated. Alternatively, they may be commemorated by a memorial. Some cathedrals, such as Aachen and Reims are the traditional coronation places of monarchs.
+
+Another civic function of the cathedral is the imparting of significant civil information. Announcements may be to the populace from the steps of the cathedral, or within the cathedral itself.
+
+Most cathedrals have a bell or bells. These are used to announce that a service is soon to take place. They are also used to convey information and celebration. The ringing of peals signifies a time of rejoicing, such as a wedding. An extended ringing of peals or "changes" conveys a time of great civic celebration. The slow tolling of the deepest bell signifies a death or disaster. Many cathedrals have a clock with associated chimes that announce the time. The bells of a cathedral are traditionally used to signal the outbreak and the ending of war.
+
+Cathedrals are often associated with significant secular organisations such as the office of the local mayor and council, the local court, the local regiment, schools, sporting organisations and service clubs. The cathedral often has its own school, primarily for the education of choristers, but often including other children as well.
+
+The cathedral, often being a large building, serves as a meeting place for many people. The cathedral often forms a centre of different activities related to community service, youth activities, study, music and decorative arts.
+
+Cathedral buildings, especially those dating from the Medieval period, are frequently the grandest of churches in the diocese (and country). The ancient cathedrals of England, of Northern France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Sicily, the Baroque cathedrals of South America, and many individual cathedrals from Italy and other parts of Europe, are among the largest and finest religious buildings. Many are renowned for their architecture or their decorative features such as sculpture, stained glass and frescos.
+
+While cathedral buildings, in general, tend to be large, size and grandeur have rarely been essential requirements. Early Celtic and Saxon cathedrals tended to be of diminutive size, as is the Byzantine so-called Little Metropole Cathedral of Athens. In Italy, with a few notable exceptions such as Florence Cathedral and Milan Cathedral, cathedrals are numerous and are often similar in form and size to monastic or large parish churches. In modern times, where functionality is the foremost consideration and where church attendance is low in many countries, a cathedral church may be a modest structure.
+
+Cathedrals of monastic foundation, and some of secular clergy, have cloisters, which traditionally provided an open area where secular activities took place protected from wind and rain. Some cathedrals also have a chapter house where the chapter could meet. In England, where these buildings have survived, they are often octagonal. A cathedral may front onto the main square of a town, as in Florence, or it may be set in a walled close as at Canterbury. There may be a number of associated monastic or clergy buildings, a bishop's palace and often a school to educate the choristers.
+
+Many cathedral buildings are very famous for their architecture and have local and national significance, both artistically and historically. Many are listed among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
+
+Many cathedrals, because of their large size and the fact that they often have towers, spires or domes, have until the 20th century, been the major landmarks in cities or in views across the countryside. With highrise building, civil action has been taken in some cases, such as Cologne Cathedral to prevent the vista of the cathedral from being spoiled.[11]
+
+Because many cathedrals took centuries to build and decorate, they constitute a major artistic investment for the city in which they stand. Not only may the building itself be architecturally significant, but the church often houses treasures such as stained glass, stone and wood statues, historic tombs, richly carved furniture and objects of both artistic and religious significance such as reliquaries. Moreover, the cathedral often plays a major role in telling the story of the town, through its plaques, inscriptions, tombs, stained glass and paintings.
+
+For these reasons, tourists have travelled to cathedrals for hundreds of years. Many cathedrals cater for tourists by charging a fee to any visitors outside service times or requesting a donation or making a charge to take photos. Cathedrals that are particularly popular tourist venues sometimes provide guides, leaflets, souvenirs and cafes.
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+Christianity portal

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+The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica (Latin: Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal enclave which is within the city of Rome.
+
+Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture[2] and the largest church in the world.[3] While it is neither the mother church of the Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome (these equivalent titles being held by the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome), St. Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world"[4] and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom".[2][5]
+
+Catholic tradition holds that the basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, chief among Jesus's apostles and also the first Bishop of Rome (Pope). Saint Peter's tomb is supposedly directly below the high altar of the basilica. For this reason, many popes have been interred at St. Peter's since the Early Christian period. A church has stood on this site since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Old St. Peter's Basilica dates from the 4th century AD. Construction of the present basilica began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626.[6]
+
+St. Peter's is famous as a place of pilgrimage and for its liturgical functions. The pope presides at a number of liturgies throughout the year both within the basilica or the adjoining St. Peter's Square; these liturgies draw audiences numbering from 15,000 to over 80,000 people.[7] St. Peter's has many historical associations, with the Early Christian Church, the Papacy, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation and numerous artists, especially Michelangelo. As a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age.[8] St. Peter's is one of the four churches in the world that hold the rank of major basilica, all four of which are in Rome. Contrary to popular misconception, it is not a cathedral because it is not the seat of a bishop; the cathedra of the pope as Bishop of Rome is at Saint John Lateran.[9]
+
+St. Peter's is a church built in the Renaissance style located in the Vatican City west of the River Tiber and near the Janiculum Hill and Hadrian's Mausoleum. Its central dome dominates the skyline of Rome. The basilica is approached via St. Peter's Square, a forecourt in two sections, both surrounded by tall colonnades. The first space is oval and the second trapezoidal. The façade of the basilica, with a giant order of columns, stretches across the end of the square and is approached by steps on which stand two 5.55 metres (18.2 ft) statues of the 1st-century apostles to Rome, Saints Peter and Paul.[10][11]
+
+The basilica is cruciform in shape, with an elongated nave in the Latin cross form but the early designs were for a centrally planned structure and this is still in evidence in the architecture. The central space is dominated both externally and internally by one of the largest domes in the world. The entrance is through a narthex, or entrance hall, which stretches across the building. One of the decorated bronze doors leading from the narthex is the Holy Door, only opened during jubilees.[10]
+
+The interior dimensions are vast when compared to other churches.[6] One author wrote: "Only gradually does it dawn upon us – as we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink; they are, of course, dwarfed by the scale of everything in the building. This in its turn overwhelms us."[12]
+
+The nave which leads to the central dome is in three bays, with piers supporting a barrel-vault, the highest of any church. The nave is framed by wide aisles which have a number of chapels off them. There are also chapels surrounding the dome. Moving around the basilica in a clockwise direction they are: The Baptistery, the Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin, the larger Choir Chapel, the altar of the Transfiguration, the Clementine Chapel with the altar of Saint Gregory, the Sacristy Entrance, the Altar of the Lie, the left transept with altars to the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Saint Joseph and Saint Thomas, the altar of the Sacred Heart, the Chapel of the Madonna of Column, the altar of Saint Peter and the Paralytic, the apse with the Chair of Saint Peter, the altar of Saint Peter raising Tabitha, the altar of St. Petronilla, the altar of the Archangel Michael, the altar of the Navicella, the right transept with altars of Saint Erasmus, Saints Processo and Martiniano, and Saint Wenceslas, the altar of St. Jerome, the altar of Saint Basil, the Gregorian Chapel with the altar of the Madonna of Succour, the larger Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, the Chapel of Saint Sebastian and the Chapel of the Pietà.[10] The Monuments, in a clockwise direction, are to: Maria Clementina Sobieski, The Stuarts, Benedict XV, John XXIII, St. Pius X, Innocent VIII, Leo XI, Innocent XI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Alexander VII, Alexander VIII, Paul III, Urban VIII, Clement X, Clement XIII, Benedict XIV, St Peter (Bronze Statue), Gregory XVI, Gregory XIV, Gregory XIII, Matilda of Canossa, Innocent XII, Pius XII, Pius XI, Christina of Sweden, Leo XII.  
+At the heart of the basilica, beneath the high altar, is the Confessio or Chapel of the Confession, in reference to the confession of faith by St. Peter, which led to his martyrdom. Two curving marble staircases lead to this underground chapel at the level of the Constantinian church and immediately above the purported burial place of Saint Peter.
+
+The entire interior of St. Peter's is lavishly decorated with marble, reliefs, architectural sculpture and gilding. The basilica contains a large number of tombs of popes and other notable people, many of which are considered outstanding artworks. There are also a number of sculptures in niches and chapels, including Michelangelo's Pietà. The central feature is a baldachin, or canopy over the Papal Altar, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The apse culminates in a sculptural ensemble, also by Bernini, and containing the symbolic Chair of Saint Peter.
+
+One observer wrote: "St Peter's Basilica is the reason why Rome is still the center of the civilized world. For religious, historical, and architectural reasons it by itself justifies a journey to Rome, and its interior offers a palimpsest of artistic styles at their best ..."[13]
+
+The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth ... the sublime of the beautiful."[14]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is one of the papal basilicas (previously styled "patriarchal basilicas")[15] and one of the four Major Basilicas of Rome, the other Major Basilicas (all of which are also Papal Basilicas) being the Basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul outside the Walls. The rank of major basilica confers on St. Peter's Basilica precedence before all minor basilicas worldwide. However, unlike all the other Papal Major Basilicas, it is wholly within the territory, and thus the sovereign jurisdiction, of the Vatican City State, and not that of Italy.[16] This is in contrast to the other three Papal Major Basilicas, which are within Italian territory and not the territory of the Vatican City State. (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)) However, the Holy See fully owns these three basilicas, and Italy is legally obligated to recognize its full ownership thereof (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 13 (Ibidem)) and to concede to all of them "the immunity granted by International Law to the headquarters of the diplomatic agents of foreign States" (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)).
+
+It is the most prominent building in the Vatican City. Its dome is a dominant feature of the skyline of Rome. Probably the largest church in Christendom,[3] it covers an area of 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres). One of the holiest sites of Christianity and Catholic Tradition, it is traditionally the burial site of its titular, St. Peter, who was the head of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first Bishop of Antioch and later the first Bishop of Rome, rendering him the first Pope. Although the New Testament does not mention St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome, tradition, based on the writings of the Fathers of the Church,[clarification needed] holds that his tomb is below the baldachin and altar of the Basilica in the "Confession". For this reason, many Popes have, from the early years of the Church, been buried near Pope St. Peter in the necropolis beneath the Basilica. Construction of the current basilica, over the old Constantinian basilica, began on 18 April 1506 and finished in 1615. At length, on 18 November 1626 Pope Urban VIII solemnly dedicated the Basilica.[6]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is neither the Pope's official seat nor first in rank among the Major Basilicas of Rome. This honour is held by the Pope's cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran which is the mother church of all churches in communion with the Catholic Church. However, St. Peter's is certainly the Pope's principal church in terms of use because most Papal liturgies and ceremonies take place there due to its size, proximity to the Papal residence, and location within the Vatican City proper. The "Chair of Saint Peter", or cathedra, an ancient chair sometimes presumed to have been used by St. Peter himself, but which was a gift from Charles the Bald and used by many popes, symbolizes the continuing line of apostolic succession from St. Peter to the reigning Pope. It occupies an elevated position in the apse of the Basilica, supported symbolically by the Doctors of the Church and enlightened symbolically by the Holy Spirit.[17]
+
+As one of the constituent structures of the historically and architecturally significant Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 under criteria (i), (ii), (iv), and (vi).[18] With an exterior area of 21,095 square metres (227,060 sq ft),[19] an interior area of 15,160 square metres (163,200 sq ft),[20][21] St. Peter's Basilica is the largest Christian church building in the world by the two latter metrics and the second largest by the first as of 2016[update]. The top of its dome, at 448.1 feet (136.6 m), also places it as the second tallest building in Rome as of 2016[update].[22] The dome's soaring height placed it among the tallest buildings of the Old World, and it continues to hold the title of tallest dome in the world. Though the largest dome in the world by diameter at the time of its completion, it no longer holds this distinction.[23]
+
+After the crucifixion of Jesus, it is recorded in the Biblical book of the Acts of the Apostles that one of his twelve disciples, Simon known as Saint Peter, a fisherman from Galilee, took a leadership position among Jesus' followers and was of great importance in the founding of the Christian Church. The name Peter is "Petrus" in Latin and "Petros" in Greek, deriving from "petra" which means "stone" or "rock" in Greek, and is the literal translation of the Aramaic "Kepa", the name given to Simon by Jesus. (John 1:42, and see Matthew 16:18)
+
+Catholic tradition holds that Peter, after a ministry of thirty-four years, travelled to Rome and met his martyrdom there along with Paul on 13 October 64 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. His execution was one of the many martyrdoms of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome. According to Origen, Peter was crucified head downwards, by his own request because he considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.[24] The crucifixion took place near an ancient Egyptian obelisk in the Circus of Nero.[25]  The obelisk now stands in St. Peter's Square and is revered as a "witness" to Peter's death. It is one of several ancient Obelisks of Rome.[26]
+
+According to tradition, Peter's remains were buried just outside the Circus, on the Mons Vaticanus across the Via Cornelia from the Circus, less than 150 metres (490 ft) from his place of death. The Via Cornelia was a road which ran east-to-west along the north wall of the Circus on land now covered by the southern portions of the Basilica and St. Peter's Square. A shrine was built on this site some years later. Almost three hundred years later, Old St. Peter's Basilica was constructed over this site.[25]
+
+The area now covered by the Vatican City had been a cemetery for some years before the Circus of Nero was built. It was a burial ground for the numerous executions in the Circus and contained many Christian burials, because for many years after the burial of Saint Peter many Christians chose to be buried near Peter.
+
+In 1939, in the reign of Pope Pius XII, 10 years of archeological research began under the crypt of the basilica in an area inaccessible since the 9th century. The excavations revealed the remains of shrines of different periods at different levels, from Clement VIII (1594)  to Callixtus II (1123) and Gregory I (590–604), built over an aedicula containing fragments of bones that were folded in a tissue with gold decorations, tinted with the precious murex purple. Although it could not be determined with certainty that the bones were those of Peter, the rare vestments suggested a burial of great importance. On 23 December 1950, in his pre-Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced the discovery of Saint Peter's tomb.[27]
+
+Old St. Peter's Basilica was the 4th-century church begun by the Emperor Constantine the Great between 319 and 333 AD.[28] It was of typical basilical form, a wide nave and two aisles on each side and an apsidal end, with the addition of a transept or bema, giving the building the shape of a tau cross. It was over 103.6 metres (340 ft) long, and the entrance was preceded by a large colonnaded atrium. This church had been built over the small shrine believed to mark the burial place of St. Peter, though the tomb was "smashed" in 846 AD.[29]  It contained a very large number of burials and memorials, including those of most of the popes from St. Peter to the 15th century. Like all of the earliest churches in Rome, both this church and its successor had the entrance to the east and the apse at the west end of the building.[30] Since the construction of the current basilica, the name Old St. Peter's Basilica has been used for its predecessor to distinguish the two buildings.[31]
+
+By the end of the 15th century, having been neglected during the period of the Avignon Papacy, the old basilica had fallen into disrepair. It appears that the first pope to consider rebuilding, or at least making radical changes was Pope Nicholas V (1447–55). He commissioned work on the old building from Leone Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino and also had Rossellino design a plan for an entirely new basilica, or an extreme modification of the old. His reign was frustrated by political problems and when he died, little had been achieved.[25]  He had, however, ordered the demolition of the Colosseum and by the time of his death, 2,522 cartloads of stone had been transported for use in the new building.[25][32] The foundations were completed for a new transept and choir to form a domed Latin cross with the preserved nave and side aisles of the old basilica. Some walls for the choir had also been built.[33]
+
+Pope Julius II planned far more for St Peter's than Nicholas V's program of repair or modification. Julius was at that time planning his own tomb, which was to be designed and adorned with sculpture by Michelangelo and placed within St Peter's.[34]  In 1505 Julius made a decision to demolish the ancient basilica and replace it with a monumental structure to house his enormous tomb and "aggrandize himself in the popular imagination".[8]  A competition was held, and a number of the designs have survived at the Uffizi Gallery. A succession of popes and architects followed in the next 120 years, their combined efforts resulting in the present building. The scheme begun by Julius II continued through the reigns of Leo X (1513–1521), Hadrian VI (1522–1523). Clement VII (1523–1534), Paul III (1534–1549), Julius III (1550–1555), Marcellus II (1555), Paul IV (1555–1559), Pius IV (1559–1565), Pius V (saint) (1565–1572), Gregory XIII (1572–1585), Sixtus V (1585–1590), Urban VII (1590), Gregory XIV (1590–1591), Innocent IX (1591), Clement VIII (1592–1605), Leo XI (1605), Paul V (1605–1621), Gregory XV (1621–1623), Urban VIII (1623–1644) and Innocent X (1644–1655).
+
+One method employed to finance the building of St. Peter's Basilica was the granting of indulgences in return for contributions. A major promoter of this method of fund-raising was Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, who had to clear debts owed to the Roman Curia by contributing to the rebuilding program. To facilitate this, he appointed the German Dominican preacher Johann Tetzel, whose salesmanship provoked a scandal.[35]
+
+A German Augustinian priest, Martin Luther, wrote to Archbishop Albrecht arguing against this "selling of indulgences". He also included his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as The 95 Theses.[36] This became a factor in starting the Reformation, the birth of Protestantism.
+
+Pope Julius' scheme for the grandest building in Christendom[8] was the subject of a competition for which a number of entries remain intact in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. It was the design of Donato Bramante that was selected, and for which the foundation stone was laid in 1506. This plan was in the form of an enormous Greek Cross with a dome inspired by that of the huge circular Roman temple, the Pantheon.[8] The main difference between Bramante's design and that of the Pantheon is that where the dome of the Pantheon is supported by a continuous wall, that of the new basilica was to be supported only on four large piers. This feature was maintained in the ultimate design. Bramante's dome was to be surmounted by a lantern with its own small dome but otherwise very similar in form to the Early Renaissance lantern of Florence Cathedral designed for Brunelleschi's dome by Michelozzo.[37]
+
+Bramante had envisioned that the central dome would be surrounded by four lower domes at the diagonal axes. The equal chancel, nave and transept arms were each to be of two bays ending in an apse. At each corner of the building was to stand a tower, so that the overall plan was square, with the apses projecting at the cardinal points. Each apse had two large radial buttresses, which squared off its semi-circular shape.[38]
+
+When Pope Julius died in 1513, Bramante was replaced with Giuliano da Sangallo and Fra Giocondo, who both died in 1515 (Bramante himself having died the previous year). Raphael was confirmed as architect of St. Peter's on 1 August 1514.[39] The main change in his plan is the nave of five bays, with a row of complex apsidal chapels off the aisles on either side. Raphael's plan for the chancel and transepts made the squareness of the exterior walls more definite by reducing the size of the towers, and the semi-circular apses more clearly defined by encircling each with an ambulatory.[40]
+
+In 1520 Raphael also died, aged 37, and his successor Baldassare Peruzzi maintained changes that Raphael had proposed to the internal arrangement of the three main apses, but otherwise reverted to the Greek Cross plan and other features of Bramante.[41] This plan did not go ahead because of various difficulties of both Church and state. In 1527 Rome was sacked and plundered by Emperor Charles V. Peruzzi died in 1536 without his plan being realized.[8]
+
+At this point Antonio da Sangallo the Younger submitted a plan which combines features of Peruzzi, Raphael and Bramante in its design and extends the building into a short nave with a wide façade and portico of dynamic projection. His proposal for the dome was much more elaborate of both structure and decoration than that of Bramante and included ribs on the exterior. Like Bramante, Sangallo proposed that the dome be surmounted by a lantern which he redesigned to a larger and much more elaborate form.[42] Sangallo's main practical contribution was to strengthen Bramante's piers which had begun to crack.[25]
+
+On 1 January 1547 in the reign of Pope Paul III, Michelangelo, then in his seventies, succeeded Sangallo the Younger as "Capomaestro", the superintendent of the building program at St Peter's.[43] He is to be regarded as the principal designer of a large part of the building as it stands today, and as bringing the construction to a point where it could be carried through. He did not take on the job with pleasure; it was forced upon him by Pope Paul, frustrated at the death of his chosen candidate, Giulio Romano and the refusal of Jacopo Sansovino to leave Venice. Michelangelo wrote "I undertake this only for the love of God and in honour of the Apostle." He insisted that he should be given a free hand to achieve the ultimate aim by whatever means he saw fit.[25]
+
+Michelangelo took over a building site at which four piers, enormous beyond any constructed since ancient Roman times, were rising behind the remaining nave of the old basilica. He also inherited the numerous schemes designed and redesigned by some of the greatest architectural and engineering minds of the 16th century. There were certain common elements in these schemes. They all called for a dome to equal that engineered by Brunelleschi a century earlier and which has since dominated the skyline of Renaissance Florence, and they all called for a strongly symmetrical plan of either Greek Cross form, like the iconic St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, or of a Latin Cross with the transepts of identical form to the chancel, as at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Even though the work had progressed only a little in 40 years, Michelangelo did not simply dismiss the ideas of the previous architects. He drew on them in developing a grand vision. Above all, Michelangelo recognized the essential quality of Bramante's original design. He reverted to the Greek Cross and, as Helen Gardner expresses it: "Without destroying the centralising features of Bramante's plan, Michelangelo, with a few strokes of the pen converted its snowflake complexity into massive, cohesive unity."[44]
+
+As it stands today, St. Peter's has been extended with a nave by Carlo Maderno. It is the chancel end (the ecclesiastical "Eastern end") with its huge centrally placed dome that is the work of Michelangelo. Because of its location within the Vatican State and because the projection of the nave screens the dome from sight when the building is approached from the square in front of it, the work of Michelangelo is best appreciated from a distance. What becomes apparent is that the architect has greatly reduced the clearly defined geometric forms of Bramante's plan of a square with square projections, and also of Raphael's plan of a square with semi-circular projections.[45] Michelangelo has blurred the definition of the geometry by making the external masonry of massive proportions and filling in every corner with a small vestry or stairwell. The effect created is of a continuous wall-surface that is folded or fractured at different angles, but lacks the right-angles which usually define change of direction at the corners of a building. This exterior is surrounded by a giant order of Corinthian pilasters all set at slightly different angles to each other, in keeping with the ever-changing angles of the wall's surface. Above them the huge cornice ripples in a continuous band, giving the appearance of keeping the whole building in a state of compression.[46]
+
+The dome of St. Peter's rises to a total height of 136.57 metres (448.1 ft) from the floor of the basilica to the top of the external cross. It is the tallest dome in the world.[47] Its internal diameter is 41.47 metres (136.1 ft), slightly smaller than two of the three other huge domes that preceded it, those of the Pantheon of Ancient Rome, 43.3 metres (142 ft), and Florence Cathedral of the Early Renaissance, 44 metres (144 ft). It has a greater diameter by approximately 30 feet (9.1 m) than Constantinople's Hagia Sophia church, completed in 537. It was to the domes of the Pantheon and Florence duomo that the architects of St. Peter's looked for solutions as to how to go about building what was conceived, from the outset, as the greatest dome of Christendom.
+
+The dome of the Pantheon stands on a circular wall with no entrances or windows except a single door. The whole building is as high as it is wide. Its dome is constructed in a single shell of concrete, made light by the inclusion of a large amount of the volcanic stones tuff and pumice. The inner surface of the dome is deeply coffered which has the effect of creating both vertical and horizontal ribs, while lightening the overall load. At the summit is an ocular opening 8 metres (26 ft) across which provides light to the interior.[8]
+
+Bramante's plan for the dome of St. Peter's (1506) follows that of the Pantheon very closely, and like that of the Pantheon, was designed to be constructed in Tufa Concrete for which he had rediscovered a formula. With the exception of the lantern that surmounts it, the profile is very similar, except that in this case the supporting wall becomes a drum raised high above ground level on four massive piers. The solid wall, as used at the Pantheon, is lightened at St. Peter's by Bramante piercing it with windows and encircling it with a peristyle.
+
+In the case of Florence Cathedral, the desired visual appearance of the pointed dome existed for many years before Brunelleschi made its construction feasible.[48] Its double-shell construction of bricks locked together in herringbone pattern (re-introduced from Byzantine architecture), and the gentle upward slope of its eight stone ribs made it possible for the construction to take place without the massive wooden formwork necessary to construct hemispherical arches. While its appearance, with the exception of the details of the lantern, is entirely Gothic, its engineering was highly innovative, and the product of a mind that had studied the huge vaults and remaining dome of Ancient Rome.[37]
+
+Sangallo's plan (1513), of which a large wooden model still exists, looks to both these predecessors. He realized the value of both the coffering at the Pantheon and the outer stone ribs at Florence Cathedral. He strengthened and extended the peristyle of Bramante into a series of arched and ordered openings around the base, with a second such arcade set back in a tier above the first. In his hands, the rather delicate form of the lantern, based closely on that in Florence, became a massive structure, surrounded by a projecting base, a peristyle and surmounted by a spire of conic form.[42] According to James Lees-Milne the design was "too eclectic, too pernickety and too tasteless to have been a success".[25]
+
+Michelangelo redesigned the dome in 1547, taking into account all that had gone before. His dome, like that of Florence, is constructed of two shells of brick, the outer one having 16 stone ribs, twice the number at Florence but far fewer than in Sangallo's design. As with the designs of Bramante and Sangallo, the dome is raised from the piers on a drum. The encircling peristyle of Bramante and the arcade of Sangallo are reduced to 16 pairs of Corinthian columns, each of 15 metres (49 ft) high which stand proud of the building, connected by an arch. Visually they appear to buttress each of the ribs, but structurally they are probably quite redundant. The reason for this is that the dome is ovoid in shape, rising steeply as does the dome of Florence Cathedral, and therefore exerting less outward thrust than does a hemispherical dome, such as that of the Pantheon, which, although it is not buttressed, is countered by the downward thrust of heavy masonry which extends above the circling wall.[8][25]
+
+The ovoid profile of the dome has been the subject of much speculation and scholarship over the past century. Michelangelo died in 1564, leaving the drum of the dome complete, and Bramante's piers much bulkier than originally designed, each 18 metres (59 ft) across. Following his death, the work continued under his assistant Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola with Giorgio Vasari appointed by Pope Pius V as a watchdog to make sure that Michelangelo's plans were carried out exactly. Despite Vignola's knowledge of Michelangelo's intentions, little happened in this period. In 1585 the energetic Pope Sixtus appointed Giacomo della Porta who was to be assisted by Domenico Fontana. The five-year reign of Sixtus was to see the building advance at a great rate.[25]
+
+Michelangelo left a few drawings, including an early drawing of the dome, and some details. There were also detailed engravings published in 1569 by Stefan du Pérac who claimed that they were the master's final solution. Michelangelo, like Sangallo before him, also left a large wooden model. Giacomo della Porta subsequently altered this model in several ways. The major change restored an earlier design, in which the outer dome appears to rise above, rather than rest directly on the base.[50] Most of the other changes were of a cosmetic nature, such as the adding of lion's masks over the swags on the drum in honour of Pope Sixtus and adding a circlet of finials around the spire at the top of the lantern, as proposed by Sangallo.[25]
+
+A drawing by Michelangelo indicates that his early intentions were towards an ovoid dome, rather than a hemispherical one.[44]  In an engraving in Galasso Alghisi' treatise (1563), the dome may be represented as ovoid, but the perspective is ambiguous.[51] Stefan du Pérac's engraving (1569) shows a hemispherical dome, but this was perhaps an inaccuracy of the engraver. The profile of the wooden model is more ovoid than that of the engravings, but less so than the finished product. It has been suggested that Michelangelo on his death bed reverted to the more pointed shape. However, Lees-Milne cites Giacomo della Porta as taking full responsibility for the change and as indicating to Pope Sixtus that Michelangelo was lacking in the scientific understanding of which he himself was capable.[25]
+
+Helen Gardner suggests that Michelangelo made the change to the hemispherical dome of lower profile in order to establish a balance between the dynamic vertical elements of the encircling giant order of pilasters and a more static and reposeful dome. Gardner also comments, "The sculpturing of architecture [by Michelangelo] ... here extends itself up from the ground through the attic stories and moves on into the drum and dome, the whole building being pulled together into a unity from base to summit."[44]
+
+It is this sense of the building being sculptured, unified and "pulled together" by the encircling band of the deep cornice that led Eneide Mignacca to conclude that the ovoid profile, seen now in the end product, was an essential part of Michelangelo's first (and last) concept. The sculptor/architect has, figuratively speaking, taken all the previous designs in hand and compressed their contours as if the building were a lump of clay. The dome must appear to thrust upwards because of the apparent pressure created by flattening the building's angles and restraining its projections.[46] If this explanation is the correct one, then the profile of the dome is not merely a structural solution, as perceived by Giacomo della Porta; it is part of the integrated design solution that is about visual tension and compression. In one sense, Michelangelo's dome may appear to look backward to the Gothic profile of Florence Cathedral and ignore the Classicism of the Renaissance, but on the other hand, perhaps more than any other building of the 16th century, it prefigures the architecture of the Baroque.[46]
+
+Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana brought the dome to completion in 1590, the last year of the reign of Sixtus V. His successor, Gregory XIV, saw Fontana complete the lantern and had an inscription to the honour of Sixtus V placed around its inner opening. The next pope, Clement VIII, had the cross raised into place, an event which took all day, and was accompanied by the ringing of the bells of all the city's churches. In the arms of the cross are set two lead caskets, one containing a fragment of the True Cross and a relic of St. Andrew and the other containing medallions of the Holy Lamb.[25]
+
+In the mid-18th century, cracks appeared in the dome, so four iron chains were installed between the two shells to bind it, like the rings that keep a barrel from bursting. As many as ten chains have been installed at various times, the earliest possibly planned by Michelangelo himself as a precaution, as Brunelleschi did at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Around the inside of the dome is written, in letters 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) high:
+
+TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM("... you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven ..." Vulgate, Matthew 16:18–19.)
+
+Beneath the lantern is the inscription:
+
+S. PETRI GLORIAE SIXTVS PP. V. A. M. D. XC. PONTIF. V.(To the glory of St Peter; Sixtus V, pope, in the year 1590, the fifth of his pontificate.)
+
+On 7 December 2007, a fragment of a red chalk drawing of a section of the dome of the basilica, almost certainly by the hand of Michelangelo, was discovered in the Vatican archives.[52] The drawing shows a small precisely drafted section of the plan of the entablature above two of the radial columns of the cupola drum. Michelangelo is known to have destroyed thousands of his drawings before his death.[53] The rare survival of this example is probably due to its fragmentary state and the fact that detailed mathematical calculations had been made over the top of the drawing.[52]
+
+On 18 February 1606, under Pope Paul V, the dismantling of the remaining parts of the Constantinian basilica began.[25] The marble cross that had been set at the top of the pediment by Pope Sylvester and Constantine the Great was lowered to the ground. The timbers were salvaged for the roof of the Borghese Palace and two rare black marble columns, the largest of their kind, were carefully stored and later used in the narthex. The tombs of various popes were opened, treasures removed and plans made for re-interment in the new basilica.[25]
+
+The Pope had appointed Carlo Maderno in 1602. He was a nephew of Domenico Fontana and had demonstrated himself as a dynamic architect. Maderno's idea was to ring Michelangelo's building with chapels, but the Pope was hesitant about deviating from the master's plan, even though he had been dead for forty years. The Fabbrica or building committee, a group drawn from various nationalities and generally despised by the Curia who viewed the basilica as belonging to Rome rather than Christendom, were in a quandary as to how the building should proceed. One of the matters that influenced their thinking was the Counter-Reformation which increasingly associated a Greek Cross plan with paganism and saw the Latin Cross as truly symbolic of Christianity.[25] The central plan also did not have a "dominant orientation toward the east."[54]
+
+Another influence on the thinking of both the Fabbrica and the Curia was a certain guilt at the demolition of the ancient building. The ground on which it and its various associated chapels, vestries and sacristies had stood for so long was hallowed. The only solution was to build a nave that encompassed the whole space. In 1607 a committee of ten architects was called together, and a decision was made to extend Michelangelo's building into a nave. Maderno's plans for both the nave and the facade were accepted. The building began on 7 May 1607, and proceeded at a great rate, with an army of 700 labourers being employed. The following year, the façade was begun, in December 1614 the final touches were added to the stucco decoration of the vault and early in 1615 the partition wall between the two sections was pulled down. All the rubble was carted away, and the nave was ready for use by Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The facade designed by Maderno, is 114.69 metres (376.3 ft) wide and 45.55 metres (149.4 ft) high and is built of travertine stone, with a giant order of Corinthian columns and a central pediment rising in front of a tall attic surmounted by thirteen statues: Christ flanked by eleven of the Apostles (except Saint Peter, whose statue is left of the stairs) and John the Baptist.
+[55]
+The inscription below the cornice on the 1 metre (3.3 ft) tall frieze reads:
+
+IN HONOREM PRINCIPIS APOST PAVLVS V BVRGHESIVS ROMANVS PONT MAX AN MDCXII PONT VII(In honour of the Prince of Apostles, Paul V Borghese, a Roman, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1612, the seventh of his pontificate)
+
+(Paul V (Camillo Borghese), born in Rome but of a Sienese family, liked to emphasize his "Romanness.")
+
+The facade is often cited as the least satisfactory part of the design of St. Peter's. The reasons for this, according to James Lees-Milne, are that it was not given enough consideration by the Pope and committee because of the desire to get the building completed quickly, coupled with the fact that Maderno was hesitant to deviate from the pattern set by Michelangelo at the other end of the building. Lees-Milne describes the problems of the façade as being too broad for its height, too cramped in its details and too heavy in the attic story. The breadth is caused by modifying the plan to have towers on either side. These towers were never executed above the line of the facade because it was discovered that the ground was not sufficiently stable to bear the weight. One effect of the facade and lengthened nave is to screen the view of the dome, so that the building, from the front, has no vertical feature, except from a distance.[25]
+
+Behind the façade of St. Peter's stretches a long portico or "narthex" such as was occasionally found in Italian churches. This is the part of Maderno's design with which he was most satisfied. Its long barrel vault is decorated with ornate stucco and gilt, and successfully illuminated by small windows between pendentives, while the ornate marble floor is beamed with light reflected in from the piazza. At each end of the narthex is a theatrical space framed by ionic columns and within each is set a statue, an equestrian figure of Charlemagne (18th century) by Cornacchini in the south end and The Vision of Constantine (1670) by Bernini in the north end.
+
+Five portals, of which three are framed by huge salvaged antique columns, lead into the basilica. The central portal has a bronze door created by Antonio Averulino c. 1440 for the old basilica[56] and somewhat enlarged to fit the new space.
+
+To the single bay of Michelangelo's Greek Cross, Maderno added a further three bays. He made the dimensions slightly different from Michelangelo's bay, thus defining where the two architectural works meet. Maderno also tilted the axis of the nave slightly. This was not by accident, as suggested by his critics. An ancient Egyptian obelisk had been erected in the square outside, but had not been quite aligned with Michelangelo's building, so Maderno compensated, in order that it should, at least, align with the Basilica's façade.[25]
+
+The nave has huge paired pilasters, in keeping with Michelangelo's work. The size of the interior is so "stupendously large" that it is hard to get a sense of scale within the building.[25][57] The four cherubs who flutter against the first piers of the nave, carrying between them two holy water basins, appear of quite normal cherubic size, until approached. Then it becomes apparent that each one is over 2 metres high and that real children cannot reach the basins unless they scramble up the marble draperies. The aisles each have two smaller chapels and a larger rectangular chapel, the Chapel of the Sacrament and the Choir Chapel. These are lavishly decorated with marble, stucco, gilt, sculpture and mosaic. Remarkably, all of the large altarpieces, with the exception of the Holy Trinity by Pietro da Cortona in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, have been reproduced in mosaic.  Two precious paintings from the old basilica, Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Our Lady of the Column are still being used as altarpieces.
+
+Maderno's last work at St. Peter's was to design a crypt-like space or "Confessio" under the dome, where the cardinals and other privileged persons could descend in order to be nearer to the burial place of the apostle. Its marble steps are remnants of the old basilica and around its balustrade are 95 bronze lamps.
+
+The design of St. Peter's Basilica, and in particular its dome, has greatly influenced church architecture in Western Christendom. Within Rome, the huge domed church of Sant'Andrea della Valle was designed by Giacomo della Porta before the completion of St Peter's Basilica, and subsequently worked on by Carlo Maderno. This was followed by the domes of San Carlo ai Catinari, Sant'Agnese in Agone, and many others. Christopher Wren's dome at St Paul's Cathedral (London, England), the domes of Karlskirche (Vienna, Austria), St. Nicholas Church (Prague, Czech Republic), and the Pantheon (Paris, France) all pay homage to St Peter's Basilica.
+
+The 19th and early-20th-century architectural revivals brought about the building of a great number of churches that imitate elements of St Peter's to a greater or lesser degree, including St. Mary of the Angels in Chicago, St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milwaukee, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Pittsburgh and Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, which replicates many aspects of St Peter's on a smaller scale. Post-Modernism has seen free adaptations of St Peter's in the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro.
+
+As a young boy Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) visited St. Peter's with the painter Annibale Carracci and stated his wish to build "a mighty throne for the apostle". His wish came true. As a young man, in 1626, he received the patronage of Pope Urban VIII and worked on the embellishment of the Basilica for 50 years. Appointed as Maderno's successor in 1629, he was to become regarded as the greatest architect and sculptor of the Baroque period. Bernini's works at St. Peter's include the baldachin (baldaquin, from Italian: baldacchino), the Chapel of the Sacrament, the plan for the niches and loggias in the piers of the dome and the chair of St. Peter.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's first work at St. Peter's was to design the baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure 28.74 metres (94.3 ft) tall and claimed to be the largest piece of bronze in the world, which stands beneath the dome and above the altar. Its design is based on the ciborium, of which there are many in the churches of Rome, serving to create a sort of holy space above and around the table on which the Sacrament is laid for the Eucharist and emphasizing the significance of this ritual. These ciboria are generally of white marble, with inlaid coloured stone. Bernini's concept was for something very different. He took his inspiration in part from the baldachin or canopy carried above the head of the pope in processions, and in part from eight ancient columns that had formed part of a screen in the old basilica. Their twisted barley-sugar shape had a special significance as they were modelled on those of the Temple of Jerusalem and donated by the Emperor Constantine. Based on these columns, Bernini created four huge columns of bronze, twisted and decorated with laurel leaves and bees, which were the emblem of Pope Urban.
+
+The baldacchino is surmounted not with an architectural pediment, like most baldacchini, but with curved Baroque brackets supporting a draped canopy, like the brocade canopies carried in processions above precious iconic images. In this case, the draped canopy is of bronze, and all the details, including the olive leaves, bees, and the portrait heads of Urban's niece in childbirth and her newborn son, are picked out in gold leaf. The baldacchino stands as a vast free-standing sculptural object, central to and framed by the largest space within the building. It is so large that the visual effect is to create a link between the enormous dome which appears to float above it, and the congregation at floor level of the basilica. It is penetrated visually from every direction, and is visually linked to the Cathedra Petri in the apse behind it and to the four piers containing large statues that are at each diagonal.[25][44]
+
+As part of the scheme for the central space of the church, Bernini had the huge piers, begun by Bramante and completed by Michelangelo, hollowed out into niches, and had staircases made inside them, leading to four balconies. There was much dismay from those who thought that the dome might fall, but it did not. On the balconies Bernini created showcases, framed by the eight ancient twisted columns, to display the four most precious relics of the basilica: the spear of Longinus, said to have pierced the side of Christ, the veil of Veronica, with the miraculous image of the face of Christ, a fragment of the True Cross discovered in Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, Helena, and a relic of Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter. In each of the niches that surround the central space of the basilica was placed a huge statue of the saint associated with the relic above. Only Saint Longinus is the work of Bernini.[25] (See below)
+
+Urban had long been a critic of Bernini's predecessor, Carlo Maderno. His disapproval of the architect's work stemmed largely from the Maderno's design for the longitudinal nave of St. Peters, which was widely condemned for obscuring Michelangelo's dome. When the Pope gave the commission to Bernini he therefore requested that a new design for the facade's bell towers to be submitted for consideration. Baldinucci describes Bernini's tower as consisting of "two orders of columns and pilasters, the first order being Corinthian" and "a third or attic story formed of pilasters and two columns on either side of the open archway in the center".
+
+Urban desired the towers to be completed by a very specific date: 29 June 1641, the feast day dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. To this end an order was issued which stated that "all work should take a second seat to that of the campanile." The south tower was completed on time even in spite of these issues, but records show that in the wake of the unveiling the Pope was not content with what he saw and he ordered the top level of Bernini's tower removed so that the structure could be made even grander. The tower continued to grow, and as the construction began to settle, the first cracks started to appear followed by Urban's infamous public admonishment of his architect.
+
+In 1642 all work on both towers came to a halt. Bernini had to pay the cost for the demolition; eventually the idea of completing the bell towers was abandoned.
+
+Bernini then turned his attention to another precious relic, the so-called Cathedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter" a chair which was often claimed to have been used by the apostle, but appears to date from the 12th century. As the chair itself was fast deteriorating and was no longer serviceable, Pope Alexander VII determined to enshrine it in suitable splendor as the object upon which the line of successors to Peter was based. Bernini created a large bronze throne in which it was housed, raised high on four looping supports held effortlessly by massive bronze statues of four Doctors of the Church, Saints Ambrose and Augustine representing the Latin Church and Athanasius and John Chrysostom, the Greek Church. The four figures are dynamic with sweeping robes and expressions of adoration and ecstasy. Behind and above the cathedra, a blaze of light comes in through a window of yellow alabaster, illuminating, at its centre, the Dove of the Holy Spirit. The elderly painter, Andrea Sacchi, had urged Bernini to make the figures large, so that they would be seen well from the central portal of the nave. The chair was enshrined in its new home with great celebration of 16 January 1666.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's final work for St. Peter's, undertaken in 1676, was the decoration of the Chapel of the Sacrament.[58] To hold the sacramental Host, he designed a miniature version in gilt bronze of Bramante's Tempietto, the little chapel that marks the place of the death of St. Peter. On either side is an angel, one gazing in rapt adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome. Bernini died in 1680 in his 82nd year.[25]
+
+To the east of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro, (St. Peter's Square). The present arrangement, constructed between 1656 and 1667, is the Baroque inspiration of Bernini who inherited a location already occupied by an Egyptian obelisk which was centrally placed, (with some contrivance) to Maderno's facade.[59] The obelisk, known as "The Witness", at 25.31 metres (83.0 ft) and a total height, including base and the cross on top, of 40 metres (130 ft), is the second largest standing obelisk, and the only one to remain standing since its removal from Egypt and re-erection at the Circus of Nero in 37 AD, where it is thought to have stood witness to the crucifixion of Saint Peter.[60] Its removal to its present location by order of Pope Sixtus V and engineered by Domenico Fontana on 28 September 1586, was an operation fraught with difficulties and nearly ending in disaster when the ropes holding the obelisk began to smoke from the friction. Fortunately this problem was noticed by Benedetto Bresca, a sailor of Sanremo, and for his swift intervention, his town was granted the privilege of providing the palms that are used at the basilica each Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The other object in the old square with which Bernini had to contend was a large fountain designed by Maderno in 1613 and set to one side of the obelisk, making a line parallel with the facade. Bernini's plan uses this horizontal axis as a major feature of his unique, spatially dynamic and highly symbolic design. The most obvious solutions were either a rectangular piazza of vast proportions so that the obelisk stood centrally and the fountain (and a matching companion) could be included, or a trapezoid piazza which fanned out from the facade of the basilica like that in front of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. The problems of the square plan are that the necessary width to include the fountain would entail the demolition of numerous buildings, including some of the Vatican, and would minimize the effect of the facade. The trapezoid plan, on the other hand, would maximize the apparent width of the facade, which was already perceived as a fault of the design.[44]
+
+Bernini's ingenious solution was to create a piazza in two sections. That part which is nearest the basilica is trapezoid, but rather than fanning out from the facade, it narrows. This gives the effect of countering the visual perspective. It means that from the second part of the piazza, the building looks nearer than it is, the breadth of the facade is minimized and its height appears greater in proportion to its width. The second section of the piazza is a huge elliptical circus which gently slopes downwards to the obelisk at its centre. The two distinct areas are framed by a colonnade formed by doubled pairs of columns supporting an entablature of the simple Tuscan Order.
+
+The part of the colonnade that is around the ellipse does not entirely encircle it, but reaches out in two arcs, symbolic of the arms of "the Catholic Church reaching out to welcome its communicants".[44]  The obelisk and Maderno's fountain mark the widest axis of the ellipse. Bernini balanced the scheme with another fountain in 1675. The approach to the square used to be through a jumble of old buildings, which added an element of surprise to the vista that opened up upon passing through the colonnade. Nowadays a long wide street, the Via della Conciliazione, built by Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaties, leads from the River Tiber to the piazza and gives distant views of St. Peter's as the visitor approaches, with the basilica acting as a terminating vista.[25]
+
+Bernini's transformation of the site is entirely Baroque in concept. Where Bramante and Michelangelo conceived a building that stood in "self-sufficient isolation", Bernini made the whole complex "expansively relate to its environment".[44] Banister Fletcher says "No other city has afforded such a wide-swept approach to its cathedral church, no other architect could have conceived a design of greater nobility ... (it is) the greatest of all atriums before the greatest of all churches of Christendom."[8]
+
+The top of the facade of St. Peter's Basilica has two clocks and several sculptures. The clocks were created to replace Bernini's bell towers which had to be torn down due to insufficient support. The left clock shows Rome time, the one of the right shows European mean time. The statues are Christ the Redeemer, St. John the Baptist and 11 Apostles. From the left: St. Thadeus, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. Thomas, St. James the Greater, St. John the Baptist, The Redeemer, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Lesser, St. Bartholomew, St. Simeon, and St. Matthias. Above the Roman clock is the coat of arms for the city-state of Vatican City since 1931 held by two angels. The European mean time clock only shows an hour hand and it is about half an hour behind the rome time. The European mean time also be an attempt to keep the Devil guessing about "the day and the hour."
+
+The Basilica has 6 bells, placed in the room under the Roman clock, only 3 of them are visible from ground level while the rest are hidden behind the bourdon. They range from the smallest which is 260 kg to the massive bourdon that approximately weighs 9 tonnes. From 1931, the bells are operated electrically, thus permitting even the largest bell to be tolled from a distance. The oldest bell Rota dates from 1288 and the bourdon called Campanone is rung at Christmas and Easter, on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, and every time the Pope imparts the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing to the city and to the world. Campanone also announces the election of a new pope.
+
+There are over 100 tombs within St. Peter's Basilica (extant to various extents), many located beneath the Basilica. These include 91 popes, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, and the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Exiled Catholic British royalty James Francis Edward Stuart and his two sons, Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Bishop of Frascati, are buried here, having been granted asylum by Pope Clement XI. Also buried here are Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James Francis Edward Stuart, Queen Christina of Sweden, who abdicated her throne in order to convert to Catholicism, and Countess Matilda of Tuscany, supporter of the Papacy during the Investiture Controversy. The most recent interment was Pope John Paul II, on 8 April 2005. Beneath, near the crypt, is the recently discovered vaulted 4th-century "Tomb of the Julii". (See below for some descriptions of tombs).
+
+Recently installed commemorative plaques read above the door as follows:
+
+PAVLVS VI PONT MAX HVIVS PATRIARCALIS VATICANAE BASILICAE PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVPaul VI, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed the holy door of this patriarchal Vatican basilica in the jubilee year of 1975.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVI A PAVLO PP VI RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB HVMANE REDEMP MCMLXXXIII–MCMLXXXIVJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed again the holy door closed and set apart by Pope Paul VI in 1976 in the jubilee year of human redemption 1983–1984.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. ITERVM PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO MAGNI IVBILAEI AB INCARNATIONE DOMINI MM–MMIJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, again opened and closed the holy door in the year of the great jubilee, from the incarnation of the Lord 2000–2001.
+
+FRANCISCVS PP. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO MAGNI IVB MM–MMI A IOANNE PAVLO PP. II RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB MISERICORDIAE MMXV–MMXVIPope Francis opened and closed again the holy door, closed and set apart by Pope John Paul II in the year of the great jubilee 2000–2001, in the jubilee year of Mercy 2015–2016.
+
+Older commemorative plaques are removed to make way for the new plaque when the holy door is opened and sealed.
+
+Saint Helenaby Andrea Bolgi
+
+Saint Longinusby Bernini
+
+Saint Andrewby Francois Duquesnoy
+
+Saint Veronicaby Francesco Mochi
+
+The Holy Door is opened only for great celebrations.
+
+The tomb of Alexander VII, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1671–1678.[62]
+
+The bronze statue of Saint Peter holding the keys of heaven, attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio.
+
+The Pietà  by Michelangelo, 1498–99, is in the north aisle.
+
+List of archpriests of the Vatican Basilica:[63]

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+
+
+Mechelen (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmɛxələ(n)] (listen), French: Malines, traditional English name: Mechlin[n 1]) is a city and municipality in the province of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. The municipality comprises the city of Mechelen proper, some quarters at its outskirts, the hamlets of Nekkerspoel (adjacent) and Battel (a few kilometers away), as well as the villages of Walem, Heffen, Leest, Hombeek, and Muizen. The Dyle (Dutch: Dijle) flows through the city, hence it is often referred to as the Dijlestad ("City on the river Dijle").
+
+Mechelen lies on the major urban and industrial axis Brussels–Antwerp, about 25 km from each city. Inhabitants find employment at Mechelen's southern industrial and northern office estates, as well as at offices or industry near the capital and Zaventem Airport, or at industrial plants near Antwerp's seaport.
+
+Mechelen is one of Flanders' prominent cities of historical art, with Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, and Leuven. It was notably a centre for artistic production during the Northern Renaissance, when painters, printmakers, illuminators and composers of polyphony were attracted by patrons such as Margaret of York, Margaret of Austria and Hieronymus van Busleyden.[2][3][4]
+
+Archaeological proof of habitation during the La Tène era in the triangle Brussels-Leuven-Antwerp, mainly concentrated around Mechelen which originated in wetlands, includes an 8.4-metre long canoe cut from an oak tree trunk and a settlement of about five wooden houses, at Nekkerspoel.[5]
+
+The area of Mechelen was settled on the banks of the river during the Gallo-Roman period as evidenced by several Roman ruins and roads. Upon Rome's declining influence, during 3rd–4th centuries the area became inhabited by Germanic tribes. A few centuries later Christianized assumedly by the Irish or Scottish missionary St Rumbold (Rombout in Dutch) who was also said to have built a monastery. Work on the cathedral that is dedicated to the saint started around 1200.
+
+Antwerp lost profitable stapelrechten (rights as first seller) for wool, oats and salt to Mechelen in 1303 when John II, Duke of Brabant, granted City rights to the town. This started a rivalry between these cities that would last well into the 20th century.
+
+In the 15th century, the city came under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy, marking the beginning of a prosperous period. In 1473 Charles the Bold moved several political bodies to the city, and Mechelen served as the seat of the Superior Court until the French Revolution. In 1490, a regular postal service between Mechelen and Innsbruck was established.
+
+The highly lucrative cloth trade gained Mechelen wealth and power during the Late Middle Ages and it even became the capital of the Low Countries (very roughly the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) in the first half of the 16th century under Archduchess Margaret of Austria.
+
+During the 16th century the city's political influence decreased dramatically, due to many governmental institutions being moved to Brussels. Mechelen compensated for this by increasing prominence in the religious arena: in 1559 it was proclaimed the Archdiocese of Mechelen, seat of religious authority over the territory that would eventually become Belgium. In 1961, "Brussels" was added to the title, resulting in the current Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels.
+
+Mechelen also retained further relevance as the Great Council of Mechelen remained the supreme court of the territory until the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1572, during the Eighty Years' War, the city was burned and sacked by the Spanish. After this pillaging, the city was rebuilt. It was sacked again in 1580 during the English Fury at Mechelen. It was during this time that the tradition of furniture making, still seen today, began.
+
+In 1718 a major rebellion took place in the city, angry mobs entered the town hall. During this time Lord Pierre de Romrée was mayor of Mechelen. The chaos ended when the Emperor formally requested the President of the Great Council to restore peace. On 18 June, Christophe-Ernest de Baillet received a full list of the people who led the troubles. The President received the support of multiple regiments that had been sent by imperial command.  After negotiations de Baillet restored peace and order in the city.[6]
+
+In 1781, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, ordered the destruction of the city's fortified walls – their former location however continues to be referred to in the Latin terms intra muros (within the walls) and extra muros (outside), and meanwhile the site became that of the inner ring road.[7]
+
+The city entered the industrial age in the 19th century. In 1835, the first railway on the European continent linked Brussels with Mechelen, which became the hub of the Belgian railway network.[8] This led to a development of metalworking industries, among others the central railway workshops which are still located in the town today. During the Second World War, the extensive Mechlinian[n 1] railway structure had caused the Nazi occupation forces to choose Mechelen for their infamous transit camp. Over 25,000 Jews and Roma were sent by rail to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp from Mechelen. The site of the transit camp and a purpose-built complex across the public square, now house the Kazerne Dossin Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights.
+
+Several famous meetings on the Christian religion are connected to the name of the city. One in 1909 is thought to have inaugurated the Liturgical Movement. Between 1921 and 1925 a series of unofficial conferences, known as the Malines Conversations,[n 1] presided over by Cardinal Mercier and attended by Anglican divines and laymen, including Lord Halifax, was the most significant of early attempts at the reconciliation between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches.
+
+Most cities in Flanders have a mock name for their inhabitants. Since 1687, for their heroic attempt to fight the fire high up in the Saint-Rumbold's Tower, where the gothic windows had shown the flaring of only the moon between clouds, Mechlinians have been called Maneblussers (moon extinguishers).
+
+Once every 25 years, a Parade, the Ommegang, commemorates both the arrival of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, father of Archduchess Margaret of Austria, and also other major events of the city's past. The Ommegang had an extra edition in 2000 for the 500th anniversary of the birth of Charles V. This cortege shows the city's six 15th–17th-century Giants and other serious and humoresque puppets and carts, all typically made on a huge scale, and has been UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity since 2005.
+
+The city's 17th-century wooden mascot, which since 1775 has been called Opsinjoorke 'the doll', is pulled about on a sheet as part of the Ommegang. Nowadays, it is the replica that is so pulled around the city. A recent bronze statue depicting the Opsinjoorke stands in front of the Belfry.
+
+The annual parade of carts decorated with flowers (comparable to that of Blankenberge for Mechlinian florists still prepare up to half of decorations), and with vegetables, – all of which are local to the area—has been indefinitely canceled since the beginning of the 21st century due to lack of financing by the City.[9]
+
+In spring, a legendary holy statue of Our Lady is the main feature in the Procession of Hanswijk.
+
+Informally, many Mechlinians (Dutch Mechelaars, locally pronounced Mecheleirs) speak Mechlinian (Mechels), a Dutch dialect which is distinct from other Brabantic dialects.
+
+Since 1995, a subscribers' quarterly, De Mecheleir,  shows old photographs of Mechelen and has stories on the local history, as well as a few columns written mimicking the dialect, for which there is no standard spelling.[10]
+
+Historically famous Mechlinian trades include laken (woollen cloth), tapestries, cordwain, Mechlin lace (precious bobbin lace, already from the early 18th century), wood carving and sculpturing, and furniture.
+
+Mechelen was at the heart of the revival of the carillon in the early 20th century, and hosts its principal school in the world to this day.[11][12]
+
+The area around Mechelen is famous for the cultivation of vegetables, among which are Belgian endive (witloof), asparagus, and cauliflower. Founded in the city, the Mechelse Veilingen in neighbouring Sint-Katelijne-Waver is the largest co-operative vegetable auction in Europe.[13]
+
+One of the four breeds of the Belgian Sheepdog is the local Malinois. The Mechelse koekoek is a local poultry breed, fleshy chickens with black and white feathers which extend on the birds' legs, with colours reminiscent of a cuckoo, hence the name.
+
+Mechelsen Bruynen was allegedly the emperor Charles V's favourite beer. A version is still brewed in the city at Het Anker brewery, one of the oldest breweries in Belgium.[14]
+
+Mechelen has an oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb). Mechelen has a narrow temperature range between seasons for its high latitude, in spite of its inland position. Summers are warm and occasionally hot, whereas winters usually remain above freezing. Similar to Belgium as a whole, the climate is relatively cloudy and receives frequent rainfall, often light.
+
+Home of two of the oldest Belgian football clubs, founded in 1904: K.R.C. Mechelen and K.V. Mechelen. The latter contributed to the international glamour of the city by winning the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and the European Super Cup in 1988. The number of lesser local teams shows this sport's popularity: Rapid Leest, Sporting Mechelen, Leest Utd., VV Leest, Walem, SK.Heffen, Zennester Hombeek, FC Muizen. In 1985, the city hosted the Canoe Sprint World Championships.
+
+The city council consists of 43 councillors, elected every six years. The mayor is Bart Somers (Open Vld) since 2001. In October 2019 Alexander Vandersmissen became acting mayor because Bart Somers became minister in the Flemish government, he retains the title of mayor. The Vld-Groen-M+ kartel got an absolute majority of seats in the October 2018 election.
+
+The 2019-2024 city council, elected in October 2018, consists of:
+
+The city of Mechelen uses ANPR cameras since September 2011 to check all inbound and outbound cars against a database of stolen, non-insured and cars listed for other reasons.  In case of a positive match, an alarm is generated in the dispatching room, enabling the police to quickly intercept the car.  Mechelen was one of the first cities in Belgium to use ANPR on this scale. As of early 2012, 1 million cars per week are checked in this way. Mechelen started this project with SAIT Zenitel.[19]
+
+Mechelen and Willebroek form a unified local police zone since 1 January 2015.

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+The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula (French: Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule, Dutch: Kathedraal van Sint-Michiel en Sint-Goedele[2]) is a medieval Roman Catholic church in central Brussels, Belgium. It is consecrated to St. Michael and St. Gudula, the patron saints of the City of Brussels, and is considered to be one of the finest examples of Brabantine Gothic architecture.
+
+The church's construction began in the 11th century and was largely complete by the 16th, though its interior was frequently modified in the following centuries. The church was given cathedral status in 1962 and has since been the co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels, together with St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.[2] Since the mid-20th century, following the construction of the North–South connection, it has been located on the Parvis Sainte-Gudule/Sinter-Goedelevoorplein, east of Boulevard de l'Impératrice/Keizerinlaan. This site is served by Brussels Central Station.
+
+A chapel dedicated to St. Michael was probably built on the Treurenberg hill as early as the 9th century. In the 11th century, it was replaced by a Romanesque church. In 1047, Lambert II, Count of Leuven founded a chapter in this church and organised the transportation of the relics of the martyr St. Gudula, housed before then in Saint Gaugericus Church on Saint-Géry Island. The patron saints of the church, St. Michael and St. Gudula, are also the patron saints of the City of Brussels.
+
+In the 13th century, Henry I, Duke of Brabant ordered two round towers to be added to the church. Henry II, Duke of Brabant instructed the building of a Brabantine Gothic collegiate church in 1226. The choir was constructed between 1226 and 1276. It took about 300 years to complete the entire church. It was completed just before the reign of the Emperor Charles V began in 1519.[3] Some chapels were added in the 16th and 17th centuries.
+
+The church was designated a historic monument on 5 March 1936.[4] It was not until 1962, with the creation of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels, that the collegiate church was promoted to the rank of co-cathedral, when it became the seat of the Archbishop, together with St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.[5]
+
+Restoration work was carried out in the 19th century under the direction of the architect Tilman-François Suys who restored the towers and portals from 1839 to 1845, and again in the 20th century under the direction of Jean Rombaux then Victor Gaston Martiny, chief architect-town planner of the Province of Brabant and member of the Royal Committee for Monuments and Sites. The cathedral was once again thoroughly restored between 1983 and 1999. On that occasion, remains of the Romanesque church as well as the Romanesque crypt were discovered under the current choir.[5]
+
+The cathedral is built of stone from the Gobertange quarry, which is located approximately 45 km (28 mi) south-east of the site of the cathedral. The building's external length is 114 m (374 ft) and its internal length is 109 m (358 ft), and the choir's exterior is 57 m (187 ft) wide and its interior 54 m (177 ft) wide. The western facade with its three portals surmounted by gables and two 64 m (210 ft) high towers are typical of the French Gothic style, but without a rose window, as it features instead a large window in the Brabantian Gothic style.
+
+The two towers, the upper parts of which are arranged in terraces, are attributed to the Flemish architect Jan Van Ruysbroeck (1470–1485), who also designed the tower of Brussels' Town Hall. They are unfinished and were meant to be much higher, in a style close to the Town Hall's tower or the north tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.
+
+The monumental staircase for the cathedral, designed by Pieter Paul Merckx, was placed in the period 1702–1707. This staircase, a gift from the city of Brussels, was originally built against the city walls to provide access to the promenade on the stretch between the Laeken Gate and the Schaerbeek Gate.
+
+The choir is Gothic and contains the mausoleums of the Dukes of Brabant and Archduke Ernest of Austria made by Robert Colyn de Nole in the 17th century.  Left of the choir is the Chapel of the Flamboyant Gothic Blessed Sacrament of the Miracle (1534–1539). It now houses the Treasure of the Cathedral, where the famous Drahmal Cross (also known as the Brussels Cross), an Anglo-Saxon inscribed cross-reliquary of the early 11th century, is stored. Right of the choir is the Chapel of Our Lady of Deliverance (1649–1655) which is built in a late Gothic style and has a Baroque altar by Jan Voorspoel (1666).[3] Behind the choir is a Baroque chapel dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen (also called the Maes Chapel) dated 1675 and a marble and alabaster altarpiece depicting the Passion of Christ by Jean Mone dated 1538.[3]
+
+The nave has all the characteristics of Brabantine Gothic: the four-part vaults are moderately high and the robust cylindrical columns that line the central aisle of the nave are topped with capitals in the form of cabbage leaves. Statues of the 12 apostles are attached to the columns. These statues date from the 17th century and were created by sculptors Lucas Faydherbe, Jerôme Duquesnoy the Younger, Johannes van Mildert and Tobias de Lelis, all renowned sculptors of their time. The statues replaced those destroyed by iconoclasts in 1566.
+
+The nave has a Baroque pulpit from the 17th century, made by Antwerp sculptor Hendrik Frans Verbruggen in 1699. The base represents Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden after plucking the forbidden fruit. At the top, the Virgin and Child piercing the serpent symbolise redemption.[3]
+
+To the right of the portal of the northern transept is an elegant 17th-century sculpture depicting The education of the Holy Virgin by Saint Anna by Jerôme Duquesnoy the Younger after a painting by Rubens.[3] The side aisles contain 17th-century confessional-boxes in oak by Jan van Delen.
+
+The cathedral contains the unmarked burial place of Dermot O'Mallun, the last Irish-born chief of the name of the O'Moloney sept of Thomond. [6]
+
+The cathedral has stained glass windows from the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries. Particularly noteworthy are the two made in 1537 and 1538 by the Antwerp glassmaker Jean Haeck based on drawings by Bernard van Orley. They adorn the northern and southern transepts, and bear the image of Charles V. Also worth mentioning are the impressive series of fifteen stained glass windows from the 19th century in the aisles, produced by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier. They were created in 1870, for the celebration of the fifth centenary of the Legend of the Miraculous Sacrament.[5]
+
+Southern transept: detail of a stained glass window by Jean Haeck depicting Charles V (1538)
+
+Nave of the cathedral: stained glass window by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier (c. 1870)
+
+Three scenes of the Legend of the Miraculous Sacrament. Stained glass windows by Capronnier (c. 1870)
+
+The big organ in the nave was inaugurated in October 2000. The organ has 4300 pipes, 63 stops, four manuals and one pedal. This instrument is the work of the German organ builder Gerhard Grenzing and his Spanish assistants from Barcelona.
+
+Both towers contain bells. The south tower contains a 49-bell carillon by the Royal Eijsbouts bell foundry from 1966, on which Sunday concerts are often given. Out of all the bells in the carillon, only 7 of them can ring. They are, from heaviest to lightest: Fabiola, Maria, Michael, Gudula, Philippe, Astrid, and Laurent. Fabiola, Philippe, Astrid and Laurent are named after members of the Belgian royal family.
+
+The north tower contains a single bourdon called Salvator, it was cast by Peter van den Gheyn in 1638. There is also another empty space where a second bourdon used to be. The bourdon has a deep crankshaft, but counterweights have already been removed. There are plans to hang it again on a straight axis with a flying clapper.
+
+At the end of the 1990s, Brussels ornithologists discovered a couple of peregrine falcons hibernating on top of the towers of the cathedral. In 2001, ornithologists of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) in association with the Fonds d’Intervention pour les Rapaces installed a laying-nest on the edifice in an attempt to encourage nest-building. This laying-nest was never used, but in the spring of 2004, a pair of falcons nested on a balcony on top of the cathedral’s northern tower. At the beginning of March, the female laid three eggs.
+
+As a result of watching the three chicks perform acrobatic feats on the cathedral’s gargoyles, at the end of May 2004, the project "Falcons for everyone" was developed by the RBINS in association with the Commission Ornithologique de Watermael-Boitsfort. The project installed cameras with a live video stream on their website.[7]
+
+The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula serves as the co-cathedral of the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, the Primate of Belgium, who is currently Archbishop Jozef De Kesel. Due to its importance and its location in the national capital, it is often used for Catholic ceremonies of national interest, such as royal marriages and state funerals.[8]  For example, in 1999, it was the setting for the wedding of Prince Philippe and Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz.

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+Florence (/ˈflɔːrəns/ FLORR-ənss; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] (listen))[a] is a city in central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.[4]
+
+Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era.[5] It is considered by many academics[6] to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages".[7] Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions.[8] From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[9] due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.
+
+The city attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.[10] The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.[11] Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, Forbes has ranked it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.[12]
+
+Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion,[11] and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor;[13] furthermore, it is a major national economic centre,[11] as well as a tourist and industrial hub. In 2008 the city had the 17th-highest average income in Italy.[14]
+
+Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. It was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries.[10]
+
+The language spoken in the city during the 14th century came to be accepted as the model for what would become the Italian language. Thanks especially to the works of the Tuscans Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, was adopted as the basis for a national literary language.[15]
+
+Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War. They similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome.
+
+Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII. The Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
+
+Roman Empire 27 BC–AD 285 
+ Western Roman Empire 285–476 
+ Kingdom of Odoacer 476–493 
+ Ostrogothic Kingdom 493–553 
+ Eastern Roman Empire 553–568 
+ Lombard Kingdom 570–773 
+ Carolingian Empire 774–797 
+ Regnum Italiae 797–1001 
+ March of Tuscany 1002–1115 
+ Republic of Florence 1115–1532 
+ Duchy of Florence 1532–1569 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1569–1801 
+ Kingdom of Etruria 1801–1807 
+ First French Empire 1807–1815 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1815–1859 
+ United Provinces of Central Italy 1859–1860 
+ Kingdom of Italy 1861–1946
+
+The Etruscans initially formed in the 9th–8th century BC  the small settlement of Fiesole (Faesulae in Latin),[16] which was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome.[citation needed] The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named originally Fluentia, owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, which was later changed to Florentia ("flowering").[17] It was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre.
+
+In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was often troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county.[18]
+
+Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD. The Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune", meaning a city state. The city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry (mainly textile industry), and access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community. The Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation (e.g. bills of exchange,[19] double-entry bookkeeping system) to medieval fairs. This period also saw the eclipse of Florence's formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406), and the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice (1293).[20]
+
+At the height of demographic expansion around 1325, the urban population may have been as great as 120,000, and the rural population around the city was probably close to 300,000.[21] The Black Death of 1348 reduced it by over half,[22][23] about 25,000 are said to have been supported by the city's wool industry: in 1345 Florence was the scene of an attempted strike by wool combers (ciompi), who in 1378 rose up in a brief revolt against oligarchic rule in the Revolt of the Ciompi. After their suppression, Florence came under the sway (1382–1434) of the Albizzi family, who became bitter rivals of the Medici.
+
+In the 15th century, Florence was among the largest cities in Europe with a population of 60,000 and was considered rich and economically successful.[24] Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family member to essentially control the city from behind the scenes. Although the city was technically a democracy of sorts, his power came from a vast patronage network along with his alliance to the new immigrants, the gente nuova (new people). The fact that the Medici were bankers to the pope also contributed to their ascendancy. Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero, who was, soon after, succeeded by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo in 1469. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Lorenzo was an accomplished poet and musician and brought composers and singers to Florence, including Alexander Agricola, Johannes Ghiselin, and Heinrich Isaac. By contemporary Florentines (and since), he was known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent" (Lorenzo il Magnifico).
+
+Following Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1492, he was succeeded by his son Piero II. When the French king Charles VIII invaded northern Italy, Piero II chose to resist his army. But when he realised the size of the French army at the gates of Pisa, he had to accept the humiliating conditions of the French king. These made the Florentines rebel, and they expelled Piero II. With his exile in 1494, the first period of Medici rule ended with the restoration of a republican government.
+
+During this period, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had become prior of the San Marco monastery in 1490. He was famed for his penitential sermons, lambasting what he viewed as widespread immorality and attachment to material riches. He praised the exile of the Medici as the work of God, punishing them for their decadence. He seized the opportunity to carry through political reforms leading to a more democratic rule. But when Savonarola publicly accused Pope Alexander VI of corruption, he was banned from speaking in public. When he broke this ban, he was excommunicated. The Florentines, tired of his extreme teachings, turned against him and arrested him. He was convicted as a heretic and burned at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498.
+
+A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimisation of political expediency and even malpractice. In other words, Machiavelli was a political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook, titled The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power. Commissioned by the Medici, Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories, the history of the city. Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic on 16 May 1527. Restored twice with the support of both Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the Medici in 1532 became hereditary dukes of Florence, and in 1569 Grand Dukes of Tuscany, ruling for two centuries. In all Tuscany, only the Republic of Lucca (later a Duchy) and the Principality of Piombino were independent from Florence.
+
+The extinction of the Medici dynasty and the accession in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, led to Tuscany's temporary inclusion in the territories of the Austrian crown. It became a secundogeniture of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who were deposed for the House of Bourbon-Parma in 1801. From 1801 to 1807 Florence was the capital of the Napoleonic client state Kingdom of Etruria. The Bourbon-Parma were deposed in December 1807 when Tuscany was annexed by France. Florence was the prefecture of the French département of Arno from 1808 to the fall of Napoleon in 1814. The Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was restored on the throne of Tuscany at the Congress of Vienna but finally deposed in 1859. Tuscany became a region of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
+
+Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in 1865 and, in an effort to modernise the city, the old market in the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and many medieval houses were pulled down and replaced by a more formal street plan with newer houses. The Piazza (first renamed Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, then Piazza della Repubblica, the present name) was significantly widened and a large triumphal arch was constructed at the west end. This development was unpopular and was prevented from continuing by the efforts of several British and American people living in the city.[citation needed] A museum recording the destruction stands nearby today.
+
+The country's second capital city was superseded by Rome six years later, after the withdrawal of the French troops allowed the capture of Rome.
+
+During World War II the city experienced a year-long German occupation (1943–1944) being part of the Italian Social Republic. Hitler declared it an open city on July 3, 1944 as troops of the British 8th Army closed in.[25] In early August, the retreating Germans decided to demolish all the bridges along the Arno linking the district of Oltrarno to the rest of the city, making it difficult for troops of the 8th Army to cross. However, at the last moment Charles Steinhauslin, at the time consul of 26 countries in Florence, convinced the German general in Italy that the Ponte Vecchio was not to be destroyed due to its historical value.[citation needed] Instead, an equally historic area of streets directly to the south of the bridge, including part of the Corridoio Vasariano, was destroyed using mines. Since then the bridges have been restored to their original forms using as many of the remaining materials as possible, but the buildings surrounding the Ponte Vecchio have been rebuilt in a style combining the old with modern design. Shortly before leaving Florence, as they knew that they would soon have to retreat, the Germans executed many freedom fighters and political opponents publicly, in streets and squares including the Piazza Santo Spirito.[citation needed]
+
+Florence was liberated by New Zealand, South African and British troops on 4 August 1944 alongside partisans from the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation (CTLN). The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city (Americans about nine kilometres (5.6 miles) south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno).
+
+At the end of World War II in May 1945, the US Army's Information and Educational Branch was ordered to establish an overseas university campus for demobilised American service men and women in Florence, Italy. The first American University for service personnel was established in June 1945 at the School of Aeronautics in Florence, Italy. Some 7,500 soldier-students were to pass through the University during its four one-month sessions (see G. I. American Universities).[26]
+
+In November 1966, the Arno flooded parts of the centre, damaging many art treasures. Around the city there are tiny placards on the walls noting where the flood waters reached at their highest point.
+
+Florence lies in a basin formed by the hills of Careggi, Fiesole, Settignano, Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale and Bellosguardo (Florence). The Arno river, three other minor rivers (Mugnone,[27] Ema and Greve) and some streams flow through it.[28]
+
+Florence has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), tending to Mediterranean (Csa).[29] It has hot summers with moderate or light rainfall and cool, damp winters. As Florence lacks a prevailing wind, summer temperatures are higher than along the coast. Rainfall in summer is convectional, while relief rainfall dominates in the winter. Snow flurries happen almost every year,[30] but often result in no accumulation.[31] The highest officially recorded temperature was 42.6 °C (108.7 °F) on 26 July 1983 and the lowest was −23.2 °C (−9.8 °F) on 12 January 1985.[32]
+
+The traditional boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The 5 administrative boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council (Consiglio Comunale), which is composed of 36 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed by 7 assessors, that is nominated and presieded over by a directly elected Mayor. The current mayor of Florence is Dario Nardella.
+
+The municipality of Florence is subdivided into five administrative Boroughs (Quartieri). Each Borough is governed by a Council (Consiglio) and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition they are supplied with an autonomous founding in order to finance local activities. The Boroughs are:
+
+All of the five boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party.
+
+The former Italian Prime Minister (2014–2016), Matteo Renzi, served as mayor from 2009 to 2014.
+
+Florence is known as the "cradle of the Renaissance" (la culla del Rinascimento) for its monuments, churches, and buildings. The best-known site of Florence is the domed cathedral of the city, Santa Maria del Fiore, known as The Duomo, whose dome was built by Filippo Brunelleschi. The nearby Campanile (partly designed by Giotto) and the Baptistery buildings are also highlights. The dome, 600 years after its completion, is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world.[37] In 1982, the historic centre of Florence (Italian: centro storico di Firenze) was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.[38] The centre of the city is contained in medieval walls that were built in the 14th century to defend the city. At the heart of the city, in Piazza della Signoria, is Bartolomeo Ammannati's Fountain of Neptune (1563–1565), which is a masterpiece of marble sculpture at the terminus of a still functioning Roman aqueduct.
+
+The layout and structure of Florence in many ways harkens back to the Roman era, where it was designed as a garrison settlement.[10] Nevertheless, the majority of the city was built during the Renaissance.[10] Despite the strong presence of Renaissance architecture within the city, traces of medieval, Baroque, Neoclassical and modern architecture can be found. The Palazzo Vecchio as well as the Duomo, or the city's Cathedral, are the two buildings which dominate Florence's skyline.[10]
+
+The river Arno, which cuts through the old part of the city, is as much a character in Florentine history as many of the people who lived there. Historically, the locals have had a love-hate relationship with the Arno – which alternated between nourishing the city with commerce, and destroying it by flood.
+
+One of the bridges in particular stands out — the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), whose most striking feature is the multitude of shops built upon its edges, held up by stilts. The bridge also carries Vasari's elevated corridor linking the Uffizi to the Medici residence (Palazzo Pitti). Although the original bridge was constructed by the Etruscans, the current bridge was rebuilt in the 14th century. It is the only bridge in the city to have survived World War II intact. It is the first example in the western world of a bridge built using segmental arches, that is, arches less than a semicircle, to reduce both span-to-rise ratio and the numbers of pillars to allow lesser encumbrance in the riverbed (being in this much more successful than the Roman Alconétar Bridge).
+
+The church of San Lorenzo contains the Medici Chapel, the mausoleum of the Medici family—the most powerful family in Florence from the 15th to the 18th century. Nearby is the Uffizi Gallery, one of the finest art museums in the world – founded on a large bequest from the last member of the Medici family.
+
+The Uffizi is located at the corner of Piazza della Signoria, a site important for being the centre of Florence's civil life and government for centuries. The Palazzo della Signoria facing it is still home of the municipal government. Many significant episodes in the history of art and political changes were staged here, such as:
+
+The Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria is the location of a number of statues by other sculptors such as Donatello, Giambologna, Ammannati and Cellini, although some have been replaced with copies to preserve the originals.
+
+Florence contains several palaces and buildings from various eras. The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence and also an art museum. This large Romanesque crenellated fortress-palace overlooks the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo's David statue as well as the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the Palazzo della Signoria, after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, it was also given several other names: Palazzo del Popolo, Palazzo dei Priori, and Palazzo Ducale, in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno to the Palazzo Pitti. It is linked to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti through the Corridoio Vasariano.
+
+Palazzo Medici Riccardi, designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo il Vecchio, of the Medici family, is another major edifice, and was built between 1445 and 1460. It was well known for its stone masonry that includes rustication and ashlar. Today it is the head office of the Metropolitan City of Florence and hosts museums and the Riccardiana Library. The Palazzo Strozzi, an example of civil architecture with its rusticated stone, was inspired by the Palazzo Medici, but with more harmonious proportions. Today the palace is used for international expositions like the annual antique show (founded as the Biennale dell'Antiquariato in 1959), fashion shows and other cultural and artistic events. Here also is the seat of the Istituto Nazionale del Rinascimento and the noted Gabinetto Vieusseux, with the library and reading room.
+There are several other notable places, including the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino; the Palazzo Davanzati, which houses the museum of the Old Florentine House; the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, designed in the Neo-Renaissance style in 1871; the Palazzo Spini Feroni, in Piazza Santa Trinita, a historic 13th-century private palace, owned since the 1920s by shoe-designer Salvatore Ferragamo; as well as various others, including the Palazzo Borghese, the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, the Palazzo Antinori, and the Royal building of Santa Maria Novella.
+
+Florence contains numerous museums and art galleries where some of the world's most important works of art are held. The city is one of the best preserved Renaissance centres of art and architecture in the world and has a high concentration of art, architecture and culture.[39] In the ranking list of the 15 most visited Italian art museums, ⅔ are represented by Florentine museums.[40] The Uffizi is one of these, having a very large collection of international and Florentine art. The gallery is articulated in many halls, catalogued by schools and chronological order. Engendered by the Medici family's artistic collections through the centuries, it houses works of art by various painters and artists. The Vasari Corridor is another gallery, built connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace passing by the Uffizi and over the Ponte Vecchio. The Galleria dell'Accademia houses a Michelangelo collection, including the David. It has a collection of Russian icons and works by various artists and painters. Other museums and galleries include the Bargello, which concentrates on sculpture works by artists including Donatello, Giambologna and Michelangelo; the Palazzo Pitti, containing part of the Medici family's former private collection. In addition to the Medici collection, the palace's galleries contain many Renaissance works, including several by Raphael and Titian, large collections of costumes, ceremonial carriages, silver, porcelain and a gallery of modern art dating from the 18th century. Adjoining the palace are the Boboli Gardens, elaborately landscaped and with numerous sculptures.
+
+There are several different churches and religious buildings in Florence. The cathedral is Santa Maria del Fiore. The San Giovanni Baptistery located in front of the cathedral, is decorated by numerous artists, notably by Lorenzo Ghiberti with the Gates of Paradise. Other churches in Florence include the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, located in Santa Maria Novella square (near the Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station) which contains works by Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio; the Basilica of Santa Croce, the principal Franciscan church in the city, which is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres (2,600 feet) south east of the Duomo, and is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Rossini, thus it is known also as the Temple of the Italian Glories (Tempio dell'Itale Glorie); the Basilica of San Lorenzo, which is one of the largest churches in the city, situated at the centre of Florence's main market district, and the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III; Santo Spirito, in the Oltrarno quarter, facing the square with the same name; Orsanmichele, whose building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele, now demolished; Santissima Annunziata, a Roman Catholic basilica and the mother church of the Servite order; Ognissanti, which was founded by the lay order of the Umiliati, and is among the first examples of Baroque architecture built in the city; the Santa Maria del Carmine, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, which is the location of the Brancacci Chapel, housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, later finished by Filippino Lippi; the Medici Chapel with statues by Michelangelo, in the San Lorenzo; as well as several others, including Santa Trinita, San Marco, Santa Felicita, Badia Fiorentina, San Gaetano, San Miniato al Monte, Florence Charterhouse, and Santa Maria del Carmine. The city additionally contains the Orthodox Russian church of Nativity, and the Great Synagogue of Florence, built in the 19th century.
+
+Florence contains various theatres and cinemas. The Odeon Cinema of the Palazzo dello Strozzino is one of the oldest cinemas in the city. Established from 1920 to 1922[41] in a wing of the Palazzo dello Strozzino, it used to be called the Cinema Teatro Savoia (Savoy Cinema-Theatre), yet was later called Odeon. The Teatro della Pergola, located in the centre of the city on the eponymous street, is an opera house built in the 17th century. Another theatre is the Teatro Comunale (or Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele, which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. There are several other theatres, such as the Saloncino Castinelli, the Teatro Puccini, the Teatro Verdi, the Teatro Goldoni and the Teatro Niccolini.
+
+Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.
+
+Aside from such monuments, Florence contains numerous major squares (piazze) and streets. The Piazza della Repubblica is a square in the city centre, location of the cultural cafés and bourgeois palaces. Among the square's cafés (like Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski or the Hard Rock Cafè), the Giubbe Rosse café has long been a meeting place for artists and writers, notably those of Futurism. The Piazza Santa Croce is another; dominated by the Basilica of Santa Croce, it is a rectangular square in the centre of the city where the Calcio Fiorentino is played every year. Furthermore, there is the Piazza Santa Trinita, a square near the Arno that mark the end of the Via de' Tornabuoni street.
+
+Other squares include the Piazza San Marco, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Piazza Beccaria and the Piazza della Libertà. The centre additionally contains several streets. Such include the Via Camillo Cavour, one of the main roads of the northern area of the historic centre; the Via Ghibellina, one of central Florence's longest streets; the Via dei Calzaiuoli, one of the most central streets of the historic centre  which links Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Signoria, winding parallel to via Roma and Piazza della Repubblica; the Via de' Tornabuoni, a luxurious street in the city centre that goes from Antinori square to ponte Santa Trinita, across Piazza Santa Trinita, characterised by the presence of fashion boutiques; the Viali di Circonvallazione, 6-lane boulevards surrounding the northern part of the historic centre; as well as others, such as Via Roma, Via degli Speziali, Via de' Cerretani, and the Viale dei Colli.
+
+Florence also contains various parks and gardens. Such include the Boboli Gardens, the Parco delle Cascine, the Giardino Bardini and the Giardino dei Semplici, amongst others.
+
+In 1200 the city was home to 50,000 people.[42] By 1300 the population of the city proper was 120,000, with an additional 300,000 living in the Contado.[43] Between 1500 and 1650 the population was around 70,000.[44][45]
+
+As of 31 October 2010[update], the population of the city proper is 370,702, while Eurostat estimates that 696,767 people live in the urban area of Florence. The Metropolitan Area of Florence, Prato and Pistoia, constituted in 2000 over an area of roughly 4,800 square kilometres (1,853 sq mi), is home to 1.5 million people. Within Florence proper, 46.8% of the population was male in 2007 and 53.2% were female. Minors (children aged 18 and less) totalled 14.10 percent of the population compared to pensioners, who numbered 25.95 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Florence resident is 49 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Florence grew by 3.22 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent.[46] The birth rate of Florence is 7.66 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
+
+As of 2009[update], 87.46% of the population was Italian. An estimated 6,000 Chinese live in the city.[47] The largest immigrant group came from other European countries (mostly Romanians and Albanians): 3.52%, East Asia (mostly Chinese and Filipino): 2.17%, the Americas: 1.41%, and North Africa (mostly Moroccan): 0.9%.[48]
+
+Much like the rest of Italy most of the people in Florence are Roman Catholic, with more than 90% of the population belonging to the Archdiocese of Florence.[49][50]
+
+Tourism is, by far, the most important of all industries and most of the Florentine economy relies on the money generated by international arrivals and students studying in the city.[10] The value tourism to the city totalled some €2.5 billion in 2015 and the number of visitors had increased by 5.5% from the previous year.[51]
+
+In 2013, Florence was listed as the second best world city by Condé Nast Traveler.[52]
+
+Manufacturing and commerce, however, still remain highly important. Florence is also Italy's 17th richest city in terms of average workers' earnings, with the figure being €23,265 (the overall city's income is €6,531,204,473), coming after Mantua, yet surpassing Bolzano.[53]
+
+Florence is a major production and commercial centre in Italy, where the Florentine industrial complexes in the suburbs produce all sorts of goods, from furniture, rubber goods, chemicals, and food.[10] However, traditional and local products, such as antiques, handicrafts, glassware, leatherwork, art reproductions, jewellery, souvenirs, elaborate metal and iron-work, shoes, accessories and high fashion clothes also dominate a fair sector of Florence's economy.[10] The city's income relies partially on services and commercial and cultural interests, such as annual fairs, theatrical and lyrical productions, art exhibitions, festivals and fashion shows, such as the Calcio Fiorentino. Heavy industry and machinery also take their part in providing an income. In Nuovo Pignone, numerous factories are still present, and small-to medium industrial businesses are dominant. The Florence-Prato-Pistoia industrial districts and areas were known as the 'Third Italy' in the 1990s, due to the exports of high-quality goods and automobile (especially the Vespa) and the prosperity and productivity of the Florentine entrepreneurs. Some of these industries even rivalled the traditional industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto due to high profits and productivity.[10]
+
+In the fourth quarter of 2015, manufacturing increased by 2.4% and exports increased by 7.2%. Leading sectors included mechanical engineering, fashion, pharmaceutics, food and wine. During 2015, permanent employment contracts increased by 48.8 percent, boosted by nationwide tax break.[51]
+
+Tourism is the most significant industry in central Florence. From April to October, tourists outnumber local population. Tickets to the Uffizi and Accademia museums are regularly sold out and large groups regularly fill the basilicas of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, both of which charge for entry. Tickets for The Uffizi and Accademia can be purchased online prior to visiting.[54] In 2010, readers of Travel + Leisure magazine ranked the city as their third favourite tourist destination.[55] In 2015, Condé Nast Travel readers voted Florence as the best city in Europe.[56]
+
+Studies by Euromonitor International have concluded that cultural and history-oriented tourism is generating significantly increased spending throughout Europe.[57]
+
+Florence is believed to have the greatest concentration of art (in proportion to its size) in the world.[58] Thus, cultural tourism is particularly strong, with world-renowned museums such as the Uffizi selling over 1.93 million tickets in 2014.[59] The city's convention centre facilities were restructured during the 1990s and host exhibitions, conferences, meetings, social forums, concerts and other events all year.
+
+In 2016, Florence had 20,588 hotel rooms in 570 facilities. International visitors use 75% of the rooms; some 18% of those were from the U.S.[60] In 2014, the city had 8.5 million overnight stays.[61] A Euromonitor report indicates that in 2015 the city ranked as the world's 36th most visited in the world, with over 4.95 million arrivals for the year.[62]
+
+Tourism brings revenue to Florence, but it creates certain problems. The Ponte Vecchio, The San Lorenzo Market and Santa Maria Novella are plagued by pickpockets.[63] The province of Florence receives roughly 13 million visitors per year[64] and in peak seasons, that can lead to over crowding at popular locations.[65] Mayor Dario Nardella is particularly concerned about visitors who arrive on buses, stay only a few hours, spend little money but contribute significantly to overcrowding. "No museum visit, just a photo from the square, the bus back and then on to Venice... We don’t want tourists like that," he said.[66]
+
+Some tourists are less than respectful of the city's cultural heritage, according to Nardella. In June 2017, he instituted a programme of spraying church steps with water to prevent tourists from using such areas as picnic spots. While he values the benefits of tourism, there has been "an increase among those who  sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them," he explained.[67] To boost the sale of traditional foods, the mayor had introduced legislation (enacted in 2016) that requires restaurants to use typical Tuscan products and rejected McDonald's application to open a location in the  Piazza del Duomo.[68]
+
+Food and wine have long been an important staple of the economy. The Chianti region is just south of the city, and its Sangiovese grapes figure prominently not only in its Chianti Classico wines but also in many of the more recently developed Supertuscan blends. Within 32 km (20 mi) to the west is the Carmignano area, also home to flavourful sangiovese-based reds. The celebrated Chianti Rufina district, geographically and historically separated from the main Chianti region, is also few kilometres east of Florence. More recently, the Bolgheri region (about 150 km (93 mi) southwest of Florence) has become celebrated for its "Super Tuscan" reds such as Sassicaia and Ornellaia.[69]
+
+Florence was the birthplace of High Renaissance art, which lasted from 1450–1527. While Medieval art focused on basic story telling of the Bible, Renaissance art focused on naturalism and human emotion.[70] Medieval art was abstract, formulaic, and largely produced by monks whereas Renaissance art was rational, mathematical, individualistic, consisted of linear perspective and shading (Chiaroscuro)[70] and produced by specialists (Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael). Religion was important, but with this new age came the humanization[71][72] of religious figures in art, such as Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1470s), and Madonna Della Seggiola; People of this age began to understand themselves as human beings, which reflected in art.[72] The Renaissance marked the rebirth of classical values in art and society as people studied the ancient masters of the Greco-Roman world;[71] Art became focused on realism as opposed to idealism.[72]
+
+Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance, Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.[73][74]
+
+Their works, together with those of many other generations of artists, are gathered in the several museums of the town: the Uffizi Gallery, the Palatina gallery with the paintings of the "Golden Ages",[75] the Bargello with the sculptures of the Renaissance, the museum of San Marco with Fra Angelico's works, the Academy, the chapels of the Medicis[76] Buonarroti's house with the sculptures of Michelangelo, the following museums: Bardini, Horne, Stibbert, Romano, Corsini, The Gallery of Modern Art, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum of Silverware and the museum of Precious Stones.[77]
+Several monuments are located in Florence: the Florence Baptistery with its mosaics; the Cathedral with its sculptures, the medieval churches with bands of frescoes; public as well as private palaces: Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Davanzati; monasteries, cloisters, refectories; the "Certosa". In the archaeological museum includes documents of Etruscan civilisation.[78] In fact the city is so rich in art that some first time visitors experience the Stendhal syndrome as they encounter its art for the first time.[79]
+
+Florentine architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1466) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) were among the fathers of both Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture.[80]
+
+The cathedral, topped by Brunelleschi's dome, dominates the Florentine skyline. The Florentines decided to start building it – late in the 13th century, without a design for the dome. The project proposed by Brunelleschi in the 14th century was the largest ever built at the time, and the first major dome built in Europe since the two great domes of Roman times – the Pantheon in Rome, and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore remains the largest brick construction of its kind in the world.[81][82] In front of it is the medieval Baptistery. The two buildings incorporate in their decoration the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In recent years, most of the important works of art from the two buildings – and from the nearby Giotto's Campanile, have been removed and replaced by copies. The originals are now housed in the Museum dell'Opera del Duomo, just to the east of the Cathedral.
+
+Florence has large numbers of art-filled churches, such as San Miniato al Monte, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Trinita, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, the Annunziata, Ognissanti and numerous others.[10]
+
+Artists associated with Florence range from Arnolfo di Cambio and Cimabue to Giotto, Nanni di Banco, and Paolo Uccello; through Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Donatello and Massaccio and the della Robbia family; through Fra Angelico and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca, and on to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Others include Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, Benozzo Gozzoli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippo Lippi, Bernardo Buontalenti, Orcagna, Pollaiuolo, Filippino Lippi, Verrocchio, Bronzino, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelozzo, the Rossellis, the Sangallos, and Pontormo. Artists from other regions who worked in Florence include Raphael, Andrea Pisano, Giambologna, Il Sodoma and Peter Paul Rubens.
+
+Picture galleries in Florence include the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Two superb collections of sculpture are in the Bargello and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. They are filled with the creations of Donatello, Verrochio, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelangelo and others. The Galleria dell'Accademia has Michelangelo's David – perhaps the best-known work of art anywhere, plus the unfinished statues of the slaves Michelangelo created for the tomb of Pope Julius II.[83][84] Other sights include the medieval city hall, the Palazzo della Signoria (also known as the Palazzo Vecchio), the Archeological Museum, the Museum of the History of Science, the Garden of Archimedes, the Palazzo Davanzatti, the Stibbert Museum, St. Marks, the Medici Chapels, the Museum of the Works of Santa Croce, the Museum of the Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the Zoological Museum ("La Specola"), the Bardini, and the Museo Horne. There is also a collection of works by the modern sculptor, Marino Marini, in a museum named after him. The Strozzi Palace is the site of special exhibits.[85]
+
+Florentine (fiorentino), spoken by inhabitants of Florence and its environs, is a Tuscan dialect and the immediate parent language to modern Italian.
+
+Although its vocabulary and pronunciation are largely identical to standard Italian, differences do exist. The Vocabolario del fiorentino contemporaneo (Dictionary of Modern Florentine) reveals lexical distinctions from all walks of life.[86] Florentines have a highly recognisable accent in phonetic terms due to the so-called gorgia toscana): "hard c" /k/ between two vowels is pronounced as a fricative [h] similar to an English h, so that dico 'I say' is phonetically [ˈdiːho], i cani 'the dogs' is [iˈhaːni]. Similarly, t between vowels is pronounced [θ] as in English thin, and p in the same position is the bilabial fricative [ɸ]. Other traits include using a form of the subjunctive mood last commonly used in medieval times,[citation needed] a frequent usage in everyday speech of the modern subjunctive, and a shortened pronunciation of the definite article, [i] instead of "il", causing doubling of the consonant that follows, so that il cane 'the dog', for example, is pronounced [ikˈkaːne].
+
+Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio pioneered the use of the vernacular[87] instead of the Latin used for most literary works at the time.
+
+Despite Latin being the main language of the courts and the Church in the Middle Ages, writers such as Dante Alighieri[87] and many others used their own language, the Florentine vernacular descended from Latin, in composing their greatest works. The oldest literary pieces written in Florentine go as far back as the 13th century. Florence's literature fully blossomed in the 14th century, when not only Dante with his Divine Comedy (1306–1321) and Petrarch, but also poets such as Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni composed their most important works.[87] Dante's masterpiece is the Divine Comedy, which mainly deals with the poet himself taking an allegoric and moral tour of Hell, Purgatory and finally Heaven, during which he meets numerous mythological or real characters of his age or before. He is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil, whose non-Christian beliefs damned him to Hell. Later on he is joined by Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven.[87]
+
+In the 14th century, Petrarch[88] and Giovanni Boccaccio[88] led the literary scene in Florence after Dante's death in 1321. Petrarch was an all-rounder writer, author and poet, but was particularly known for his Canzoniere, or the Book of Songs, where he conveyed his unremitting love for Laura.[88] His style of writing has since become known as Petrarchism.[88] Boccaccio was better known for his Decameron, a slightly grim story of Florence during the 1350s bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, when some people fled the ravaged city to an isolated country mansion, and spent their time there recounting stories and novellas taken from the medieval and contemporary tradition. All of this is written in a series of 100 distinct novellas.[88]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, Florence was the home town of political writer and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, whose ideas on how rulers should govern the land, detailed in The Prince, spread across European courts and enjoyed enduring popularity for centuries. These principles became known as Machiavellianism.
+
+Florence became a musical centre during the Middle Ages and music and the performing arts remain an important part of its culture. The growth of Northern Italian Cities in the 1500s likely contributed to its increased prominence. During the Renaissance, there were four kinds of musical patronage in the city with respect to both sacred and secular music: state, corporate, church, and private. It was here that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging the result—in other words, the first operas, setting the wheels in motion not just for the further development of the operatic form, but for later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony and concerto.  After the year 1600, Italian trends prevailed across Europe, by 1750 it was the primary musical language. The genre of the Madrigal, born in Italy, gained popularity in Britain and elsewhere. Several Italian cities were "larger on the musical map than their real-size for power suggested. Florence, was once such city which experienced a fantastic period in the early seventeenth Century of musico-theatrical innovation, including the beginning and flourishing of opera.[89]
+
+Opera was invented in Florence in the late 16th century when Jacobo Peri's Dafne an opera in the style of monody, was premiered.  Opera spread from Florence throughout Italy and eventually Europe.  Vocal Music in the choir setting was also taking new identity at this time.  At the beginning of the 17th century, two practices for writing music were devised, one the first practice or Stile Antico/Prima Prattica the other the Stile Moderno/Seconda Prattica.  The Stile Antico was more prevalent in Northern Europe and Stile Moderno was practiced more by the Italian Composers of the time.[90]
+
+Composers and musicians who have lived in Florence include Piero Strozzi (1550 – after 1608), Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) and Mike Francis (1961–2009). Giulio Caccini's book Le Nuove Musiche was significant in performance practice technique instruction at the time.[89]  The book specified a new term, in use by the 1630s, called monody which indicated the combination of voice and basso continuo and connoted a practice of stating text in a free, lyrical, yet speech-like manner.  This would occur while an instrument, usually a keyboard type such as harpsichord, played and held chords while the singer sang/spoke the monodic line.[91]
+
+Florence has been a setting for numerous works of fiction and movies, including the novels and associated films, such as Light in the Piazza, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No, Calmi Cuori Appassionati, Hannibal, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini, Virgin Territory and Inferno. The city is home to renowned Italian actors and actresses, such as Roberto Benigni, Leonardo Pieraccioni and Vittoria Puccini.
+
+Florence has appeared as a location in video games such as Assassins Creed II.[92] The Republic of Florence also appears as a playable nation in Paradox Interactive's grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV.
+
+16th century Florence is the setting of the Japanese manga and anime series Arte.
+
+Florentine food grows out of a tradition of peasant eating rather than rarefied high cooking. The majority of dishes are based on meat. The whole animal was traditionally eaten; tripe (trippa) and stomach (lampredotto) were once regularly on the menu and still are sold at the food carts stationed throughout the city. Antipasti include crostini toscani, sliced bread rounds topped with a chicken liver-based pâté, and sliced meats (mainly prosciutto and salame, often served with melon when in season). The typically saltless Tuscan bread, obtained with natural levain frequently features in Florentine courses, especially in its soups, ribollita and pappa al pomodoro, or in the salad of bread and fresh vegetables called panzanella that is served in summer. The bistecca alla fiorentina is a large (the customary size should weigh around 1.2 to 1.5 kg [40 to 50 oz]) – the "date" steak – T-bone steak of Chianina beef cooked over hot charcoal and served very rare with its more recently derived version, the tagliata, sliced rare beef served on a bed of arugula, often with slices of Parmesan cheese on top. Most of these courses are generally served with local olive oil, also a prime product enjoying a worldwide reputation.[93] Among the desserts, schiacciata alla fiorentina, a white flatbread cake, is one of the most popular; it is a very soft cake, prepared with extremely simple ingredients, typical of Florentine cuisine, and is especially eaten at Carnival.
+
+Research institutes and university departments are located within the Florence area and within two campuses at
+Polo di Novoli and Polo Scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino[94] as well as in the Research Area of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.[95]
+
+Florence has been an important scientific centre for centuries, notably during the Renaissance with scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+Florentines were one of the driving forces behind the Age of Discovery. Florentine bankers financed Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese explorers who pioneered the route around Africa to India and the Far East. It was a map drawn by the Florentine Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a student of Brunelleschi, that Christopher Columbus used to sell his "enterprise" to the Spanish monarchs, and which he used on his first voyage. Mercator's "Projection" is a refined version of Toscanelli's – taking into account the Americas, of which the Florentine was, obviously, ignorant.
+
+Galileo and other scientists pioneered the study of optics, ballistics, astronomy, anatomy, and so on. Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo Bruni, Machiavelli, and many others laid the groundwork for our understanding of science.
+
+By the year 1300 Florence had become a centre of textile production in Europe. Many of the rich families in Renaissance Florence were major purchasers of locally produced fine clothing, and the specialists of fashion in the economy and culture of Florence during that period is often underestimated.[96] Florence is regarded by some as the birthplace and earliest centre of the modern (post World War Two) fashion industry in Italy. The Florentine "soirées" of the early 1950s organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini were events where several Italian designers participated in group shows and first garnered international attention.[97] Florence has served as the home of the Italian fashion company Salvatore Ferragamo since 1928. Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, and Emilio Pucci are also headquartered in Florence. Other major players in the fashion industry such as Prada and Chanel have large offices and stores in Florence or its outskirts. Florence's main upscale shopping street is Via de' Tornabuoni, where major luxury fashion houses and jewellery labels, such as Armani and Bulgari, have their elegant boutiques. Via del Parione and Via Roma are other streets that are also well known for their high-end fashion stores.[98]
+
+The Scoppio del Carro ("Explosion of the Cart") is a celebration of the First Crusade. During the day of Easter, a cart, which the Florentines call the Brindellone and which is led by four white oxen, is taken to the Piazza del Duomo between the Baptistery of St. John the Baptist (Battistero di San Giovanni) and the Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore). The cart is connected by a rope to the interior of the church. Near the cart there is a model of a dove, which, according to legend, is a symbol of good luck for the city: at the end of the Easter mass, the dove emerges from the nave of the Duomo and ignites the fireworks on the cart.
+
+Calcio Storico Fiorentino ("Historic Florentine Football"), sometimes called Calcio in costume, is a traditional sport, regarded as a forerunner of soccer, though the actual gameplay most closely resembles rugby. The event originates from the Middle Ages, when the most important Florentine nobles amused themselves playing while wearing bright costumes. The most important match was played on 17 February 1530, during the siege of Florence. That day Papal troops besieged the city while the Florentines, with contempt of the enemies, decided to play the game notwithstanding the situation. The game is played in the Piazza di Santa Croce. A temporary arena is constructed, with bleachers and a sand-covered playing field. A series of matches are held between four teams representing each quartiere (quarter) of Florence during late June and early July.[99] There are four teams: Azzurri (light blue), Bianchi (white), Rossi (red) and Verdi (green). The Azzurri are from the quarter of Santa Croce, Bianchi from the quarter of Santo Spirito, Verdi are from San Giovanni and Rossi from Santa Maria Novella.
+
+In association football Florence is represented by ACF Fiorentina, which plays in Serie A, the top league of Italian league system.
+ACF Fiorentina has won two Italian Championships, in 1956 and 1969, and 6 Italian cup,[100]  since their formation in 1926. They play their games at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which holds 47,282.
+The female squad of ACF Fiorentina have won the women's association football Italian Championship of the 2016–17 season.
+
+The city is home of the Centro Tecnico Federale di Coverciano, in Coverciano, Florence, the main training ground of the Italian national team, and the technical department of the Italian Football Federation.
+
+Florence was selected to host the 2013 UCI World Road Cycling Championships.
+
+Since 2017 Florence is also represented in Eccellenza, the top tier of rugby union league system in Italy, by I Medicei, which is a club established in 2015 by the merging of the senior squads of I Cavalieri (of Prato) and Firenze Rugby 1931.
+I Medicei won the Serie A Championship in 2016–17 and were promoted to Eccellenza for the 2017–18 season.
+
+Rari Nantes Florentia is a successful water polo club based in Florence; both its male and female squads have won several Italian championships and the female squad has also European titles in their palmarès.
+
+The University of Florence was first founded in 1321, and was recognized by Pope Clement VI in 1349. In 2019, over 50,000 students were enrolled at the university.
+
+Several American universities host a campus in Florence. Including New York University, Marist College, Pepperdine, Stanford, Florida State and James Madison. Over 8,000 American students are enrolled for study in Florence.[101]
+
+The private school, Centro Machiavelli which teaches Italian language and culture to foreigners, is located in Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence.
+
+The centre of Florence is closed to through-traffic, although buses, taxis and residents with appropriate permits are allowed in. This area is commonly referred to as the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato), which is divided into several subsections.[102] Residents of one section, therefore, will only be able to drive in their district and perhaps some surrounding ones. Cars without permits are allowed to enter after 7.30 pm, or before 7.30 am. The rules shift during the tourist-filled summers, putting more restrictions on where one can get in and out.[103]
+
+The principal public transit network in the city is run by the ATAF and Li-nea bus company. Individual tickets, or a pass called Carta Agile with multiple rides, should be purchased in advance and are available at local tobacconists, bars and newspaper stalls and must be validated once on board. These tickets may be used on ATAF and Li-nea buses, Tramvia and second-class local trains only within city railway stations. Train tickets must be validated before boarding. The main bus station is next to Santa Maria Novella railway station. Trenitalia runs trains between the railway stations within the city, and to other destinations around Italy and Europe. The central railway station, Santa Maria Novella, is about 500 m (1,600 ft) northwest of the Piazza del Duomo. There are two other important stations: Campo di Marte and Rifredi. Most bundled routes are Firenze—Pisa, Firenze—Viareggio and Firenze-Arezzo (along the main line to Rome). Other local railways connect Florence with Borgo San Lorenzo in the Mugello area (Faentina railway) and Siena.
+
+Long distance 10 km (6.21 mi) buses are run by the SITA, Copit, CAP companies. The transit companies also accommodate travellers from the Amerigo Vespucci Airport, which is 5 km (3.1 mi) west of the city centre, and which has scheduled services run by major European carriers.
+
+In an effort to reduce air pollution and car traffic in the city, a multi-line tram network called Tramvia is under construction. The first line began operation on 14 February 2010 and connects Florence's primary intercity railway station (Santa Maria Novella) with the southwestern suburb of Scandicci. This line is 7.4 km (4.6 mi) long and has 14 stops. The construction of a second line began on 5 November 2011, construction was stopped due to contractors' difficulties and restarted in 2014 with the new line opening on February 11, 2019. This second line connects Florence's airport with the city centre. A third line (from Santa Maria Novella to the Careggi area, where the most important hospitals of Florence are located) is also under construction.[104][105][106]
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Firenze, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 59 min. 13% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 min, while 22% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.1 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.[107]
+
+Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station is the main national and international railway station in Florence and is used by 59 million people every year.[108] The building, designed by Giovanni Michelucci, was built in the Italian Rationalism style and it is one of the major rationalist buildings in Italy. It is located in Piazza della Stazione, near the Fortezza da Basso (a masterpiece of the military Renaissance architecture[109]) and the Viali di Circonvallazione, and in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's apse from which it takes its name. As well as numerous high speed trains to major Italian cities Florence is served by international overnight sleeper services to Munich and Vienna operated by Austrian railways ÖBB.
+
+A new high-speed rail station is under construction and is contracted to be operational by 2015.[110] It is planned to be connected to Vespucci airport, Santa Maria Novella railway station, and to the city centre by the second line of Tramvia.[111] The architectural firms Foster + Partners and Lancietti Passaleva Giordo and Associates designed this new rail station.[112]
+
+The Florence Airport, Peretola, is one of two main airports in the Tuscany region though it is not widely used by popular airlines. The other airport in the Tuscany region is the Galileo Galilei International Airport in Pisa.
+
+Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike sharing company, has been operating in Florence since July 2017. As of 2019, the company operates 4,000 bikes in Florence. The users scan the QR code on the bike using the Mobike app, and end the ride by parking curbside. The bikes have a fixed rate of €1 every 20 minutes. Since Mobike is a dock-less bike-sharing system, it does not provide stations, therefore the bikes can be left almost anywhere.
+
+Florence is twinned with:[113]
+
+
+
+L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata
+
+Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
+
+Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche
+
+Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily
+
+Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto
+

en/905.html.txt

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+Russian: Екатерина Алексеевна Романова, romanized: Yekaterina Alekseyevna Romanova
+
+Catherine II[a] (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 – 17 November 1796[b]), most commonly known as Catherine the Great,[c] was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796—the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised, resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe.
+
+In her accession to power and her rule of the empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably count Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and admirals such as Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. In the south, the Crimean Khanate was crushed following victories over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish wars, and Russia colonised the territories of Novorossiya along the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. In the west, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherine's former lover, King Stanisław August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. In the east, Russia started to colonise Alaska, establishing Russian America.
+
+Catherine reformed the administration of Russian guberniyas (governorates), and many new cities and towns were founded on her orders. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines. However, military conscription and the economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and of private landowners intensified the exploitation of serf labour. This was one of the chief reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachev Rebellion of Cossacks and peasants.
+
+The period of Catherine the Great's rule, the Catherinian Era,[1] is considered the Golden Age of Russia.[2] The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the short reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine, freed Russian nobles from compulsory military or state service. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the empress, changed the face of the country. She enthusiastically supported the ideals of the Enlightenment and is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots.[3] As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, including the establishment of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe.
+
+Catherine was born in Alt-Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland) as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt[4] but held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. Two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden: Gustav III and Charles XIII.[5] In accordance with the custom then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. Catherine was regarded as a tomboy and was known by the nickname Fike.[6]
+
+Her childhood was quite uneventful. She once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm: "I see nothing of interest in it."[7] Although Catherine was born a princess, her family had very little money. Her rise to power was supported by her mother's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations.[8][9] The more than  300 souvereign entities of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them quite small and powerless, made for a highly competitive political system as the various princely families fought for advantage over each other, often via political marriages.[10] For the smaller German princely families, an advantageous marriage was one of the best means of advancing their interests, and the young Sophie was groomed throughout her childhood to be the wife of some powerful ruler in order to improve the position of the von Anhalt family. Besides her native German, Sophie became fluent in French, the lingua franca of European elites in the 18th century.[11] The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, French, and Lutheran theology.[12]
+
+The choice of Sophie-Catherine as wife of her second cousin, the prospective tsar Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, resulted from some amount of diplomatic management in which Count Lestocq, Peter's aunt and ruling Russian Empress Elizabeth, and Frederick II of Prussia took part. Lestocq and Frederick wanted to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia to weaken Austria's influence and ruin the Russian chancellor Bestuzhev, on whom Empress Elizabeth relied, and who acted as a known partisan of Russo-Austrian co-operation.
+
+Catherine first met Peter III at the age of 10. Based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age. Peter also still played with toy soldiers. Catherine later wrote that she stayed at one end of the castle, and Peter at the other.[13]
+
+The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Catherine's mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Historical accounts portray Johanna as a cold, abusive woman who loved gossip and court intrigues. Her hunger for fame centred on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick of Prussia. Empress Elizabeth knew the family well: She had intended to marry Princess Johanna's brother Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein), who had died of smallpox in 1727 before the wedding could take place.[14] Despite Johanna's interference, Empress Elizabeth took a strong liking to Catherine, who, on arrival in Russia in 1744 spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Empress Elizabeth, but with her husband and with the Russian people as well. Catherine applied herself to learning the Russian language with zeal, rising at night and walking about her bedroom barefoot, repeating her lessons; although she mastered the language, she retained an accent. This practice led to a severe attack of pneumonia in March 1744. When she wrote her memoirs, she said she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown.
+
+Catherine recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She credited her survival to frequent bloodletting; in a single day, she had four phlebotomies. Her mother, who was opposed to this practice, fell into the empress's disfavour. When Catherine's situation looked desperate, her mother wanted her confessed by a Lutheran pastor. Awaking from her delirium, however, Catherine said: "I don't want any Lutheran; I want my Orthodox father [clergyman]." This raised her in the empress's esteem.
+
+Princess Sophie's father, a devout German Lutheran, opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite his objection, however, on 28 June 1744, the Russian Orthodox Church received Princess Sophie as a member with the new name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic Алексеевна (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey). On the following day, the formal betrothal took place. The long-planned dynastic marriage finally occurred on 21 August 1745 in Saint Petersburg. Sophie had turned 16; her father did not travel to Russia for the wedding. The bridegroom, known then as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day[update] Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739. The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which remained the residence of the "young court" for many years to come.
+
+Bored with her husband, Catherine became an avid reader of books, mostly in French.[12] Catherine disparaged her husband as devoted to reading "Lutheran prayer-books, the other the history of and trial of some highway robbers who had been hanged or broken on the wheel".[12] It was during this period that she first read Voltaire and the other philosophes of the French Enlightenment.[12] As she learned Russian, she became increasingly interested in the literature of her adopted country.[15] Finally, it was the Annals by Tacitus that caused what she called a "revolution" in her teenage mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be.[15] She was especially impressed with Tacitus's argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives".[15] While living at Oranienbaum, Catherine had her first sexual relationship with Sergei Saltykov as her marriage to Peter had not been consummated as Catherine later claimed.[16][17]
+
+Count Andrei Shuvalov, chamberlain to Catherine, was well-acquainted with the diarist James Boswell, and Boswell reports that Shuvalov shared private information regarding the monarch's intimate affairs. One of these rumours was that Peter took a mistress (Elizabeth Vorontsova),[18] while Catherine carried on liaisons with Sergei Saltykov,[19] Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (1734–1783),[20][21] Alexander Vasilchikov,[22][23] Grigory Potemkin,[22][23][24][25] Stanisław August Poniatowski,[26][27] and others. She became friends with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's mistress, who introduced her to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband.
+
+Peter III's temperament became quite unbearable for those who resided in the palace. He would announce trying drills in the morning to male servants, who later joined Catherine in her room to sing and dance until late hours. The classical view of the character of Peter, as having many flaws, is mainly drawn from the memoirs of his wife and successor[citation needed].
+
+Catherine became pregnant with her second child, Anna, who only lived to 14 months, in 1759. Due to various rumours of Catherine's promiscuity, Peter was led to believe he was not the child's biological father and is known to have proclaimed, "Go to the devil!", when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. She thus spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's alleged abrasive personality.[28] In her memoirs, Catherine strongly implied that the real father of her son Paul was not Peter, but rather Saltykov, which would mean that the House of Romanov came to an end in 1762, not 1918.[29] However, the fact that Paul closely resembled Peter in terms of appearance and personality has led many to argue that Peter was indeed the father of Paul.[29] What is certain is the fact that the direct male line of the Romanovs ended in 1762 with the accession of Peter to the throne, as he was the son of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and Anna Petrovna (the elder surviving daughter of Peter the Great).[citation needed]
+
+Catherine recalled in her memoirs her optimistic and resolute mood before her accession to the throne:
+
+After the death of the Empress Elizabeth on 5 January 1762 (OS: 25 December 1761), Peter succeeded to the throne as Emperor Peter III, and Catherine became empress consort. The imperial couple moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The tsar's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king, Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), and Russian troops had occupied Berlin in 1761. Peter, however, supported Frederick II, eroding much of his support among the nobility. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. Peter also intervened in a dispute between his Duchy of Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig (see Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff). As Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter planned war against Denmark, Russia's traditional ally against Sweden.
+
+In July 1762, barely six months after becoming emperor, Peter lingered in Oranienbaum with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives, while his wife lived in another palace nearby. On the night of 8 July (OS: 27 June 1762),[31] Catherine the Great was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested by her estranged husband and that all they had been planning must take place at once. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Ismailovsky regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. Catherine then left with the regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne. She had her husband arrested, and forced him to sign a document of abdication, leaving no one to dispute her accession to the throne.[32][33] On 17 July 1762—eight days after the coup that amazed the outside world[34] and just six months after his accession to the throne—Peter III died at Ropsha, possibly at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Grigory Orlov, then a court favourite and a participant in the coup). Peter supposedly was assassinated, but it is unknown how he died. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of hemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke.[35]
+
+At the time of Peter III's overthrow, other potential rivals for the throne included Ivan VI (1740–1764), who had been confined at Schlüsselburg in Lake Ladoga from the age of six months, and was thought to be insane. Ivan VI was assassinated during an attempt to free him as part of a failed coup: Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (1753–1775) was another potential rival.
+
+Although Catherine did not descend from the Romanov dynasty, her ancestors included members of the Rurik dynasty, which preceded the Romanovs. She succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the precedent established when Catherine I succeeded her husband Peter the Great in 1725. Historians debate Catherine's technical status, whether as a regent or as a usurper, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul. In the 1770s, a group of nobles connected with Paul, including Nikita Panin, considered a new coup to depose Catherine and transfer the crown to Paul, whose power they envisaged restricting in a kind of constitutional monarchy.[36] Nothing came of this, however, and Catherine reigned until her death.
+
+Catherine was crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 22 September 1762.[37] Her coronation marks the creation of one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, the Imperial Crown of Russia, designed by Swiss-French court diamond jeweller Jérémie Pauzié. Inspired by the Byzantine Empire design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the eastern and western Roman empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop. The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel that previously belonged to the Empress Elizabeth, and a diamond cross. The crown was produced in a record two months and weighed 2.3 kg.[38]
+From 1762, the Great Imperial Crown was the coronation crown of all Romanov emperors until the monarchy's abolition and the death of the last Romanov, Nicholas II, in 1918. It is one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, and is now on display in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Museum.[39]
+
+During her reign, Catherine extended by some 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi) the borders of the Russian Empire, absorbing New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers—the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
+
+Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 1763–1781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland and Sweden, to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favour and Catherine had him replaced with Ivan Osterman (in office 1781–1797).
+
+Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1766, but stopped short of a full military alliance.[40] Although she could see the benefits of Britain's friendship, she was wary of Britain's increased power following its victory in the Seven Years' War, which threatened the European balance of power.
+
+Peter the Great had succeeded in gaining a toehold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, in the Azov campaigns. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. Russia inflicted some of the heaviest defeats ever suffered by the Ottoman Empire, including the Battle of Chesma (5–7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). In 1769, a last major Crimean–Nogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves.[41]
+
+The Russian victories procured access to the Black Sea and allowed Catherine's government to incorporate present-day southern Ukraine, where the Russians founded the new cities of Odessa, Nikolayev, Yekaterinoslav (literally: "the Glory of Catherine"; the future Dnipro), and Kherson. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed 10 July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval or commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted to Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and made the Crimea a protectorate of Russia.
+
+Catherine annexed the Crimea in 1783, nine years after the Crimean Khanate had gained nominal independence—which had been guaranteed by Russia—from the Ottoman Empire as a result of her first war against the Turks. The palace of the Crimean khans passed into the hands of the Russians. In 1787, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo-Turkish War.
+
+The Ottomans restarted hostilities in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92. This war was another catastrophe for the Ottomans, ending with the Treaty of Jassy (1792), which legitimised the Russian claim to the Crimea and granted the Yedisan region to Russia.
+
+In the Treaty of Georgievsk (1783) Russia agreed to protect Georgia against any new invasion and further political aspirations of their Persian suzerains. Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they, under the new king Agha Mohammad Khan, had again invaded Georgia and established rule in 1795 and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. The ultimate goal for the Russian government, however, was to topple the anti-Russian shah (king), and to replace him with a half-brother, Morteza Qoli Khan, who had defected to Russia and was therefore pro-Russian.[42][43]
+
+It was widely expected that a 13,000-strong Russian corps would be led by the seasoned general, Ivan Gudovich, but the empress followed the advice of her lover, Prince Zubov, and entrusted the command to his youthful brother, Count Valerian Zubov. The Russian troops set out from Kizlyar in April 1796 and stormed the key fortress of Derbent on 10 May. The event was glorified by the court poet Derzhavin in his famous ode; he later commented bitterly on Zubov's inglorious return from the expedition in another remarkable poem.[citation needed]
+
+By mid-June, Zubov's troops overran without any resistance most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal cities—Baku, Shemakha, and Ganja. By November, they were stationed at the confluence of the Araks and Kura Rivers, poised to attack mainland Iran. In this month, the empress of Russia died and her successor Paul, who detested that the Zubovs had other plans for the army, ordered the troops to retreat to Russia. This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign: many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine longed for recognition as an enlightened sovereign. She pioneered for Russia the role that Britain later played through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries as an international mediator in disputes that could, or did, lead to war. She acted as mediator in the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779) between the German states of Prussia and Austria. In 1780, she established a League of Armed Neutrality, designed to defend neutral shipping from the British Royal Navy during the American Revolution.
+
+From 1788 to 1790, Russia fought a war against Sweden, a conflict instigated by Catherine's cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, who expected to simply overtake the Russian armies still engaged in war against the Ottoman Turks, and hoped to strike Saint Petersburg directly. But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in a tied battle of Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. Denmark declared war on Sweden in 1788 (the Theatre War). After the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in 1790, the parties signed the Treaty of Värälä (14 August 1790), returning all conquered territories to their respective owners and confirming the Treaty of Åbo. Peace ensued for 20 years, aided by the assassination of Gustav III in 1792.[citation needed]
+
+In 1764, Catherine placed Stanisław August Poniatowski, her former lover, on the Polish throne. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from the King Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in carrying it out in the 1790s. In 1768, she formally became protector of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provoked an anti-Russian uprising in Poland, the Confederation of Bar (1768–72). After the uprising broke down due to internal politics in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, she established in the Rzeczpospolita, a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys.[44]
+
+After the French Revolution of 1789, Catherine rejected many principles of the Enlightenment she had once viewed favourably. Afraid the May Constitution of Poland (1791) might lead to a resurgence in the power of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the growing democratic movements inside the Commonwealth might become a threat to the European monarchies, Catherine decided to intervene in Poland. She provided support to a Polish anti-reform group known as the Targowica Confederation. After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the Polish–Russian War of 1792 and in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria (1795).[citation needed]
+
+In the Far East, Russians became active in fur trapping in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands. This spurred Russian interest in opening trade with Japan to the south for supplies and food. In 1783, storms drove a Japanese sea captain, Daikokuya Kōdayū, ashore in the Aleutian Islands, at that time Russian territory. Russian local authorities helped his party, and the Russian government decided to use him as a trade envoy. On 28 June 1791, Catherine granted Daikokuya an audience at Tsarskoye Selo. Subsequently, in 1792, the Russian government dispatched a trade mission to Japan, led by Adam Laxman. The Tokugawa shogunate received the mission, but negotiations failed.[citation needed]
+
+The Qianlong emperor of China was committed to an expansionist policy in Central Asia and saw the Russian empire as a potential rival, making for difficult and unfriendly relations between Beijing and Saint Petersburg.[45] In 1762, he unilaterally abrogated the Treaty of Kyakhta, which governed the caravan trade between the two empires.[46] Another source of tension were Dzungar Mongol fugitives from the Chinese state who took refuge with the Russians.[47] The Dzungar genocide by the Qing state had led many Dzungars to seek sanctuary in the Russian empire, and was one of the reasons for the abrogation of the Treaty of Kyakhta. Catherine perceived the Qianlong emperor as an unpleasant and arrogant neighbor, once saying: "I shall not die until I have ejected the Turks from Europe, suppressed the pride of China and established trade with India".[47] In a 1790 letter to Baron de Grimm written in French, she called the Qianlong emperor "mon voisin chinois aux petits yeux" ("my Chinese neighbor with small eyes").[45]
+
+Russian economic development was well below the standards in western Europe. Historian François Cruzet writes that Russia under Catherine:
+
+had neither a free peasantry, nor a significant middle class, nor legal norms hospitable to private enterprise. Still, there was a start of industry, mainly textiles around Moscow and ironworks in the Ural Mountains, with a labor force mainly of serfs, bound to the works.[48]
+
+Catherine strongly encouraged the migration of the Volga Germans, farmers from Germany who settled mostly in the Volga River Valley region. They indeed helped modernise the sector that totally dominated the Russian economy. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing.[49][50][page needed]
+
+In 1768, the Assignation Bank was given the task of issuing the first government paper money. It opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1769. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. Paper notes were issued upon payment of similar sums in copper money, which were also refunded upon the presentation of those notes.
+The emergence of these assignation rubles was necessary due to large government spending on military needs, which led to a shortage of silver in the treasury (transactions, especially in foreign trade, were conducted almost exclusively in silver and gold coins). Assignation rubles circulated on equal footing with the silver ruble; a market exchange rate for these two currencies was ongoing. The use of these notes continued until 1849.[51]
+
+Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education. The Hermitage Museum, which now[update] occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books.[52] By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems and 10,000 drawings. Two wings were devoted to her collections of "curiosities".[53] She ordered the planting of the first "English garden" at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770.[52] In a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: "Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. I hate fountains that torture water in order to make it take a course contrary to its nature: Statues are relegated to galleries, vestibules etc; in a word, Anglomania is the master of my plantomania".[54]
+
+Catherine shared in the general European craze for all things Chinese, and made a point of collecting Chinese art and buying porcelain in the popular Chinoiserie style.[55] Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the "Chinese Palace" at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening.[55] The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style.[55] In 1779, she hired the British architect Charles Cameron to build the Chinese Village at Tsarkoe Selo (modern Pushkin, Russia).[55] Catherine had at first attempted to hire a Chinese architect to build the Chinese Village, and on finding that was impossible, settled on Cameron, who likewise specialised in the chinoiserie style.[55]
+
+She wrote comedies, fiction, and memoirs, while cultivating Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert—all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). Although she never met him face to face, she mourned him bitterly when he died. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine read three sorts of books, namely those for pleasure, those for information, and those to provide her with a philosophy.[56] In the first category, she read romances and comedies that were popular at the time, many of which were regarded as "inconsequential" by the critics both then and since.[56] She especially liked the work of German comic writers such as Moritz August von Thümmel and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai.[56] In the second category fell the work of Denis Diderot, Jacques Necker, Johann Bernhard Basedow and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.[57] Catherine expressed some frustration with the economists she read for what she regarded as their impractical theories, writing in the margin of one of Necker's books that if it was possible to solve all of the state's economic problems in one day, she would have done so a long time ago.[57] For information about particular nations that interested her, she read Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's Memoirs de Chine to learn about the vast and wealthy Chinese empire that bordered her empire; François Baron de Tott's Memoires de les Turcs et les Tartares for information about the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean khanate; the books of Frederick the Great praising himself to learn about Frederick just as much as to learn about Prussia; and the pamphlets of Benjamin Franklin denouncing the British Crown to understand the reasons for the American Revolution.[57] In the third category fell the work of Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Ferdinando Galiani, Nicolas Baudeau and Sir William Blackstone.[58] For philosophy, she liked books promoting what has been called "enlightened despotism", which she embraced as her ideal of an autocratic but reformist government that operated according to the rule of law, not the whims of the ruler, hence her interest in Blackstone's legal commentaries.[58]
+
+Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopédie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection.
+
+Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission—almost a consultative parliament—composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. The Commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. The empress prepared the "Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly", pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of Western Europe, especially Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria.
+
+As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisors, she refrained from immediately putting them into practice. After holding more than 200 sittings, the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory.
+
+In spite of this, Catherine began issuing codes to address some of the modernisation trends suggested in her Nakaz. In 1775, the empress decreed a Statute for the Administration of the Provinces of the Russian Empire. The statute sought to efficiently govern Russia by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts. By the end of her reign, 50 provinces and nearly 500 districts were created, government officials numbering more than double this were appointed, and spending on local government increased sixfold. In 1785, Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, increasing the power of the landed oligarchs. Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility, who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. Catherine also issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code of 1781, the Police Ordinance of 1782, and the Statute of National Education of 1786. In 1777, the empress described to Voltaire her legal innovations within a backward Russia as progressing "little by little".
+
+During Catherine's reign, Russians imported and studied the classical and European influences that inspired the Russian Enlightenment. Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the 19th century, especially for Alexander Pushkin. Catherine became a great patron of Russian opera. When Alexander Radishchev published his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790 (one year after the start of the French Revolution) and warned of uprisings because of the deplorable social conditions of the peasants held as serfs, Catherine exiled him to Siberia.
+
+Catherine also received Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (formerly court painter to Marie Antoinette) at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, by whom she was painted shortly before her death. Madame Vigée Le Brun vividly describes the empress in her memoirs: "the sight of this famous woman so impressed me that I found it impossible to think of anything: I could only stare at her. Firstly I was very surprised at her small stature; I had imagined her to be very tall, as great as her fame. She was also very fat, but her face was still beautiful, and she wore her white hair up, framing it perfectly. Her genius seemed to rest on her forehead, which was both high and wide. Her eyes were soft and sensitive, her nose quite Greek, her colour high and her features expressive. She addressed me immediately in a voice full of sweetness, if a little throaty: "I am delighted to welcome you here, Madame, your reputation runs before you. I am very fond of the arts, especially painting. I am no connoisseur, but I am a great art lover."
+
+Madame Vigée Le Brun also describes the empress at a gala: "The double doors opened and the Empress appeared. I have said that she was quite small, and yet on the days when she made her public appearances, with her head held high, her eagle-like stare and a countenance accustomed to command, all this gave her such an air of majesty that to me she might have been Queen of the World; she wore the sashes of three orders, and her costume was both simple and regal; it consisted of a muslin tunic embroidered with gold fastened by a diamond belt, and the full sleeves were folded back in the Asiatic style. Over this tunic she wore a red velvet dolman with very short sleeves. The bonnet which held her white hair was not decorated with ribbons, but with the most beautiful diamonds."
+
+Catherine held western European philosophies and culture close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia.[59] She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Catherine believed education could change the hearts and minds of the Russian people and turn them away from backwardness. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility.[60]
+
+Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters.[61] Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. She also established a commission composed of T.N. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. She consulted British education pioneers, particularly the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr John Brown.[62] In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I.I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs.[63] However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. In July 1765, Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission's problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. Dr. Brown argued, in a democratic country, education ought to be under the state's control and based on an education code. He also placed great emphasis on the "proper and effectual education of the female sex"; two years prior, Catherine had commissioned Ivan Betskoy to draw up the General Programme for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes.[64] This work emphasised the fostering of the creation of a 'new kind of people' raised in isolation from the damaging influence of a backward Russian environment.[65] The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. It was charged with admitting destitute and extramarital children to educate them in any way the state deemed fit. Because the Moscow Foundling Home was not established as a state-funded institution, it represented an opportunity to experiment with new educational theories. However, the Moscow Foundling Home was unsuccessful, mainly due to extremely high mortality rates, which prevented many of the children from living long enough to develop into the enlightened subjects the state desired.[66]
+
+Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, at the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoy, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute in 1764, first of its kind in Russia. At first, the institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie as well.[67] The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, often were accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings. Within the walls of the institute, they were taught impeccable French, musicianship, dancing, and complete awe of the monarch. At the institute, enforcement of strict discipline was central to its philosophy. Running and games were forbidden, and the building was kept particularly cold because too much warmth was believed to be harmful to the developing body as was excess play.[68]
+
+During 1768–1774, no progress was made in setting up a national school system.[69] Catherine continued to investigate educational theory and practice of other countries. She made many educational reforms despite the lack of a national school system. The remodeling of the Cadet Corps 1766 initiated many educational reforms. It then began to take children from a very young age and educate them until the age of 21. The curriculum was broadened from the professional military curriculum to include the sciences, philosophy, ethics, history, and international law. This policy in the Cadet Corps influenced the teaching in the Naval Cadet Corps and in the Engineering and Artillery Schools. After the war and the defeat of Pugachev, Catherine laid the obligation to establish schools at the guberniya—a provincial subdivision of the Russian empire ruled by a governor—on the Boards of Social Welfare set up with the participation of elected representatives from the three free estates.[70]
+
+By 1782, Catherine arranged another advisory commission to study the information gathered about the educational systems of many different countries.[71] A system produced by a mathematician, Franz Aepinus, stood out in particular. He was strongly in favor of the adoption of the Austrian three-tier model of trivial, real, and normal schools at the village, town, and provincial capital levels. In addition to the advisory commission, Catherine established a Commission of National Schools under Pyotr Zavadovsky. This commission was charged with organizing a national school network, training the teachers, and providing the textbooks. On 5 August 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was promulgated.[72] The statute established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools in guberniya capitals that were free of charge, open to all of the free classes (not serfs), and co-educational. It also regulated, in detail, the subjects to be taught at every age and the method of teaching. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". This work, divided into four parts, dealt with teaching methods, the subjects taught, the behaviour of the teacher, and the running of a school.[72]
+
+Judgment of the 19th century was generally critical, claiming that Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program.[73] Two years after the implementation of Catherine's program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions established. Throughout Russia, the inspectors encountered a patchy response. While the nobility provided appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their own children to private, prestigious institutions. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. An estimated 62,000 pupils were being educated in some 549 state institutions near the end of Catherine's reign. This was only a minuscule number of people compared to the size of the Russian population.[74]
+
+Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. She nationalised all of the church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. Very few members of the nobility entered the church, which became even less important than it had been. She did not allow dissenters to build chapels, and she suppressed religious dissent after the onset of the French Revolution.[75]
+
+However, Catherine promoted Christianity in her anti-Ottoman policy, promoting the protection and fostering of Christians under Turkish rule. She placed strictures on Catholics (ukaz of 23 February 1769), mainly Polish, and attempted to assert and extend state control over them in the wake of the partitions of Poland.[76] Nevertheless, Catherine's Russia provided an asylum and a base for regrouping to the Jesuits following the suppression of the Jesuits in most of Europe in 1773.[76]
+
+Catherine took many different approaches to Islam during her reign. Between 1762 and 1773, Muslims were prohibited from owning any Orthodox serfs. They were pressured into Orthodoxy through monetary incentives.[77] Catherine promised more serfs of all religions, as well as amnesty for convicts, if Muslims chose to convert to Orthodoxy.[78] However, the Legislative Commission of 1767 offered several seats to people professing the Islamic faith. This commission promised to protect their religious rights, but did not do so. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure.[78] Catherine chose to assimilate Islam into the state rather than eliminate it when public outcry became too disruptive. After the "Toleration of All Faiths" Edict of 1773, Muslims were permitted to build mosques and practise all of their traditions, the most obvious of these being the pilgrimage to Mecca, which previously had been denied.[79] Catherine created the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly to help regulate Muslim-populated regions as well as regulate the instruction and ideals of mullahs. The positions on the Assembly were appointed and paid for by Catherine and her government as a way of regulating religious affairs.[80]
+
+In 1785, Catherine approved the subsidising of new mosques and new town settlements for Muslims. This was another attempt to organise and passively control the outer fringes of her country. By building new settlements with mosques placed in them, Catherine attempted to ground many of the nomadic people who wandered through southern Russia.[81] In 1786, she assimilated the Islamic schools into the Russian public school system under government regulation. The plan was another attempt to force nomadic people to settle. This allowed the Russian government to control more people, especially those who previously had not fallen under the jurisdiction of Russian law.[82]
+
+Russia often treated Judaism as a separate entity, where Jews were maintained with a separate legal and bureaucratic system. Although the government knew that Judaism existed, Catherine and her advisers had no real definition of what a Jew is because the term meant many things during her reign.[83] Judaism was a small, if not nonexistent, religion in Russia until 1772. When Catherine agreed to the First Partition of Poland, the large new Jewish element was treated as a separate people, defined by their religion. Catherine separated the Jews from Orthodox society, restricting them to the Pale of Settlement. She levied additional taxes on the followers of Judaism; if a family converted to the Orthodox faith, that additional tax was lifted.[84] Jewish members of society were required to pay double the tax of their Orthodox neighbours. Converted Jews could gain permission to enter the merchant class and farm as free peasants under Russian rule.[85][86]
+
+In an attempt to assimilate the Jews into Russia's economy, Catherine included them under the rights and laws of the Charter of the Towns of 1782.[87] Orthodox Russians disliked the inclusion of Judaism, mainly for economic reasons. Catherine tried to keep the Jews away from certain economic spheres, even under the guise of equality; in 1790, she banned Jewish citizens from Moscow's middle class.[88]
+
+In 1785, Catherine declared Jews to be officially foreigners, with foreigners' rights.[89] This re-established the separate identity that Judaism maintained in Russia throughout the Jewish Haskalah. Catherine's decree also denied Jews the rights of an Orthodox or naturalised citizen of Russia. Taxes doubled again for those of Jewish descent in 1794, and Catherine officially declared that Jews bore no relation to Russians.
+
+In many ways, the Orthodox Church fared no better than its foreign counterparts during the reign of Catherine. Under her leadership, she completed what Peter III had started: The church's lands were expropriated, and the budget of both monasteries and bishoprics were controlled by the College of Economy.[90] Endowments from the government replaced income from privately held lands. The endowments were often much less than the original intended amount.[91] She closed 569 of 954 monasteries, of which only 161 received government money. Only 400,000 rubles of church wealth were paid back.[92] While other religions (such as Islam) received invitations to the Legislative Commission, the Orthodox clergy did not receive a single seat.[91] Their place in government was restricted severely during the years of Catherine's reign.[75]
+
+In 1762, to help mend the rift between the Orthodox church and a sect that called themselves the Old Believers, Catherine passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference.[93] While claiming religious tolerance, she intended to recall the believers into the official church. They refused to comply, and in 1764, she deported over 20,000 Old Believers to Siberia on the grounds of their faith.[93] In later years, Catherine amended her thoughts. Old Believers were allowed to hold elected municipal positions after the Urban Charter of 1785, and she promised religious freedom to those who wished to settle in Russia.[94][95]
+
+Religious education was reviewed strictly. At first, she simply attempted to revise clerical studies, proposing a reform of religious schools. This reform never progressed beyond the planning stages. By 1786, Catherine excluded all religion and clerical studies programs from lay education.[96] By separating the public interests from those of the church, Catherine began a secularisation of the day-to-day workings of Russia. She transformed the clergy from a group that wielded great power over the Russian government and its people to a segregated community forced to depend on the state for compensation.[91]
+
+Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions[97] for as long as they held her interest, and then pensioning them off with gifts of serfs and large estates. The percentage of state money spent on the court increased from 10.4% in 1767 to 11.4% in 1781 to 13.5% in 1795. Catherine gave away 66,000 serfs from 1762–1772, 202,000 from 1773–1793, and 100,000 in one day: 18 August 1795.[98]:119 Catherine bought the support of the bureaucracy. From 19 April 1764, any bureaucrat holding the same rank for seven years or more instantly was promoted. On 13 September 1767, Catherine decreed that after seven years in one rank, civil servants automatically would be promoted regardless of office or merit.[99]
+
+After her affair with her lover and adviser Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin ended in 1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk[100]). Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. One of her lovers, Pyotr Zavadovsky, received 50,000 rubles, a pension of 5,000 rubles and 4,000 peasants in Ukraine after she dismissed him in 1777.[101] The last of her lovers, Prince Zubov, was 40 years her junior. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.[102]
+
+Catherine decided to have herself inoculated against smallpox by Thomas Dimsdale, a British doctor. While this was considered a controversial method at the time, she succeeded. Her son Pavel later was inoculated as well. Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire and stated: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger". By 1800, approximately 2 million inoculations (almost 6% of the population) were administered in the Russian Empire.
+
+Catherine kept her illegitimate son by Grigori Orlov (Alexis Bobrinsky, later elevated to Count Bobrinsky by Paul I) near Tula, away from her court.
+
+Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, offered Stanisław Poniatowski a place in the embassy in return for gaining Catherine as an ally. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine, 26 years old and already married to the then-Grand Duke Peter for some 10 years, met the 22-year-old Poniatowski in 1755, therefore well before encountering the Orlov brothers. In 1757, Poniatowski served in the British forces during the Seven Years' War, thus severing close relationships with Catherine. She bore him a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage).
+
+King Augustus III of Poland died in 1763, so Poland needed to elect a new ruler. Catherine supported Poniatowski as a candidate to become the next king. She sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight, and imposing Poniatowski as king. Poniatowski accepted the throne, and thereby put himself under Catherine's control. News of Catherine's plan spread, and Frederick II (others say the Ottoman sultan) warned her that if she tried to conquer Poland by marrying Poniatowski, all of Europe would oppose her. She had no intention of marrying him, having already given birth to Orlov's child and to the Grand Duke Paul by then.
+
+Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) among them. Russia got territories east of the line connecting, more or less, Riga–Polotsk–Mogilev. In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper, leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795, one year before Catherine's death. Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation until 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.
+
+Grigory Orlov, the grandson of a rebel in the Streltsy Uprising (1698) against Peter the Great, distinguished himself in the Battle of Zorndorf (25 August 1758), receiving three wounds. He represented an opposite to Peter's pro-Prussian sentiment, with which Catherine disagreed. By 1759, Catherine and he had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, the Grand Duke Peter. Catherine saw Orlov as very useful, and he became instrumental in the 28 June 1762 coup d’état against her husband, but she preferred to remain the dowager empress of Russia rather than marrying anyone.
+
+Grigory Orlov and his other three brothers found themselves rewarded with titles, money, swords, and other gifts, but Catherine did not marry Grigory, who proved inept at politics and useless when asked for advice. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress.
+
+Orlov died in 1783. Their son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky (1762–1813), had one daughter, Maria Alexeyeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya) (1798–1835), who married in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 1784–1842) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against Napoleon, and later served as ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
+
+Grigory Potemkin was involved in the coup d'état of 1762. In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. By the winter of 1773, the Pugachev revolt had started to threaten. Catherine's son Paul had started gaining support; both of these trends threatened her power. She called Potemkin for help—mostly military—and he became devoted to her.
+
+In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Days earlier, she had found out about an uprising in the Volga region. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy. Potemkin quickly gained positions and awards. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. He later became the de facto absolute ruler of New Russia, governing its colonisation.
+
+In 1780, Emperor Joseph II, the son of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and travelling with him to Saint Petersburg. Potemkin also convinced Catherine to expand the universities in Russia to increase the number of scientists.
+
+Potemkin fell very ill in August 1783. Catherine worried he would not finish his work developing the south as he had planned. Potemkin died at the age of 52 in 1791.
+
+According to a census taken from 1754 to 1762, Catherine owned 500,000 serfs. A further 2.8 million belonged to the Russian state.[103]
+
+At the time of Catherine's reign, the landowning noble class owned the serfs, who were bound to the land they tilled. Children of serfs were born into serfdom and worked the same land their parents had. The serfs had very limited rights, but they were not exactly slaves. While the state did not technically allow them to own possessions, some serfs were able to accumulate enough wealth to pay for their freedom.[104] The understanding of law in imperial Russia by all sections of society was often weak, confused, or nonexistent, particularly in the provinces where most serfs lived. This is why some serfs were able to do things such as accumulate wealth. To become serfs, people conceded their freedoms to a landowner in exchange for their protection and support in times of hardship. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. All of this was true before Catherine's reign, and this is the system she inherited.
+
+Catherine did initiate some changes to serfdom. If a noble did not live up to his side of the deal, the serfs could file complaints against him by following the proper channels of law.[105] Catherine gave them this new right, but in exchange they could no longer appeal directly to her. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before.[106] Some serfs were able to use their new status to their advantage. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs.[107] Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. In addition, some governors listened to the complaints of serfs and punished nobles, but this was by no means universal.
+
+Other than these, the rights of a serf were very limited. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion, and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labour in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals.[108] The only thing a noble could not do to his serfs was to kill them. The life of a serf belonged to the state. Historically, when the serfs faced problems they could not solve on their own (such as abusive masters), they often appealed to the autocrat, and continued doing so during Catherine's reign, but she signed legislation prohibiting it.[109] Although she did not want to communicate directly with the serfs, she did create some measures to improve their conditions as a class and reduce the size of the institution of serfdom. For example, she took action to limit the number of new serfs; she eliminated many ways for people to become serfs, culminating in the manifesto of 17 March 1775, which prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again.[110] However, she also restricted the freedoms of many peasants. During her reign, Catherine gave away many state-owned peasants to become private serfs (owned by a landowner), and while their ownership changed hands, a serf's location never did. However, peasants owned by the state generally had more freedoms than those owned by a noble.
+
+While the majority of serfs were farmers bound to the land, a noble could have his serfs sent away to learn a trade or be educated at a school as well as employ them at businesses that paid wages.[111] This happened more often during Catherine's reign because of the new schools she established. Only in this way could a serf leave the farm for which he was responsible.
+
+The attitude of the serfs toward their autocrat had historically been a positive one.[112]
+However, if the tsar's policies were too extreme or too disliked, she was not considered the true tsar. In these cases, it was necessary to replace this “fake” tsar with the “true” tsar, whoever she may be. Because the serfs had no political power, they rioted to convey their message. However, usually, if the serfs did not like the policies of the tsar, they saw the nobles as corrupt and evil, preventing the people of Russia from communicating with the well-intentioned tsar and misinterpreting her decrees.[113] However, they were already suspicious of Catherine upon her accession because she had annulled an act by Peter III that essentially freed the serfs belonging to the Orthodox Church.[114] Naturally, the serfs did not like it when Catherine tried to take away their right to petition her because they felt as though she had severed their connection to the autocrat, and their power to appeal to her. Far away from the capital, they were confused as to the circumstances of her accession to the throne.[115]
+
+The peasants were discontented because of many other factors as well, including crop failure, and epidemics, especially a major epidemic in 1771. The nobles were imposing a stricter rule than ever, reducing the land of each serf and restricting their freedoms further beginning around 1767.[116] Their discontent led to widespread outbreaks of violence and rioting during Pugachev's Rebellion of 1774. The serfs probably followed someone who was pretending to be the true tsar because of their feelings of disconnection to Catherine and her policies empowering the nobles, but this was not the first time they followed a pretender under Catherine's reign.[117] Pugachev had made stories about himself acting as a real tsar should, helping the common people, listening to their problems, praying for them, and generally acting saintly, and this helped rally the peasants and serfs, with their very conservative values, to his cause.[118] With all this discontent in mind, Catherine did rule for 10 years before the anger of the serfs boiled over into a rebellion as extensive as Pugachev's. The rebellion ultimately failed and in fact backfired as Catherine was pushed away from the idea of serf liberation following the violent uprising. Under Catherine's rule, despite her enlightened ideals, the serfs were generally unhappy and discontented.
+
+Though Catherine's life and reign included remarkable personal successes, they ended in two failures. Her Swedish cousin (once removed), King Gustav IV Adolph, visited her in September 1796, the empress's intention being that her granddaughter Alexandra should become queen of Sweden by marriage. A ball was given at the imperial court on 11 September when the engagement was supposed to be announced. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. The frustration affected Catherine's health. She recovered well enough to begin to plan a ceremony which would establish her favourite grandson Alexander as her heir, superseding her difficult son Paul, but she died before the announcement could be made, just over two months after the engagement ball.[119]
+
+On 16 November [O.S. 5 November] 1796, Catherine rose early in the morning and had her usual morning coffee, soon settling down to work on papers; she told her lady's maid, Maria Perekusikhina, that she had slept better than she had in a long time.[120] Sometime after 9:00 she was found on the floor with her face purplish, her pulse weak, and her breathing shallow and laboured.[120] The court physician diagnosed a stroke[120][121] and despite attempts to revive her she fell into a coma. She was given the last rites and died the following evening around 9:45.[121] An autopsy confirmed stroke as the cause of death.[122]
+
+Later, several unfounded stories circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. A popular insult to the empress's legacy at the time is that she died after having sex with her horse. The story claimed that her maids believed that Catherine spent too much unsupervised time with her favorite horse, Dudley.[123] A German scholar Adam Olearius in his 1647 book Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise claimed that Russians had fondness for sodomy, especially with horses.[124] Olearius's claims about a supposed Russian tendency towards bestiality with horses was often repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the alleged barbarous "Asian" nature of Russia. Given the frequency which this story was repeated together with Catherine's love of her adopted homeland and her hippophilia, it was an easy step to apply this scurrilous story as the cause of her death.[124] Finally, Catherine's lack of shame about expressing her sexuality together with her incongruous position as a female leader in the male-dominated society of Europe made her the object of much malicious gossip, and the story of her supposed death while attempting sex with a stallion was meant to show how "unnatural" her rule as empress of Russia was.[125] Catherine was meant to have been a pawn in the European power game who was to be married off to some prince and provide the proverbial "heir and a spare" to continue the dynasty, and in rejecting this role for herself by ruling as empress in her own right provoked a powerful reaction against herself.
+
+Catherine's undated will, discovered in early 1792 by her secretary Alexander Vasilievich Khrapovitsky among her papers, gave specific instructions should she die: "Lay out my corpse dressed in white, with a golden crown on my head, and on it inscribe my Christian name. Mourning dress is to be worn for six months, and no longer: the shorter the better."[126] In the end, the empress was laid to rest with a gold crown on her head and clothed in a silver brocade dress. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi.[127][128] According to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun: "The empress's body lay in state for six weeks in a large and magnificently decorated room in the castle, which was kept lit day and night. Catherine was stretched on a ceremonial bed surrounded by the coats of arms of all the towns in Russia. Her face was left uncovered, and her fair hand rested on the bed. All the ladies, some of whom took turn to watch by the body, would go and kiss this hand, or at least appear to." A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vigée Le Brun's memoirs.
+
+Catherine appears as a character in Lord Byron's unfinished mock-heroic poem Don Juan.
+
+She was a subject in The Royal Diaries series in the book Catherine: The Great Journey, Russia, 1743 by Kristiana Gregory.
+
+The Empress is parodied in Offenbach's operetta La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867).[137]
+
+Ernst Lubitsch's silent film Forbidden Paradise (1924) told the story of Catherine's romance with an officer.
+
+Marlene Dietrich portrayed Catherine the Great in the film The Scarlet Empress (1934).
+
+The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) is a film starring Elisabeth Bergner and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
+
+Lubitsch remade his 1924 silent film as the sound film A Royal Scandal (1945), also known as Czarina.
+
+Jeanne Moreau played a version of Catherine in the farce comedy film Great Catherine (1968).
+
+The British/Canadian/American TV miniseries Young Catherine (1991), starring Julia Ormond as Catherine and Vanessa Redgrave as Empress Elizabeth, is based on Catherine's early life.
+
+The television movie Catherine the Great (1995) stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Catherine and Jeanne Moreau as Empress Elizabeth.
+
+Her rise to power and subsequent reign are portrayed in the award-winning Russia-1 television series Ekaterina.
+
+The Channel One Russia television series Catherine the Great was released in 2015.
+
+Catherine (portrayed by Meghan Tonjes) is featured in the web series Epic Rap Battles of History, in the episode "Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible" (12 July 2016), pitted against the titular characters, as well as Frederick the Great and Pompey the Great.[138]
+
+The television miniseries Catherine the Great (2019) stars Helen Mirren.
+
+She is played by Elle Fanning in the comedic miniseries The Great (2020).
+
+Pre-eminent figures in Catherinian Russia include:
+

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+Russian: Екатерина Алексеевна Романова, romanized: Yekaterina Alekseyevna Romanova
+
+Catherine II[a] (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 – 17 November 1796[b]), most commonly known as Catherine the Great,[c] was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796—the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised, resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe.
+
+In her accession to power and her rule of the empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably count Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and admirals such as Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. In the south, the Crimean Khanate was crushed following victories over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish wars, and Russia colonised the territories of Novorossiya along the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. In the west, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Catherine's former lover, King Stanisław August Poniatowski, was eventually partitioned, with the Russian Empire gaining the largest share. In the east, Russia started to colonise Alaska, establishing Russian America.
+
+Catherine reformed the administration of Russian guberniyas (governorates), and many new cities and towns were founded on her orders. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines. However, military conscription and the economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and of private landowners intensified the exploitation of serf labour. This was one of the chief reasons behind several rebellions, including the large-scale Pugachev Rebellion of Cossacks and peasants.
+
+The period of Catherine the Great's rule, the Catherinian Era,[1] is considered the Golden Age of Russia.[2] The Manifesto on Freedom of the Nobility, issued during the short reign of Peter III and confirmed by Catherine, freed Russian nobles from compulsory military or state service. Construction of many mansions of the nobility, in the classical style endorsed by the empress, changed the face of the country. She enthusiastically supported the ideals of the Enlightenment and is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots.[3] As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, including the establishment of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe.
+
+Catherine was born in Alt-Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland) as Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt[4] but held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. Two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden: Gustav III and Charles XIII.[5] In accordance with the custom then prevailing in the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. Catherine was regarded as a tomboy and was known by the nickname Fike.[6]
+
+Her childhood was quite uneventful. She once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm: "I see nothing of interest in it."[7] Although Catherine was born a princess, her family had very little money. Her rise to power was supported by her mother's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations.[8][9] The more than  300 souvereign entities of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them quite small and powerless, made for a highly competitive political system as the various princely families fought for advantage over each other, often via political marriages.[10] For the smaller German princely families, an advantageous marriage was one of the best means of advancing their interests, and the young Sophie was groomed throughout her childhood to be the wife of some powerful ruler in order to improve the position of the von Anhalt family. Besides her native German, Sophie became fluent in French, the lingua franca of European elites in the 18th century.[11] The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, French, and Lutheran theology.[12]
+
+The choice of Sophie-Catherine as wife of her second cousin, the prospective tsar Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, resulted from some amount of diplomatic management in which Count Lestocq, Peter's aunt and ruling Russian Empress Elizabeth, and Frederick II of Prussia took part. Lestocq and Frederick wanted to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia to weaken Austria's influence and ruin the Russian chancellor Bestuzhev, on whom Empress Elizabeth relied, and who acted as a known partisan of Russo-Austrian co-operation.
+
+Catherine first met Peter III at the age of 10. Based on her writings, she found Peter detestable upon meeting him. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol at such a young age. Peter also still played with toy soldiers. Catherine later wrote that she stayed at one end of the castle, and Peter at the other.[13]
+
+The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Catherine's mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Historical accounts portray Johanna as a cold, abusive woman who loved gossip and court intrigues. Her hunger for fame centred on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick of Prussia. Empress Elizabeth knew the family well: She had intended to marry Princess Johanna's brother Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein), who had died of smallpox in 1727 before the wedding could take place.[14] Despite Johanna's interference, Empress Elizabeth took a strong liking to Catherine, who, on arrival in Russia in 1744 spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Empress Elizabeth, but with her husband and with the Russian people as well. Catherine applied herself to learning the Russian language with zeal, rising at night and walking about her bedroom barefoot, repeating her lessons; although she mastered the language, she retained an accent. This practice led to a severe attack of pneumonia in March 1744. When she wrote her memoirs, she said she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown.
+
+Catherine recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She credited her survival to frequent bloodletting; in a single day, she had four phlebotomies. Her mother, who was opposed to this practice, fell into the empress's disfavour. When Catherine's situation looked desperate, her mother wanted her confessed by a Lutheran pastor. Awaking from her delirium, however, Catherine said: "I don't want any Lutheran; I want my Orthodox father [clergyman]." This raised her in the empress's esteem.
+
+Princess Sophie's father, a devout German Lutheran, opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite his objection, however, on 28 June 1744, the Russian Orthodox Church received Princess Sophie as a member with the new name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic Алексеевна (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey). On the following day, the formal betrothal took place. The long-planned dynastic marriage finally occurred on 21 August 1745 in Saint Petersburg. Sophie had turned 16; her father did not travel to Russia for the wedding. The bridegroom, known then as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day[update] Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739. The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which remained the residence of the "young court" for many years to come.
+
+Bored with her husband, Catherine became an avid reader of books, mostly in French.[12] Catherine disparaged her husband as devoted to reading "Lutheran prayer-books, the other the history of and trial of some highway robbers who had been hanged or broken on the wheel".[12] It was during this period that she first read Voltaire and the other philosophes of the French Enlightenment.[12] As she learned Russian, she became increasingly interested in the literature of her adopted country.[15] Finally, it was the Annals by Tacitus that caused what she called a "revolution" in her teenage mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be.[15] She was especially impressed with Tacitus's argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives".[15] While living at Oranienbaum, Catherine had her first sexual relationship with Sergei Saltykov as her marriage to Peter had not been consummated as Catherine later claimed.[16][17]
+
+Count Andrei Shuvalov, chamberlain to Catherine, was well-acquainted with the diarist James Boswell, and Boswell reports that Shuvalov shared private information regarding the monarch's intimate affairs. One of these rumours was that Peter took a mistress (Elizabeth Vorontsova),[18] while Catherine carried on liaisons with Sergei Saltykov,[19] Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (1734–1783),[20][21] Alexander Vasilchikov,[22][23] Grigory Potemkin,[22][23][24][25] Stanisław August Poniatowski,[26][27] and others. She became friends with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's mistress, who introduced her to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband.
+
+Peter III's temperament became quite unbearable for those who resided in the palace. He would announce trying drills in the morning to male servants, who later joined Catherine in her room to sing and dance until late hours. The classical view of the character of Peter, as having many flaws, is mainly drawn from the memoirs of his wife and successor[citation needed].
+
+Catherine became pregnant with her second child, Anna, who only lived to 14 months, in 1759. Due to various rumours of Catherine's promiscuity, Peter was led to believe he was not the child's biological father and is known to have proclaimed, "Go to the devil!", when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. She thus spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's alleged abrasive personality.[28] In her memoirs, Catherine strongly implied that the real father of her son Paul was not Peter, but rather Saltykov, which would mean that the House of Romanov came to an end in 1762, not 1918.[29] However, the fact that Paul closely resembled Peter in terms of appearance and personality has led many to argue that Peter was indeed the father of Paul.[29] What is certain is the fact that the direct male line of the Romanovs ended in 1762 with the accession of Peter to the throne, as he was the son of Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and Anna Petrovna (the elder surviving daughter of Peter the Great).[citation needed]
+
+Catherine recalled in her memoirs her optimistic and resolute mood before her accession to the throne:
+
+After the death of the Empress Elizabeth on 5 January 1762 (OS: 25 December 1761), Peter succeeded to the throne as Emperor Peter III, and Catherine became empress consort. The imperial couple moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The tsar's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king, Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), and Russian troops had occupied Berlin in 1761. Peter, however, supported Frederick II, eroding much of his support among the nobility. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. Peter also intervened in a dispute between his Duchy of Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig (see Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff). As Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter planned war against Denmark, Russia's traditional ally against Sweden.
+
+In July 1762, barely six months after becoming emperor, Peter lingered in Oranienbaum with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives, while his wife lived in another palace nearby. On the night of 8 July (OS: 27 June 1762),[31] Catherine the Great was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested by her estranged husband and that all they had been planning must take place at once. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Ismailovsky regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. Catherine then left with the regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne. She had her husband arrested, and forced him to sign a document of abdication, leaving no one to dispute her accession to the throne.[32][33] On 17 July 1762—eight days after the coup that amazed the outside world[34] and just six months after his accession to the throne—Peter III died at Ropsha, possibly at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Grigory Orlov, then a court favourite and a participant in the coup). Peter supposedly was assassinated, but it is unknown how he died. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of hemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke.[35]
+
+At the time of Peter III's overthrow, other potential rivals for the throne included Ivan VI (1740–1764), who had been confined at Schlüsselburg in Lake Ladoga from the age of six months, and was thought to be insane. Ivan VI was assassinated during an attempt to free him as part of a failed coup: Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (1753–1775) was another potential rival.
+
+Although Catherine did not descend from the Romanov dynasty, her ancestors included members of the Rurik dynasty, which preceded the Romanovs. She succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the precedent established when Catherine I succeeded her husband Peter the Great in 1725. Historians debate Catherine's technical status, whether as a regent or as a usurper, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul. In the 1770s, a group of nobles connected with Paul, including Nikita Panin, considered a new coup to depose Catherine and transfer the crown to Paul, whose power they envisaged restricting in a kind of constitutional monarchy.[36] Nothing came of this, however, and Catherine reigned until her death.
+
+Catherine was crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 22 September 1762.[37] Her coronation marks the creation of one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, the Imperial Crown of Russia, designed by Swiss-French court diamond jeweller Jérémie Pauzié. Inspired by the Byzantine Empire design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the eastern and western Roman empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop. The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel that previously belonged to the Empress Elizabeth, and a diamond cross. The crown was produced in a record two months and weighed 2.3 kg.[38]
+From 1762, the Great Imperial Crown was the coronation crown of all Romanov emperors until the monarchy's abolition and the death of the last Romanov, Nicholas II, in 1918. It is one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, and is now on display in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Museum.[39]
+
+During her reign, Catherine extended by some 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi) the borders of the Russian Empire, absorbing New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers—the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
+
+Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 1763–1781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland and Sweden, to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favour and Catherine had him replaced with Ivan Osterman (in office 1781–1797).
+
+Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1766, but stopped short of a full military alliance.[40] Although she could see the benefits of Britain's friendship, she was wary of Britain's increased power following its victory in the Seven Years' War, which threatened the European balance of power.
+
+Peter the Great had succeeded in gaining a toehold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, in the Azov campaigns. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. Russia inflicted some of the heaviest defeats ever suffered by the Ottoman Empire, including the Battle of Chesma (5–7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). In 1769, a last major Crimean–Nogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves.[41]
+
+The Russian victories procured access to the Black Sea and allowed Catherine's government to incorporate present-day southern Ukraine, where the Russians founded the new cities of Odessa, Nikolayev, Yekaterinoslav (literally: "the Glory of Catherine"; the future Dnipro), and Kherson. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed 10 July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval or commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted to Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and made the Crimea a protectorate of Russia.
+
+Catherine annexed the Crimea in 1783, nine years after the Crimean Khanate had gained nominal independence—which had been guaranteed by Russia—from the Ottoman Empire as a result of her first war against the Turks. The palace of the Crimean khans passed into the hands of the Russians. In 1787, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo-Turkish War.
+
+The Ottomans restarted hostilities in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92. This war was another catastrophe for the Ottomans, ending with the Treaty of Jassy (1792), which legitimised the Russian claim to the Crimea and granted the Yedisan region to Russia.
+
+In the Treaty of Georgievsk (1783) Russia agreed to protect Georgia against any new invasion and further political aspirations of their Persian suzerains. Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they, under the new king Agha Mohammad Khan, had again invaded Georgia and established rule in 1795 and had expelled the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. The ultimate goal for the Russian government, however, was to topple the anti-Russian shah (king), and to replace him with a half-brother, Morteza Qoli Khan, who had defected to Russia and was therefore pro-Russian.[42][43]
+
+It was widely expected that a 13,000-strong Russian corps would be led by the seasoned general, Ivan Gudovich, but the empress followed the advice of her lover, Prince Zubov, and entrusted the command to his youthful brother, Count Valerian Zubov. The Russian troops set out from Kizlyar in April 1796 and stormed the key fortress of Derbent on 10 May. The event was glorified by the court poet Derzhavin in his famous ode; he later commented bitterly on Zubov's inglorious return from the expedition in another remarkable poem.[citation needed]
+
+By mid-June, Zubov's troops overran without any resistance most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal cities—Baku, Shemakha, and Ganja. By November, they were stationed at the confluence of the Araks and Kura Rivers, poised to attack mainland Iran. In this month, the empress of Russia died and her successor Paul, who detested that the Zubovs had other plans for the army, ordered the troops to retreat to Russia. This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign: many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine longed for recognition as an enlightened sovereign. She pioneered for Russia the role that Britain later played through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries as an international mediator in disputes that could, or did, lead to war. She acted as mediator in the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779) between the German states of Prussia and Austria. In 1780, she established a League of Armed Neutrality, designed to defend neutral shipping from the British Royal Navy during the American Revolution.
+
+From 1788 to 1790, Russia fought a war against Sweden, a conflict instigated by Catherine's cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, who expected to simply overtake the Russian armies still engaged in war against the Ottoman Turks, and hoped to strike Saint Petersburg directly. But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in a tied battle of Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. Denmark declared war on Sweden in 1788 (the Theatre War). After the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in 1790, the parties signed the Treaty of Värälä (14 August 1790), returning all conquered territories to their respective owners and confirming the Treaty of Åbo. Peace ensued for 20 years, aided by the assassination of Gustav III in 1792.[citation needed]
+
+In 1764, Catherine placed Stanisław August Poniatowski, her former lover, on the Polish throne. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from the King Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in carrying it out in the 1790s. In 1768, she formally became protector of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provoked an anti-Russian uprising in Poland, the Confederation of Bar (1768–72). After the uprising broke down due to internal politics in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, she established in the Rzeczpospolita, a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys.[44]
+
+After the French Revolution of 1789, Catherine rejected many principles of the Enlightenment she had once viewed favourably. Afraid the May Constitution of Poland (1791) might lead to a resurgence in the power of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the growing democratic movements inside the Commonwealth might become a threat to the European monarchies, Catherine decided to intervene in Poland. She provided support to a Polish anti-reform group known as the Targowica Confederation. After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the Polish–Russian War of 1792 and in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria (1795).[citation needed]
+
+In the Far East, Russians became active in fur trapping in Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands. This spurred Russian interest in opening trade with Japan to the south for supplies and food. In 1783, storms drove a Japanese sea captain, Daikokuya Kōdayū, ashore in the Aleutian Islands, at that time Russian territory. Russian local authorities helped his party, and the Russian government decided to use him as a trade envoy. On 28 June 1791, Catherine granted Daikokuya an audience at Tsarskoye Selo. Subsequently, in 1792, the Russian government dispatched a trade mission to Japan, led by Adam Laxman. The Tokugawa shogunate received the mission, but negotiations failed.[citation needed]
+
+The Qianlong emperor of China was committed to an expansionist policy in Central Asia and saw the Russian empire as a potential rival, making for difficult and unfriendly relations between Beijing and Saint Petersburg.[45] In 1762, he unilaterally abrogated the Treaty of Kyakhta, which governed the caravan trade between the two empires.[46] Another source of tension were Dzungar Mongol fugitives from the Chinese state who took refuge with the Russians.[47] The Dzungar genocide by the Qing state had led many Dzungars to seek sanctuary in the Russian empire, and was one of the reasons for the abrogation of the Treaty of Kyakhta. Catherine perceived the Qianlong emperor as an unpleasant and arrogant neighbor, once saying: "I shall not die until I have ejected the Turks from Europe, suppressed the pride of China and established trade with India".[47] In a 1790 letter to Baron de Grimm written in French, she called the Qianlong emperor "mon voisin chinois aux petits yeux" ("my Chinese neighbor with small eyes").[45]
+
+Russian economic development was well below the standards in western Europe. Historian François Cruzet writes that Russia under Catherine:
+
+had neither a free peasantry, nor a significant middle class, nor legal norms hospitable to private enterprise. Still, there was a start of industry, mainly textiles around Moscow and ironworks in the Ural Mountains, with a labor force mainly of serfs, bound to the works.[48]
+
+Catherine strongly encouraged the migration of the Volga Germans, farmers from Germany who settled mostly in the Volga River Valley region. They indeed helped modernise the sector that totally dominated the Russian economy. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing.[49][50][page needed]
+
+In 1768, the Assignation Bank was given the task of issuing the first government paper money. It opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1769. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. Paper notes were issued upon payment of similar sums in copper money, which were also refunded upon the presentation of those notes.
+The emergence of these assignation rubles was necessary due to large government spending on military needs, which led to a shortage of silver in the treasury (transactions, especially in foreign trade, were conducted almost exclusively in silver and gold coins). Assignation rubles circulated on equal footing with the silver ruble; a market exchange rate for these two currencies was ongoing. The use of these notes continued until 1849.[51]
+
+Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education. The Hermitage Museum, which now[update] occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books.[52] By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems and 10,000 drawings. Two wings were devoted to her collections of "curiosities".[53] She ordered the planting of the first "English garden" at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770.[52] In a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: "Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. I hate fountains that torture water in order to make it take a course contrary to its nature: Statues are relegated to galleries, vestibules etc; in a word, Anglomania is the master of my plantomania".[54]
+
+Catherine shared in the general European craze for all things Chinese, and made a point of collecting Chinese art and buying porcelain in the popular Chinoiserie style.[55] Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the "Chinese Palace" at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening.[55] The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style.[55] In 1779, she hired the British architect Charles Cameron to build the Chinese Village at Tsarkoe Selo (modern Pushkin, Russia).[55] Catherine had at first attempted to hire a Chinese architect to build the Chinese Village, and on finding that was impossible, settled on Cameron, who likewise specialised in the chinoiserie style.[55]
+
+She wrote comedies, fiction, and memoirs, while cultivating Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert—all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). Although she never met him face to face, she mourned him bitterly when he died. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.[citation needed]
+
+Catherine read three sorts of books, namely those for pleasure, those for information, and those to provide her with a philosophy.[56] In the first category, she read romances and comedies that were popular at the time, many of which were regarded as "inconsequential" by the critics both then and since.[56] She especially liked the work of German comic writers such as Moritz August von Thümmel and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai.[56] In the second category fell the work of Denis Diderot, Jacques Necker, Johann Bernhard Basedow and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.[57] Catherine expressed some frustration with the economists she read for what she regarded as their impractical theories, writing in the margin of one of Necker's books that if it was possible to solve all of the state's economic problems in one day, she would have done so a long time ago.[57] For information about particular nations that interested her, she read Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's Memoirs de Chine to learn about the vast and wealthy Chinese empire that bordered her empire; François Baron de Tott's Memoires de les Turcs et les Tartares for information about the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean khanate; the books of Frederick the Great praising himself to learn about Frederick just as much as to learn about Prussia; and the pamphlets of Benjamin Franklin denouncing the British Crown to understand the reasons for the American Revolution.[57] In the third category fell the work of Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Ferdinando Galiani, Nicolas Baudeau and Sir William Blackstone.[58] For philosophy, she liked books promoting what has been called "enlightened despotism", which she embraced as her ideal of an autocratic but reformist government that operated according to the rule of law, not the whims of the ruler, hence her interest in Blackstone's legal commentaries.[58]
+
+Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopédie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection.
+
+Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission—almost a consultative parliament—composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. The Commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. The empress prepared the "Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly", pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of Western Europe, especially Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria.
+
+As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisors, she refrained from immediately putting them into practice. After holding more than 200 sittings, the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory.
+
+In spite of this, Catherine began issuing codes to address some of the modernisation trends suggested in her Nakaz. In 1775, the empress decreed a Statute for the Administration of the Provinces of the Russian Empire. The statute sought to efficiently govern Russia by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts. By the end of her reign, 50 provinces and nearly 500 districts were created, government officials numbering more than double this were appointed, and spending on local government increased sixfold. In 1785, Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, increasing the power of the landed oligarchs. Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility, who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. Catherine also issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code of 1781, the Police Ordinance of 1782, and the Statute of National Education of 1786. In 1777, the empress described to Voltaire her legal innovations within a backward Russia as progressing "little by little".
+
+During Catherine's reign, Russians imported and studied the classical and European influences that inspired the Russian Enlightenment. Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the 19th century, especially for Alexander Pushkin. Catherine became a great patron of Russian opera. When Alexander Radishchev published his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790 (one year after the start of the French Revolution) and warned of uprisings because of the deplorable social conditions of the peasants held as serfs, Catherine exiled him to Siberia.
+
+Catherine also received Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (formerly court painter to Marie Antoinette) at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, by whom she was painted shortly before her death. Madame Vigée Le Brun vividly describes the empress in her memoirs: "the sight of this famous woman so impressed me that I found it impossible to think of anything: I could only stare at her. Firstly I was very surprised at her small stature; I had imagined her to be very tall, as great as her fame. She was also very fat, but her face was still beautiful, and she wore her white hair up, framing it perfectly. Her genius seemed to rest on her forehead, which was both high and wide. Her eyes were soft and sensitive, her nose quite Greek, her colour high and her features expressive. She addressed me immediately in a voice full of sweetness, if a little throaty: "I am delighted to welcome you here, Madame, your reputation runs before you. I am very fond of the arts, especially painting. I am no connoisseur, but I am a great art lover."
+
+Madame Vigée Le Brun also describes the empress at a gala: "The double doors opened and the Empress appeared. I have said that she was quite small, and yet on the days when she made her public appearances, with her head held high, her eagle-like stare and a countenance accustomed to command, all this gave her such an air of majesty that to me she might have been Queen of the World; she wore the sashes of three orders, and her costume was both simple and regal; it consisted of a muslin tunic embroidered with gold fastened by a diamond belt, and the full sleeves were folded back in the Asiatic style. Over this tunic she wore a red velvet dolman with very short sleeves. The bonnet which held her white hair was not decorated with ribbons, but with the most beautiful diamonds."
+
+Catherine held western European philosophies and culture close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia.[59] She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Catherine believed education could change the hearts and minds of the Russian people and turn them away from backwardness. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility.[60]
+
+Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters.[61] Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. She also established a commission composed of T.N. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. She consulted British education pioneers, particularly the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr John Brown.[62] In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I.I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs.[63] However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. In July 1765, Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission's problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. Dr. Brown argued, in a democratic country, education ought to be under the state's control and based on an education code. He also placed great emphasis on the "proper and effectual education of the female sex"; two years prior, Catherine had commissioned Ivan Betskoy to draw up the General Programme for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes.[64] This work emphasised the fostering of the creation of a 'new kind of people' raised in isolation from the damaging influence of a backward Russian environment.[65] The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. It was charged with admitting destitute and extramarital children to educate them in any way the state deemed fit. Because the Moscow Foundling Home was not established as a state-funded institution, it represented an opportunity to experiment with new educational theories. However, the Moscow Foundling Home was unsuccessful, mainly due to extremely high mortality rates, which prevented many of the children from living long enough to develop into the enlightened subjects the state desired.[66]
+
+Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, at the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoy, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute in 1764, first of its kind in Russia. At first, the institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie as well.[67] The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, often were accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings. Within the walls of the institute, they were taught impeccable French, musicianship, dancing, and complete awe of the monarch. At the institute, enforcement of strict discipline was central to its philosophy. Running and games were forbidden, and the building was kept particularly cold because too much warmth was believed to be harmful to the developing body as was excess play.[68]
+
+During 1768–1774, no progress was made in setting up a national school system.[69] Catherine continued to investigate educational theory and practice of other countries. She made many educational reforms despite the lack of a national school system. The remodeling of the Cadet Corps 1766 initiated many educational reforms. It then began to take children from a very young age and educate them until the age of 21. The curriculum was broadened from the professional military curriculum to include the sciences, philosophy, ethics, history, and international law. This policy in the Cadet Corps influenced the teaching in the Naval Cadet Corps and in the Engineering and Artillery Schools. After the war and the defeat of Pugachev, Catherine laid the obligation to establish schools at the guberniya—a provincial subdivision of the Russian empire ruled by a governor—on the Boards of Social Welfare set up with the participation of elected representatives from the three free estates.[70]
+
+By 1782, Catherine arranged another advisory commission to study the information gathered about the educational systems of many different countries.[71] A system produced by a mathematician, Franz Aepinus, stood out in particular. He was strongly in favor of the adoption of the Austrian three-tier model of trivial, real, and normal schools at the village, town, and provincial capital levels. In addition to the advisory commission, Catherine established a Commission of National Schools under Pyotr Zavadovsky. This commission was charged with organizing a national school network, training the teachers, and providing the textbooks. On 5 August 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was promulgated.[72] The statute established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools in guberniya capitals that were free of charge, open to all of the free classes (not serfs), and co-educational. It also regulated, in detail, the subjects to be taught at every age and the method of teaching. In addition to the textbooks translated by the commission, teachers were provided with the "Guide to Teachers". This work, divided into four parts, dealt with teaching methods, the subjects taught, the behaviour of the teacher, and the running of a school.[72]
+
+Judgment of the 19th century was generally critical, claiming that Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program.[73] Two years after the implementation of Catherine's program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions established. Throughout Russia, the inspectors encountered a patchy response. While the nobility provided appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their own children to private, prestigious institutions. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. An estimated 62,000 pupils were being educated in some 549 state institutions near the end of Catherine's reign. This was only a minuscule number of people compared to the size of the Russian population.[74]
+
+Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. She nationalised all of the church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. Very few members of the nobility entered the church, which became even less important than it had been. She did not allow dissenters to build chapels, and she suppressed religious dissent after the onset of the French Revolution.[75]
+
+However, Catherine promoted Christianity in her anti-Ottoman policy, promoting the protection and fostering of Christians under Turkish rule. She placed strictures on Catholics (ukaz of 23 February 1769), mainly Polish, and attempted to assert and extend state control over them in the wake of the partitions of Poland.[76] Nevertheless, Catherine's Russia provided an asylum and a base for regrouping to the Jesuits following the suppression of the Jesuits in most of Europe in 1773.[76]
+
+Catherine took many different approaches to Islam during her reign. Between 1762 and 1773, Muslims were prohibited from owning any Orthodox serfs. They were pressured into Orthodoxy through monetary incentives.[77] Catherine promised more serfs of all religions, as well as amnesty for convicts, if Muslims chose to convert to Orthodoxy.[78] However, the Legislative Commission of 1767 offered several seats to people professing the Islamic faith. This commission promised to protect their religious rights, but did not do so. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure.[78] Catherine chose to assimilate Islam into the state rather than eliminate it when public outcry became too disruptive. After the "Toleration of All Faiths" Edict of 1773, Muslims were permitted to build mosques and practise all of their traditions, the most obvious of these being the pilgrimage to Mecca, which previously had been denied.[79] Catherine created the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly to help regulate Muslim-populated regions as well as regulate the instruction and ideals of mullahs. The positions on the Assembly were appointed and paid for by Catherine and her government as a way of regulating religious affairs.[80]
+
+In 1785, Catherine approved the subsidising of new mosques and new town settlements for Muslims. This was another attempt to organise and passively control the outer fringes of her country. By building new settlements with mosques placed in them, Catherine attempted to ground many of the nomadic people who wandered through southern Russia.[81] In 1786, she assimilated the Islamic schools into the Russian public school system under government regulation. The plan was another attempt to force nomadic people to settle. This allowed the Russian government to control more people, especially those who previously had not fallen under the jurisdiction of Russian law.[82]
+
+Russia often treated Judaism as a separate entity, where Jews were maintained with a separate legal and bureaucratic system. Although the government knew that Judaism existed, Catherine and her advisers had no real definition of what a Jew is because the term meant many things during her reign.[83] Judaism was a small, if not nonexistent, religion in Russia until 1772. When Catherine agreed to the First Partition of Poland, the large new Jewish element was treated as a separate people, defined by their religion. Catherine separated the Jews from Orthodox society, restricting them to the Pale of Settlement. She levied additional taxes on the followers of Judaism; if a family converted to the Orthodox faith, that additional tax was lifted.[84] Jewish members of society were required to pay double the tax of their Orthodox neighbours. Converted Jews could gain permission to enter the merchant class and farm as free peasants under Russian rule.[85][86]
+
+In an attempt to assimilate the Jews into Russia's economy, Catherine included them under the rights and laws of the Charter of the Towns of 1782.[87] Orthodox Russians disliked the inclusion of Judaism, mainly for economic reasons. Catherine tried to keep the Jews away from certain economic spheres, even under the guise of equality; in 1790, she banned Jewish citizens from Moscow's middle class.[88]
+
+In 1785, Catherine declared Jews to be officially foreigners, with foreigners' rights.[89] This re-established the separate identity that Judaism maintained in Russia throughout the Jewish Haskalah. Catherine's decree also denied Jews the rights of an Orthodox or naturalised citizen of Russia. Taxes doubled again for those of Jewish descent in 1794, and Catherine officially declared that Jews bore no relation to Russians.
+
+In many ways, the Orthodox Church fared no better than its foreign counterparts during the reign of Catherine. Under her leadership, she completed what Peter III had started: The church's lands were expropriated, and the budget of both monasteries and bishoprics were controlled by the College of Economy.[90] Endowments from the government replaced income from privately held lands. The endowments were often much less than the original intended amount.[91] She closed 569 of 954 monasteries, of which only 161 received government money. Only 400,000 rubles of church wealth were paid back.[92] While other religions (such as Islam) received invitations to the Legislative Commission, the Orthodox clergy did not receive a single seat.[91] Their place in government was restricted severely during the years of Catherine's reign.[75]
+
+In 1762, to help mend the rift between the Orthodox church and a sect that called themselves the Old Believers, Catherine passed an act that allowed Old Believers to practise their faith openly without interference.[93] While claiming religious tolerance, she intended to recall the believers into the official church. They refused to comply, and in 1764, she deported over 20,000 Old Believers to Siberia on the grounds of their faith.[93] In later years, Catherine amended her thoughts. Old Believers were allowed to hold elected municipal positions after the Urban Charter of 1785, and she promised religious freedom to those who wished to settle in Russia.[94][95]
+
+Religious education was reviewed strictly. At first, she simply attempted to revise clerical studies, proposing a reform of religious schools. This reform never progressed beyond the planning stages. By 1786, Catherine excluded all religion and clerical studies programs from lay education.[96] By separating the public interests from those of the church, Catherine began a secularisation of the day-to-day workings of Russia. She transformed the clergy from a group that wielded great power over the Russian government and its people to a segregated community forced to depend on the state for compensation.[91]
+
+Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions[97] for as long as they held her interest, and then pensioning them off with gifts of serfs and large estates. The percentage of state money spent on the court increased from 10.4% in 1767 to 11.4% in 1781 to 13.5% in 1795. Catherine gave away 66,000 serfs from 1762–1772, 202,000 from 1773–1793, and 100,000 in one day: 18 August 1795.[98]:119 Catherine bought the support of the bureaucracy. From 19 April 1764, any bureaucrat holding the same rank for seven years or more instantly was promoted. On 13 September 1767, Catherine decreed that after seven years in one rank, civil servants automatically would be promoted regardless of office or merit.[99]
+
+After her affair with her lover and adviser Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin ended in 1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk[100]). Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. One of her lovers, Pyotr Zavadovsky, received 50,000 rubles, a pension of 5,000 rubles and 4,000 peasants in Ukraine after she dismissed him in 1777.[101] The last of her lovers, Prince Zubov, was 40 years her junior. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.[102]
+
+Catherine decided to have herself inoculated against smallpox by Thomas Dimsdale, a British doctor. While this was considered a controversial method at the time, she succeeded. Her son Pavel later was inoculated as well. Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire and stated: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger". By 1800, approximately 2 million inoculations (almost 6% of the population) were administered in the Russian Empire.
+
+Catherine kept her illegitimate son by Grigori Orlov (Alexis Bobrinsky, later elevated to Count Bobrinsky by Paul I) near Tula, away from her court.
+
+Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, offered Stanisław Poniatowski a place in the embassy in return for gaining Catherine as an ally. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine, 26 years old and already married to the then-Grand Duke Peter for some 10 years, met the 22-year-old Poniatowski in 1755, therefore well before encountering the Orlov brothers. In 1757, Poniatowski served in the British forces during the Seven Years' War, thus severing close relationships with Catherine. She bore him a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage).
+
+King Augustus III of Poland died in 1763, so Poland needed to elect a new ruler. Catherine supported Poniatowski as a candidate to become the next king. She sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight, and imposing Poniatowski as king. Poniatowski accepted the throne, and thereby put himself under Catherine's control. News of Catherine's plan spread, and Frederick II (others say the Ottoman sultan) warned her that if she tried to conquer Poland by marrying Poniatowski, all of Europe would oppose her. She had no intention of marrying him, having already given birth to Orlov's child and to the Grand Duke Paul by then.
+
+Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) among them. Russia got territories east of the line connecting, more or less, Riga–Polotsk–Mogilev. In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper, leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795, one year before Catherine's death. Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation until 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.
+
+Grigory Orlov, the grandson of a rebel in the Streltsy Uprising (1698) against Peter the Great, distinguished himself in the Battle of Zorndorf (25 August 1758), receiving three wounds. He represented an opposite to Peter's pro-Prussian sentiment, with which Catherine disagreed. By 1759, Catherine and he had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, the Grand Duke Peter. Catherine saw Orlov as very useful, and he became instrumental in the 28 June 1762 coup d’état against her husband, but she preferred to remain the dowager empress of Russia rather than marrying anyone.
+
+Grigory Orlov and his other three brothers found themselves rewarded with titles, money, swords, and other gifts, but Catherine did not marry Grigory, who proved inept at politics and useless when asked for advice. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress.
+
+Orlov died in 1783. Their son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky (1762–1813), had one daughter, Maria Alexeyeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya) (1798–1835), who married in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 1784–1842) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against Napoleon, and later served as ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
+
+Grigory Potemkin was involved in the coup d'état of 1762. In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. By the winter of 1773, the Pugachev revolt had started to threaten. Catherine's son Paul had started gaining support; both of these trends threatened her power. She called Potemkin for help—mostly military—and he became devoted to her.
+
+In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Days earlier, she had found out about an uprising in the Volga region. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy. Potemkin quickly gained positions and awards. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. He later became the de facto absolute ruler of New Russia, governing its colonisation.
+
+In 1780, Emperor Joseph II, the son of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and travelling with him to Saint Petersburg. Potemkin also convinced Catherine to expand the universities in Russia to increase the number of scientists.
+
+Potemkin fell very ill in August 1783. Catherine worried he would not finish his work developing the south as he had planned. Potemkin died at the age of 52 in 1791.
+
+According to a census taken from 1754 to 1762, Catherine owned 500,000 serfs. A further 2.8 million belonged to the Russian state.[103]
+
+At the time of Catherine's reign, the landowning noble class owned the serfs, who were bound to the land they tilled. Children of serfs were born into serfdom and worked the same land their parents had. The serfs had very limited rights, but they were not exactly slaves. While the state did not technically allow them to own possessions, some serfs were able to accumulate enough wealth to pay for their freedom.[104] The understanding of law in imperial Russia by all sections of society was often weak, confused, or nonexistent, particularly in the provinces where most serfs lived. This is why some serfs were able to do things such as accumulate wealth. To become serfs, people conceded their freedoms to a landowner in exchange for their protection and support in times of hardship. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. All of this was true before Catherine's reign, and this is the system she inherited.
+
+Catherine did initiate some changes to serfdom. If a noble did not live up to his side of the deal, the serfs could file complaints against him by following the proper channels of law.[105] Catherine gave them this new right, but in exchange they could no longer appeal directly to her. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before.[106] Some serfs were able to use their new status to their advantage. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs.[107] Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. In addition, some governors listened to the complaints of serfs and punished nobles, but this was by no means universal.
+
+Other than these, the rights of a serf were very limited. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion, and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labour in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals.[108] The only thing a noble could not do to his serfs was to kill them. The life of a serf belonged to the state. Historically, when the serfs faced problems they could not solve on their own (such as abusive masters), they often appealed to the autocrat, and continued doing so during Catherine's reign, but she signed legislation prohibiting it.[109] Although she did not want to communicate directly with the serfs, she did create some measures to improve their conditions as a class and reduce the size of the institution of serfdom. For example, she took action to limit the number of new serfs; she eliminated many ways for people to become serfs, culminating in the manifesto of 17 March 1775, which prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again.[110] However, she also restricted the freedoms of many peasants. During her reign, Catherine gave away many state-owned peasants to become private serfs (owned by a landowner), and while their ownership changed hands, a serf's location never did. However, peasants owned by the state generally had more freedoms than those owned by a noble.
+
+While the majority of serfs were farmers bound to the land, a noble could have his serfs sent away to learn a trade or be educated at a school as well as employ them at businesses that paid wages.[111] This happened more often during Catherine's reign because of the new schools she established. Only in this way could a serf leave the farm for which he was responsible.
+
+The attitude of the serfs toward their autocrat had historically been a positive one.[112]
+However, if the tsar's policies were too extreme or too disliked, she was not considered the true tsar. In these cases, it was necessary to replace this “fake” tsar with the “true” tsar, whoever she may be. Because the serfs had no political power, they rioted to convey their message. However, usually, if the serfs did not like the policies of the tsar, they saw the nobles as corrupt and evil, preventing the people of Russia from communicating with the well-intentioned tsar and misinterpreting her decrees.[113] However, they were already suspicious of Catherine upon her accession because she had annulled an act by Peter III that essentially freed the serfs belonging to the Orthodox Church.[114] Naturally, the serfs did not like it when Catherine tried to take away their right to petition her because they felt as though she had severed their connection to the autocrat, and their power to appeal to her. Far away from the capital, they were confused as to the circumstances of her accession to the throne.[115]
+
+The peasants were discontented because of many other factors as well, including crop failure, and epidemics, especially a major epidemic in 1771. The nobles were imposing a stricter rule than ever, reducing the land of each serf and restricting their freedoms further beginning around 1767.[116] Their discontent led to widespread outbreaks of violence and rioting during Pugachev's Rebellion of 1774. The serfs probably followed someone who was pretending to be the true tsar because of their feelings of disconnection to Catherine and her policies empowering the nobles, but this was not the first time they followed a pretender under Catherine's reign.[117] Pugachev had made stories about himself acting as a real tsar should, helping the common people, listening to their problems, praying for them, and generally acting saintly, and this helped rally the peasants and serfs, with their very conservative values, to his cause.[118] With all this discontent in mind, Catherine did rule for 10 years before the anger of the serfs boiled over into a rebellion as extensive as Pugachev's. The rebellion ultimately failed and in fact backfired as Catherine was pushed away from the idea of serf liberation following the violent uprising. Under Catherine's rule, despite her enlightened ideals, the serfs were generally unhappy and discontented.
+
+Though Catherine's life and reign included remarkable personal successes, they ended in two failures. Her Swedish cousin (once removed), King Gustav IV Adolph, visited her in September 1796, the empress's intention being that her granddaughter Alexandra should become queen of Sweden by marriage. A ball was given at the imperial court on 11 September when the engagement was supposed to be announced. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. The frustration affected Catherine's health. She recovered well enough to begin to plan a ceremony which would establish her favourite grandson Alexander as her heir, superseding her difficult son Paul, but she died before the announcement could be made, just over two months after the engagement ball.[119]
+
+On 16 November [O.S. 5 November] 1796, Catherine rose early in the morning and had her usual morning coffee, soon settling down to work on papers; she told her lady's maid, Maria Perekusikhina, that she had slept better than she had in a long time.[120] Sometime after 9:00 she was found on the floor with her face purplish, her pulse weak, and her breathing shallow and laboured.[120] The court physician diagnosed a stroke[120][121] and despite attempts to revive her she fell into a coma. She was given the last rites and died the following evening around 9:45.[121] An autopsy confirmed stroke as the cause of death.[122]
+
+Later, several unfounded stories circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. A popular insult to the empress's legacy at the time is that she died after having sex with her horse. The story claimed that her maids believed that Catherine spent too much unsupervised time with her favorite horse, Dudley.[123] A German scholar Adam Olearius in his 1647 book Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise claimed that Russians had fondness for sodomy, especially with horses.[124] Olearius's claims about a supposed Russian tendency towards bestiality with horses was often repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the alleged barbarous "Asian" nature of Russia. Given the frequency which this story was repeated together with Catherine's love of her adopted homeland and her hippophilia, it was an easy step to apply this scurrilous story as the cause of her death.[124] Finally, Catherine's lack of shame about expressing her sexuality together with her incongruous position as a female leader in the male-dominated society of Europe made her the object of much malicious gossip, and the story of her supposed death while attempting sex with a stallion was meant to show how "unnatural" her rule as empress of Russia was.[125] Catherine was meant to have been a pawn in the European power game who was to be married off to some prince and provide the proverbial "heir and a spare" to continue the dynasty, and in rejecting this role for herself by ruling as empress in her own right provoked a powerful reaction against herself.
+
+Catherine's undated will, discovered in early 1792 by her secretary Alexander Vasilievich Khrapovitsky among her papers, gave specific instructions should she die: "Lay out my corpse dressed in white, with a golden crown on my head, and on it inscribe my Christian name. Mourning dress is to be worn for six months, and no longer: the shorter the better."[126] In the end, the empress was laid to rest with a gold crown on her head and clothed in a silver brocade dress. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi.[127][128] According to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun: "The empress's body lay in state for six weeks in a large and magnificently decorated room in the castle, which was kept lit day and night. Catherine was stretched on a ceremonial bed surrounded by the coats of arms of all the towns in Russia. Her face was left uncovered, and her fair hand rested on the bed. All the ladies, some of whom took turn to watch by the body, would go and kiss this hand, or at least appear to." A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vigée Le Brun's memoirs.
+
+Catherine appears as a character in Lord Byron's unfinished mock-heroic poem Don Juan.
+
+She was a subject in The Royal Diaries series in the book Catherine: The Great Journey, Russia, 1743 by Kristiana Gregory.
+
+The Empress is parodied in Offenbach's operetta La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867).[137]
+
+Ernst Lubitsch's silent film Forbidden Paradise (1924) told the story of Catherine's romance with an officer.
+
+Marlene Dietrich portrayed Catherine the Great in the film The Scarlet Empress (1934).
+
+The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) is a film starring Elisabeth Bergner and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
+
+Lubitsch remade his 1924 silent film as the sound film A Royal Scandal (1945), also known as Czarina.
+
+Jeanne Moreau played a version of Catherine in the farce comedy film Great Catherine (1968).
+
+The British/Canadian/American TV miniseries Young Catherine (1991), starring Julia Ormond as Catherine and Vanessa Redgrave as Empress Elizabeth, is based on Catherine's early life.
+
+The television movie Catherine the Great (1995) stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Catherine and Jeanne Moreau as Empress Elizabeth.
+
+Her rise to power and subsequent reign are portrayed in the award-winning Russia-1 television series Ekaterina.
+
+The Channel One Russia television series Catherine the Great was released in 2015.
+
+Catherine (portrayed by Meghan Tonjes) is featured in the web series Epic Rap Battles of History, in the episode "Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible" (12 July 2016), pitted against the titular characters, as well as Frederick the Great and Pompey the Great.[138]
+
+The television miniseries Catherine the Great (2019) stars Helen Mirren.
+
+She is played by Elle Fanning in the comedic miniseries The Great (2020).
+
+Pre-eminent figures in Catherinian Russia include:
+

en/907.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,358 @@
+
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+God
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+Schools
+
+Relations with:
+
+The Catholic Church, sometimes referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2018[update].[4] As the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution,[7] it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.[8] The church is headed by the bishop of Rome, known as the pope. Its central administration is the Holy See.
+
+The Christian beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission,[9][10][note 1] that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles, and that the pope is the successor to Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ.[13] It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, reserving infallibility, passed down by sacred tradition.[14] The Latin Church, the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, and institutes such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders and third orders reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.[15][16]
+
+Of its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass.[17] The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, honoured in dogmas and devotions.[18] Its teaching includes Divine Mercy, sanctification through faith and evangelization of the Gospel as well as Catholic social teaching, which emphasises voluntary support for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+The Catholic Church has influenced Western philosophy, culture, art, and science. Catholics live all over the world through missions, diaspora, and conversions. Since the 20th century the majority reside in the southern hemisphere, due to secularization in Europe, and increased persecution in the Middle East.
+
+The Catholic Church shared communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East–West Schism in 1054, disputing particularly the authority of the pope. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the Oriental Orthodox churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451; all separated primarily over differences in Christology.  In the 16th century, the Reformation led to Protestantism also breaking away.
+
+From the late 20th century the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teachings on sexuality, its absence of female priests, and its handling of sexual abuse cases involving clergy.
+
+Catholic (from Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikos, lit. 'universal') was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century.[22] The first known use of the phrase "the catholic church" (καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία he katholike ekklesia) occurred in the letter written about 110 AD from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans.[note 2] In the Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name "Catholic Church" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves "the church".[23][24] The "Catholic" notion was further stressed in the edict De fide Catolica issued 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire, when establishing the state church of the Roman Empire.[25]
+
+Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Church has taken the adjective "Orthodox" as its distinctive epithet (however, its official name continues to be the "Orthodox Catholic Church"[26]) and the Western Church in communion with the Holy See has similarly taken "Catholic", keeping that description also after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as "Protestants".[27][28]
+
+While the "Roman Church" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th–10th century), the "Roman Catholic Church" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century.[29] "Roman Catholic" has occasionally appeared also in documents produced both by the Holy See,[note 3] notably applied to certain national episcopal conferences, and local dioceses.[note 4]
+
+The name "Catholic Church" for the whole church is used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). The name "Catholic Church" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965),[30] the First Vatican Council (1869–1870),[31] the Council of Trent (1545–1563),[32] and numerous other official documents.[33][34]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church.[35][36] There are three levels of clergy, the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local diocese or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, commonly called the pope, whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See. In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services.
+
+The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the pope (Latin: papa; "father"), who is the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.[37] The current pope, Francis, was elected on 13 March 2013 by papal conclave.[38]
+
+Jus novum (c. 1140-1563)
+
+Jus novissimum (c. 1563-1918)
+
+Jus codicis (1918-present)
+
+Other
+
+Sacraments
+
+Sacramentals
+
+Sacred places
+
+Sacred times
+
+Supra-diocesan/eparchal structures
+
+Particular churches
+
+Juridic persons
+
+Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of canon law
+
+Clerics
+
+Office
+
+Juridic and physical persons
+
+Associations of the faithful
+
+Pars dynamica (trial procedure)
+
+Canonization
+
+Election of the Roman Pontiff
+
+Academic degrees
+
+Journals and Professional Societies
+
+Faculties of canon law
+
+Canonists
+
+Institute of consecrated life
+
+Society of apostolic life
+
+The office of the pope is known as the papacy. The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the "Holy See" (Sancta Sedes in Latin), or the "Apostolic See" (meaning the see of the apostle Peter).[39][40] Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church.
+
+The pope is also Sovereign of Vatican City,[41] a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives.[42] The Holy See also confers orders, decorations and medals, such as the orders of chivalry originating from the Middle Ages.
+
+While the famous Saint Peter's Basilica is located in Vatican City, above the traditional site of Saint Peter's tomb, the papal cathedral for the Diocese of Rome is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, located within the city of Rome, though enjoying extraterritorial privileges accredited to the Holy See.
+
+The position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals.[43]
+
+Following the death or resignation of a pope,[note 5] members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor.[45] Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic as pope since 1389 only cardinals have been elected.[46]
+
+Canon law (Latin: jus canonicum)[47] is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church.[48] The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system[49] and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West,[50][51] while the distinctive traditions of Oriental canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
+
+Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator—the Supreme Pontiff—who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person,[52] while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system:[53] laws, courts, lawyers, judges,[53] a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church[54] as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches,[54] principles of legal interpretation,[55] and coercive penalties.[56][57]
+
+Canon law concerns the Catholic Church's life and organization and is distinct from civil law. In its own field it gives force to civil law only by specific enactment in matters such as the guardianship of minors.[58] Similarly, civil law may give force in its field to canon law, but only by specific enactment, as with regard to canonical marriages.[59] Currently, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is in effect for the Latin Church.[60] The distinct 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO, after the Latin initials) applies to the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches.[61]
+
+
+
+In the first thousand years of Catholic history, different varieties of Christianity developed in the Western and Eastern Christian areas of Europe. Though most Eastern-tradition churches are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054, autonomous particular churches of both traditions currently participate, also known as "churches sui iuris" (Latin: "of one's own right"). The largest and most well known is the Latin Church, the only Western-tradition church, with more than 1 billion members worldwide. Relatively small in terms of adherents compared to the Latin Church, are the 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic Churches with a combined membership of 17.3 million as of 2010[update].[62][63][64][65]
+
+The Latin Church is governed by the pope and diocesan bishops directly appointed by him. The pope exercises a direct patriarchal role over the Latin Church, which is considered to form the original and still major part of Western Christianity, a heritage of certain beliefs and customs originating in Europe and northwestern Africa, some of which are inherited by many Christian denominations that trace their origins to the Protestant Reformation.[66]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches follow the traditions and spirituality of Eastern Christianity and are churches which have always remained in full communion with the Catholic Church or who have chosen to re-enter full communion in the centuries following the East–West Schism and earlier divisions. These churches are communities of Catholic Christians whose forms of worship reflect distinct historical and cultural influences rather than differences in doctrine.
+
+A church sui iuris is defined in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches as a "group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy" that is recognised by the pope in his capacity as the supreme authority on matters of doctrine within the church.[67] The term is an innovation of the CCEO to denote the relative autonomy of the Eastern Catholic Churches,[68] who remain in full communion with the pope, but have governance structures and liturgical traditions separate from that of the Latin Church.[63] While the Latin Church's canons do not explicitly use the term, it is tacitly recognised as equivalent.
+
+Some Eastern Catholic churches are governed by a patriarch who is elected by the synod of the bishops of that church,[69] others are headed by a major archbishop,[70] others are under a metropolitan,[71] and others are organized as individual eparchies.[72] Each church has authority over the particulars of its internal organization, liturgical rites, liturgical calendar and other aspects of its spirituality, subject only to the authority of the pope.[73] The Roman Curia has a specific department, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to maintain relations with them.[74] The pope does not generally appoint bishops or clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches, deferring to their internal governance structures, but may intervene if he feels it necessary.
+
+Individual countries, regions, or major cities are served by particular churches known as dioceses in the Latin Church, or eparchies in the Eastern Catholic Churches, each overseen by a bishop. As of 2008[update], the Catholic Church has 2,795 dioceses.[76] The bishops in a particular country are members of a national or regional episcopal conference.[77]
+
+Dioceses are divided into parishes, each with one or more priests, deacons or lay ecclesial ministers.[78] Parishes are responsible for the day to day celebration of the sacraments and pastoral care of the laity.[79] As of 2016[update], there are 221,700 parishes worldwide.[80]
+
+In the Latin Church, Catholic men may serve as deacons or priests by receiving sacramental ordination. Men and women may serve as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, as readers (lectors), or as altar servers. Historically, boys and men have only been permitted to serve as altar servers; however, since the 1990s, girls and women have also been permitted.[81][note 6]
+
+Ordained Catholics, as well as members of the laity, may enter into consecrated life either on an individual basis, as a hermit or consecrated virgin, or by joining an institute of consecrated life (a religious institute or a secular institute) in which to take vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience.[82] Examples of institutes of consecrated life are the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Legionaries of Christ and the Sisters of Mercy.[82]
+
+"Religious institutes" is a modern term encompassing both "religious orders" and "religious congregations," which were once distinguished in canon law.[83] The terms "religious order" and "religious institute" tend to be used as synonyms colloquially.[84]
+
+By means of Catholic charities and beyond, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+Catholicism is the world's second largest religious body after Sunni Islam.[85] Church membership, defined as baptised Catholics, was 1.329 billion at the end of 2018, which is 18% of the world population.[4] Catholics represent about half of all Christians.[86]
+
+Geographic distribution of Catholics worldwide continues to shift, with 17.8% in Africa, 48.3% in the Americas, 11.1% Asia, 21.5% in Europe, and 0.9% in Oceania.[4]
+
+Catholic ministers include ordained clergy, lay ecclesial ministers, missionaries, and catechists. Also as of the end of 2014, there were 465,595 ordained clergy, including 5,237 bishops, 415,792 priests (diocesan and religious), and 44,566 deacons (permanent).[87] Non-ordained ministers included 3,157,568 catechists, 367,679 lay missionaries, and 39,951 lay ecclesial ministers.[88]
+
+Catholics who have committed to religious or consecrated life instead of marriage or single celibacy, as a state of life or relational vocation, include 54,559 male religious, 705,529 women religious. These are not ordained, nor generally considered ministers unless also engaged in one of the lay minister categories above.[87]
+
+Catholic doctrine has developed over the centuries, reflecting direct teachings of early Christians, formal definitions of heretical and orthodox beliefs by ecumenical councils and in papal bulls, and theological debate by scholars. The church believes that it is continually guided by the Holy Spirit as it discerns new theological issues and is protected infallibly from falling into doctrinal error when a firm decision on an issue is reached.[89][90]
+
+It teaches that revelation has one common source, God, and two distinct modes of transmission: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition,[91][92] and that these are authentically interpreted by the Magisterium.[93][94] Sacred Scripture consists of the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, consisting of 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament writings. Sacred Tradition consists of those teachings believed by the church to have been handed down since the time of the Apostles.[95] Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are collectively known as the "deposit of faith" (depositum fidei in Latin). These are in turn interpreted by the Magisterium (from magister, Latin for "teacher"), the church's teaching authority, which is exercised by the pope and the College of Bishops in union with the pope, the Bishop of Rome.[96] Catholic doctrine is authoritatively summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by the Holy See.[97][98]
+
+The Catholic Church holds that there is one eternal God, who exists as a perichoresis ("mutual indwelling") of three hypostases, or "persons": God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit, which together are called the "Holy Trinity".[99]
+
+Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the "Second Person" of the Trinity, God the Son. In an event known as the Incarnation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature through the conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ, therefore, is understood as being both fully divine and fully human, including possessing a human soul. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels.[100] Jesus is believed to have remained sinless while on earth, and to have allowed himself to be unjustly executed by crucifixion, as a sacrifice of himself to reconcile humanity to God; this reconciliation is known as the Paschal Mystery.[101] The Greek term "Christ" and the Hebrew "Messiah" both mean "anointed one", referring to the Christian belief that Jesus' death and resurrection are the fulfilment of the Old Testament's messianic prophecies.[102]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that "the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one single principle".[103] It holds that the Father, as the "principle without principle", is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that he, as Father of the only Son, is with the Son the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds.[104] This belief is expressed in the Filioque clause which was added to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed of 381 but not included in the Greek versions of the creed used in Eastern Christianity.[105]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it is the "one true church",[9][106] "the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race",[107][108] and "the one true religion".[109] According to the Catechism, the Catholic Church is further described in the Nicene Creed as the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church".[110] These are collectively known as the Four Marks of the Church. The church teaches that its founder is Jesus Christ.[111][112] The New Testament records several events considered integral to the establishment of the Catholic Church, including Jesus' activities and teaching and his appointment of the apostles as witnesses to his ministry, suffering, and resurrection. The Great Commission, after his resurrection, instructed the apostles to continue his work. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, is seen as the beginning of the public ministry of the Catholic Church.[113] The church teaches that all duly consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles of Christ, known as apostolic succession.[114] In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the pope) is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, a position from which he derives his supremacy over the church.[115]
+
+Catholic belief holds that the church "is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth"[116] and that it alone possesses the full means of salvation.[117] Through the passion (suffering) of Christ leading to his crucifixion as described in the Gospels, it is said Christ made himself an oblation to God the Father in order to reconcile humanity to God;[118] the Resurrection of Jesus makes him the firstborn from the dead, the first among many brethren.[119] By reconciling with God and following Christ's words and deeds, an individual can enter the Kingdom of God.[120] The church sees its liturgy and sacraments as perpetuating the graces achieved through Christ's sacrifice to strengthen a person's relationship with Christ and aid in overcoming sin.[121]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that, immediately after death, the soul of each person will receive a particular judgement from God, based on their sins and their relationship to Christ.[122][123] This teaching also attests to another day when Christ will sit in universal judgement of all mankind. This final judgement, according to the church's teaching, will bring an end to human history and mark the beginning of both a new and better heaven and earth ruled by God in righteousness.[124]
+
+Depending on the judgement rendered following death, it is believed that a soul may enter one of three states of the afterlife:
+
+While the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation,[117] it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of Christian communities separated from itself to "impel towards Catholic unity"[133] and "tend and lead toward the Catholic Church",[133] and thus bring people to salvation, because these separated communities contain some elements of proper doctrine, albeit admixed with errors. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.[134]
+
+A saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognised as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God, while canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the "canon", or list, of recognised saints.[135][136] The first persons honoured as saints were the martyrs. Pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly.
+
+In the Catholic Church, both in Latin and Eastern Catholic churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he is worthy to be recognised as a saint. The church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that he may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the church, including in the Litany of the Saints. Canonization allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite; for permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.[137]
+
+Devotions are "external practices of piety" which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics.[138] These include various practices regarding the veneration of the saints, especially veneration of the Virgin Mary. Other devotional practices include the Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Face of Jesus,[139] the various scapulars, novenas to various saints,[140] pilgrimages[141] and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament,[140] and the veneration of saintly images such as the santos.[142] The bishops at the Second Vatican Council reminded Catholics that "devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonise with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them."[143]
+
+Catholic Mariology deals with the doctrines and teachings concerning the life of the Mary, mother of Jesus, as well as the veneration of Mary by the faithful. Mary is held in special regard, declared the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτόκος, romanized: Theotokos, lit. 'God-bearer'), and believed as dogma to have remained a virgin throughout her life.[144] Further teachings include the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (her own conception without the stain of original sin) and the Assumption of Mary (that her body was assumed directly into heaven at the end of her life). Both of these doctrines were defined as infallible dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively,[145] but only after consulting with the Catholic bishops throughout the world to ascertain that this is a Catholic belief.[146]
+
+Devotions to Mary are part of Catholic piety but are distinct from the worship of God.[147] Practices include prayers and Marian art, music, and architecture. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honoured with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church because, by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ.[145] Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions such as the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices.[148] Pilgrimage to the sites of several Marian apparitions affirmed by the church, such as Lourdes, Fátima, and Guadalupe,[149] are also popular Catholic devotions.[150]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it was entrusted with seven sacraments that were instituted by Christ. The number and nature of the sacraments were defined by several ecumenical councils, most recently the Council of Trent.[151][note 7] These are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction, one of the "Last Rites"), Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. Sacraments are visible rituals that Catholics see as signs of God's presence and effective channels of God's grace to all those who receive them with the proper disposition (ex opere operato).[152] The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes the sacraments into three groups, the "sacraments of Christian initiation", "sacraments of healing" and "sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the faithful". These groups broadly reflect the stages of people's natural and spiritual lives which each sacrament is intended to serve.[153]
+
+The liturgies of the sacraments are central to the church's mission. According to the Catechism:
+
+In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the "communion of the Holy Spirit" who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities.[154]
+
+According to church doctrine, the sacraments of the church require the proper form, matter, and intent to be validly celebrated.[155] In addition, the Canon Laws for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches govern who may licitly celebrate certain sacraments, as well as strict rules about who may receive the sacraments.[156] Notably, because the church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist,[157] those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden to receive the sacrament until they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance).[158] Catholics are normally obliged to abstain from eating for at least an hour before receiving the sacrament.[158] Non-Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from receiving the Eucharist as well.[156][159]
+
+Catholics, even if they were in danger of death and unable to approach a Catholic minister, may not ask for the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance or anointing of the sick from someone, such as a Protestant minister, who is not known to be validly ordained in line with Catholic teaching on ordination.[160][161] Likewise, even in grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may not administer these sacraments to those who do not manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament. In relation to the churches of Eastern Christianity not in communion with the Holy See, the Catholic Church is less restrictive, declaring that "a certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged."[162]
+
+As viewed by the Catholic Church, Baptism is the first of three sacraments of initiation as a Christian.[163] It washes away all sins, both original sin and personal actual sins.[164] It makes a person a member of the church.[165] As a gratuitous gift of God that requires no merit on the part of the person who is baptised, it is conferred even on children,[166] who, though they have no personal sins, need it on account of original sin.[167] If a new-born child is in a danger of death, anyone—be it a doctor, a nurse, or a parent—may baptise the child.[168] Baptism marks a person permanently and cannot be repeated.[169] The Catholic Church recognises as valid baptisms conferred even by people who are not Catholics or Christians, provided that they intend to baptise ("to do what the Church does when she baptises") and that they use the Trinitarian baptismal formula.[170]
+
+The Catholic Church sees the sacrament of confirmation as required to complete the grace given in baptism.[171] When adults are baptised, confirmation is normally given immediately afterwards,[172] a practice followed even with newly baptised infants in the Eastern Catholic Churches.[173] In the West confirmation of children is delayed until they are old enough to understand or at the bishop's discretion.[174] In Western Christianity, particularly Catholicism, the sacrament is called confirmation, because it confirms and strengthens the grace of baptism; in the Eastern Churches, it is called chrismation, because the essential rite is the anointing of the person with chrism,[175] a mixture of olive oil and some perfumed substance, usually balsam, blessed by a bishop.[175][176] Those who receive confirmation must be in a state of grace, which for those who have reached the age of reason means that they should first be cleansed spiritually by the sacrament of Penance; they should also have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to show in their lives that they are Christians.[177]
+
+For Catholics, the Eucharist is the sacrament which completes Christian initiation. It is described as "the source and summit of the Christian life".[178] The ceremony in which a Catholic first receives the Eucharist is known as First Communion.[179]
+
+The Eucharistic celebration, also called the Mass or Divine liturgy, includes prayers and scriptural readings, as well as an offering of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar and consecrated by the priest to become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a change called transubstantiation.[180][note 8] The words of consecration reflect the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, where Christ offered his body and blood to his Apostles the night before his crucifixion. The sacrament re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,[181] and perpetuates it. Christ's death and resurrection gives grace through the sacrament that unites the faithful with Christ and one another, remits venial sin, and aids against committing moral sin (though mortal sin itself is forgiven through the sacrament of penance).[182]
+
+The two sacraments of healing are the Sacrament of Penance and Anointing of the Sick.
+
+The Sacrament of Penance (also called Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Confession, and Conversion[183]) exists for the conversion of those who, after baptism, separate themselves from Christ by sin.[184] Essential to this sacrament are acts both by the sinner (examination of conscience, contrition with a determination not to sin again, confession to a priest, and performance of some act to repair the damage caused by sin) and by the priest (determination of the act of reparation to be performed and absolution).[185] Serious sins (mortal sins) should be confessed at least once a year and always before receiving Holy Communion, while confession of venial sins also is recommended.[186] The priest is bound under the severest penalties to maintain the "seal of confession", absolute secrecy about any sins revealed to him in confession.[187]
+
+While chrism is used only for the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, a different oil is used by a priest or bishop to bless a Catholic who, because of illness or old age, has begun to be in danger of death.[188] This sacrament, known as Anointing of the Sick, is believed to give comfort, peace, courage and, if the sick person is unable to make a confession, even forgiveness of sins.[189]
+
+The sacrament is also referred to as Unction, and in the past as Extreme Unction, and it is one of the three sacraments that constitute the last rites, together with Penance and Viaticum (Eucharist).[190]
+
+According to the Catechism, there are two sacraments of communion directed towards the salvation of others: priesthood and marriage.[191] Within the general vocation to be a Christian, these two sacraments "consecrate to specific mission or vocation among the people of God. Men receive the holy orders to feed the Church by the word and grace. Spouses marry so that their love may be fortified to fulfil duties of their state".[192]
+
+The sacrament of Holy Orders consecrates and deputes some Christians to serve the whole body as members of three degrees or orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests) and diaconate (deacons).[193][194] The church has defined rules on who may be ordained into the clergy. In the Latin Church, the priesthood is generally restricted to celibate men, and the episcopate is always restricted to celibate men.[195] Men who are already married may be ordained in certain Eastern Catholic churches in most countries,[196] and the personal ordinariates and may become deacons even in the Western Church[197][198] (see Clerical marriage). But after becoming a Catholic priest, a man may not marry (see Clerical celibacy) unless he is formally laicized.
+
+All clergy, whether deacons, priests or bishops, may preach, teach, baptise, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies.[199] Only bishops and priests can administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick.[200][201] Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders, which ordains someone into the clergy.[202]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a social and spiritual bond between a man and a woman, ordered towards the good of the spouses and procreation of children; according to Catholic teachings on sexual morality, it is the only appropriate context for sexual activity. A Catholic marriage, or any marriage between baptised individuals of any Christian denomination, is viewed as a sacrament. A sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved except by death.[203][note 9] The church recognises certain conditions, such as freedom of consent, as required for any marriage to be valid; In addition, the church sets specific rules and norms, known as canonical form, that Catholics must follow.[206]
+
+The church does not recognise divorce as ending a valid marriage and allows state-recognised divorce only as a means of protecting the property and well being of the spouses and any children. However, consideration of particular cases by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal can lead to declaration of the invalidity of a marriage, a declaration usually referred to as an annulment.[207] Remarriage following a divorce is not permitted unless the prior marriage was declared invalid.[207]
+
+Among the 24 autonomous (sui iuris) churches, numerous liturgical and other traditions exist, called rites, which reflect historical and cultural diversity rather than differences in belief.[208] In the definition of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, "a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris".[209]
+
+The liturgy of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called the Mass in the West and Divine Liturgy or other names in the East, is the principal liturgy of the Catholic Church.[210] This is because it is considered the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ himself.[211] Its most widely used form is that of the Roman Rite as promulgated by Paul VI in 1969 and revised by Pope John Paul II in 2002. In certain circumstances, the 1962 form of the Roman Rite remains authorized in the Latin Church. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites. The liturgies of the Eucharist and the other sacraments vary from rite to rite, reflecting different theological emphases.
+
+
+
+The Roman Rite is the most common rite of worship used by the Catholic Church. Its use is found worldwide, originating in Rome and spreading throughout Europe, influencing and eventually supplanting local rites.[212] The present ordinary form of Mass in the Roman Rite, found in the post-1969 editions of the Roman Missal, is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, using an officially approved translation from the original text in Latin. An outline of its major liturgical elements can be found in the sidebar.
+
+In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the licitness of continued use of the 1962 Roman Missal as an "extraordinary form" (forma extraordinaria) of the Roman Rite, speaking of it also as an usus antiquior ("older use"), and issuing new more permissive norms for its employment.[213] An instruction issued four years later spoke of the two forms or usages of the Roman Rite approved by the pope as the ordinary form and the extraordinary form ("the forma ordinaria" and "the forma extraordinaria").[214]
+
+The 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, published a few months before the Second Vatican Council opened, was the last that presented the Mass as standardized in 1570 by Pope Pius V at the request of the Council of Trent and that is therefore known as the Tridentine Mass.[157] Pope Pius V's Roman Missal was subjected to minor revisions by Pope Clement VIII in 1604, Pope Urban VIII in 1634, Pope Pius X in 1911, Pope Pius XII in 1955, and Pope John XXIII in 1962. Each successive edition was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite Mass until superseded by a later edition. When the 1962 edition was superseded by that of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969, its continued use at first required permission from bishops;[215] but Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum allowed free use of it for Mass celebrated without a congregation and authorized parish priests to permit, under certain conditions, its use even at public Masses. Except for the scriptural readings, which Pope Benedict allowed to be proclaimed in the vernacular language, it is celebrated exclusively in liturgical Latin.[216]
+
+Since 2014, clergy in the small personal ordinariates set up for groups of former Anglicans under the terms of the 2009 document Anglicanorum Coetibus[217] are permitted to use a variation of the Roman Rite called "Divine Worship" or, less formally, "Ordinariate Use",[218] which incorporates elements of the Anglican liturgy and traditions,[note 10] an accommodation protested by Anglican leaders.
+
+In the Archdiocese of Milan, with around five million Catholics the largest in Europe,[219] Mass is celebrated according to the Ambrosian Rite. Other Latin Church rites include the Mozarabic[220] and those of some religious institutes.[221] These liturgical rites have an antiquity of at least 200 years before 1570, the date of Pope Pius V's Quo primum, and were thus allowed to continue.[222]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches share common patrimony and liturgical rites as their counterparts, including Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches who are no longer in communion with the Holy See. These include churches that historically developed in Russia, Caucasus, the Balkans, North Eastern Africa, India and the Middle East. The Eastern Catholic Churches are groups of faithful who have either never been out of communion with the Holy See or who have restored communion with it at the cost of breaking communion with their associates of the same tradition.[223]
+
+The rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches include the Byzantine Rite, in its Antiochian, Greek and Slavonic varieties; the Alexandrian Rite; the Syriac Rite; the Armenian Rite; the Maronite Rite and the Chaldean Rite. Eastern Catholic Churches have the autonomy to set the particulars of their liturgical forms and worship, within certain limits to protect the "accurate observance" of their liturgical tradition.[224] In the past some of the rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches were subject to a degree of liturgical Latinization. However, in recent years Eastern Catholic Churches have returned to traditional Eastern practices in accord with the Vatican II decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.[225] Each church has its own liturgical calendar.[226]
+
+Catholic social teaching, reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, places a heavy emphasis on the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted.[227][228] Church teaching calls for a preferential option for the poor while canon law prescribes that "The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor."[229] Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum which upholds the rights and dignity of labour and the right of workers to form unions.
+
+Catholic teaching regarding sexuality calls for a practice of chastity, with a focus on maintaining the spiritual and bodily integrity of the human person. Marriage is considered the only appropriate context for sexual activity.[230] Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council, due to changing cultural attitudes in the Western world described as the sexual revolution.
+
+The church has also addressed stewardship of the natural environment, and its relationship to other social and theological teachings. In the document Laudato si', dated 24 May 2015, Pope Francis critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, and laments environmental degradation and global warming.[231] The pope expressed concern that the warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as humans pursue short-term economic gains.[232]
+
+The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world.[19] In 2010, the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the church manages 26% of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy.[233]
+
+The church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world[234][235] and operates the world's largest non-governmental school system.[236]
+
+Religious institutes for women have played a particularly prominent role in the provision of health and education services,[237] as with orders such as the Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul.[238] The Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work among India's poor.[239] Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the same award in 1996 for "work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor".[240]
+
+The church is also actively engaged in international aid and development through organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Caritas International, Aid to the Church in Need, refugee advocacy groups such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and community aid groups such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.[241]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church calls all members to practise chastity according to their state in life. Chastity includes temperance, self-mastery, personal and cultural growth, and divine grace. It requires refraining from lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution and, especially, rape. Chastity for those who are not married requires living in continence, abstaining from sexual activity; those who are married are called to conjugal chastity.[242]
+
+In the church's teaching, sexual activity is reserved to married couples, whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptised. Even in romantic relationships, particularly engagement to marriage, partners are called to practise continence, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity.[243] Chastity in marriage requires in particular conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the possibility of life;[244] the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance.[245]
+
+Contraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason.[246] Pope Francis said in 2015 that he is worried that the church has grown "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception and has criticized the Catholic Church for placing dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized.[247][248]
+
+Canon law makes no provision for divorce between baptised individuals, as a valid, consummated sacramental marriage is considered to be a lifelong bond.[249] However, a declaration of nullity may be granted when the proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a valid marriage were absent from the beginning—in other words, that the marriage was not valid due to some impediment. A declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment, is a judgement on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly attempted.[250] In addition, marriages among unbaptised individuals may be dissolved with papal permission under certain situations, such as a desire to marry a Catholic, under Pauline or Petrine privilege.[204][205] An attempt at remarriage following divorce without a declaration of nullity places "the remarried spouse ... in a situation of public and permanent adultery". An innocent spouse who lives in continence following divorce, or couples who live in continence following a civil divorce for a grave cause, do not sin.[251]
+
+Worldwide, diocesan tribunals completed over 49000 cases for nullity of marriage in 2006. Over the past 30 years about 55 to 70% of annulments have occurred in the United States. The growth in annulments has been substantial; in the United States, 27,000 marriages were annulled in 2006, compared to 338 in 1968. However, approximately 200,000 married Catholics in the United States divorce each year; 10 million total as of 2006[update].[252][note 11] Divorce is increasing in some predominantly Catholic countries in Europe.[254] In some predominantly Catholic countries, it is only in recent years that divorce was introduced (e.g. Italy (1970), Portugal (1975), Brazil (1977), Spain (1981), Ireland (1996), Chile (2004) and Malta (2011), while the Philippines and the Vatican City have no procedure for divorce. (The Philippines does, however, allow divorce for Muslims.)
+
+The church teaches that sexual intercourse should only take place between a man and woman who are married to each other, and should be without the use of birth control or contraception. In his encyclical Humanae vitae[255] (1968), Pope Paul VI firmly rejected all contraception, thus contradicting dissenters in the church that saw the birth control pill as an ethically justifiable method of contraception, though he permitted the regulation of births by means of natural family planning. This teaching was continued especially by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where he clarified the church's position on contraception, abortion and euthanasia by condemning them as part of a "culture of death" and calling instead for a "culture of life".[256]
+
+Many Western Catholics have voiced significant disagreement with the church's teaching on contraception.[257] Catholics for Choice, a political lobbyist group which is not associated with the Catholic Church, stated in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control.[258] Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty.[note 12] As Catholic health providers are among the largest providers of services to patients with HIV/AIDS worldwide, there is significant controversy within and outside the church regarding the use of condoms as a means of limiting new infections, as condom use ordinarily constitutes prohibited contraceptive use.[261]
+
+Similarly, the Catholic Church opposes in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying that the artificial process replaces the love between a husband and wife.[262] In addition, it opposes IVF because it might cause disposal of embryos; Catholics believe an embryo is an individual with a soul who must be treated as such.[263] For this reason, the church also opposes abortion.[264]
+
+The Catholic Church also teaches that "homosexual acts" are "contrary to the natural law", "acts of grave depravity" and "under no circumstances can they be approved", but that persons experiencing homosexual tendencies must be accorded respect and dignity.[265] According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
+
+The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. ...
+Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.[266]
+
+This part of the Catechism was quoted by Pope Francis in a 2013 press interview in which he remarked, when asked about an individual:
+
+I think that when you encounter a person like this [the individual he was asked about], you must make a distinction between the fact of a person being gay from the fact of being a lobby, because lobbies, all are not good. That is bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?[267]
+
+This remark and others made in the same interview were seen as a change in the tone, but not in the substance of the teaching of the church,[268] which includes opposition to same-sex marriage.[269] Certain dissenting Catholic groups oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it.[270]
+
+Women and men religious engage in a variety of occupations, from contemplative prayer, to teaching, to providing health care, to working as missionaries.[237][271] While Holy Orders are reserved for men, Catholic women have played diverse roles in the life of the church, with religious institutes providing a formal space for their participation and convents providing spaces for their self-government, prayer and influence through many centuries. Religious sisters and nuns have been extensively involved in developing and running the church's worldwide health and education service networks.[272]
+
+Efforts in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood led to several rulings by the Roman Curia or popes against the proposal, as in Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) and Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994). According to the latest ruling, found in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II affirmed that the Catholic Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination".[273] In defiance of these rulings, opposition groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests have performed ceremonies they affirm as sacramental ordinations (with, reputedly, an ordaining male Catholic bishop in the first few instances) which, according to canon law, are both illicit and invalid and considered mere simulations[274] of the sacrament of ordination.[275][note 13] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded by issuing a statement clarifying that any Catholic bishops involved in ordination ceremonies for women, as well as the women themselves if they were Catholic, would automatically receive the penalty of excommunication (latae sententiae, literally "with the sentence already applied", i.e. automatically), citing canon 1378 of canon law and other church laws.[276]
+
+From the 1990s, the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and other church members has become the subject of civil litigation, criminal prosecution, media coverage and public debate in countries around the world. The Catholic Church has been criticized for its handling of abuse complaints when it became known that some bishops had shielded accused priests, transferring them to other pastoral assignments where some continued to commit sexual offences.
+
+In response to the scandal, formal procedures have been established to help prevent abuse, encourage the reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness.[277] In 2014, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the safeguarding of minors.[278]
+
+The Christian religion is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived and preached in the 1st century AD in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire. Catholic doctrine teaches that the contemporary Catholic Church is the continuation of this early Christian community established by Jesus.[9] Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire, despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 313, and it became the state religion in 380. Germanic invaders of Roman territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, many of whom had previously adopted Arian Christianity, eventually adopted Catholicism to ally themselves with the papacy and the monasteries.
+
+In the 7th and 8th centuries, expanding Muslim conquests following the advent of Islam led to an Arab domination of the Mediterranean that severed political connections between that area and northern Europe, and weakened cultural connections between Rome and the Byzantine Empire. Conflicts involving authority in the church, particularly the authority of the Bishop of Rome finally culminated in the East–West Schism in the 11th century, splitting the church into the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Earlier splits within the church occurred after the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). However, a few Eastern Churches remained in communion with Rome, and portions of some others established communion in the 15th century and later, forming what are called the Eastern Catholic Churches.
+
+Early monasteries throughout Europe helped preserve Greek and Roman classical civilization. The church eventually became the dominant influence in Western civilization into the modern age. Many Renaissance figures were sponsored by the church. The 16th century, however, began to see challenges to the church, in particular to its religious authority, by figures in the Protestant Reformation, as well as in the 17th century by secular intellectuals in the Enlightenment. Concurrently, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and missionaries spread the church's influence through Africa, Asia, and the New World.
+
+In 1870, the First Vatican Council declared the dogma of papal infallibility and the Kingdom of Italy annexed the city of Rome, the last portion of the Papal States to be incorporated into the new nation. In the 20th century, anti-clerical governments around the world, including Mexico and Spain, persecuted or executed thousands of clerics and laypersons. In the Second World War, the church condemned Nazism, and protected hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust; its efforts, however, have been criticized as inadequate. After the war, freedom of religion was severely restricted in the Communist countries newly aligned with the Soviet Union, several of which had large Catholic populations.
+
+In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council led to reforms of the church's liturgy and practices, described as "opening the windows" by defenders, but criticized by traditionalist Catholics. In the face of increased criticism from both within and without, the church has upheld or reaffirmed at various times controversial doctrinal positions regarding sexuality and gender, including limiting clergy to males, and moral exhortations against abortion, contraception, sexual activity outside of marriage, remarriage following divorce without annulment, and against same-sex marriage.
+
+The New Testament, in particular the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles and his Great Commission of the Apostles, instructing them to continue his work.[112][279] The book Acts of Apostles, tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman empire.[280]  The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, occurring fifty days following the date Christ is believed to have resurrected.[113] At Pentecost, the Apostles are believed to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission in leading the church.[281][282] The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, led by the Bishop of Rome are the successors to the Apostles.[283]
+
+In the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the "rock" upon which Christ's church will be built.[284][285] The Catholic Church considers the Bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor to Saint Peter.[286] Some scholars state Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.[287][note 14] Others say that the institution of the papacy is not dependent on the idea that Peter was Bishop of Rome or even on his ever having been in Rome.[288] Many scholars hold that a church structure of plural presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when the structure of a single bishop and plural presbyters was adopted,[289] and that later writers retrospectively applied the term "bishop of Rome" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period and also to Peter himself.[289] On this basis, Oscar Cullmann,[290] Henry Chadwick,[291] and Bart D. Ehrman[292] question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy. Raymond E. Brown also says that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have looked on Peter as having "roles that would contribute in an essential way to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church". These roles, Brown says, "contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome, the bishop of the city where Peter died, and where Paul witnessed to the truth of Christ, as the successor of Peter in care for the church universal".[289]
+
+Conditions in the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas. The empire's network of roads and waterways facilitated travel, and the Pax Romana made travelling safe. The empire encouraged the spread of a common culture with Greek roots, which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood.[293]
+
+Unlike most religions in the Roman Empire, however, Christianity required its adherents to renounce all other gods, a practice adopted from Judaism (see Idolatry). The Christians' refusal to join pagan celebrations meant they were unable to participate in much of public life, which caused non-Christians—including government authorities—to fear that the Christians were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the Empire. The resulting persecutions were a defining feature of Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century.[294]
+
+In 313, Emperor Constantine I's Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and in 330 Constantine moved the imperial capital to Constantinople, modern Istanbul, Turkey. In 380 the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a position that within the diminishing territory of the Byzantine Empire would persist until the empire itself ended in the fall of Constantinople in 1453, while elsewhere the church was independent of the empire, as became particularly clear with the East–West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five primary sees emerged, an arrangement formalized in the mid-6th century by Emperor Justinian I as the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.[295][296] In 451 the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity,[297] elevated the see of Constantinople to a position "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome".[298] From c. 350 to c. 500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome, steadily increased in authority through their consistent intervening in support of orthodox leaders in theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them.[299] Emperor Justinian, who in the areas under his control definitively established a form of caesaropapism,[300] in which "he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in the Church",[301] reestablished imperial power over Rome and other parts of the West, initiating the period termed the Byzantine Papacy (537–752), during which the bishops of Rome, or popes, required approval from the emperor in Constantinople or from his representative in Ravenna for consecration, and most were selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects,[302] resulting in a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art as well as liturgy.[303]
+
+Most of the Germanic tribes who in the following centuries invaded the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Catholic Church declared heretical.[304] The resulting religious discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects[305] was avoided when, in 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism, allying himself with the papacy and the monasteries.[306] The Visigoths in Spain followed his lead in 589,[307] and the Lombards in Italy in the course of the 7th century.[308]
+
+Western Christianity, particularly through its monasteries, was a major factor in preserving classical civilization, with its art (see Illuminated manuscript) and literacy.[309][310] Through his Rule, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, exerted an enormous influence on European culture through the appropriation of the monastic spiritual heritage of the early Catholic Church and, with the spread of the Benedictine tradition, through the preservation and transmission of ancient culture. During this period, monastic Ireland became a centre of learning and early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe.[1]
+
+Catholicism portal
+
+The Catholic Church was the dominant influence on Western civilization from Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age.[8] It was the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque styles in art, architecture and music.[311] Renaissance figures such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Bernini and Caravaggio are examples of the numerous visual artists sponsored by the church.[312] Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization".[313]
+
+The massive Islamic invasions of the mid-7th century began a long struggle between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basin. The Byzantine Empire soon lost the lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch and was reduced to that of Constantinople, the empire's capital. As a result of Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, the Frankish state, centred away from that sea, was able to evolve as the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages.[314] The battles of Toulouse and Poitiers halted the Islamic advance in the West and the failed Siege of Constantinople halted it in the East. Two or three decades later, in 751, the Byzantine Empire lost to the Lombards the city of Ravenna from which it governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, that acknowledged its sovereignty. The fall of Ravenna meant that confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked for during the election in 752 of Pope Stephen II and that the papacy was forced to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it.[315] In 754, at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, the Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards. He then gifted the lands of the former exarchate to the pope, thus initiating the Papal States. Rome and the Byzantine East would delve into further conflict during the Photian schism of the 860s, when Photius criticized the Latin west of adding of the filioque clause after being excommunicated by Nicholas I. Though the schism was reconciled, unresolved issues would lead to further division.[316]
+
+In the 11th century, the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman Emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes.[317][318]
+
+In 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine–Seljuk Wars,[319] which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control.[320] In the 11th century, strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East–West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach.[321] In this age great gothic cathedrals in France were an expression of popular pride in the Christian faith.
+
+In the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán. The studia conventualia and studia generalia of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of Church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe.[322] Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' Summa Theologica was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation.[323]
+
+A growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. To escape instability in Rome, Clement V in 1309 became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France[324] during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome,[325] but was followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western schism, with claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa.[325] The matter was largely resolved in 1415–17 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope.[326]
+
+In 1438, the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches.[327] Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches.[328]
+
+The Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the prominent role the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal played in Western Colonialism, Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the transformation of societies through the socio-political mechanisms of colonial rule. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal[329] and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies.[330] In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines.[331] Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China, and Japan.[332] The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Roman Catholic francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec.[333]
+
+In 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, but his reform efforts encouraged Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk in Germany, who sent his Ninety-five Theses to several bishops in 1517.[334] His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences, and along with the Leipzig Debate this led to his excommunication in 1521.[334][335] In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations[336] and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church.[337] Meanwhile, Henry VIII petitioned the pope for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make him head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism.[338]
+
+The Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict—the Thirty Years' War—which broke out in 1618.[339] In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes.[340] This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants.[339][340]
+
+The Council of Trent (1545–1563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation.[341] In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment.[342]
+
+From the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society.[343] In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution of 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason,[344] and the martyrdom of nuns during the Reign of Terror.[345] In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801.[346] The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.[347]
+
+In 1854, Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a Dogma in the Catholic Church.[348] In 1870, the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements,[349][350] striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church,[351]
+
+The Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response, Pope Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land, and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a "prisoner in the Vatican".[352] This stand-off, which was spoken of as the Roman Question, was resolved by the 1929 Lateran Treaties, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state.[353]
+
+A number of anti-clerical governments emerged in the 20th century.
+
+The 1926 Calles Law separating church and state in Mexico led to the Cristero War[354] in which more than 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[355] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped, and captured priests shot.[354] Following the 1917 October Revolution, persecution of the church and Catholics in the Soviet Union continued into the 1930s, with the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements, and closure of churches.[356][357] In the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy allied with Franco's Nationalists against the Popular Front government,[358] citing as justification Republican violence against the church.[359][360] Pope Pius XI referred to these three countries as a "terrible triangle".[361][362]
+
+After violations of the 1933 Reichskonkordat between the church and Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of the church and their ideology of neo-paganism and racial superiority.[363][364][365] The church condemned the 1939 Invasion of Poland that started World War II and other subsequent wartime Nazi invasions.[366] Thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and brothers were imprisoned and murdered throughout the countries occupied by the Nazis, including Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein.[367] While Pope Pius XII has been credited with helping to save hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust,[368][369] the church has also been accused of having encouraged centuries of antisemitism by its teachings[370] and not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities.[371]
+
+During the post-war period, Communist governments in Eastern Europe severely restricted religious freedoms.[372] Although some priests and religious people collaborated with Communist regimes,[373] many others were imprisoned, deported, or executed. The church was an important player in the fall of Communism in Europe, particularly in the Polish People's Republic.[374]
+
+In 1949, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries.[375] The new government also created the Patriotic Church and appointed its bishops. These appointments were initially rejected by Rome before many of them were accepted.[376] In the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communists closed all religious establishments. When Chinese churches eventually reopened, they remained under the control of the Patriotic Church. Many Catholic pastors and priests continued to be sent to prison for refusing to renounce allegiance to Rome.[377]
+
+The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before.[378] Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernised the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging "fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations".[379] It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (aggiornamento), which was described by its advocates as an "opening of the windows".[380] In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism,[381] and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document Nostra aetate.[382]
+
+The council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the "Spirit of Vatican II" such as Swiss theologian Hans Küng said that Vatican II had "not gone far enough" to change church policies.[383] Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led "to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments", among other issues.[384]
+
+Several teachings of the Catholic Church came under increased scrutiny both concurrent with and following the council; among those teachings was the church's teaching regarding the immorality of contraception. The recent introduction of hormonal contraception (including "the pill"), which were believed by some to be morally different from previous methods, prompted John XXIII to form a committee to advise him of the moral and theological issues with the new method.[385][386] Pope Paul VI later expanded the committee's scope to freely examine all methods, and the committee's unreleased final report was rumoured to suggest permitting at least some methods of contraception. Paul did not agree with the arguments presented, and eventually issued Humanae vitae, saying that it upheld the constant teaching of the church against contraception. It expressly included hormonal methods as prohibited.[note 15] This document generated a largely negative response from many Catholics.[from whom?][387]
+
+In 1978, Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Kraków in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history.[388] Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, credited the Polish pope with hastening the fall of Communism in Europe.[389]
+
+John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He instituted World Youth Day as a "worldwide encounter with the pope" for young people; it is now held every two to three years.[390] He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries,[391] and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasised the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in Laborem exercens.[392] He emphasised several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia, and against widespread use of the death penalty, in Evangelium Vitae.[393]
+
+From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women, and its handling of sexual abuse cases.
+
+In 2005, following the death of John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul, was elected. He was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization,[394] and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962.[395] In 2012, the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, an assembly of the Synod of Bishops discussed re-evangelising lapsed Catholics in the developed world.[396] Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years.[397]
+
+Pope Francis, the current pope of the Catholic Church, succeeded Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 as the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century. Pope Francis has been noted for his humility, emphasis on God's mercy, concern for the poor and the environment, as well as his commitment to interfaith dialogue. He is credited with having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.
+
+Pope Francis is recognised for his efforts "to further close the nearly 1,000-year estrangement with the Orthodox Churches".[398] His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church,[399] the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation.[400] On 12 February 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, met in Havana, Cuba, issuing a joint declaration calling for restored Christian unity between the two churches. This was reported as the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054.[401]
+
+In 2014, the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops addressed the church's ministry towards families and marriages and to Catholics in "irregular" relationships, such as those who divorced and remarried outside of the church without a declaration of nullity.[402][403] While welcomed by some, it was criticized by some for perceived ambiguity, provoking controversies among individual representatives of differing perspectives.[404]
+
+In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis reestablished mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church.[405]

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+God
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+Schools
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+Relations with:
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+The Catholic Church, sometimes referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2018[update].[4] As the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution,[7] it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.[8] The church is headed by the bishop of Rome, known as the pope. Its central administration is the Holy See.
+
+The Christian beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission,[9][10][note 1] that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles, and that the pope is the successor to Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ.[13] It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, reserving infallibility, passed down by sacred tradition.[14] The Latin Church, the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, and institutes such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders and third orders reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.[15][16]
+
+Of its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass.[17] The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, honoured in dogmas and devotions.[18] Its teaching includes Divine Mercy, sanctification through faith and evangelization of the Gospel as well as Catholic social teaching, which emphasises voluntary support for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+The Catholic Church has influenced Western philosophy, culture, art, and science. Catholics live all over the world through missions, diaspora, and conversions. Since the 20th century the majority reside in the southern hemisphere, due to secularization in Europe, and increased persecution in the Middle East.
+
+The Catholic Church shared communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East–West Schism in 1054, disputing particularly the authority of the pope. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the Oriental Orthodox churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451; all separated primarily over differences in Christology.  In the 16th century, the Reformation led to Protestantism also breaking away.
+
+From the late 20th century the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teachings on sexuality, its absence of female priests, and its handling of sexual abuse cases involving clergy.
+
+Catholic (from Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikos, lit. 'universal') was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century.[22] The first known use of the phrase "the catholic church" (καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία he katholike ekklesia) occurred in the letter written about 110 AD from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans.[note 2] In the Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name "Catholic Church" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves "the church".[23][24] The "Catholic" notion was further stressed in the edict De fide Catolica issued 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire, when establishing the state church of the Roman Empire.[25]
+
+Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Church has taken the adjective "Orthodox" as its distinctive epithet (however, its official name continues to be the "Orthodox Catholic Church"[26]) and the Western Church in communion with the Holy See has similarly taken "Catholic", keeping that description also after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as "Protestants".[27][28]
+
+While the "Roman Church" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th–10th century), the "Roman Catholic Church" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century.[29] "Roman Catholic" has occasionally appeared also in documents produced both by the Holy See,[note 3] notably applied to certain national episcopal conferences, and local dioceses.[note 4]
+
+The name "Catholic Church" for the whole church is used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). The name "Catholic Church" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965),[30] the First Vatican Council (1869–1870),[31] the Council of Trent (1545–1563),[32] and numerous other official documents.[33][34]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church.[35][36] There are three levels of clergy, the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local diocese or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, commonly called the pope, whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See. In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services.
+
+The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the pope (Latin: papa; "father"), who is the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.[37] The current pope, Francis, was elected on 13 March 2013 by papal conclave.[38]
+
+Jus novum (c. 1140-1563)
+
+Jus novissimum (c. 1563-1918)
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+Jus codicis (1918-present)
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+Other
+
+Sacraments
+
+Sacramentals
+
+Sacred places
+
+Sacred times
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+Supra-diocesan/eparchal structures
+
+Particular churches
+
+Juridic persons
+
+Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of canon law
+
+Clerics
+
+Office
+
+Juridic and physical persons
+
+Associations of the faithful
+
+Pars dynamica (trial procedure)
+
+Canonization
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+Election of the Roman Pontiff
+
+Academic degrees
+
+Journals and Professional Societies
+
+Faculties of canon law
+
+Canonists
+
+Institute of consecrated life
+
+Society of apostolic life
+
+The office of the pope is known as the papacy. The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the "Holy See" (Sancta Sedes in Latin), or the "Apostolic See" (meaning the see of the apostle Peter).[39][40] Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church.
+
+The pope is also Sovereign of Vatican City,[41] a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives.[42] The Holy See also confers orders, decorations and medals, such as the orders of chivalry originating from the Middle Ages.
+
+While the famous Saint Peter's Basilica is located in Vatican City, above the traditional site of Saint Peter's tomb, the papal cathedral for the Diocese of Rome is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, located within the city of Rome, though enjoying extraterritorial privileges accredited to the Holy See.
+
+The position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals.[43]
+
+Following the death or resignation of a pope,[note 5] members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor.[45] Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic as pope since 1389 only cardinals have been elected.[46]
+
+Canon law (Latin: jus canonicum)[47] is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church.[48] The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system[49] and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West,[50][51] while the distinctive traditions of Oriental canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
+
+Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator—the Supreme Pontiff—who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person,[52] while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system:[53] laws, courts, lawyers, judges,[53] a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church[54] as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches,[54] principles of legal interpretation,[55] and coercive penalties.[56][57]
+
+Canon law concerns the Catholic Church's life and organization and is distinct from civil law. In its own field it gives force to civil law only by specific enactment in matters such as the guardianship of minors.[58] Similarly, civil law may give force in its field to canon law, but only by specific enactment, as with regard to canonical marriages.[59] Currently, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is in effect for the Latin Church.[60] The distinct 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO, after the Latin initials) applies to the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches.[61]
+
+
+
+In the first thousand years of Catholic history, different varieties of Christianity developed in the Western and Eastern Christian areas of Europe. Though most Eastern-tradition churches are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054, autonomous particular churches of both traditions currently participate, also known as "churches sui iuris" (Latin: "of one's own right"). The largest and most well known is the Latin Church, the only Western-tradition church, with more than 1 billion members worldwide. Relatively small in terms of adherents compared to the Latin Church, are the 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic Churches with a combined membership of 17.3 million as of 2010[update].[62][63][64][65]
+
+The Latin Church is governed by the pope and diocesan bishops directly appointed by him. The pope exercises a direct patriarchal role over the Latin Church, which is considered to form the original and still major part of Western Christianity, a heritage of certain beliefs and customs originating in Europe and northwestern Africa, some of which are inherited by many Christian denominations that trace their origins to the Protestant Reformation.[66]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches follow the traditions and spirituality of Eastern Christianity and are churches which have always remained in full communion with the Catholic Church or who have chosen to re-enter full communion in the centuries following the East–West Schism and earlier divisions. These churches are communities of Catholic Christians whose forms of worship reflect distinct historical and cultural influences rather than differences in doctrine.
+
+A church sui iuris is defined in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches as a "group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy" that is recognised by the pope in his capacity as the supreme authority on matters of doctrine within the church.[67] The term is an innovation of the CCEO to denote the relative autonomy of the Eastern Catholic Churches,[68] who remain in full communion with the pope, but have governance structures and liturgical traditions separate from that of the Latin Church.[63] While the Latin Church's canons do not explicitly use the term, it is tacitly recognised as equivalent.
+
+Some Eastern Catholic churches are governed by a patriarch who is elected by the synod of the bishops of that church,[69] others are headed by a major archbishop,[70] others are under a metropolitan,[71] and others are organized as individual eparchies.[72] Each church has authority over the particulars of its internal organization, liturgical rites, liturgical calendar and other aspects of its spirituality, subject only to the authority of the pope.[73] The Roman Curia has a specific department, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to maintain relations with them.[74] The pope does not generally appoint bishops or clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches, deferring to their internal governance structures, but may intervene if he feels it necessary.
+
+Individual countries, regions, or major cities are served by particular churches known as dioceses in the Latin Church, or eparchies in the Eastern Catholic Churches, each overseen by a bishop. As of 2008[update], the Catholic Church has 2,795 dioceses.[76] The bishops in a particular country are members of a national or regional episcopal conference.[77]
+
+Dioceses are divided into parishes, each with one or more priests, deacons or lay ecclesial ministers.[78] Parishes are responsible for the day to day celebration of the sacraments and pastoral care of the laity.[79] As of 2016[update], there are 221,700 parishes worldwide.[80]
+
+In the Latin Church, Catholic men may serve as deacons or priests by receiving sacramental ordination. Men and women may serve as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, as readers (lectors), or as altar servers. Historically, boys and men have only been permitted to serve as altar servers; however, since the 1990s, girls and women have also been permitted.[81][note 6]
+
+Ordained Catholics, as well as members of the laity, may enter into consecrated life either on an individual basis, as a hermit or consecrated virgin, or by joining an institute of consecrated life (a religious institute or a secular institute) in which to take vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience.[82] Examples of institutes of consecrated life are the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Legionaries of Christ and the Sisters of Mercy.[82]
+
+"Religious institutes" is a modern term encompassing both "religious orders" and "religious congregations," which were once distinguished in canon law.[83] The terms "religious order" and "religious institute" tend to be used as synonyms colloquially.[84]
+
+By means of Catholic charities and beyond, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+Catholicism is the world's second largest religious body after Sunni Islam.[85] Church membership, defined as baptised Catholics, was 1.329 billion at the end of 2018, which is 18% of the world population.[4] Catholics represent about half of all Christians.[86]
+
+Geographic distribution of Catholics worldwide continues to shift, with 17.8% in Africa, 48.3% in the Americas, 11.1% Asia, 21.5% in Europe, and 0.9% in Oceania.[4]
+
+Catholic ministers include ordained clergy, lay ecclesial ministers, missionaries, and catechists. Also as of the end of 2014, there were 465,595 ordained clergy, including 5,237 bishops, 415,792 priests (diocesan and religious), and 44,566 deacons (permanent).[87] Non-ordained ministers included 3,157,568 catechists, 367,679 lay missionaries, and 39,951 lay ecclesial ministers.[88]
+
+Catholics who have committed to religious or consecrated life instead of marriage or single celibacy, as a state of life or relational vocation, include 54,559 male religious, 705,529 women religious. These are not ordained, nor generally considered ministers unless also engaged in one of the lay minister categories above.[87]
+
+Catholic doctrine has developed over the centuries, reflecting direct teachings of early Christians, formal definitions of heretical and orthodox beliefs by ecumenical councils and in papal bulls, and theological debate by scholars. The church believes that it is continually guided by the Holy Spirit as it discerns new theological issues and is protected infallibly from falling into doctrinal error when a firm decision on an issue is reached.[89][90]
+
+It teaches that revelation has one common source, God, and two distinct modes of transmission: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition,[91][92] and that these are authentically interpreted by the Magisterium.[93][94] Sacred Scripture consists of the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, consisting of 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament writings. Sacred Tradition consists of those teachings believed by the church to have been handed down since the time of the Apostles.[95] Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are collectively known as the "deposit of faith" (depositum fidei in Latin). These are in turn interpreted by the Magisterium (from magister, Latin for "teacher"), the church's teaching authority, which is exercised by the pope and the College of Bishops in union with the pope, the Bishop of Rome.[96] Catholic doctrine is authoritatively summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by the Holy See.[97][98]
+
+The Catholic Church holds that there is one eternal God, who exists as a perichoresis ("mutual indwelling") of three hypostases, or "persons": God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit, which together are called the "Holy Trinity".[99]
+
+Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the "Second Person" of the Trinity, God the Son. In an event known as the Incarnation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature through the conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ, therefore, is understood as being both fully divine and fully human, including possessing a human soul. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels.[100] Jesus is believed to have remained sinless while on earth, and to have allowed himself to be unjustly executed by crucifixion, as a sacrifice of himself to reconcile humanity to God; this reconciliation is known as the Paschal Mystery.[101] The Greek term "Christ" and the Hebrew "Messiah" both mean "anointed one", referring to the Christian belief that Jesus' death and resurrection are the fulfilment of the Old Testament's messianic prophecies.[102]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that "the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one single principle".[103] It holds that the Father, as the "principle without principle", is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that he, as Father of the only Son, is with the Son the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds.[104] This belief is expressed in the Filioque clause which was added to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed of 381 but not included in the Greek versions of the creed used in Eastern Christianity.[105]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it is the "one true church",[9][106] "the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race",[107][108] and "the one true religion".[109] According to the Catechism, the Catholic Church is further described in the Nicene Creed as the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church".[110] These are collectively known as the Four Marks of the Church. The church teaches that its founder is Jesus Christ.[111][112] The New Testament records several events considered integral to the establishment of the Catholic Church, including Jesus' activities and teaching and his appointment of the apostles as witnesses to his ministry, suffering, and resurrection. The Great Commission, after his resurrection, instructed the apostles to continue his work. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, is seen as the beginning of the public ministry of the Catholic Church.[113] The church teaches that all duly consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles of Christ, known as apostolic succession.[114] In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the pope) is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, a position from which he derives his supremacy over the church.[115]
+
+Catholic belief holds that the church "is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth"[116] and that it alone possesses the full means of salvation.[117] Through the passion (suffering) of Christ leading to his crucifixion as described in the Gospels, it is said Christ made himself an oblation to God the Father in order to reconcile humanity to God;[118] the Resurrection of Jesus makes him the firstborn from the dead, the first among many brethren.[119] By reconciling with God and following Christ's words and deeds, an individual can enter the Kingdom of God.[120] The church sees its liturgy and sacraments as perpetuating the graces achieved through Christ's sacrifice to strengthen a person's relationship with Christ and aid in overcoming sin.[121]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that, immediately after death, the soul of each person will receive a particular judgement from God, based on their sins and their relationship to Christ.[122][123] This teaching also attests to another day when Christ will sit in universal judgement of all mankind. This final judgement, according to the church's teaching, will bring an end to human history and mark the beginning of both a new and better heaven and earth ruled by God in righteousness.[124]
+
+Depending on the judgement rendered following death, it is believed that a soul may enter one of three states of the afterlife:
+
+While the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation,[117] it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of Christian communities separated from itself to "impel towards Catholic unity"[133] and "tend and lead toward the Catholic Church",[133] and thus bring people to salvation, because these separated communities contain some elements of proper doctrine, albeit admixed with errors. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.[134]
+
+A saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognised as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God, while canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the "canon", or list, of recognised saints.[135][136] The first persons honoured as saints were the martyrs. Pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly.
+
+In the Catholic Church, both in Latin and Eastern Catholic churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he is worthy to be recognised as a saint. The church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that he may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the church, including in the Litany of the Saints. Canonization allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite; for permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.[137]
+
+Devotions are "external practices of piety" which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics.[138] These include various practices regarding the veneration of the saints, especially veneration of the Virgin Mary. Other devotional practices include the Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Face of Jesus,[139] the various scapulars, novenas to various saints,[140] pilgrimages[141] and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament,[140] and the veneration of saintly images such as the santos.[142] The bishops at the Second Vatican Council reminded Catholics that "devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonise with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them."[143]
+
+Catholic Mariology deals with the doctrines and teachings concerning the life of the Mary, mother of Jesus, as well as the veneration of Mary by the faithful. Mary is held in special regard, declared the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτόκος, romanized: Theotokos, lit. 'God-bearer'), and believed as dogma to have remained a virgin throughout her life.[144] Further teachings include the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (her own conception without the stain of original sin) and the Assumption of Mary (that her body was assumed directly into heaven at the end of her life). Both of these doctrines were defined as infallible dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively,[145] but only after consulting with the Catholic bishops throughout the world to ascertain that this is a Catholic belief.[146]
+
+Devotions to Mary are part of Catholic piety but are distinct from the worship of God.[147] Practices include prayers and Marian art, music, and architecture. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honoured with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church because, by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ.[145] Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions such as the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices.[148] Pilgrimage to the sites of several Marian apparitions affirmed by the church, such as Lourdes, Fátima, and Guadalupe,[149] are also popular Catholic devotions.[150]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it was entrusted with seven sacraments that were instituted by Christ. The number and nature of the sacraments were defined by several ecumenical councils, most recently the Council of Trent.[151][note 7] These are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction, one of the "Last Rites"), Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. Sacraments are visible rituals that Catholics see as signs of God's presence and effective channels of God's grace to all those who receive them with the proper disposition (ex opere operato).[152] The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes the sacraments into three groups, the "sacraments of Christian initiation", "sacraments of healing" and "sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the faithful". These groups broadly reflect the stages of people's natural and spiritual lives which each sacrament is intended to serve.[153]
+
+The liturgies of the sacraments are central to the church's mission. According to the Catechism:
+
+In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the "communion of the Holy Spirit" who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities.[154]
+
+According to church doctrine, the sacraments of the church require the proper form, matter, and intent to be validly celebrated.[155] In addition, the Canon Laws for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches govern who may licitly celebrate certain sacraments, as well as strict rules about who may receive the sacraments.[156] Notably, because the church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist,[157] those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden to receive the sacrament until they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance).[158] Catholics are normally obliged to abstain from eating for at least an hour before receiving the sacrament.[158] Non-Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from receiving the Eucharist as well.[156][159]
+
+Catholics, even if they were in danger of death and unable to approach a Catholic minister, may not ask for the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance or anointing of the sick from someone, such as a Protestant minister, who is not known to be validly ordained in line with Catholic teaching on ordination.[160][161] Likewise, even in grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may not administer these sacraments to those who do not manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament. In relation to the churches of Eastern Christianity not in communion with the Holy See, the Catholic Church is less restrictive, declaring that "a certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged."[162]
+
+As viewed by the Catholic Church, Baptism is the first of three sacraments of initiation as a Christian.[163] It washes away all sins, both original sin and personal actual sins.[164] It makes a person a member of the church.[165] As a gratuitous gift of God that requires no merit on the part of the person who is baptised, it is conferred even on children,[166] who, though they have no personal sins, need it on account of original sin.[167] If a new-born child is in a danger of death, anyone—be it a doctor, a nurse, or a parent—may baptise the child.[168] Baptism marks a person permanently and cannot be repeated.[169] The Catholic Church recognises as valid baptisms conferred even by people who are not Catholics or Christians, provided that they intend to baptise ("to do what the Church does when she baptises") and that they use the Trinitarian baptismal formula.[170]
+
+The Catholic Church sees the sacrament of confirmation as required to complete the grace given in baptism.[171] When adults are baptised, confirmation is normally given immediately afterwards,[172] a practice followed even with newly baptised infants in the Eastern Catholic Churches.[173] In the West confirmation of children is delayed until they are old enough to understand or at the bishop's discretion.[174] In Western Christianity, particularly Catholicism, the sacrament is called confirmation, because it confirms and strengthens the grace of baptism; in the Eastern Churches, it is called chrismation, because the essential rite is the anointing of the person with chrism,[175] a mixture of olive oil and some perfumed substance, usually balsam, blessed by a bishop.[175][176] Those who receive confirmation must be in a state of grace, which for those who have reached the age of reason means that they should first be cleansed spiritually by the sacrament of Penance; they should also have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to show in their lives that they are Christians.[177]
+
+For Catholics, the Eucharist is the sacrament which completes Christian initiation. It is described as "the source and summit of the Christian life".[178] The ceremony in which a Catholic first receives the Eucharist is known as First Communion.[179]
+
+The Eucharistic celebration, also called the Mass or Divine liturgy, includes prayers and scriptural readings, as well as an offering of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar and consecrated by the priest to become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a change called transubstantiation.[180][note 8] The words of consecration reflect the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, where Christ offered his body and blood to his Apostles the night before his crucifixion. The sacrament re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,[181] and perpetuates it. Christ's death and resurrection gives grace through the sacrament that unites the faithful with Christ and one another, remits venial sin, and aids against committing moral sin (though mortal sin itself is forgiven through the sacrament of penance).[182]
+
+The two sacraments of healing are the Sacrament of Penance and Anointing of the Sick.
+
+The Sacrament of Penance (also called Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Confession, and Conversion[183]) exists for the conversion of those who, after baptism, separate themselves from Christ by sin.[184] Essential to this sacrament are acts both by the sinner (examination of conscience, contrition with a determination not to sin again, confession to a priest, and performance of some act to repair the damage caused by sin) and by the priest (determination of the act of reparation to be performed and absolution).[185] Serious sins (mortal sins) should be confessed at least once a year and always before receiving Holy Communion, while confession of venial sins also is recommended.[186] The priest is bound under the severest penalties to maintain the "seal of confession", absolute secrecy about any sins revealed to him in confession.[187]
+
+While chrism is used only for the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, a different oil is used by a priest or bishop to bless a Catholic who, because of illness or old age, has begun to be in danger of death.[188] This sacrament, known as Anointing of the Sick, is believed to give comfort, peace, courage and, if the sick person is unable to make a confession, even forgiveness of sins.[189]
+
+The sacrament is also referred to as Unction, and in the past as Extreme Unction, and it is one of the three sacraments that constitute the last rites, together with Penance and Viaticum (Eucharist).[190]
+
+According to the Catechism, there are two sacraments of communion directed towards the salvation of others: priesthood and marriage.[191] Within the general vocation to be a Christian, these two sacraments "consecrate to specific mission or vocation among the people of God. Men receive the holy orders to feed the Church by the word and grace. Spouses marry so that their love may be fortified to fulfil duties of their state".[192]
+
+The sacrament of Holy Orders consecrates and deputes some Christians to serve the whole body as members of three degrees or orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests) and diaconate (deacons).[193][194] The church has defined rules on who may be ordained into the clergy. In the Latin Church, the priesthood is generally restricted to celibate men, and the episcopate is always restricted to celibate men.[195] Men who are already married may be ordained in certain Eastern Catholic churches in most countries,[196] and the personal ordinariates and may become deacons even in the Western Church[197][198] (see Clerical marriage). But after becoming a Catholic priest, a man may not marry (see Clerical celibacy) unless he is formally laicized.
+
+All clergy, whether deacons, priests or bishops, may preach, teach, baptise, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies.[199] Only bishops and priests can administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick.[200][201] Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders, which ordains someone into the clergy.[202]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a social and spiritual bond between a man and a woman, ordered towards the good of the spouses and procreation of children; according to Catholic teachings on sexual morality, it is the only appropriate context for sexual activity. A Catholic marriage, or any marriage between baptised individuals of any Christian denomination, is viewed as a sacrament. A sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved except by death.[203][note 9] The church recognises certain conditions, such as freedom of consent, as required for any marriage to be valid; In addition, the church sets specific rules and norms, known as canonical form, that Catholics must follow.[206]
+
+The church does not recognise divorce as ending a valid marriage and allows state-recognised divorce only as a means of protecting the property and well being of the spouses and any children. However, consideration of particular cases by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal can lead to declaration of the invalidity of a marriage, a declaration usually referred to as an annulment.[207] Remarriage following a divorce is not permitted unless the prior marriage was declared invalid.[207]
+
+Among the 24 autonomous (sui iuris) churches, numerous liturgical and other traditions exist, called rites, which reflect historical and cultural diversity rather than differences in belief.[208] In the definition of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, "a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris".[209]
+
+The liturgy of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called the Mass in the West and Divine Liturgy or other names in the East, is the principal liturgy of the Catholic Church.[210] This is because it is considered the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ himself.[211] Its most widely used form is that of the Roman Rite as promulgated by Paul VI in 1969 and revised by Pope John Paul II in 2002. In certain circumstances, the 1962 form of the Roman Rite remains authorized in the Latin Church. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites. The liturgies of the Eucharist and the other sacraments vary from rite to rite, reflecting different theological emphases.
+
+
+
+The Roman Rite is the most common rite of worship used by the Catholic Church. Its use is found worldwide, originating in Rome and spreading throughout Europe, influencing and eventually supplanting local rites.[212] The present ordinary form of Mass in the Roman Rite, found in the post-1969 editions of the Roman Missal, is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, using an officially approved translation from the original text in Latin. An outline of its major liturgical elements can be found in the sidebar.
+
+In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the licitness of continued use of the 1962 Roman Missal as an "extraordinary form" (forma extraordinaria) of the Roman Rite, speaking of it also as an usus antiquior ("older use"), and issuing new more permissive norms for its employment.[213] An instruction issued four years later spoke of the two forms or usages of the Roman Rite approved by the pope as the ordinary form and the extraordinary form ("the forma ordinaria" and "the forma extraordinaria").[214]
+
+The 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, published a few months before the Second Vatican Council opened, was the last that presented the Mass as standardized in 1570 by Pope Pius V at the request of the Council of Trent and that is therefore known as the Tridentine Mass.[157] Pope Pius V's Roman Missal was subjected to minor revisions by Pope Clement VIII in 1604, Pope Urban VIII in 1634, Pope Pius X in 1911, Pope Pius XII in 1955, and Pope John XXIII in 1962. Each successive edition was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite Mass until superseded by a later edition. When the 1962 edition was superseded by that of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969, its continued use at first required permission from bishops;[215] but Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum allowed free use of it for Mass celebrated without a congregation and authorized parish priests to permit, under certain conditions, its use even at public Masses. Except for the scriptural readings, which Pope Benedict allowed to be proclaimed in the vernacular language, it is celebrated exclusively in liturgical Latin.[216]
+
+Since 2014, clergy in the small personal ordinariates set up for groups of former Anglicans under the terms of the 2009 document Anglicanorum Coetibus[217] are permitted to use a variation of the Roman Rite called "Divine Worship" or, less formally, "Ordinariate Use",[218] which incorporates elements of the Anglican liturgy and traditions,[note 10] an accommodation protested by Anglican leaders.
+
+In the Archdiocese of Milan, with around five million Catholics the largest in Europe,[219] Mass is celebrated according to the Ambrosian Rite. Other Latin Church rites include the Mozarabic[220] and those of some religious institutes.[221] These liturgical rites have an antiquity of at least 200 years before 1570, the date of Pope Pius V's Quo primum, and were thus allowed to continue.[222]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches share common patrimony and liturgical rites as their counterparts, including Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches who are no longer in communion with the Holy See. These include churches that historically developed in Russia, Caucasus, the Balkans, North Eastern Africa, India and the Middle East. The Eastern Catholic Churches are groups of faithful who have either never been out of communion with the Holy See or who have restored communion with it at the cost of breaking communion with their associates of the same tradition.[223]
+
+The rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches include the Byzantine Rite, in its Antiochian, Greek and Slavonic varieties; the Alexandrian Rite; the Syriac Rite; the Armenian Rite; the Maronite Rite and the Chaldean Rite. Eastern Catholic Churches have the autonomy to set the particulars of their liturgical forms and worship, within certain limits to protect the "accurate observance" of their liturgical tradition.[224] In the past some of the rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches were subject to a degree of liturgical Latinization. However, in recent years Eastern Catholic Churches have returned to traditional Eastern practices in accord with the Vatican II decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.[225] Each church has its own liturgical calendar.[226]
+
+Catholic social teaching, reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, places a heavy emphasis on the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted.[227][228] Church teaching calls for a preferential option for the poor while canon law prescribes that "The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor."[229] Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum which upholds the rights and dignity of labour and the right of workers to form unions.
+
+Catholic teaching regarding sexuality calls for a practice of chastity, with a focus on maintaining the spiritual and bodily integrity of the human person. Marriage is considered the only appropriate context for sexual activity.[230] Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council, due to changing cultural attitudes in the Western world described as the sexual revolution.
+
+The church has also addressed stewardship of the natural environment, and its relationship to other social and theological teachings. In the document Laudato si', dated 24 May 2015, Pope Francis critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, and laments environmental degradation and global warming.[231] The pope expressed concern that the warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as humans pursue short-term economic gains.[232]
+
+The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world.[19] In 2010, the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the church manages 26% of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy.[233]
+
+The church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world[234][235] and operates the world's largest non-governmental school system.[236]
+
+Religious institutes for women have played a particularly prominent role in the provision of health and education services,[237] as with orders such as the Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul.[238] The Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work among India's poor.[239] Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the same award in 1996 for "work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor".[240]
+
+The church is also actively engaged in international aid and development through organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Caritas International, Aid to the Church in Need, refugee advocacy groups such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and community aid groups such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.[241]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church calls all members to practise chastity according to their state in life. Chastity includes temperance, self-mastery, personal and cultural growth, and divine grace. It requires refraining from lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution and, especially, rape. Chastity for those who are not married requires living in continence, abstaining from sexual activity; those who are married are called to conjugal chastity.[242]
+
+In the church's teaching, sexual activity is reserved to married couples, whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptised. Even in romantic relationships, particularly engagement to marriage, partners are called to practise continence, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity.[243] Chastity in marriage requires in particular conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the possibility of life;[244] the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance.[245]
+
+Contraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason.[246] Pope Francis said in 2015 that he is worried that the church has grown "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception and has criticized the Catholic Church for placing dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized.[247][248]
+
+Canon law makes no provision for divorce between baptised individuals, as a valid, consummated sacramental marriage is considered to be a lifelong bond.[249] However, a declaration of nullity may be granted when the proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a valid marriage were absent from the beginning—in other words, that the marriage was not valid due to some impediment. A declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment, is a judgement on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly attempted.[250] In addition, marriages among unbaptised individuals may be dissolved with papal permission under certain situations, such as a desire to marry a Catholic, under Pauline or Petrine privilege.[204][205] An attempt at remarriage following divorce without a declaration of nullity places "the remarried spouse ... in a situation of public and permanent adultery". An innocent spouse who lives in continence following divorce, or couples who live in continence following a civil divorce for a grave cause, do not sin.[251]
+
+Worldwide, diocesan tribunals completed over 49000 cases for nullity of marriage in 2006. Over the past 30 years about 55 to 70% of annulments have occurred in the United States. The growth in annulments has been substantial; in the United States, 27,000 marriages were annulled in 2006, compared to 338 in 1968. However, approximately 200,000 married Catholics in the United States divorce each year; 10 million total as of 2006[update].[252][note 11] Divorce is increasing in some predominantly Catholic countries in Europe.[254] In some predominantly Catholic countries, it is only in recent years that divorce was introduced (e.g. Italy (1970), Portugal (1975), Brazil (1977), Spain (1981), Ireland (1996), Chile (2004) and Malta (2011), while the Philippines and the Vatican City have no procedure for divorce. (The Philippines does, however, allow divorce for Muslims.)
+
+The church teaches that sexual intercourse should only take place between a man and woman who are married to each other, and should be without the use of birth control or contraception. In his encyclical Humanae vitae[255] (1968), Pope Paul VI firmly rejected all contraception, thus contradicting dissenters in the church that saw the birth control pill as an ethically justifiable method of contraception, though he permitted the regulation of births by means of natural family planning. This teaching was continued especially by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where he clarified the church's position on contraception, abortion and euthanasia by condemning them as part of a "culture of death" and calling instead for a "culture of life".[256]
+
+Many Western Catholics have voiced significant disagreement with the church's teaching on contraception.[257] Catholics for Choice, a political lobbyist group which is not associated with the Catholic Church, stated in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control.[258] Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty.[note 12] As Catholic health providers are among the largest providers of services to patients with HIV/AIDS worldwide, there is significant controversy within and outside the church regarding the use of condoms as a means of limiting new infections, as condom use ordinarily constitutes prohibited contraceptive use.[261]
+
+Similarly, the Catholic Church opposes in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying that the artificial process replaces the love between a husband and wife.[262] In addition, it opposes IVF because it might cause disposal of embryos; Catholics believe an embryo is an individual with a soul who must be treated as such.[263] For this reason, the church also opposes abortion.[264]
+
+The Catholic Church also teaches that "homosexual acts" are "contrary to the natural law", "acts of grave depravity" and "under no circumstances can they be approved", but that persons experiencing homosexual tendencies must be accorded respect and dignity.[265] According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
+
+The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. ...
+Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.[266]
+
+This part of the Catechism was quoted by Pope Francis in a 2013 press interview in which he remarked, when asked about an individual:
+
+I think that when you encounter a person like this [the individual he was asked about], you must make a distinction between the fact of a person being gay from the fact of being a lobby, because lobbies, all are not good. That is bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?[267]
+
+This remark and others made in the same interview were seen as a change in the tone, but not in the substance of the teaching of the church,[268] which includes opposition to same-sex marriage.[269] Certain dissenting Catholic groups oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it.[270]
+
+Women and men religious engage in a variety of occupations, from contemplative prayer, to teaching, to providing health care, to working as missionaries.[237][271] While Holy Orders are reserved for men, Catholic women have played diverse roles in the life of the church, with religious institutes providing a formal space for their participation and convents providing spaces for their self-government, prayer and influence through many centuries. Religious sisters and nuns have been extensively involved in developing and running the church's worldwide health and education service networks.[272]
+
+Efforts in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood led to several rulings by the Roman Curia or popes against the proposal, as in Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) and Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994). According to the latest ruling, found in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II affirmed that the Catholic Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination".[273] In defiance of these rulings, opposition groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests have performed ceremonies they affirm as sacramental ordinations (with, reputedly, an ordaining male Catholic bishop in the first few instances) which, according to canon law, are both illicit and invalid and considered mere simulations[274] of the sacrament of ordination.[275][note 13] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded by issuing a statement clarifying that any Catholic bishops involved in ordination ceremonies for women, as well as the women themselves if they were Catholic, would automatically receive the penalty of excommunication (latae sententiae, literally "with the sentence already applied", i.e. automatically), citing canon 1378 of canon law and other church laws.[276]
+
+From the 1990s, the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and other church members has become the subject of civil litigation, criminal prosecution, media coverage and public debate in countries around the world. The Catholic Church has been criticized for its handling of abuse complaints when it became known that some bishops had shielded accused priests, transferring them to other pastoral assignments where some continued to commit sexual offences.
+
+In response to the scandal, formal procedures have been established to help prevent abuse, encourage the reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness.[277] In 2014, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the safeguarding of minors.[278]
+
+The Christian religion is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived and preached in the 1st century AD in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire. Catholic doctrine teaches that the contemporary Catholic Church is the continuation of this early Christian community established by Jesus.[9] Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire, despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 313, and it became the state religion in 380. Germanic invaders of Roman territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, many of whom had previously adopted Arian Christianity, eventually adopted Catholicism to ally themselves with the papacy and the monasteries.
+
+In the 7th and 8th centuries, expanding Muslim conquests following the advent of Islam led to an Arab domination of the Mediterranean that severed political connections between that area and northern Europe, and weakened cultural connections between Rome and the Byzantine Empire. Conflicts involving authority in the church, particularly the authority of the Bishop of Rome finally culminated in the East–West Schism in the 11th century, splitting the church into the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Earlier splits within the church occurred after the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). However, a few Eastern Churches remained in communion with Rome, and portions of some others established communion in the 15th century and later, forming what are called the Eastern Catholic Churches.
+
+Early monasteries throughout Europe helped preserve Greek and Roman classical civilization. The church eventually became the dominant influence in Western civilization into the modern age. Many Renaissance figures were sponsored by the church. The 16th century, however, began to see challenges to the church, in particular to its religious authority, by figures in the Protestant Reformation, as well as in the 17th century by secular intellectuals in the Enlightenment. Concurrently, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and missionaries spread the church's influence through Africa, Asia, and the New World.
+
+In 1870, the First Vatican Council declared the dogma of papal infallibility and the Kingdom of Italy annexed the city of Rome, the last portion of the Papal States to be incorporated into the new nation. In the 20th century, anti-clerical governments around the world, including Mexico and Spain, persecuted or executed thousands of clerics and laypersons. In the Second World War, the church condemned Nazism, and protected hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust; its efforts, however, have been criticized as inadequate. After the war, freedom of religion was severely restricted in the Communist countries newly aligned with the Soviet Union, several of which had large Catholic populations.
+
+In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council led to reforms of the church's liturgy and practices, described as "opening the windows" by defenders, but criticized by traditionalist Catholics. In the face of increased criticism from both within and without, the church has upheld or reaffirmed at various times controversial doctrinal positions regarding sexuality and gender, including limiting clergy to males, and moral exhortations against abortion, contraception, sexual activity outside of marriage, remarriage following divorce without annulment, and against same-sex marriage.
+
+The New Testament, in particular the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles and his Great Commission of the Apostles, instructing them to continue his work.[112][279] The book Acts of Apostles, tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman empire.[280]  The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, occurring fifty days following the date Christ is believed to have resurrected.[113] At Pentecost, the Apostles are believed to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission in leading the church.[281][282] The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, led by the Bishop of Rome are the successors to the Apostles.[283]
+
+In the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the "rock" upon which Christ's church will be built.[284][285] The Catholic Church considers the Bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor to Saint Peter.[286] Some scholars state Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.[287][note 14] Others say that the institution of the papacy is not dependent on the idea that Peter was Bishop of Rome or even on his ever having been in Rome.[288] Many scholars hold that a church structure of plural presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when the structure of a single bishop and plural presbyters was adopted,[289] and that later writers retrospectively applied the term "bishop of Rome" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period and also to Peter himself.[289] On this basis, Oscar Cullmann,[290] Henry Chadwick,[291] and Bart D. Ehrman[292] question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy. Raymond E. Brown also says that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have looked on Peter as having "roles that would contribute in an essential way to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church". These roles, Brown says, "contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome, the bishop of the city where Peter died, and where Paul witnessed to the truth of Christ, as the successor of Peter in care for the church universal".[289]
+
+Conditions in the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas. The empire's network of roads and waterways facilitated travel, and the Pax Romana made travelling safe. The empire encouraged the spread of a common culture with Greek roots, which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood.[293]
+
+Unlike most religions in the Roman Empire, however, Christianity required its adherents to renounce all other gods, a practice adopted from Judaism (see Idolatry). The Christians' refusal to join pagan celebrations meant they were unable to participate in much of public life, which caused non-Christians—including government authorities—to fear that the Christians were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the Empire. The resulting persecutions were a defining feature of Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century.[294]
+
+In 313, Emperor Constantine I's Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and in 330 Constantine moved the imperial capital to Constantinople, modern Istanbul, Turkey. In 380 the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a position that within the diminishing territory of the Byzantine Empire would persist until the empire itself ended in the fall of Constantinople in 1453, while elsewhere the church was independent of the empire, as became particularly clear with the East–West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five primary sees emerged, an arrangement formalized in the mid-6th century by Emperor Justinian I as the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.[295][296] In 451 the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity,[297] elevated the see of Constantinople to a position "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome".[298] From c. 350 to c. 500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome, steadily increased in authority through their consistent intervening in support of orthodox leaders in theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them.[299] Emperor Justinian, who in the areas under his control definitively established a form of caesaropapism,[300] in which "he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in the Church",[301] reestablished imperial power over Rome and other parts of the West, initiating the period termed the Byzantine Papacy (537–752), during which the bishops of Rome, or popes, required approval from the emperor in Constantinople or from his representative in Ravenna for consecration, and most were selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects,[302] resulting in a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art as well as liturgy.[303]
+
+Most of the Germanic tribes who in the following centuries invaded the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Catholic Church declared heretical.[304] The resulting religious discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects[305] was avoided when, in 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism, allying himself with the papacy and the monasteries.[306] The Visigoths in Spain followed his lead in 589,[307] and the Lombards in Italy in the course of the 7th century.[308]
+
+Western Christianity, particularly through its monasteries, was a major factor in preserving classical civilization, with its art (see Illuminated manuscript) and literacy.[309][310] Through his Rule, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, exerted an enormous influence on European culture through the appropriation of the monastic spiritual heritage of the early Catholic Church and, with the spread of the Benedictine tradition, through the preservation and transmission of ancient culture. During this period, monastic Ireland became a centre of learning and early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe.[1]
+
+Catholicism portal
+
+The Catholic Church was the dominant influence on Western civilization from Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age.[8] It was the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque styles in art, architecture and music.[311] Renaissance figures such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Bernini and Caravaggio are examples of the numerous visual artists sponsored by the church.[312] Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization".[313]
+
+The massive Islamic invasions of the mid-7th century began a long struggle between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basin. The Byzantine Empire soon lost the lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch and was reduced to that of Constantinople, the empire's capital. As a result of Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, the Frankish state, centred away from that sea, was able to evolve as the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages.[314] The battles of Toulouse and Poitiers halted the Islamic advance in the West and the failed Siege of Constantinople halted it in the East. Two or three decades later, in 751, the Byzantine Empire lost to the Lombards the city of Ravenna from which it governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, that acknowledged its sovereignty. The fall of Ravenna meant that confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked for during the election in 752 of Pope Stephen II and that the papacy was forced to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it.[315] In 754, at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, the Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards. He then gifted the lands of the former exarchate to the pope, thus initiating the Papal States. Rome and the Byzantine East would delve into further conflict during the Photian schism of the 860s, when Photius criticized the Latin west of adding of the filioque clause after being excommunicated by Nicholas I. Though the schism was reconciled, unresolved issues would lead to further division.[316]
+
+In the 11th century, the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman Emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes.[317][318]
+
+In 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine–Seljuk Wars,[319] which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control.[320] In the 11th century, strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East–West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach.[321] In this age great gothic cathedrals in France were an expression of popular pride in the Christian faith.
+
+In the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán. The studia conventualia and studia generalia of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of Church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe.[322] Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' Summa Theologica was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation.[323]
+
+A growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. To escape instability in Rome, Clement V in 1309 became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France[324] during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome,[325] but was followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western schism, with claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa.[325] The matter was largely resolved in 1415–17 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope.[326]
+
+In 1438, the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches.[327] Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches.[328]
+
+The Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the prominent role the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal played in Western Colonialism, Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the transformation of societies through the socio-political mechanisms of colonial rule. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal[329] and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies.[330] In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines.[331] Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China, and Japan.[332] The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Roman Catholic francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec.[333]
+
+In 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, but his reform efforts encouraged Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk in Germany, who sent his Ninety-five Theses to several bishops in 1517.[334] His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences, and along with the Leipzig Debate this led to his excommunication in 1521.[334][335] In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations[336] and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church.[337] Meanwhile, Henry VIII petitioned the pope for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make him head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism.[338]
+
+The Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict—the Thirty Years' War—which broke out in 1618.[339] In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes.[340] This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants.[339][340]
+
+The Council of Trent (1545–1563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation.[341] In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment.[342]
+
+From the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society.[343] In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution of 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason,[344] and the martyrdom of nuns during the Reign of Terror.[345] In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801.[346] The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.[347]
+
+In 1854, Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a Dogma in the Catholic Church.[348] In 1870, the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements,[349][350] striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church,[351]
+
+The Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response, Pope Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land, and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a "prisoner in the Vatican".[352] This stand-off, which was spoken of as the Roman Question, was resolved by the 1929 Lateran Treaties, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state.[353]
+
+A number of anti-clerical governments emerged in the 20th century.
+
+The 1926 Calles Law separating church and state in Mexico led to the Cristero War[354] in which more than 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[355] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped, and captured priests shot.[354] Following the 1917 October Revolution, persecution of the church and Catholics in the Soviet Union continued into the 1930s, with the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements, and closure of churches.[356][357] In the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy allied with Franco's Nationalists against the Popular Front government,[358] citing as justification Republican violence against the church.[359][360] Pope Pius XI referred to these three countries as a "terrible triangle".[361][362]
+
+After violations of the 1933 Reichskonkordat between the church and Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of the church and their ideology of neo-paganism and racial superiority.[363][364][365] The church condemned the 1939 Invasion of Poland that started World War II and other subsequent wartime Nazi invasions.[366] Thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and brothers were imprisoned and murdered throughout the countries occupied by the Nazis, including Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein.[367] While Pope Pius XII has been credited with helping to save hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust,[368][369] the church has also been accused of having encouraged centuries of antisemitism by its teachings[370] and not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities.[371]
+
+During the post-war period, Communist governments in Eastern Europe severely restricted religious freedoms.[372] Although some priests and religious people collaborated with Communist regimes,[373] many others were imprisoned, deported, or executed. The church was an important player in the fall of Communism in Europe, particularly in the Polish People's Republic.[374]
+
+In 1949, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries.[375] The new government also created the Patriotic Church and appointed its bishops. These appointments were initially rejected by Rome before many of them were accepted.[376] In the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communists closed all religious establishments. When Chinese churches eventually reopened, they remained under the control of the Patriotic Church. Many Catholic pastors and priests continued to be sent to prison for refusing to renounce allegiance to Rome.[377]
+
+The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before.[378] Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernised the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging "fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations".[379] It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (aggiornamento), which was described by its advocates as an "opening of the windows".[380] In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism,[381] and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document Nostra aetate.[382]
+
+The council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the "Spirit of Vatican II" such as Swiss theologian Hans Küng said that Vatican II had "not gone far enough" to change church policies.[383] Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led "to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments", among other issues.[384]
+
+Several teachings of the Catholic Church came under increased scrutiny both concurrent with and following the council; among those teachings was the church's teaching regarding the immorality of contraception. The recent introduction of hormonal contraception (including "the pill"), which were believed by some to be morally different from previous methods, prompted John XXIII to form a committee to advise him of the moral and theological issues with the new method.[385][386] Pope Paul VI later expanded the committee's scope to freely examine all methods, and the committee's unreleased final report was rumoured to suggest permitting at least some methods of contraception. Paul did not agree with the arguments presented, and eventually issued Humanae vitae, saying that it upheld the constant teaching of the church against contraception. It expressly included hormonal methods as prohibited.[note 15] This document generated a largely negative response from many Catholics.[from whom?][387]
+
+In 1978, Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Kraków in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history.[388] Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, credited the Polish pope with hastening the fall of Communism in Europe.[389]
+
+John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He instituted World Youth Day as a "worldwide encounter with the pope" for young people; it is now held every two to three years.[390] He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries,[391] and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasised the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in Laborem exercens.[392] He emphasised several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia, and against widespread use of the death penalty, in Evangelium Vitae.[393]
+
+From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women, and its handling of sexual abuse cases.
+
+In 2005, following the death of John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul, was elected. He was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization,[394] and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962.[395] In 2012, the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, an assembly of the Synod of Bishops discussed re-evangelising lapsed Catholics in the developed world.[396] Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years.[397]
+
+Pope Francis, the current pope of the Catholic Church, succeeded Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 as the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century. Pope Francis has been noted for his humility, emphasis on God's mercy, concern for the poor and the environment, as well as his commitment to interfaith dialogue. He is credited with having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.
+
+Pope Francis is recognised for his efforts "to further close the nearly 1,000-year estrangement with the Orthodox Churches".[398] His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church,[399] the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation.[400] On 12 February 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, met in Havana, Cuba, issuing a joint declaration calling for restored Christian unity between the two churches. This was reported as the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054.[401]
+
+In 2014, the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops addressed the church's ministry towards families and marriages and to Catholics in "irregular" relationships, such as those who divorced and remarried outside of the church without a declaration of nullity.[402][403] While welcomed by some, it was criticized by some for perceived ambiguity, provoking controversies among individual representatives of differing perspectives.[404]
+
+In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis reestablished mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church.[405]

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+God
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+Schools
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+Relations with:
+
+The Catholic Church, sometimes referred to as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2018[update].[4] As the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution,[7] it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.[8] The church is headed by the bishop of Rome, known as the pope. Its central administration is the Holy See.
+
+The Christian beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission,[9][10][note 1] that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles, and that the pope is the successor to Saint Peter, upon whom primacy was conferred by Jesus Christ.[13] It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, reserving infallibility, passed down by sacred tradition.[14] The Latin Church, the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, and institutes such as mendicant orders, enclosed monastic orders and third orders reflect a variety of theological and spiritual emphases in the church.[15][16]
+
+Of its seven sacraments, the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in the Mass.[17] The church teaches that through consecration by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, honoured in dogmas and devotions.[18] Its teaching includes Divine Mercy, sanctification through faith and evangelization of the Gospel as well as Catholic social teaching, which emphasises voluntary support for the sick, the poor, and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+The Catholic Church has influenced Western philosophy, culture, art, and science. Catholics live all over the world through missions, diaspora, and conversions. Since the 20th century the majority reside in the southern hemisphere, due to secularization in Europe, and increased persecution in the Middle East.
+
+The Catholic Church shared communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East–West Schism in 1054, disputing particularly the authority of the pope. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the Oriental Orthodox churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451; all separated primarily over differences in Christology.  In the 16th century, the Reformation led to Protestantism also breaking away.
+
+From the late 20th century the Catholic Church has been criticized for its teachings on sexuality, its absence of female priests, and its handling of sexual abuse cases involving clergy.
+
+Catholic (from Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikos, lit. 'universal') was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century.[22] The first known use of the phrase "the catholic church" (καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία he katholike ekklesia) occurred in the letter written about 110 AD from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans.[note 2] In the Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name "Catholic Church" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves "the church".[23][24] The "Catholic" notion was further stressed in the edict De fide Catolica issued 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire, when establishing the state church of the Roman Empire.[25]
+
+Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Church has taken the adjective "Orthodox" as its distinctive epithet (however, its official name continues to be the "Orthodox Catholic Church"[26]) and the Western Church in communion with the Holy See has similarly taken "Catholic", keeping that description also after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as "Protestants".[27][28]
+
+While the "Roman Church" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th–10th century), the "Roman Catholic Church" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century.[29] "Roman Catholic" has occasionally appeared also in documents produced both by the Holy See,[note 3] notably applied to certain national episcopal conferences, and local dioceses.[note 4]
+
+The name "Catholic Church" for the whole church is used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). The name "Catholic Church" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965),[30] the First Vatican Council (1869–1870),[31] the Council of Trent (1545–1563),[32] and numerous other official documents.[33][34]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church.[35][36] There are three levels of clergy, the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local diocese or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, commonly called the pope, whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See. In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services.
+
+The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the pope (Latin: papa; "father"), who is the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church.[37] The current pope, Francis, was elected on 13 March 2013 by papal conclave.[38]
+
+Jus novum (c. 1140-1563)
+
+Jus novissimum (c. 1563-1918)
+
+Jus codicis (1918-present)
+
+Other
+
+Sacraments
+
+Sacramentals
+
+Sacred places
+
+Sacred times
+
+Supra-diocesan/eparchal structures
+
+Particular churches
+
+Juridic persons
+
+Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of canon law
+
+Clerics
+
+Office
+
+Juridic and physical persons
+
+Associations of the faithful
+
+Pars dynamica (trial procedure)
+
+Canonization
+
+Election of the Roman Pontiff
+
+Academic degrees
+
+Journals and Professional Societies
+
+Faculties of canon law
+
+Canonists
+
+Institute of consecrated life
+
+Society of apostolic life
+
+The office of the pope is known as the papacy. The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the "Holy See" (Sancta Sedes in Latin), or the "Apostolic See" (meaning the see of the apostle Peter).[39][40] Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church.
+
+The pope is also Sovereign of Vatican City,[41] a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives.[42] The Holy See also confers orders, decorations and medals, such as the orders of chivalry originating from the Middle Ages.
+
+While the famous Saint Peter's Basilica is located in Vatican City, above the traditional site of Saint Peter's tomb, the papal cathedral for the Diocese of Rome is the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, located within the city of Rome, though enjoying extraterritorial privileges accredited to the Holy See.
+
+The position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals.[43]
+
+Following the death or resignation of a pope,[note 5] members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor.[45] Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic as pope since 1389 only cardinals have been elected.[46]
+
+Canon law (Latin: jus canonicum)[47] is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church.[48] The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system[49] and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West,[50][51] while the distinctive traditions of Oriental canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris.
+
+Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator—the Supreme Pontiff—who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person,[52] while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system:[53] laws, courts, lawyers, judges,[53] a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church[54] as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches,[54] principles of legal interpretation,[55] and coercive penalties.[56][57]
+
+Canon law concerns the Catholic Church's life and organization and is distinct from civil law. In its own field it gives force to civil law only by specific enactment in matters such as the guardianship of minors.[58] Similarly, civil law may give force in its field to canon law, but only by specific enactment, as with regard to canonical marriages.[59] Currently, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is in effect for the Latin Church.[60] The distinct 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO, after the Latin initials) applies to the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches.[61]
+
+
+
+In the first thousand years of Catholic history, different varieties of Christianity developed in the Western and Eastern Christian areas of Europe. Though most Eastern-tradition churches are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054, autonomous particular churches of both traditions currently participate, also known as "churches sui iuris" (Latin: "of one's own right"). The largest and most well known is the Latin Church, the only Western-tradition church, with more than 1 billion members worldwide. Relatively small in terms of adherents compared to the Latin Church, are the 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic Churches with a combined membership of 17.3 million as of 2010[update].[62][63][64][65]
+
+The Latin Church is governed by the pope and diocesan bishops directly appointed by him. The pope exercises a direct patriarchal role over the Latin Church, which is considered to form the original and still major part of Western Christianity, a heritage of certain beliefs and customs originating in Europe and northwestern Africa, some of which are inherited by many Christian denominations that trace their origins to the Protestant Reformation.[66]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches follow the traditions and spirituality of Eastern Christianity and are churches which have always remained in full communion with the Catholic Church or who have chosen to re-enter full communion in the centuries following the East–West Schism and earlier divisions. These churches are communities of Catholic Christians whose forms of worship reflect distinct historical and cultural influences rather than differences in doctrine.
+
+A church sui iuris is defined in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches as a "group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy" that is recognised by the pope in his capacity as the supreme authority on matters of doctrine within the church.[67] The term is an innovation of the CCEO to denote the relative autonomy of the Eastern Catholic Churches,[68] who remain in full communion with the pope, but have governance structures and liturgical traditions separate from that of the Latin Church.[63] While the Latin Church's canons do not explicitly use the term, it is tacitly recognised as equivalent.
+
+Some Eastern Catholic churches are governed by a patriarch who is elected by the synod of the bishops of that church,[69] others are headed by a major archbishop,[70] others are under a metropolitan,[71] and others are organized as individual eparchies.[72] Each church has authority over the particulars of its internal organization, liturgical rites, liturgical calendar and other aspects of its spirituality, subject only to the authority of the pope.[73] The Roman Curia has a specific department, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to maintain relations with them.[74] The pope does not generally appoint bishops or clergy in the Eastern Catholic Churches, deferring to their internal governance structures, but may intervene if he feels it necessary.
+
+Individual countries, regions, or major cities are served by particular churches known as dioceses in the Latin Church, or eparchies in the Eastern Catholic Churches, each overseen by a bishop. As of 2008[update], the Catholic Church has 2,795 dioceses.[76] The bishops in a particular country are members of a national or regional episcopal conference.[77]
+
+Dioceses are divided into parishes, each with one or more priests, deacons or lay ecclesial ministers.[78] Parishes are responsible for the day to day celebration of the sacraments and pastoral care of the laity.[79] As of 2016[update], there are 221,700 parishes worldwide.[80]
+
+In the Latin Church, Catholic men may serve as deacons or priests by receiving sacramental ordination. Men and women may serve as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, as readers (lectors), or as altar servers. Historically, boys and men have only been permitted to serve as altar servers; however, since the 1990s, girls and women have also been permitted.[81][note 6]
+
+Ordained Catholics, as well as members of the laity, may enter into consecrated life either on an individual basis, as a hermit or consecrated virgin, or by joining an institute of consecrated life (a religious institute or a secular institute) in which to take vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience.[82] Examples of institutes of consecrated life are the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Legionaries of Christ and the Sisters of Mercy.[82]
+
+"Religious institutes" is a modern term encompassing both "religious orders" and "religious congregations," which were once distinguished in canon law.[83] The terms "religious order" and "religious institute" tend to be used as synonyms colloquially.[84]
+
+By means of Catholic charities and beyond, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world.[19]
+
+Catholicism is the world's second largest religious body after Sunni Islam.[85] Church membership, defined as baptised Catholics, was 1.329 billion at the end of 2018, which is 18% of the world population.[4] Catholics represent about half of all Christians.[86]
+
+Geographic distribution of Catholics worldwide continues to shift, with 17.8% in Africa, 48.3% in the Americas, 11.1% Asia, 21.5% in Europe, and 0.9% in Oceania.[4]
+
+Catholic ministers include ordained clergy, lay ecclesial ministers, missionaries, and catechists. Also as of the end of 2014, there were 465,595 ordained clergy, including 5,237 bishops, 415,792 priests (diocesan and religious), and 44,566 deacons (permanent).[87] Non-ordained ministers included 3,157,568 catechists, 367,679 lay missionaries, and 39,951 lay ecclesial ministers.[88]
+
+Catholics who have committed to religious or consecrated life instead of marriage or single celibacy, as a state of life or relational vocation, include 54,559 male religious, 705,529 women religious. These are not ordained, nor generally considered ministers unless also engaged in one of the lay minister categories above.[87]
+
+Catholic doctrine has developed over the centuries, reflecting direct teachings of early Christians, formal definitions of heretical and orthodox beliefs by ecumenical councils and in papal bulls, and theological debate by scholars. The church believes that it is continually guided by the Holy Spirit as it discerns new theological issues and is protected infallibly from falling into doctrinal error when a firm decision on an issue is reached.[89][90]
+
+It teaches that revelation has one common source, God, and two distinct modes of transmission: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition,[91][92] and that these are authentically interpreted by the Magisterium.[93][94] Sacred Scripture consists of the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, consisting of 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament writings. Sacred Tradition consists of those teachings believed by the church to have been handed down since the time of the Apostles.[95] Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are collectively known as the "deposit of faith" (depositum fidei in Latin). These are in turn interpreted by the Magisterium (from magister, Latin for "teacher"), the church's teaching authority, which is exercised by the pope and the College of Bishops in union with the pope, the Bishop of Rome.[96] Catholic doctrine is authoritatively summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by the Holy See.[97][98]
+
+The Catholic Church holds that there is one eternal God, who exists as a perichoresis ("mutual indwelling") of three hypostases, or "persons": God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit, which together are called the "Holy Trinity".[99]
+
+Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the "Second Person" of the Trinity, God the Son. In an event known as the Incarnation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature through the conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ, therefore, is understood as being both fully divine and fully human, including possessing a human soul. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels.[100] Jesus is believed to have remained sinless while on earth, and to have allowed himself to be unjustly executed by crucifixion, as a sacrifice of himself to reconcile humanity to God; this reconciliation is known as the Paschal Mystery.[101] The Greek term "Christ" and the Hebrew "Messiah" both mean "anointed one", referring to the Christian belief that Jesus' death and resurrection are the fulfilment of the Old Testament's messianic prophecies.[102]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that "the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one single principle".[103] It holds that the Father, as the "principle without principle", is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that he, as Father of the only Son, is with the Son the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds.[104] This belief is expressed in the Filioque clause which was added to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed of 381 but not included in the Greek versions of the creed used in Eastern Christianity.[105]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it is the "one true church",[9][106] "the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race",[107][108] and "the one true religion".[109] According to the Catechism, the Catholic Church is further described in the Nicene Creed as the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church".[110] These are collectively known as the Four Marks of the Church. The church teaches that its founder is Jesus Christ.[111][112] The New Testament records several events considered integral to the establishment of the Catholic Church, including Jesus' activities and teaching and his appointment of the apostles as witnesses to his ministry, suffering, and resurrection. The Great Commission, after his resurrection, instructed the apostles to continue his work. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, is seen as the beginning of the public ministry of the Catholic Church.[113] The church teaches that all duly consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles of Christ, known as apostolic succession.[114] In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the pope) is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, a position from which he derives his supremacy over the church.[115]
+
+Catholic belief holds that the church "is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth"[116] and that it alone possesses the full means of salvation.[117] Through the passion (suffering) of Christ leading to his crucifixion as described in the Gospels, it is said Christ made himself an oblation to God the Father in order to reconcile humanity to God;[118] the Resurrection of Jesus makes him the firstborn from the dead, the first among many brethren.[119] By reconciling with God and following Christ's words and deeds, an individual can enter the Kingdom of God.[120] The church sees its liturgy and sacraments as perpetuating the graces achieved through Christ's sacrifice to strengthen a person's relationship with Christ and aid in overcoming sin.[121]
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that, immediately after death, the soul of each person will receive a particular judgement from God, based on their sins and their relationship to Christ.[122][123] This teaching also attests to another day when Christ will sit in universal judgement of all mankind. This final judgement, according to the church's teaching, will bring an end to human history and mark the beginning of both a new and better heaven and earth ruled by God in righteousness.[124]
+
+Depending on the judgement rendered following death, it is believed that a soul may enter one of three states of the afterlife:
+
+While the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation,[117] it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of Christian communities separated from itself to "impel towards Catholic unity"[133] and "tend and lead toward the Catholic Church",[133] and thus bring people to salvation, because these separated communities contain some elements of proper doctrine, albeit admixed with errors. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.[134]
+
+A saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognised as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God, while canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the "canon", or list, of recognised saints.[135][136] The first persons honoured as saints were the martyrs. Pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word and life—began to be venerated publicly.
+
+In the Catholic Church, both in Latin and Eastern Catholic churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he is worthy to be recognised as a saint. The church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that he may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the church, including in the Litany of the Saints. Canonization allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite; for permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed.[137]
+
+Devotions are "external practices of piety" which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics.[138] These include various practices regarding the veneration of the saints, especially veneration of the Virgin Mary. Other devotional practices include the Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Face of Jesus,[139] the various scapulars, novenas to various saints,[140] pilgrimages[141] and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament,[140] and the veneration of saintly images such as the santos.[142] The bishops at the Second Vatican Council reminded Catholics that "devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonise with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them."[143]
+
+Catholic Mariology deals with the doctrines and teachings concerning the life of the Mary, mother of Jesus, as well as the veneration of Mary by the faithful. Mary is held in special regard, declared the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτόκος, romanized: Theotokos, lit. 'God-bearer'), and believed as dogma to have remained a virgin throughout her life.[144] Further teachings include the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (her own conception without the stain of original sin) and the Assumption of Mary (that her body was assumed directly into heaven at the end of her life). Both of these doctrines were defined as infallible dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively,[145] but only after consulting with the Catholic bishops throughout the world to ascertain that this is a Catholic belief.[146]
+
+Devotions to Mary are part of Catholic piety but are distinct from the worship of God.[147] Practices include prayers and Marian art, music, and architecture. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honoured with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church because, by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ.[145] Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions such as the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices.[148] Pilgrimage to the sites of several Marian apparitions affirmed by the church, such as Lourdes, Fátima, and Guadalupe,[149] are also popular Catholic devotions.[150]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that it was entrusted with seven sacraments that were instituted by Christ. The number and nature of the sacraments were defined by several ecumenical councils, most recently the Council of Trent.[151][note 7] These are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction, one of the "Last Rites"), Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. Sacraments are visible rituals that Catholics see as signs of God's presence and effective channels of God's grace to all those who receive them with the proper disposition (ex opere operato).[152] The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes the sacraments into three groups, the "sacraments of Christian initiation", "sacraments of healing" and "sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the faithful". These groups broadly reflect the stages of people's natural and spiritual lives which each sacrament is intended to serve.[153]
+
+The liturgies of the sacraments are central to the church's mission. According to the Catechism:
+
+In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the "communion of the Holy Spirit" who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities.[154]
+
+According to church doctrine, the sacraments of the church require the proper form, matter, and intent to be validly celebrated.[155] In addition, the Canon Laws for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches govern who may licitly celebrate certain sacraments, as well as strict rules about who may receive the sacraments.[156] Notably, because the church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist,[157] those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden to receive the sacrament until they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance).[158] Catholics are normally obliged to abstain from eating for at least an hour before receiving the sacrament.[158] Non-Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from receiving the Eucharist as well.[156][159]
+
+Catholics, even if they were in danger of death and unable to approach a Catholic minister, may not ask for the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance or anointing of the sick from someone, such as a Protestant minister, who is not known to be validly ordained in line with Catholic teaching on ordination.[160][161] Likewise, even in grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may not administer these sacraments to those who do not manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament. In relation to the churches of Eastern Christianity not in communion with the Holy See, the Catholic Church is less restrictive, declaring that "a certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged."[162]
+
+As viewed by the Catholic Church, Baptism is the first of three sacraments of initiation as a Christian.[163] It washes away all sins, both original sin and personal actual sins.[164] It makes a person a member of the church.[165] As a gratuitous gift of God that requires no merit on the part of the person who is baptised, it is conferred even on children,[166] who, though they have no personal sins, need it on account of original sin.[167] If a new-born child is in a danger of death, anyone—be it a doctor, a nurse, or a parent—may baptise the child.[168] Baptism marks a person permanently and cannot be repeated.[169] The Catholic Church recognises as valid baptisms conferred even by people who are not Catholics or Christians, provided that they intend to baptise ("to do what the Church does when she baptises") and that they use the Trinitarian baptismal formula.[170]
+
+The Catholic Church sees the sacrament of confirmation as required to complete the grace given in baptism.[171] When adults are baptised, confirmation is normally given immediately afterwards,[172] a practice followed even with newly baptised infants in the Eastern Catholic Churches.[173] In the West confirmation of children is delayed until they are old enough to understand or at the bishop's discretion.[174] In Western Christianity, particularly Catholicism, the sacrament is called confirmation, because it confirms and strengthens the grace of baptism; in the Eastern Churches, it is called chrismation, because the essential rite is the anointing of the person with chrism,[175] a mixture of olive oil and some perfumed substance, usually balsam, blessed by a bishop.[175][176] Those who receive confirmation must be in a state of grace, which for those who have reached the age of reason means that they should first be cleansed spiritually by the sacrament of Penance; they should also have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to show in their lives that they are Christians.[177]
+
+For Catholics, the Eucharist is the sacrament which completes Christian initiation. It is described as "the source and summit of the Christian life".[178] The ceremony in which a Catholic first receives the Eucharist is known as First Communion.[179]
+
+The Eucharistic celebration, also called the Mass or Divine liturgy, includes prayers and scriptural readings, as well as an offering of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar and consecrated by the priest to become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a change called transubstantiation.[180][note 8] The words of consecration reflect the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, where Christ offered his body and blood to his Apostles the night before his crucifixion. The sacrament re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,[181] and perpetuates it. Christ's death and resurrection gives grace through the sacrament that unites the faithful with Christ and one another, remits venial sin, and aids against committing moral sin (though mortal sin itself is forgiven through the sacrament of penance).[182]
+
+The two sacraments of healing are the Sacrament of Penance and Anointing of the Sick.
+
+The Sacrament of Penance (also called Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Confession, and Conversion[183]) exists for the conversion of those who, after baptism, separate themselves from Christ by sin.[184] Essential to this sacrament are acts both by the sinner (examination of conscience, contrition with a determination not to sin again, confession to a priest, and performance of some act to repair the damage caused by sin) and by the priest (determination of the act of reparation to be performed and absolution).[185] Serious sins (mortal sins) should be confessed at least once a year and always before receiving Holy Communion, while confession of venial sins also is recommended.[186] The priest is bound under the severest penalties to maintain the "seal of confession", absolute secrecy about any sins revealed to him in confession.[187]
+
+While chrism is used only for the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, a different oil is used by a priest or bishop to bless a Catholic who, because of illness or old age, has begun to be in danger of death.[188] This sacrament, known as Anointing of the Sick, is believed to give comfort, peace, courage and, if the sick person is unable to make a confession, even forgiveness of sins.[189]
+
+The sacrament is also referred to as Unction, and in the past as Extreme Unction, and it is one of the three sacraments that constitute the last rites, together with Penance and Viaticum (Eucharist).[190]
+
+According to the Catechism, there are two sacraments of communion directed towards the salvation of others: priesthood and marriage.[191] Within the general vocation to be a Christian, these two sacraments "consecrate to specific mission or vocation among the people of God. Men receive the holy orders to feed the Church by the word and grace. Spouses marry so that their love may be fortified to fulfil duties of their state".[192]
+
+The sacrament of Holy Orders consecrates and deputes some Christians to serve the whole body as members of three degrees or orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests) and diaconate (deacons).[193][194] The church has defined rules on who may be ordained into the clergy. In the Latin Church, the priesthood is generally restricted to celibate men, and the episcopate is always restricted to celibate men.[195] Men who are already married may be ordained in certain Eastern Catholic churches in most countries,[196] and the personal ordinariates and may become deacons even in the Western Church[197][198] (see Clerical marriage). But after becoming a Catholic priest, a man may not marry (see Clerical celibacy) unless he is formally laicized.
+
+All clergy, whether deacons, priests or bishops, may preach, teach, baptise, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies.[199] Only bishops and priests can administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick.[200][201] Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders, which ordains someone into the clergy.[202]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a social and spiritual bond between a man and a woman, ordered towards the good of the spouses and procreation of children; according to Catholic teachings on sexual morality, it is the only appropriate context for sexual activity. A Catholic marriage, or any marriage between baptised individuals of any Christian denomination, is viewed as a sacrament. A sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved except by death.[203][note 9] The church recognises certain conditions, such as freedom of consent, as required for any marriage to be valid; In addition, the church sets specific rules and norms, known as canonical form, that Catholics must follow.[206]
+
+The church does not recognise divorce as ending a valid marriage and allows state-recognised divorce only as a means of protecting the property and well being of the spouses and any children. However, consideration of particular cases by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal can lead to declaration of the invalidity of a marriage, a declaration usually referred to as an annulment.[207] Remarriage following a divorce is not permitted unless the prior marriage was declared invalid.[207]
+
+Among the 24 autonomous (sui iuris) churches, numerous liturgical and other traditions exist, called rites, which reflect historical and cultural diversity rather than differences in belief.[208] In the definition of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, "a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris".[209]
+
+The liturgy of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called the Mass in the West and Divine Liturgy or other names in the East, is the principal liturgy of the Catholic Church.[210] This is because it is considered the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ himself.[211] Its most widely used form is that of the Roman Rite as promulgated by Paul VI in 1969 and revised by Pope John Paul II in 2002. In certain circumstances, the 1962 form of the Roman Rite remains authorized in the Latin Church. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites. The liturgies of the Eucharist and the other sacraments vary from rite to rite, reflecting different theological emphases.
+
+
+
+The Roman Rite is the most common rite of worship used by the Catholic Church. Its use is found worldwide, originating in Rome and spreading throughout Europe, influencing and eventually supplanting local rites.[212] The present ordinary form of Mass in the Roman Rite, found in the post-1969 editions of the Roman Missal, is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, using an officially approved translation from the original text in Latin. An outline of its major liturgical elements can be found in the sidebar.
+
+In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the licitness of continued use of the 1962 Roman Missal as an "extraordinary form" (forma extraordinaria) of the Roman Rite, speaking of it also as an usus antiquior ("older use"), and issuing new more permissive norms for its employment.[213] An instruction issued four years later spoke of the two forms or usages of the Roman Rite approved by the pope as the ordinary form and the extraordinary form ("the forma ordinaria" and "the forma extraordinaria").[214]
+
+The 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, published a few months before the Second Vatican Council opened, was the last that presented the Mass as standardized in 1570 by Pope Pius V at the request of the Council of Trent and that is therefore known as the Tridentine Mass.[157] Pope Pius V's Roman Missal was subjected to minor revisions by Pope Clement VIII in 1604, Pope Urban VIII in 1634, Pope Pius X in 1911, Pope Pius XII in 1955, and Pope John XXIII in 1962. Each successive edition was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite Mass until superseded by a later edition. When the 1962 edition was superseded by that of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969, its continued use at first required permission from bishops;[215] but Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum allowed free use of it for Mass celebrated without a congregation and authorized parish priests to permit, under certain conditions, its use even at public Masses. Except for the scriptural readings, which Pope Benedict allowed to be proclaimed in the vernacular language, it is celebrated exclusively in liturgical Latin.[216]
+
+Since 2014, clergy in the small personal ordinariates set up for groups of former Anglicans under the terms of the 2009 document Anglicanorum Coetibus[217] are permitted to use a variation of the Roman Rite called "Divine Worship" or, less formally, "Ordinariate Use",[218] which incorporates elements of the Anglican liturgy and traditions,[note 10] an accommodation protested by Anglican leaders.
+
+In the Archdiocese of Milan, with around five million Catholics the largest in Europe,[219] Mass is celebrated according to the Ambrosian Rite. Other Latin Church rites include the Mozarabic[220] and those of some religious institutes.[221] These liturgical rites have an antiquity of at least 200 years before 1570, the date of Pope Pius V's Quo primum, and were thus allowed to continue.[222]
+
+The Eastern Catholic Churches share common patrimony and liturgical rites as their counterparts, including Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches who are no longer in communion with the Holy See. These include churches that historically developed in Russia, Caucasus, the Balkans, North Eastern Africa, India and the Middle East. The Eastern Catholic Churches are groups of faithful who have either never been out of communion with the Holy See or who have restored communion with it at the cost of breaking communion with their associates of the same tradition.[223]
+
+The rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches include the Byzantine Rite, in its Antiochian, Greek and Slavonic varieties; the Alexandrian Rite; the Syriac Rite; the Armenian Rite; the Maronite Rite and the Chaldean Rite. Eastern Catholic Churches have the autonomy to set the particulars of their liturgical forms and worship, within certain limits to protect the "accurate observance" of their liturgical tradition.[224] In the past some of the rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches were subject to a degree of liturgical Latinization. However, in recent years Eastern Catholic Churches have returned to traditional Eastern practices in accord with the Vatican II decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.[225] Each church has its own liturgical calendar.[226]
+
+Catholic social teaching, reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, places a heavy emphasis on the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted.[227][228] Church teaching calls for a preferential option for the poor while canon law prescribes that "The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor."[229] Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum which upholds the rights and dignity of labour and the right of workers to form unions.
+
+Catholic teaching regarding sexuality calls for a practice of chastity, with a focus on maintaining the spiritual and bodily integrity of the human person. Marriage is considered the only appropriate context for sexual activity.[230] Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council, due to changing cultural attitudes in the Western world described as the sexual revolution.
+
+The church has also addressed stewardship of the natural environment, and its relationship to other social and theological teachings. In the document Laudato si', dated 24 May 2015, Pope Francis critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, and laments environmental degradation and global warming.[231] The pope expressed concern that the warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as humans pursue short-term economic gains.[232]
+
+The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world.[19] In 2010, the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the church manages 26% of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy.[233]
+
+The church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world[234][235] and operates the world's largest non-governmental school system.[236]
+
+Religious institutes for women have played a particularly prominent role in the provision of health and education services,[237] as with orders such as the Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul.[238] The Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work among India's poor.[239] Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the same award in 1996 for "work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor".[240]
+
+The church is also actively engaged in international aid and development through organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Caritas International, Aid to the Church in Need, refugee advocacy groups such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and community aid groups such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.[241]
+
+
+
+The Catholic Church calls all members to practise chastity according to their state in life. Chastity includes temperance, self-mastery, personal and cultural growth, and divine grace. It requires refraining from lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution and, especially, rape. Chastity for those who are not married requires living in continence, abstaining from sexual activity; those who are married are called to conjugal chastity.[242]
+
+In the church's teaching, sexual activity is reserved to married couples, whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptised. Even in romantic relationships, particularly engagement to marriage, partners are called to practise continence, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity.[243] Chastity in marriage requires in particular conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the possibility of life;[244] the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance.[245]
+
+Contraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason.[246] Pope Francis said in 2015 that he is worried that the church has grown "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception and has criticized the Catholic Church for placing dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized.[247][248]
+
+Canon law makes no provision for divorce between baptised individuals, as a valid, consummated sacramental marriage is considered to be a lifelong bond.[249] However, a declaration of nullity may be granted when the proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a valid marriage were absent from the beginning—in other words, that the marriage was not valid due to some impediment. A declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment, is a judgement on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly attempted.[250] In addition, marriages among unbaptised individuals may be dissolved with papal permission under certain situations, such as a desire to marry a Catholic, under Pauline or Petrine privilege.[204][205] An attempt at remarriage following divorce without a declaration of nullity places "the remarried spouse ... in a situation of public and permanent adultery". An innocent spouse who lives in continence following divorce, or couples who live in continence following a civil divorce for a grave cause, do not sin.[251]
+
+Worldwide, diocesan tribunals completed over 49000 cases for nullity of marriage in 2006. Over the past 30 years about 55 to 70% of annulments have occurred in the United States. The growth in annulments has been substantial; in the United States, 27,000 marriages were annulled in 2006, compared to 338 in 1968. However, approximately 200,000 married Catholics in the United States divorce each year; 10 million total as of 2006[update].[252][note 11] Divorce is increasing in some predominantly Catholic countries in Europe.[254] In some predominantly Catholic countries, it is only in recent years that divorce was introduced (e.g. Italy (1970), Portugal (1975), Brazil (1977), Spain (1981), Ireland (1996), Chile (2004) and Malta (2011), while the Philippines and the Vatican City have no procedure for divorce. (The Philippines does, however, allow divorce for Muslims.)
+
+The church teaches that sexual intercourse should only take place between a man and woman who are married to each other, and should be without the use of birth control or contraception. In his encyclical Humanae vitae[255] (1968), Pope Paul VI firmly rejected all contraception, thus contradicting dissenters in the church that saw the birth control pill as an ethically justifiable method of contraception, though he permitted the regulation of births by means of natural family planning. This teaching was continued especially by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where he clarified the church's position on contraception, abortion and euthanasia by condemning them as part of a "culture of death" and calling instead for a "culture of life".[256]
+
+Many Western Catholics have voiced significant disagreement with the church's teaching on contraception.[257] Catholics for Choice, a political lobbyist group which is not associated with the Catholic Church, stated in 1998 that 96% of U.S. Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control.[258] Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty.[note 12] As Catholic health providers are among the largest providers of services to patients with HIV/AIDS worldwide, there is significant controversy within and outside the church regarding the use of condoms as a means of limiting new infections, as condom use ordinarily constitutes prohibited contraceptive use.[261]
+
+Similarly, the Catholic Church opposes in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying that the artificial process replaces the love between a husband and wife.[262] In addition, it opposes IVF because it might cause disposal of embryos; Catholics believe an embryo is an individual with a soul who must be treated as such.[263] For this reason, the church also opposes abortion.[264]
+
+The Catholic Church also teaches that "homosexual acts" are "contrary to the natural law", "acts of grave depravity" and "under no circumstances can they be approved", but that persons experiencing homosexual tendencies must be accorded respect and dignity.[265] According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
+
+The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. ...
+Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.[266]
+
+This part of the Catechism was quoted by Pope Francis in a 2013 press interview in which he remarked, when asked about an individual:
+
+I think that when you encounter a person like this [the individual he was asked about], you must make a distinction between the fact of a person being gay from the fact of being a lobby, because lobbies, all are not good. That is bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?[267]
+
+This remark and others made in the same interview were seen as a change in the tone, but not in the substance of the teaching of the church,[268] which includes opposition to same-sex marriage.[269] Certain dissenting Catholic groups oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it.[270]
+
+Women and men religious engage in a variety of occupations, from contemplative prayer, to teaching, to providing health care, to working as missionaries.[237][271] While Holy Orders are reserved for men, Catholic women have played diverse roles in the life of the church, with religious institutes providing a formal space for their participation and convents providing spaces for their self-government, prayer and influence through many centuries. Religious sisters and nuns have been extensively involved in developing and running the church's worldwide health and education service networks.[272]
+
+Efforts in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood led to several rulings by the Roman Curia or popes against the proposal, as in Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) and Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994). According to the latest ruling, found in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II affirmed that the Catholic Church "does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination".[273] In defiance of these rulings, opposition groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests have performed ceremonies they affirm as sacramental ordinations (with, reputedly, an ordaining male Catholic bishop in the first few instances) which, according to canon law, are both illicit and invalid and considered mere simulations[274] of the sacrament of ordination.[275][note 13] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded by issuing a statement clarifying that any Catholic bishops involved in ordination ceremonies for women, as well as the women themselves if they were Catholic, would automatically receive the penalty of excommunication (latae sententiae, literally "with the sentence already applied", i.e. automatically), citing canon 1378 of canon law and other church laws.[276]
+
+From the 1990s, the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and other church members has become the subject of civil litigation, criminal prosecution, media coverage and public debate in countries around the world. The Catholic Church has been criticized for its handling of abuse complaints when it became known that some bishops had shielded accused priests, transferring them to other pastoral assignments where some continued to commit sexual offences.
+
+In response to the scandal, formal procedures have been established to help prevent abuse, encourage the reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness.[277] In 2014, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the safeguarding of minors.[278]
+
+The Christian religion is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived and preached in the 1st century AD in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire. Catholic doctrine teaches that the contemporary Catholic Church is the continuation of this early Christian community established by Jesus.[9] Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire, despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 313, and it became the state religion in 380. Germanic invaders of Roman territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, many of whom had previously adopted Arian Christianity, eventually adopted Catholicism to ally themselves with the papacy and the monasteries.
+
+In the 7th and 8th centuries, expanding Muslim conquests following the advent of Islam led to an Arab domination of the Mediterranean that severed political connections between that area and northern Europe, and weakened cultural connections between Rome and the Byzantine Empire. Conflicts involving authority in the church, particularly the authority of the Bishop of Rome finally culminated in the East–West Schism in the 11th century, splitting the church into the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Earlier splits within the church occurred after the Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). However, a few Eastern Churches remained in communion with Rome, and portions of some others established communion in the 15th century and later, forming what are called the Eastern Catholic Churches.
+
+Early monasteries throughout Europe helped preserve Greek and Roman classical civilization. The church eventually became the dominant influence in Western civilization into the modern age. Many Renaissance figures were sponsored by the church. The 16th century, however, began to see challenges to the church, in particular to its religious authority, by figures in the Protestant Reformation, as well as in the 17th century by secular intellectuals in the Enlightenment. Concurrently, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and missionaries spread the church's influence through Africa, Asia, and the New World.
+
+In 1870, the First Vatican Council declared the dogma of papal infallibility and the Kingdom of Italy annexed the city of Rome, the last portion of the Papal States to be incorporated into the new nation. In the 20th century, anti-clerical governments around the world, including Mexico and Spain, persecuted or executed thousands of clerics and laypersons. In the Second World War, the church condemned Nazism, and protected hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust; its efforts, however, have been criticized as inadequate. After the war, freedom of religion was severely restricted in the Communist countries newly aligned with the Soviet Union, several of which had large Catholic populations.
+
+In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council led to reforms of the church's liturgy and practices, described as "opening the windows" by defenders, but criticized by traditionalist Catholics. In the face of increased criticism from both within and without, the church has upheld or reaffirmed at various times controversial doctrinal positions regarding sexuality and gender, including limiting clergy to males, and moral exhortations against abortion, contraception, sexual activity outside of marriage, remarriage following divorce without annulment, and against same-sex marriage.
+
+The New Testament, in particular the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles and his Great Commission of the Apostles, instructing them to continue his work.[112][279] The book Acts of Apostles, tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman empire.[280]  The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, occurring fifty days following the date Christ is believed to have resurrected.[113] At Pentecost, the Apostles are believed to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission in leading the church.[281][282] The Catholic Church teaches that the college of bishops, led by the Bishop of Rome are the successors to the Apostles.[283]
+
+In the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the "rock" upon which Christ's church will be built.[284][285] The Catholic Church considers the Bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor to Saint Peter.[286] Some scholars state Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.[287][note 14] Others say that the institution of the papacy is not dependent on the idea that Peter was Bishop of Rome or even on his ever having been in Rome.[288] Many scholars hold that a church structure of plural presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when the structure of a single bishop and plural presbyters was adopted,[289] and that later writers retrospectively applied the term "bishop of Rome" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period and also to Peter himself.[289] On this basis, Oscar Cullmann,[290] Henry Chadwick,[291] and Bart D. Ehrman[292] question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy. Raymond E. Brown also says that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have looked on Peter as having "roles that would contribute in an essential way to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church". These roles, Brown says, "contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome, the bishop of the city where Peter died, and where Paul witnessed to the truth of Christ, as the successor of Peter in care for the church universal".[289]
+
+Conditions in the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas. The empire's network of roads and waterways facilitated travel, and the Pax Romana made travelling safe. The empire encouraged the spread of a common culture with Greek roots, which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood.[293]
+
+Unlike most religions in the Roman Empire, however, Christianity required its adherents to renounce all other gods, a practice adopted from Judaism (see Idolatry). The Christians' refusal to join pagan celebrations meant they were unable to participate in much of public life, which caused non-Christians—including government authorities—to fear that the Christians were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the Empire. The resulting persecutions were a defining feature of Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century.[294]
+
+In 313, Emperor Constantine I's Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and in 330 Constantine moved the imperial capital to Constantinople, modern Istanbul, Turkey. In 380 the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a position that within the diminishing territory of the Byzantine Empire would persist until the empire itself ended in the fall of Constantinople in 1453, while elsewhere the church was independent of the empire, as became particularly clear with the East–West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five primary sees emerged, an arrangement formalized in the mid-6th century by Emperor Justinian I as the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.[295][296] In 451 the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity,[297] elevated the see of Constantinople to a position "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome".[298] From c. 350 to c. 500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome, steadily increased in authority through their consistent intervening in support of orthodox leaders in theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them.[299] Emperor Justinian, who in the areas under his control definitively established a form of caesaropapism,[300] in which "he had the right and duty of regulating by his laws the minutest details of worship and discipline, and also of dictating the theological opinions to be held in the Church",[301] reestablished imperial power over Rome and other parts of the West, initiating the period termed the Byzantine Papacy (537–752), during which the bishops of Rome, or popes, required approval from the emperor in Constantinople or from his representative in Ravenna for consecration, and most were selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects,[302] resulting in a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art as well as liturgy.[303]
+
+Most of the Germanic tribes who in the following centuries invaded the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Catholic Church declared heretical.[304] The resulting religious discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects[305] was avoided when, in 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism, allying himself with the papacy and the monasteries.[306] The Visigoths in Spain followed his lead in 589,[307] and the Lombards in Italy in the course of the 7th century.[308]
+
+Western Christianity, particularly through its monasteries, was a major factor in preserving classical civilization, with its art (see Illuminated manuscript) and literacy.[309][310] Through his Rule, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, exerted an enormous influence on European culture through the appropriation of the monastic spiritual heritage of the early Catholic Church and, with the spread of the Benedictine tradition, through the preservation and transmission of ancient culture. During this period, monastic Ireland became a centre of learning and early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe.[1]
+
+Catholicism portal
+
+The Catholic Church was the dominant influence on Western civilization from Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age.[8] It was the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque styles in art, architecture and music.[311] Renaissance figures such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Bernini and Caravaggio are examples of the numerous visual artists sponsored by the church.[312] Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization".[313]
+
+The massive Islamic invasions of the mid-7th century began a long struggle between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basin. The Byzantine Empire soon lost the lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch and was reduced to that of Constantinople, the empire's capital. As a result of Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, the Frankish state, centred away from that sea, was able to evolve as the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages.[314] The battles of Toulouse and Poitiers halted the Islamic advance in the West and the failed Siege of Constantinople halted it in the East. Two or three decades later, in 751, the Byzantine Empire lost to the Lombards the city of Ravenna from which it governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, that acknowledged its sovereignty. The fall of Ravenna meant that confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked for during the election in 752 of Pope Stephen II and that the papacy was forced to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it.[315] In 754, at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, the Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards. He then gifted the lands of the former exarchate to the pope, thus initiating the Papal States. Rome and the Byzantine East would delve into further conflict during the Photian schism of the 860s, when Photius criticized the Latin west of adding of the filioque clause after being excommunicated by Nicholas I. Though the schism was reconciled, unresolved issues would lead to further division.[316]
+
+In the 11th century, the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman Emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes.[317][318]
+
+In 1095, Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine–Seljuk Wars,[319] which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control.[320] In the 11th century, strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East–West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach.[321] In this age great gothic cathedrals in France were an expression of popular pride in the Christian faith.
+
+In the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán. The studia conventualia and studia generalia of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of Church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe.[322] Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' Summa Theologica was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation.[323]
+
+A growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. To escape instability in Rome, Clement V in 1309 became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France[324] during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome,[325] but was followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western schism, with claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa.[325] The matter was largely resolved in 1415–17 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope.[326]
+
+In 1438, the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches.[327] Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches.[328]
+
+The Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the prominent role the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal played in Western Colonialism, Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the transformation of societies through the socio-political mechanisms of colonial rule. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal[329] and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies.[330] In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines.[331] Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China, and Japan.[332] The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Roman Catholic francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec.[333]
+
+In 1415, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, but his reform efforts encouraged Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk in Germany, who sent his Ninety-five Theses to several bishops in 1517.[334] His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences, and along with the Leipzig Debate this led to his excommunication in 1521.[334][335] In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations[336] and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church.[337] Meanwhile, Henry VIII petitioned the pope for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make him head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism.[338]
+
+The Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict—the Thirty Years' War—which broke out in 1618.[339] In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes.[340] This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants.[339][340]
+
+The Council of Trent (1545–1563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation.[341] In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment.[342]
+
+From the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society.[343] In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution of 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason,[344] and the martyrdom of nuns during the Reign of Terror.[345] In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801.[346] The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States.[347]
+
+In 1854, Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a Dogma in the Catholic Church.[348] In 1870, the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements,[349][350] striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church,[351]
+
+The Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response, Pope Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land, and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a "prisoner in the Vatican".[352] This stand-off, which was spoken of as the Roman Question, was resolved by the 1929 Lateran Treaties, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state.[353]
+
+A number of anti-clerical governments emerged in the 20th century.
+
+The 1926 Calles Law separating church and state in Mexico led to the Cristero War[354] in which more than 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[355] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped, and captured priests shot.[354] Following the 1917 October Revolution, persecution of the church and Catholics in the Soviet Union continued into the 1930s, with the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements, and closure of churches.[356][357] In the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy allied with Franco's Nationalists against the Popular Front government,[358] citing as justification Republican violence against the church.[359][360] Pope Pius XI referred to these three countries as a "terrible triangle".[361][362]
+
+After violations of the 1933 Reichskonkordat between the church and Nazi Germany, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of the church and their ideology of neo-paganism and racial superiority.[363][364][365] The church condemned the 1939 Invasion of Poland that started World War II and other subsequent wartime Nazi invasions.[366] Thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and brothers were imprisoned and murdered throughout the countries occupied by the Nazis, including Saints Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein.[367] While Pope Pius XII has been credited with helping to save hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust,[368][369] the church has also been accused of having encouraged centuries of antisemitism by its teachings[370] and not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities.[371]
+
+During the post-war period, Communist governments in Eastern Europe severely restricted religious freedoms.[372] Although some priests and religious people collaborated with Communist regimes,[373] many others were imprisoned, deported, or executed. The church was an important player in the fall of Communism in Europe, particularly in the Polish People's Republic.[374]
+
+In 1949, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War led to the expulsion of all foreign missionaries.[375] The new government also created the Patriotic Church and appointed its bishops. These appointments were initially rejected by Rome before many of them were accepted.[376] In the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communists closed all religious establishments. When Chinese churches eventually reopened, they remained under the control of the Patriotic Church. Many Catholic pastors and priests continued to be sent to prison for refusing to renounce allegiance to Rome.[377]
+
+The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before.[378] Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernised the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging "fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations".[379] It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (aggiornamento), which was described by its advocates as an "opening of the windows".[380] In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism,[381] and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document Nostra aetate.[382]
+
+The council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the "Spirit of Vatican II" such as Swiss theologian Hans Küng said that Vatican II had "not gone far enough" to change church policies.[383] Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led "to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments", among other issues.[384]
+
+Several teachings of the Catholic Church came under increased scrutiny both concurrent with and following the council; among those teachings was the church's teaching regarding the immorality of contraception. The recent introduction of hormonal contraception (including "the pill"), which were believed by some to be morally different from previous methods, prompted John XXIII to form a committee to advise him of the moral and theological issues with the new method.[385][386] Pope Paul VI later expanded the committee's scope to freely examine all methods, and the committee's unreleased final report was rumoured to suggest permitting at least some methods of contraception. Paul did not agree with the arguments presented, and eventually issued Humanae vitae, saying that it upheld the constant teaching of the church against contraception. It expressly included hormonal methods as prohibited.[note 15] This document generated a largely negative response from many Catholics.[from whom?][387]
+
+In 1978, Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Kraków in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history.[388] Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, credited the Polish pope with hastening the fall of Communism in Europe.[389]
+
+John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He instituted World Youth Day as a "worldwide encounter with the pope" for young people; it is now held every two to three years.[390] He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries,[391] and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasised the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in Laborem exercens.[392] He emphasised several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia, and against widespread use of the death penalty, in Evangelium Vitae.[393]
+
+From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women, and its handling of sexual abuse cases.
+
+In 2005, following the death of John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul, was elected. He was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization,[394] and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962.[395] In 2012, the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, an assembly of the Synod of Bishops discussed re-evangelising lapsed Catholics in the developed world.[396] Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years.[397]
+
+Pope Francis, the current pope of the Catholic Church, succeeded Pope Benedict XVI in 2013 as the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century. Pope Francis has been noted for his humility, emphasis on God's mercy, concern for the poor and the environment, as well as his commitment to interfaith dialogue. He is credited with having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.
+
+Pope Francis is recognised for his efforts "to further close the nearly 1,000-year estrangement with the Orthodox Churches".[398] His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church,[399] the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation.[400] On 12 February 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, met in Havana, Cuba, issuing a joint declaration calling for restored Christian unity between the two churches. This was reported as the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054.[401]
+
+In 2014, the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops addressed the church's ministry towards families and marriages and to Catholics in "irregular" relationships, such as those who divorced and remarried outside of the church without a declaration of nullity.[402][403] While welcomed by some, it was criticized by some for perceived ambiguity, provoking controversies among individual representatives of differing perspectives.[404]
+
+In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis reestablished mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church.[405]

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+
+
+Aikido (合気道, aikidō, Japanese pronunciation: [aikiꜜdoː], kyūjitai: 合氣道) is a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy and religious beliefs. Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attackers from injury.[1][2] Aikido is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) life energy"[3] or as "the way of harmonious spirit".[4] According to the founder's philosophy, the primary goal in the practice of aikido is to overcome oneself instead of cultivating violence or aggressiveness.[5] Morihei Ueshiba used the phrase "masakatsu agatsu katsuhayabi" (Japanese: 正勝吾勝勝速日) ("true victory, final victory over oneself, here and now") to refer to this principle.[6]
+
+Aikido's fundamental principles include: irimi[7] (entering), atemi,[8][9] kokyu-ho (breathing control), sankaku-ho (triangular principle) and tenkan (turning) movements that redirect the opponent's attack momentum. Its curriculum comprises various techniques, primarily throws and joint locks.[10] It also includes a weapons system encompassing the bokken, tantō and jō.
+
+Aikido derives mainly from the martial art of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, but began to diverge from it in the late 1920s, partly due to Ueshiba's involvement with the Ōmoto-kyō religion. Ueshiba's early students' documents bear the term aiki-jūjutsu.[11]
+
+Ueshiba's senior students have different approaches to aikido, depending partly on when they studied with him. Today, aikido is found all over the world in a number of styles, with broad ranges of interpretation and emphasis. However, they all share techniques formulated by Ueshiba and most have concern for the well-being of the attacker.
+
+The word "aikido" is formed of three kanji:
+
+The term aiki does not readily appear in the Japanese language outside the scope of budō. This has led to many possible interpretations of the word.
+合 is mainly used in compounds to mean 'combine, unite, join together, meet', examples being 合同 (combined/united), 合成 (composition), 結合 (unite/combine/join together), 連合 (union/alliance/association), 統合 (combine/unify), and 合意 (mutual agreement). There is an idea of reciprocity, 知り合う (to get to know one another), 話し合い (talk/discussion/negotiation), and 待ち合わせる (meet by appointment).
+
+気 is often used to describe a feeling, as in X気がする ('I feel X', as in terms of thinking but with less cognitive reasoning), and 気持ち (feeling/sensation); it is used to mean energy or force, as in 電気 (electricity) and 磁気 (magnetism); it can also refer to qualities or aspects of people or things, as in 気質 (spirit/trait/temperament).
+
+The term dō is also found in martial arts such as judo and kendo, and in various non-martial arts, such as Japanese calligraphy (shodō), flower arranging (kadō) and tea ceremony (chadō or sadō).
+
+Therefore, from a purely literal interpretation, aikido is the "Way of combining forces" or "Way of unifying energy", in which the term aiki refers to the martial arts principle or tactic of blending with an attacker's movements for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort.[12] One applies aiki by understanding the rhythm and intent of the attacker to find the optimal position and timing to apply a counter-technique.
+
+Aikido was created by Morihei Ueshiba (植芝 盛平 Ueshiba Morihei, 1883–1969), referred to by some aikido practitioners as Ōsensei (Great Teacher).[13] The term aikido was coined in the twentieth century.[14] Ueshiba envisioned aikido not only as the synthesis of his martial training, but as an expression of his personal philosophy of universal peace and reconciliation. During Ueshiba's lifetime and continuing today, aikido has evolved from the aiki that Ueshiba studied into a variety of expressions by martial artists throughout the world.[10]
+
+Ueshiba developed aikido primarily during the late 1920s through the 1930s through the synthesis of the older martial arts that he had studied.[15] The core martial art from which aikido derives is Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu, which Ueshiba studied directly with Takeda Sōkaku, the reviver of that art. Additionally, Ueshiba is known to have studied Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū with Tozawa Tokusaburō in Tokyo in 1901, Gotōha Yagyū Shingan-ryū under Nakai Masakatsu in Sakai from 1903 to 1908, and judo with Kiyoichi Takagi (高木 喜代市 Takagi Kiyoichi, 1894–1972) in Tanabe in 1911.[16]
+
+The art of Daitō-ryū is the primary technical influence on aikido. Along with empty-handed throwing and joint-locking techniques, Ueshiba incorporated training movements with weapons, such as those for the spear (yari), short staff (jō), and possibly the bayonet (銃剣, jūken). Aikido also derives much of its technical structure from the art of swordsmanship (kenjutsu).[4][17]
+
+Ueshiba moved to Hokkaidō in 1912, and began studying under Takeda Sokaku in 1915; His official association with Daitō-ryū continued until 1937.[15] However, during the latter part of that period, Ueshiba had already begun to distance himself from Takeda and the Daitō-ryū. At that time Ueshiba referred to his martial art as "Aiki Budō". It is unclear exactly when Ueshiba began using the name "aikido", but it became the official name of the art in 1942 when the Greater Japan Martial Virtue Society (Dai Nippon Butoku Kai) was engaged in a government sponsored reorganization and centralization of Japanese martial arts.[10]
+
+After Ueshiba left Hokkaidō in 1919, he met and was profoundly influenced by Onisaburo Deguchi, the spiritual leader of the Ōmoto-kyō religion (a neo-Shinto movement) in Ayabe.[18] One of the primary features of Ōmoto-kyō is its emphasis on the attainment of utopia during one's life. This idea was a great influence on Ueshiba's martial arts philosophy of extending love and compassion especially to those who seek to harm others. Aikido demonstrates this philosophy in its emphasis on mastering martial arts so that one may receive an attack and harmlessly redirect it. In an ideal resolution, not only is the receiver unharmed, but so is the attacker.[19]
+
+In addition to the effect on his spiritual growth, the connection with Deguchi gave Ueshiba entry to elite political and military circles as a martial artist. As a result of this exposure, he was able to attract not only financial backing but also gifted students. Several of these students would found their own styles of aikido.[20]
+
+Aikido was first introduced to the rest of the world in 1951 by Minoru Mochizuki with a visit to France, where he demonstrated aikido techniques to judo students.[21] He was followed by Tadashi Abe in 1952, who came as the official Aikikai Hombu representative, remaining in France for seven years. Kenji Tomiki toured with a delegation of various martial arts through 15 continental states of the United States in 1953.[20][22] Later that year, Koichi Tohei was sent by Aikikai Hombu to Hawaii for a full year, where he set up several dōjō. This trip was followed by several subsequent visits and is considered the formal introduction of aikido to the United States. The United Kingdom followed in 1955; Italy in 1964 by Hiroshi Tada; and Germany in 1965 by Katsuaki Asai. Designated the "Official Delegate for Europe and Africa" by Morihei Ueshiba, Masamichi Noro arrived in France in September 1961. Seiichi Sugano was appointed to introduce aikido to Australia in 1965. Today there are aikido dōjō throughout the world.
+
+The largest aikido organization is the Aikikai Foundation, which remains under the control of the Ueshiba family. However, aikido has developed into many styles, most of which were formed by Morihei Ueshiba's major students.[20]
+
+The earliest independent styles to emerge were Yoseikan Aikido, begun by Minoru Mochizuki in 1931,[21] Yoshinkan Aikido, founded by Gozo Shioda in 1955,[23] and Shodokan Aikido, founded by Kenji Tomiki in 1967.[24] The emergence of these styles pre-dated Ueshiba's death and did not cause any major upheavals when they were formalized. Shodokan Aikido, however, was controversial, since it introduced a unique rule-based competition that some felt was contrary to the spirit of aikido.[20]
+
+After Ueshiba's death in 1969, two more major styles emerged. Significant controversy arose with the departure of the Aikikai Hombu Dojo's chief instructor Koichi Tohei, in 1974. Tohei left as a result of a disagreement with the son of the founder, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, who at that time headed the Aikikai Foundation. The disagreement was over the proper role of ki development in regular aikido training. After Tohei left, he formed his own style, called Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, and the organization that governs it, the Ki Society (Ki no Kenkyūkai).[25]
+
+A final major style evolved from Ueshiba's retirement in Iwama, Ibaraki and the teaching methodology of long term student Morihiro Saito. It is unofficially referred to as the "Iwama style", and at one point a number of its followers formed a loose network of schools they called Iwama Ryu. Although Iwama style practitioners remained part of the Aikikai until Saito's death in 2002, followers of Saito subsequently split into two groups.  One remained with the Aikikai and the other formed the independent Shinshin Aikishuren Kai in 2004 around Saito's son Hitohiro Saito.
+
+Today, the major styles of aikido are each run by a separate governing organization, have their own headquarters (本部道場, honbu dōjō) in Japan, and are taught throughout the world.[20]
+
+The study of ki is an important component of aikido. The term does not specifically refer to either physical or mental training, as it encompasses both. The kanji for ki normally is written as 気. It was written as 氣 until the writing reforms after World War II, and this older form still is seen on occasion.
+
+The character for ki is used in everyday Japanese terms, such as "health" (元気, genki), or "shyness" (内気, uchiki). Ki has many meanings, including "ambience", "mind", "mood", and "intention", however, in traditional martial arts it is often used to refer to "life energy". Gōzō Shioda's Yoshinkan Aikido, considered one of the "hard styles", largely follows Ueshiba's teachings from before World War II, and surmises that the secret to ki lies in timing and the application of the whole body's strength to a single point.[26] In later years, Ueshiba's application of ki in aikido took on a softer, more gentle feel. This concept was known as Takemusu Aiki, and many of his later students teach about ki from this perspective. Koichi Tohei's Ki Society centers almost exclusively around the study of the empirical (albeit subjective) experience of ki, with students' proficiency in aikido techniques and ki development ranked separately.[27]
+
+In aikido, as in virtually all Japanese martial arts, there are both physical and mental aspects of training. The physical training in aikido is diverse, covering both general physical fitness and conditioning, as well as specific techniques.[28] Because a substantial portion of any aikido curriculum consists of throws, beginners learn how to safely fall or roll.[28] The specific techniques for attack include both strikes and grabs; the techniques for defense consist of throws and pins. After basic techniques are learned, students study freestyle defense against multiple opponents, and techniques with weapons.
+
+Physical training goals pursued in conjunction with aikido include controlled relaxation, correct movement of joints such as hips and shoulders, flexibility, and endurance, with less emphasis on strength training. In aikido, pushing or extending movements are much more common than pulling or contracting movements. This distinction can be applied to general fitness goals for the aikido practitioner.[4]
+
+In aikido, specific muscles or muscle groups are not isolated and worked to improve tone, mass, or power. Aikido-related training emphasizes the use of coordinated whole-body movement and balance similar to yoga or pilates. For example, many dōjōs begin each class with warm-up exercises (準備体操, junbi taisō), which may include stretching and ukemi (break falls).[29]
+
+Aikido training is based primarily on two partners practicing pre-arranged forms (kata) rather than freestyle practice. The basic pattern is for the receiver of the technique (uke) to initiate an attack against the person who applies the technique—the 取り tori, or shite 仕手 (depending on aikido style), also referred to as 投げ nage (when applying a throwing technique), who neutralises this attack with an aikido technique.[30]
+
+Both halves of the technique, that of uke and that of tori, are considered essential to aikido training.[30] Both are studying aikido principles of blending and adaptation. Tori learns to blend with and control attacking energy, while uke learns to become calm and flexible in the disadvantageous, off-balance positions in which tori places them. This "receiving" of the technique is called ukemi.[30] Uke continuously seeks to regain balance and cover vulnerabilities (e.g., an exposed side), while tori uses position and timing to keep uke off-balance and vulnerable. In more advanced training, uke will sometimes apply reversal techniques (返し技, kaeshi-waza) to regain balance and pin or throw tori.
+
+Ukemi (受身) refers to the act of receiving a technique. Good ukemi involves attention to the technique, the partner, and the immediate environment—it is considered an active part of the process of learning aikido. The method of falling itself is also important, and is a way for the practitioner to receive an aikido technique safely and minimize risk of injury.
+
+Aikido techniques are usually a defense against an attack, so students must learn to deliver various types of attacks to be able to practice aikido with a partner. Although attacks are not studied as thoroughly as in striking-based arts, attacks with intent (such as a strong strike or an immobilizing grab) are needed to study correct and effective application of technique.[4]
+
+Many of the strikes (打ち, uchi) of aikido resemble cuts from a sword or other grasped object, which indicate its origins in techniques intended for armed combat.[4] Other techniques, which explicitly appear to be punches (tsuki), are practiced as thrusts with a knife or sword. Kicks are generally reserved for upper-level variations; reasons cited include that falls from kicks are especially dangerous, and that kicks (high kicks in particular) were uncommon during the types of combat prevalent in feudal Japan.
+
+Some basic strikes include:
+
+Beginners in particular often practice techniques from grabs, both because they are safer and because it is easier to feel the energy and the direction of the movement of force of a hold than it is for a strike. Some grabs are historically derived from being held while trying to draw a weapon, whereupon a technique could then be used to free oneself and immobilize or strike the attacker while they are grabbing the defender.[4] The following are examples of some basic grabs:
+
+The following are a sample of the basic or widely practiced throws and pins. Many of these techniques derive from Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu, but some others were invented by Morihei Ueshiba. The precise terminology for some may vary between organisations and styles; the following are the terms used by the Aikikai Foundation. Note that despite the names of the first five techniques listed, they are not universally taught in numeric order.[31]
+
+Aikido makes use of body movement (tai sabaki) to blend the movement of tori with the movement of uke. For example, an "entering" (irimi) technique consists of movements inward towards uke, while a "turning" (転換, tenkan) technique uses a pivoting motion.[37]
+Additionally, an "inside" (内, uchi) technique takes place in front of uke, whereas an "outside" (外, soto) technique takes place to their side; a "front" (表, omote) technique is applied with motion to the front of uke, and a "rear" (裏, ura) version is applied with motion towards the rear of uke, usually by incorporating a turning or pivoting motion. Finally, most techniques can be performed while in a seated posture (seiza). Techniques where both uke and tori are standing are called tachi-waza, techniques where both start off in seiza are called suwari-waza, and techniques performed with uke standing and tori sitting are called hanmi handachi (半身半立).[38]
+
+From these few basic techniques, there are numerous of possible implementations. For example, ikkyō can be applied to an opponent moving forward with a strike (perhaps with an ura type of movement to redirect the incoming force), or to an opponent who has already struck and is now moving back to reestablish distance (perhaps an omote-waza version). Specific aikido kata are typically referred to with the formula "attack-technique(-modifier)"; katate-dori ikkyō, for example, refers to any ikkyō technique executed when uke is holding one wrist. This could be further specified as katate-dori ikkyō omote (referring to any forward-moving ikkyō technique from that grab).
+
+Atemi (当て身) are strikes (or feints) employed during an aikido technique. Some view atemi as attacks against "vital points" meant to cause damage in and of themselves. For instance, Gōzō Shioda described using atemi in a brawl to quickly down a gang's leader.[26] Others consider atemi, especially to the face, to be methods of distraction meant to enable other techniques; a strike, even if it is blocked, can startle the target and break their concentration. Additionally, the target may also become unbalanced while attempting to avoid a strike (by jerking the head back, for example) which may allow for an easier throw.[38]
+Many sayings about atemi are attributed to Morihei Ueshiba, who considered them an essential element of technique.[39]
+
+Weapons training in aikido traditionally includes the short staff (jō) (these techniques closely resemble the use of the bayonet, or Jūkendō), the wooden sword (bokken), and the knife (tantō).[40] Some schools incorporate firearm-disarming techniques, where either weapon-taking and/or weapon-retention may be taught. Some schools, such as the Iwama style of Morihiro Saito, usually spend substantial time practicing with both bokken and jō, under the names of aiki-ken, and aiki-jō, respectively.
+
+The founder developed many of the empty-handed techniques from traditional sword, spear and bayonet movements. Consequently, the practice of the weapons arts gives insight into the origin of techniques and movements, and reinforces the concepts of distance, timing, foot movement, presence and connectedness with one's training partner(s).[41]
+
+One feature of aikido is training to defend against multiple attackers, often called taninzudori, or taninzugake. Freestyle practice with multiple attackers called randori (乱取) is a key part of most curricula and is required for the higher level ranks.[42] Randori exercises a person's ability to intuitively perform techniques in an unstructured environment.[42] Strategic choice of techniques, based on how they reposition the student relative to other attackers, is important in randori training. For instance, an ura technique might be used to neutralise the current attacker while turning to face attackers approaching from behind.[4]
+
+In Shodokan Aikido, randori differs in that it is not performed with multiple persons with defined roles of defender and attacker, but between two people, where both participants attack, defend, and counter at will. In this respect it resembles judo randori.[24][43]
+
+In applying a technique during training, it is the responsibility of tori to prevent injury to uke by employing a speed and force of application that is appropriate with their partner's proficiency in ukemi.[30] When injuries (especially to the joints) occur, they are often the result of a tori misjudging the ability of uke to receive the throw or pin.[44][45]
+
+A study of injuries in the martial arts showed that the type of injuries varied considerably from one art to the other.[46]
+Soft tissue injuries are one of the most common types of injuries found within aikido,[46] as well as joint strain and stubbed fingers and toes.[45] Several deaths from head-and-neck injuries, caused by aggressive shihōnage in a senpai/kōhai hazing context, have been reported.[44]
+
+Aikido training is mental as well as physical, emphasizing the ability to relax the mind and body even under the stress of dangerous situations.[47] This is necessary to enable the practitioner to perform the 'enter-and-blend' movements that underlie aikido techniques, wherein an attack is met with confidence and directness.[48] Morihei Ueshiba once remarked that one "must be willing to receive 99% of an opponent's attack and stare death in the face" in order to execute techniques without hesitation.[49] As a martial art concerned not only with fighting proficiency but with the betterment of daily life, this mental aspect is of key importance to aikido practitioners.[50]
+
+Aikido practitioners (commonly called aikidōka outside Japan) generally progress by promotion through a series of "grades" (kyū), followed by a series of "degrees" (dan), pursuant to formal testing procedures. Some aikido organizations use belts to distinguish practitioners' grades, often simply white and black belts to distinguish kyu and dan grades, though some use various belt colors. Testing requirements vary, so a particular rank in one organization is not comparable or interchangeable with the rank of another.[4] Some dōjōs have an age requirement before students can take the dan rank exam.
+
+The uniform worn for practicing aikido (aikidōgi) is similar to the training uniform (keikogi) used in most other modern martial arts; simple trousers and a wraparound jacket, usually white. Both thick ("judo-style"), and thin ("karate-style") cotton tops are used.[4] Aikido-specific tops are available with shorter sleeves which reach to just below the elbow.
+
+Most aikido systems add a pair of wide pleated black or indigo trousers called a hakama (used also in Naginatajutsu, kendo, and iaido). In many schools, its use is reserved for practitioners with dan ranks or for instructors, while others allow all practitioners to wear a hakama regardless of rank.[4]
+
+The most common criticism of aikido is that it suffers from a lack of realism in training. The attacks initiated by uke (and which tori must defend against) have been criticized as being "weak", "sloppy", and "little more than caricatures of an attack".[51][52] Weak attacks from uke allow for a conditioned response from tori, and result in underdevelopment of the skills needed for the safe and effective practice of both partners.[51] To counteract this, some styles allow students to become less compliant over time but, in keeping with the core philosophies, this is after having demonstrated proficiency in being able to protect themselves and their training partners. Shodokan Aikido addresses the issue by practising in a competitive format.[24] Such adaptations are debated between styles, with some maintaining that there is no need to adjust their methods because either the criticisms are unjustified, or that they are not training for self-defense or combat effectiveness, but spiritual, fitness or other reasons.[53]
+
+Another criticism pertains to the shift in training focus after the end of Ueshiba's seclusion in Iwama from 1942 to the mid-1950s, as he increasingly emphasized the spiritual and philosophical aspects of aikido. As a result, strikes to vital points by tori, entering (irimi) and initiation of techniques by tori, the distinction between omote (front side) and ura (back side) techniques, and the use of weapons, were all de-emphasized or eliminated from practice. Some Aikido practitioners feel that lack of training in these areas leads to an overall loss of effectiveness.[54]
+
+Conversely, some styles of aikido receive criticism for not placing enough importance on the spiritual practices emphasized by Ueshiba. According to Minoru Shibata of Aikido Journal, "O-Sensei's aikido was not a continuation and extension of the old and has a distinct discontinuity with past martial and philosophical concepts."[55] That is, that aikido practitioners who focus on aikido's roots in traditional jujutsu or kenjutsu are diverging from what Ueshiba taught. Such critics urge practitioners to embrace the assertion that "[Ueshiba's] transcendence to the spiritual and universal reality were the fundamentals  [sic] of the paradigm that he demonstrated."[55]
+

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+Coordinates: 42°15′40″N 44°07′16″E / 42.26111°N 44.12111°E / 42.26111; 44.12111
+
+The Caucasus (/ˈkɔːkəsəs/), or Caucasia[3][4] (/kɔːˈkeɪʒə/), is an area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and mainly occupied by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and south western Russia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus mountain range, which has historically been considered a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.[5]
+
+Europe's highest mountain, Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 metres (18,510 ft) is in the west part of the Greater Caucasus mountain range.[6] On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and grows into the Armenian highlands, part of which is located in Turkey.[7]
+
+The Caucasus region is separated into northern and southern parts – the North Caucasus (Ciscaucasus) and Transcaucasus (South Caucasus), respectively. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia, as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan. The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is occupied by several independent states, namely, mostly by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, but also extending to parts of northeastern Turkey, northern Iran and the partially recognised Artsakh Republic.
+
+The region is known for its linguistic diversity: aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian language families are indigenous to the area.
+
+The term Caucasus is derived from Caucas (Georgian: კავკასოსი Kawḳasosi) the son of the Biblical Togarmah and legendary forefather of Nakh peoples. According to Leonti Mroveli, the XI century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas.[8]
+"The Vainakhs are the ancient natives of the Caucasus. It is noteworthy, that according to the genealogical table drawn up by Leonti Mroveli, the legendary forefather of the Vainakhs was "Kavkas", hence the name Kavkasians, one of the ethnicons met in the ancient Georgian written sources, signifying the ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush. As appears from the above, the Vainakhs, at least by name, are presented as the most "Caucasian" people of all the Caucasians (Caucasus - Kavkas - Kavkasians) in the Georgian historical tradition."[9][10]
+
+The term Caucasus is not only used for the mountains themselves but also includes Ciscaucasia (which is part of the Russian Federation) and Transcaucasia.[11] According to Alexander Mikaberidze, Transcaucasia is a "Russo-centric" term.[12]
+
+Pliny the Elder's Natural History (77–79 AD) derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis ("ice-shining, white with snow").[13] German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means "ice".[14][15]
+
+In the Tale of Past Years (1113 AD), it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы (Kavkasijskyě gory) came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος (Kaukasos; later Greek pronunciation Kafkasos)),[16] which, according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as the "Seagull's Mountain" (καύ-: καύαξ, καύηξ, ηκος ο, κήξ, κηϋξ "a kind of seagull" + the reconstructed *κάσος η "mountain" or "rock" richly attested both in place and personal names.)[17]
+
+According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the Ancient Greek word Καύκασος (Kaukasos) is connected to Gothic Hauhs ("high") as well as Lithuanian Kaũkas ("hillock") and Kaukarà ("hill, top").[16][18] British linguist Adrian Room points out that Kau- also means "mountain" in Pelasgian.[19]
+
+The Transcaucasus region and Dagestan were the furthest points of Parthian and later Sasanian expansions, with areas to the north of the Greater Caucasus range practically impregnable. The mythological Mount Qaf, the world's highest mountain that ancient Iranian lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region. The region is also one of the candidates for the location of Airyanem Vaejah, the apparent homeland of the Iranians of Zoroaster. In Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian era, the Caucasus range was referred to as Kaf Kof.[20] The term resurfaced in Iranian tradition later on in a variant form when Ferdowsi, in his Shahnameh, referred to the Caucasus mountains as Kōh-i Kāf.[20] "Most of the modern names of the Caucasus originate from the Greek Kaukasos (Lat., Caucasus) and the Middle Persian Kaf Kof".[20]
+
+"The earliest etymon" of the name Caucasus comes from Kaz-kaz, the Hittite designation of the "inhabitants of the southern coast of the Black Sea".[20]
+
+It was also noted that in Nakh Ков гас (Kov gas) means "gateway to steppe"[21]
+
+The modern name for the region is usually similar in many languages, and is generally between Kavkaz and Kawkaz.
+
+The North Caucasus region is known as the Ciscaucasus, whereas the South Caucasus region is commonly known as the Transcaucasus.
+
+The Ciscaucasus contains most of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. It consists of Southern Russia, mainly the North Caucasian Federal District's autonomous republics, and the northernmost parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Ciscaucasus lies between the Black Sea to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, and borders the Southern Federal District to its north. The two Federal Districts are collectively referred to as "Southern Russia."
+
+The Transcaucasus borders the Greater Caucasus range and Southern Russia to its north, the Black Sea and Turkey to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, and Iran to its south. It contains the Lesser Caucasus mountain range and surrounding lowlands. All of Armenia, Azerbaijan (excluding the northernmost parts) and Georgia (excluding the northernmost parts) are in the South Caucasus.
+
+The watershed along the Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the dividing line between Europe and Southwest Asia. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus (5,642 meters) located in western Ciscaucasus, and is considered as the highest point in Europe.
+
+The Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth.[citation needed] The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia (including Adjara and Abkhazia), Azerbaijan (including Nakhchivan), Armenia, and the Russian Federation. The Russian divisions include Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia–Alania, Kabardino–Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia, Adygea, Krasnodar Krai and Stavropol Krai, in clockwise order.
+
+Three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful of entities: Artsakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognized by the world community as part of Georgia, and Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.
+
+The region has many different languages and language families. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region.[23] No fewer than three language families are unique to the area. In addition, Indo-European languages, such as East Slavic, Armenian and Ossetian, and Turkic languages, such as Azerbaijani, Kumyk language and Karachay–Balkar, are spoken in the area. Russian is used as a lingua franca most notably in the North Caucasus.
+
+The peoples of the northern and southern Caucasus tend to be either Sunni Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Armenian Christians. Twelver Shi'ism has many adherents in the southeastern part of the region, in Azerbaijan which extends into Iran.
+
+Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, and cultural rivalries and expansionism for centuries. Throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world.[24] At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire conquered the territory from Qajar Iran.[24]
+
+The territory of the Caucasus region was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era. In 1991, early human (that is, hominin) fossils dating back 1.8 million years were found at the Dmanisi archaeological site in Georgia. Scientists now classify the assemblage of fossil skeletons as the subspecies Homo erectus georgicus.[citation needed]
+
+The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for presence of early humans outside the African continent;[25] and the Dmanisi skulls are the five oldest hominins ever found outside Africa.
+
+Kura–Araxes culture from about 4000 BC until about 2000 BC enveloped a vast area approximately 1,000 km by 500 km, and mostly encompassed, on modern-day territories, the Southern Caucasus (except western Georgia), northwestern Iran, the northeastern Caucasus, eastern Turkey, and as far as Syria.
+
+Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC), the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as the Caucasus Mountains. Later ancient kingdoms of the region included Armenia, Albania, Colchis and Iberia, among others. These kingdoms were later incorporated into various Iranian empires, including Media, the Achaemenid Empire, Parthia, and the Sassanid Empire, who would altogether rule the Caucasus for many hundreds of years. In 95–55 BC, under the reign of Armenian king Tigranes the Great, the Kingdom of Armenia included Kingdom of Armenia, vassals Iberia, Albania, Parthia, Atropatene, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Syria, Nabataean kingdom, and Judea. By the time of the first century BC, Zoroastrianism had become the dominant religion of the region; however, the region would go through two other religious transformations. Owing to the strong rivalry between Persia and Rome, and later Byzantium, the latter would invade the region several times, although it was never able to hold the region.
+
+As the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia (an eponymous branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia) was the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion (in 301 AD), and Caucasian Albania and Georgia had become Christian entities, Christianity began to overtake Zoroastrianism and pagan beliefs. With the Muslim conquest of Persia, large parts of the region came under the rule of the Arabs, and Islam penetrated into the region.[26]
+
+In the 10th century, the Alans (proto-Ossetians)[27] founded the Kingdom of Alania, that flourished in the Northern Caucasus, roughly in the location of latter-day Circassia and modern North Ossetia–Alania, until its destruction by the Mongol invasion in 1238–39.
+
+During the Middle Ages Bagratid Armenia, Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget, Kingdom of Syunik and Principality of Khachen organized local Armenian population facing multiple threats after the fall of antique Kingdom of Armenia. Caucasian Albania maintained close ties with Armenia and the Church of Caucasian Albania shared same Christian dogmas with the Armenian Apostolic Church and had a tradition of their Catholicos being ordained through the Patriarch of Armenia.[28]
+
+In the 12th century, the Georgian king David the Builder drove the Muslims out from Caucasus and made the Kingdom of Georgia a strong regional power. In 1194–1204 Georgian Queen Tamar's armies crushed new Seljuk Turkish invasions from the south-east and south and launched several successful campaigns into Seljuk Turkish-controlled Southern Armenia. The Georgian Kingdom continued military campaigns in the Caucasus region. As a result of her military campaigns and the temporary fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, Georgia became the strongest Christian state in the whole Near East area, encompassing most of the Caucasus stretching from Northern Iran and Northeastern Turkey to the North Caucasus.
+
+The Caucasus region was conquered by the Ottomans, Mongols, local kingdoms and khanates, as well as, once again, Iran.
+
+Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Armenia, original building completed in 303 AD, a religious centre of Armenia. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
+
+Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Georgia, original building completed in the 4th century. It was a religious centre of monarchical Georgia. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
+
+Northwest Caucasus caftan, 8-10th century, from the region of Alania.
+
+Svaneti defensive tower houses
+
+Palace of the Shirvanshahs, 13-th-15th centuries
+
+Imamzadeh of Ganja, 7th-9th centuries
+
+Up to and including the early 19th century, the Southern Caucasus and southern Dagestan all formed part of the Persian Empire. In 1813 and 1828 by the Treaty of Gulistan and the Treaty of Turkmenchay respectively, the Persians were forced to irrevocably cede the Southern Caucasus and Dagestan to Imperial Russia.[29] In the ensuing years after these gains, the Russians took the remaining part of the Southern Caucasus, comprising western Georgia, through several wars from the Ottoman Empire.[30][31]
+
+In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire also conquered the Northern Caucasus. In the aftermath of the Caucasian Wars, an ethnic cleansing of Circassians was performed by Russia in which the indigenous peoples of this region, mostly Circassians, were expelled from their homeland and forced to move primarily to the Ottoman Empire.[32][33]
+
+In the 1940s, around 480,000 Chechens and Ingush, 120,000 Karachay–Balkars and Meskhetian Turks, thousands of Kalmyks, and 200,000 Kurds in Nakchivan and Caucasus Germans were deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia. About a quarter of them died.[34]
+
+The Southern Caucasus region was unified as a single political entity twice – during the Russian Civil War (Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic) from 9 April 1918 to 26 May 1918, and under the Soviet rule (Transcaucasian SFSR) from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia became independent nations.
+
+The region has been subject to various territorial disputes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), the East Prigorodny Conflict (1989–1991), the War in Abkhazia (1992–93), the First Chechen War (1994–1996), the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), and the 2008 South Ossetia War.
+
+In Greek mythology, the Caucasus, or Kaukasos, was one of the pillars supporting the world.[citation needed] After presenting man with the gift of fire, Prometheus (or Amirani in the Georgian version) was chained there by Zeus, to have his liver eaten daily by an eagle as punishment for defying Zeus' wish to keep the "secret of fire" from humans.
+
+In Persian mythology, the Caucasus might be associated with the mythic Mount Qaf which is believed to surround the known world. It is the battlefield of Saoshyant and the nest of the Simurgh.[citation needed]
+
+The Roman poet Ovid placed the Caucasus in Scythia and depicted it as a cold and stony mountain which was the abode of personified hunger. The Greek hero Jason sailed to the west coast of the Caucasus in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, and there met Medea, a daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis.
+
+The Caucasus has a rich folklore tradition.[35] This tradition has been preserved orally—necessitated by the fact that for most of the languages involved there was no alphabet until the early twentieth century—and only began to be written down in the late nineteenth century.[36] One important tradition is that of the Nart sagas, which tell stories of a race of ancient heroes called the Narts. These sagas include such figures as Satanaya, the mother of the Narts, Sosruquo a shape changer and trickster, Tlepsh a blacksmith god, and Batradz, a mighty hero.[35] The folklore of the Caucasus shows ancient Iranian Zoroastrian influence, involve battles with ancient Goths, Huns and Khazars, and contain many connections with ancient Indian, Norse Scandinavian, and Greek cultures.[37]
+
+Caucasian folklore contains many links with the myths of the ancient Greeks. There are resemblances between the mother goddess Satanaya and the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite.[38] The story of how the trickster Nart Sosruquo, became invulnerable parallels that of the Greek hero Achilles.[39] The ancient Greek Amazons are connected with a Caucasian "warrior Forest-Mother, Amaz-an".[40]
+
+Caucasian legends include stories involving giants similar to Homer's Polyphemus story.[41] In these stories, the giant is almost always a shepherd,[42] and he is variously a one-eyed rock-throwing cannibal, who lives in a cave (the exit of which is often blocked by a stone), kills the hero's companions, is blinded by a hot stake, and whose flock of animals is stolen by the hero and his men, all motifs which (along with still others) are also found in the Polyphemus story.[43] In one example from Georgia, two brothers, who are being held prisoner by a giant one-eyed shepherd called "One-eye", take a spit, heat it up, stab it into the giant's eye, and escape.[44]
+
+There are also links with the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus.[45] Many legends, widespread in the Caucasus, contain motifs shared with the Prometheus story.[46] These motifs include: a giant hero, his conflict with God or gods, the stealing of fire and giving it to men, being chained, and being tormented by a bird who pecks at his liver (or heart).[47] The Adyge/Circassian Nart Nasran,[48] the Georgian Amirani,[49] the Chechen Pkharmat,[50] and the Abkhazian Abrskil,[51] are examples of such Prometheus-like figures.
+
+The Caucasus is an area of great ecological importance. The region is included in the list of 34 world biodiversity hotspots.[52][53] It harbors some 6400 species of higher plants, 1600 of which are endemic to the region.[54] Its wildlife includes Persian leopards, brown bears, wolves, bison, marals, golden eagles and hooded crows. Among invertebrates, some 1000 spider species are recorded in the Caucasus.[55][56] Most of arthropod biodiversity is concentrated on Great and Lesser Caucasus ranges.[56]
+
+The region has a high level of endemism and a number of relict animals and plants, the fact reflecting presence of refugial forests, which survived the Ice Age in the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasus forest refugium is the largest throughout the Western Asian (near Eastern) region.[57][58] The area has multiple representatives of disjunct relict groups of plants with the closest relatives in Eastern Asia, southern Europe, and even North America.[59][60][61] Over 70 species of forest snails of the region are endemic.[62] Some relict species of vertebrates are Caucasian parsley frog, Caucasian salamander, Robert's snow vole, and Caucasian grouse, and there are almost entirely endemic groups of animals such as lizards of genus Darevskia. In general, species composition of this refugium is quite distinct and differs from that of the other Western Eurasian refugia.[58]
+
+The natural landscape is one of mixed forest, with substantial areas of rocky ground above the treeline. The Caucasus Mountains are also noted for a dog breed, the Caucasian Shepherd Dog (Rus. Kavkazskaya Ovcharka, Geo. Nagazi). Vincent Evans noted that minke whales have been recorded from the Black Sea.[63][64][65]
+
+Caucasus has many economically important minerals and energy resources, such as alunite, gold, chromium, copper, iron ore, mercury, manganese, molybdenum, lead, tungsten, uranium, zinc, oil, natural gas, and coal (both hard and brown).
+
+2014 Winter Olympics venue, Sochi, Russia. 
+Krasnaya Polyana — a popular centre of mountain skiing and a snowboard venue.
+The 2015 European Games is the first in the history of the European Games to be held in Azerbaijan.
+
+Mountain-skiing complexes:
+
+The Azerbaijan Grand Prix (motor racing) venue was the first in the history of Formula One to be held in Azerbaijan
+The Rugby World Cup U20 (rugby) was in Georgia (country) 2017
+In 2017 U-19 Europe Championship (Football) was held in Georgia.
+

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+Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as Cavour (/kəˈvʊər/ kə-VOOR, Italian: [kaˈvur]), was an Italian statesman and a leading figure in the movement toward Italian unification.[4] He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right, and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia, a position he maintained (except for a six-month resignation) throughout the Second Italian War of Independence and Garibaldi's campaigns to unite Italy. After the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took office as the first Prime Minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office, and thus did not live to see Venetia or Rome added to the new Italian nation.
+
+Cavour put forth several economic reforms in his native region of Piedmont in his earlier years, and founded the political newspaper Il Risorgimento. After being elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he quickly rose in rank through the Piedmontese government, coming to dominate the Chamber of Deputies through a union of left-center and right-center politicians. After a large rail system expansion program, Cavour became prime minister in 1852. As prime minister, Cavour successfully negotiated Piedmont's way through the Crimean War, the Second Italian War of Independence, and Garibaldi's expeditions, managing to maneuver Piedmont diplomatically to become a new great power in Europe, controlling a nearly united Italy that was five times as large as Piedmont had been before he came to power. Cavour was a freemason of the Italian Symbolic Rite.
+
+English historian Denis Mack Smith says Cavour was the most successful parliamentarian in Italian history but he was not especially democratic. Cavour was often dictatorial, ignored his ministerial colleagues and parliament, and interfered in parliamentary elections. He also practiced trasformismo and other policies which were carried over into post-Risorgimento Italy.[5][6]
+
+Camillo Benso was born in Turin during Napoleonic rule, into a family that had gained a fair amount of land during the French occupation. He was the second of two sons of Michele Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Benso, 4th Marquess of Cavour and Count of Isolabella and Leri, Lord of Corveglia, Dusino, Mondonio, Ottiglio and Ponticelli, Co-Lord of Castagnole, Cellarengo and Menabi, Cereaglio, Chieri, San Salvatore Monferrato, Santena and Valfenera, 1st Baron of the French Empire (1781–1850) and his wife (1805) Adélaïde (Adèle) Suzanne, Marchioness of Sellon (1780–1846), herself of French origin. His godparents were Napoleon's sister Pauline, and her husband, Prince Camillo Borghese, after whom Camillo was named.[7]
+
+Camillo and his older brother Gustavo were initially educated at home. He was sent to the Turin Military Academy when he was only ten years old. In July 1824 he was named a page to Charles Albert, the king of Piedmont (1831–1849). Cavour frequently ran afoul of the authorities in the academy, as he was too headstrong to deal with the rigid military discipline. He was once forced to live three days on bread and water because he had been caught with books that the academy had banned.[specify] He was found to be apt at the mathematical disciplines, and was therefore enlisted in the Engineer Corps in the Piedmontese-Sardinian army in 1827. While in the army, he studied the English language as well as the works of Jeremy Bentham and Benjamin Constant, developing liberal tendencies which made him suspect to police forces at the time.[8] He resigned his commission in the army in November 1831,[7] both because of boredom with military life and because of his dislike of the reactionary policies of King Charles Albert. He administered the family estate at Grinzane, some forty kilometers outside the capital, serving as mayor there from 1832 to the revolutionary upheaval of 1848.
+
+Cavour then lived for a time in Switzerland, with his Protestant relatives in Geneva. He grew acquainted with Calvinist teachings, and for a short while he converted from a form of unorthodox Catholicism, only to go back later. A Reformed pastor, Alexandre Vinet, impressed upon Cavour the need for the separation of church and state, a doctrine Cavour followed for the remainder of his life. He then traveled to Paris where he was impressed by parliamentary debates, especially those of François Guizot and Adolphe Thiers, confirming his devotion to a political career. He next went to London, where he was much more disappointed by British politics, and toured the country, visiting Oxford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Chester, Nottingham, and Manchester. A quick tour through the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland (the German part and the Lake Geneva area) eventually landed him back in Turin.
+
+Cavour believed that economic progress had to precede political change, and stressed the advantages of railroad construction in the peninsula.[7] He was a strong supporter of transportation by steam engine, sponsoring the building of many railroads and canals. Between 1838 and 1842 Cavour began several initiatives in attempts to solve economic problems in his area. He experimented with different agricultural techniques on his estate, such as growing sugar beets, and was one of the first Italian landowners to use chemical fertilizers.[9] He also founded the Piedmontese Agricultural Society. In his spare time, he again traveled extensively, mostly in France and the United Kingdom.
+
+The first apparently "liberal" moves of Pope Pius IX and the political upheavals of 1848 spawned a new movement of Italian liberalism, allowing Cavour to enter the political arena, no longer in fear of the police. He then gave a speech in front of numerous journalists in favor of a constitution for Piedmont, which was eventually granted. Cavour, unlike several other political thinkers, was not at first offered a position in the new Chamber of Deputies, as he was still a somewhat suspicious character to the nation.[6]
+
+Cavour never planned for the establishment of a united country, and even later during his Premiership his objective was to expand Piedmont with the annexation of Lombardy and Venetia, rather than a unified Italy. For example, during the conservative period, he gained a reputation as a non-revolutionary progressive. He was a poor public speaker.  Cavour then lost the next election, while the Piedmontese army was destroyed at the Battle of Novara, leading Charles Albert to abdicate, passing the throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II.[10]
+
+Cavour was then brought back into Parliament by the voters, where he was much more successful. His knowledge of European markets and modern economics earned him the positions of Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Commerce, and Minister of the Navy in 1850. Cavour soon came to dominate the cabinet of Prime Minister Massimo d'Azeglio.  Cavour united the Right Center and the Left Center in the chamber to show dominance there as well. In 1851, Cavour gained a Cabinet promotion to Minister of Finance  by working against his colleague from inside the Cabinet in a somewhat disreputable takeover, although this was to Piedmont's advantage because of his many economic reforms. It allowed Cavour to begin his railway expansion program, giving Piedmont 800 kilometres of track by the year 1860, one third of the railways in Italy at the time.  He took the lead in legislation weakening the powers of the Church to own land, control the schools and supervise marriage laws.  When the bishops protested, they were punished or exiled, making Cavour the hero of liberal anticlerical elements across Italy.[11]
+
+Cavour formed a coalition with Urbano Rattazzi known as the Connubio ("union"), uniting the moderate men of the Right and of the Left, and brought about the fall of the d'Azeglio cabinet in November 1852. The King reluctantly accepted Cavour as prime minister, the most conservative possible choice, but their relationship was never an easy one.[12]
+
+Cavour was generally liberal and believed in free trade, freedom of opinion, and secular rule, but he was an enemy of republicans and revolutionaries, whom he feared as disorganized radicals who would upset the social order. Cavour dominated debate in Parliament but is criticized for the controversial methods he used while Prime Minister, including excessive use of emergency powers, employing friends, bribing some newspapers while suppressing others, and rigging elections, though these were fairly common practices for the time. The national debt soared by a factor of six because of his heavy spending on modernizing projects, especially railways, and building up the army and the Royal Sardinian Navy. When he became Prime Minister Piedmont had just suffered a major defeat by Austria, but when he died, Victor Emmanuel II ruled a state five times as large, which dominated Italy and ranked among Europe's great powers.
+
+The allied powers of Britain and France asked Piedmont to enter the Crimean War, partially to encourage Austria to enter, which it would not do unless it was certain that Piedmontese troops were not available to attack Austrian positions in Italy. Cavour, who hoped that the allies would support Piedmont's expansion in Italy, agreed as soon as his colleagues' support would allow and entered the war on 10 January 1855. This was too late to truly distinguish themselves militarily, but the 18,000 man contingent earned Piedmont a position at the Congress of Paris that ended the war.
+
+In January 1858, the Italian Felice Orsini's attempted assassination of Napoleon III paradoxically opened an avenue of diplomacy between France and Piedmont. While in jail awaiting trial, Orsini wrote a public letter to the Emperor of the French, ending with, "Remember that, so long as Italy is not independent, the peace of Europe and Your Majesty is but an empty dream... Set my country free, and the blessings of twenty-five million people will follow you everywhere and forever."[13] Orsini was still executed, but Napoleon III began to explore the possibility of joint operation with Piedmont against Austria. Cavour and Napoleon met in July 1858 at Plombières-les-Bains, and the two agreed that Piedmont would attempt to provoke war with the Duchy of Modena, obliging Austria to enter, and France would then aid Piedmont. In return, Cavour reluctantly agreed to cede Savoy (the seat of the Piedmontese royal family) and the  County of Nice to France, and also arranged a royal marriage between Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy and Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, surprisingly without Victor Emmanuel's consent.[14]
+In the same year, Cavour sent his cousin, the famous beauty, photographic artist, and secret agent Virginia Oldoïni, to further the interests of Italian unification with the emperor by whatever means possible, and by all accounts she succeeded, famously becoming the mistress of Napoleon.
+
+Both France and Piedmont began to prepare for war, but diplomatic support diminished rapidly. Napoleon III quickly soured on the plot, and Britain, Prussia, and Russia proposed an international congress, with one likely goal the disarmament of Piedmont. Piedmont was saved by Austria's sending an ultimatum on 23 April, demanding that Piedmont disarm itself, thus casting Austria as an aggressor. France mobilised and slowly began to enter Italy, but Piedmont needed to defend itself for a short period. Fortunately, rainstorms and Austrian indecision under Ferencz Graf Gyulai gave time for France to arrive in force.
+
+The battles of Magenta and Solferino left Franco-Piedmontese forces in control of Lombardy, but the Austrians remained confident of defending their "fortress quadrilateral" area, with four fortresses in Verona, Legnago, Peschiera, and Mantua. These defenses, the horrors of the Battle of Solferino, the possibility of Prussian entry into the war, and the potential for an over-strong Piedmontese state convinced Napoleon to sign a separate peace with Austria in the Treaty of Villafranca on 11 July 1859, ending the Second Italian War of Independence. Victor Emmanuel accepted the peace, but Cavour was so infuriated after reading the terms of the treaty that he tendered his resignation. He soon regained his optimism, however, as several of the terms, such as the restoration to power of the rulers of Tuscany and Modena, and the establishment of an Italian Confederation including Austria, were not actually carried out.
+
+General La Marmora succeeded to Cavour's post and insisted on following the treaty terms, even sending a letter to Tuscany asking that they restore their Grand Duke. (Bettino Ricasoli, virtual dictator of Tuscany at the time, wrote about this appeal to his brother, saying "Tell General La Marmora that I have torn his letter into a thousand pieces."[15]) France continued direct talks with Piedmont on the destiny of the central Italian states, all of whose autocrats supported unification with Piedmont but were restrained by the treaty, which called for the restoration of their old governments.
+
+Cavour had retired to his estate at Leri, out of politics but concerned about the King’s alliance with Garibaldi’s revolutionaries and his desire to renew the war with Austria without allied support.[16] When the weak La Marmora cabinet resigned, Victor Emmanuel was reluctant to have Cavour as premier again due both to their quarrel over the treaty of Villafranca and Cavour's success in preventing the king from marrying his mistress after the queen's death. But Cavour was sent for on 20 January 1860.
+
+Cavour agreed with Napoleon to cede Savoy and Nice to France, in order to annex Tuscany and Emilia to Piedmont. Plebiscites were arranged with huge majorities in all these provinces to approve the changes.[17] Cavour managed to convince most that uniting Italy would make up for these territorial losses. With this, the first stage of unification was completed. It was now up to Garibaldi to overthrow the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and bring southern Italy into Piedmont's control.
+
+Garibaldi was furious that his birthplace, Nice, had been ceded to France, and wished to recapture the city, but a popular insurrection in Palermo on 4 April 1860 diverted him southward. He requested a brigade of Piedmontese to take Sicily, but Cavour refused. So instead, Garibaldi raised a force of a thousand (I Mille) redshirt volunteers. They landed at Marsala in Sicily on 11 May and won the battles of Calatafimi and Milazzo, gaining control of Sicily. Cavour attempted to annex Sicily to Piedmont, but Garibaldi and his comrade Francesco Crispi would not allow it.
+
+Cavour persuaded Victor Emmanuel to write a letter to Garibaldi, requesting that he not invade the mainland; the letter was indeed sent, but the King secretly wished Garibaldi to invade. He wrote another letter asking him to go ahead, but this was apparently never sent.[18] Cavour meanwhile attempted to stir up a liberal revolution in Naples, but the populace was unreceptive. Garibaldi invaded, attempting to reach Naples quickly before Cavour found a way to stop him. On 7 September he entered Naples, at that time the largest city in Italy, and unilaterally declared Victor Emmanuel the King of Italy.[19] Garibaldi was now military dictator of southern Italy and Sicily, and he imposed the Piedmontese constitution but publicly demanded that Cavour be removed, which alienated him slightly from Victor Emmanuel.
+
+Garibaldi was unwilling to stop at this point, and planned an immediate invasion of the Papal States. Cavour feared France in that case would declare war to defend the Pope and successfully stopped Garibaldi from initiating his attack. Garibaldi had been weakened by the Battle of Volturno, so Cavour quickly invaded the Papal regions of Umbria and Marche. This linked the territories conquered by Piedmont with those taken by Garibaldi. The King met with Garibaldi, who handed over control of southern Italy and Sicily, thus uniting Italy.
+
+The relationship between Cavour and Garibaldi was always fractious: Cavour likened Garibaldi to "a savage" while Garibaldi memorably called Cavour "a low intriguer".[20]
+
+In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II declared the Kingdom of Italy, making Cavour  Prime Minister of Italy. Cavour had many difficult issues to consider, including how to create a national military, which legal institutions should be retained in what locations, and especially the future of Rome. Most Italians thought Rome must be capital of a united Italy, but this conflicted with the temporal power of the Pope and also the independence of the Church. Cavour believed that Rome should remain the seat of "a free church in a free state", which would maintain its independence but give up temporal power.[21] These issues would become known as the "Roman Question". Still Austrian Venetia was also a problem. Cavour recognized that Venice must be an integral part of Italy but refused to take a stance on how to achieve it, saying "Will the deliverance of Venice come by arms or diplomacy? I do not know. It is the secret of Providence."[22] A motion approving of his foreign policy passed by a huge majority, basically only opposed by left-wing and right-wing extremist groups.
+
+Creating Italy was no easy task, but ruling it proved a worse strain on the Prime Minister. In 1861, at the peak of his career, months of long days coupled with insomnia and constant worry took their toll on Cavour. He fell ill, presumably of malaria, and to make matters worse insisted upon being bled. His regular doctor would have refused, but he was not available; so Cavour was bled several times until it was nearly impossible to draw any blood from him. He was buried in Santena, near Turin.
+
+After his death, Italy would gain Venice in 1866 in the course of the Third Italian War of Independence, connected to the Austro-Prussian War. The Capture of Rome completed the unification of Italy (aside from Trentino and Trieste) in 1870.
+
+Today, many Italian cities, including Turin, Trieste, Rome, Florence, and Naples, have important streets, squares, and piazzas named after Cavour, as well as Mazzini and Garibaldi.[23] The clipper ship, Camille Cavour, the battleship Conte di Cavour, which fought both in World War I and World War II, and the new Marina Militare aircraft carrier Cavour is also named in his honor.
+
+In 1865, the Collegio dei Nobili, the oldest high school in Turin (founded 1568), and among the oldest and most prominent ones in Italy, was renamed the Liceo Ginnasio statale "Camillo Benso di Cavour" (Liceo classico Cavour).[citation needed]

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+An abbreviation (from Latin brevis, meaning short [1]) is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters, or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev.; NBM, for nil (or nothing) by mouth is an abbreviated medical instruction. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language (for example, e.g., i.e. or RSVP). Some types of abbreviations are acronyms (which are pronounceable), initialisms (using initials only), or grammatical contractions or crasis.
+
+An abbreviation is a shortening by any of these, or other, methods.
+
+Acronyms, initialisms, contractions and crasis share some semantic and phonetic functions, and all four are connected by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance.[2]:p167
+
+A contraction is a reduction of size by the drawing together of the parts; a contraction of a word or words is made by omitting certain letters or syllables and bringing together the first and last letters or elements, such as "I'm" . A contraction may be regarded as a type of abbreviation, but not vice versa.
+
+Abbreviations have a long history, created so that spelling out a whole word could be avoided. This might be done to save time and space, and also to provide secrecy. In both Greece and Rome the reduction of words to single letters was common.[3] In Roman inscriptions, "Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation". However, "some could have more than one meaning, depending on their context. (For example, ⟨A⟩ can be an abbreviation for many words, such as ager, amicus, annus, as, Aulus, Aurelius, aurum and avus.)"[4]
+
+Abbreviations in English were frequently used from its earliest days. Manuscripts of copies of the old English poem Beowulf used many abbreviations, for example the Tironian et (⁊) or & for and, and y for since, so that "not much space is wasted".[5] The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviations.[6] At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time.
+
+Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ.
+
+In the Early Modern English period, between the 15th and 17th centuries, the thorn (letter) Þ was used for th, as in Þe ('the'). However, in modern times, ⟨Þ⟩ was often misread and wrongly rewritten as ⟨y⟩, as in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.[7]
+
+During the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. For example  J. R. R. Tolkien, his friend C. S. Lewis and other members of the Oxford literary group were known as the Inklings.[8][clarification needed] Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.[9][10]
+
+Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. This question is considered below,
+
+Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s allowed for a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant- and text messaging. The original SMS, supported message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set), for instance.[a]  This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated.[11] More recently Twitter, a popular social networking service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits.
+
+In modern English, there are several conventions for abbreviations, and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to make this easier, publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include those in the following subsections.
+
+If the original word was capitalized then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When a word is abbreviated to more than a single letter and was originally spelled with lower case letters then there is no need for capitalization. However, when abbreviating a phrase where only the first letter of each word is taken, then all letters should be capitalized, as in YTD for year-to-date, PCB for printed circuit board and FYI for for your information. However, see the following section regarding abbreviations that have become common vocabulary: these are no longer written with capital letters.
+
+A period (full stop) is often used to signify an abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this should happen.
+
+According to Hart's Rules, the traditional rule is that abbreviations (in the narrow sense that includes only words with the ending, and not the middle, dropped) terminate with a full stop, whereas contractions (in the sense of words missing a middle part) do not, but there are exceptions.[2]:p167–170 Fowler's Modern English Usage says full stops are used to mark both abbreviations and contractions, but recommends against this practice: advising them only for abbreviations and lower-case initialisms and not for upper-case initialisms and contractions.[12]
+
+In American English, the period is usually included regardless of whether or not it is a contraction, e.g. Dr. or Mrs.. In some cases, periods are optional, as in either US or U.S. for United States, EU or E.U. for European Union, and UN or U.N. for United Nations. There are some house styles, however—American ones included—that remove the periods from almost all abbreviations. For example:
+
+Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic words are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba.
+
+Today, spaces are generally not used between single-letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S."
+
+When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, only one period is used: The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C.
+
+There is a question about how to pluralize abbreviations, particularly acronyms. Some writers tend to pluralize abbreviations by addding 's (apostrophe s), as in "two PC's have broken screens", although this notation typically indicates possessive case. However, this style is not preferred by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian, writing about style in academic writings,[13] allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" and "Ph.D.'s", while the Modern Language Association[14] explicitly says, "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". Also, the American Psychological Association specifically says,[15][16] "without an apostrophe".
+
+However, the 1999 style guide for The New York Times states that the addition of an apostrophe is necessary when pluralizing all abbreviations, preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's".[17]
+
+Following those who would generally omit the apostrophe, to form the plural of run batted in, simply add an s to the end of RBI.[18]
+
+For all other rules, see below:
+
+To form the plural of an abbreviation, a number, or a capital letter used as a noun, simply add a lowercase s to the end. Apostrophes following decades and single letters are also common.
+
+To indicate the plural of the abbreviation or symbol of a unit of measure, the same form is used as in the singular.
+
+When an abbreviation contains more than one full point, Hart's Rules recommends putting the s after the final one.
+
+However, subject to any house style or consistency requirement, the same plurals may be rendered less formally as:
+
+According to Hart's Rules, an apostrophe may be used in rare cases where clarity calls for it, for example when letters or symbols are referred to as objects.
+
+However, the apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes:
+
+In Latin, and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English, single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter for note-taking. Most of these deal with writing and publishing. A few longer abbreviations use this as well.
+
+Publications based in the U.S. tend to follow the style guides of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press.[verification needed] The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The National Institute of Standards and Technology sets the style for abbreviations of units.
+
+Many British publications follow some of these guidelines in abbreviation:
+
+Writers often use shorthand to denote units of measure. Such shorthand can be an abbreviation, such as "in" for "inch" or can be a symbol such as "km" for "kilometre/kilometer".
+
+In the International System of Units (SI) manual[20] the word "symbol" is used consistently to define the shorthand used to represent the various SI units of measure. The manual also defines the way in which units should be written, the principal rules being:
+
+A syllabic abbreviation is usually formed from the initial syllables of several words, such as Interpol = International + police. It is a variant of the acronym. Syllabic abbreviations are usually written using lower case, sometimes starting with a capital letter, and are always pronounced as words rather than letter by letter. Syllabic abbreviations should be distinguished from portmanteaus, which combine two words without necessarily taking whole syllables from each.
+
+Syllabic abbreviations are not widely used in English. Some UK government ministries such as Ofcom (Office of Communications) and Oftel (Office of Telecommunications) use this style.
+
+New York City has various neighborhoods named by syllabic abbreviation, such as Tribeca (Triangle below Canal Street) and SoHo (South of Houston Street). This usage has spread into other American cities, giving SoMa, San Francisco (South of Market) and LoDo, Denver (Lower Downtown), amongst others.
+
+Partially syllabic abbreviations are preferred by the US Navy, as it increases readability amidst the large number of initialisms that would otherwise have to fit into the same acronyms. Hence DESRON 6 is used (in the full capital form) to mean "Destroyer Squadron 6", while COMNAVAIRLANT would be "Commander, Naval Air Force (in the) Atlantic."
+
+Syllabic abbreviations prevailed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for naming a plethora of new bureaucratic organisations. For example, Gestapo stands for Geheime Staats-Polizei, or "secret state police". Similarly, Leninist organisations such as the Comintern (Communist International) and Komsomol (Kommunisticheskii Soyuz Molodyozhi, or "Communist youth union") used Russian language syllabic abbreviations. This has given syllabic abbreviations negative connotations in some countries,[citation needed] (as in Orwell's Newspeak), notwithstanding that such abbreviations were used in Germany even before the Nazis came to power, e.g., Schupo for Schutzpolizei, and are still used, e.g. Kripo for Kriminalpolizei.
+
+In the modern Russian language words like Minoborony (from Ministerstvo oborony — Ministry of Defence) and Minobrnauki (from Ministerstvo obrazovaniya i nauki — Ministry of Education and Science) are still commonly used.
+
+In Belarus there is Beltelecom (Belarus Telecommunication) and Belsat (Belarus Satellite).
+
+Syllabic abbreviations were also typical for the German language used in the German Democratic Republic, e.g. Stasi for Staatssicherheit ("state security", the secret police) or Vopo for Volkspolizist ("people's policeman"). Other uses are in company or product names such as Aldi, from the name of the founder, Theo Albrecht, and the German word Diskont (discount) or Haribo, from the name of the founder and the headquarters of the company, Hans Riegl Bonn.
+
+Syllabic abbreviations are more common in Spanish; examples abound in organization names such as Pemex for Petróleos Mexicanos ("Mexican Petroleums" or Fonafifo for Fondo Nacional de Financimiento Forestal (National Forestry Financing Fund).
+
+In Southeast Asian languages, especially in Malay languages, syllabic abbreviations are also common; examples include Petronas (for Petroliam Nasional, "National Petroleum"), its Indonesian equivalent Pertamina (from its original name Perusahaan Pertambangan Minyak dan Gas Bumi Negara, "State Oil and Natural Gas Mining Company"), and Kemenhub (from Kementerian Perhubungan, "Ministry of Transportation")
+
+East Asian languages whose writing systems use Chinese characters form abbreviations similarly by using key Chinese characters from a term or phrase. For example, in Japanese the term for the United Nations, kokusai rengō (国際連合) is often abbreviated to kokuren (国連). (Such abbreviations are called ryakugo (略語) in Japanese; see also Japanese abbreviated and contracted words). The syllabic abbreviation is frequently used for universities: for instance, Tōdai (東大) for Tōkyō daigaku (東京大学, University of Tokyo) and is used similarly in Chinese: Běidà (北大) for Běijīng Dàxué (北京大学, Peking University). The English phrase "Gung ho" originated as a Chinese abbreviation.

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+Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment or vision loss, is a decreased ability to see to a degree that causes problems not fixable by usual means, such as glasses.[1][2] Some also include those who have a decreased ability to see because they do not have access to glasses or contact lenses.[1] Visual impairment is often defined as a best corrected visual acuity of worse than either 20/40 or 20/60.[7] The term blindness is used for complete or nearly complete vision loss.[7] Visual impairment may cause difficulties with normal daily activities such as driving, reading, socializing, and walking.[2]
+
+The most common causes of visual impairment globally are uncorrected refractive errors (43%), cataracts (33%), and glaucoma (2%).[5] Refractive errors include near-sightedness, far-sightedness, presbyopia, and astigmatism.[5] Cataracts are the most common cause of blindness.[5] Other disorders that may cause visual problems include age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, corneal clouding, childhood blindness, and a number of infections.[8] Visual impairment can also be caused by problems in the brain due to stroke, premature birth, or trauma among others.[9] These cases are known as cortical visual impairment.[9] Screening for vision problems in children may improve future vision and educational achievement.[10] Screening adults without symptoms is of uncertain benefit.[11] Diagnosis is by an eye exam.[2]
+
+The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of visual impairment is either preventable or curable with treatment.[5] This includes cataracts, the infections river blindness and trachoma, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, uncorrected refractive errors, and some cases of childhood blindness.[12] Many people with significant visual impairment benefit from vision rehabilitation, changes in their environment, and assistive devices.[2]
+
+As of 2015 there were 940 million people with some degree of vision loss.[6] 246 million had low vision and 39 million were blind.[5] The majority of people with poor vision are in the developing world and are over the age of 50 years.[5] Rates of visual impairment have decreased since the 1990s.[5] Visual impairments have considerable economic costs both directly due to the cost of treatment and indirectly due to decreased ability to work.[13]
+
+The definition of visual impairment is reduced vision not corrected by glasses or contact lenses. The World Health Organization uses the following classifications of visual impairment. When the vision in the better eye with best possible glasses correction is:
+
+Blindness is defined by the World Health Organization as vision in a person's best eye with best correction of less than 20/500 or a visual field of less than 10 degrees.[7] This definition was set in 1972, and there is ongoing discussion as to whether it should be altered to officially include uncorrected refractive errors.[1]
+
+Severely sight impaired
+
+Sight impaired
+
+Low vision
+
+In the UK, the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI) is used to certify patients as severely sight impaired or sight impaired.[15] The accompanying guidance for clinical staff states: "The National Assistance Act 1948 states that a person can be certified as severely sight impaired if they are 'so blind as to be unable to perform any work for which eye sight is essential'". Certification is based on whether a person can do any work for which eyesight is essential, not just one particular job (such as their job before becoming blind).[16]
+
+In practice, the definition depends on individuals' visual acuity and the extent to which their field of vision is restricted. The Department of Health identifies three groups of people who may be classified as severely visually impaired.[16]
+
+The Department of Health also state that a person is more likely to be classified as severely visually impaired if their eyesight has failed recently or if they are an older individual, both groups being perceived as less able to adapt to their vision loss.[16]
+
+In the United States, any person with vision that cannot be corrected to better than 20/200 in the best eye, or who has 20 degrees (diameter) or less of visual field remaining, is considered legally blind or eligible for disability classification and possible inclusion in certain government sponsored programs.
+
+In the United States, the terms partially sighted, low vision, legally blind and totally blind are used by schools, colleges, and other educational institutions to describe students with visual impairments.[17] They are defined as follows:
+
+In 1934, the American Medical Association adopted the following definition of blindness:
+
+Central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with corrective glasses or central visual acuity of more than 20/200 if there is a visual field defect in which the peripheral field is contracted to such an extent that the widest diameter of the visual field subtends an angular distance no greater than 20 degrees in the better eye.[18]
+
+The United States Congress included this definition as part of the Aid to the Blind program in the Social Security Act passed in 1935.[18][19] In 1972, the Aid to the Blind program and two others combined under Title XVI of the Social Security Act to form the Supplemental Security Income program[20] which states:
+
+An individual shall be considered to be blind for purposes of this title if he has central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with the use of a correcting lens. An eye which is accompanied by a limitation in the fields of vision such that the widest diameter of the visual field subtends an angle no greater than 20 degrees shall be considered for purposes of the first sentence of this subsection as having a central visual acuity of 20/200 or less. An individual shall also be considered to be blind for purposes of this title if he is blind as defined under a State plan approved under title X or XVI as in effect for October 1972 and received aid under such plan (on the basis of blindness) for December 1973, so long as he is continuously blind as so defined.[21]
+
+Visual impairments may take many forms and be of varying degrees. Visual acuity alone is not always a good predictor of the degree of problems a person may have. Someone with relatively good acuity (e.g., 20/40) can have difficulty with daily functioning, while someone with worse acuity (e.g., 20/200) may function reasonably well if their visual demands are not great.
+
+The American Medical Association has estimated that the loss of one eye equals 25% impairment of the visual system and 24% impairment of the whole person;[22][23] total loss of vision in both eyes is considered to be 100% visual impairment and 85% impairment of the whole person.[22]
+
+Some people who fall into this category can use their considerable residual vision – their remaining sight – to complete daily tasks without relying on alternative methods. The role of a low vision specialist (optometrist or ophthalmologist) is to maximize the functional level of a patient's vision by optical or non-optical means. Primarily, this is by use of magnification in the form of telescopic systems for distance vision and optical or electronic magnification for near tasks.
+
+People with significantly reduced acuity may benefit from training conducted by individuals trained in the provision of technical aids. Low vision rehabilitation professionals, some of whom are connected to an agency for the blind, can provide advice on lighting and contrast to maximize remaining vision. These professionals also have access to non-visual aids, and can instruct patients in their uses.
+
+The subjects making the most use of rehabilitation instruments, who lived alone, and preserved their own mobility and occupation were the least depressed, with the lowest risk of suicide and the highest level of social integration.
+
+Those with worsening sight and the prognosis of eventual blindness are at comparatively high risk of suicide and thus may be in need of supportive services. Many studies have demonstrated how rapid acceptance of the serious visual handicap has led to a better, more productive compliance with rehabilitation programs. Moreover, psychological distress has been reported to be at its highest when sight loss is not complete, but the prognosis is unfavorable. Therefore, early intervention is imperative for enabling successful psychological adjustment.[24]
+
+Blindness can occur in combination with such conditions as intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, hearing impairments, and epilepsy.[25][26] Blindness in combination with hearing loss is known as deafblindness.
+
+It has been estimated that over half of completely blind people have non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder, a condition in which a person's circadian rhythm, normally slightly longer than 24 hours, is not entrained (synchronized) to the light–dark cycle.[27][28]
+
+The most common causes of visual impairment globally in 2010 were:
+
+The most common causes of blindness worldwide in 2010 were:
+
+About 90% of people who are visually impaired live in the developing world.[5] Age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy are the leading causes of blindness in the developed world.[29]
+
+Among working-age adults who are newly blind in England and Wales the most common causes in 2010 were:[30]
+
+Cataracts are the congenital and pediatric pathology that describes the greying or opacity of the crystalline lens, which is most commonly caused by intrauterine infections, metabolic disorders, and genetically transmitted syndromes.[31] Cataracts are the leading cause of child and adult blindness that doubles in prevalence with every ten years after the age of 40.[32] Consequently, today cataracts are more common among adults than in children.[31] That is, people face higher chances of developing cataracts as they age. Nonetheless, cataracts tend to have a greater financial and emotional toll upon children as they must undergo expensive diagnosis, long term rehabilitation, and visual assistance.[33] Also, according to the Saudi Journal for Health Sciences, sometimes patients experience irreversible amblyopia[31] after pediatric cataract surgery because the cataracts prevented the normal maturation of vision prior to operation.[34] Despite the great progress in treatment, cataracts remain a global problem in both economically developed and developing countries.[35] At present, with the variant outcomes as well as the unequal access to cataract surgery, the best way to reduce the risk of developing cataracts is to avoid smoking and extensive exposure to sun light (i.e. UV-B rays).[32]
+
+Glaucoma is a congenital and pediatric eye disease characterized by increased pressure within the eye or intraocular pressure (IOP).[36] Glaucoma causes visual field loss as well as severs the optic nerve.[37] Early diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma in patients is imperative because glaucoma is triggered by non-specific levels of IOP.[37] Also, another challenge in accurately diagnosing glaucoma is that the disease has four causes: 1) inflammatory ocular hypertension syndrome (IOHS); 2) severe uveitic angle closure; 3) corticosteroid-induced; and 4) a heterogonous mechanism associated with structural change and chronic inflammation.[36] In addition, often pediatric glaucoma differs greatly in cause and management from the glaucoma developed by adults.[38] Currently, the best sign of pediatric glaucoma is an IOP of 21 mm Hg or greater present within a child.[38] One of the most common causes of pediatric glaucoma is cataract removal surgery, which leads to an incidence rate of about 12.2% among infants and 58.7% among 10-year-olds.[38]
+
+Childhood blindness can be caused by conditions related to pregnancy, such as congenital rubella syndrome and retinopathy of prematurity. Leprosy and onchocerciasis each blind approximately 1 million individuals in the developing world.
+
+The number of individuals blind from trachoma has decreased in the past 10 years from 6 million to 1.3 million, putting it in seventh place on the list of causes of blindness worldwide.
+
+Central corneal ulceration is also a significant cause of monocular blindness worldwide, accounting for an estimated 850,000 cases of corneal blindness every year in the Indian subcontinent alone. As a result, corneal scarring from all causes is now the fourth greatest cause of global blindness.[39]
+
+Eye injuries, most often occurring in people under 30, are the leading cause of monocular blindness (vision loss in one eye) throughout the United States. Injuries and cataracts affect the eye itself, while abnormalities such as optic nerve hypoplasia affect the nerve bundle that sends signals from the eye to the back of the brain, which can lead to decreased visual acuity.
+
+Cortical blindness results from injuries to the occipital lobe of the brain that prevent the brain from correctly receiving or interpreting signals from the optic nerve. Symptoms of cortical blindness vary greatly across individuals and may be more severe in periods of exhaustion or stress. It is common for people with cortical blindness to have poorer vision later in the day.
+
+Blinding has been used as an act of vengeance and torture in some instances, to deprive a person of a major sense by which they can navigate or interact within the world, act fully independently, and be aware of events surrounding them. An example from the classical realm is Oedipus, who gouges out his own eyes after realizing that he fulfilled the awful prophecy spoken of him. Having crushed the Bulgarians, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II blinded as many as 15,000 prisoners taken in the battle, before releasing them.[40] Contemporary examples include the addition of methods such as acid throwing as a form of disfigurement.
+
+People with albinism often have vision loss to the extent that many are legally blind, though few of them actually cannot see. Leber congenital amaurosis can cause total blindness or severe sight loss from birth or early childhood.
+
+Recent advances in mapping of the human genome have identified other genetic causes of low vision or blindness. One such example is Bardet–Biedl syndrome.
+
+Rarely, blindness is caused by the intake of certain chemicals. A well-known example is methanol, which is only mildly toxic and minimally intoxicating, and breaks down into the substances formaldehyde and formic acid which in turn can cause blindness, an array of other health complications, and death.[41] When competing with ethanol for metabolism, ethanol is metabolized first, and the onset of toxicity is delayed. Methanol is commonly found in methylated spirits, denatured ethyl alcohol, to avoid paying taxes on selling ethanol intended for human consumption. Methylated spirits are sometimes used by alcoholics as a desperate and cheap substitute for regular ethanol alcoholic beverages.
+
+It is important that people be examined by someone specializing in low vision care prior to other rehabilitation training to rule out potential medical or surgical correction for the problem and to establish a careful baseline refraction and prescription of both normal and low vision glasses and optical aids. Only a doctor is qualified to evaluate visual functioning of a compromised visual system effectively.[48] The American Medical Association provides an approach to evaluating visual loss as it affects an individual's ability to perform activities of daily living.[22]
+
+Screening adults who have no symptoms is of uncertain benefit.[11]
+
+The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of visual loss is either preventable or curable with treatment.[5] This includes cataracts, onchocerciasis, trachoma, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, uncorrected refractive errors, and some cases of childhood blindness.[12] The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that half of blindness in the United States is preventable.[2]
+
+Many people with serious visual impairments can travel independently, using a wide range of tools and techniques. Orientation and mobility specialists are professionals who are specifically trained to teach people with visual impairments how to travel safely, confidently, and independently in the home and the community. These professionals can also help blind people to practice travelling on specific routes which they may use often, such as the route from one's house to a convenience store. Becoming familiar with an environment or route can make it much easier for a blind person to navigate successfully.
+
+Tools such as the white cane with a red tip – the international symbol of blindness – may also be used to improve mobility. A long cane is used to extend the user's range of touch sensation. It is usually swung in a low sweeping motion, across the intended path of travel, to detect obstacles. However, techniques for cane travel can vary depending on the user and/or the situation. Some visually impaired persons do not carry these kinds of canes, opting instead for the shorter, lighter identification (ID) cane. Still others require a support cane. The choice depends on the individual's vision, motivation, and other factors.
+
+A small number of people employ guide dogs to assist in mobility. These dogs are trained to navigate around various obstacles, and to indicate when it becomes necessary to go up or down a step. However, the helpfulness of guide dogs is limited by the inability of dogs to understand complex directions. The human half of the guide dog team does the directing, based upon skills acquired through previous mobility training. In this sense, the handler might be likened to an aircraft's navigator, who must know how to get from one place to another, and the dog to the pilot, who gets them there safely.
+
+GPS devices can also be used as a mobility aid. Such software can assist blind people with orientation and navigation, but it is not a replacement for traditional mobility tools such as white canes and guide dogs.
+
+Some blind people are skilled at echolocating silent objects simply by producing mouth clicks and listening to the returning echoes. It has been shown that blind echolocation experts use what is normally the "visual" part of their brain to process the echoes.[49][50]
+
+Government actions are sometimes taken to make public places more accessible to blind people. Public transportation is freely available to the blind in many cities. Tactile paving and audible traffic signals can make it easier and safer for visually impaired pedestrians to cross streets. In addition to making rules about who can and cannot use a cane, some governments mandate the right-of-way be given to users of white canes or guide dogs.
+
+Most visually impaired people who are not totally blind read print, either of a regular size or enlarged by magnification devices. Many also read large-print, which is easier for them to read without such devices. A variety of magnifying glasses, some handheld, and some on desktops, can make reading easier for them.
+
+Others read braille (or the infrequently used Moon type), or rely on talking books and readers or reading machines, which convert printed text to speech or braille. They use computers with special hardware such as scanners and refreshable braille displays as well as software written specifically for the blind, such as optical character recognition applications and screen readers.
+
+Some people access these materials through agencies for the blind, such as the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the United States, the National Library for the Blind or the RNIB in the United Kingdom.
+
+Closed-circuit televisions, equipment that enlarges and contrasts textual items, are a more high-tech alternative to traditional magnification devices.
+
+There are also over 100 radio reading services throughout the world that provide people with vision impairments with readings from periodicals over the radio. The International Association of Audio Information Services provides links to all of these organizations.
+
+Access technology such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and refreshable braille displays enable the blind to use mainstream computer applications and mobile phones. The availability of assistive technology is increasing, accompanied by concerted efforts to ensure the accessibility of information technology to all potential users, including the blind. Later versions of Microsoft Windows include an Accessibility Wizard & Magnifier for those with partial vision, and Microsoft Narrator, a simple screen reader. Linux distributions (as live CDs) for the blind include Vinux and Adriane Knoppix, the latter developed in part by Adriane Knopper who has a visual impairment.  macOS and iOS  also come with a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver, while Google TalkBack is built in to most Android devices.
+
+The movement towards greater web accessibility is opening a far wider number of websites to adaptive technology, making the web a more inviting place for visually impaired surfers.
+
+Experimental approaches in sensory substitution are beginning to provide access to arbitrary live views from a camera.
+
+Modified visual output that includes large print and/or clear simple graphics can be of benefit to users with some residual vision.[51]
+
+Blind people may use talking equipment such as thermometers, watches, clocks, scales, calculators, and compasses. They may also enlarge or mark dials on devices such as ovens and thermostats to make them usable. Other techniques used by blind people to assist them in daily activities include:
+
+Most people, once they have been visually impaired for long enough, devise their own adaptive strategies in all areas of personal and professional management.
+
+For the blind, there are books in braille, audio-books, and text-to-speech computer programs, machines and e-book readers. Low vision people can make use of these tools as well as large-print reading materials and e-book readers that provide large font sizes.
+
+Computers are important tools of integration for the visually impaired person. They allow, using standard or specific programs, screen magnification and conversion of text into sound or touch (braille line), and are useful for all levels of visual handicap. OCR scanners can, in conjunction with text-to-speech software, read the contents of books and documents aloud via computer. Vendors also build closed-circuit televisions that electronically magnify paper, and even change its contrast and color, for visually impaired users. For more information, consult Assistive technology.
+
+In adults with low vision there is no conclusive evidence supporting one form of reading aid over another.[53] In several studies stand-mounted devices allowed faster reading than hand-held or portable optical aids.[53] While electronic aids may allow faster reading for individuals with low vision, portability, ease of use, and affordability must be considered for people.[53]
+
+Children with low vision sometimes have reading delays, but do benefit from phonics-based beginning reading instruction methods. Engaging phonics instruction is multisensory, highly motivating, and hands-on. Typically students are first taught the most frequent sounds of the alphabet letters, especially the so-called short vowel sounds, then taught to blend sounds together with three-letter consonant-vowel-consonant words such as cat, red, sit, hot, sun. Hands-on (or kinesthetically appealing) VERY enlarged print materials such as those found in "The Big Collection of Phonics Flipbooks" by Lynn Gordon (Scholastic, 2010) are helpful for teaching word families and blending skills to beginning readers with low vision. Beginning reading instructional materials should focus primarily on the lower-case letters, not the capital letters (even though they are larger) because reading text requires familiarity (mostly) with lower-case letters. Phonics-based beginning reading should also be supplemented with phonemic awareness lessons, writing opportunities, and many read-alouds (literature read to children daily) to stimulate motivation, vocabulary development, concept development, and comprehension skill development. Many children with low vision can be successfully included in regular education environments. Parents may need to be vigilant to ensure that the school provides the teacher and students with appropriate low vision resources, for example technology in the classroom, classroom aide time, modified educational materials, and consultation assistance with low vision experts.
+
+Communication with the visually impaired can be more difficult than communicating with someone who doesn't have vision loss. However, many people are uncomfortable with communicating with the blind, and this can cause communication barriers. One of the biggest obstacles in communicating with visually impaired individuals comes from face-to-face interactions.[54] There are many factors that can cause the sighted to become uncomfortable while communicating face to face. There are many non-verbal factors that hinder communication between the visually impaired and the sighted, more often than verbal factors do. These factors, which Rivka Bialistock[54] mentions in her article, include:
+
+The blind person sends these signals or types of non-verbal communication without being aware that they are doing so. These factors can all affect the way an individual would feel about communicating with the visually impaired. This leaves the visually impaired feeling rejected and lonely.
+
+In the article Towards better communication, from the interest point of view. Or—skills of sight-glish for the blind and visually impaired, the author, Rivka Bialistock [54] comes up with a method to reduce individuals being uncomfortable with communicating with the visually impaired. This method is called blind-glish or sight-glish, which is a language for the blind, similar to English. For example, babies, who are not born and able to talk right away, communicate through sight-glish, simply seeing everything and communicating non-verbally. This comes naturally to sighted babies, and by teaching this same method to babies with a visual impairment can improve their ability to communicate better, from the very beginning.
+
+To avoid the rejected feeling of the visually impaired, people need to treat the blind the same way they would treat anyone else, rather than treating them like they have a disability, and need special attention. People may feel that it is improper to, for example, tell their blind child to look at them when they are speaking. However, this contributes to the sight-glish method.[54] It is important to disregard any mental fears or uncomfortable feelings people have while communicating (verbally and non-verbally) face-to-face.
+
+Individuals with a visual disability not only have to find ways to communicate effectively with the people around them, but their environment as well. The blind or visually impaired rely largely on their other senses such as hearing, touch, and smell in order to understand their surroundings.[55]
+
+Sound is one of the most important senses that the blind or visually impaired use in order to locate objects in their surroundings. A form of echolocation is used, similarly to that of a bat.[56] Echolocation from a person's perspective is when the person uses sound waves generated from speech or other forms of noise such as cane tapping, which reflect off of objects and bounce back at the person giving them a rough idea of where the object is. This does not mean they can depict details based on sound but rather where objects are in order to interact, or avoid them. Increases in atmospheric pressure and humidity increase a person's ability to use sound to their advantage as wind or any form of background noise impairs it.[55]
+
+Touch is also an important aspect of how blind or visually impaired people perceive the world. Touch gives immense amount of information in the person's immediate surrounding. Feeling anything with detail gives off information on shape, size, texture, temperature, and many other qualities. Touch also helps with communication; braille is a form of communication in which people use their fingers to feel elevated bumps on a surface and can understand what is meant to be interpreted.[57] There are some issues and limitations with touch as not all objects are accessible to feel, which makes it difficult to perceive the actual object. Another limiting factor is that the learning process of identifying objects with touch is much slower than identifying objects with sight. This is due to the fact the object needs to be approached and carefully felt until a rough idea can be constructed in the brain.[55]
+
+Certain smells can be associated with specific areas and help a person with vision problems to remember a familiar area. This way there is a better chance of recognizing an area's layout in order to navigate themselves through. The same can be said for people as well. Some people have their own special odor that a person with a more trained sense of smell can pick up. A person with an impairment of their vision can use this to recognize people within their vicinity without them saying a word.[55]
+
+Visual impairment can have profound effects on the development of infant and child communication. The language and social development of a child or infant can be very delayed by the inability to see the world around them.
+
+Social development includes interactions with the people surrounding the infant in the beginning of its life. To a child with vision, a smile from a parent is the first symbol of recognition and communication, and is almost an instant factor of communication. For a visually impaired infant, recognition of a parent's voice will be noticed at approximately two months old, but a smile will only be evoked through touch between parent and baby. This primary form of communication is greatly delayed for the child and will prevent other forms of communication from developing. Social interactions are more complicated because subtle visual cues are missing and facial expressions from others are lost.
+
+Due to delays in a child's communication development, they may appear to be disinterested in social activity with peers, non-communicative and uneducated on how to communicate with other people. This may cause the child to be avoided by peers and consequently overprotected by family members.
+
+With sight, much of what is learned by a child is learned through imitation of others, whereas a visually impaired child needs very planned instruction directed at the development of postponed imitation. A visually impaired infant may jabber and imitate words sooner than a sighted child, but may show delay when combining words to say themselves, the child may tend to initiate few questions and their use of adjectives is infrequent. Normally the child's sensory experiences are not readily coded into language and this may cause them to store phrases and sentences in their memory and repeat them out of context. The language of the blind child does not seem to mirror their developing knowledge of the world, but rather their knowledge of the language of others.
+
+A visually impaired child may also be hesitant to explore the world around them due to fear of the unknown and also may be discouraged from exploration by overprotective family members. Without concrete experiences, the child is not able to develop meaningful concepts or the language to describe or think about them.[58]
+
+Visual impairment has the ability to create consequences for health and well being. Visual impairment is increasing, especially among older people. It is recognized that those individuals with visual impairment are likely to have limited access to information and healthcare facilities, and may not receive the best care possible because not all health care professionals are aware of specific needs related to vision. Accommodation may require alternative means of communication.[59]
+
+The WHO estimates that in 2012 there were 285 million visually impaired people in the world, of which 246 million had low vision and 39 million were blind.[5]
+
+Of those who are blind 90% live in the developing world.[59] Worldwide for each blind person, an average of 3.4 people have low vision, with country and regional variation ranging from 2.4 to 5.5.[60]
+
+By age: Visual impairment is unequally distributed across age groups. More than 82% of all people who are blind are 50 years of age and older, although they represent only 19% of the world's population. Due to the expected number of years lived in blindness (blind years), childhood blindness remains a significant problem, with an estimated 1.4 million blind children below age 15.
+
+By gender: Available studies consistently indicate that in every region of the world, and at all ages, females have a significantly higher risk of being visually impaired than males.
+
+By geography: Visual impairment is not distributed uniformly throughout the world. More than 90% of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries.[60]
+
+Since the estimates of the 1990s, new data based on the 2002 global population show a reduction in the number of people who are blind or visually impaired, and those who are blind from the effects of infectious diseases, but an increase in the number of people who are blind from conditions related to longer life spans.[60]
+
+In 1987, it was estimated that 598,000 people in the United States met the legal definition of blindness.[61] Of this number, 58% were over the age of 65.[61] In 1994–1995, 1.3 million Americans reported legal blindness.[62]
+
+To determine which people qualify for special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governments have specific definitions for legal blindness.[63] In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet (6.1 m) from an object to see it—with corrective lenses—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet (61 m). In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind.
+Approximately fifteen percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no light or form perception. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Low vision is sometimes used to describe visual acuities from 20/70 to 20/200.[64]
+
+The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted the blind in their ceramics.[65]
+
+In Greek myth, Tiresias was a prophet famous for his clairvoyance. According to one myth, he was blinded by the gods as punishment for revealing their secrets, while another holds that he was blinded as punishment after he saw Athena naked while she was bathing. In the Odyssey, the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus captures Odysseus, who blinds Polyphemus to escape. In Norse mythology, Loki tricks the blind god Höðr into killing his brother Baldr, the god of happiness.
+
+The New Testament contains numerous instances of Jesus performing miracles to heal the blind. According to the Gospels, Jesus healed the two blind men of Galilee, the blind man of Bethsaida, the blind man of Jericho and the man who was born blind.
+
+The parable of the blind men and an elephant has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement.
+
+"Three Blind Mice" is a medieval English nursery rhyme about three blind mice whose tails are cut off after chasing the farmer's wife. The work is explicitly incongruous, ending with the comment Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?
+
+Poet John Milton, who went blind in mid-life, composed On His Blindness, a sonnet about coping with blindness. The work posits that [those] who best Bear [God]'s mild yoke, they serve him best.
+
+The Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt often depicted scenes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit, which tells the story of a blind patriarch who is healed by his son, Tobias, with the help of the archangel Raphael.[66]
+
+Slaver-turned-abolitionist John Newton composed the hymn Amazing Grace about a wretch who "once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see." Blindness, in this sense, is used both metaphorically (to refer to someone who was ignorant but later became knowledgeable) and literally, as a reference to those healed in the Bible. In the later years of his life, Newton himself would go blind.
+
+H. G. Wells' story "The Country of the Blind" explores what would happen if a sighted man found himself trapped in a country of blind people to emphasise society's attitude to blind people by turning the situation on its head.
+
+Bob Dylan's anti-war song "Blowin' in the Wind" twice alludes to metaphorical blindness: How many times can a man turn his head // and pretend that he just doesn't see... How many times must a man look up // Before he can see the sky?
+
+Contemporary fiction contains numerous well-known blind characters. Some of these characters can see by means of devices, such as the Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil, who can see via his super-human hearing acuity, or Star Trek's Geordi La Forge, who can see with the aid of a VISOR, a fictional device that transmits optical signals to his brain.
+
+Blind and partially sighted people participate in sports, such as swimming, snow skiing and athletics. Some sports have been invented or adapted for the blind, such as goalball, association football, cricket, golf, tennis, bowling, and beep baseball.[67][68] The worldwide authority on sports for the blind is the International Blind Sports Federation.[69][70] People with vision impairments have participated in the Paralympic Games since the 1976 Toronto summer Paralympics.[71]
+
+The word "blind" (adjective and verb) is often used to signify a lack of knowledge of something. For example, a blind date is a date in which the people involved have not previously met; a blind experiment is one in which information is kept from either the experimenter or the participant to mitigate the placebo effect or observer bias. The expression "blind leading the blind" refers to incapable people leading other incapable people. Being blind to something means not understanding or being aware of it. A "blind spot" is an area where someone cannot see: for example, where a car driver cannot see because parts of his car's bodywork are in the way; metaphorically, a topic on which an individual is unaware of their own biases, and therefore of the resulting distortions of their own judgements (see Bias blind spot).
+
+A 2008 study tested the effect of using gene therapy to help restore the sight of patients with a rare form of inherited blindness, known as Leber's congenital amaurosis or LCA.[72] Leber's Congenital Amaurosis damages the light receptors in the retina and usually begins affecting sight in early childhood, with worsening vision until complete blindness around the age of 30.
+
+The study used a common cold virus to deliver a normal version of the gene called RPE65 directly into the eyes of affected patients. Remarkably, all 3 patients, aged 19, 22 and 25, responded well to the treatment and reported improved vision following the procedure. Due to the age of the patients and the degenerative nature of LCA, the improvement of vision in gene therapy patients is encouraging for researchers. It is hoped that gene therapy may be even more effective in younger LCA patients who have experienced limited vision loss, as well as in other blind or partially blind individuals.
+
+Two experimental treatments for retinal problems include a cybernetic replacement and transplant of fetal retinal cells.[73]
+
+There is no high-quality evidence on the effect of assistive technologies on educational outcomes and quality of life in children with low vision as of 2015,[74] nor is there evidence on magnifying reading aids in children.[75] Low-vision rehabilitation does not appear to have an important impact on health-related quality of life, though some low-vision rehabilitation interventions, particularly psychological therapies and methods of enhancing vision, may improve vision-related quality of life in people with sight loss.[76]
+
+Statements that certain species of mammals are "born blind" refers to them being born with their eyes closed and their eyelids fused together; the eyes open later. One example is the rabbit. In humans, the eyelids are fused for a while before birth, but open again before the normal birth time; however, very premature babies are sometimes born with their eyes fused shut, and opening later. Other animals, such as the blind mole rat, are truly blind and rely on other senses.[citation needed]
+
+The theme of blind animals has been a powerful one in literature. Peter Shaffer's Tony Award-winning play, Equus, tells the story of a boy who blinds six horses. Theodore Taylor's classic young adult novel, The Trouble With Tuck, is about a teenage girl, Helen, who trains her blind dog to follow and trust a seeing-eye dog.

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+In fiction, a character (sometimes known as a fictional character) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, television series, film, or video game).[1][2][3] The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made.[2] Derived from the ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration,[4] although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones  in 1749.[5][6] From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.[6]  Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person".[7] In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes.[8] Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation  by an actor.[6] Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterisation.[6]
+
+A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type.[9] Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualised.[9] The characters in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.[10]
+
+The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work.[11] The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic) that it forms with the other characters.[12] The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.[13]
+
+In fiction writing, authors create dynamic characters by many methods. Sometimes characters are conjured up from imagination; in other instances, they are created by amplifying the character trait of a real person into a new fictional creation.[1][2] An author or creator basing a character on a real person can use a person they know, a historical figure, a current figure who they have not met, or on themselves, with the latter being either an author-surrogate or an example of self-insertion. An author can create a character using the basic character archetypes which are common to many cultural traditions: the father figure, mother figure, hero, and so on. An author can also create a fictional character using generic stock characters, but these are flat, simplified characters that tend to be used for supporting or minor characters. Nevertheless, some significant authors have used stock characters as the starting point for building richly detailed characters, such as Shakespeare's use of the boastful soldier character as the basis for Falstaff.
+
+In his book Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities, functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round characters.[14] Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, round characters are complex figures with many different characteristics, that undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.[15]
+
+Stock characters are usually one-dimensional and thin. Mary Sues are characters mainly appearing in fan fiction. They are virtually devoid of flaws,[16] and are therefore considered flat characters.
+
+Dynamic characters are those that change over the course of the story, while static characters remain the same throughout. An example of a popular dynamic character in literature is Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of A Christmas Carol. At the start of the story, he is a bitter miser, but by the end of the tale, he transforms into a kind-hearted, generous man.
+
+In television, a regular, main or ongoing character is a character who appears in all or a majority of episodes, or in a significant chain of episodes of the series.[17] Regular characters may be both core and secondary ones.
+
+A recurring character or supporting character often and frequently appears from time to time during the series' run.[18] Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main focus.
+
+A guest or minor character is one who acts only in a few episodes or scenes. Unlike regular characters, the guest ones do not need to be carefully incorporated into the storyline with all its ramifications: they create a piece of drama and then disappear without consequences to the narrative structure, unlike core characters, for which any significant conflict must be traced during a considerable time, which is often seen as an unjustified waste of resources.[19] There may also be a continuing or recurring guest character.[20] Sometimes a guest or minor character may gain unanticipated popularity and turn into a regular or main one;[21] this is known as a breakout character.[22][23]
+
+In the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Poetics (c. 335 BCE), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle deduces that character (ethos) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12).[24] He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5).[25] He defines character as "that which reveals decision, of whatever sort" (1450b8).[25] It is possible, therefore, to have stories that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since character necessarily involves making the ethical dispositions of those performing the action clear.[26] If, in speeches, the speaker "decides or avoids nothing at all", then those speeches "do not have character" (1450b9—11).[27] Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot (mythos) over character (ethos).[28] He writes:
+
+But the most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite according to their actions. So [the actors] do not act in order to represent the characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions" (1450a15-23).[29]
+
+Aristotle suggests that works were distinguished in the first instance according to the nature of the person who created them: "the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons" by producing "hymns and praise-poems", while "ordinary people represented those of inferior ones" by "composing invectives" (1448b20—1449a5).[30] On this basis, a distinction between the individuals represented in tragedy and in comedy arose: tragedy, along with epic poetry, is "a representation of serious people" (1449b9—10), while comedy is "a representation of people who are rather inferior" (1449a32—33).[31]
+
+In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not be by Aristotle), Ancient Greek comedy is defined as involving three types of characters: the buffoon (bômolochus), the ironist (eirôn), and the imposter or boaster (alazôn).[32] All three are central to Aristophanes' "old comedy".[33]
+
+By the time the Roman comic playwright Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established.[34] His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since the play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy.[35]
+
+[...] is first used in English to denote 'a personality in a novel or a play' in 1749 (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.).
+
+Its use as 'the sum of the qualities which constitute an individual' is a mC17 development. The modern literary and theatrical sense of 'an individual created in a fictitious work' is not attested in OED until mC18: 'Whatever characters any... have for the jestsake personated... are now thrown off' (1749, Fielding, Tom Jones).

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+
+
+Céline Marie Claudette Dion CC OQ (/seɪˌliːn diˈɒn/,[1] also UK: /- ˈdiːɒn/,[2] French: [selin maʁi klodɛt djɔ̃], Quebec French: [- d͡zjɔ̃]; born 30 March 1968)[3] is a Canadian singer. She is renowned for her powerful, technically skilled vocals,[4][5] and remains the best-selling Canadian artist and one of the best-selling artists of all time with record sales of 200 million copies worldwide.[6][7] Born into a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, she emerged as a teen star in her homeland with a series of French-language albums during the 1980s. She first gained international recognition by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, where she represented Switzerland. After learning to speak English, she signed on to Epic Records in the United States. In 1990, Dion released her debut English-language album, Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.
+
+During the 1990s, she achieved worldwide fame after releasing several best-selling English albums, such as Falling into You (1996) and Let's Talk About Love (1997), which were both certified diamond in the US. She also scored a series of international number-one hits, including "The Power of Love", "Think Twice", "Because You Loved Me", "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", "My Heart Will Go On", and "I'm Your Angel". Dion continued releasing French albums between each English record; D'eux (1995) became the best-selling French-language album of all time, while S'il suffisait d'aimer (1998), Sans attendre (2012), and Encore un soir (2016), were all certified diamond in France. During the 2000s, she built her reputation as a highly successful live performer with A New Day... on the Las Vegas Strip (2003–07), which remains the highest-grossing concert residency of all time, as well as the Taking Chances World Tour (2008–09), one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time.
+
+Dion's music has been influenced by genres ranging from rock and R&B to gospel and classical. Her recordings are mainly in French and English, although she also sings in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. While her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is regarded as one of pop music's most influential voices. She has won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Billboard named her the "Queen of Adult Contemporary" for having the most number ones on the radio format for a female artist.[8] She is the second best-selling female artist in the US during the Nielsen SoundScan era. In 2003, she was honoured by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for selling over 50 million albums in Europe.
+
+Dion was born in Charlemagne, Quebec, 24 kilometres (15 mi) northeast of Montreal, the youngest of 14 children of Thérèse (née Tanguay, 1927–2020), a homemaker, and Adhémar Dion (1923–2003), a butcher, both of French-Canadian descent.[9][10] She was raised a Roman Catholic in a poor, but, by her own account, happy home in Charlemagne.[11][12] Music had always been a major part of the Dion family, and she was named after the song "Céline", which French singer Hugues Aufray had recorded two years before her birth.[13] On 13 August 1973, at the age of five, the young Céline made her first public appearance at her brother Michel's wedding, where she performed Christine Charbonneau's song "Du fil des aiguilles et du coton".[14] She continued to perform with her siblings in her parents' small piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, "The Old Barrel". From an early age, she had dreamed of being a performer.[15] In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer."[16]
+
+As a child in Quebec, Dion participated in Girl Guide programs as a member of Girl Guides of Canada.[17]
+
+At age 12, she collaborated with her mother and her brother Jacques to write and compose her first song, "Ce n'était qu'un rêve", whose title translates as "It Was Only a Dream" or "Nothing But A Dream".[12] Her brother Michel sent the recording to music manager René Angélil, whose name he discovered on the back of a Ginette Reno album.[18] Angélil was moved to tears by Dion's voice and decided to make her a star.[12] In 1981, he mortgaged his home to fund her first record, La voix du bon Dieu, which later became a local No. 1 hit and made her an instant star in Quebec. Her popularity spread to other parts of the world when she competed in the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, Japan, and won the musician's award for "Top Performer" as well as the gold medal for "Best Song" with "Tellement j'ai d'amour pour toi".[18]
+
+By 1983, in addition to becoming the first Canadian artist to receive a gold record in France for the single "D'amour ou d'amitié" ("Of Love or of Friendship"), Dion had also won several Félix Awards, including "Best Female performer" and "Discovery of the Year".[18][19] Further success came when she represented Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi" and won the contest by a close margin in Dublin, Ireland.[20]
+
+At age eighteen, after seeing a Michael Jackson performance, Dion told Angélil that she wanted to be a star like Jackson.[21] Though confident in her talent, Angélil realized that her image needed to be changed for her to be marketed worldwide.[12] She receded from the spotlight for a number of months, during which she underwent dental surgery to improve her appearance, and was sent to the École Berlitz in 1989 to polish her English.[22]
+
+In 1989, during a concert on the Incognito tournée, she injured her voice. She consulted the otorhinolaryngologist William Gould,[23][24] who gave her an ultimatum: have immediate surgery on her vocal cords or do not utilize them at all for three weeks.[23] Dion chose the latter and underwent vocal training with William Riley.[23][24]
+
+Two years after she learned English, Dion made her debut into the Anglophone market with Unison (1990), the lead single having originally been recorded by Laura Branigan.[18] She incorporated the help of many established musicians, including Vito Luprano and Canadian producer David Foster.[15] The album was largely influenced by 1980s soft rock music that quickly found a niche within the adult contemporary radio format. Unison also hit the right notes with critics: Jim Faber of Entertainment Weekly wrote that her vocals were "tastefully unadorned", and that she never attempted to "bring off styles that are beyond her".[25] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic declared it "a fine, sophisticated American debut".[26] Singles from the album included "(If There Was) Any Other Way", "The Last to Know", "Unison", and "Where Does My Heart Beat Now", a mid-tempo soft-rock ballad that made prominent use of the electric guitar. The latter became her first top-ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number four. In 1991, Dion was a featured soloist on "Voices That Care", a tribute to American troops fighting in Operation Desert Storm.[citation needed]
+
+Her real international breakthrough came when she duetted with Peabo Bryson on the title track to Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991).[27] It became her first top-ten hit in the UK and her second top-ten hit in the US. The song earned its songwriters an Academy Award for Best Song and gave Dion her first Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.[15] "Beauty and the Beast" served as the lead single from her 1992 self-titled album, which, like her debut, had a strong pop rock influence combined with elements of soul and classical music. Owing to the success of the lead-off single and her collaborations with David Foster and Diane Warren, the album was even more well-received commercially than Unison; it was certified diamond in Canada and double platinum in the US. The album's second single "If You Asked Me To" (a cover of Patti LaBelle's song from the 1989 movie Licence to Kill) became her first number-one single in Canada and peaked at number four on the US Billboard Hot 100.
+
+Also during this time, Dion released the Francophone album Dion chante Plamondon. The album consisted mostly of covers, but featured four new songs: "Des mots qui sonnent", "Je danse dans ma tête", "Quelqu'un que j'aime, quelqu'un qui m'aime" and "L'amour existe encore". It was originally released in Canada and France during the 1991–1992 period, then later received an international release in 1994, the first French Celine Dion album to do so. "Un garçon pas comme les autres (Ziggy)" became a smash hit in France, reaching No. 2 and being certified gold. In Quebec, the album was certified Gold the day it was released.[citation needed]
+
+By 1992, Unison, Céline Dion, and numerous high-profile media appearances had propelled Dion to superstardom in North America. She had achieved one of her main objectives: wedging her way into the Anglophone market and achieving fame.[28] However, while she was experiencing rising success in the US, her French fans in Canada criticized her for neglecting them.[15][29] She would later rebuff these criticisms at the 1991 Félix Awards show, where, after winning "English Artist of the Year", she openly refused to accept the award. She asserted that she was—and would always be—a French, not an English, artist.[22][30] Apart from her commercial success, there were also changes in her personal life, as Angélil, who was twenty-six years her senior, transitioned from manager to lover. However, the relationship was kept a secret as they both feared that the public would find their relations inappropriate.[31]
+
+In 1993, Dion announced her feelings for her manager by declaring him "the colour of [her] love" in the dedication section of her third English-language album The Colour of My Love. However, instead of criticizing their relationship as she had feared, fans embraced the couple.[15] Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.[citation needed]
+
+As with most of her catalogue, The Colour of My Love had over-riding themes of love and romance.[32] It became her most successful record up to that point, selling more than six million copies in the US, two million in Canada, and peaking at No. 1 in many countries. The album also spawned Dion's first US, Canadian, and Australian No. 1 single "The Power of Love" (a remake of Jennifer Rush's 1985 hit), which would become her signature hit until she reached new career heights in the late 1990s.[28]
+
+The single "When I Fall in Love", a duet with Clive Griffin, achieved moderate success on the US and Canadian charts and was nominated for two Grammy Awards, winning one. The Colour of My Love also became Dion's first major hit in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom. Both the album and the single "Think Twice" simultaneously occupied the top of the British charts for five consecutive weeks. "Think Twice", which remained at No. 1 for seven weeks, eventually became the fourth single by a female artist to sell in excess of one million copies in the UK[33] while the album was eventually certified five-times platinum for two million copies sold.[34]
+
+Dion kept to her French roots and continued to release many Francophone recordings between each English record.[35] Generally, they achieved more credibility than her English-language works.[29] She released À l'Olympia, a live album that was recorded during one of her concerts at the Paris Olympia in 1994. It had one promotional single, a live version of "Calling You", which peaked at seventy-five on the French Singles Chart. She also recorded a bilingual version of "Petit Papa Noël" with Alvin and the Chipmunks for the 1994 holiday album A Very Merry Chipmunk. D'eux (also known as The French Album in the United States), was released in 1995, and it would go on to become the best-selling French-language album of all time.[35] The album was mostly written and produced by Jean-Jacques Goldman, and amassed huge success with the singles "Pour que tu m'aimes encore" and "Je sais pas". "Pour que tu m'aimes encore" reached No. 1 in France and stayed at the top position for twelve weeks. It was later certified Platinum in France.[36] The single reached the top ten in the UK and Ireland, a rare accomplishment for a French song. The second single off the album, "Je sais pas", reached No. 1 on the French Singles Chart as well and was certified Silver there.[37] These songs later became "If That's What It Takes" and "I Don't Know" on her next English album, Falling into You.[citation needed]
+
+During the mid-1990s and onward, Dion's albums were generally constructed on the basis of melodramatic soft rock ballads, with sprinklings of up-tempo pop and rare forays into other genres.[38] She collaborated with many renowned writers and producers such as Jim Steinman and David Foster, who helped her to develop a signature sound.[15][39] While critical reviews fluctuated, her releases performed increasingly well on the international charts, and in 1996, she won the World Music Award for "World's Best-selling Female Recording Artist of the Year" for the third time. By the mid-1990s, she had established herself as one of the best-selling artists in the world.[40]
+
+Falling into You (1996), Dion's fourth English-language album, presented the singer at the height of her popularity and showed a further progression of her music.[31] In an attempt to reach a wider audience, the album combined many elements, such as complex orchestral sounds, African chanting, and elaborate musical effects. Additionally, instruments like the violin, Spanish guitar, trombone, the cavaquinho, and saxophone created a new sound.[41] The singles encompassed a variety of musical styles. The title track "Falling into You" and "River Deep – Mountain High" (a Tina Turner cover) made prominent use of percussion instruments; "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" (produced by its writer Jim Steinman) and a remake of Eric Carmen's "All by Myself" maintained a soft-rock atmosphere, combined with the classical sound of the piano; and the No. 1 single "Because You Loved Me", which was written by Diane Warren, was a pop ballad that served as the theme to the 1996 film Up Close and Personal.[40]
+
+Falling into You garnered career-best reviews for Dion. While Dan Leroy wrote that it was not very different from her previous work,[42] and Stephen Holden of The New York Times and Natalie Nichols of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the album was formulaic,[43][44] other critics, such as Chuck Eddy of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, and Daniel Durchholz, lavished the album as "compelling", "passionate", "stylish", "elegant", and "remarkably well-crafted".[41][45] Falling into You became Dion's most critically and commercially successful album: it topped the charts in many countries and became one of the best-selling albums of all time.[46]
+
+In 2013, CBC Music ranked Falling into You 33rd in their list of the 100 greatest Canadian albums ever.[47] In the United States, the album reached No. 1,[48] and was later certified 11× Platinum for over 11 million copies shipped.[49] In Canada, the album was certified diamond for over one million copies shipped.[50] The IFPI certified Falling into You 9× Platinum, an accolade that has been given to only two other albums in history, with one of the two being Dion's own album, Let's Talk About Love.[51] The album also won Grammy Awards for Best Pop Album and the academy's highest honour, Album of the Year.[52]
+
+Dion was asked to perform "The Power of the Dream" at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.[53] In March 1996, she launched the Falling into You Tour in support of her new album, performing concerts around the world for over a year.
+
+She followed Falling into You with Let's Talk About Love (1997), which was publicized as its sequel.[54] The recording process took place in London, New York City, and Los Angeles, and featured a host of special guests, such as Barbra Streisand on "Tell Him"; the Bee Gees on "Immortality"; and tenor Luciano Pavarotti on "I Hate You Then I Love You".[31][55] Other musicians included Carole King, Sir George Martin, Bryan Adams and Jamaican singer Diana King, who added a reggae tinge to "Treat Her Like a Lady"[56]
+
+Let's Talk About Love was another major success, reaching No. 1 all over the world, attaining platinum status in twenty-four sales territories, and becoming the fastest selling album of her career.[57] In the United States, the album topped the chart in its seventh week of release,[58] and was later certified 10× Platinum in the US for over 10 million copies shipped.[59] In Canada, the album sold 230,212 copies in its first week of release, which remains a record.[60] It was eventually certified diamond in Canada for over one million copies shipped.[61][62] The most successful single from the album was the classically influenced ballad "My Heart Will Go On", which was written and composed by James Horner and Will Jennings, and produced by Horner and Walter Afanasieff.[52]
+
+Serving as the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, the song topped the charts across the world and became Dion's signature song.[63] Horner and Jennings won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song,[64] while Dion herself garnered two Grammy Awards for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and the most coveted, Record of the Year, (the song itself won four awards, but two were presented to the songwriters).[65] "My Heart Will Go On" and "Think Twice" made her the only female artist in the UK to have two singles to sell more than a million copies.[66] In support of her album, she embarked on the Let's Talk About Love Tour between 1998 and 1999.[67]
+
+Dion ended the 1990s with three more extremely successful albums: the Christmas album These Are Special Times (1998), the French-language album, S'il suffisait d'aimer, and the compilation album All the Way... A Decade of Song (1999).[68] On These Are Special Times, she co-wrote the song "Don't Save It All for Christmas Day" along with Ric Wake and Peter Zizzo.[69] The album was her most classically influenced yet, with orchestral arrangements found on virtually every track.[70] The album featured the single "I'm Your Angel" (a duet with R. Kelly), which became her fourth US No. 1 single, and a smash hit across the world. The album's second single "The Prayer" (a duet with Andrea Bocelli) served as the soundtrack of the 1998 film Quest for Camelot and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. All the Way... A Decade of Song drew together her most successful hits coupled with seven new songs, including the lead-off single "That's the Way It Is", a cover of Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", and "All the Way", a duet with Frank Sinatra.[68] All the Way became one of the best-selling compilation albums of all time, reaching No. 1 in the United States for three weeks.[48] The album was later certified 7x Platinum in the US for 7 million copies shipped.[71] It also topped the charts in the UK,[72] Canada,[73] and Australia.[74] Her last French-language studio album of the 1990s, S'il suffisait d'aimer, was very successful as well, topping the charts in every major French-speaking country, including France,[75] Switzerland,[76] the Wallonia region of Belgium,[77] and Canada.[73] In France, the album was certified diamond, selling 1.5 million copies.[78] By the end of the 1990s, Dion had sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and had won a slew of industry awards.[79] Her status as one of the music industry's biggest pop divas was further solidified when she was asked to perform on VH1's Divas Live special in 1998, with superstars Aretha Franklin, Gloria Estefan, Shania Twain, and Mariah Carey.[80] That year, she also received two of the highest Canadian honours: "Officer of the Order of Canada for Outstanding Contribution to the World of Contemporary Music"[81][82] and "Officer of the National Order of Quebec".[83] A year later, she was inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, and was honoured with a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.[84]
+
+Starting from the mid-1990s, the pop rock influence that was more noticeable in her earlier releases was replaced by a more mature feel.[54] Additionally, the recurring theme of "love" dominated most of her releases, which led to some critics dismissing her music as banal.[85] Other critics, like Elysa Gardner and Jose F. Promis, praised her voice during this period, describing it as a "technical marvel".[86][87] Steve Dollar, in his review of These Are Special Times, opined that Dion was a "vocal Olympian for whom there ain't no mountain—or scale—high enough".[88]
+
+After releasing and promoting thirteen albums during the 1990s, Dion stated that she needed to settle down, and announced on her latest album All the Way... A Decade of Song, that she needed to take a step back from the spotlight and enjoy life.[11][89] Angélil's diagnosis with esophageal cancer also prompted her to hiatus.[90] While on break, she was unable to escape the spotlight. In 2000, the National Enquirer published a false story about the singer. Brandishing a picture of Dion and her husband, the magazine misquoted her, printing the headline, "Celine — 'I'm Pregnant With Twins!'"[91] She later sued the magazine for more than $20 million.[92] The editors of the Enquirer printed an apology and a full retraction to her in the next issue, and donated money to the American Cancer Society in honour of her and her husband. A year after the incident, after undergoing fertility treatments, she gave birth to a son, René-Charles Dion Angélil, on 25 January 2001, in Florida.[93][94]
+
+Following the 11 September attacks, Dion returned to the music scene, and in a televised performance sang "God Bless America" at the benefit concert America: A Tribute to Heroes. Chuck Taylor of Billboard wrote, "the performance ... brings to mind what has made her one of the celebrated vocalists of our time: the ability to render emotion that shakes the soul. Affecting, meaningful, and filled with grace, this is a musical reflection to share with all of us still searching for ways to cope."[95] She performed it again in 2003 during pregame festivities for Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego. In December 2001, she published her autobiography My Story, My Dream which chronicled her rags-to-riches story.[96]
+
+Dion ended her three-year sabbatical from the music industry with the aptly titled album A New Day Has Come, released in March 2002. The album was her most personal yet, with songs focusing on her motherhood and maturation as a woman such as "A New Day Has Come", and "Goodbye's (The Saddest Word)". She stated: "becoming a mother makes you a grown-up."[89] She stated, "A New Day Has Come, for Rene, for me, is the baby. It has everything to do with the baby ... That song "A New Day Has Come" represents very well the mood I'm feeling right now. It represents the whole album."[97] A New Day Has Come debuted at No. 1 in more than 17 countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada.[98][99][100] In the United States, the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 527,000 copies; marking her first No. 1 debut on the chart, as well as the highest debut sales week of her career in the US.[101] It was eventually certified 3× Platinum in the United States,[102] and 6× Platinum in Canada.[103]
+
+While the album was commercially successful, critical reviews suggested that it was "forgettable" and the lyrics were "lifeless".[104] Both Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone magazine, and Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly, stated that Dion's music had not developed much during her break, and classed her material as trite and mediocre.[105][106] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine called the album "a lengthy collection of drippy, gooey pop fluffer-nutter".[107] The first single off the album, A New Day Has Come peaked at No.22 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, being an airplay-only release. On the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks, however, the song spent 21 consecutive weeks at No. 1, breaking the record for the longest span at the top.[108] The previous record holders were Phil Collins' You'll Be in My Heart and Dion's own Because You Loved Me, both of which lasted nineteen weeks at No. 1. During 2002, she performed for many benefit concerts, including her second appearance on VH1 Divas Live, a concert to benefit the VH1 Save The Music Foundation, alongside Cher, Anastacia, Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Shakira, and Stevie Nicks.
+
+In conjunction with an endorsement deal with Chrysler, she released One Heart (2003), an album that represented her appreciation for life.[109] The album largely consisted of pop and dance music—a deviation from the soaring, melodramatic ballads, for which she had been known. Although the album achieved moderate success, One Heart was met with mixed criticism, and words such as "predictable" and "banal" appeared even in the most lenient reviews.[110][111] A cover of the 1989 Cyndi Lauper hit "I Drove All Night", released to launch her advertising campaign with Chrysler,[112] incorporated elements of dance-pop and rock and roll. The advertising deal was met with criticism, with some stating that Dion was trying to cater to her sponsors.[113][114]
+
+After One Heart, she released her next English-language studio album, Miracle (2004). Miracle was a multimedia project conceived by Dion and Australian photographer Anne Geddes and had a theme centring on babies and motherhood. The album was filled with lullabies and other songs of maternal love and inspiration, including covers of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy". The reviews for Miracle were mixed.[115] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic.com gave the album three of out five stars, stating, "The worst you can say about the record is that there are no surprises, but the audience for this record doesn't want surprises; they want comfort, whether it arrives in polished music or artsy photos of newborns, and Miracle provides both, which makes it appealing for those expectant or new mothers in Dion's audience."[115] Chuck Taylor of Billboard magazine wrote that the single "Beautiful Boy" was "an unexpected gem" and called Dion "a timeless, enormously versatile artist",[116] Chuck Arnold of People Magazine, however, labelled the album as excessively sentimental,[117] while Nancy Miller of Entertainment Weekly opined that "the whole earth-mama act is just opportunism, reborn".[118] Miracle debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart and No. 1 in Canada and was eventually certified platinum by the RIAA.[119]
+
+The francophone album 1 fille & 4 types (1 Girl & 4 Guys), released in October 2003, fared better than her previous two releases and showed her trying to distance herself from the "diva" image. She recruited Jean-Jacques Goldman, Gildas Arzel, Eric Benzi, and Jacques Veneruso, with whom she had previously worked on two of her best-selling French albums S'il suffisait d'aimer and D'eux. Labeled "the album of pleasure" by Dion herself, the album cover showed her in a simple and relaxed manner, contrary to the choreographed poses usually found on her album covers. The album achieved widespread commercial success in France, Canada, and Belgium where it reached No. 1. In France, the album debuted at No. 1 and was later certified 2× platinum after selling over 700,000 copies. Critic Stephen Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that Dion's vocals were "back at top of their game" and that she was "getting back to pop basics and performing at a level unheard in a while".[120]
+
+Though her albums were commercially successful, they did not achieve the sales or the reception of her previous works. Her songs received less airplay as radio became less embracing of balladeers like Dion, Carey, and Houston, and was focused on more up-tempo, Urban/Hip-hop songs.[121] By 2004, Dion had accumulated sales of more than 175 million albums worldwide and received the Chopard Diamond Award from the World Music Awards for her achievements. According to the official World Music Awards website, the award is rare; it is "not presented every year" and an artist can be presented with the award only for selling "over 100 million albums during their career".[122]
+
+In early 2002, Dion announced a three-year, 600-show contract to appear five nights a week in an entertainment extravaganza, A New Day..., at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.[123] This move was generally seen as risky, but journalist Miriam Nunzio wrote that it was "one of the smartest business decisions in years by any major recording artist".[124] Dion conceived the show after seeing O by Franco Dragone during her break from recording, and it premiered on 25 March 2003, in a 4,000-seat arena specifically designed for her show and modelled after the Roman Colosseum.[123] Many stars attended the opening night including Dick Clark, Alan Thicke, Kathy Griffin, Lance Bass, and Justin Timberlake, who hosted the television special.[125] The show, directed by Dragone and choreographed by the renowned Mia Michaels, was a combination of dance, music, and visual effects. It included Dion performing her biggest hits against an array of dancers and special effects. Reviewer Mike Weatherford felt that, at first, Dion was not as relaxed as she should be, and at times, it was hard to find the singer among the excessive stage ornamentation and dancers. However, he noted that the show had become more enjoyable over the course of its run, because of her improved stage-presence and simplified costumes.[63]
+
+The show was well-received by audiences, despite the complaints of expensive tickets[citation needed]; it routinely sold out until its end in late 2007.[126] Ticket prices averaged $135.33.[127] According to Pollstar, Dion sold 322,000 tickets and grossed US$43.9 million in the first half of 2005, and by July 2005, she had sold out 315 out of 384 shows.[128] By the end of 2005, she grossed more than US$76 million, placing sixth on Billboard's Money Makers list for 2005.[129] A New Day... was the 6th biggest-selling tour in the US in 2006.[130] Because of the show's success, her contract was extended into 2007 for an undisclosed sum. On 5 January 2007, it was announced that the show would end on 15 December 2007, with tickets for the period after October 2007 having gone on sale from 1 March.[131] According to Billboard, A New Day... is the most successful residency of all time, grossing over US$385 million ($474.72 million in 2019 dollars)[132] and drawing nearly three million people to 717 shows.[133] The Live in Las Vegas: A New Day... DVD was released on 10 December 2007, in Europe and the following day in North America.[134]
+
+On 21 May 2007, Dion released the French-language album D'elles (About Them), which debuted at the top of the Canadian album charts, selling 72,200 copies in its first week. It marked her tenth No. 1 album in the SoundScan era, and her eighth to debut at the top position. In Canada, the album has been certified 2× platinum, and within the first month had already shipped half a million units worldwide.[135] D'Elles also reached No. 1 in France and Belgium. The first single "Et s'il n'en restait qu'une (je serais celle-là)" (meaning "And If There Was Only One Woman Left (I Would Be That One)") debuted at the top of the French singles chart a month earlier. Later that same year, she released the English album Taking Chances on 12 November in Europe, and 13 November in North America.[136] Her first English studio album since 2003's One Heart, it featured pop, R&B, and rock inspired music.[137] For this album, she collaborated with John Shanks and ex-Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody, as well as Kristian Lundin, Peer Åström, Linda Perry, Japanese singer Yuna Ito, and R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo.[138][139] Dion stated, "I think this album represents a positive evolution in my career ... I'm feeling strong, maybe a little gutsier than in the past, and just as passionate about music and life as I ever was."[140] She launched her year-long worldwide Taking Chances Tour on 14 February 2008, in South Africa, performing 132 dates in stadiums and arenas across five continents.[141]
+
+The Taking Chances Tour was a great success in the United States, reaching the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Boxscore, having sold out every concert in the US and Canada. In addition, she appeared on Idol Gives Back for a second year in a row. Dion was nominated for six Juno Awards in 2008, adding to her 53 previous nominations (an all-time record). Her nominations included Artist of the Year, Pop Album of the Year (for Taking Chances), Francophone Album of the Year (for D'elles) and Album of the Year (for both Taking Chances and D'elles).[142] The following year, she was nominated for 3 Juno Awards including the Fan Choice Award, Song of the Year (for Taking Chances), and Music DVD of the Year (for Live in Las Vegas — A New Day...)[143]
+
+On 22 August 2008, Dion presented a free outdoor concert, mostly in French, on the Plains of Abraham, in Québec City, Canada, for the 400th anniversary of Québec City.[144] The celebration gathered approximately 490,000 people. The concert, called Céline sur les Plaines, was released on DVD on 11 November 2008, in Québec and was released on 20 May 2009, in France.[145] Late October 2008 saw the worldwide release of a comprehensive English-language greatest hits album, My Love: Essential Collection.[146]
+
+In May 2009, Dion was named the 20th best-selling artist of the decade and the second-best-selling female artist of the decade in the United States, selling an estimated 17.57 million copies of her albums there since 2000.[147] In June 2009, Forbes reported that she earned $100 million during 2008. In December 2009, Pollstar announced that she was the best-selling solo touring act of the decade and the second-best-selling touring act of the decade, behind only the Dave Matthews Band.[148] she grossed $522.2 million during the decade, a large portion of that sum coming from her five-year residency at Caesars Palace.[148]
+
+On 17 February 2010, Dion released into theatres a documentary film about her Taking Chances Tour, titled, Celine: Through the Eyes of the World.[149] The documentary shows behind-the-scenes footage of her both onstage and offstage, along with footage of her with her family as they travelled the world with her. The distributor is the Sony Pictures subsidiary, Hot Ticket.[149] The film was later released on Blu-ray and DVD on 4 May 2010, along with the CD/DVD, Taking Chances World Tour: The Concert.[150][151] At the 52nd Grammy Awards in February 2010, Dion joined Carrie Underwood, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, and Smokey Robinson to perform the song "Earth Song" during the 3-D Michael Jackson tribute.[152]
+
+In January 2010, The Los Angeles Times presented its annual list of the top ten largest earners of the year, revealing that Dion took the top spot for the entire decade, with $US747.9 million in total revenue from 2000–2009.[153] The largest haul came from ticket sales, totalling $522.2 million.[153] Additionally, she was named "Artist of the Decade" in her native Canadian province of Québec, announced by the Montréal-based newspaper, Le Journal de Québec in 2009 December.[154] A public online survey asked responders to vote for whom they believe deserved the above-mentioned accolade.[154]
+
+Furthermore, in a May 2010 Harris Poll, Dion was named the most popular musician in the United States, ahead of U2, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles while factoring in gender, political affiliations, geographic region of residence, and income.[155] Specifically, she was the most popular musician in the female demographic, as well as among all Democrats, those who live in the eastern United States and southern United States, and those who have incomes between US$35k and US$74.9k.[156][157]
+
+In September 2010, she released the single "Voler", a duet with French singer Michel Sardou. The song was later included on Sardou's album.[158] In addition, it was announced in October 2010 that Dion wrote and composed a new song for Canadian singer, Marc Dupré entitled "Entre deux mondes".[159]
+
+In an interview with People magazine published in February 2010, Dion announced that she would be returning to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for Celine, a three-year residency for seventy shows a year, beginning 15 March 2011.[160] She stated that the show will feature, "all the songs from my repertoire that people want to hear" and will contain a selection of music from classic Hollywood films.[160] To promote her return to Las Vegas, Dion made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on 21 February, during the show's final season, marking her record twenty-seventh appearance.[161][162]   In 2018, Billboard stated her residency Celine is the second most successful residency of all time.[163]
+
+For a record sixth time, she performed at the 83rd Academy Awards, where she sang the song "Smile", as part of the ceremony's "In Memoriam" segment.[164] On 4 September, she appeared on the 2011 MDA Labor Telethon Event and presented a prerecorded performance of "Open Arms" from her new Las Vegas show.[165] On 1 October 2011, the OWN Network premiered a documentary on Dion's life, detailing the months before, during and after her pregnancy, to the makings of her new Las Vegas Show, called, "Celine: 3 Boys and a New Show".[166] The documentary became the second highest rated show on TV OWN Canada. In October, FlightNetwork.com conducted a poll asking 780 participants which celebrity they would most like to sit next to on an airplane. Dion was the top favourite, with 23.7% of the vote.[167] Also, in September, she released the 14th perfume from her Celine Dion Parfums Collection, called "Signature".[168] On 15 September, she made an appearance at the free concert of world-famous tenor, Andrea Bocelli, in Central Park in New York.[169] In 2012, she performed at the 16th Jazz and Blues Festival in Jamaica.[170]
+
+In October 2012, Sony Music Entertainment released The Best of Celine Dion & David Foster in Asia.[171] She began recording songs for her next English and French albums during April and May 2012.[172] The French-language album, Sans attendre was released on 2 November 2012, and was a smash success in all French-speaking territories, especially in France where it achieved diamond status.[173] The English-language album was postponed to 1 November 2013.[174] Titled Loved Me Back to Life, it included collaborations with an exceptional team of songwriters and producers, including duets with Ne-Yo and Stevie Wonder.[175] The lead single, "Loved Me Back to Life" was released on 3 September 2013.[176] Dion embarked on the Sans attendre Tour in November 2013 and performed in Belgium and France.[177] "Breakaway", "Incredible" and "Water and a Flame" were chosen as next singles.[178][179] The music video for "Incredible" was uploaded onto her official Vevo channel in early June 2014.[180]
+
+On 16 May 2014, Dion released a three-disc set (2CD/DVD and 2CD/Blu-ray) titled Céline une seule fois / Live 2013, which reached top ten on the album charts in France, Canada and Belgium Wallonia.[181][better source needed]
+
+On 13 August 2014, Dion announced the indefinite postponement of all her show business activities, including her concert residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and the cancellation of her Asia Tour, because of the worsening of her husband's health after he underwent the removal of a cancerous tumor in December 2013.[182][183] However, on 20 March 2015, she announced that she would be returning to The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in late August 2015.[184] On 14 January 2016, she cancelled the rest of the January performances due to her husband's and her brother's death from cancer.[185] Dion resumed the residency on 23 February to a sold-out crowd and rave reviews.
+
+In October 2015, Dion announced on social media that she had begun working on a new French album, posting a photo by the side of Algerian singer Zaho.[186] Dion's French single, "Encore un soir", was released on 24 May 2016. On 20 May, she released a cover of Queen's song "The Show Must Go On", featuring Lindsey Stirling on violin.[187] She performed "The Show Must Go On" at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards on 22 May, and received the Billboard Icon Award (presented to her by her son, René-Charles Angélil) in recognition of her career spanning over three decades.[188]
+
+The singer's new French album, Encore un soir, was released on 26 August 2016. It features fifteen tracks performed in French and, according to the singer, has a personal choice of the songs – more uplifting lyrics were chosen.[189] Encore un soir topped the charts in France, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland, and was certified Diamond in France, 2× Platinum in Canada and Platinum in Belgium and Switzerland.[190][191] It has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide.[192] In 2016 and 2017, Dion toured Europe and Canada with two sold-out concert tours.[193][194][195][196][197] On 9 September 2016, she released "Recovering", a song written for her by Pink after Dion's husband René Angélil died in January 2016.[198] Dion also recorded "How Does a Moment Last Forever" for the Beauty and the Beast: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, released in March 2017.[199] Her compilation, Un peu de nous topped the chart in France in July and August 2017.[200]
+
+On 3 May 2018, she released the single "Ashes" from the film Deadpool 2.[201] The remix version of the song topped the US Dance Club Songs chart in July 2018.[202] From June to August 2018, she toured the Asia-Pacific region and grossed $56.5 million from 22 shows.[203] On 24 September 2018, she announced the end of her Las Vegas residency Celine, with the final date set for 8 June 2019.[204] She is currently working on a new English album.[205] In January 2019, she performed "A Change Is Gonna Come" at the "Aretha! A Grammy Celebration for the Queen of Soul" Franklin's tribute concert, to be broadcast in March 2019.[206][207]
+
+In March 2019, she was one of 11 singers from Quebec, alongside Ginette Reno, Diane Dufresne, Isabelle Boulay, Luce Dufault, Louise Forestier, Laurence Jalbert, Catherine Major, Ariane Moffatt, Marie Denise Pelletier and Marie-Élaine Thibert, who participated in a supergroup recording of Renée Claude's 1971 single "Tu trouveras la paix" after Claude's diagnosis with Alzheimer's disease was announced.[208]
+
+On 3 April 2019, during a Facebook Live event, Dion announced her 2019/2020 Courage World Tour, beginning in Quebec City on 18 September 2019.[209] She also announced a new English language album of the same name, to be released later in November 2019.[210]
+
+On 18 September 2019, Dion released three songs, "Lying Down", "Courage", and "Imperfections" for her upcoming album, "Courage" as well as the pre-release of the album which will be available on 15 November 2019[211]
+
+On 26 February 2020, Dion released two songs as exclusive Spotify singles: an acoustic version of Imperfections, and a cover of Chris Isaak's Wicked Game. Isaak joined Dion and sang vocals on the track.
+
+On 10 June 2020, Dion announced that her Courage World Tour will kick off again in 2021, after the tour was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[212]
+
+Dion cites idols as varied as Aretha Franklin, Charles Aznavour, Carole King, Anne Murray, Barbra Streisand, and the Bee Gees, all of whom she would eventually collaborate with.[213][214][215] She has also expressed admiration for artists such as Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Madonna, citing the former two as having a profound influence on her own vocal style.[216] Her music has been influenced by numerous genres, including pop, rock, gospel, R&B, and soul, and her lyrics focus on themes of poverty, world hunger, and spirituality, with an emphasis on love and romance.[32][217] After the birth of her first child, her work increasingly focused on maternal love.[115][218][219][220]
+
+Dion has faced considerable criticism from critics, who state that her music often retreats behind pop and soul conventions, and is marked by excessive sentimentality.[22][85] According to Keith Harris of Rolling Stone magazine, "[Dion's] sentimentality is bombastic and defiant rather than demure and retiring ... [she] stands at the end of the chain of drastic devolution that goes Aretha–Whitney–Mariah. Far from being an aberration, Dion actually stands as a symbol of a certain kind of pop sensibility—bigger is better, too much is never enough, and the riper the emotion the more true."[221] Her francophone releases, by contrast, tend to be deeper and more varied than her English releases, and consequently have achieved more credibility.[29][222]
+
+Critics have stated that Dion's involvement in the production aspect of her music is fundamentally lacking, which results in her work being overproduced[222] and impersonal.[29] However, coming from a family in which all of her siblings were musicians, she dabbled in learning how to play instruments like piano and guitar, and practised with a Fender Stratocaster during the recording sessions of her album, Falling into You.[223]
+
+Occasionally, Dion has contributed to the writing of a handful of her English and French songs, as well as writing a few songs for other artists such as Marc Dupre. Additionally, as her career progressed, she found herself taking charge in the production of her albums. On her first English album, which she recorded before she had a firm command of the English language, she expressed disapproval, which could have been avoided if she had assumed more creative input.[29] By the time she released her second English album Celine Dion, she had assumed more control of the production and recording process, hoping to dispel earlier criticisms. She stated, "On the second album I said, 'Well, I have the choice to be afraid one more time and not be 100% happy, or not be afraid and be part of this album.' This is my album."[29] Besides her contributions to some of her early French albums, Dion wrote a few of the songs on Let's Talk About Love (1997) and These Are Special Times (1998).[224]
+
+She is often the subject of media ridicule[225] and parody and is frequently impersonated on shows such as MADtv, Saturday Night Live, South Park, Royal Canadian Air Farce, and This Hour Has 22 Minutes for her strong accent and on-stage gesticulations. However, she has stated that she is unaffected by the comments, and is flattered that people take the time to impersonate her.[89] She even invited Ana Gasteyer, who parodied her on SNL, to appear on stage during one of her performances in New York. While she is rarely politically outspoken, in 2005 following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Dion appeared on Larry King Live and tearfully criticized the US government's slow response in aiding the victims of the hurricane: "There's people still there waiting to be rescued. To me that is not acceptable ... How can it be so easy to send planes in another country to kill everybody in a second and destroy lives. We need to serve our country."[226] After her interview, she stated, "When I do interviews with Larry King or the big TV shows like that, they put you on the spot, which is very difficult. I do have an opinion, but I'm a singer. I'm not a politician."[227]
+
+Dion is often regarded as one of pop music's most influential voices.[22][29][228] According to Linda Lister in Divafication: The Deification of Modern Female Pop Stars, she has been described as a reigning "Queen of Pop" for her influence over the record industry during the 1990s, alongside other female entertainers, including Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.[229] In a countdown of the "22 Greatest Voices in Music" by Blender Magazine and MTV, she placed ninth (sixth for a female), and she was also placed fourth in Cover Magazine's list of "The 100 Outstanding Pop Vocalists".[230][231][232] Dion is often compared to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston for her vocal style and to her idol, Barbra Streisand, for her voice.[233]
+
+She possesses a three-octave range, from B2 to E♭6.[234][235] She once stated that she is a mezzo-soprano.[236] However, attempts to adapt classical voice types to other forms of singing have been met with controversy.[237] Without making a classification, Kent Nagano, maestro of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, remarked, "All you just sang was full lyric soprano", after Dion auditioned with two solos from Carmen, wanting to know if she could sing opera.[236] Her timbre has been described as "thin, slightly nasal"[238] with a "raspy" lower register and "bell glass-like high notes".[239]
+
+She is often praised for her technical virtuosity.[240] Jim Santella of The Buffalo News writes "Like an iron fist in a velvet glove, the power of Celine Dion's voice is cloaked in a silky vibrato that betrays the intensity of her vocal commitment."[241] Jeff Miers, also of The Buffalo News, says of Dion "Her singing voice is absolutely extra-human. She hits notes in full voice, with a controlled vibrato and an incredible conception of pitch, like she's shucking an ear of corn."[242] Stephen Holden of The New York Times states that Dion has "a good-sized arsenal of technical skills. She can deliver tricky melismas, produce expressive vocal catches and sustain long notes without the tiniest wavering of pitch. And as her duets ... have shown, she is a reliable harmony voice."[238] In an interview with Libération, Jean-Jacques Goldman notes that she has "no problem of accuracy or tempo".[243] According to Kent Nagano, she is "a musician who has a good ear, a refinement, and a degree of perfection that is enviable".[236] Charles Alexander of Time states, "[Her] voice glides effortlessly from deep whispers to dead-on high notes, a sweet siren that combines force with grace."[28]
+
+In her French repertoire, Dion adorns her vocals with more nuances and expressiveness, with the emotional intensity being "more tender and intimate".[244] Additionally, Luc Plamondon, a French singer-songwriter who has worked closely with Dion claims that there are three chanteuses (stylistically) that she uses: the Québécois, the French, and the American.[244] Her self-titled album was promoted with the slogan "Remember the name because you'll never forget the voice."[citation needed]
+
+Dion is regarded as one of pop music's most influential voices. Linda Lister describes her as a reigning Queen of Pop for her influence over the record industry during the 1990s.[245] Her music and vocal style, alongside that of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, have been said to shape how the bulk of modern female pop vocalists sing. These three singers have been widely credited with reviving the power ballad, and in doing so reshaping the adult contemporary radio format, making it one of the most popular formats of the 1990s and early 2000s. According to producer, musician, and former American Idol judge Randy Jackson, Dion, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston are the voices of the modern era.[246] Music critic and Dion biographer Carl Wilson notes that her "fame and influence is also renewed and expressed regularly these days by American Idol, the largest mass musical phenomenon of the past decade, where Celine's stood solidly in its pantheon of singers for young people to emulate".[247] Many contestants on the countless televised talent competitions that have risen at the turn of the millennium often emulate Dion, Houston and Carey and cite them as idols.[248]
+
+Many artists have either mentioned Dion as a major influence or as one of their favourite singers including: Britney Spears,[249] Rihanna,[250] Christina Aguilera,[251] Frank Ocean,[252] Adele,[253] Josh Groban,[254] Delta Goodrem,[255] Jordin Sparks,[256] Jake Zyrus,[citation needed] Leona Lewis,[257] Jessie J,[258] Jojo,[259] Lea Michele,[260] Jennifer Hudson,[261] Ariana Grande,[262] Regine Velasquez, Taylor Swift,[263] Vanessa Hudgens,[citation needed] The Canadian Tenors, Faith Hill, Katy Perry, Sevyn Streeter and Kelly Clarkson,[264] among many others. Country singer Martina McBride is widely heralded by the press as the Celine Dion of Country music.[265]
+
+Numerous artists have also praised Dion's voice, singing ability or expressed an interest in working with her including Met Opera conductor and musical director Yannick Nézet-Séguin,[266][267] Beyoncé,[268] Carlos Santana,[269] Elton John,[270] OneRepublic,[271] Coldplay,[272] Sharon Osbourne,[273] Nicole Scherzinger,[274] Ne-Yo,[275] Carole King,[276] Barbra Streisand,[277] Luciano Pavarotti,[278] Bee Gees,[279] Sir George Martin,[279] Justin Bieber,[280] Jean-Jacques Goldman,[281] and Cher.[282]
+
+Timbaland stated "Celine has such a beautiful, mesmerizing voice. She is so talented. I think we could create something that is a classic like she is already." Josh Groban remarked "She's a powerhouse. In this day and age, when more and more studio-produced, tiny-tiny voices are being rewarded ... she has this extraordinary instrument."[254] According to Diane Warren, "Celine is the best singer by far of her generation",[283] an opinion shared by Quincy Jones,[284] Tommy Mottola, and David Foster.[285] Moreover, Shania Twain and Jennifer Lopez have praised her dynamic stage presence, with Jennifer Lopez commenting on American Idol: "Celine gets on stage, she owns the stage, she runs all over that stage, she stops that stage."[286]
+
+On a cultural level, Dion is credited for introducing francophone music to many non-francophone countries around the globe. Her albums D'eux and S'il suffisait d'aimer remain the best selling francophone albums in history, gaining unprecedented success in non-Francophone markets such as the United Kingdom, Poland, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Japan, and New Zealand. According to RFI Musique, she "has done her bit for French music over the years, assuring the success of French songs which would probably never have got beyond Francophone borders without her ... Without Celine, French record sales would be dramatically lower!"[287] In May 2008, she received France's highest award, the Legion of Honour, from President of France Nicolas Sarkozy.[288][289][290] Sarkozy praised Dion and stated: "France thanks you because your talent and success have contributed to the influence of the French language outside our borders".[291]
+
+She is also credited for both revitalizing and revolutionizing the entertainment scene in Las Vegas with the gargantuan successes of her residencies there. She managed to re-popularize the Las Vegas "residency" as a desirable way for top artists to essentially tour in place, letting their fans come to them. Over the years, fellow established icons such as Elton John, Bette Midler, Rod Stewart, Cher, and Shania Twain followed suit.[292][better source needed] According to Gary Bongiovanni, president and editor-in-chief of Pollstar "Celine redefined what artists can do in Las Vegas, helping to make it arguably the busiest entertainment city in the world."[293] By 2013, even the much-younger pop star Britney Spears had announced a Vegas residency, further cementing the extent of Dion's influence on the city as an entertainment capital.[294][better source needed] Kurt Melien, vice-president of entertainment at Caesar's Palace stated "Celine was a pioneer without question ... Twenty years ago, we couldn't have got someone the stature of Britney Spears to appear in Vegas. Stars likes her would never have considered it if Celine hadn't paved the way. She changed the face of modern Vegas."[295]
+Regarding her financial impact on Las Vegas, Stephen Brown, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research in Las Vegas, commented "People will come to the city just for her and they will spend money and as a consequence, she has an outsized impact on the economy", then adding "Bigger than Elvis, Sinatra and Liberace put together? Definitely." Estimations indicate that Dion's show will create up to 7,000 indirect jobs and around $114 million worth of new economic activity in each of the three years for which she has been contracted.[296]
+
+The Canadian comedy music group, The Arrogant Worms, released an album called Dirt in 1999 which contained a song called "Celine Dion", about the singers' stalker-like affection for her.[297] In 1999, Dion received a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame.[298] She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2004, one which she dedicated to her father, who had died the month prior. In May 2003, she placed at No. 10 on VH1's list of "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era".[299] She was ranked at No. 64 on their list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time".[300] Dion's album Falling into You is included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 list.[301]
+
+"My Heart Will Go On" was included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2007, Dion was ranked by Forbes as the fifth richest woman in entertainment with an estimated net worth of US$250 million, though the ranking omitted non-working or retired celebrities.[302][303][304] In August 2008, she received an honorary doctorate in music from the Université Laval in Quebec City.[305]
+
+In October 2010, Dion was named a Goodwill Ambassador, a program created by the UN in 1999, sharing this accolade with Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon.[306] She also received several state decorations. In 2004, she was awarded the Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award.
+
+On 26 July 2013, she was awarded the highest rank of the Order of Canada, the Companion of the Order of Canada, by the Governor General of Canada and the investiture ceremony was held at Citadelle of Quebec,[307] the same year she was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame.[308]
+
+Les Productions Feeling Inc., also known as Feeling Inc. or just Feeling, is an artist management company based in Laval, Québec, Canada, and owned by Dion and her husband and manager, Rene Angélil. She is also founder of Nickels Restaurant food chain. She and her husband also own Le Mirage Golf Club and Schwartz's Restaurant. In association with Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Shaquille O'Neal, she opened a popular night club called Pure, located at Caesars Palace.[309]
+
+Dion became an entrepreneur with the establishment of her franchise restaurant Nickels in 1990. She has since divested her interests in the chain and is no longer affiliated with Nickels, as of 1997.[310] In 2003, Dion signed a deal with Coty, Inc. to release Celine Dion Parfums.[311] Her latest fragrance, Signature, was released in September 2011[168] with an advertising campaign by New York agency Kraftworks NYC.[312] Since its inception, Celine Dion Parfums has grossed over $850 million in retail sales.[313][314] In October 2004, Air Canada hired Dion as part of their promotional campaign to unveil new service products and an updated livery. "You and I", the theme song sung by Dion, was written by advertising executives working for Air Canada.[315]
+
+Dion has actively supported many charity organizations, worldwide. She has promoted the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF) since 1982, and became the foundation's National Celebrity Patron in 1993.[316] She has an emotional attachment to the foundation; her niece Karine succumbed to the disease at the age of sixteen, in Dion's arms. In 2003, she joined a number of other celebrities, athletes, and politicians, including Josh Groban and Yolanda Adams to support "World Children's Day", a global fundraising effort sponsored by McDonald's. The effort raised money from more than 100 nations and benefited orphanages and children's health organizations. In addition, she has been a major supporter of the T. J. Martell Foundation, the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, and many health and educational campaigns. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she donated $1 million to the victims of the storm, and held a fund-raising event for the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami, which subsequently raised more than $1 million.[317] After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, she donated $100,000 to China Children & Teenagers' Fund and sent a letter showing her consolation and support.[318] Since 2004, she is involved, alongside husband René Angelil, with the Québec gay community by supporting the publication of health and HIV prevention materials in Gay Globe Magazine, owned by journalist Roger-Luc Chayer.[319] She is also a member of Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.[320] In November 2018, she launched a gender-neutral clothing line for kids, Celinununu.[321]
+
+As the youngest of 14 children, Dion grew up wearing hand-me-downs and sharing a bed with several sisters.[322][323] As a baby, she slept in a drawer to save on a crib.[324] She was bullied at school and called "Vampire", owing to her teeth and skinny frame.[310] Local tabloids even dubbed her "Canine Dion" in the teenage years of her career.[227] She often spoke of running home from school to play music in the basement with her brothers and sisters. "I detested school", she would later write in her autobiography. "I had always lived surrounded by adults and children a lot older than me. I learned everything I needed to know from them. As far as I was concerned, real life existed around them."[96] Dion's eldest sister was already in her 20s, married, and pregnant with her first child at the time Dion's mother, Thérèse, was pregnant with Celine.[325]
+
+Dion first met her husband and manager, René Angélil, in 1980, when she was 12 and he was 38, after her brother, Michel Dondalinger Dion, sent him a demonstration recording of "Ce n'était qu'un rêve" ("It Was Only a Dream/Nothing But A Dream"), a song she, her mother Thérèse, and her brother Jacques Dion had jointly written and composed. Over subsequent years, Angélil guided her to stardom in francophone territories.
+
+After the dissolution of Angélil's second marriage, he and Dion took a professional break and he had spent the major part of the year in Las Vegas, while Dion was learning English and taking dance and singing lessons in Montreal. Upon his return, "he avoided being alone with me for too long a time",[326] she said in her 2000 autobiography My Story, My Dream. Meanwhile, she kept a photo of Angélil under her pillow, writing, "Before I fell asleep, I slipped it under the pillow, out of fear that my mother, who always shared a room with me, would find it."[327] She also wrote "Less and less could I hide from myself the fact that I was in love with Rene; I had all the symptoms,"[328] and "I was in love with a man I couldn't love, who didn't want me to love him, who didn't want to love me."[329] Dion's mother, who traveled everywhere with the singer until she was 19, was initially wary of her daughter's growing infatuation with a much older and twice-divorced Angélil, but Dion was insistent, telling her mother "I'm not a minor. This is a free country. No one has the right to prevent me from loving whoever I want to."[330]
+
+Their professional relationship eventually turned romantic after Dion's win at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in 1988; she was 20.[331][323][332] The romance was only known to family and friends for five years, though Dion nearly revealed all in a tearful 1992 interview with journalist Lise Payette.[333][334][335] Many years later, Payette penned the song "Je cherche l'ombre" for Dion's 2007 album D'elles.[336]
+
+Dion and Angélil became engaged in 1993, on Dion's 25th birthday,[337] and made their relationship public in the liner notes of her 1993 album The Colour of My Love.[338] They married on 17 December 1994, at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, Quebec. On 5 January 2000, Dion and Angélil renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas.[339]
+
+In May 2000, Dion had two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York to improve her chances of conceiving, after deciding to use in-vitro fertilization because of years of failed attempts to conceive. Their first son, René-Charles Angélil, was born on 25 January 2001. In May 2010, Angélil announced that Dion was 14 weeks pregnant with twins after a sixth treatment of in-vitro fertilization. On Saturday, 23 October 2010, at 11:11 and 11:12 am respectively,  Dion gave birth to fraternal twins by Caesarean section at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida,[340] The twins were named Eddy, after Dion's favourite French songwriter, Eddy Marnay, who had also produced her first five albums, and Nelson, after former South African President Nelson Mandela.[341] She appeared with her newborn sons on the cover of 9 December 2010 issue of the Canadian edition of Hello! magazine.[342]
+
+On 14 January 2016, Angélil died from throat cancer.[343][344] His funeral was held on 22 January 2016, in Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, where he and Dion wed 21 years earlier. The couple's eldest son, René-Charles, gave the eulogy just three days before his 15th birthday.[345] Following Angélil's passing, Dion became the sole owner and president of her management and production companies, including CDA Productions and Les Productions Feeling.[346][347]
+
+Two days after Angélil's death – on what would have been her husband's birthday – Dion's brother, Daniel, died at age 59, also of cancer.[348]
+
+On 22 March 2018, Dion's management team announced that she had been dealing with hearing irregularities for the past 12–18 months due to patulous Eustachian tube and would undergo a minimally invasive surgical procedure to correct the problem after ear-drop medications appeared to be no longer working.[349]
+
+Owing to her slight frame, Dion has for decades been subject of eating disorder rumors, which she has consistently denied:[350][351] "I don’t have an eating problem, and there’s nothing more I can say about it".[323] "My work requires me to be in great physical shape. I wouldn't have been able to live up to a hundred shows a year and travel ceaselessly from one end of the world to the other if I had eaten too much or not enough, or if, as certain magazines have claimed, I made myself throw up after each meal."[352] She has often spoken about having been bullied at school and lacking confidence in her early years in the business:[353] "I didn’t have, visually, what it took. I was not pretty, I had teeth problems, and I was very skinny. I didn’t fit the mold".[354]
+
+In recent years, Dion took up ballet under the guidance of her former dancer, Naomi Stikeman, who also previously performed for The National Ballet of Canada and La La La Human Steps, and former Cirque du Soleil dancer-turned-fashion-illustrator, Pepe Muñoz, who is also part of her styling team.[350][355] She is also a skier and a regular at her son René-Charles' hockey games.[356][357][358]
+
+French-language studio albums
+
+
+
+English-language studio albums
+
+
+
+Tours
+
+
+
+Residencies
+

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+
+
+The egg is the organic vessel containing the zygote in which an embryo develops until it can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches. An egg results from fertilization of an egg cell. Most arthropods, vertebrates (excluding live-bearing mammals), and mollusks lay eggs, although some, such as scorpions, do not.
+
+Reptile eggs, bird eggs, and monotreme eggs are laid out of water and are surrounded by a protective shell, either flexible or inflexible. Eggs laid on land or in nests are usually kept within a warm and favorable temperature range while the embryo grows. When the embryo is adequately developed it hatches, i.e., breaks out of the egg's shell. Some embryos have a temporary egg tooth they use to crack, pip, or break the eggshell or covering.
+
+The largest recorded egg is from a whale shark and was 30 cm × 14 cm × 9 cm (11.8 in × 5.5 in × 3.5 in) in size.[1] Whale shark eggs typically hatch within the mother. At 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) and up to 17.8 cm × 14 cm (7.0 in × 5.5 in), the ostrich egg is the largest egg of any living bird,[2] though the extinct elephant bird and some non-avian dinosaurs laid larger eggs. The bee hummingbird produces the smallest known bird egg, which weighs half of a gram (around 0.02 oz). Some eggs laid by reptiles and most fish, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates can be even smaller.
+
+Reproductive structures similar to the egg in other kingdoms are termed "spores," or in spermatophytes "seeds," or in gametophytes "egg cells".
+
+Several major groups of animals typically have readily distinguishable eggs.
+
+The most common reproductive strategy for fish is known as oviparity, in which the female lays undeveloped eggs that are externally fertilized by a male. Typically large numbers of eggs are laid at one time (an adult female cod can produce 4–6 million eggs in one spawning) and the eggs are then left to develop without parental care. When the larvae hatch from the egg, they often carry the remains of the yolk in a yolk sac which continues to nourish the larvae for a few days as they learn how to swim. Once the yolk is consumed, there is a critical point after which they must learn how to hunt and feed or they will die.
+
+A few fish, notably the rays and most sharks use ovoviviparity in which the eggs are fertilized and develop internally. However, the larvae still grow inside the egg consuming the egg's yolk and without any direct nourishment from the mother. The mother then gives birth to relatively mature young. In certain instances, the physically most developed offspring will devour its smaller siblings for further nutrition while still within the mother's body. This is known as intrauterine cannibalism.
+
+In certain scenarios, some fish such as the hammerhead shark and reef shark are viviparous, with the egg being fertilized and developed internally, but with the mother also providing direct nourishment.
+
+The eggs of fish and amphibians are jellylike. Cartilaginous fish (sharks, skates, rays, chimaeras) eggs are fertilized internally and exhibit a wide variety of both internal and external embryonic development. Most fish species spawn eggs that are fertilized externally, typically with the male inseminating the eggs after the female lays them. These eggs do not have a shell and would dry out in the air. Even air-breathing amphibians lay their eggs in water, or in protective foam as with the Coast foam-nest treefrog, Chiromantis xerampelina.
+
+Bird eggs are laid by females and incubated for a time that varies according to the species; a single young hatches from each egg. Average clutch sizes range from one (as in condors) to about 17 (the grey partridge). Some birds lay eggs even when not fertilized (e.g. hens); it is not uncommon for pet owners to find their lone bird nesting on a clutch of unfertilized eggs, which are sometimes called wind-eggs.
+
+The default color of vertebrate eggs is the white of the calcium carbonate from which the shells are made, but some birds, mainly passerines, produce colored eggs. The pigment biliverdin and its zinc chelate give a green or blue ground color, and protoporphyrin produces reds and browns as a ground color or as spotting.
+
+Non-passerines typically have white eggs, except in some ground-nesting groups such as the Charadriiformes, sandgrouse and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and some parasitic cuckoos which have to match the passerine host's egg. Most passerines, in contrast, lay colored eggs, even if there is no need of cryptic colors.
+
+However some have suggested that the protoporphyrin markings on passerine eggs actually act to reduce brittleness by acting as a solid-state lubricant.[10] If there is insufficient calcium available in the local soil, the egg shell may be thin, especially in a circle around the broad end. Protoporphyrin speckling compensates for this, and increases inversely to the amount of calcium in the soil.[11]
+
+For the same reason, later eggs in a clutch are more spotted than early ones as the female's store of calcium is depleted.
+
+The color of individual eggs is also genetically influenced, and appears to be inherited through the mother only, suggesting that the gene responsible for pigmentation is on the sex-determining W chromosome (female birds are WZ, males ZZ).
+
+It used to be thought that color was applied to the shell immediately before laying, but subsequent research shows that coloration is an integral part of the development of the shell, with the same protein responsible for depositing calcium carbonate, or protoporphyrins when there is a lack of that mineral.
+
+In species such as the common guillemot, which nest in large groups, each female's eggs have very different markings, making it easier for females to identify their own eggs on the crowded cliff ledges on which they breed.
+
+Bird eggshells are diverse. For example:
+
+Tiny pores in bird eggshells allow the embryo to breathe. The domestic hen's egg has around 7000 pores.[12]
+
+Some bird eggshells have a coating of vaterite spherules, which is a rare polymorph of calcium carbonate. In Greater Ani Crotophaga major this vaterite coating is thought to act as a shock absorber, protecting the calcite shell from fracture during incubation, such as colliding with other eggs in the nest.[13]
+
+Most bird eggs have an oval shape, with one end rounded and the other more pointed. This shape results from the egg being forced through the oviduct. Muscles contract the oviduct behind the egg, pushing it forward. The egg's wall is still shapeable, and the pointed end develops at the back. Long, pointy eggs are an incidental consequence of having a streamlined body typical of birds with strong flying abilities; flight narrows the oviduct, which changes the type of egg a bird can lay.[14] Cliff-nesting birds often have highly conical eggs. They are less likely to roll off, tending instead to roll around in a tight circle; this trait is likely to have arisen due to evolution via natural selection. In contrast, many hole-nesting birds have nearly spherical eggs.[15]
+
+Many animals feed on eggs. For example, principal predators of the black oystercatcher's eggs include raccoons, skunks, mink, river and sea otters, gulls, crows and foxes. The stoat (Mustela erminea) and long-tailed weasel (M. frenata) steal ducks' eggs. Snakes of the genera Dasypeltis and Elachistodon specialize in eating eggs.
+
+Brood parasitism occurs in birds when one species lays its eggs in the nest of another. In some cases, the host's eggs are removed or eaten by the female, or expelled by her chick. Brood parasites include the cowbirds and many Old World cuckoos.
+
+An average whooping crane egg is 102 mm (4.0 in) long and weighs 208 g (7.3 oz)
+
+Eurasian oystercatcher eggs camouflaged in the nest
+
+Egg of a senegal parrot, a bird that nests in tree holes, on a 1 cm (0.39 in) grid
+
+Eggs of ostrich, emu, kiwi and chicken
+
+Finch egg next to American dime
+
+Eggs of duck, goose, guineafowl and chicken
+
+Eggs of ostrich, cassowary, chicken, flamingo, pigeon and blackbird
+
+Egg of an emu
+
+Egg from a chicken compared to a 1 euro coin, great tit egg and a corn grain
+
+Bird nest with brown marbling eggs of a robin
+
+Like amphibians, amniotes are air-breathing vertebrates, but they have complex eggs or embryos, including an amniotic membrane. Amniotes include reptiles (including dinosaurs and their descendants, birds) and mammals.
+
+Reptile eggs are often rubbery and are always initially white. They are able to survive in the air. Often the sex of the developing embryo is determined by the temperature of the surroundings, with cooler temperatures favouring males. Not all reptiles lay eggs; some are viviparous ("live birth").
+
+Dinosaurs laid eggs, some of which have been preserved as petrified fossils.
+
+Among mammals, early extinct species laid eggs, as do platypuses and echidnas (spiny anteaters). Platypuses and two genera of echidna are Australian monotremes. Marsupial and placental mammals do not lay eggs, but their unborn young do have the complex tissues that identify amniotes.
+
+The eggs of the egg-laying mammals (the platypus and the echidnas) are macrolecithal eggs very much like those of reptiles. The eggs of marsupials are likewise macrolecithal, but rather small, and develop inside the body of the female, but do not form a placenta. The young are born at a very early stage, and can be classified as a "larva" in the biological sense.[16]
+
+In placental mammals, the egg itself is void of yolk, but develops an umbilical cord from structures that in reptiles would form the yolk sac. Receiving nutrients from the mother, the fetus completes the development while inside the uterus.
+
+Eggs are common among invertebrates, including insects, spiders, mollusks, and crustaceans.
+
+All sexually reproducing life, including both plants and animals, produces gametes. The male gamete cell, sperm, is usually motile whereas the female gamete cell, the ovum, is generally larger and sessile. The male and female gametes combine to produce the zygote cell. In multicellular organisms the zygote subsequently divides in an organised manner into smaller more specialised cells, so that this new individual develops into an embryo. In most animals the embryo is the sessile initial stage of the individual life cycle, and is followed by the emergence (that is, the hatching) of a motile stage. The zygote or the ovum itself or the sessile organic vessel containing the developing embryo may be called the egg.
+
+A recent proposal suggests that the phylotypic animal body plans originated in cell aggregates before the existence of an egg stage of development. Eggs, in this view, were later evolutionary innovations, selected for their role in ensuring genetic uniformity among the cells of incipient multicellular organisms.[17]
+
+Scientists often classify animal reproduction according to the degree of development that occurs before the new individuals are expelled from the adult body, and by the yolk which the egg provides to nourish the embryo.
+
+Vertebrate eggs can be classified by the relative amount of yolk. Simple eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal, medium-sized eggs with some yolk are called mesolecithal, and large eggs with a large concentrated yolk are called macrolecithal.[7] This classification of eggs is based on the eggs of chordates, though the basic principle extends to the whole animal kingdom.
+
+Small eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal. The yolk is evenly distributed, so the cleavage of the egg cell cuts through and divides the egg into cells of fairly similar sizes. In sponges and cnidarians the dividing eggs develop directly into a simple larva, rather like a morula with cilia. In cnidarians, this stage is called the planula, and either develops directly into the adult animals or forms new adult individuals through a process of budding.[18]
+
+Microlecithal eggs require minimal yolk mass. Such eggs are found in flatworms, roundworms, annelids, bivalves, echinoderms, the lancelet and in most marine arthropods.[19] In anatomically simple animals, such as cnidarians and flatworms, the fetal development can be quite short, and even microlecithal eggs can undergo direct development. These small eggs can be produced in large numbers. In animals with high egg mortality, microlecithal eggs are the norm, as in bivalves and marine arthropods. However, the latter are more complex anatomically than e.g. flatworms, and the small microlecithal eggs do not allow full development. Instead, the eggs hatch into larvae, which may be markedly different from the adult animal.
+
+In placental mammals, where the embryo is nourished by the mother throughout the whole fetal period, the egg is reduced in size to essentially a naked egg cell.
+
+Mesolecithal eggs have comparatively more yolk than the microlecithal eggs. The yolk is concentrated in one part of the egg (the vegetal pole), with the cell nucleus and most of the cytoplasm in the other (the animal pole). The cell cleavage is uneven, and mainly concentrated in the cytoplasma-rich animal pole.[3]
+
+The larger yolk content of the mesolecithal eggs allows for a longer fetal development. Comparatively anatomically simple animals will be able to go through the full development and leave the egg in a form reminiscent of the adult animal. This is the situation found in hagfish and some snails.[4][19] Animals with smaller size eggs or more advanced anatomy will still have a distinct larval stage, though the larva will be basically similar to the adult animal, as in lampreys, coelacanth and the salamanders.[3]
+
+Eggs with a large yolk are called macrolecithal. The eggs are usually few in number, and the embryos have enough food to go through full fetal development in most groups.[7] Macrolecithal eggs are only found in selected representatives of two groups: Cephalopods and vertebrates.[7][20]
+
+Macrolecithal eggs go through a different type of development than other eggs. Due to the large size of the yolk, the cell division can not split up the yolk mass. The fetus instead develops as a plate-like structure on top of the yolk mass, and only envelopes it at a later stage.[7] A portion of the yolk mass is still present as an external or semi-external yolk sac at hatching in many groups. This form of fetal development is common in bony fish, even though their eggs can be quite small. Despite their macrolecithal structure, the small size of the eggs does not allow for direct development, and the eggs hatch to a larval stage ("fry"). In terrestrial animals with macrolecithal eggs, the large volume to surface ratio necessitates structures to aid in transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and for storage of waste products so that the embryo does not suffocate or get poisoned from its own waste while inside the egg, see amniote.[9]
+
+In addition to bony fish and cephalopods, macrolecithal eggs are found in cartilaginous fish, reptiles, birds and monotreme mammals.[3] The eggs of the coelacanths can reach a size of 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter, and the young go through full development while in the uterus, living on the copious yolk.[21]
+
+Animals are commonly classified by their manner of reproduction, at the most general level distinguishing egg-laying (Latin. oviparous) from live-bearing (Latin. viviparous).
+
+These classifications are divided into more detail according to the development that occurs before the offspring are expelled from the adult's body. Traditionally:[22]
+
+The term hemotropic derives from the Latin for blood-feeding, contrasted with histotrophic for tissue-feeding.[27]
+
+Eggs laid by many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Popular choices for egg consumption are chicken, duck, roe, and caviar, but by a wide margin the egg most often humanly consumed is the chicken egg, typically unfertilized.
+
+According to the Kashrut, that is the set of Jewish dietary laws, kosher food may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law). Kosher meat and milk (or derivatives) cannot be mixed (Deuteronomy 14:21) or stored together. Eggs are considered pareve (neither meat nor dairy) despite being an animal product and can be mixed with either milk or kosher meat. Mayonnaise, for instance, is usually marked "pareve" despite by definition containing egg.[28]
+
+Many vaccines for infectious diseases are produced in fertile chicken eggs. The basis of this technology was the discovery in 1931 by Alice Miles Woodruff and Ernest William Goodpasture at Vanderbilt University that the rickettsia and viruses that cause a variety of diseases will grow in chicken embryos. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases.
+
+The egg is a symbol of new life and rebirth in many cultures around the world. Christians view Easter eggs as symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.[29] A popular Easter tradition in some parts of the world is the decoration of hard-boiled eggs (usually by dyeing, but often by hand-painting or spray-painting). Adults often hide the eggs for children to find, an activity known as an Easter egg hunt. A similar tradition of egg painting exists in areas of the world influenced by the culture of Persia. Before the spring equinox in the Persian New Year tradition (called Norouz), each family member decorates a hard-boiled egg and sets them together in a bowl. The tradition of a dancing egg is held during the feast of Corpus Christi in Barcelona and other Catalan cities since the 16th century. It consists of an emptied egg, positioned over the water jet from a fountain, which starts turning without falling.[30]
+
+Although a food item, raw eggs are sometimes thrown at houses, cars, or people. This act, known commonly as "egging" in the various English-speaking countries, is a minor form of vandalism and, therefore, usually a criminal offense and is capable of damaging property (egg whites can degrade certain types of vehicle paint) as well as potentially causing serious eye injury. On Halloween, for example, trick or treaters have been known to throw eggs (and sometimes flour) at property or people from whom they received nothing.[citation needed] Eggs are also often thrown in protests, as they are inexpensive and nonlethal, yet very messy when broken.[31]
+
+Egg collecting was a popular hobby in some cultures, including among the first Australians. Traditionally, the embryo would be removed before a collector stored the egg shell.[32]
+
+Collecting eggs of wild birds is now banned by many jurisdictions, as the practice can threaten rare species. In the United Kingdom, the practice is prohibited by the Protection of Birds Act 1954 and Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.[33] On the other hand, ongoing underground trading is becoming a serious issue.[34]
+
+Since the protection of wild bird eggs was regulated, early collections have come to the museums as curiosities. For example, the Australian Museum hosts a collection of about 20,000 registered clutches of eggs,[35] and the collection in Western Australia Museum has been archived in a gallery.[36] Scientists regard egg collections as a good natural-history data, as the details recorded in the collectors' notes have helped them to understand birds' nesting behaviors.[37]
+
+Insect eggs, in this case those of the Emperor gum moth, are often laid on the underside of leaves.
+
+Fish eggs, such as these herring eggs are often transparent and fertilized after laying.
+
+Skates and some sharks have a uniquely shaped egg case called a mermaid's purse.
+
+A Testudo hermanni emerging fully developed from a reptilian egg.
+
+A Schistosoma mekongi egg.
+
+Eggs of Huffmanela hamo, a nematode parasite in a fish
+
+Eggs of various parasites (mainly nematodes) from wild primates

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+
+
+The egg is the organic vessel containing the zygote in which an embryo develops until it can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches. An egg results from fertilization of an egg cell. Most arthropods, vertebrates (excluding live-bearing mammals), and mollusks lay eggs, although some, such as scorpions, do not.
+
+Reptile eggs, bird eggs, and monotreme eggs are laid out of water and are surrounded by a protective shell, either flexible or inflexible. Eggs laid on land or in nests are usually kept within a warm and favorable temperature range while the embryo grows. When the embryo is adequately developed it hatches, i.e., breaks out of the egg's shell. Some embryos have a temporary egg tooth they use to crack, pip, or break the eggshell or covering.
+
+The largest recorded egg is from a whale shark and was 30 cm × 14 cm × 9 cm (11.8 in × 5.5 in × 3.5 in) in size.[1] Whale shark eggs typically hatch within the mother. At 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) and up to 17.8 cm × 14 cm (7.0 in × 5.5 in), the ostrich egg is the largest egg of any living bird,[2] though the extinct elephant bird and some non-avian dinosaurs laid larger eggs. The bee hummingbird produces the smallest known bird egg, which weighs half of a gram (around 0.02 oz). Some eggs laid by reptiles and most fish, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates can be even smaller.
+
+Reproductive structures similar to the egg in other kingdoms are termed "spores," or in spermatophytes "seeds," or in gametophytes "egg cells".
+
+Several major groups of animals typically have readily distinguishable eggs.
+
+The most common reproductive strategy for fish is known as oviparity, in which the female lays undeveloped eggs that are externally fertilized by a male. Typically large numbers of eggs are laid at one time (an adult female cod can produce 4–6 million eggs in one spawning) and the eggs are then left to develop without parental care. When the larvae hatch from the egg, they often carry the remains of the yolk in a yolk sac which continues to nourish the larvae for a few days as they learn how to swim. Once the yolk is consumed, there is a critical point after which they must learn how to hunt and feed or they will die.
+
+A few fish, notably the rays and most sharks use ovoviviparity in which the eggs are fertilized and develop internally. However, the larvae still grow inside the egg consuming the egg's yolk and without any direct nourishment from the mother. The mother then gives birth to relatively mature young. In certain instances, the physically most developed offspring will devour its smaller siblings for further nutrition while still within the mother's body. This is known as intrauterine cannibalism.
+
+In certain scenarios, some fish such as the hammerhead shark and reef shark are viviparous, with the egg being fertilized and developed internally, but with the mother also providing direct nourishment.
+
+The eggs of fish and amphibians are jellylike. Cartilaginous fish (sharks, skates, rays, chimaeras) eggs are fertilized internally and exhibit a wide variety of both internal and external embryonic development. Most fish species spawn eggs that are fertilized externally, typically with the male inseminating the eggs after the female lays them. These eggs do not have a shell and would dry out in the air. Even air-breathing amphibians lay their eggs in water, or in protective foam as with the Coast foam-nest treefrog, Chiromantis xerampelina.
+
+Bird eggs are laid by females and incubated for a time that varies according to the species; a single young hatches from each egg. Average clutch sizes range from one (as in condors) to about 17 (the grey partridge). Some birds lay eggs even when not fertilized (e.g. hens); it is not uncommon for pet owners to find their lone bird nesting on a clutch of unfertilized eggs, which are sometimes called wind-eggs.
+
+The default color of vertebrate eggs is the white of the calcium carbonate from which the shells are made, but some birds, mainly passerines, produce colored eggs. The pigment biliverdin and its zinc chelate give a green or blue ground color, and protoporphyrin produces reds and browns as a ground color or as spotting.
+
+Non-passerines typically have white eggs, except in some ground-nesting groups such as the Charadriiformes, sandgrouse and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and some parasitic cuckoos which have to match the passerine host's egg. Most passerines, in contrast, lay colored eggs, even if there is no need of cryptic colors.
+
+However some have suggested that the protoporphyrin markings on passerine eggs actually act to reduce brittleness by acting as a solid-state lubricant.[10] If there is insufficient calcium available in the local soil, the egg shell may be thin, especially in a circle around the broad end. Protoporphyrin speckling compensates for this, and increases inversely to the amount of calcium in the soil.[11]
+
+For the same reason, later eggs in a clutch are more spotted than early ones as the female's store of calcium is depleted.
+
+The color of individual eggs is also genetically influenced, and appears to be inherited through the mother only, suggesting that the gene responsible for pigmentation is on the sex-determining W chromosome (female birds are WZ, males ZZ).
+
+It used to be thought that color was applied to the shell immediately before laying, but subsequent research shows that coloration is an integral part of the development of the shell, with the same protein responsible for depositing calcium carbonate, or protoporphyrins when there is a lack of that mineral.
+
+In species such as the common guillemot, which nest in large groups, each female's eggs have very different markings, making it easier for females to identify their own eggs on the crowded cliff ledges on which they breed.
+
+Bird eggshells are diverse. For example:
+
+Tiny pores in bird eggshells allow the embryo to breathe. The domestic hen's egg has around 7000 pores.[12]
+
+Some bird eggshells have a coating of vaterite spherules, which is a rare polymorph of calcium carbonate. In Greater Ani Crotophaga major this vaterite coating is thought to act as a shock absorber, protecting the calcite shell from fracture during incubation, such as colliding with other eggs in the nest.[13]
+
+Most bird eggs have an oval shape, with one end rounded and the other more pointed. This shape results from the egg being forced through the oviduct. Muscles contract the oviduct behind the egg, pushing it forward. The egg's wall is still shapeable, and the pointed end develops at the back. Long, pointy eggs are an incidental consequence of having a streamlined body typical of birds with strong flying abilities; flight narrows the oviduct, which changes the type of egg a bird can lay.[14] Cliff-nesting birds often have highly conical eggs. They are less likely to roll off, tending instead to roll around in a tight circle; this trait is likely to have arisen due to evolution via natural selection. In contrast, many hole-nesting birds have nearly spherical eggs.[15]
+
+Many animals feed on eggs. For example, principal predators of the black oystercatcher's eggs include raccoons, skunks, mink, river and sea otters, gulls, crows and foxes. The stoat (Mustela erminea) and long-tailed weasel (M. frenata) steal ducks' eggs. Snakes of the genera Dasypeltis and Elachistodon specialize in eating eggs.
+
+Brood parasitism occurs in birds when one species lays its eggs in the nest of another. In some cases, the host's eggs are removed or eaten by the female, or expelled by her chick. Brood parasites include the cowbirds and many Old World cuckoos.
+
+An average whooping crane egg is 102 mm (4.0 in) long and weighs 208 g (7.3 oz)
+
+Eurasian oystercatcher eggs camouflaged in the nest
+
+Egg of a senegal parrot, a bird that nests in tree holes, on a 1 cm (0.39 in) grid
+
+Eggs of ostrich, emu, kiwi and chicken
+
+Finch egg next to American dime
+
+Eggs of duck, goose, guineafowl and chicken
+
+Eggs of ostrich, cassowary, chicken, flamingo, pigeon and blackbird
+
+Egg of an emu
+
+Egg from a chicken compared to a 1 euro coin, great tit egg and a corn grain
+
+Bird nest with brown marbling eggs of a robin
+
+Like amphibians, amniotes are air-breathing vertebrates, but they have complex eggs or embryos, including an amniotic membrane. Amniotes include reptiles (including dinosaurs and their descendants, birds) and mammals.
+
+Reptile eggs are often rubbery and are always initially white. They are able to survive in the air. Often the sex of the developing embryo is determined by the temperature of the surroundings, with cooler temperatures favouring males. Not all reptiles lay eggs; some are viviparous ("live birth").
+
+Dinosaurs laid eggs, some of which have been preserved as petrified fossils.
+
+Among mammals, early extinct species laid eggs, as do platypuses and echidnas (spiny anteaters). Platypuses and two genera of echidna are Australian monotremes. Marsupial and placental mammals do not lay eggs, but their unborn young do have the complex tissues that identify amniotes.
+
+The eggs of the egg-laying mammals (the platypus and the echidnas) are macrolecithal eggs very much like those of reptiles. The eggs of marsupials are likewise macrolecithal, but rather small, and develop inside the body of the female, but do not form a placenta. The young are born at a very early stage, and can be classified as a "larva" in the biological sense.[16]
+
+In placental mammals, the egg itself is void of yolk, but develops an umbilical cord from structures that in reptiles would form the yolk sac. Receiving nutrients from the mother, the fetus completes the development while inside the uterus.
+
+Eggs are common among invertebrates, including insects, spiders, mollusks, and crustaceans.
+
+All sexually reproducing life, including both plants and animals, produces gametes. The male gamete cell, sperm, is usually motile whereas the female gamete cell, the ovum, is generally larger and sessile. The male and female gametes combine to produce the zygote cell. In multicellular organisms the zygote subsequently divides in an organised manner into smaller more specialised cells, so that this new individual develops into an embryo. In most animals the embryo is the sessile initial stage of the individual life cycle, and is followed by the emergence (that is, the hatching) of a motile stage. The zygote or the ovum itself or the sessile organic vessel containing the developing embryo may be called the egg.
+
+A recent proposal suggests that the phylotypic animal body plans originated in cell aggregates before the existence of an egg stage of development. Eggs, in this view, were later evolutionary innovations, selected for their role in ensuring genetic uniformity among the cells of incipient multicellular organisms.[17]
+
+Scientists often classify animal reproduction according to the degree of development that occurs before the new individuals are expelled from the adult body, and by the yolk which the egg provides to nourish the embryo.
+
+Vertebrate eggs can be classified by the relative amount of yolk. Simple eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal, medium-sized eggs with some yolk are called mesolecithal, and large eggs with a large concentrated yolk are called macrolecithal.[7] This classification of eggs is based on the eggs of chordates, though the basic principle extends to the whole animal kingdom.
+
+Small eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal. The yolk is evenly distributed, so the cleavage of the egg cell cuts through and divides the egg into cells of fairly similar sizes. In sponges and cnidarians the dividing eggs develop directly into a simple larva, rather like a morula with cilia. In cnidarians, this stage is called the planula, and either develops directly into the adult animals or forms new adult individuals through a process of budding.[18]
+
+Microlecithal eggs require minimal yolk mass. Such eggs are found in flatworms, roundworms, annelids, bivalves, echinoderms, the lancelet and in most marine arthropods.[19] In anatomically simple animals, such as cnidarians and flatworms, the fetal development can be quite short, and even microlecithal eggs can undergo direct development. These small eggs can be produced in large numbers. In animals with high egg mortality, microlecithal eggs are the norm, as in bivalves and marine arthropods. However, the latter are more complex anatomically than e.g. flatworms, and the small microlecithal eggs do not allow full development. Instead, the eggs hatch into larvae, which may be markedly different from the adult animal.
+
+In placental mammals, where the embryo is nourished by the mother throughout the whole fetal period, the egg is reduced in size to essentially a naked egg cell.
+
+Mesolecithal eggs have comparatively more yolk than the microlecithal eggs. The yolk is concentrated in one part of the egg (the vegetal pole), with the cell nucleus and most of the cytoplasm in the other (the animal pole). The cell cleavage is uneven, and mainly concentrated in the cytoplasma-rich animal pole.[3]
+
+The larger yolk content of the mesolecithal eggs allows for a longer fetal development. Comparatively anatomically simple animals will be able to go through the full development and leave the egg in a form reminiscent of the adult animal. This is the situation found in hagfish and some snails.[4][19] Animals with smaller size eggs or more advanced anatomy will still have a distinct larval stage, though the larva will be basically similar to the adult animal, as in lampreys, coelacanth and the salamanders.[3]
+
+Eggs with a large yolk are called macrolecithal. The eggs are usually few in number, and the embryos have enough food to go through full fetal development in most groups.[7] Macrolecithal eggs are only found in selected representatives of two groups: Cephalopods and vertebrates.[7][20]
+
+Macrolecithal eggs go through a different type of development than other eggs. Due to the large size of the yolk, the cell division can not split up the yolk mass. The fetus instead develops as a plate-like structure on top of the yolk mass, and only envelopes it at a later stage.[7] A portion of the yolk mass is still present as an external or semi-external yolk sac at hatching in many groups. This form of fetal development is common in bony fish, even though their eggs can be quite small. Despite their macrolecithal structure, the small size of the eggs does not allow for direct development, and the eggs hatch to a larval stage ("fry"). In terrestrial animals with macrolecithal eggs, the large volume to surface ratio necessitates structures to aid in transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and for storage of waste products so that the embryo does not suffocate or get poisoned from its own waste while inside the egg, see amniote.[9]
+
+In addition to bony fish and cephalopods, macrolecithal eggs are found in cartilaginous fish, reptiles, birds and monotreme mammals.[3] The eggs of the coelacanths can reach a size of 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter, and the young go through full development while in the uterus, living on the copious yolk.[21]
+
+Animals are commonly classified by their manner of reproduction, at the most general level distinguishing egg-laying (Latin. oviparous) from live-bearing (Latin. viviparous).
+
+These classifications are divided into more detail according to the development that occurs before the offspring are expelled from the adult's body. Traditionally:[22]
+
+The term hemotropic derives from the Latin for blood-feeding, contrasted with histotrophic for tissue-feeding.[27]
+
+Eggs laid by many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Popular choices for egg consumption are chicken, duck, roe, and caviar, but by a wide margin the egg most often humanly consumed is the chicken egg, typically unfertilized.
+
+According to the Kashrut, that is the set of Jewish dietary laws, kosher food may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law). Kosher meat and milk (or derivatives) cannot be mixed (Deuteronomy 14:21) or stored together. Eggs are considered pareve (neither meat nor dairy) despite being an animal product and can be mixed with either milk or kosher meat. Mayonnaise, for instance, is usually marked "pareve" despite by definition containing egg.[28]
+
+Many vaccines for infectious diseases are produced in fertile chicken eggs. The basis of this technology was the discovery in 1931 by Alice Miles Woodruff and Ernest William Goodpasture at Vanderbilt University that the rickettsia and viruses that cause a variety of diseases will grow in chicken embryos. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases.
+
+The egg is a symbol of new life and rebirth in many cultures around the world. Christians view Easter eggs as symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.[29] A popular Easter tradition in some parts of the world is the decoration of hard-boiled eggs (usually by dyeing, but often by hand-painting or spray-painting). Adults often hide the eggs for children to find, an activity known as an Easter egg hunt. A similar tradition of egg painting exists in areas of the world influenced by the culture of Persia. Before the spring equinox in the Persian New Year tradition (called Norouz), each family member decorates a hard-boiled egg and sets them together in a bowl. The tradition of a dancing egg is held during the feast of Corpus Christi in Barcelona and other Catalan cities since the 16th century. It consists of an emptied egg, positioned over the water jet from a fountain, which starts turning without falling.[30]
+
+Although a food item, raw eggs are sometimes thrown at houses, cars, or people. This act, known commonly as "egging" in the various English-speaking countries, is a minor form of vandalism and, therefore, usually a criminal offense and is capable of damaging property (egg whites can degrade certain types of vehicle paint) as well as potentially causing serious eye injury. On Halloween, for example, trick or treaters have been known to throw eggs (and sometimes flour) at property or people from whom they received nothing.[citation needed] Eggs are also often thrown in protests, as they are inexpensive and nonlethal, yet very messy when broken.[31]
+
+Egg collecting was a popular hobby in some cultures, including among the first Australians. Traditionally, the embryo would be removed before a collector stored the egg shell.[32]
+
+Collecting eggs of wild birds is now banned by many jurisdictions, as the practice can threaten rare species. In the United Kingdom, the practice is prohibited by the Protection of Birds Act 1954 and Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.[33] On the other hand, ongoing underground trading is becoming a serious issue.[34]
+
+Since the protection of wild bird eggs was regulated, early collections have come to the museums as curiosities. For example, the Australian Museum hosts a collection of about 20,000 registered clutches of eggs,[35] and the collection in Western Australia Museum has been archived in a gallery.[36] Scientists regard egg collections as a good natural-history data, as the details recorded in the collectors' notes have helped them to understand birds' nesting behaviors.[37]
+
+Insect eggs, in this case those of the Emperor gum moth, are often laid on the underside of leaves.
+
+Fish eggs, such as these herring eggs are often transparent and fertilized after laying.
+
+Skates and some sharks have a uniquely shaped egg case called a mermaid's purse.
+
+A Testudo hermanni emerging fully developed from a reptilian egg.
+
+A Schistosoma mekongi egg.
+
+Eggs of Huffmanela hamo, a nematode parasite in a fish
+
+Eggs of various parasites (mainly nematodes) from wild primates

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+
+
+
+
+A. f. fulgens F. Cuvier, 1825
+A. f. styani Thomas, 1902[2]
+
+The red panda (Ailurus fulgens) is a mammal species native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List because the wild population is estimated at fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and continues to decline due to habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and inbreeding depression.[1] Despite its name, it is not closely related to the giant panda.[3]
+
+The red panda has reddish-brown fur, a long, shaggy tail, and a waddling gait due to its shorter front legs; it is roughly the size of a domestic cat, though with a longer body, and is somewhat heavier. It is arboreal and feeds mainly on bamboo, but also eats eggs, birds, and insects. It is a solitary animal, mainly active from dusk to dawn, and is largely sedentary during the day. It is also called the lesser panda, the red bear-cat, and the red cat-bear.[4]
+
+The red panda is the only living member of the genus Ailurus and the family Ailuridae. It has previously been placed in the raccoon and bear families, but the results of phylogenetic analysis provide strong support for its taxonomic classification in its own family, Ailuridae, which is part of the superfamily Musteloidea, along with the weasel, raccoon and skunk families.[5] Traditionally it was thought to consist of two subspecies.[6] However, results of genetic analysis indicate that there are probably two distinct red panda species, the Chinese red panda and the Himalayan red panda, which genetically diverged 0.22 million years ago.[7]
+
+The red panda has long, soft, reddish-brown fur on the upper parts, blackish fur on the lower parts, and a light face with tear markings and white badges similar to those of a raccoon, but each individual can have distinctive markings. Its skull is roundish with medium-sized upright ears, its nose is black, and its eyes are blackish. Its teeth are robust. Its long, bushy tail with six alternating transverse ochre rings provide balance and excellent camouflage in a habitat with moss- and lichen-covered trees. The legs are black and short with thick fur on the soles of the paws. This fur serves as thermal insulation on snow-covered or icy surfaces and conceals scent glands, which are also present on the anus.[8]
+
+The head and body length of a red panda measures 50 to 64 cm (20 to 25 in), and its tail is 28 to 59 cm (11 to 23 in) long. Males weigh 3.7 to 6.2 kg (8.2 to 13.7 lb) and females 3 to 6.0 kg (6.6 to 13.2 lb).[9]
+
+The red panda is specialized as a bamboo feeder with strong, curved and sharp semi-retractile claws[9] standing inward for grasping narrow tree branches, leaves, and fruit. Like the giant panda, it has a "false thumb", which is an extension of the wrist bone. When descending a tree head-first, the red panda rotates its ankle to control its descent, one of the few climbing species to do so.[10]
+
+The red panda is endemic to the temperate forests of the Himalayas, and ranges from the foothills of western Nepal to China in the east.[11] Its easternmost limit is the Qinling Mountains of the Shaanxi Province in China. Its range includes southern Tibet, Sikkim and Assam in India, Bhutan, the northern mountains of Burma, and in south-western China, in the Hengduan Mountains of Sichuan and the Gongshan Mountains in Yunnan. It may also live in south-west Tibet and northern Arunachal Pradesh, but this has not been documented. Locations with the highest density of red pandas include an area in the Himalayas that has been proposed as having been a refuge for a variety of endemic species in the Pleistocene. The distribution range of the red panda should be considered disjunct, rather than continuous.[9] A disjunct population inhabits the Meghalaya Plateau of north-eastern India.[12]
+
+The red panda lives between 2,200 and 4,800 m (7,200 and 15,700 ft) altitude, inhabiting areas of moderate temperature between 10 and 25 °C (50 and 77 °F) with little annual change. It prefers mountainous mixed deciduous and conifer forests, especially with old trees and dense understories of bamboo.[9][11]
+
+During a survey in the 1970s, signs of red pandas were found in Nepal's Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve.[13] Their presence was confirmed in spring 2007 when four red pandas were sighted at elevations ranging from 3,220 to 3,610 m (10,560 to 11,840 ft).[14] Its westernmost distribution is in Rara National Park.[15][16] In 2018, red pandas were sighted at elevations of 3,150–3,650 m (10,330–11,980 ft) in Nepal's Lamjung District.[17]
+
+The red panda population in Sichuan Province is larger and more stable than the Yunnan population, suggesting a southward expansion from Sichuan into Yunnan in the Holocene.[18]
+The red panda has become extirpated from the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Qinghai.[19]
+
+The red panda is territorial; it is solitary except during mating season. It is generally quiet except for some twittering, tweeting, and whistling communication sounds. It has been reported to be both nocturnal and crepuscular, sleeping on tree branches or in tree hollows during the day and increasing its activity in the late afternoon and early evening hours. It sleeps stretched out on a branch with legs dangling when it is hot, and curled up with its tail over the face when it is cold.[9] It is very heat-sensitive, with an optimal "well-being" temperature between 17 and 25 °C (63 and 77 °F).[20]
+
+Shortly after waking, red pandas clean their fur somewhat like a cat would, licking their front paws and then rubbing their backs, torsos, and sides. They also rub their backs and bellies along the sides of trees or rocks. Then they patrol their territories, marking with urine and a weak musk-smelling secretion from their anal glands. They search for food running along the ground or through the trees. Red pandas may use their forepaws alternately to bring food to their mouths or place food directly into their mouths.[9]
+
+Predators of the red panda include the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), mustelids, and humans. If they feel threatened or sense danger, they may try to escape by climbing a rock column or tree. If they can no longer flee, they stand on their hind legs to make themselves appear larger and use the sharp claws on their front paws to defend themselves. A red panda became a visitor attraction in Japan for his ability to stand upright for ten seconds at a time.[21]
+
+Red pandas are excellent climbers, and forage largely in trees. They eat mostly bamboo, and may eat small mammals, birds, eggs, flowers, and berries. In captivity, they were observed to eat birds, flowers, maple and mulberry leaves, and bark and fruits of maple, beech, and mulberry.[9]
+
+Like the giant panda, they cannot digest cellulose, so they must consume a large volume of bamboo to survive. Their diets consist of about two-thirds bamboo, but they also eat mushrooms, roots, acorns, lichens, and grasses. Occasionally, they supplement their diets with fish and insects. They do little more than eat and sleep due to their low-calorie diets.[22][23]
+
+Bamboo shoots are more easily digested than leaves, exhibiting the highest digestibility in summer and autumn, intermediate digestibility in the spring, and lowest digestibility in the winter. These variations correlate with the nutrient contents in the bamboo. Red pandas process bamboo poorly, especially the cellulose and cell wall components. This implies microbial digestion plays only a minor role in their digestive strategy. To survive on this poor-quality diet, they have to eat the high-quality sections of the bamboo plant, such as the tender leaves and shoots, in large quantities, over 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) of fresh leaves and 4 kg (8.8 lb) of fresh shoots daily. This food passes through the digestive tract fairly rapidly (about 2–4 hr) so as to maximize daily nutrient intake.[24] Red pandas can taste artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, and are the only nonprimates known to be able to do so.[25]
+
+Red pandas are able to reproduce at around 18 months of age, and are fully mature at two to three years. Adults rarely interact in the wild except to mate. Both sexes may mate with more than one partner during the mating season from mid-January to early March.[26] A few days before birth, females begin to collect material, such as brushwood, grass, and leaves; to build a nest, which is normally located in a hollow tree or a rock crevice. After a gestation period of 112 to 158 days, the female gives birth in mid-June to late July to one to four (usually 1–2) blind and deaf cubs weighing 110 to 130 g (3.9 to 4.6 oz) each.[9]
+
+After birth, the mother cleans the cubs, and can then recognize each by their smell. At first, she spends 60% to 90% of her time with the cubs. After the first week, the mother starts spending more time outside the nest, returning every few hours to nurse and groom the cubs. She moves the young frequently among several nests, all of which she keeps clean. The cubs start to open their eyes at about 18 days of age. By about 90 days, they achieve full adult fur and coloring, and begin to venture out of the nest. They also start eating solid foods at this point, weaning at around six to eight months of age. The cubs stay with their mother until the next litter is born in the following summer. Males rarely help raise the young, and only if they live in pairs or in small groups.[9]
+
+A red panda's lifespan ranges between eight and 10 years, but individuals have been known to reach 15 years.[27]
+
+The primary threats to red pandas are direct harvest from the wild, live or dead, competition with domestic livestock resulting in habitat degradation, and deforestation resulting in habitat loss or fragmentation. The relative importance of these factors is different in each region, and is not well understood.[11] For instance, in India, the biggest threat seems to be habitat loss followed by poaching, while in China, the biggest threat seems to be hunting and poaching.[1] A 40% decrease in red panda populations has been reported in China over the last 50 years, and populations in western Himalayan areas are considered to be lower.[19]
+
+Deforestation can inhibit the spread of red pandas and exacerbate the natural population subdivision by topography and ecology, leading to severe fragmentation of the remaining wild population. Fewer than 40 animals in four separate groups share resources with humans in Nepal's Langtang National Park, where only 6% of 1,710 km2 (660 sq mi) is preferred red panda habitat. Although direct competition for food with domestic livestock is not significant, livestock can depress bamboo growth by trampling.[28]
+
+Small groups of animals with little opportunity for exchange between them face the risk of inbreeding, decreased genetic diversity, and even extinction. In addition, clearcutting for firewood or agriculture, including hillside terracing, removes old trees that provide maternal dens and decreases the ability of some species of bamboo to regenerate.[11]
+
+In south-west China, red pandas are hunted for their fur, especially for the highly valued bushy tails, from which hats are produced. In these areas, the fur is often used for local cultural ceremonies. In weddings, the bridegroom traditionally carries the hide. The "good-luck charm" red panda-tail hats are also used by local newly-weds.[19] This practice may be quite old, as the red panda seems to be depicted in a 13th-century Chinese pen-and-ink scroll showing a hunting scene. Little or no mention of the red panda is made in the culture and folklore of Nepal.[29]
+
+In the past, red pandas were captured and sold to zoos. In an article appearing in the International Zoo News in 1969, one reported he personally had handled 350 red pandas in 17 years.[30]
+
+Due to CITES, this zoo harvest has decreased substantially in recent years, but poaching continues, and red pandas are often sold to private collectors at exorbitant prices. In some parts of Nepal and India, red pandas are kept as pets.[31]
+
+The red panda has a naturally low birth rate (usually one single or twin birth per year), and a high death rate in the wild[citation needed].
+
+The red panda is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2008 because the global population is estimated at about 10,000 individuals, with a decreasing population trend; only about half of the total area of potential habitat of 142,000 km2 (55,000 sq mi) is actually being used by the species. Due to its shy and secretive nature, and its largely nocturnal habits, observation of red pandas is difficult. Therefore, population figures in the wild are determined by population density estimates and not direct counts. It is protected in all range countries, and hunting is illegal. It is listed in CITES Appendix I.[1]
+
+Worldwide population estimates range from fewer than 2,500[26] to between 16,000 and 20,000 individuals.[12] In 1999, the total population in China was estimated at between 3,000 and 7,000 individuals.[19] In 2001, the wild population in India was estimated at between 5,000 and 6,000 individuals.[12] Estimates for Nepal indicate only a few hundred individuals.[32]
+Reliable population numbers are hard to find, partly because other animals have been mistaken for the red panda. For instance, one report from Myanmar stated that red pandas were still fairly common in some areas; however, the accompanying photographic proof of the "red panda" was in fact a viverrid species.[33]
+
+Conservation efforts are highly variable between countries:
+
+A community-managed forest in Ilam District of eastern Nepal is home to 15 red pandas which generate household income through tourism activities, including homestays. Villagers in the high-altitude areas of Arunachal Pradesh have formed the Pangchen Red Panda Conservation Alliance comprising five villages with a community-conserved forest area of 200 km2 (77 sq mi) at an altitude of 2,500 m (8,200 ft) to over 4,000 m (13,000 ft).[35]
+
+The international red panda studbook is currently managed at Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands. In cooperation with the International Red Panda Management Group, they coordinate the Species Survival Plan in North America, the European Endangered Species Programme in Europe, and other captive-breeding programs in Australia, India, Japan, and China. As of 2006, more than 800 individuals were kept in zoos and parks around the world. Of these, 511 individuals of the Himalayan red panda were kept in 173 institutions[36] and 306 individuals of Styan's red panda were kept in 81 institutions.[37]
+Since 2009, the North American Red Panda Species Survival Plan is coordinated at the Knoxville Zoo, which by 2011 had 101 red panda births. Only the Rotterdam Zoo has had more captive births worldwide.[36][37]
+
+The Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling successfully released four captive-bred red pandas to the wild in August and November 2003.[38]
+
+The most often cited example of keeping red pandas as pets is the case of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. Pandas were presented to her family as a gift, and they were then housed in "a special tree house".[39]
+
+Ailurus fulgens was the scientific name proposed by Frédéric Cuvier in 1825, who described a zoological specimen sent by Alfred Duvaucel "from the mountains north of India". He was the first to also use the vernacular name panda.[40][41] In the 19th and 20th centuries, the following specimens were described:
+
+Pocock distinguished A. f. styani from A. f. fulgens by its longer winter coat and greater blackness of the pelage, bigger skull, more strongly curved forehead, and more robust teeth. His description is based on skulls and skins collected in Sichuan, Myitkyina District, close to the border of Yunnan, and Upper Burma.[8]
+
+Two subspecies are usually recognised, although results from a recent genomic study has suggested that these should be considered separate species:[1][7]
+
+The Brahmaputra River is often considered the natural barrier between the two subspecies, where it makes a curve around the eastern end of the Himalayas, although some authors suggest A. f. fulgens extends farther eastward into China.[43]
+
+The name Ailurus fulgens refulgens is sometimes incorrectly used for A. f. styani. This stems from a lapsus made by Henri Milne-Edwards in 1874.[44] making A. f. refulgens a nomen nudum.[43] This has been corrected in later publications.[45][46]
+
+At various times, the red panda was placed in the Procyonidae, Ursidae, with Ailuropoda (giant panda) in the Ailuropodinae (until this family was moved into the Ursidae), and into its own family, the Ailuridae. This uncertainty comes from difficulty in determining whether certain characteristics of Ailurus are phylogenetically conservative or are derived and convergent with species of similar ecological habits.[9]
+
+Evidence based on the fossil record, serology, karyology, behavior, anatomy, and reproduction reflect closer affinities with Procyonidae than Ursidae. However, ecological and foraging specializations and distinct geographical distribution in relation to modern procyonids support classification in the separate family Ailuridae.[6][9][47]
+
+Recent molecular systematic DNA research also places the red panda into its own family, Ailuridae, a part of the broad superfamily Musteloidea that also includes the mephitids (skunks), procyonids (raccoons), and mustelids (weasels).[5][47][48] According to the most recent phylogenetic studies, the red panda's closest relatives within the Musteloidea superfamily are the procyonids and mustelids.[49]
+
+It is not a bear, nor closely related to the giant panda, nor a raccoon, nor a lineage of uncertain affinities. Rather it is a basal lineage of musteloid, with a long history of independence from its closest relatives (skunks, raccoons, and otters/weasels/badgers).
+
+The red panda is considered a living fossil and only distantly related to the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), as it is naturally more closely related to the other members of the superfamily Musteloidea to which it belongs. The common ancestor of both pandas (which also was an ancestor for all living bears; pinnipeds like seals and walruses; and members of the family Musteloidea like weasels and otters) can be traced back to the Paleogene period tens of millions of years ago, with a wide distribution across Eurasia.
+
+Fossils of the extinct red panda Parailurus anglicus were excavated in sites from China in the east to Britain in the west.[50] In 1977, a single tooth of Parailurus was discovered in the Pliocene Ringold Formation of Washington. This first North American record is almost identical to European specimens and indicates the immigration of this species from Asia.[51] In 2004, a tooth from a red panda species never before recorded in North America was discovered at the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. The tooth dates from 4.5–7 million years ago. This species, described as Pristinailurus bristoli, indicates that a second, more primitive ailurine lineage inhabited North America during the Miocene. Cladistic analysis suggests that Parailurus and Ailurus are sister taxa.[50][52] Additional fossils of Pristinailurus bristoli were discovered at the Gray Fossil Site in 2010 and in 2012.[53][54]
+The discovery in Spain of the postcranial remains of Simocyon batalleri, a Miocene relative to the red panda, supports a sister-group relationship between red pandas and bears. The discovery suggests the red panda's "false thumb" was an adaptation to arboreal locomotion — independent of the giant panda's adaptation to manipulate bamboo — one of the most dramatic cases of convergent evolution among vertebrates.[55]
+
+In 2020, results of a phylogenetic analysis of red panda samples showed that red pandas in China and the Himalayas were separated by a river about 250,000 years ago. Therefore, the two subspecies should be treated as distinct species. The analysed samples showed high levels of population structure across the red panda's range.[7] However, the results of this research should be treated with caution because of the sampling gap of >500 km between the two proposed species, and the lack of isolation-by-distance and morphometric analyses. Additionally, the use of the phylogenetic species concept for species delimitation in mammals has been associated with the unnecessary splitting of subspecies into species.[56][57]
+
+Ailurus is adopted from the ancient Greek word αἴλουρος (ailouros), meaning "cat".[58] The specific epithet fulgens is Latin for "shining, bright".[59][60]
+
+Panda is a Roman goddess of peace and travellers, who was called upon before starting a difficult journey.[61]
+
+The Lepcha call it sak nam. In Nepal, it is called bhalu biralo (bear-cat) and habre. The Sherpa people of Nepal and Sikkim call it ye niglva ponva and wah donka.[62] The word wậː is Sunuwari meaning bear; in Tamang language, a small, red bear is called tāwām.[63] In the Kanchenjunga region of eastern Nepal, the Limbu people know red pandas as kaala (literally "dark") because of their underside pelage; villagers of Tibetan origin call them hoptongar.[64]
+
+Additionally, Pocock lists the vernacular names ye and nigálya ponya (Nepal); thokya and thongwa (Limbu); oakdonga or wakdonka and woker (Bhotia); saknam sunam (Lepcha).[8] Nigálya may originate from the Nepali word निङालो niṅālo or nĩgālo, a small bamboo, Arundinaria intermedia, but also refers to a kind of small leopard, or cat-bear.[65] The word pónya may originate from the Nepali पञ्जा pajā ("claw") or पौँजा paũjā ("paw").[66]
+'Poonya' also means "eater of bamboo".[67] The name panda could originate from panjā.[68]
+
+In modern Chinese, the red panda is called xiăoxióngmāo (小熊猫 and 小熊貓, lesser or small panda, or literally "little bear cat"),[69] or 红熊猫/紅熊貓 (hóngxióngmāo, red panda or literally "red bear cat").[70]
+
+In English, the red panda is also called the "lesser panda", "true panda" and "common panda".[71][72][73]
+
+The first known written record of the red panda occurs in a 13th-century Chinese scroll depicting a hunting scene between hunters and the red panda.[29]
+
+The red panda was recognized as the state animal of Sikkim in the early 1990s,[74] and was the mascot of the Darjeeling Tea Festival.[29]
+
+In 2005, Babu, a male red panda at Birmingham Nature Centre in Birmingham, England, escaped[75] and briefly became a media celebrity,[75][76] before being recaptured. He was subsequently voted "Brummie of the Year", the first animal to receive this honor.[75][76]
+Rusty, a male red panda at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, similarly attracted media attention when he briefly escaped in 2013.[77][78]
+
+The name of the open-source Firefox web browser is said to have been derived from a nickname of the red panda: "fire fox".[79][80]
+
+An anthropomorphic red panda was featured as Master Shifu, the kung fu teacher, in the 2008 film Kung Fu Panda, and its sequels Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011 and Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016.[81] The red panda Futa inspired the character of Pabu, the so-called "fire ferret" animal companion (primarily of Bolin), in the U.S. animated TV series The Legend of Korra.[82]
+
+Jetstar Japan uses a red panda mascot character named "Jetta" (ジェッ太).[83]
+
+An anthropomorphic red panda, Retsuko, is the main character of the TV anime and Netflix original series Aggretsuko.[84]
+

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+
+
+The egg is the organic vessel containing the zygote in which an embryo develops until it can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches. An egg results from fertilization of an egg cell. Most arthropods, vertebrates (excluding live-bearing mammals), and mollusks lay eggs, although some, such as scorpions, do not.
+
+Reptile eggs, bird eggs, and monotreme eggs are laid out of water and are surrounded by a protective shell, either flexible or inflexible. Eggs laid on land or in nests are usually kept within a warm and favorable temperature range while the embryo grows. When the embryo is adequately developed it hatches, i.e., breaks out of the egg's shell. Some embryos have a temporary egg tooth they use to crack, pip, or break the eggshell or covering.
+
+The largest recorded egg is from a whale shark and was 30 cm × 14 cm × 9 cm (11.8 in × 5.5 in × 3.5 in) in size.[1] Whale shark eggs typically hatch within the mother. At 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) and up to 17.8 cm × 14 cm (7.0 in × 5.5 in), the ostrich egg is the largest egg of any living bird,[2] though the extinct elephant bird and some non-avian dinosaurs laid larger eggs. The bee hummingbird produces the smallest known bird egg, which weighs half of a gram (around 0.02 oz). Some eggs laid by reptiles and most fish, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates can be even smaller.
+
+Reproductive structures similar to the egg in other kingdoms are termed "spores," or in spermatophytes "seeds," or in gametophytes "egg cells".
+
+Several major groups of animals typically have readily distinguishable eggs.
+
+The most common reproductive strategy for fish is known as oviparity, in which the female lays undeveloped eggs that are externally fertilized by a male. Typically large numbers of eggs are laid at one time (an adult female cod can produce 4–6 million eggs in one spawning) and the eggs are then left to develop without parental care. When the larvae hatch from the egg, they often carry the remains of the yolk in a yolk sac which continues to nourish the larvae for a few days as they learn how to swim. Once the yolk is consumed, there is a critical point after which they must learn how to hunt and feed or they will die.
+
+A few fish, notably the rays and most sharks use ovoviviparity in which the eggs are fertilized and develop internally. However, the larvae still grow inside the egg consuming the egg's yolk and without any direct nourishment from the mother. The mother then gives birth to relatively mature young. In certain instances, the physically most developed offspring will devour its smaller siblings for further nutrition while still within the mother's body. This is known as intrauterine cannibalism.
+
+In certain scenarios, some fish such as the hammerhead shark and reef shark are viviparous, with the egg being fertilized and developed internally, but with the mother also providing direct nourishment.
+
+The eggs of fish and amphibians are jellylike. Cartilaginous fish (sharks, skates, rays, chimaeras) eggs are fertilized internally and exhibit a wide variety of both internal and external embryonic development. Most fish species spawn eggs that are fertilized externally, typically with the male inseminating the eggs after the female lays them. These eggs do not have a shell and would dry out in the air. Even air-breathing amphibians lay their eggs in water, or in protective foam as with the Coast foam-nest treefrog, Chiromantis xerampelina.
+
+Bird eggs are laid by females and incubated for a time that varies according to the species; a single young hatches from each egg. Average clutch sizes range from one (as in condors) to about 17 (the grey partridge). Some birds lay eggs even when not fertilized (e.g. hens); it is not uncommon for pet owners to find their lone bird nesting on a clutch of unfertilized eggs, which are sometimes called wind-eggs.
+
+The default color of vertebrate eggs is the white of the calcium carbonate from which the shells are made, but some birds, mainly passerines, produce colored eggs. The pigment biliverdin and its zinc chelate give a green or blue ground color, and protoporphyrin produces reds and browns as a ground color or as spotting.
+
+Non-passerines typically have white eggs, except in some ground-nesting groups such as the Charadriiformes, sandgrouse and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and some parasitic cuckoos which have to match the passerine host's egg. Most passerines, in contrast, lay colored eggs, even if there is no need of cryptic colors.
+
+However some have suggested that the protoporphyrin markings on passerine eggs actually act to reduce brittleness by acting as a solid-state lubricant.[10] If there is insufficient calcium available in the local soil, the egg shell may be thin, especially in a circle around the broad end. Protoporphyrin speckling compensates for this, and increases inversely to the amount of calcium in the soil.[11]
+
+For the same reason, later eggs in a clutch are more spotted than early ones as the female's store of calcium is depleted.
+
+The color of individual eggs is also genetically influenced, and appears to be inherited through the mother only, suggesting that the gene responsible for pigmentation is on the sex-determining W chromosome (female birds are WZ, males ZZ).
+
+It used to be thought that color was applied to the shell immediately before laying, but subsequent research shows that coloration is an integral part of the development of the shell, with the same protein responsible for depositing calcium carbonate, or protoporphyrins when there is a lack of that mineral.
+
+In species such as the common guillemot, which nest in large groups, each female's eggs have very different markings, making it easier for females to identify their own eggs on the crowded cliff ledges on which they breed.
+
+Bird eggshells are diverse. For example:
+
+Tiny pores in bird eggshells allow the embryo to breathe. The domestic hen's egg has around 7000 pores.[12]
+
+Some bird eggshells have a coating of vaterite spherules, which is a rare polymorph of calcium carbonate. In Greater Ani Crotophaga major this vaterite coating is thought to act as a shock absorber, protecting the calcite shell from fracture during incubation, such as colliding with other eggs in the nest.[13]
+
+Most bird eggs have an oval shape, with one end rounded and the other more pointed. This shape results from the egg being forced through the oviduct. Muscles contract the oviduct behind the egg, pushing it forward. The egg's wall is still shapeable, and the pointed end develops at the back. Long, pointy eggs are an incidental consequence of having a streamlined body typical of birds with strong flying abilities; flight narrows the oviduct, which changes the type of egg a bird can lay.[14] Cliff-nesting birds often have highly conical eggs. They are less likely to roll off, tending instead to roll around in a tight circle; this trait is likely to have arisen due to evolution via natural selection. In contrast, many hole-nesting birds have nearly spherical eggs.[15]
+
+Many animals feed on eggs. For example, principal predators of the black oystercatcher's eggs include raccoons, skunks, mink, river and sea otters, gulls, crows and foxes. The stoat (Mustela erminea) and long-tailed weasel (M. frenata) steal ducks' eggs. Snakes of the genera Dasypeltis and Elachistodon specialize in eating eggs.
+
+Brood parasitism occurs in birds when one species lays its eggs in the nest of another. In some cases, the host's eggs are removed or eaten by the female, or expelled by her chick. Brood parasites include the cowbirds and many Old World cuckoos.
+
+An average whooping crane egg is 102 mm (4.0 in) long and weighs 208 g (7.3 oz)
+
+Eurasian oystercatcher eggs camouflaged in the nest
+
+Egg of a senegal parrot, a bird that nests in tree holes, on a 1 cm (0.39 in) grid
+
+Eggs of ostrich, emu, kiwi and chicken
+
+Finch egg next to American dime
+
+Eggs of duck, goose, guineafowl and chicken
+
+Eggs of ostrich, cassowary, chicken, flamingo, pigeon and blackbird
+
+Egg of an emu
+
+Egg from a chicken compared to a 1 euro coin, great tit egg and a corn grain
+
+Bird nest with brown marbling eggs of a robin
+
+Like amphibians, amniotes are air-breathing vertebrates, but they have complex eggs or embryos, including an amniotic membrane. Amniotes include reptiles (including dinosaurs and their descendants, birds) and mammals.
+
+Reptile eggs are often rubbery and are always initially white. They are able to survive in the air. Often the sex of the developing embryo is determined by the temperature of the surroundings, with cooler temperatures favouring males. Not all reptiles lay eggs; some are viviparous ("live birth").
+
+Dinosaurs laid eggs, some of which have been preserved as petrified fossils.
+
+Among mammals, early extinct species laid eggs, as do platypuses and echidnas (spiny anteaters). Platypuses and two genera of echidna are Australian monotremes. Marsupial and placental mammals do not lay eggs, but their unborn young do have the complex tissues that identify amniotes.
+
+The eggs of the egg-laying mammals (the platypus and the echidnas) are macrolecithal eggs very much like those of reptiles. The eggs of marsupials are likewise macrolecithal, but rather small, and develop inside the body of the female, but do not form a placenta. The young are born at a very early stage, and can be classified as a "larva" in the biological sense.[16]
+
+In placental mammals, the egg itself is void of yolk, but develops an umbilical cord from structures that in reptiles would form the yolk sac. Receiving nutrients from the mother, the fetus completes the development while inside the uterus.
+
+Eggs are common among invertebrates, including insects, spiders, mollusks, and crustaceans.
+
+All sexually reproducing life, including both plants and animals, produces gametes. The male gamete cell, sperm, is usually motile whereas the female gamete cell, the ovum, is generally larger and sessile. The male and female gametes combine to produce the zygote cell. In multicellular organisms the zygote subsequently divides in an organised manner into smaller more specialised cells, so that this new individual develops into an embryo. In most animals the embryo is the sessile initial stage of the individual life cycle, and is followed by the emergence (that is, the hatching) of a motile stage. The zygote or the ovum itself or the sessile organic vessel containing the developing embryo may be called the egg.
+
+A recent proposal suggests that the phylotypic animal body plans originated in cell aggregates before the existence of an egg stage of development. Eggs, in this view, were later evolutionary innovations, selected for their role in ensuring genetic uniformity among the cells of incipient multicellular organisms.[17]
+
+Scientists often classify animal reproduction according to the degree of development that occurs before the new individuals are expelled from the adult body, and by the yolk which the egg provides to nourish the embryo.
+
+Vertebrate eggs can be classified by the relative amount of yolk. Simple eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal, medium-sized eggs with some yolk are called mesolecithal, and large eggs with a large concentrated yolk are called macrolecithal.[7] This classification of eggs is based on the eggs of chordates, though the basic principle extends to the whole animal kingdom.
+
+Small eggs with little yolk are called microlecithal. The yolk is evenly distributed, so the cleavage of the egg cell cuts through and divides the egg into cells of fairly similar sizes. In sponges and cnidarians the dividing eggs develop directly into a simple larva, rather like a morula with cilia. In cnidarians, this stage is called the planula, and either develops directly into the adult animals or forms new adult individuals through a process of budding.[18]
+
+Microlecithal eggs require minimal yolk mass. Such eggs are found in flatworms, roundworms, annelids, bivalves, echinoderms, the lancelet and in most marine arthropods.[19] In anatomically simple animals, such as cnidarians and flatworms, the fetal development can be quite short, and even microlecithal eggs can undergo direct development. These small eggs can be produced in large numbers. In animals with high egg mortality, microlecithal eggs are the norm, as in bivalves and marine arthropods. However, the latter are more complex anatomically than e.g. flatworms, and the small microlecithal eggs do not allow full development. Instead, the eggs hatch into larvae, which may be markedly different from the adult animal.
+
+In placental mammals, where the embryo is nourished by the mother throughout the whole fetal period, the egg is reduced in size to essentially a naked egg cell.
+
+Mesolecithal eggs have comparatively more yolk than the microlecithal eggs. The yolk is concentrated in one part of the egg (the vegetal pole), with the cell nucleus and most of the cytoplasm in the other (the animal pole). The cell cleavage is uneven, and mainly concentrated in the cytoplasma-rich animal pole.[3]
+
+The larger yolk content of the mesolecithal eggs allows for a longer fetal development. Comparatively anatomically simple animals will be able to go through the full development and leave the egg in a form reminiscent of the adult animal. This is the situation found in hagfish and some snails.[4][19] Animals with smaller size eggs or more advanced anatomy will still have a distinct larval stage, though the larva will be basically similar to the adult animal, as in lampreys, coelacanth and the salamanders.[3]
+
+Eggs with a large yolk are called macrolecithal. The eggs are usually few in number, and the embryos have enough food to go through full fetal development in most groups.[7] Macrolecithal eggs are only found in selected representatives of two groups: Cephalopods and vertebrates.[7][20]
+
+Macrolecithal eggs go through a different type of development than other eggs. Due to the large size of the yolk, the cell division can not split up the yolk mass. The fetus instead develops as a plate-like structure on top of the yolk mass, and only envelopes it at a later stage.[7] A portion of the yolk mass is still present as an external or semi-external yolk sac at hatching in many groups. This form of fetal development is common in bony fish, even though their eggs can be quite small. Despite their macrolecithal structure, the small size of the eggs does not allow for direct development, and the eggs hatch to a larval stage ("fry"). In terrestrial animals with macrolecithal eggs, the large volume to surface ratio necessitates structures to aid in transport of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and for storage of waste products so that the embryo does not suffocate or get poisoned from its own waste while inside the egg, see amniote.[9]
+
+In addition to bony fish and cephalopods, macrolecithal eggs are found in cartilaginous fish, reptiles, birds and monotreme mammals.[3] The eggs of the coelacanths can reach a size of 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter, and the young go through full development while in the uterus, living on the copious yolk.[21]
+
+Animals are commonly classified by their manner of reproduction, at the most general level distinguishing egg-laying (Latin. oviparous) from live-bearing (Latin. viviparous).
+
+These classifications are divided into more detail according to the development that occurs before the offspring are expelled from the adult's body. Traditionally:[22]
+
+The term hemotropic derives from the Latin for blood-feeding, contrasted with histotrophic for tissue-feeding.[27]
+
+Eggs laid by many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Popular choices for egg consumption are chicken, duck, roe, and caviar, but by a wide margin the egg most often humanly consumed is the chicken egg, typically unfertilized.
+
+According to the Kashrut, that is the set of Jewish dietary laws, kosher food may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law). Kosher meat and milk (or derivatives) cannot be mixed (Deuteronomy 14:21) or stored together. Eggs are considered pareve (neither meat nor dairy) despite being an animal product and can be mixed with either milk or kosher meat. Mayonnaise, for instance, is usually marked "pareve" despite by definition containing egg.[28]
+
+Many vaccines for infectious diseases are produced in fertile chicken eggs. The basis of this technology was the discovery in 1931 by Alice Miles Woodruff and Ernest William Goodpasture at Vanderbilt University that the rickettsia and viruses that cause a variety of diseases will grow in chicken embryos. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases.
+
+The egg is a symbol of new life and rebirth in many cultures around the world. Christians view Easter eggs as symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.[29] A popular Easter tradition in some parts of the world is the decoration of hard-boiled eggs (usually by dyeing, but often by hand-painting or spray-painting). Adults often hide the eggs for children to find, an activity known as an Easter egg hunt. A similar tradition of egg painting exists in areas of the world influenced by the culture of Persia. Before the spring equinox in the Persian New Year tradition (called Norouz), each family member decorates a hard-boiled egg and sets them together in a bowl. The tradition of a dancing egg is held during the feast of Corpus Christi in Barcelona and other Catalan cities since the 16th century. It consists of an emptied egg, positioned over the water jet from a fountain, which starts turning without falling.[30]
+
+Although a food item, raw eggs are sometimes thrown at houses, cars, or people. This act, known commonly as "egging" in the various English-speaking countries, is a minor form of vandalism and, therefore, usually a criminal offense and is capable of damaging property (egg whites can degrade certain types of vehicle paint) as well as potentially causing serious eye injury. On Halloween, for example, trick or treaters have been known to throw eggs (and sometimes flour) at property or people from whom they received nothing.[citation needed] Eggs are also often thrown in protests, as they are inexpensive and nonlethal, yet very messy when broken.[31]
+
+Egg collecting was a popular hobby in some cultures, including among the first Australians. Traditionally, the embryo would be removed before a collector stored the egg shell.[32]
+
+Collecting eggs of wild birds is now banned by many jurisdictions, as the practice can threaten rare species. In the United Kingdom, the practice is prohibited by the Protection of Birds Act 1954 and Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.[33] On the other hand, ongoing underground trading is becoming a serious issue.[34]
+
+Since the protection of wild bird eggs was regulated, early collections have come to the museums as curiosities. For example, the Australian Museum hosts a collection of about 20,000 registered clutches of eggs,[35] and the collection in Western Australia Museum has been archived in a gallery.[36] Scientists regard egg collections as a good natural-history data, as the details recorded in the collectors' notes have helped them to understand birds' nesting behaviors.[37]
+
+Insect eggs, in this case those of the Emperor gum moth, are often laid on the underside of leaves.
+
+Fish eggs, such as these herring eggs are often transparent and fertilized after laying.
+
+Skates and some sharks have a uniquely shaped egg case called a mermaid's purse.
+
+A Testudo hermanni emerging fully developed from a reptilian egg.
+
+A Schistosoma mekongi egg.
+
+Eggs of Huffmanela hamo, a nematode parasite in a fish
+
+Eggs of various parasites (mainly nematodes) from wild primates

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+
+A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
+
+Earth's volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major, rigid tectonic plates that float on a hotter, softer layer in its mantle.[1] Therefore, on Earth, volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and most are found underwater. For example, a mid-oceanic ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, e.g., in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of "plate hypothesis" volcanism.[2] Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes. These so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the core–mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth.  Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another.
+
+Large eruptions can affect ambient temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's  troposphere; historically, large volcanic eruptions have been followed by volcanic winters which have caused catastrophic famines.
+
+The word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology.[3] The study of volcanoes is called volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology.
+
+At the mid-oceanic ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as new oceanic crust is formed by the cooling and solidifying of hot molten rock. Because the crust is very thin at these ridges due to the pull of the tectonic plates, the release of pressure leads to adiabatic expansion (without transfer of heat or matter) and the partial melting of the mantle, causing volcanism and creating new oceanic crust. Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans; therefore, most volcanic activity on the Earth is submarine, forming new seafloor. Black smokers (also known as deep sea vents) are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea-level, volcanic islands are formed; for example, Iceland.
+
+Subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. In this case, the oceanic plate subducts, or submerges, under the continental plate, forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the melting temperature of the overlying mantle wedge, thus creating magma. This magma tends to be extremely  viscous because of its high silica content, so it often does not attain the surface but cools and solidifies at depth.  When it does reach the surface, however, a volcano is formed. Typical examples are Mount Etna and the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire.
+
+Hotspots are volcanic areas believed to be formed by mantle plumes, which are hypothesized to be columns of hot material rising from the core-mantle boundary in a fixed space that causes large-volume melting. Because tectonic plates move across them, each volcano becomes dormant and is eventually re-formed as the plate advances over the postulated plume. The Hawaiian Islands are said to have been formed in such a manner; so has the Snake River Plain, with the Yellowstone Caldera being the part of the North American plate above the hot spot. This theory, however, has been doubted.[2]
+
+The most common perception of a volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit; however, this describes just one of the many types of volcano.  The features of volcanoes are much more complicated and their structure and behavior depends on a number of factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic material (including lava and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can develop anywhere on the landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puʻu ʻŌʻō on a flank of Hawaii's Kīlauea.
+Other types of volcano include cryovolcanoes (or ice volcanoes), particularly on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune; and mud volcanoes, which are formations often not associated with known magmatic activity. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes except when the mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano.
+
+Volcanic fissure vents are flat, linear fractures through which lava emerges.
+
+Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent. They generally do not explode catastrophically. Since low-viscosity magma is typically low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common in oceanic than continental settings. The Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, and they are common in Iceland, as well.
+
+Lava domes are built by slow eruptions of highly viscous lava. They are sometimes formed within the crater of a previous volcanic eruption, as in the case of Mount Saint Helens, but can also form independently, as in the case of Lassen Peak. Like stratovolcanoes, they can produce violent, explosive eruptions, but their lava generally does not flow far from the originating vent.
+
+Cryptodomes are formed when viscous lava is forced upward causing the surface to bulge. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was an example; lava beneath the surface of the mountain created an upward bulge which slid down the north side of the mountain.
+
+Volcanic cones or cinder cones result from eruptions of mostly small pieces of scoria and pyroclastics (both resemble cinders, hence the name of this volcano type) that build up around the vent. These can be relatively short-lived eruptions that produce a cone-shaped hill perhaps 30 to 400 meters high. Most cinder cones erupt only once. Cinder cones may form as flank vents on larger volcanoes, or occur on their own.  Parícutin in Mexico and Sunset Crater in Arizona are examples of cinder cones.  In New Mexico, Caja del Rio is a volcanic field of over 60 cinder cones.
+
+Based on satellite images it was suggested that cinder cones might occur on other terrestrial bodies in the Solar system too; on the surface of Mars and the Moon.[4][5][6][7]
+
+Stratovolcanoes or composite volcanoes are tall conical mountains composed of lava flows and other ejecta in alternate layers, the strata that gives rise to the name. Stratovolcanoes are also known as composite volcanoes because they are created from multiple structures during different kinds of eruptions. Strato/composite volcanoes are made of cinders, ash, and lava. Cinders and ash pile on top of each other, lava flows on top of the ash, where it cools and hardens, and then the process repeats. Classic examples include Mount Fuji in Japan, Mayon Volcano in the Philippines, and Mount Vesuvius and Stromboli in Italy.
+
+Throughout recorded history, ash produced by the explosive eruption of stratovolcanoes has posed the greatest volcanic hazard to civilizations. Not only do stratovolcanoes have greater pressure buildup from the underlying lava flow than shield volcanoes, but their fissure vents and monogenetic volcanic fields (volcanic cones) also have more powerful eruptions because they are often under extension. They are also steeper than shield volcanoes, with slopes of 30–35° compared to slopes of generally 5–10°, and their loose tephra are material for dangerous lahars.[8] Large pieces of tephra are called volcanic bombs. Big bombs can measure more than 4 feet(1.2 meters) across and weigh several tons.[9]
+
+A supervolcano usually has a large caldera and can produce devastation on an enormous, sometimes continental, scale. Such volcanoes are able to severely cool global temperatures for many years after the eruption due to the huge volumes of sulfur and ash released into the atmosphere. They are the most dangerous type of volcano. Examples include Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park and Valles Caldera in New Mexico (both western United States); Lake Taupo in New Zealand; Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia; and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Because of the enormous area they may cover, supervolcanoes are hard to identify centuries after an eruption. Similarly, large igneous provinces are also considered supervolcanoes because of the vast amount of basalt lava erupted (even though the lava flow is non-explosive).
+
+Submarine volcanoes are common features of the ocean floor. In shallow water, active volcanoes disclose their presence by blasting steam and rocky debris high above the ocean's surface. In the ocean's deep, the tremendous weight of the water above prevents the explosive release of steam and gases; however, they can be detected by hydrophones and discoloration of water because of volcanic gases. Pillow lava is a common eruptive product of submarine volcanoes and is characterized by thick sequences of discontinuous pillow-shaped masses which form under water. Even large submarine eruptions may not disturb the ocean surface due to the rapid cooling effect and increased buoyancy of water (as compared to air) which often causes volcanic vents to form steep pillars on the ocean floor. Hydrothermal vents are common near these volcanoes, and some support peculiar ecosystems based on dissolved minerals. Over time, the formations created by submarine volcanoes may become so large that they break the ocean surface as new islands or floating pumice rafts.
+
+In 2018, a multitude of seismic signals were detected by earthquake monitoring agencies all over the world in May and June. They created a weird humming sound and some of the signals detected in November of that year had a duration of up to 20 minutes. An oceanographic campaign in May 2019 showed that the previously mysterious humming noises were caused by the formation of an underwater volcano off the coast of Mayotte.[10]
+
+Subglacial volcanoes develop underneath icecaps. They are made up of flat lava which flows at the top of extensive pillow lavas and palagonite. When the icecap melts, the lava on top collapses, leaving a flat-topped mountain. These volcanoes are also called table mountains, tuyas, or (uncommonly) mobergs. Very good examples of this type of volcano can be seen in Iceland, however, there are also tuyas in British Columbia. The origin of the term comes from Tuya Butte, which is one of the several tuyas in the area of the Tuya River and Tuya Range in northern British Columbia. Tuya Butte was the first such landform analyzed and so its name has entered the geological literature for this kind of volcanic formation. The Tuya Mountains Provincial Park was recently established to protect this unusual landscape, which lies north of Tuya Lake and south of the Jennings River near the boundary with the Yukon Territory.
+
+Mud volcanoes or mud domes are formations created by geo-excreted liquids and gases, although there are several processes which may cause such activity. The largest structures are 10 kilometers in diameter and reach 700 meters high.
+
+Another way of classifying volcanoes is by the composition of material erupted (lava), since this affects the shape of the volcano. Lava can be broadly classified into four different compositions:[11]
+
+Two types of lava are named according to the surface texture: ʻAʻa (pronounced [ˈʔaʔa]) and pāhoehoe ([paːˈho.eˈho.e]), both Hawaiian words. ʻAʻa is characterized by a rough, clinkery surface and is the typical texture of viscous lava flows. However, even basaltic or mafic flows can be erupted as ʻaʻa flows, particularly if the eruption rate is high and the slope is steep.
+
+Pāhoehoe is characterized by its smooth and often ropey or wrinkly surface and is generally formed from more fluid lava flows. Usually, only mafic flows will erupt as pāhoehoe, since they often erupt at higher temperatures or have the proper chemical make-up to allow them to flow with greater fluidity.
+
+A popular way of classifying magmatic volcanoes is by their frequency of eruption[according to whom?], with those that erupt regularly called active, those that have erupted in historical times but are now quiet called dormant or inactive, and those that have not erupted in historical times called extinct. However, these popular classifications—extinct in particular—are practically meaningless to scientists. They use classifications which refer to a particular volcano's formative and eruptive processes and resulting shapes.
+
+There is no consensus among volcanologists on how to define an "active" volcano. The lifespan of a volcano can vary from months to several million years, making such a distinction sometimes meaningless when compared to the lifespans of humans or even civilizations. For example, many of Earth's volcanoes have erupted dozens of times in the past few thousand years but are not currently showing signs of eruption. Given the long lifespan of such volcanoes, they are very active. By human lifespans, however, they are not.
+
+Scientists usually consider a volcano to be erupting or likely to erupt if it is currently erupting, or showing signs of unrest such as unusual earthquake activity or significant new gas emissions. Most scientists consider a volcano active if it has erupted in the last 10,000 years (Holocene times)—the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program uses this definition of active. Most volcanoes are situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire.[12] An estimated 500 million people live near active volcanoes.[12]
+
+Historical time (or recorded history) is another timeframe for active.[13][14] The Catalogue of the Active Volcanoes of the World, published by the International Association of Volcanology, uses this definition, by which there are more than 500 active volcanoes.[13] However, the span of recorded history differs from region to region. In China and the Mediterranean, it reaches back nearly 3,000 years, but in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada, it reaches back less than 300 years, and in Hawaii and New Zealand, only around 200 years.[13]
+
+As of 2013, the following are considered Earth's most active volcanoes:[15]
+
+As of 2010[update], the longest ongoing (but not necessarily continuous) volcanic eruptive phases are:[16]
+
+Other very active volcanoes include:
+
+Extinct volcanoes are those that scientists consider unlikely to erupt again because the volcano no longer has a magma supply. Examples of extinct volcanoes are many volcanoes on the Hawaiian – Emperor seamount chain in the Pacific Ocean (although some volcanoes at the eastern end of the chain are active), Hohentwiel in Germany, Shiprock in New Mexico, Zuidwal volcano in the Netherlands and many volcanoes in Italy like Monte Vulture. Edinburgh Castle in Scotland is famously located atop an extinct volcano. Otherwise, whether a volcano is truly extinct is often difficult to determine. Since "supervolcano" calderas can have eruptive lifespans sometimes measured in millions of years, a caldera that has not produced an eruption in tens of thousands of years is likely to be considered dormant instead of extinct. Some volcanologists refer to extinct volcanoes as inactive, though the term is now more commonly used for dormant volcanoes once thought to be extinct.
+
+It is difficult to distinguish an extinct volcano from a dormant (inactive) one. Dormant volcanoes are those that have not erupted for thousands of years, but are likely to erupt again in the future.[17][18] Volcanoes are often considered to be extinct if there are no written records of its activity. Nevertheless, volcanoes may remain dormant for a long period of time. For example,  Yellowstone has a repose/recharge period of around 700,000 years, and Toba of around 380,000 years.[19] Vesuvius was described by Roman writers as having been covered with gardens and vineyards before its eruption of 79 CE, which destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Before its catastrophic eruption of 1991, Pinatubo was an inconspicuous volcano, unknown to most people in the surrounding areas. Two other examples are the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat, thought to be extinct before activity resumed in 1995, and Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska, which, before its September 2006 eruption, had not erupted since before 8000 BCE and had long been thought to be extinct.
+
+The three common popular classifications of volcanoes can be subjective and some volcanoes thought to have been extinct have erupted again. To help prevent people from falsely believing they are not at risk when living on or near a volcano, countries have adopted new classifications to describe the various levels and stages of volcanic activity.[20]  Some alert systems use different numbers or colors to designate the different stages.  Other systems use colors and words.  Some systems use a combination of both.
+
+The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has adopted a common system nationwide for characterizing the level of unrest and eruptive activity at volcanoes. The new volcano alert-level system classifies volcanoes now as being in a normal, advisory, watch or warning stage.  Additionally, colors are used to denote the amount of ash produced.
+
+The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas. They are named Decade Volcanoes because the project was initiated as part of the United Nations-sponsored International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (the 1990s). The 16 current Decade Volcanoes are
+
+The Deep Earth Carbon Degassing Project, an initiative of the Deep Carbon Observatory, monitors nine volcanoes, two of which are Decade volcanoes. The focus of the Deep Earth Carbon Degassing Project is to use Multi-Component Gas Analyzer System instruments to measure CO2/SO2 ratios in real-time and in high-resolution to allow detection of the pre-eruptive degassing of rising magmas, improving prediction of volcanic activity.[21]
+
+There are many different types of volcanic eruptions and associated activity: phreatic eruptions (steam-generated eruptions), explosive eruption of high-silica lava (e.g., rhyolite), effusive eruption of low-silica lava (e.g., basalt), pyroclastic flows, lahars (debris flow) and carbon dioxide emission. All of these activities can pose a hazard to humans. Earthquakes, hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots and geysers often accompany volcanic activity.
+
+The concentrations of different volcanic gases can vary considerably from one volcano to the next. Water vapor is typically the most abundant volcanic gas, followed by carbon dioxide[22] and sulfur dioxide. Other principal volcanic gases include hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride. A large number of minor and trace gases are also found in volcanic emissions, for example hydrogen, carbon monoxide, halocarbons, organic compounds, and volatile metal chlorides.
+
+Large, explosive volcanic eruptions inject water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen chloride (HCl), hydrogen fluoride (HF) and ash (pulverized rock and pumice) into the stratosphere to heights of 16–32 kilometres (10–20 mi) above the Earth's surface. The most significant impacts from these injections come from the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. The SO2 emissions alone of two different eruptions are sufficient to compare their potential climatic impact.[23] The aerosols increase the Earth's albedo—its reflection of radiation from the Sun back into space—and thus cool the Earth's lower atmosphere or troposphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the stratosphere. Several eruptions during the past century have caused a decline in the average temperature at the Earth's surface of up to half a degree (Fahrenheit scale) for periods of one to three years; sulfur dioxide from the eruption of Huaynaputina probably caused the Russian famine of 1601–1603.[24]
+
+A volcanic winter is thought to have taken place around 70,000 years ago after the supereruption of Lake Toba on Sumatra island in Indonesia.[25] According to the Toba catastrophe theory to which some anthropologists and archeologists subscribe, it had global consequences,[26] killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today.[27]
+
+It has been suggested that volcanic activity caused or contributed to the End-Ordovician, Permian-Triassic, Late Devonian mass extinctions, and possibly others. The massive eruptive event which formed the Siberian Traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history, continued for a million years and is considered to be the likely cause of the "Great Dying" about 250 million years ago,[28] which is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time.[29]
+
+The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora created global climate anomalies that became known as the "Year Without a Summer" because of the effect on North American and European weather.[30] Agricultural crops failed and livestock died in much of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in one of the worst famines of the 19th century.[31]
+
+The freezing winter of 1740–41, which led to widespread famine in northern Europe, may also owe its origins to a volcanic eruption.[32]
+
+Sulfate aerosols promote complex chemical reactions on their surfaces that alter chlorine and nitrogen chemical species in the stratosphere. This effect, together with increased stratospheric chlorine levels from chlorofluorocarbon pollution, generates chlorine monoxide (ClO), which destroys ozone (O3). As the aerosols grow and coagulate, they settle down into the upper troposphere where they serve as nuclei for cirrus clouds and further modify the Earth's radiation balance. Most of the hydrogen chloride (HCl) and hydrogen fluoride (HF) are dissolved in water droplets in the eruption cloud and quickly fall to the ground as acid rain. The injected ash also falls rapidly from the stratosphere; most of it is removed within several days to a few weeks. Finally, explosive volcanic eruptions release the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and thus provide a deep source of carbon for biogeochemical cycles.[33]
+
+Gas emissions from volcanoes are a natural contributor to acid rain. Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.[34] Volcanic eruptions may inject aerosols into the Earth's atmosphere. Large injections may cause visual effects such as unusually colorful sunsets and affect global climate mainly by cooling it. Volcanic eruptions also provide the benefit of adding nutrients to soil through the weathering process of volcanic rocks. These fertile soils assist the growth of plants and various crops. Volcanic eruptions can also create new islands, as the magma cools and solidifies upon contact with the water.
+
+Ash thrown into the air by eruptions can present a hazard to aircraft, especially jet aircraft where the particles can be melted by the high operating temperature; the melted particles then adhere to the turbine blades and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine.  Dangerous encounters in 1982 after the eruption of Galunggung in Indonesia, and 1989 after the eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska raised awareness of this phenomenon.  Nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers were established by the International Civil Aviation Organization to monitor ash clouds and advise pilots accordingly.  The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull caused major disruptions to air travel in Europe.
+
+The Earth's Moon has no large volcanoes and no current volcanic activity, although recent evidence suggests it may still possess a partially molten core.[35] However, the Moon does have many volcanic features such as maria (the darker patches seen on the moon), rilles and domes.
+
+The planet Venus has a surface that is 90% basalt, indicating that volcanism played a major role in shaping its surface. The planet may have had a major global resurfacing event about 500 million years ago,[36] from what scientists can tell from the density of impact craters on the surface. Lava flows are widespread and forms of volcanism not present on Earth occur as well. Changes in the planet's atmosphere and observations of lightning have been attributed to ongoing volcanic eruptions, although there is no confirmation of whether or not Venus is still volcanically active. However, radar sounding by the Magellan probe revealed evidence for comparatively recent volcanic activity at Venus's highest volcano Maat Mons, in the form of ash flows near the summit and on the northern flank.
+
+There are several extinct volcanoes on Mars, four of which are vast shield volcanoes far bigger than any on Earth. They include Arsia Mons, Ascraeus Mons, Hecates Tholus, Olympus Mons, and Pavonis Mons. These volcanoes have been extinct for many millions of years,[37] but the European Mars Express spacecraft has found evidence that volcanic activity may have occurred on Mars in the recent past as well.[37]
+
+Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system because of tidal interaction with Jupiter. It is covered with volcanoes that erupt sulfur, sulfur dioxide and silicate rock, and as a result, Io is constantly being resurfaced. Its lavas are the hottest known anywhere in the solar system, with temperatures exceeding 1,800 K (1,500 °C). In February 2001, the largest recorded volcanic eruptions in the solar system occurred on Io.[38] Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's Galilean moons, also appears to have an active volcanic system, except that its volcanic activity is entirely in the form of water, which freezes into ice on the frigid surface. This process is known as cryovolcanism, and is apparently most common on the moons of the outer planets of the solar system.
+
+In 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft observed cryovolcanoes (ice volcanoes) on Triton, a moon of Neptune, and in 2005 the Cassini–Huygens probe photographed fountains of frozen particles erupting from Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.[39][40] The ejecta may be composed of water, liquid nitrogen, ammonia, dust, or methane compounds. Cassini–Huygens also found evidence of a methane-spewing cryovolcano on the Saturnian moon Titan, which is believed to be a significant source of the methane found in its atmosphere.[41] It is theorized that cryovolcanism may also be present on the Kuiper Belt Object Quaoar.
+
+A 2010 study of the exoplanet COROT-7b, which was detected by transit in 2009, suggested that tidal heating from the host star very close to the planet and neighboring planets could generate intense volcanic activity similar to that found on Io.[42]
+
+Many ancient accounts ascribe volcanic eruptions to supernatural causes, such as the actions of gods or demigods. To the ancient Greeks, volcanoes' capricious power could only be explained as acts of the gods, while 16th/17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler believed they were ducts for the Earth's tears.[43]  One early idea counter to this was proposed by Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), who witnessed eruptions of Mount Etna and Stromboli, then visited the crater of Vesuvius and published his view of an Earth with a central fire connected to numerous others caused by the burning of sulfur, bitumen and coal.
+
+Various explanations were proposed for volcano behavior before the modern understanding of the Earth's mantle structure as a semisolid material was developed. For decades after awareness that compression and radioactive materials may be heat sources, their contributions were specifically discounted. Volcanic action was often attributed to chemical reactions and a thin layer of molten rock near the surface.

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+A centaur (/ˈsɛntɔːr/; Greek: κένταυρος, kéntauros, Latin: centaurus), or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse.[2][3] Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature.
+
+The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele.[4] As the story goes, Nephele was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus. Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created.[5] Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus, a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and the nymph Stilbe. In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths.
+
+Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus.  According to Nonnus, they were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were horned.[6][7]
+
+There were also the Lamian Pheres, twelve rustic daimones (spirits) of the Lamos river. They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos, protecting him from the machinations of Hera, but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians.[8]
+
+The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron.[citation needed]
+
+The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.[9][10][11] Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture," Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism.[12]
+
+The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the Parthenon metopes by Phidias and in a Renaissance-era sculpture by Michelangelo.
+
+The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin.[13] The etymology from ken + tauros, "piercing bull," was a euhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom.[14] Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer".[15]
+
+The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen.[16] The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.
+
+Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil,[17] who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian Gandharva), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.[18] A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.
+
+Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art.[19] Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome[i] who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.[20]
+
+The Kalibangan cylinder seal, dated to be around 2600-1900 BC,[21] found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures.[22][21] Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Goddess of War.[23][24] These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in the 3rd millennium BC.
+
+In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.
+
+Kinnaras, another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology, appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India. It is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur.[25][26]
+
+A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane, a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino's poem I Reali di Francia, which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations.
+
+The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests a Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth.[27] A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi, and by the Geometric period, centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[28]
+
+In Greek art of the Archaic period, centaurs are depicted in three different forms.  Some centaurs are depicted with a human torso attached to the body of a horse at the withers, where the horse's neck would be; this form, designated "Class A" by Professor Paul Baur, later became standard.  "Class B" centaurs are depicted with a human body and legs joined at the waist to the hindquarters of a horse; in some cases centaurs of both Class A and Class B appear together.  A third type, designated "Class C", depicts centaurs with human forelegs terminating in hooves. Baur describes this as an apparent development of Aeolic art, which never became particularly widespread.[29]  At a later period, paintings on some amphorae depict winged centaurs.[30]
+
+Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine (circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity.[31][32]
+
+Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne. Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and griffins guarding the chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle, Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes.
+
+The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos" in its library. The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony, is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware.[33]
+
+Another exhibit by Willers is now on long-term display at the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson, Arizona.  The full-mount skeleton of a Centaur, built by Skulls Unlimited International, Inc., is on display along with several other fabled creatures, including the Cyclopes, Unicorn, and Griffin.
+
+Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding a bow is referred to as a sagittarius.[34]
+
+Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni, who was known as "Sassetta".[35] Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood.
+
+Lucretius, in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things, denied the existence of centaurs based on their differing rate of growth. He states that at the age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible.[36]
+
+C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare; a fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion.
+
+In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts, preferring to avoid contact with humans. They live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing, and astrology, but like in the original myths, they are known to have some wild and barbarous tendencies.
+
+With the exception of Chiron, the centaurs in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are seen as wild party-goers who use a lot of American slang. Chiron retains his mythological role as a trainer of heroes and is skilled in archery. In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus, another group of centaurs are depicted with more animalistic features (such as horns) and appear as villains, serving the Gigantes.
+
+Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965) includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts.
+
+Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series features centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. The centaurs are portrayed as a proud, elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, which is part man, part moose.
+
+The myth of the centaur appears in John Updike's novel The Centaur. The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like the mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York.
+
+Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BC)
+
+Botticelli, Pallas and Centaur (1482–83)
+
+Antonio Canova, Theseus Defeats the Centaur (1805-1819)
+
+Prince Bova fights Polkan, Russian lubok (1860)
+
+A bronze statue of a centaur, after the Furietti Centaurs
+
+Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures:
+
+Also,
+
+Additionally, Bucentaur, the name of several historically important Venetian vessels, was linked to a posited ox-centaur or βουκένταυρος (boukentauros) by fanciful and likely spurious folk-etymology.

en/924.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+A centaur (/ˈsɛntɔːr/; Greek: κένταυρος, kéntauros, Latin: centaurus), or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse.[2][3] Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature.
+
+The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele.[4] As the story goes, Nephele was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus. Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created.[5] Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus, a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and the nymph Stilbe. In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths.
+
+Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus.  According to Nonnus, they were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were horned.[6][7]
+
+There were also the Lamian Pheres, twelve rustic daimones (spirits) of the Lamos river. They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos, protecting him from the machinations of Hera, but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians.[8]
+
+The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron.[citation needed]
+
+The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.[9][10][11] Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture," Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism.[12]
+
+The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the Parthenon metopes by Phidias and in a Renaissance-era sculpture by Michelangelo.
+
+The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin.[13] The etymology from ken + tauros, "piercing bull," was a euhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom.[14] Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer".[15]
+
+The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen.[16] The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.
+
+Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil,[17] who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian Gandharva), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.[18] A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.
+
+Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art.[19] Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome[i] who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.[20]
+
+The Kalibangan cylinder seal, dated to be around 2600-1900 BC,[21] found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures.[22][21] Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Goddess of War.[23][24] These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in the 3rd millennium BC.
+
+In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.
+
+Kinnaras, another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology, appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India. It is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur.[25][26]
+
+A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane, a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino's poem I Reali di Francia, which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations.
+
+The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests a Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth.[27] A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi, and by the Geometric period, centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[28]
+
+In Greek art of the Archaic period, centaurs are depicted in three different forms.  Some centaurs are depicted with a human torso attached to the body of a horse at the withers, where the horse's neck would be; this form, designated "Class A" by Professor Paul Baur, later became standard.  "Class B" centaurs are depicted with a human body and legs joined at the waist to the hindquarters of a horse; in some cases centaurs of both Class A and Class B appear together.  A third type, designated "Class C", depicts centaurs with human forelegs terminating in hooves. Baur describes this as an apparent development of Aeolic art, which never became particularly widespread.[29]  At a later period, paintings on some amphorae depict winged centaurs.[30]
+
+Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine (circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity.[31][32]
+
+Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne. Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and griffins guarding the chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle, Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes.
+
+The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos" in its library. The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony, is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware.[33]
+
+Another exhibit by Willers is now on long-term display at the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson, Arizona.  The full-mount skeleton of a Centaur, built by Skulls Unlimited International, Inc., is on display along with several other fabled creatures, including the Cyclopes, Unicorn, and Griffin.
+
+Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding a bow is referred to as a sagittarius.[34]
+
+Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni, who was known as "Sassetta".[35] Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood.
+
+Lucretius, in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things, denied the existence of centaurs based on their differing rate of growth. He states that at the age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible.[36]
+
+C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare; a fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion.
+
+In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts, preferring to avoid contact with humans. They live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing, and astrology, but like in the original myths, they are known to have some wild and barbarous tendencies.
+
+With the exception of Chiron, the centaurs in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are seen as wild party-goers who use a lot of American slang. Chiron retains his mythological role as a trainer of heroes and is skilled in archery. In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus, another group of centaurs are depicted with more animalistic features (such as horns) and appear as villains, serving the Gigantes.
+
+Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965) includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts.
+
+Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series features centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. The centaurs are portrayed as a proud, elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, which is part man, part moose.
+
+The myth of the centaur appears in John Updike's novel The Centaur. The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like the mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York.
+
+Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BC)
+
+Botticelli, Pallas and Centaur (1482–83)
+
+Antonio Canova, Theseus Defeats the Centaur (1805-1819)
+
+Prince Bova fights Polkan, Russian lubok (1860)
+
+A bronze statue of a centaur, after the Furietti Centaurs
+
+Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures:
+
+Also,
+
+Additionally, Bucentaur, the name of several historically important Venetian vessels, was linked to a posited ox-centaur or βουκένταυρος (boukentauros) by fanciful and likely spurious folk-etymology.

en/925.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+A centaur (/ˈsɛntɔːr/; Greek: κένταυρος, kéntauros, Latin: centaurus), or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse.[2][3] Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature.
+
+The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele.[4] As the story goes, Nephele was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus. Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created.[5] Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus, a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and the nymph Stilbe. In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes, ancestor of the Lapiths.
+
+Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus.  According to Nonnus, they were fathered by Zeus, who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were horned.[6][7]
+
+There were also the Lamian Pheres, twelve rustic daimones (spirits) of the Lamos river. They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos, protecting him from the machinations of Hera, but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians.[8]
+
+The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron.[citation needed]
+
+The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus, a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed.[9][10][11] Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture," Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism.[12]
+
+The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the Parthenon metopes by Phidias and in a Renaissance-era sculpture by Michelangelo.
+
+The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin.[13] The etymology from ken + tauros, "piercing bull," was a euhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom.[14] Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer".[15]
+
+The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen.[16] The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were the kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs.
+
+Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil,[17] who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian Gandharva), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.[18] A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.
+
+Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art.[19] Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome[i] who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.[20]
+
+The Kalibangan cylinder seal, dated to be around 2600-1900 BC,[21] found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures.[22][21] Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Goddess of War.[23][24] These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in the 3rd millennium BC.
+
+In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.
+
+Kinnaras, another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology, appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India. It is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur.[25][26]
+
+A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane, a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino's poem I Reali di Francia, which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations.
+
+The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests a Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth.[27] A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi, and by the Geometric period, centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[28]
+
+In Greek art of the Archaic period, centaurs are depicted in three different forms.  Some centaurs are depicted with a human torso attached to the body of a horse at the withers, where the horse's neck would be; this form, designated "Class A" by Professor Paul Baur, later became standard.  "Class B" centaurs are depicted with a human body and legs joined at the waist to the hindquarters of a horse; in some cases centaurs of both Class A and Class B appear together.  A third type, designated "Class C", depicts centaurs with human forelegs terminating in hooves. Baur describes this as an apparent development of Aeolic art, which never became particularly widespread.[29]  At a later period, paintings on some amphorae depict winged centaurs.[30]
+
+Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine (circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity.[31][32]
+
+Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne. Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and griffins guarding the chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle, Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire, these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes.
+
+The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos" in its library. The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers by combining a study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony, is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware.[33]
+
+Another exhibit by Willers is now on long-term display at the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson, Arizona.  The full-mount skeleton of a Centaur, built by Skulls Unlimited International, Inc., is on display along with several other fabled creatures, including the Cyclopes, Unicorn, and Griffin.
+
+Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding a bow is referred to as a sagittarius.[34]
+
+Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni, who was known as "Sassetta".[35] Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood.
+
+Lucretius, in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things, denied the existence of centaurs based on their differing rate of growth. He states that at the age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible.[36]
+
+C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare; a fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion.
+
+In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts, preferring to avoid contact with humans. They live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing, and astrology, but like in the original myths, they are known to have some wild and barbarous tendencies.
+
+With the exception of Chiron, the centaurs in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are seen as wild party-goers who use a lot of American slang. Chiron retains his mythological role as a trainer of heroes and is skilled in archery. In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus, another group of centaurs are depicted with more animalistic features (such as horns) and appear as villains, serving the Gigantes.
+
+Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series (1965) includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts.
+
+Brandon Mull's Fablehaven series features centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. The centaurs are portrayed as a proud, elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, which is part man, part moose.
+
+The myth of the centaur appears in John Updike's novel The Centaur. The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like the mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York.
+
+Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (500 BC)
+
+Botticelli, Pallas and Centaur (1482–83)
+
+Antonio Canova, Theseus Defeats the Centaur (1805-1819)
+
+Prince Bova fights Polkan, Russian lubok (1860)
+
+A bronze statue of a centaur, after the Furietti Centaurs
+
+Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures:
+
+Also,
+
+Additionally, Bucentaur, the name of several historically important Venetian vessels, was linked to a posited ox-centaur or βουκένταυρος (boukentauros) by fanciful and likely spurious folk-etymology.

en/926.html.txt

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+
+
+The litre (British and Commonwealth spelling) or liter (American spelling) (SI symbols L and l,[1] other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metre. A cubic decimetre (or litre) occupies a volume of 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm (see figure) and is thus equal to one-thousandth of a cubic metre.
+
+The original French metric system used the litre as a base unit. The word litre is derived from an older French unit, the litron, whose name came from Greek—where it was a unit of weight, not volume[2]—via Latin, and which equalled approximately 0.831 litres. The litre was also used in several subsequent versions of the metric system and is accepted for use with the SI,[3] although not an SI unit—the SI unit of volume is the cubic metre (m3). The spelling used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures is "litre",[3] a spelling which is shared by almost all English-speaking countries. The spelling "liter" is predominantly used in American English.[a]
+
+One litre of liquid water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram, because the kilogram was originally defined in 1795 as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at the temperature of melting ice (0 °C). Subsequent redefinitions of the metre and kilogram mean that this relationship is no longer exact.[4]
+
+A litre is a cubic decimetre, which is the volume of a cube 10 centimetres × 10 centimetres × 10 centimetres (1 L ≡ 1 dm3 ≡ 1000 cm3). Hence 1 L ≡ 0.001 m3 ≡ 1000 cm3, and 1 m3 (i.e. a cubic metre, which is the SI unit for volume) is exactly 1000 L.
+
+From 1901 to 1964, the litre was defined as the volume of one kilogram of pure water at maximum density (+4 °C) and standard pressure. The kilogram was in turn specified as the mass of the International Prototype of the Kilogram (a specific platinum/iridium cylinder) and was intended to be of the same mass as the 1 litre of water referred to above. It was subsequently discovered that the cylinder was around 28 parts per million too large and thus, during this time, a litre was about 1.000028 dm3. Additionally, the mass–volume relationship of water (as with any fluid) depends on temperature, pressure, purity and isotopic uniformity. In 1964, the definition relating the litre to mass was superseded by the current one. Although the litre is not an SI unit, it is accepted by the CGPM (the standards body that defines the SI) for use with the SI. CGPM defines the litre and its acceptable symbols.
+
+A litre is equal in volume to the millistere, an obsolete non-SI metric unit customarily used for dry measure.
+
+Litres are most commonly used for items (such as fluids and solids that can be poured) which are measured by the capacity or size of their container, whereas cubic metres (and derived units) are most commonly used for items measured either by their dimensions or their displacements. The litre is often also used in some calculated measurements, such as density (kg/L), allowing an easy comparison with the density of water.
+
+One litre of water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram when measured at its maximal density, which occurs at about 4 °C. It follows, therefore, that 1000th of a litre, known as one millilitre (1 mL), of water has a mass of about 1 g; 1000 litres of water has a mass of about 1000 kg (1 tonne). This relationship holds because the gram was originally defined as the mass of 1 mL of water; however, this definition was abandoned in 1799 because the density of water changes with temperature and, very slightly, with pressure.
+
+It is now known that the density of water also depends on the isotopic ratios of the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in a particular sample. Modern measurements of Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water, which is pure distilled water with an isotopic composition representative of the average of the world's oceans, show that it has a density of 0.999975±0.000001 kg/L at its point of maximum density (3.984 °C) under one standard atmosphere (760 Torr = 101.325 kPa) of pressure.[5]
+
+The litre, though not an official SI unit, may be used with SI prefixes. The most commonly used derived unit is the millilitre, defined as one-thousandth of a litre, and also often referred to by the SI derived unit name "cubic centimetre". It is a commonly used measure, especially in medicine, cooking and automotive engineering. Other units may be found in the table below, where the more often used terms are in bold. However, some authorities advise against some of them; for example, in the United States, NIST advocates using the millilitre or litre instead of the centilitre.[6] There are two international standard symbols for the litre: L and l. In the United States the former is preferred because of the risk that (in some fonts) the letter l and the digit 1 may be confused.[7]
+
+One litre is slightly larger than a US liquid quart and slightly less than an imperial quart or one US dry quart. A mnemonic for its volume relative to an imperial pint is "a litre of water's a pint and three quarters"; this is very close, as a litre is actually 1.75975399 pints.
+
+A litre is the volume of a cube with sides of 10 cm, which is slightly less than a cube of sides 4 inches (one-third of a foot). One cubic foot would contain exactly 27 such cubes (four inches on each side), making one cubic foot approximately equal to 27 litres. One cubic foot has an exact volume of 28.316846592 litres, which is 4.88% higher than the 27-litre approximation.
+
+A litre of liquid water has a mass almost exactly equal to one kilogram. An early definition of the kilogram was set as the mass of one litre of water. Because volume changes with temperature and pressure, and pressure uses units of mass, the definition of a kilogram was changed. At standard pressure, one litre of water has a mass of 0.999975 kg at 4 °C, and 0.997 kg at 25 °C.[8]
+
+Originally, the only symbol for the litre was l (lowercase letter L), following the SI convention that only those unit symbols that abbreviate the name of a person start with a capital letter. In many English-speaking countries, however, the most common shape of a handwritten Arabic digit 1 is just a vertical stroke; that is, it lacks the upstroke added in many other cultures. Therefore, the digit "1" may easily be confused with the letter "l". In some computer typefaces, the two characters are barely distinguishable. This caused some concern, especially in the medical community.[citation needed]
+
+As a result, L (uppercase letter L) was adopted as an alternative symbol for litre in 1979.[citation needed] The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology now recommends the use of the uppercase letter L,[9] a practice that is also widely followed in Canada and Australia. In these countries, the symbol L is also used with prefixes, as in mL and μL, instead of the traditional ml and μl used in Europe. In the UK and Ireland, as well as the rest of Europe, lowercase l is used with prefixes, though whole litres are often written in full (so, "750 ml" on a wine bottle, but often "1 litre" on a juice carton). In 1990, the International Committee for Weights and Measures stated that it was too early to choose a single symbol for the litre.[10]
+
+Prior to 1979, the symbol ℓ came into common use in some countries;[citation needed] for example, it was recommended by South African Bureau of Standards publication M33 and Canada in the 1970s. This symbol can still be encountered occasionally in some English-speaking and European countries like Germany, and its use is ubiquitous in Japan and South Korea.
+
+Fonts covering the CJK characters usually include not only the script small ℓ but also four precomposed characters: ㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘ for the microlitre, millilitre, decilitre and kilolitre.
+
+The first name of the litre was "cadil"; standards are shown at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.[12]
+
+The litre was introduced in France in 1795 as one of the new "republican units of measurement" and defined as one cubic decimetre.[13]
+One litre of liquid water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram, due to the gram being defined in 1795 as one cubic centimetre of water at the temperature of melting ice.[4]
+The original decimetre length was 44.344 lignes, which was revised in 1798 to 44.3296 lignes. This made the original litre 1.000974 of today's cubic decimetre. It was against this litre that the kilogram was constructed.
+
+In 1879, the CIPM adopted the definition of the litre, with the symbol l (lowercase letter L).
+
+In 1901, at the 3rd CGPM conference, the litre was redefined as the space occupied by 1 kg of pure water at the temperature of its maximum density (3.98 °C) under a pressure of 1 atm. This made the litre equal to about 1.000028 dm3 (earlier reference works usually put it at 1.000027 dm3).
+
+In 1964, at the 12th CGPM conference, the original definition was reverted to, and thus the litre was once again defined in exact relation to the metre, as another name for the cubic decimetre, that is, exactly 1 dm3.[14]
+
+In 1979, at the 16th CGPM conference, the alternative symbol L (uppercase letter L) was adopted. It also expressed a preference that in the future only one of these two symbols should be retained, but in 1990 said it was still too early to do so.[10]
+
+In spoken English, the symbol "mL" (for millilitre) can be pronounced as "mil". This can potentially cause confusion with some other measurement words such as:
+
+However the context is usually sufficient hint — "mL" is a unit of volume; whereas the others are units of linear or angular measurement.
+
+The abbreviation "cc" (for cubic centimetre, equal to a millilitre or mL) is a unit of the cgs system, which preceded the MKS system, which later evolved into the SI system. The abbreviation "cc" is still commonly used in many fields, including medical dosage and sizing for combustion engine displacement.
+
+The microlitre (μL) has been known in the past as the lambda (λ), but this usage is now discouraged.[15] In the medical field the microlitre is sometimes abbreviated as mcL on test results.[16]
+
+In the SI system, apart from prefixes for powers of 1000, use of the "centi" (10−2), "deci" (10−1), "deca" (10+1) and "hecto" (10+2) prefixes with litres is common. For example, in many European countries, the hectolitre is the typical unit for production and export volumes of beverages (milk, beer, soft drinks, wine, etc.) and for measuring the size of the catch and quotas for fishing boats; decilitres are common in Croatia, Switzerland and Scandinavia and often found in cookbooks, and restaurant and café menus; centilitres indicate the capacity of drinking glasses and of small bottles. In colloquial Dutch in Belgium, a "vijfentwintiger" and a "drieëndertiger" (literally "twenty-fiver" and "thirty-threer") are the common beer glasses, the corresponding bottles mention 25 cL and 33 cL. Bottles may also be 75 cL or half size at 37.5 cL for "artisanal" brews or 70 cL for wines or spirits. Cans come in 25 cL, 33 cL and 50 cL.[citation needed] Similarly, alcohol shots are often marked in cL in restaurant menus, typically 3 cL (1.06 imp fl oz; 1.01 US fl oz).
+
+In countries where the metric system was adopted as the official measuring system after the SI standard was established, common usage eschews prefixes that are not powers of 1000. For example, in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, consumer beverages are labelled almost exclusively using litres and millilitres. Hectolitres sometimes appear in industry, but centilitres and decilitres are rarely, if ever, used.[citation needed] An exception is in pathology, where for instance blood lead level may be measured in micrograms per decilitre.[citation needed] Larger volumes are usually given in cubic metres (equivalent to 1 kL), or thousands or millions of cubic metres.[citation needed]
+
+Although kilolitres, megalitres, and gigalitres are commonly used for measuring water consumption, reservoir capacities and river flows, for larger volumes of fluids, such as annual consumption of tap water, lorry (truck) tanks, or swimming pools, the cubic metre is the general unit. It is also generally for all volumes of a non-liquid nature.[citation needed]

en/927.html.txt

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+
+
+The metre (Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling) (from the French unit mètre, from the Greek noun μέτρον, "measure") is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). The SI unit symbol is m.
+The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second.
+The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar (the actual bar used was changed in 1889). In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and slightly updated in 2019.
+
+Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States[2][3][4][5] and the Philippines,[6] which use meter. Other Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages[7]  likewise spell the word meter.
+
+Measuring devices (such as ammeter, speedometer) are spelled "-meter" in all variants of English.[8] The suffix "-meter" has the same Greek origin as the unit of length.[9][10]
+
+The etymological roots of metre can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω (metreo) (to measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον (metron) (a measure), which were used for physical measurement, for poetic metre and by extension for moderation or avoiding extremism (as in "be measured in your response"). This range of uses is also found in Latin (metior, mensura), French (mètre, mesure), English and other languages.  The motto ΜΕΤΡΩ ΧΡΩ (metro chro) in the seal of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which was a saying of the Greek statesman and philosopher Pittacus of Mytilene and may be translated as "Use measure!", thus calls for both measurement and moderation. The use of the word metre (for the French unit mètre) in English began at least as early as 1797.[11]
+
+In 1671 Jean Picard measured the length of a "seconds pendulum" (a pendulum with a period of two seconds) at the Paris observatory. He found the value of 440.5 lines of the Toise of Châtelet which had been recently renewed. He proposed a universal toise (French: Toise universelle) which was twice the length of the seconds pendulum.[12][13] However, it was soon discovered that the length of a seconds pendulum varies from place to place: French astronomer Jean Richer had measured the 0.3% difference in length between Cayenne (in French Guiana) and Paris.[14][15][16]
+
+Jean Richer and Giovanni Domenico Cassini measured the parallax of Mars between Paris and Cayenne in French Guiana when Mars was at its closest to Earth in 1672. They arrived at a figure for the solar parallax of 9.5 arcseconds, equivalent to an Earth–Sun distance of about 22000 Earth radii. They were also the first astronomers to have access to an accurate and reliable value for the radius of Earth, which had been measured by their colleague Jean Picard in 1669 as 3269 thousand toises. Picard's geodetic observations had been confined to the determination of the magnitude of the Earth considered as a sphere, but the discovery made by Jean Richer turned the attention of mathematicians to its deviation from a spherical form. In addition to its significance for cartography, the determination of the Figure of the Earth became a problem of the highest importance in astronomy, inasmuch as the diameter of the Earth was the unit to which all celestial distances had to be referred.[17] [18][19][20]
+
+As a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. On 7 October 1790 that commission advised the adoption of a decimal system, and on 19 March 1791 advised the adoption of the term mètre ("measure"), a basic unit of length, which they defined as equal to one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along the meridian through Paris.[21][22][23][24][25] In 1793, the French National Convention adopted the proposal.[11]
+
+The French Academy of Sciences commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain, lasting from 1792 to 1799, which attempted to accurately measure the distance between a belfry in Dunkerque and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona at the longitude of Paris Panthéon.[26] The expedition was fictionalised in Denis Guedj, Le Mètre du Monde.[27] Ken Alder wrote factually about the expedition in The Measure of All Things: the seven year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world.[28] This portion of  the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator. From 1801 to 1812 France adopted this definition of the metre as its official unit of length based on results from this expedition combined with those of the Geodesic Mission to Peru.[29][30] The latter was related by Larrie D. Ferreiro in Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped Our World.[31]
+
+A more accurate determination of the Figure of the Earth would soon result from the measurement of the Struve Geodetic Arc (1816–1855) and would have given another value for the definition of this standard of length. This did not invalidate the metre but highlighted that progresses in science would allow better measurement of Earth's size and shape.[20] After the July Revolution of 1830 the metre became the definitive French standard from 1840. At that time it had already been adopted by Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler for the U.S Survey of the Coast.[29][32][33]
+
+"The unit of length to which all distances measured in the Coast Survey are referred is the French metre, an authentic copy of which is preserved in the archives of the Coast Survey Office. It is the property of the American Philosophical Society, to whom it was presented by Mr. Hassler, who had received it from Tralles, a member of the French Committee charged with  the construction of the standard metre by comparison with the toise, which had served as unit of length in the measurement of the meridional arcs in France and Peru. It possesses all the authenticity of any original metre extant, bearing not only the stamp of the Committee but also the original mark by which it was distiguished from the other bars during the operation of standarding. It is always designated as the Committee metre" (French : Mètre des Archives).[34]
+
+In 1830 President Andrew Jackson mandated Ferdinand Rudolf Hassler  to work out new standards for all U.S. states. According to the decision of the Congress of the United States, the British Parlementary Standard from 1758 was introduced as the unit of length.[35] Another geodesist with metrology skills was to play a pivotal role in the process of internationalization of weights and measures, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero who would become the first president of both the International Geodetic Association and the International Committee for Weights and Measures.[36]
+
+In 1867 at the second general conference of the International Association of Geodesy held in Berlin, the question of an international standard unit of length was discussed in order to combine the measurements made in different countries to determine the size and shape of the Earth.[37][38][39] The conference recommended the adoption of the metre in replacement of the toise and the creation of an international metre commission, according to the proposal of Johann Jacob Baeyer, Adolphe Hirsch and Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero who had devised two geodetic standards calibrated on the metre for the map of Spain.[33][37][39][40] Measurement traceability between the toise and the metre was ensured by comparison of the Spanish standard with the standard devised by Borda and Lavoisier for the survey of the meridian arc connecting Dunkirk with Barcelona.[36][40][41]
+
+A member of the Preparatory Committee since 1870 and Spanish representative at the Paris Conference in 1875, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero intervened with the French Academy of Sciences to rally France to the project to create an International Bureau of Weights and Measures equipped with the scientific means necessary to redefine the units of the metric system according to the progress of sciences.[42]
+
+In the 1870s and in light of modern precision, a series of international conferences was held to devise new metric standards. The Metre Convention (Convention du Mètre) of 1875 mandated the establishment of a permanent International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM: Bureau International des Poids et Mesures) to be located in Sèvres, France. This new organisation was to construct and preserve a prototype metre bar, distribute national metric prototypes, and maintain comparisons between them and non-metric measurement standards. The organisation distributed such bars in 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM: Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures), establishing the International Prototype Metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar composed of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.[43]
+
+The comparison of the new prototypes of the metre with each other and with the Committee metre (French: Mètre des Archives) involved the development of special measuring equipment and the definition of a reproducible temperature scale. The BIPM's thermometry work led to the discovery of special alloys of iron-nickel, in particular invar, for which its director, the Swiss physicist Charles-Edouard Guillaume, was granted the Nobel Prize for physics in 1920.[44]
+
+As Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero stated, the progress of metrology combined with those of gravimetry through improvement of Kater's pendulum led to a new era of geodesy. If precision metrology had needed the help of geodesy, the latter could not continue to prosper without the help of metrology. Indeed, how to express all the measurements of terrestrial arcs as a function of a single unit, and all the determinations of the force of gravity with the pendulum, if metrology had not created a common unit, adopted and respected by all civilized nations, and if in addition one had not compared, with great precision, to the same unit all the standards for measuring geodesic bases, and all the pendulum rods that had hitherto been used or would be used in the future? Only when this series of metrological comparisons would be finished with a probable error of a thousandth of a millimetre would geodesy be able to link the works of the different nations with one another, and then proclaim the result of the last measurement of the Globe. As the figure of the Earth could be inferred from variations of the seconds pendulum length with latitude, the United States Coast Survey instructed Charles Sanders Peirce in the spring of 1875 to proceed to Europe for the purpose of making pendulum experiments to chief initial stations for operations of this sort, in order to bring the determinations of the forces of gravity in America into communication with those of other parts of the world; and also for the purpose of making a careful study of the methods of pursuing these researches in the different countries of Europe. In 1886 the association of geodesy changed name for the International Geodetic Association, which Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero presided up to his death in 1891. During this period the International Geodetic Association (German: Internationale Erdmessung) gained worldwide importance with the joining of United States, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Japan.[36][45][46][47][48][49]
+
+Efforts to supplement the various national surveying systems, which begun in the 19th century with the foundation of the Mitteleuropäische Gradmessung, resulted in a series of global ellipsoids of the Earth (e.g., Helmert 1906, Hayford 1910/1924) which would later lead to develop the World Geodetic System. Nowadays the practical realisation of the metre is possible everywhere thanks to the atomic clocks embedded in GPS satellites.[50][51]
+
+In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell suggested that light emitted by an element be used as the standard both for the meter and for the second. These two quantities could then be used to define the unit of mass.[52]
+
+In 1893, the standard metre was first measured with an interferometer by Albert A. Michelson, the inventor of the device and an advocate of using some particular wavelength of light as a standard of length. By 1925, interferometry was in regular use at the BIPM. However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new International System of Units (SI) as equal to 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.[53]
+
+To further reduce uncertainty, the 17th CGPM in 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of the second and the speed of light:[54]
+
+This definition fixed the speed of light in vacuum at exactly 299792458 metres per second (≈300000 km/s).[54] An intended by-product of the 17th CGPM's definition was that it enabled scientists to compare lasers accurately using frequency, resulting in wavelengths with one-fifth the uncertainty involved in the direct comparison of wavelengths, because interferometer errors were eliminated. To further facilitate reproducibility from lab to lab, the 17th CGPM also made the iodine-stabilised helium–neon laser "a recommended radiation" for realising the metre.[55] For the purpose of delineating the metre, the BIPM currently considers the HeNe laser wavelength, λHeNe, to be 632.99121258 nm with an estimated relative standard uncertainty (U) of 2.1×10−11.[55][56][57] This uncertainty is currently one limiting factor in laboratory realisations of the metre, and it is several orders of magnitude poorer than that of the second, based upon the caesium fountain atomic clock (U = 5×10−16).[58] Consequently, a  realisation of the metre is usually delineated (not defined) today in labs as 1579800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium-neon laser light in a vacuum, the error stated being only that of frequency determination.[55] This bracket notation expressing the error is explained in the article on measurement uncertainty.
+
+Practical realisation of the metre is subject to uncertainties in characterising the medium, to various uncertainties of interferometry, and to uncertainties in measuring the frequency of the source.[59] A commonly used medium is air, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has set up an online calculator to convert wavelengths in vacuum to wavelengths in air.[60] As described by NIST, in air, the uncertainties in characterising the medium are dominated by errors in measuring temperature and pressure. Errors in the theoretical formulas used are secondary.[61] By implementing a refractive index correction such as this, an approximate realisation of the metre can be implemented in air, for example, using the formulation of the metre as 1579800.762042(33) wavelengths of helium–neon laser light in vacuum, and converting the wavelengths in a vacuum to wavelengths in air. Air is only one possible medium to use in a realisation of the metre, and any partial vacuum can be used, or some inert atmosphere like helium gas, provided the appropriate corrections for refractive index are implemented.[62]
+
+The metre is defined as the path length travelled by light in a given time and practical laboratory length measurements in metres are determined by counting the number of wavelengths of laser light of one of the standard types that fit into the length,[65] and converting the selected unit of wavelength to metres. Three major factors limit the accuracy attainable with laser interferometers for a length measurement:[59][66]
+
+Of these, the last is peculiar to the interferometer itself. The conversion of a length in wavelengths to a length in metres is based upon the relation
+
+which converts the unit of wavelength λ to metres using c, the speed of light in vacuum in m/s. Here n is the refractive index of the medium in which the measurement is made, and f is the measured frequency of the source. Although conversion from wavelengths to metres introduces an additional error in the overall length due to measurement error in determining the refractive index and the frequency, the measurement of frequency is one of the most accurate measurements available.[66]
+
+SI prefixes are often employed to denote decimal multiples and submultiples of the metre, as shown in the table below. As indicated in the table, some are commonly used, while others are not. Long distances are usually expressed in km, astronomical units (149.6 Gm), light-years (10 Pm), or parsecs (31 Pm), rather than in Mm, Gm, Tm, Pm, Em, Zm or Ym; "30 cm", "30 m", and "300 m" are more common than "3 dm", "3 dam", and "3 hm", respectively.
+
+The terms micron and (occasionally) millimicron are often used instead of micrometre (μm) and nanometre (nm), but this practice is officially discouraged.[76]
+
+
+
+Within this table, "inch" and "yard" mean "international inch" and "international yard"[77] respectively, though approximate conversions in the left column hold for both international and survey units.
+
+One metre is exactly equivalent to 5 000/127 inches and to 1 250/1 143 yards.
+
+A simple mnemonic aid exists to assist with conversion, as three "3"s:
+
+The ancient Egyptian cubit was about 0.5 m (surviving rods are 523–529 mm).[78] Scottish and English definitions of the ell (two cubits) were 941 mm (0.941 m) and 1143 mm (1.143 m) respectively.[79][80] The ancient Parisian toise (fathom) was slightly shorter than 2 m and was standardised at exactly 2 m in the mesures usuelles system, such that 1 m was exactly ​1⁄2 toise.[81] The Russian verst was 1.0668 km.[82] The Swedish mil was 10.688 km, but was changed to 10 km when Sweden converted to metric units.[83]

en/928.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+Coordinates: 7°N 21°E / 7°N 21°E / 7; 21
+
+The Central African Republic (CAR; Sango: Ködörösêse tî Bêafrîka; French: République centrafricaine  pronounced [ʁepyblik sɑ̃tʁafʁikɛn], or Centrafrique [sɑ̃tʁafʁik]) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest and Cameroon to the west. The CAR covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 sq mi) and had an estimated population of around 4.7 million as of 2018[update]. As of 2020[update], the CAR is the scene of a civil war, ongoing since 2012.[8]
+
+Most of the CAR consists of Sudano-Guinean savannas, but the country also includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. Two thirds of the country is within the Ubangi River basin (which flows into the Congo), while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari, which flows into Lake Chad.
+
+What is today the Central African Republic has been inhabited for millennia; however, the country's current borders were established by France, which ruled the country as a colony starting in the late 19th century. After gaining independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic was ruled by a series of autocratic leaders, including an abortive attempt at a monarchy;[9] by the 1990s, calls for democracy led to the first multi-party democratic elections in 1993. Ange-Félix Patassé became president, but was later removed by General François Bozizé in the 2003 coup. The Central African Republic Bush War began in 2004 and, despite a peace treaty in 2007 and another in 2011, civil war resumed in 2012, perpetuating the country's poor human rights record, characterized by widespread and increasing abuses by various participating armed groups, such as arbitrary imprisonment, torture and restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of movement.
+
+Despite its significant mineral deposits and other resources, such as uranium reserves, crude oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, lumber, and hydropower,[10] as well as significant quantities of arable land, the Central African Republic is among the ten poorest countries in the world, with the lowest GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in the world as of 2017.[11] As of 2019[update], according to the Human Development Index (HDI), the country had the second lowest level of human development, ranking 188th out of 189 countries.[12] It is also estimated to be the unhealthiest country[13] as well as the worst country in which to be young.[14] The Central African Republic is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the Non-Aligned Movement.
+
+Approximately 10,000 years ago, desertification forced hunter-gatherer societies south into the Sahel regions of northern Central Africa, where some groups settled.[15] Farming began as part of the Neolithic Revolution.[16] Initial farming of white yam progressed into millet and sorghum, and before 3000 BC[17] the domestication of African oil palm improved the groups' nutrition and allowed for expansion of the local populations.[18] This Agricultural Revolution, combined with a "Fish-stew Revolution", in which fishing began to take place, and the use of boats, allowed for the transportation of goods. Products were often moved in ceramic pots, which are the first known examples of artistic expression from the region's inhabitants.
+
+The Bouar Megaliths in the western region of the country indicate an advanced level of habitation dating back to the very late Neolithic Era (c. 3500–2700 BC).[19][20] Ironworking arrived in the region around 1000 BC.
+
+Central Sudanic-speaking people settled along the Ubangi River in what is today Central and East CAR. while Bantoid peoples migrated from the southwest from Cameroon.[21]
+
+Bananas arrived in the region during the first millennium BCE[22] and added an important source of carbohydrates to the diet; they were also used in the production of alcoholic beverages. Production of copper, salt, dried fish, and textiles dominated the economic trade in the Central African region.[23]
+
+During the 16th and 17th centuries slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile River slave routes. Their captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa or South along the Ubanqui and Congo rivers.[24][25] In the mid 19th century, the Bobangi people became major slave traders and sold their captives to the Americas using the Ubangi river to reach the coast.[26] During the 18th century Bandia-Nzakara peoples established the Bangassou Kingdom along the Ubangi River.[25] In 1875, the Sudanese sultan Rabih az-Zubayr governed Upper-Oubangui, which included present-day CAR.[27]
+
+The European invasion of Central African territory began in the late 19th century during the Scramble for Africa.[28] Europeans, primarily the French, Germans, and Belgians, arrived in the area in 1885. France seized and colonized Ubangi-Shari territory in 1894. In 1911 at the Treaty of Fez, France ceded a nearly 300,000 km² portion of the Sangha and Lobaye basins to the German Empire which ceded a smaller area (in present-day Chad) to France. After World War I France again annexed the territory. Modeled on King Leopold's Congo Free State, concessions were doled out to private companies that endeavored to strip the region's assets as quickly and cheaply as possible before depositing a percentage of their profits into the French treasury. The concessionary companies forced local people to harvest rubber, coffee, and other commodities without pay and held their families hostage until they met their quotas. Between 1890, a year after the French first arrived, and 1940, the population declined by half due to diseases, famine and exploitation by private companies.[29]
+
+In 1920 French Equatorial Africa was established and Ubangi-Shari was administered from Brazzaville.[30]  During the 1920s and 1930s the French introduced a policy of mandatory cotton cultivation,[30] a network of roads was built, attempts were made to combat sleeping sickness, and Protestant missions were established to spread Christianity.[31] New forms of forced labor were also introduced and a large number of Ubangians were sent to work on the Congo-Ocean Railway. Through the period of construction until 1934 there was a continual heavy cost in human lives, with total deaths among all workers along the railway estimated in excess of 17,000 of the construction workers, from a combination of both industrial accidents and diseases including malaria.[32] In 1928, a major insurrection, the Kongo-Wara rebellion or 'war of the hoe handle', broke out in Western Ubangi-Shari and continued for several years. The extent of this insurrection, which was perhaps the largest anti-colonial rebellion in Africa during the interwar years, was carefully hidden from the French public because it provided evidence of strong opposition to French colonial rule and forced labor.[33]
+
+In September 1940, during the Second World War, pro-Gaullist French officers took control of Ubangi-Shari and General Leclerc established his headquarters for the Free French Forces in Bangui.[34] In 1946 Barthélémy Boganda was elected with 9,000 votes to the French National Assembly, becoming the first representative of the CAR in the French government. Boganda maintained a political stance against racism and the colonial regime but gradually became disheartened with the French political system and returned to CAR to establish the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (Mouvement pour l'évolution sociale de l'Afrique noire, MESAN) in 1950.[35]
+
+In the Ubangi-Shari Territorial Assembly election in 1957, MESAN captured 347,000 out of the total 356,000 votes,[36] and won every legislative seat,[37] which led to Boganda being elected president of the Grand Council of French Equatorial Africa and vice-president of the Ubangi-Shari Government Council.[38] Within a year, he declared the establishment of the Central African Republic and served as the country's first prime minister. MESAN continued to exist, but its role was limited.[39] After Boganda's death in a plane crash on 29 March 1959, his cousin, David Dacko, took control of MESAN and became the country's first president after the CAR had formally received independence from France. Dacko threw out his political rivals, including former Prime Minister and Mouvement d'évolution démocratique de l'Afrique centrale (MEDAC), leader Abel Goumba, whom he forced into exile in France. With all opposition parties suppressed by November 1962, Dacko declared MESAN as the official party of the state.[40]
+
+On 31 December 1965, Dacko was overthrown in the Saint-Sylvestre coup d'état by Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who suspended the constitution and dissolved the National Assembly. President Bokassa declared himself President for Life in 1972 and named himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire (as the country was renamed) on 4 December 1976. A year later, Emperor Bokassa crowned himself in a lavish and expensive ceremony that was ridiculed by much of the world.[9]
+
+In April 1979, young students protested against Bokassa's decree that all school attendees would need to buy uniforms from a company owned by one of his wives. The government violently suppressed the protests, killing 100 children and teenagers. Bokassa himself may have been personally involved in some of the killings.[41] In September 1979, France overthrew Bokassa and restored Dacko to power (subsequently restoring the name of the country and the original government to the Central African Republic). Dacko, in turn, was again overthrown in a coup by General André Kolingba on 1 September 1981.[42]
+
+Kolingba suspended the constitution and ruled with a military junta until 1985. He introduced a new constitution in 1986 which was adopted by a nationwide referendum. Membership in his new party, the Rassemblement Démocratique Centrafricain (RDC), was voluntary. In 1987 and 1988, semi-free elections to parliament were held, but Kolingba's two major political opponents, Abel Goumba and Ange-Félix Patassé, were not allowed to participate.[43]
+
+By 1990, inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall, a pro-democracy movement arose. Pressure from the United States, France, and from a group of locally represented countries and agencies called GIBAFOR (France, the US, Germany, Japan, the EU, the World Bank, and the UN) finally led Kolingba to agree, in principle, to hold free elections in October 1992 with help from the UN Office of Electoral Affairs. After using the excuse of alleged irregularities to suspend the results of the elections as a pretext for holding on to power, President Kolingba came under intense pressure from GIBAFOR to establish a "Conseil National Politique Provisoire de la République" (Provisional National Political Council, CNPPR) and to set up a "Mixed Electoral Commission", which included representatives from all political parties.[43]
+
+When a second round of elections were finally held in 1993, again with the help of the international community coordinated by GIBAFOR,  Ange-Félix Patassé won in the second round of voting with 53% of the vote while Goumba won 45.6%. Patassé's party, the Mouvement pour la Libération du Peuple Centrafricain (MLPC) or Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, gained a simple but not an absolute majority of seats in parliament, which meant Patassé's party required coalition partners.[43]
+
+Patassé purged many of the Kolingba elements from the government and Kolingba supporters accused Patassé's government of conducting a "witch hunt" against the Yakoma. A new constitution was approved on 28 December 1994 but had little impact on the country's politics. In 1996–1997, reflecting steadily decreasing public confidence in the government's erratic behaviour, three mutinies against Patassé's administration were accompanied by widespread destruction of property and heightened ethnic tension. During this time (1996) the Peace Corps evacuated all its volunteers to neighboring Cameroon.  To date, the Peace Corps has not returned to the Central African Republic.  The Bangui Agreements, signed in January 1997, provided for the deployment of an inter-African military mission, to Central African Republic and re-entry of ex-mutineers into the government on 7 April 1997. The inter-African military mission was later replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force (MINURCA). Since 1997, the country has hosted almost a dozen peacekeeping interventions, earning it the title of "world champion of peacekeeping".[29]
+
+In 1998, parliamentary elections resulted in Kolingba's RDC winning 20 out of 109 seats. The next year, however, in spite of widespread public anger in urban centers over his corrupt rule, Patassé won a second term in the presidential election.[44]
+
+On 28 May 2001, rebels stormed strategic buildings in Bangui in an unsuccessful coup attempt. The army chief of staff, Abel Abrou, and General François N'Djadder Bedaya were killed, but Patassé regained the upper hand by bringing in at least 300 troops of the Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba and Libyan soldiers.[45]
+
+In the aftermath of the failed coup, militias loyal to Patassé sought revenge against rebels in many neighborhoods of Bangui and incited unrest including the murder of many political opponents. Eventually, Patassé came to suspect that General François Bozizé was involved in another coup attempt against him, which led Bozizé  to flee with loyal troops to Chad. In March 2003, Bozizé launched a surprise attack against Patassé, who was out of the country. Libyan troops and some 1,000 soldiers of Bemba's Congolese rebel organization failed to stop the rebels and Bozizé's forces succeeded in overthrowing Patassé.[46]
+
+François Bozizé suspended the constitution and named a new cabinet, which included most opposition parties. Abel Goumba was named vice-president, which gave Bozizé's new government a positive image.[why?] Bozizé established a broad-based National Transition Council to draft a new constitution, and announced that he would step down and run for office once the new constitution was approved.[47]
+
+In 2004, the Central African Republic Bush War began, as forces opposed to Bozizé took up arms against his government. In May 2005, Bozizé won the presidential election, which excluded Patassé, and in 2006 fighting continued between the government and the rebels.[48] In November 2006, Bozizé's government requested French military support to help them repel rebels who had taken control of towns in the country's northern regions.[49]
+Though the initially public details of the agreement pertained to logistics and intelligence, by December the French assistance included airstrikes by Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters against rebel positions.[50][51]
+
+The Syrte Agreement in February and the Birao Peace Agreement in April 2007 called for a cessation of hostilities, the billeting of FDPC fighters and their integration with FACA, the liberation of political prisoners, integration of FDPC into government, an amnesty for the UFDR, its recognition as a political party, and the integration of its fighters into the national army. Several groups continued to fight but other groups signed on to the agreement, or similar agreements with the government (e.g. UFR on 15 December 2008). The only major group not to sign an agreement at the time was the CPJP, which continued its activities and signed a peace agreement with the government on 25 August 2012.
+
+In 2011, Bozizé was reelected in an election which was widely considered fraudulent.[10]
+
+In November 2012, Séléka, a coalition of rebel groups, took over towns in the northern and central regions of the country.  These groups eventually reached a peace deal with the Bozizé's government in January 2013 involving a power sharing government[10] but this deal broke down and the rebels seized the capital in March 2013 and Bozizé fled the country.[52][53]
+
+Michel Djotodia took over as president. Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye requested a UN peacekeeping force from the UN Security Council and on 31 May former President Bozizé was indicted for crimes against humanity and incitement of genocide.[54]
+By the end of the year there were international warnings of a "genocide"[55][56] and fighting was largely from reprisal attacks on civilians from Seleka's predominantly Muslim fighters and Christian militias called "anti-balaka."[57] By August 2013, there were reports of over 200,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs)[58][59]
+
+French President François Hollande called on the UN Security Council and African Union to increase their efforts to stabilize the country. On 18 February 2014, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the UN Security Council to immediately deploy 3,000 troops to the country, bolstering the 6,000 African Union soldiers and 2,000 French troops already in the country, to combat civilians being murdered in large numbers. The Séléka government was said to be divided,[60] and in September 2013, Djotodia officially disbanded Seleka, but many rebels refused to disarm, becoming known as ex-Seleka, and veered further out of government control.[57] It is argued that the focus of the initial disarmament efforts exclusively on the Seleka inadvertently handed the anti-Balaka the upper hand, leading to the forced displacement of Muslim civilians by anti-Balaka in Bangui and western CAR.[29]
+
+On 11 January 2014, Michael Djotodia and Nicolas Tiengaye resigned as part of a deal negotiated at a regional summit in neighboring Chad.[61] Catherine Samba-Panza was elected as interim president by the National Transitional Council,[62] becoming the first ever female Central African president. On 23 July 2014, following Congolese mediation efforts, Séléka and anti-balaka representatives signed a ceasefire agreement in Brazzaville.[63] By the end of 2014, the country was de facto partitioned with the anti-Balaka in the southwest and ex-Seleka  in the northeast.[29] In March 2015, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said 417 of the country's 436 mosques had been destroyed, and Muslim women were so scared of going out in public they were giving birth in their homes instead of going to the hospital.[64] On 14 December 2015, Séléka rebel leaders declared an independent Republic of Logone.[65]
+
+The Central African Republic is a landlocked nation within the interior of the African continent. It is bordered by Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo. The country lies between latitudes 2° and 11°N, and longitudes 14° and 28°E.[66]
+
+Much of the country consists of flat or rolling plateau savanna approximately 500 metres (1,640 ft) above sea level. Most of the northern half lies within the World Wildlife Fund's East Sudanian savanna ecoregion. In addition to the Fertit Hills in the northeast of the CAR, there are scattered hills in the southwest regions. In the northwest is the Yade Massif, a granite plateau with an altitude of 348 metres (1,143 ft).
+
+At 622,984 square kilometres (240,535 sq mi), the Central African Republic is the world's 44th-largest country. It is comparable in size to Ukraine, as the Ukraine is 603,500 square kilometres (233,000 sq mi) in area, according to List of countries and dependencies by area.
+
+Much of the southern border is formed by tributaries of the Congo River; the Mbomou River in the east merges with the Uele River to form the Ubangi River, which also comprises portions of the southern border. The Sangha River flows through some of the western regions of the country, while the eastern border lies along the edge of the Nile River watershed.[66]
+
+It has been estimated that up to 8% of the country is covered by forest, with the densest parts generally located in the southern regions. The forests are highly diverse and include commercially important species of Ayous, Sapelli and Sipo.[67] The deforestation rate is about 0.4% per annum, and lumber poaching is commonplace.[68]
+
+In 2008, Central African Republic was the world's least light pollution affected country.[69]
+
+The Central African Republic is the focal point of the Bangui Magnetic Anomaly, one of the largest magnetic anomalies on Earth.[70]
+
+In the southwest, the Dzanga-Sangha National Park is located in a rain forest area. The country is noted for its population of forest elephants and western lowland gorillas. In the north, the Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park is well-populated with wildlife, including leopards, lions, cheetahs and rhinos, and the Bamingui-Bangoran National Park is located in the northeast of CAR. The parks have been seriously affected by the activities of poachers, particularly those from Sudan, over the past two decades.[71]
+
+The climate of the Central African Republic is generally tropical, with a wet season that lasts from June to September in the northern regions of the country, and from May to October in the south. During the wet season, rainstorms are an almost daily occurrence, and early morning fog is commonplace. Maximum annual precipitation is approximately 1,800 millimetres (71 in) in the upper Ubangi region.[72]
+
+The northern areas are hot and humid from February to May,[73] but can be subject to the hot, dry, and dusty trade wind known as the Harmattan. The southern regions have a more equatorial climate, but they are subject to desertification, while the extreme northeast regions of the country are a steppe.[74]
+
+The Central African Republic is divided into 16 administrative prefectures (préfectures), two of which are economic prefectures (préfectures economiques), and one an autonomous commune; the prefectures are further divided into 71 sub-prefectures (sous-préfectures).[75][76]
+
+The prefectures are Bamingui-Bangoran, Basse-Kotto, Haute-Kotto, Haut-Mbomou, Kémo, Lobaye, Mambéré-Kadéï, Mbomou, Nana-Mambéré, Ombella-M'Poko, Ouaka, Ouham, Ouham-Pendé and Vakaga. The economic prefectures are Nana-Grébizi and Sangha-Mbaéré, while the commune is the capital city of Bangui.[75]
+
+The population of the Central African Republic has almost quadrupled since independence. In 1960, the population was 1,232,000; as of a 2018 UN estimate, it is approximately 4,666,368.[1][2]
+
+The United Nations estimates that approximately 4% of the population aged between 15 and 49 is HIV positive.[77] Only 3% of the country has antiretroviral therapy available, compared to a 17% coverage in the neighbouring countries of Chad and the Republic of the Congo.[78]
+
+The nation is divided into over 80 ethnic groups, each having its own language. The largest ethnic groups are the Baggara Arabs, Baka, Banda, Bayaka, Fula, Gbaya, Kara, Kresh, Mbaka, Mandja, Ngbandi, Sara, Vidiri, Wodaabe, Yakoma, Yulu, Zande, with others including Europeans of mostly French descent.[10]
+
+
+
+According to the 2003 national census, 80.3% of the population was Christian—51.4% Protestant and 28.9% Roman Catholic—, 10% is Muslim and 4.5 percent other religious groups, with 5.5 percent having no religious beliefs.[80] More recent work from the Pew Research Center estimated that, as of 2010, Christians constituted 89.8% of the population (with Protestantism at 60.7% and Catholicism 28.5%) while Muslims make up 8.9%.[81][82] The Catholic Church claims over 1.5 million adherents, approximately one-third of the population.[83] Indigenous belief (animism) is also practiced, and many indigenous beliefs are incorporated into Christian and Islamic practice.[84]  A UN director described religious tensions between Muslims and Christians as being high.[85]
+
+There are many missionary groups operating in the country, including Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, Grace Brethren, and Jehovah's Witnesses. While these missionaries are predominantly from the United States, France, Italy, and Spain, many are also from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other African countries. Large numbers of missionaries left the country when fighting broke out between rebel and government forces in 2002–3, but many of them have now returned to continue their work.[86]
+
+According to Overseas Development Institute research, during the crisis ongoing since 2012, religious leaders have mediated between communities and armed groups; they also provided refuge for people seeking shelter.[87]
+
+The Central African Republic's two official languages are French and Sango (also spelled Sangho), a creole developed as an inter-ethnic lingua franca based on the local Ngbandi language. CAR is one of the few African countries to have an African language as their official language.[88]
+
+Basketball is the country's most popular sport and a good way to connect with its people.[89][90] Its national team won the African Championship twice and was the first Sub-Saharan African team to qualify for the Basketball World Cup, in 1974.
+
+The country also has a national football team, which is governed by the Central African Football Federation, and stages matches at the Barthélemy Boganda Stadium.[91]
+
+Politics in the Central African Republic formally take place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic. In this system, the President is the head of state, with a  Prime Minister as head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament.[10]
+
+Changes in government have occurred in recent years by three methods: violence, negotiations, and elections. A new constitution was approved by voters in a referendum held on 5 December 2004. The government was rated 'Partly Free' from 1991 to 2001 and from 2004 to 2013.[92]
+
+The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term, and the prime minister is appointed by the president. The president also appoints and presides over the Council of Ministers, which initiates laws and oversees government operations. However, as of 2018 the official government is not in control of large parts of the country, which are governed by rebel groups.[93]
+
+Acting president since April 2016 is Faustin Archange Touadera who followed the interim government under Catherine Samba-Panza, interim prime minister André Nzapayeké.[94]
+
+The National Assembly  (Assemblée Nationale) has 140 members, elected for a five-year term using the two-round (or Run-off) system.[10]
+
+As in many other former French colonies, the Central African Republic's legal system is based on French law.[95] The Supreme Court, or Cour Supreme, is made up of judges appointed by the president. There is also a Constitutional Court, and its judges are also appointed by the president.[10]
+
+The Central African Republic relies heavily on Russian mercenaries for the protection of its diamond mines.[96]
+
+The Central African Republic is heavily dependent upon foreign aid and numerous NGOs provide services that the government does not provide.[97] In 2019, over $100 million USD in foreign aid was spent in the country, mostly on humanitarian assistance.[98]
+
+In 2006, due to ongoing violence, over 50,000 people in the country's northwest were at risk of starvation[99] but this was averted due to assistance from the United Nations.[100] On 8 January 2008, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon declared that the Central African Republic was eligible to receive assistance from the Peacebuilding Fund.[101] Three priority areas were identified: first, the reform of the security sector; second, the promotion of good governance and the rule of law; and third, the revitalization of communities affected by conflicts. On 12 June 2008, the Central African Republic requested assistance from the UN Peacebuilding Commission,[102] which was set up in 2005 to help countries emerging from conflict avoid devolving back into war or chaos.[103]
+
+In response to concerns of a potential genocide, a peacekeeping force – the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) – was authorized in December 2013. This African Union force of 6,000 personnel was accompanied by the French Operation Sangaris.[87]
+
+In 2017, Central African Republic signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[104]
+
+The per capita income of the Republic is often listed as being approximately $400 a year, one of the lowest in the world, but this figure is based mostly on reported sales of exports and largely ignores the unregistered sale of foods, locally produced alcoholic beverages, diamonds, ivory, bushmeat, and traditional medicine.[105]
+
+The currency of the Central African Republic is the CFA franc, which is accepted across the former countries of French West Africa and trades at a fixed rate to the euro. Diamonds constitute the country's most important export, accounting for 40–55% of export revenues, but it is estimated that between 30% and 50% of those produced each year leave the country clandestinely.[105]
+
+Agriculture is dominated by the cultivation and sale of food crops such as cassava, peanuts, maize, sorghum, millet, sesame, and plantain. The annual real GDP growth rate is just above 3%. The importance of food crops over exported cash crops is indicated by the fact that the total production of cassava, the staple food of most Central Africans, ranges between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes a year, while the production of cotton, the principal exported cash crop, ranges from 25,000 to 45,000 tonnes a year. Food crops are not exported in large quantities, but still constitute the principal cash crops of the country, because Central Africans derive far more income from the periodic sale of surplus food crops than from exported cash crops such as cotton or coffee.[105] Much of the country is self-sufficient in food crops; however, livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.[106]
+
+The Republic's primary import partner is the France (17.1%). Other imports come from the United States (12.3%), India (11.5%), and China (8.2%). Its largest export partner is France (31.2%), followed by Burundi (16.2%), China (12.5%), Cameroon (9.6%), and Austria (7.8%).[10]
+
+The CAR is a member of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA). In the 2009 World Bank Group's report Doing Business, it was ranked 183rd of 183 as regards 'ease of doing business', a composite index which takes into account regulations that enhance business activity and those that restrict it.[107]
+
+Bangui is the transport hub of the Central African Republic. As of 1999, eight roads connected the city to other main towns in the country, Cameroon, Chad and South Sudan; of these, only the toll roads are paved. During the rainy season from July to October, some roads are impassable.[108][109]
+
+River ferries sail from the river port at Bangui to Brazzaville and Zongo. The river can be navigated most of the year between Bangui and Brazzaville. From Brazzaville, goods are transported by rail to Pointe-Noire, Congo's Atlantic port.[110] The river port handles the overwhelming majority of the country's international trade and has a cargo handling capacity of 350,000 tons; it has 350 metres (1,150 ft) length of wharfs and 24,000 square metres (260,000 sq ft) of warehousing space.[108]
+
+Bangui M'Poko International Airport is Central African Republic's only international airport. As of June 2014 it had regularly scheduled direct flights to Brazzaville,  Casablanca, Cotonou, Douala, Kinshasha, Lomé, Luanda, Malabo, N'Djamena,  Paris, Pointe-Noire, and Yaoundé.
+
+Since at least 2002 there have been plans to connect Bangui by rail to the Transcameroon Railway.[111]
+
+The Central African Republic primarily uses hydroelectricity as there are few other resources for energy and power.[112] The Central African Republic will likely be among the main winners after a global transition to renewable energies is completed as the country is ranked no. 7 out of 156 nations in the index of geopolitical gains and losses after energy transition (GeGaLo Index).[113]
+
+Presently, the Central African Republic has active television services, radio stations, internet service providers, and mobile phone carriers; Socatel is the leading provider for both internet and mobile phone access throughout the country. The primary governmental regulating bodies of telecommunications are the Ministère des Postes and Télécommunications et des Nouvelles Technologies. In addition, the Central African Republic receives international support on telecommunication related operations from ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D) within the International Telecommunication Union to improve infrastructure.[114]
+
+Public education in the Central African Republic is free and is compulsory from ages 6 to 14.[115] However, approximately half of the adult population of the country is illiterate.[116]
+
+The two institutions of higher education in the Central African Republic are the University of Bangui, a public university located in Bangui, which includes a medical school; and Euclid University, an international university.
+[117]
+[118]
+
+The largest hospitals in the country are located in the Bangui district. As a member of the World Health Organization, the Central African Republic receives vaccination assistance, such as a 2014 intervention for the prevention of a measles epidemic.[119] In 2007, female life expectancy at birth was 48.2 years and male life expectancy at birth was 45.1 years.[120]
+
+Women's health is poor in the Central African Republic. As of 2010[update], the country had the 4th highest maternal mortality rate in the world.[121]
+The total fertility rate in 2014 was estimated at 4.46 children born/woman.[10] Approximately 25% of women had undergone female genital mutilation.[122]  Many births in the country are guided by traditional birth attendants, who often have little or no formal training.[123]
+
+Malaria is endemic in the Central African Republic, and one of the leading causes of death.[124]
+According to 2009 estimates, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is about 4.7% of the adult population (ages 15–49).[125] This is in general agreement with the 2016 United Nations estimate of approximately 4%.[126] Government expenditure on health was US$20 (PPP) per person in 2006[120] and 10.9% of total government expenditure in 2006.[120] There was only around 1 physician for every 20,000 persons in 2009.[127]
+
+The 2009 Human Rights Report by the United States Department of State noted that human rights in CAR were poor and expressed concerns over numerous government abuses.[128] The U.S. State Department alleged that major human rights abuses such as extrajudicial executions by security forces, torture, beatings and rape of suspects and prisoners occurred with impunity. It also alleged harsh and life-threatening conditions in prisons and detention centers, arbitrary arrest, prolonged pretrial detention and denial of a fair trial, restrictions on freedom of movement, official corruption, and restrictions on workers' rights.[128]
+
+The State Department report also cites widespread mob violence, the prevalence of female genital mutilation, discrimination against women and Pygmies, human trafficking, forced labor, and child labor.[129] Freedom of movement is limited in the northern part of the country "because of actions by state security forces, armed bandits, and other nonstate armed entities", and due to fighting between government and anti-government forces, many persons have been internally displaced.[130]
+
+Violence against children and women in relation to accusations of witchcraft has also been cited as a serious problem in the country.[131][132][133] Witchcraft is a criminal offense under the penal code.[131]
+
+Freedom of speech is addressed in the country's constitution, but there have been incidents of government intimidation of the media.[128] A report by the International Research & Exchanges Board's media sustainability index noted that "the country minimally met objectives, with segments of the legal system and government opposed to a free media system".[128]
+
+Approximately 68% of girls are married before they turn 18,[134] and the United Nations' Human Development Index ranked the country 188 out of 188 countries surveyed.[135] The Bureau of International Labor Affairs has also mentioned it in its last edition of the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.

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+Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure.[1][2] An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love of food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment.[3]
+
+Love is considered to be a positive and negative: with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another"; and its vice representing human moral flaw, akin to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, as it potentially leads people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency.[4][5] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.[6] In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.[7] Love has been postulated to be a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.[8]
+
+Ancient Greek philosophers identified five forms of love: essentially, familial love (in Greek, Storge), friendly love or platonic love (Philia), romantic love (Eros), guest love (Xenia) and divine love (Agape). Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of love: unrequited love, empty love, companionate love, consummate love, infatuated love, self-love, and courtly love. Numerous cultures have also distinguished Ren, Yuanfen, Mamihlapinatapai, Cafuné, Kama, Bhakti, Mettā, Ishq, Chesed, Amore, Charity, Saudade (and other variants or symbioses of these states), as culturally unique words, definitions, or expressions of love in regards to a specified "moments" currently lacking in the English language.[9][10][11]
+
+Scientific research on emotion has increased significantly over the past two decades. The color wheel theory of love defines three primary, three secondary and nine tertiary love styles, describing them in terms of the traditional color wheel. The triangular theory of love suggests "intimacy, passion and commitment" are core components of love. Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.
+
+The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Many other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that in English are denoted as "love"; one example is the plurality of Greek words for "love" which includes agape and eros.[12] Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus doubly impede the establishment of a universal definition.[13]
+
+Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love (antonyms of "love"). Love as a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like) is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy). As a less-sexual and more-emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust. As an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is often applied to close friendships or platonic love. (Further possible ambiguities come with usages "girlfriend", "boyfriend", "just good friends").
+
+Abstractly discussed, love usually refers to an experience one person feels for another. Love often involves caring for, or identifying with, a person or thing (cf. vulnerability and care theory of love), including oneself (cf. narcissism). In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly over time. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.[14]
+
+The complex and abstract nature of love often reduces discourse of love to a thought-terminating cliché. Several common proverbs regard love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love". St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another."[15] Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value.[citation needed] Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another."[16] Meher Baba stated that in love there is a "feeling of unity" and an "active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love."[17] Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as "unconditional selflessness".[18]
+
+People can be said to love an object, principle, or goal to which they are deeply committed and greatly value. For example, compassionate outreach and volunteer workers' "love" of their cause may sometimes be born not of interpersonal love but impersonal love, altruism, and strong spiritual or political convictions.[19] People can also "love" material objects, animals, or activities if they invest themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things. If sexual passion is also involved, then this feeling is called paraphilia.[20] A common principle that people say they love is life itself.
+
+Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings. It is a much more potent sentiment than a simple liking for a person. Unrequited love refers to those feelings of love that are not reciprocated. Interpersonal love is most closely associated with Interpersonal relationships.[19] Such love might exist between family members, friends, and couples. There are also a number of psychological disorders related to love, such as erotomania.
+Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the 20th century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have added to the understanding the concept of love.
+
+Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst.[21] Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and human behavior researcher, divides the experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust is the feeling of sexual desire; romantic attraction determines what partners mates find attractive and pursue, conserving time and energy by choosing; and attachment involves sharing a home, parental duties, mutual defense, and in humans involves feelings of safety and security.[22] Three distinct neural circuitries, including neurotransmitters, and three behavioral patterns, are associated with these three romantic styles.[22]
+
+Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including the neurotransmitter hormones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, the same compounds released by amphetamine, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side effects such as increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.[23]
+
+Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding that promotes relationships lasting for many years and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin to a greater degree than short-term relationships have.[23] Enzo Emanuele and coworkers reported the protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these return to previous levels after one year.[24]
+
+Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion. Intimacy is a form in which two people share confidences and various details of their personal lives, and is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is permanent. The last form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. All forms of love are viewed as varying combinations of these three components. Non-love does not include any of these components. Liking only includes intimacy. Infatuated love only includes passion. Empty love only includes commitment. Romantic love includes both intimacy and passion. Companionate love includes intimacy and commitment. Fatuous love includes passion and commitment. Lastly, consummate love includes all three components.[25] American psychologist Zick Rubin sought to define love by psychometrics in the 1970s. His work states that three factors constitute love: attachment, caring, and intimacy.[26][27]
+
+Following developments in electrical theories such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating has generally found this not to be true when it comes to character and personality—people tend to like people similar to themselves. However, in a few unusual and specific domains, such as immune systems, it seems that humans prefer others who are unlike themselves (e.g., with an orthogonal immune system), since this will lead to a baby that has the best of both worlds.[28] In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed, described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and affinities.
+Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose work in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the "concern for the spiritual growth of another," and simple narcissism.[29] In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.
+
+Psychologist Erich Fromm maintained in his book The Art of Loving that love is not merely a feeling but is also actions, and that in fact, the "feeling" of love is superficial in comparison to one's commitment to love via a series of loving actions over time.[19] In this sense, Fromm held that love is ultimately not a feeling at all, but rather is a commitment to, and adherence to, loving actions towards another, oneself, or many others, over a sustained duration.[19] Fromm also described love as a conscious choice that in its early stages might originate as an involuntary feeling, but which then later no longer depends on those feelings, but rather depends only on conscious commitment.[19]
+
+Evolutionary psychology has attempted to provide various reasons for love as a survival tool. Humans are dependent on parental help for a large portion of their lifespans compared to other mammals. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote parental support of children for this extended time period. Furthermore, researchers as early as Charles Darwin himself identified unique features of human love compared to other mammals and credit love as a major factor for creating social support systems that enabled the development and expansion of the human species.[30] Another factor may be that sexually transmitted diseases can cause, among other effects, permanently reduced fertility, injury to the fetus, and increase complications during childbirth. This would favor monogamous relationships over polygamy.[31]
+
+Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst.[21] Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. Certainly, love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin), neurotrophins (such as NGF), and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love: sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to its mother. The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate); companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.
+
+Greek distinguishes several different senses in which the word "love" is used. Ancient Greeks identified four forms of love: kinship or familiarity (in Greek, storge), friendship and/or platonic desire (philia), sexual and/or romantic desire (eros), and self-emptying or divine love (agape).[32][33] Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of romantic love.[34] However, with Greek (as with many other languages), it has been historically difficult to separate the meanings of these words totally. At the same time, the Ancient Greek text of the Bible has examples of the verb agapo having the same meaning as phileo.
+
+Agape (ἀγάπη agápē) means love in modern-day Greek. The term s'agapo means I love you in Greek. The word agapo is the verb I love. It generally refers to a "pure," ideal type of love, rather than the physical attraction suggested by eros. However, there are some examples of agape used to mean the same as eros. It has also been translated as "love of the soul."[35]
+
+Eros (ἔρως érōs) (from the Greek deity Eros) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Greek word erota means in love. Plato refined his own definition. Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. Some translations list it as "love of the body".[35]
+
+Philia (φιλία philía), a dispassionate virtuous love, was a concept addressed and developed by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics Book VIII.[36] It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality, and familiarity. Philia is motivated by practical reasons; one or both of the parties benefit from the relationship. It can also mean "love of the mind."
+
+Storge (στοργή storgē) is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring.
+
+Xenia (ξενία xenía), hospitality, was an extremely important practice in ancient Greece. It was an almost ritualized friendship formed between a host and his guest, who could previously have been strangers. The host fed and provided quarters for the guest, who was expected to repay only with gratitude. The importance of this can be seen throughout Greek mythology—in particular, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
+
+The Latin language has several different verbs corresponding to the English word "love." amō is the basic verb meaning I love, with the infinitive amare ("to love") as it still is in Italian today. The Romans used it both in an affectionate sense as well as in a romantic or sexual sense. From this verb come amans—a lover, amator, "professional lover," often with the accessory notion of lechery—and amica, "girlfriend" in the English sense, often being applied euphemistically to a prostitute. The corresponding noun is amor (the significance of this term for the Romans is well illustrated in the fact, that the name of the City, Rome—in Latin: Roma—can be viewed as an anagram for amor, which was used as the secret name of the City in wide circles in ancient times),[37] which is also used in the plural form to indicate love affairs or sexual adventures. This same root also produces amicus—"friend"—and amicitia, "friendship" (often based to mutual advantage, and corresponding sometimes more closely to "indebtedness" or "influence"). Cicero wrote a treatise called On Friendship (de Amicitia), which discusses the notion at some length. Ovid wrote a guide to dating called Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), which addresses, in depth, everything from extramarital affairs to overprotective parents.
+
+Latin sometimes uses amāre where English would simply say to like. This notion, however, is much more generally expressed in Latin by the terms placere or delectāre, which are used more colloquially, the latter used frequently in the love poetry of Catullus. Diligere often has the notion "to be affectionate for," "to esteem," and rarely if ever is used for romantic love. This word would be appropriate to describe the friendship of two men. The corresponding noun diligentia, however, has the meaning of "diligence" or "carefulness," and has little semantic overlap with the verb. Observare is a synonym for diligere; despite the cognate with English, this verb and its corresponding noun, observantia, often denote "esteem" or "affection." Caritas is used in Latin translations of the Christian Bible to mean "charitable love"; this meaning, however, is not found in Classical pagan Roman literature. As it arises from a conflation with a Greek word, there is no corresponding verb.
+
+Two philosophical underpinnings of love exist in the Chinese tradition, one from Confucianism which emphasized actions and duty while the other came from Mohism which championed a universal love. A core concept to Confucianism is 仁 (Ren, "benevolent love"), which focuses on duty, action and attitude in a relationship rather than love itself. In Confucianism, one displays benevolent love by performing actions such as filial piety from children, kindness from parents, loyalty to the king and so forth.
+
+The concept of 愛 (Mandarin: ài) was developed by the Chinese philosopher Mozi in the 4th century BC in reaction to Confucianism's benevolent love. Mozi tried to replace what he considered to be the long-entrenched Chinese over-attachment to family and clan structures with the concept of "universal love" (兼愛, jiān'ài). In this, he argued directly against Confucians who believed that it was natural and correct for people to care about different people in different degrees. Mozi, by contrast, believed people in principle should care for all people equally. Mohism stressed that rather than adopting different attitudes towards different people, love should be unconditional and offered to everyone without regard to reciprocation; not just to friends, family and other Confucian relations. Later in Chinese Buddhism, the term Ai (愛) was adopted to refer to a passionate, caring love and was considered a fundamental desire. In Buddhism, Ai was seen as capable of being either selfish or selfless, the latter being a key element towards enlightenment.
+
+In Mandarin Chinese, 愛 (ài) is often used as the equivalent of the Western concept of love. 愛 (ài) is used as both a verb (e.g. 我愛你, Wǒ ài nǐ, or "I love you") and a noun (such as 愛情 àiqíng, or "romantic love"). However, due to the influence of Confucian 仁 (rén), the phrase 我愛你 (Wǒ ài nǐ, I love you) carries with it a very specific sense of responsibility, commitment and loyalty. Instead of frequently saying "I love you" as in some Western societies, the Chinese are more likely to express feelings of affection in a more casual way. Consequently, "I like you" (我喜欢你, Wǒ xǐhuan nǐ) is a more common way of expressing affection in Mandarin; it is more playful and less serious.[38] This is also true in Japanese (suki da, 好きだ).
+
+The Japanese language uses three words to convey the English equivalent of "love". Because "love" covers a wide range of emotions and behavioral phenomena, there are nuances distinguishing the three terms.[39][40] The term ai (愛), which is often associated with maternal love[39] or selfless love,[40] originally referred to beauty and was often used in religious context. Following the Meiji Restoration 1868, the term became associated with "love" in order to translate Western literature. Prior to Western influence, the term koi (恋 or 孤悲) generally represented romantic love, and was often the subject of the popular Man'yōshū Japanese poetry collection.[39] Koi describes a longing for a member of the opposite sex and is typically interpreted as selfish and wanting.[40] The term's origins come from the concept of lonely solitude as a result of separation from a loved one. Though modern usage of koi focuses on sexual love and infatuation, the Manyō used the term to cover a wider range of situations, including tenderness, benevolence, and material desire.[39] The third term, ren'ai (恋愛), is a more modern construction that combines the kanji characters for both ai and koi, though its usage more closely resembles that of koi in the form of romantic love.[39][40]
+
+In contemporary literature, kama refers usually to sexual desire.[41][42] However, the term also refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture and nature.[43][44]
+
+The concept kama is found in some of the earliest known verses in Vedas. For example, Book 10 of Rig Veda describes the creation of the universe from nothing by the great heat. There in hymn 129, it states:
+
+कामस्तदग्रे समवर्तताधि मनसो रेतः परथमं यदासीत |
+सतो बन्धुमसति निरविन्दन हर्दि परतीष्याकवयो मनीषा ||[45]
+
+Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit,
+Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
+
+The children of Adam are limbs of one body
+Having been created of one essence.
+When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
+The other limbs cannot remain at rest.
+If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others
+You are not worthy to be called by the name of "man".
+
+Sa'di, Gulistan
+
+Rumi, Hafiz and Sa'di are icons of the passion and love that the Persian culture and language present.[citation needed] The Persian word for love is Ishq, which is derived from Arabic language; however, it is considered by most to be too stalwart a term for interpersonal love and is more commonly substituted for "doost dashtan" ("liking").[citation needed] In the Persian culture, everything is encompassed by love and all is for love, starting from loving friends and family, husbands and wives, and eventually reaching the divine love that is the ultimate goal in life.[citation needed]
+
+In Hebrew, אהבה (ahava) is the most commonly used term for both interpersonal love and love between God and God's creations. Chesed, often translated as loving-kindness, is used to describe many forms of love between human beings.
+
+The commandment to love other people is given in the Torah, which states, "Love your neighbor like yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). The Torah's commandment to love God "with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5) is taken by the Mishnah (a central text of the Jewish oral law) to refer to good deeds, willingness to sacrifice one's life rather than commit certain serious transgressions, willingness to sacrifice all of one's possessions, and being grateful to the Lord despite adversity (tractate Berachoth 9:5). Rabbinic literature differs as to how this love can be developed, e.g., by contemplating divine deeds or witnessing the marvels of nature.
+
+As for love between marital partners, this is deemed an essential ingredient to life: "See life with the wife you love" (Ecclesiastes 9:9). Rabbi David Wolpe writes that "...love is not only about the feelings of the lover...It is when one person believes in another person and shows it." He further states that "...love...is a feeling that expresses itself in action. What we really feel is reflected in what we do."[47] The biblical book Song of Solomon is considered a romantically phrased metaphor of love between God and his people, but in its plain reading, reads like a love song. The 20th-century rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler is frequently quoted as defining love from the Jewish point of view as "giving without expecting to take" (from his Michtav me-Eliyahu, Vol. 1).
+
+The Christian understanding is that love comes from God. The love of man and woman—eros in Greek—and the unselfish love of others (agape), are often contrasted as "descending" and "ascending" love, respectively, but are ultimately the same thing.[48]
+
+There are several Greek words for "love" that are regularly referred to in Christian circles.
+
+Christians believe that to Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength and Love your neighbor as yourself are the two most important things in life (the greatest commandment of the Jewish Torah, according to Jesus; cf. Gospel of Mark chapter 12, verses 28–34). Saint Augustine summarized this when he wrote "Love God, and do as thou wilt."
+
+The Apostle Paul glorified love as the most important virtue of all. Describing love in the famous poetic interpretation in 1 Corinthians, he wrote, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres." (1 Cor. 13:4–7, NIV)
+
+The Apostle John wrote, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:16–17, NIV) John also wrote, "Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7–8, NIV)
+
+Saint Augustine says that one must be able to decipher the difference between love and lust. Lust, according to Saint Augustine, is an overindulgence, but to love and be loved is what he has sought for his entire life. He even says, "I was in love with love." Finally, he does fall in love and is loved back, by God. Saint Augustine says the only one who can love you truly and fully is God, because love with a human only allows for flaws such as "jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and contention." According to Saint Augustine, to love God is "to attain the peace which is yours." (Saint Augustine's Confessions)
+
+Augustine regards the duplex commandment of love in Matthew 22 as the heart of Christian faith and the interpretation of the Bible. After the review of Christian doctrine, Augustine treats the problem of love in terms of use and enjoyment until the end of Book I of De Doctrina Christiana (1.22.21–1.40.44;).[50]
+
+Christian theologians see God as the source of love, which is mirrored in humans and their own loving relationships. Influential Christian theologian C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves. Benedict XVI named his first encyclical God is love. He said that a human being, created in the image of God, who is love, is able to practice love; to give himself to God and others (agape) and by receiving and experiencing God's love in contemplation (eros). This life of love, according to him, is the life of the saints such as Teresa of Calcutta and the Blessed Virgin Mary and is the direction Christians take when they believe that God loves them.[48]
+
+Pope Francis taught that "True love is both loving and letting oneself be loved...what is important in love is not our loving, but allowing ourselves to be loved by God."[51] And so, in the analysis of a Catholic theologian, for Pope Francis, "the key to love...is not our activity. It is the activity of the greatest, and the source, of all the powers in the universe: God's."[52]
+
+In Christianity the practical definition of love is summarised by St. Thomas Aquinas, who defined love as "to will the good of another," or to desire for another to succeed.[15] This is an explanation of the Christian need to love others, including their enemies. As Thomas Aquinas explains, Christian love is motivated by the need to see others succeed in life, to be good people.
+
+Regarding love for enemies, Jesus is quoted in the Gospel of Matthew chapter five:
+
+"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
+– Matthew 5: 43–48.
+
+Do not forget to love with forgiveness, Christ saved an adulterous woman from those who would stone her. A world of wronged hypocrites needs forgiving love. Mosaic Law would hold Deuteronomy 22:22-24 "If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die—the man that lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall put away the evil from Israel. If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife; so you shall put away the evil from among you."[53][circular reference]
+
+Tertullian wrote regarding love for enemies: "Our individual, extraordinary, and perfect goodness consists in loving our enemies. To love one's friends is common practice, to love one's enemies only among Christians."[54]
+
+Love encompasses the Islamic view of life as universal brotherhood that applies to all who hold faith. Amongst the 99 names of God (Allah), there is the name Al-Wadud, or "the Loving One," which is found in Surah [Quran 11:90] as well as Surah [Quran 85:14]. God is also referenced at the beginning of every chapter in the Qur'an as Ar-Rahman and Ar-Rahim, or the "Most Compassionate" and the "Most Merciful", indicating that nobody is more loving, compassionate and benevolent than God. The Qur'an refers to God as being "full of loving kindness."
+
+The Qur'an exhorts Muslim believers to treat all people, those who have not persecuted them, with birr or "deep kindness" as stated in Surah [Quran 6:8-9]. Birr is also used by the Qur'an in describing the love and kindness that children must show to their parents.
+
+Ishq, or divine love, is the emphasis of Sufism in the Islamic tradition. Practitioners of Sufism believe that love is a projection of the essence of God to the universe. God desires to recognize beauty, and as if one looks at a mirror to see oneself, God "looks" at himself within the dynamics of nature. Since everything is a reflection of God, the school of Sufism practices to see the beauty inside the apparently ugly. Sufism is often referred to as the religion of love.[55] God in Sufism is referred to in three main terms, which are the Lover, Loved, and Beloved, with the last of these terms being often seen in Sufi poetry. A common viewpoint of Sufism is that through love, humankind can get back to its inherent purity and grace. The saints of Sufism are infamous for being "drunk" due to their love of God; hence, the constant reference to wine in Sufi poetry and music.
+
+In his Paris Talks, `Abdu'l-Bahá described four types of love: the love that flows from God to human beings; the love that flows from human beings to God; the love of God towards the Self or Identity of God; and the love of human beings for human beings.[56]
+
+In Buddhism, Kāma is sensuous, sexual love. It is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment, since it is selfish. Karuṇā is compassion and mercy, which reduces the suffering of others. It is complementary to wisdom and is necessary for enlightenment. Adveṣa and mettā are benevolent love. This love is unconditional and requires considerable self-acceptance. This is quite different from ordinary love, which is usually about attachment and sex and which rarely occurs without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to detachment and unselfish interest in others' welfare.
+
+The Bodhisattva ideal in Mahayana Buddhism involves the complete renunciation of oneself in order to take on the burden of a suffering world. The strongest motivation one has in order to take the path of the Bodhisattva is the idea of salvation within unselfish, altruistic love for all sentient beings.
+
+In Hinduism, kāma is pleasurable, sexual love, personified by the god Kamadeva. For many Hindu schools, it is the third end (Kama) in life. Kamadeva is often pictured holding a bow of sugar cane and an arrow of flowers; he may ride upon a great parrot. He is usually accompanied by his consort Rati and his companion Vasanta, lord of the spring season. Stone images of Kamadeva and Rati can be seen on the door of the Chennakeshava temple at Belur, in Karnataka, India. Maara is another name for kāma.
+
+In contrast to kāma, prema – or prem – refers to elevated love. Karuna is compassion and mercy, which impels one to help reduce the suffering of others. Bhakti is a Sanskrit term, meaning "loving devotion to the supreme God." A person who practices bhakti is called a bhakta. Hindu writers, theologians, and philosophers have distinguished nine forms of bhakti, which can be found in the Bhagavata Purana and works by Tulsidas. The philosophical work Narada Bhakti Sutras, written by an unknown author (presumed to be Narada), distinguishes eleven forms of love.
+
+In certain Vaishnava sects within Hinduism, attaining unadulterated, unconditional and incessant love for Godhead is considered the foremost goal of life. Gaudiya Vaishnavas who worship Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the cause of all causes consider Love for Godhead (Prema) to act in two ways: sambhoga and vipralambha (union and separation)—two opposites.[57]
+
+In the condition of separation, there is an acute yearning for being with the beloved and in the condition of union, there is supreme happiness and nectarean. Gaudiya Vaishnavas consider that Krishna-prema (Love for Godhead) is not fire but that it still burns away one's material desires. They consider that Kṛṣṇa-prema is not a weapon, but it still pierces the heart. It is not water, but it washes away everything—one's pride, religious rules, and one's shyness. Krishna-prema is considered to make one drown in the ocean of transcendental ecstasy and pleasure. The love of Radha, a cowherd girl, for Krishna is often cited as the supreme example of love for Godhead by Gaudiya Vaishnavas. Radha is considered to be the internal potency of Krishna, and is the supreme lover of Godhead. Her example of love is considered to be beyond the understanding of material realm as it surpasses any form of selfish love or lust that is visible in the material world. The reciprocal love between Radha (the supreme lover) and Krishna (God as the Supremely Loved) is the subject of many poetic compositions in India such as the Gita Govinda and Hari Bhakti Shuddhodhaya.
+
+In the Bhakti tradition within Hinduism, it is believed that execution of devotional service to God leads to the development of Love for God (taiche bhakti-phale krsne prema upajaya), and as love for God increases in the heart, the more one becomes free from material contamination (krishna-prema asvada haile, bhava nasa paya). Being perfectly in love with God or Krishna makes one perfectly free from material contamination. and this is the ultimate way of salvation or liberation. In this tradition, salvation or liberation is considered inferior to love, and just an incidental by-product. Being absorbed in Love for God is considered to be the perfection of life.[58]
+
+The term "free love" has been used[59] to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It claimed that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.[60]
+
+Many people in the early 19th century believed that marriage was an important aspect of life to "fulfill earthly human happiness." Middle-class Americans wanted the home to be a place of stability in an uncertain world. This mentality created a vision of strongly defined gender roles, which provoked the advancement of the free love movement as a contrast.[61]
+
+The term "sex radical" has been used interchangeably with the term "free lover".[citation needed] By whatever name, advocates had two strong beliefs: opposition to the idea of forceful sexual activity in a relationship and advocacy for a woman to use her body in any way that she pleases.[62] These are also beliefs of Feminism.[63]
+
+The philosophy of love is a field of social philosophy and ethics that attempts to explain the nature of love.[64] The philosophical investigation of love includes the tasks of distinguishing between the various kinds of personal love, asking if and how love is or can be justified, asking what the value of love is, and what impact love has on the autonomy of both the lover and the beloved.[63]

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+A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity. As of 2018[update], the International Atomic Energy Agency reported there were 450 nuclear power reactors in operation in 30 countries.[1][2]
+
+Nuclear plants are usually considered to be base load stations since fuel is a small part of the cost of production[3] and because they cannot be easily or quickly dispatched. Their operations, maintenance, and fuel costs are at the low end of the spectrum, making them suitable as base-load power suppliers. However, the cost of proper long term radioactive waste storage is uncertain.
+
+Electricity was generated by a nuclear reactor for the first time ever on September 3, 1948, at the X-10 Graphite Reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, US which was the first nuclear power station to power a light bulb.[4][5][6] The second, larger experiment occurred on December 20, 1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho.
+
+On June 27, 1954, the world's first nuclear power station to generate electricity for a power grid, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, started operations in Obninsk of the Soviet Union.[7] The world's first full scale power station, Calder Hall in England, opened on October 17, 1956.[8] The world's first full scale power station solely devoted to electricity production—Calder Hall was also meant to produce plutonium—the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, United States—was connected to the grid on December 18, 1957.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The conversion to electrical energy takes place indirectly, as in conventional thermal power stations. The fission in a nuclear reactor heats the reactor coolant. The coolant may be water or gas, or even liquid metal, depending on the type of reactor. The reactor coolant then goes to a steam generator and heats water to produce steam. The pressurized steam is then usually fed to a multi-stage steam turbine. After the steam turbine has expanded and partially condensed the steam, the remaining vapor is condensed in a condenser. The condenser is a heat exchanger which is connected to a secondary side such as a river or a cooling tower. The water is then pumped back into the steam generator and the cycle begins again. The water-steam cycle corresponds to the Rankine cycle.
+
+The nuclear reactor is the heart of the station. In its central part, the reactor's core produces heat due to nuclear fission. With this heat, a coolant is heated as it is pumped through the reactor and thereby removes the energy from the reactor. Heat from nuclear fission is used to raise steam, which runs through turbines, which in turn power the electrical generators.
+
+Nuclear reactors usually rely on uranium to fuel the chain reaction. Uranium is a very heavy metal that is abundant on Earth and is found in sea water as well as most rocks. Naturally occurring uranium is found in two different isotopes: uranium-238 (U-238), accounting for 99.3% and uranium-235 (U-235) accounting for about 0.7%. Isotopes are atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons. Thus, U-238 has 146 neutrons and U-235 has 143 neutrons.
+
+Different isotopes have different behaviors. For instance, U-235 is fissile which means that it is easily split and gives off a lot of energy making it ideal for nuclear energy. On the other hand, U-238 does not have that property despite it being the same element. Different isotopes also have different half-lives. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of a sample of a radioactive element to decay. U-238 has a longer half-life than U-235, so it takes longer to decay over time. This also means that U-238 is less radioactive than U-235.
+
+Since nuclear fission creates radioactivity, the reactor core is surrounded by a protective shield. This containment absorbs radiation and prevents radioactive material from being released into the environment. In addition, many reactors are equipped with a dome of concrete to protect the reactor against both internal casualties and external impacts.[9]
+
+The purpose of the steam turbine is to convert the heat contained in steam into mechanical energy. The engine house with the steam turbine is usually structurally separated from the main reactor building. It is aligned so as to prevent debris from the destruction of a turbine in operation from flying towards the reactor.[citation needed]
+
+In the case of a pressurized water reactor, the steam turbine is separated from the nuclear system. To detect a leak in the steam generator and thus the passage of radioactive water at an early stage, an activity meter is mounted to track the outlet steam of the steam generator. In contrast, boiling water reactors pass radioactive water through the steam turbine, so the turbine is kept as part of the radiologically controlled area of the nuclear power station.
+
+The electric generator converts mechanical power supplied by the turbine into electrical power. Low-pole AC synchronous generators of high rated power are used. A cooling system removes heat from the reactor core and transports it to another area of the station, where the thermal energy can be harnessed to produce electricity or to do other useful work. Typically the hot coolant is used as a heat source for a boiler, and the pressurized steam from that drives one or more steam turbine driven electrical generators.[10]
+
+In the event of an emergency, safety valves can be used to prevent pipes from bursting or the reactor from exploding. The valves are designed so that they can derive all of the supplied flow rates with little increase in pressure. In the case of the BWR, the steam is directed into the suppression chamber and condenses there. The chambers on a heat exchanger are connected to the intermediate cooling circuit.
+
+The main condenser is a large cross-flow shell and tube heat exchanger that takes wet vapor, a mixture of liquid water and steam at saturation conditions, from the turbine-generator exhaust and condenses it back into sub-cooled liquid water so it can be pumped back to the reactor by the condensate and feedwater pumps.[11][full citation needed]
+
+In the main condenser the wet vapor turbine exhaust come into contact with thousands of tubes that have much colder water flowing through them on the other side. The cooling water typically come from a natural body of water such as a river or lake. 
+Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located in the desert about 60 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, is the only nuclear facility that does not use a natural body of water for cooling, instead it uses treated sewage from the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. 
+The water coming from the cooling body of water is either pumped back to the water source at a warmer temperature or returns to a cooling tower where it either cools for more uses or evaporates into water vapor that rises out the top of the tower.[12]
+
+The water level in the steam generator and the nuclear reactor is controlled using the feedwater system. The feedwater pump has the task of taking the water from the condensate system, increasing the pressure and forcing it into either the steam generators—in the case of a pressurized water reactor—or directly into the reactor, for boiling water reactors.
+
+Continuous power supply to the reactor is critical to ensure safe operation. Most nuclear stations require at least two distinct sources of offsite power for redundancy. These are usually provided by multiple transformers that are sufficiently separated and can receive power from multiple transmission lines.
+
+In addition, in some nuclear stations, the turbine generator can power the station's loads while the station is online, without requiring external power. This is achieved via station service transformers which tap power from the generator output before they reach the step-up transformer.
+
+The economics of nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, and multibillion-dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power stations typically have high capital costs, but low direct fuel costs, with the costs of fuel extraction, processing, use and spent fuel storage internalized costs. Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear stations. Cost estimates take into account station decommissioning and nuclear waste storage or recycling costs in the United States due to the Price Anderson Act.
+
+With the prospect that all spent nuclear fuel could potentially be recycled by using future reactors, generation IV reactors are being designed to completely close the nuclear fuel cycle. However, up to now, there has not been any actual bulk recycling of waste from a NPP, and on-site temporary storage is still being used at almost all plant sites due to construction problems for deep geological repositories. Only Finland has stable repository plans, therefore from a worldwide perspective, long-term waste storage costs are uncertain.
+
+Construction, or capital cost aside, measures to mitigate global warming such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, increasingly favor the economics of nuclear power. Further efficiencies are hoped to be achieved through more advanced reactor designs, Generation III reactors promise to be at least 17% more fuel efficient, and have lower capital costs, while Generation IV reactors promise further gains in fuel efficiency and significant reductions in nuclear waste.
+
+In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling to find finance, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors at Cernavodă in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out.[14] Where cheap gas is available and its future supply relatively secure, this also poses a major problem for nuclear projects.[14]
+
+Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties. To date all operating nuclear power stations were developed by state-owned or regulated utilities where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating performance, fuel price, and other factors were borne by consumers rather than suppliers.[15] Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by station suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power stations.[16]
+
+Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, costs are likely to go up for currently operating and new nuclear power stations, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management and elevated design basis threats.[17] However many designs, such as the currently under construction AP1000, use passive nuclear safety cooling systems, unlike those of Fukushima I which required active cooling systems, which largely eliminates the need to spend more on redundant back up safety equipment.
+
+Professor of sociology Charles Perrow states that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly-coupled nuclear reactor systems. Such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.[18] An interdisciplinary team from MIT has estimated that given the expected growth of nuclear power from 2005 to 2055, at least four serious nuclear accidents would be expected in that period.[19] The MIT study does not take into account improvements in safety since 1970.[20][21]
+
+The most serious accidents to date have been the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, corresponding to the beginning of the operation of generation II reactors. This leads to on average one serious accident happening every eight years worldwide.[citation needed]
+
+Modern nuclear reactor designs have had numerous safety improvements since the first-generation nuclear reactors. A nuclear power plant cannot explode like a nuclear weapon because the fuel for uranium reactors is not enriched enough, and nuclear weapons require precision explosives to force fuel into a small enough volume to go supercritical. Most reactors require continuous temperature control to prevent a core meltdown, which has occurred on a few occasions through accident or natural disaster, releasing radiation and making the surrounding area uninhabitable. Plants must be defended against theft of nuclear material and attack by enemy military planes or missiles.[22]
+
+The nuclear power debate about the deployment and use of nuclear fission reactors to generate electricity from nuclear fuel for civilian purposes peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies," in some countries.[23]
+
+Proponents argue that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source which reduces carbon emissions and can increase energy security if its use supplants a dependence on imported fuels.[24][full citation needed] Proponents advance the notion that nuclear power produces virtually no air pollution, in contrast to the chief viable alternative of fossil fuel. Proponents also believe that nuclear power is the only viable course to achieve energy independence for most Western countries. They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.[25][full citation needed]
+
+Opponents say that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment,[who?][weasel words] and that costs do not justify benefits. Threats include health risks and environmental damage from uranium mining, processing and transport, the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation or sabotage, and the unsolved problem of radioactive nuclear waste.[26][27][28] Another environmental issue is discharge of hot water into the sea. The hot water modifies the environmental conditions for marine flora and fauna. They also contend that reactors themselves are enormously complex machines where many things can and do go wrong, and there have been many serious nuclear accidents.[29][30] Critics do not believe that these risks can be reduced through new technology,[31] despite rapid advancements in containment procedures and storage methods.
+
+Opponents argue that when all the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered, from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning, nuclear power is not a low-carbon electricity source despite the possibility of refinement and long term storage being powered by a nuclear facility.[32][33][34] Those countries that do not contain uranium mines cannot achieve energy independence through existing nuclear power technologies. Actual construction costs often exceed estimates, and spent fuel management costs are difficult to define.[citation needed]
+
+Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel.[35] Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With the commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors.[36] The reprocessed uranium, which constitutes the bulk of the spent fuel material, can in principle also be re-used as fuel, but that is only economic when uranium prices are high or disposal is expensive. Finally, the breeder reactor can employ not only the recycled plutonium and uranium in spent fuel, but all the actinides, closing the nuclear fuel cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by more than 60 times.[37]
+
+Nuclear reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level waste, but by itself does not reduce radioactivity or heat generation and therefore does not eliminate the need for a geological waste repository. Reprocessing has been politically controversial because of the potential to contribute to nuclear proliferation, the potential vulnerability to nuclear terrorism, the political challenges of repository siting (a problem that applies equally to direct disposal of spent fuel), and because of its high cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle.[38] In the United States, the Obama administration stepped back from President Bush's plans for commercial-scale reprocessing and reverted to a program focused on reprocessing-related scientific research.[39]
+
+The Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage puts in place an international framework for nuclear liability.[40]
+However states with a majority of the world's nuclear power stations, including the U.S., Russia, China and Japan, are not party to international nuclear liability conventions. In the U.S., insurance for nuclear or radiological incidents is covered (for facilities licensed through 2025) by the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.
+
+Under the energy policy of the United Kingdom through its 1965 Nuclear Installations Act, liability is governed for nuclear damage for which a UK nuclear licensee is responsible. The Act requires compensation to be paid for damage up to a limit of £150 million by the liable operator for ten years after the incident. Between ten and thirty years afterwards, the Government meets this obligation. The Government is also liable for additional limited cross-border liability (about £300 million) under international conventions (Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and Brussels Convention supplementary to the Paris Convention).[41]
+
+Nuclear decommissioning is the dismantling of a nuclear power station and decontamination of the site to a state no longer requiring protection from radiation for the general public. The main difference from the dismantling of other power stations is the presence of radioactive material that requires special precautions to remove and safely relocate to a waste repository.
+
+Generally speaking, nuclear stations were originally designed for a life of about 30 years.[42][43] Newer stations are designed for a 40 to 60-year operating life.[44] The Centurion Reactor is a future class of nuclear reactor that is being designed to last 100 years.[45] One of the major limiting wear factors is the deterioration of the reactor's pressure vessel under the action of neutron bombardment,[43] however in 2018 Rosatom announced it had developed a thermal annealing technique for reactor pressure vessels which ameliorates radiation damage and extends service life by between 15 and 30 years.[46]
+
+Decommissioning involves many administrative and technical actions. It includes all clean-up of radioactivity and progressive demolition of the station. Once a facility is decommissioned, there should no longer be any danger of a radioactive accident or to any persons visiting it. After a facility has been completely decommissioned it is released from regulatory control, and the licensee of the station no longer has responsibility for its nuclear safety.
+
+Nuclear stations are used primarily for base load because of economic considerations. The fuel cost of operations for a nuclear station is smaller than the fuel cost for operation of coal or gas plants. Since most of the cost of nuclear power plant is capital cost, there is almost no cost saving by running it at less than full capacity.[47]
+
+Nuclear power plants are routinely used in load following mode on a large scale in France, although "it is generally accepted that this is not an ideal economic situation for nuclear stations."[48] Unit A at the decomissioned German Biblis Nuclear Power Plant was designed to modulate its output 15% per minute between 40% to 100% of its nominal power.[49]
+
+-

en/931.html.txt

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+
+
+A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre; equivalently it is the curve traced out by a point that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is constant. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is called the radius. This article is about circles in Euclidean geometry, and, in particular, the Euclidean plane, except where otherwise noted.
+
+Specifically, a circle is a simple closed curve that divides the plane into two regions: an interior and an exterior. In everyday use, the term "circle" may be used interchangeably to refer to either the boundary of the figure, or to the whole figure including its interior; in strict technical usage, the circle is only the boundary and the whole figure is called a disc.
+
+A circle may also be defined as a special kind of ellipse in which the two foci are coincident and the eccentricity is 0, or the two-dimensional shape enclosing the most area per unit perimeter squared, using calculus of variations.
+
+A circle is a plane figure bounded by one curved line, and such that all straight lines drawn from a certain point within it to the bounding line, are equal. The bounding line is called its circumference and the point, its centre.
+
+In the field of topology, a circle isn't limited to the geometric concept, but to all of its homeomorphisms. Two topological circles are equivalent if one can be transformed into the other via a deformation of R3 upon itself (known as an ambient isotopy).[2]
+
+All of the specified regions may be considered as open, that is, not containing their boundaries, or as closed, including their respective boundaries.
+
+The word circle derives from the Greek κίρκος/κύκλος (kirkos/kuklos), itself a metathesis of the Homeric Greek κρίκος (krikos), meaning "hoop" or "ring".[3] The origins of the words circus and circuit are closely related.
+
+The circle has been known since before the beginning of recorded history. Natural circles would have been observed, such as the Moon, Sun, and a short plant stalk blowing in the wind on sand, which forms a circle shape in the sand. The circle is the basis for the wheel, which, with related inventions such as gears, makes much of modern machinery possible. In mathematics, the study of the circle has helped inspire the development of geometry, astronomy and calculus.
+
+Early science, particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy, was connected to the divine for most medieval scholars, and many believed that there was something intrinsically "divine" or "perfect" that could be found in circles.[4][5]
+
+Some highlights in the history of the circle are:
+
+The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is π (pi), an irrational constant approximately equal to 3.141592654. Thus the circumference C is related to the radius r and diameter d by:
+
+As proved by Archimedes, in his Measurement of a Circle, the area enclosed by a circle is equal to that of a triangle whose base has the length of the circle's circumference and whose height equals the circle's radius,[8] which comes to π multiplied by the radius squared:
+
+Equivalently, denoting diameter by d,
+
+that is, approximately 79% of the circumscribing square (whose side is of length d).
+
+The circle is the plane curve enclosing the maximum area for a given arc length. This relates the circle to a problem in the calculus of variations, namely the isoperimetric inequality.
+
+Equation of a circle
+In an x–y Cartesian coordinate system, the circle with centre coordinates (a, b) and radius r is the set of all points (x, y) such that
+
+This equation, known as the Equation of the Circle, follows from the Pythagorean theorem applied to any point on the circle: as shown in the adjacent diagram, the radius is the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle whose other sides are of length |x − a| and |y − b|. If the circle is centred at the origin (0, 0), then the equation simplifies to
+
+Parametric form 
+The equation can be written in parametric form using the trigonometric functions sine and cosine as
+
+where t is a parametric variable in the range 0 to 2π, interpreted geometrically as the angle that the ray from (a, b) to (x, y) makes with the positive x-axis.
+
+An alternative parametrisation of the circle is:
+
+In this parameterisation, the ratio of t to r can be interpreted geometrically as the stereographic projection of the line passing through the centre parallel to the x-axis (see Tangent half-angle substitution). However, this parameterisation works only if t is made to range not only through all reals but also to a point at infinity; otherwise, the leftmost point of the circle would be omitted.
+
+3-point-form 
+The equation of the circle determined by three points 
+
+
+
+(
+
+x
+
+1
+
+
+,
+
+y
+
+1
+
+
+)
+,
+(
+
+x
+
+2
+
+
+,
+
+y
+
+2
+
+
+)
+,
+(
+
+x
+
+3
+
+
+,
+
+y
+
+3
+
+
+)
+
+
+{\displaystyle (x_{1},y_{1}),(x_{2},y_{2}),(x_{3},y_{3})}
+
+ not on a line is obtained by a conversion of the 3-point-form of a circle's equation
+
+Homogeneous form
+In homogeneous coordinates, each conic section with the equation of a circle has the form
+
+It can be proven that a conic section is a circle exactly when it contains (when extended to the complex projective plane) the points I(1: i: 0) and J(1: −i: 0). These points are called the circular points at infinity.
+
+In polar coordinates, the equation of a circle is:
+
+where a is the radius of the circle, 
+
+
+
+(
+r
+,
+θ
+)
+
+
+{\displaystyle (r,\theta )}
+
+ is the polar coordinate of a generic point on the circle, and 
+
+
+
+(
+
+r
+
+0
+
+
+,
+ϕ
+)
+
+
+{\displaystyle (r_{0},\phi )}
+
+ is the polar coordinate of the centre of the circle (i.e., r0 is the distance from the origin to the centre of the circle, and φ is the anticlockwise angle from the positive x-axis to the line connecting the origin to the centre of the circle). For a circle centred on the origin, i.e. r0 = 0, this reduces to simply r = a. When r0 = a, or when the origin lies on the circle, the equation becomes
+
+In the general case, the equation can be solved for r, giving
+
+Note that without the ± sign, the equation would in some cases describe only half a circle.
+
+In the complex plane, a circle with a centre at c and radius r has the equation:
+
+In parametric form, this can be written:
+
+The slightly generalised equation
+
+for real p, q and complex g is sometimes called a generalised circle. This becomes the above equation for a circle with 
+
+
+
+p
+=
+1
+,
+ 
+g
+=
+−
+
+
+c
+¯
+
+
+,
+ 
+q
+=
+
+r
+
+2
+
+
+−
+
+|
+
+c
+
+
+|
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle p=1,\ g=-{\overline {c}},\ q=r^{2}-|c|^{2}}
+
+, since 
+
+
+
+
+|
+
+z
+−
+c
+
+
+|
+
+
+2
+
+
+=
+z
+
+
+z
+¯
+
+
+−
+
+
+c
+¯
+
+
+z
+−
+c
+
+
+z
+¯
+
+
++
+c
+
+
+c
+¯
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle |z-c|^{2}=z{\overline {z}}-{\overline {c}}z-c{\overline {z}}+c{\overline {c}}}
+
+. Not all generalised circles are actually circles: a generalised circle is either a (true) circle or a line.
+
+The tangent line through a point P on the circle is perpendicular to the diameter passing through P. If P = (x1, y1) and the circle has centre (a, b) and radius r, then the tangent line is perpendicular to the line from (a, b) to (x1, y1), so it has the form (x1 − a)x + (y1 – b)y = c. Evaluating at (x1, y1) determines the value of c and the result is that the equation of the tangent is
+
+or
+
+If y1 ≠ b then the slope of this line is
+
+This can also be found using implicit differentiation.
+
+When the centre of the circle is at the origin then the equation of the tangent line becomes
+
+and its slope is
+
+An inscribed angle (examples are the blue and green angles in the figure) is exactly half the corresponding central angle (red). Hence, all inscribed angles that subtend the same arc (pink) are equal. Angles inscribed on the arc (brown) are supplementary. In particular, every inscribed angle that subtends a diameter is a right angle (since the central angle is 180 degrees).
+
+Another proof of this result, which relies only on two chord properties given above, is as follows. Given a chord of length y and with sagitta of length x, since the sagitta intersects the midpoint of the chord, we know it is part of a diameter of the circle. Since the diameter is twice the radius, the "missing" part of the diameter is (2r − x) in length. Using the fact that one part of one chord times the other part is equal to the same product taken along a chord intersecting the first chord, we find that (2r − x)x = (y / 2)2. Solving for r, we find the required result.
+
+There are many compass-and-straightedge constructions resulting in circles.
+
+The simplest and most basic is the construction given the centre of the circle and a point on the circle. Place the fixed leg of the compass on the centre point, the movable leg on the point on the circle and rotate the compass.
+
+Apollonius of Perga showed that a circle may also be defined as the set of points in a plane having a constant ratio (other than 1) of distances to two fixed foci, A and B.[12][13] (The set of points where the distances are equal is the perpendicular bisector of segment AB, a line.) That circle is sometimes said to be drawn about two points.
+
+The proof is in two parts. First, one must prove that, given two foci A and B and a ratio of distances, any point P satisfying the ratio of distances must fall on a particular circle. Let C be another point, also satisfying the ratio and lying on segment AB. By the angle bisector theorem the line segment PC will bisect the interior angle APB, since the segments are similar:
+
+Analogously, a line segment PD through some point D on AB extended bisects the corresponding exterior angle BPQ where Q is on AP extended. Since the interior and exterior angles sum to 180 degrees, the angle CPD is exactly 90 degrees, i.e., a right angle. The set of points P such that angle CPD is a right angle forms a circle, of which CD is a diameter.
+
+Second, see[14]:p.15 for a proof that every point on the indicated circle satisfies the given ratio.
+
+A closely related property of circles involves the geometry of the cross-ratio of points in the complex plane. If A, B, and C are as above, then the circle of Apollonius for these three points is the collection of points P for which the absolute value of the cross-ratio is equal to one:
+
+Stated another way, P is a point on the circle of Apollonius if and only if the cross-ratio [A,B;C,P] is on the unit circle in the complex plane.
+
+If C is the midpoint of the segment AB, then the collection of points P satisfying the Apollonius condition
+
+is not a circle, but rather a line.
+
+Thus, if A, B, and C are given distinct points in the plane, then the locus of points P satisfying the above equation is called a "generalised circle." It may either be a true circle or a line. In this sense a line is a generalised circle of infinite radius.
+
+In every triangle a unique circle, called the incircle, can be inscribed such that it is tangent to each of the three sides of the triangle.[15]
+
+About every triangle a unique circle, called the circumcircle, can be circumscribed such that it goes through each of the triangle's three vertices.[16]
+
+A tangential polygon, such as a tangential quadrilateral, is any convex polygon within which a circle can be inscribed that is tangent to each side of the polygon.[17] Every regular polygon and every triangle is a tangential polygon.
+
+A cyclic polygon is any convex polygon about which a circle can be circumscribed, passing through each vertex. A well-studied example is the cyclic quadrilateral. Every regular polygon and every triangle is a cyclic polygon. A polygon that is both cyclic and tangential is called a bicentric polygon.
+
+A hypocycloid is a curve that is inscribed in a given circle by tracing a fixed point on a smaller circle that rolls within and tangent to the given circle.
+
+The circle can be viewed as a limiting case of each of various other figures:
+
+Defining a circle as the set of points with a fixed distance from a point, different shapes can be considered circles under different definitions of distance. In p-norm, distance is determined by
+
+In Euclidean geometry, p = 2, giving the familiar
+
+In taxicab geometry, p = 1. Taxicab circles are squares with sides oriented at a 45° angle to the coordinate axes. While each side would have length 
+
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+r
+
+
+{\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}r}
+
+ using a Euclidean metric, where r is the circle's radius, its length in taxicab geometry is 2r. Thus, a circle's circumference is 8r. Thus, the value of a geometric analog to 
+
+
+
+π
+
+
+{\displaystyle \pi }
+
+ is 4 in this geometry. The formula for the unit circle in taxicab geometry is 
+
+
+
+
+|
+
+x
+
+|
+
++
+
+|
+
+y
+
+|
+
+=
+1
+
+
+{\displaystyle |x|+|y|=1}
+
+ in Cartesian coordinates and
+
+in polar coordinates.
+
+A circle of radius 1 (using this distance) is the von Neumann neighborhood of its center.
+
+A circle of radius r for the Chebyshev distance (L∞ metric) on a plane is also a square with side length 2r parallel to the coordinate axes, so planar Chebyshev distance can be viewed as equivalent by rotation and scaling to planar taxicab distance. However, this equivalence between L1 and L∞ metrics does not generalize to higher dimensions.
+
+Squaring the circle is the problem, proposed by ancient geometers, of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge.
+
+In 1882, the task was proven to be impossible, as a consequence of the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem, which proves that pi (π) is a transcendental number, rather than an algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients.
+
+From the time of the earliest known civilisations – such as the Assyrians and ancient Egyptians, those in the Indus Valley and along the Yellow River in China, and the Western civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome during classical Antiquity – the circle has been used directly or indirectly in visual art to convey the artist’s message and to express certain ideas.
+However, differences in worldview (beliefs and culture) had a great impact on artists’ perceptions. While some emphasised the circle’s perimeter to demonstrate their democratic manifestation, others focused on its centre to symbolise the concept of cosmic unity. In mystical doctrines, the circle mainly symbolises the infinite and cyclical nature of existence, but in religious traditions it represents heavenly bodies and divine spirits.
+The circle signifies many sacred and spiritual concepts, including unity, infinity, wholeness, the universe, divinity, balance, stability and perfection, among others. Such concepts have been conveyed in cultures worldwide through the use of symbols, for example, a compass, a halo, the vesica piscis and its derivatives (fish, eye, aureole, mandorla, etc.), the ouroboros, the Dharma wheel, a rainbow, mandalas, rose windows and so forth. [18]
+
+
+
+
+

en/932.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+A grain is a small, hard, dry seed, with or without an attached hull or fruit layer, harvested for human or animal consumption.[1] A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes. The term specifically refers to seeds of plants of the grass family, such as wheat, corn, and rice; seeds of non-edible grass species are also often called "grains."
+
+After being harvested, dry grains are more durable than other staple foods, such as starchy fruits (plantains, breadfruit, etc.) and tubers (sweet potatoes, cassava, and more). This durability has made grains well suited to industrial agriculture, since they can be mechanically harvested, transported by rail or ship, stored for long periods in silos, and milled for flour or pressed for oil. Thus, major global commodity markets exist for maize, rice, soybeans, wheat and other grains but not for tubers, vegetables, or other crops.
+
+Grains and cereal are synonymous with caryopses, the fruits of the grass family. In agronomy and commerce, seeds or fruits from other plant families are called grains if they resemble caryopses. For example, amaranth is sold as "grain amaranth", and amaranth products may be described as "whole grains". The pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes had grain-based food systems but, at the higher elevations, none of the grains was a cereal. All three grains native to the Andes (kaniwa, kiwicha, and quinoa) are broad-leafed plants rather than grasses such as corn, rice, and wheat.[2]
+
+All cereal crops are members of the grass family (Poaceae).[3] Cereal grains contain a substantial amount of starch,[4] a carbohydrate that provides dietary energy.
+
+Starchy grains from broadleaf (dicot) plant families:
+
+Pulses or grain legumes, members of the pea family, have a higher protein content than most other plant foods, at around 20%, while soybeans have as much as 35%. As is the case with all other whole plant foods, pulses also contain carbohydrate and fat. Common pulses include:
+
+Oilseed grains are grown primarily for the extraction of their edible oil. Vegetable oils provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids.[5] They are also used as fuel and lubricants.[6]
+
+Because grains are small, hard and dry, they can be stored, measured, and transported more readily than can other kinds of food crops such as fresh fruits, roots and tubers. The development of grain agriculture allowed excess food to be produced and stored easily which could have led to the creation of the first permanent settlements and the division of society into classes.[7]
+
+Those who handle grain at grain facilities may encounter numerous occupational hazards and exposures. Risks include grain entrapment, where workers are submerged in the grain and unable to remove themselves;[8] explosions caused by fine particles of grain dust,[9] and falls.

en/933.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+A grain is a small, hard, dry seed, with or without an attached hull or fruit layer, harvested for human or animal consumption.[1] A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes. The term specifically refers to seeds of plants of the grass family, such as wheat, corn, and rice; seeds of non-edible grass species are also often called "grains."
+
+After being harvested, dry grains are more durable than other staple foods, such as starchy fruits (plantains, breadfruit, etc.) and tubers (sweet potatoes, cassava, and more). This durability has made grains well suited to industrial agriculture, since they can be mechanically harvested, transported by rail or ship, stored for long periods in silos, and milled for flour or pressed for oil. Thus, major global commodity markets exist for maize, rice, soybeans, wheat and other grains but not for tubers, vegetables, or other crops.
+
+Grains and cereal are synonymous with caryopses, the fruits of the grass family. In agronomy and commerce, seeds or fruits from other plant families are called grains if they resemble caryopses. For example, amaranth is sold as "grain amaranth", and amaranth products may be described as "whole grains". The pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes had grain-based food systems but, at the higher elevations, none of the grains was a cereal. All three grains native to the Andes (kaniwa, kiwicha, and quinoa) are broad-leafed plants rather than grasses such as corn, rice, and wheat.[2]
+
+All cereal crops are members of the grass family (Poaceae).[3] Cereal grains contain a substantial amount of starch,[4] a carbohydrate that provides dietary energy.
+
+Starchy grains from broadleaf (dicot) plant families:
+
+Pulses or grain legumes, members of the pea family, have a higher protein content than most other plant foods, at around 20%, while soybeans have as much as 35%. As is the case with all other whole plant foods, pulses also contain carbohydrate and fat. Common pulses include:
+
+Oilseed grains are grown primarily for the extraction of their edible oil. Vegetable oils provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids.[5] They are also used as fuel and lubricants.[6]
+
+Because grains are small, hard and dry, they can be stored, measured, and transported more readily than can other kinds of food crops such as fresh fruits, roots and tubers. The development of grain agriculture allowed excess food to be produced and stored easily which could have led to the creation of the first permanent settlements and the division of society into classes.[7]
+
+Those who handle grain at grain facilities may encounter numerous occupational hazards and exposures. Risks include grain entrapment, where workers are submerged in the grain and unable to remove themselves;[8] explosions caused by fine particles of grain dust,[9] and falls.

en/934.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+
+
+Green Book
+
+Parasite
+
+The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars,[1] are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the "Academy Award of Merit", although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the "Oscar". The statuette depicts a knight rendered in the Art Deco style.
+
+The award was originally sculpted by George Stanley from a design sketch by Cedric Gibbons.[2] AMPAS first presented it in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in what would become known as the 1st Academy Awards.[3][4] The Academy Awards ceremony was first broadcast by radio in 1930 and was televised for the first time in 1953. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and is now televised live worldwide.[5] It is also the oldest of the four major annual American entertainment awards; its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music – are modeled after the Academy Awards.[6] They are widely cited as the most famous and prestigious competitive awards in the field of entertainment.
+
+The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2019, was held on February 9, 2020. As with the previous ceremony, there was no host. The ceremony was broadcast on ABC. It took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, for the 18th consecutive year. This ceremony marked the first time in Oscar history that more than three films had received ten or more nominations.[7] A total of 3,140 Oscar statuettes have been awarded since its inception in 1929.[8]
+
+The first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people.[9]
+
+The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel.[5] The cost of guest tickets for that night's ceremony was $5 ($74 in 2020 dollars). Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the film-making industry of the time, for their works during the 1927–28 period. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes.
+
+Winners were announced to media three months earlier. That was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11:00 pm on the night of the awards.[5] This method was used until 1940, when the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result, the Academy has, since 1941, used a sealed envelope to reveal the names of the winners.[5]
+
+The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. He had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier; this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. At that time, winners were recognized for the entirety of their work done in a certain category during the qualifying period; for example, Jannings received the award for two movies in which he starred during that period, and Janet Gaynor later won a single Oscar for performances in three films. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, and professionals were honored for a specific performance in a single film. For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years.[5]
+
+At the 29th ceremony, held in 1957, the Best Foreign Language Film category, now known as Best International Feature Film, was introduced. Until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award.
+
+Perhaps the most widely seen streaker in history was 34-year-old Robert Opel, who streaked across the stage of The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles flashing a peace sign on national US television at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. Bemused host David Niven quipped, "Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?" Later, evidence arose suggesting that Opel's appearance was facilitated as a publicity stunt by the show's producer Jack Haley Jr. Robert Metzler, the show's business manager, believed that the incident had been planned in some way; during the dress rehearsal Niven had asked Metzler's wife to borrow a pen so he could write down the famous line, which was thus not the ad-lib it appeared to be.[10]
+
+The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[11]
+
+Since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies have ended with the Academy Award for Best Picture.
+
+Traditionally, the previous year's winner for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor present the awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, while the previous year's winner for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress present the awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.
+
+Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the February 9, 2020 award ceremony.[12]
+
+Tom Hanks announced at the 2020 Oscar Ceremony, the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on December 14, 2020.[13] The museum development started in 2017 under Kerry Brougher, but is now led by Bill Kramer.[14] The industry curated exhibits will be geared toward the history of motion picture, the art & science of film making, exhibiting trailblazing directors, actors, film makers, sound editors and more, and will house famous artifacts from acclaimed movies like Dorothy's Ruby Red Slippers.
+
+Because of COVID-19, Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson announced that for the 2021 Oscar Ceremony, streaming movies not shown in theaters would be eligible, though at some point the requirement that movies be shown in theaters would return.[15]
+
+The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette.[8] Made of gold-plated bronze on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34.3 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.856 kg), and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.[16]
+
+Sculptor George Stanley (who also did the Muse Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl) sculpted Cedric Gibbons' design. The statuettes presented at the initial ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze. Within a few years, the bronze was abandoned in favor of Britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy which is then plated in copper, nickel silver, and finally, 24-karat gold.[8] Due to a metal shortage during World War II, Oscars were made of painted plaster for three years. Following the war, the Academy invited recipients to redeem the plaster figures for gold-plated metal ones.[17] The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Award's statuettes. From 1983 to 2015,[18] approximately 50 Oscars in a tin alloy with gold plating were made each year in Chicago by Illinois manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.[19] It would take between three and four weeks to manufacture 50 statuettes.[20] In 2016, the Academy returned to bronze as the core metal of the statuettes, handing manufacturing duties to Walden, New York-based Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry.[21][22] While based on a digital scan of an original 1929 Oscar, the statuettes retain their modern-era dimensions and black pedestal. Cast in liquid bronze from 3D-printed ceramic molds and polished, they are then electroplated in 24-karat gold by Brooklyn, New York–based Epner Technology. The time required to produce 50 such statuettes is roughly three months.[23] R.S. Owens is expected to continue producing other awards for the Academy and service existing Oscars that need replating.[24]
+
+The Academy officially adopted the name "Oscar" for the trophies in 1939. However, the origin of the nickname is disputed.[25]
+
+One biography of Bette Davis, who was a president of the Academy in 1941, claims she named the award after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. A frequently mentioned originator is Margaret Herrick, the Academy executive secretary, who, when she first saw the award in 1931, said the statuette reminded her of "Uncle Oscar", a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce.[26]
+
+Columnist Sidney Skolsky, who was present during Herrick's naming in 1931, wrote that "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar.'"[27] The Academy credits Skolsky with "the first confirmed newspaper reference" to Oscar in his column on March 16, 1934, which was written about that year's 6th Academy Awards.[28] The 1934 awards appeared again in another early media mention of Oscar: a Time magazine story.[29] In the ceremonies that year, Walt Disney was the first to thank the Academy for his "Oscar" during his acceptance speech.[30]
+
+To prevent information identifying the Oscar winners from leaking ahead of the ceremony, Oscar statuettes presented at the ceremony have blank baseplates. Until 2010, winners returned their statuettes to the Academy and had to wait several weeks to have their names inscribed on their respective Oscars. Since 2010, winners have had the option of having engraved nameplates applied to their statuettes at an inscription-processing station at the Governor's Ball, a party held immediately after the Oscar ceremony. The R.S. Owens company has engraved nameplates made before the ceremony, bearing the name of every potential winner. The nameplates for the non-winning nominees are later recycled.[31][32]
+
+Prior to 1950 Oscar statuettes were (and remain) the property of the recipient.[33]  Since then the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that the statuette be first offered for sale back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards predating this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums.[34]
+
+In 1989 Michael Todd's grandson tried to sell Todd's Best Picture Oscar for his 1956 production of Around the World in 80 Days to a movie prop collector.  The Academy earned enforcement of its statuette contract by gaining a permanent injunction against the sale.
+
+In 1992, Harold Russell consigned his 1946 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for The Best Years of Our Lives to auction in order to raise money for his wife's medical expenses.  Though his decision caused controversy, the first-ever Oscar to be sold passed   to a private collector on August 6, 1992 for $60,500 ($110,200 today). Russell defended his action, saying, "I don't know why anybody would be critical. My wife's health is much more important than sentimental reasons. The movie will be here, even if Oscar isn't." .[35]
+
+In December 2011, Orson Welles' 1941 Oscar for Citizen Kane (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay) was put up for auction, after his heirs won a 2004 court decision contending that Welles did not sign any agreement to return the statue to the Academy.[36] On December 20, 2011, it sold in an online auction for US$861,542 ($0.98 million today).[37]
+
+Some buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury.[34]
+
+In addition to the Academy Award of Merit (Oscar award), there are nine honorary (non-competitive) awards presented by the Academy from time to time (except for the Academy Honorary Award, the Technical Achievement Award, and the Student Academy Awards, which are presented annually):[38]
+
+The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.
+
+Since 2004, Academy Award nomination results have been announced to the public in mid-January. Prior to that, the results were announced in early February.
+
+The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, maintains a voting membership of over 7,000 as of 2018[update].[39]
+
+Academy membership is divided into different branches, with each representing a different discipline in film production. Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311 members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) since the 7th Academy Awards in 1935. The firm mails the ballots of eligible nominees to members of the Academy in December to reflect the previous eligible year with a due date sometime in January of the next year, then tabulates the votes in a process that takes thousands of hours.[40][41][42]
+
+All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contributions to the field of motion pictures.
+
+New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has just under 6,000 voting members. While the membership had been growing, stricter policies have kept its size steady since then.[43]
+
+In 2012, the results of a study conducted by the Los Angeles Times were published describing the demographic breakdown of approximately 88% of AMPAS' voting membership. Of the 5,100+ active voters confirmed, 94% were Caucasian, 77% were male, and 54% were found to be over the age of 60. 33% of voting members are former nominees (14%) and winners (19%).[44]
+
+In May 2011, the Academy sent a letter advising its 6,000 or so voting members that an online system for Oscar voting would be implemented in 2013.[45]
+
+According to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, and play for seven consecutive days, to qualify (except for the Best International Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, and awards in short film categories). Additionally, the film must be shown at least three times on each day of its qualifying run, with at least one of the daily showings starting between 6 pm and 10 pm local time.[46][47]
+
+The Best International Feature Film award does not require a U.S. release. It requires the film to be submitted as its country's official selection.
+
+The Best Documentary Feature award requires either week-long releases in both Los Angeles County and New York City[a]  during the previous calendar year, or a qualifying award at a competitive film festival from the Documentary Feature Qualifying Festival list (regardless of any public exhibition or distribution), or a submission in the International Feature Film category as its country's official selection. The qualifying theatrical runs must meet the same requirements as those for non-documentary films regarding numbers and times of screenings. Additionally, a film must have been reviewed by a critic from The New York Times, Time Out New York, the Los Angeles Times, or LA Weekly.[49]
+
+Awards in short film categories (Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Animated Short Film, and Best Live Action Short Film) have noticeably different eligibility rules from most other competitive awards. First, the qualifying period for release does not coincide with a calendar year, instead covering a one-year period starting on October 1 and ending on September 30 of the calendar year before the ceremony. Second, there are multiple methods of qualification. The main method is a week-long theatrical release in either Los Angeles County or New York City during the eligibility period. Films also can qualify by winning specified awards at one of a number of competitive film festivals designated by the Academy, also without regard to prior public distribution. Finally, a film that is selected as a gold, silver, or bronze medal winner in an appropriate category of the immediately previous Student Academy Awards is also eligible (Documentary category for that award, and Animation, Narrative, Alternative, or International for the other awards). The requirements for the qualifying theatrical run are also different from those for other awards. Only one screening per day is required. For the Documentary award, the screening must start between noon and 10 pm local time; for other awards, no specific start time is required, but the film must appear in regular theater listings with dates and screening times.[49][50]
+
+For example, the 2009 Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker, was actually first released in 2008, but did not qualify for the 2008 awards, as it did not play its Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles until mid-2009, thus qualifying for the 2009 awards. Foreign films must include English subtitles, and each country can submit only one film for consideration in the International Feature Film category per year.[51]
+
+Rule 2 states that a film must be feature-length, defined as a minimum of 40 minutes, except for short-subject awards, and it must exist either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print or in 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s progressive scan digital cinema format with a minimum projector resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels.[52] Since the 90th Academy Awards, presented in 2018, multi-part and limited series have been ineligible for the Best Documentary Feature award. This followed the win of O.J.: Made in America, an eight-hour presentation that was screened in a limited release before being broadcast in five parts on ABC and ESPN, in that category in 2017. The Academy's announcement of the new rule made no direct mention of that film.[53]
+
+Producers must submit an Official Screen Credits online form before the deadline; in case it is not submitted by the defined deadline, the film will be ineligible for Academy Awards in any year. The form includes the production credits for all related categories. Then, each form is checked and put in a Reminder List of Eligible Releases.
+
+In late December, ballots, and copies of the Reminder List of Eligible Releases are mailed to around 6,000 active members. For most categories, members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees only in their respective categories (i.e. only directors vote for directors, writers for writers, actors for actors, etc.). In the special case of Best Picture, all voting members are eligible to select the nominees. In all major categories, a variant of the single transferable vote is used, with each member casting a ballot with up to five nominees (ten for Best Picture) ranked preferentially.[54][55][56] In certain categories, including International Feature Film, Documentary and Animated Feature, nominees are selected by special screening committees made up of members from all branches.
+
+In most categories, the winner is selected from among the nominees by plurality voting of all members.[54][56] Since 2009, the Best Picture winner has been chosen by instant runoff voting.[56][57] Since 2013, re-weighted range voting has been used to select the nominees for the Best Visual Effects.[58][59]
+
+Film companies will spend as much as several million dollars on marketing to awards voters for a movie in the running for Best Picture, in attempts to improve chances of receiving Oscars and other movie awards conferred in Oscar season. The Academy enforces rules to limit overt campaigning by its members so as to try to eliminate excesses and prevent the process from becoming undignified. It has an awards czar on staff who advises members on allowed practices and levies penalties on offenders.[60] For example, a producer of the 2009 Best Picture nominee The Hurt Locker was disqualified as a producer in the category when he contacted associates urging them to vote for his film and not another that was seen as the front-runner (The Hurt Locker eventually won).
+
+The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, commonly in late February or early March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers sometimes do not adhere to this. (The artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast.)
+
+The Academy Awards is the world's longest-running awards show televised live from the U.S. to all time zones in North America and worldwide, and gathers billions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world.[61] The Oscars were first televised in 1953 by NBC, which continued to broadcast the event until 1960, when ABC took over, televising the festivities (including the first color broadcast of the event in 1966) through 1970. NBC regained the rights for five years (1971–75), then ABC resumed broadcast duties in 1976 and its current contract with the Academy runs through 2028.[62] The Academy has also produced condensed versions of the ceremony for broadcast in international markets (especially those outside of the Americas) in more desirable local timeslots. The ceremony was broadcast live internationally for the first time via satellite since 1970, but only two South American countries, Chile and Brazil, purchased the rights to air the broadcast. By that time, the television rights to the Academy Awards had been sold in 50 countries. A decade later, the rights were already being sold to 60 countries, and by 1984, the TV rights to the Awards were licensed in 76 countries.
+
+The ceremonies were moved up from late March/early April to late February, since 2004, to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. Another reason was because of the growing TV ratings success coinciding with the NCAA Basketball Tournament, which would cut into the Academy Awards audience. (In 1976 and 1977, ABC's regained Oscars were moved from Tuesday to Monday and went directly opposite NBC's NCAA title game.) The earlier date is also to the advantage of ABC, as it now usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. Some years, the ceremony is moved into the first Sunday of March to avoid a clash with the Winter Olympic Games. Another reason for the move to late February and early March is also to avoid the awards ceremony occurring so close to the religious holidays of Passover and Easter, which for decades had been a grievance from members and the general public.[63] Advertising is somewhat restricted, however, as traditionally no movie studios or competitors of official Academy Award sponsors may advertise during the telecast. The production of the Academy Awards telecast currently holds the distinction of winning the most Emmys in history, with 47 wins and 195 nominations overall since that award's own launch in 1949.[64]
+
+After many years of being held on Mondays at 9:00 pm Eastern/6:00 p.m Pacific, since the 1999 ceremonies, it was moved to Sundays at 8:30 pm ET/5:30 pm PT.[65] The reasons given for the move were that more viewers would tune in on Sundays, that Los Angeles rush-hour traffic jams could be avoided, and an earlier start time would allow viewers on the East Coast to go to bed earlier.[66] For many years the film industry opposed a Sunday broadcast because it would cut into the weekend box office.[67] In 2010, the Academy contemplated moving the ceremony even further back into January, citing TV viewers' fatigue with the film industry's long awards season. However, such an accelerated schedule would dramatically decrease the voting period for its members, to the point where some voters would only have time to view the contending films streamed on their computers (as opposed to traditionally receiving the films and ballots in the mail). Furthermore, a January ceremony on Sunday would clash with National Football League playoff games.[68] In 2018, the Academy announced that the ceremony would be moved from late February to mid February beginning with the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.[69]
+
+Originally scheduled for April 8, 1968, the 40th Academy Awards ceremony was postponed for two days, because of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. On March 30, 1981, the 53rd Academy Awards was postponed for one day, after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and others in Washington, D.C.[70]
+
+In 1993, an In Memoriam segment was introduced,[71] honoring those who had made a significant contribution to cinema who had died in the preceding 12 months, a selection compiled by a small committee of Academy members.[72] This segment has drawn criticism over the years for the omission of some names. Criticism was also levied for many years regarding another aspect, with the segment having a "popularity contest" feel as the audience varied their applause to those who had died by the subject's cultural impact; the applause has since been muted during the telecast, and the audience is discouraged from clapping during the segment and giving silent reflection instead. This segment was later followed by a commercial break.
+
+In terms of broadcast length, the ceremony generally averages three and a half hours. The first Oscars, in 1929, lasted 15 minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, the 2002 ceremony lasted four hours and twenty-three minutes.[73][74] In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45 seconds. This, according to organizer Bill Mechanic, was to ensure the elimination of what he termed "the single most hated thing on the show" – overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion.[75] In 2016, in a further effort to streamline speeches, winners' dedications were displayed on an on-screen ticker.[76] During the 2018 ceremony, host Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged how long the ceremony had become, by announcing that he would give a brand-new jet ski to whoever gave the shortest speech of the night (a reward won by Mark Bridges when accepting his Best Costume Design award for Phantom Thread).[77] The Wall Street Journal analyzed the average minutes spent across the 2014–2018 telecasts as follows: 14 on song performances; 25 on the hosts' speeches; 38 on prerecorded clips; and 78 on the awards themselves, broken into 24 on the introduction and announcement, 24 on winners walking to the stage, and 30 on their acceptance speeches.[78]
+
+Although still dominant in ratings, the viewership of the Academy Awards has steadily dropped; the 88th Academy Awards were the lowest-rated in the past eight years (although with increases in male and 18–49 viewership), while the show itself also faced mixed reception. Following the show, Variety reported that ABC was, in negotiating an extension to its contract to broadcast the Oscars, seeking to have more creative control over the broadcast itself. Currently and nominally, AMPAS is responsible for most aspects of the telecast, including the choice of production staff and hosting, although ABC is allowed to have some input on their decisions.[79] In August 2016, AMPAS extended its contract with ABC through 2028: the contract neither contains any notable changes nor gives ABC any further creative control over the telecast.[80]
+
+Historically, the telecast's viewership is higher when box-office hits are favored to win the Best Picture award. More than 57.25 million viewers tuned to the telecast for the 70th Academy Awards in 1998, the year of Titanic, which generated a box office haul during its initial 1997–98 run of US$600.8 million in the US, a box office record that would remain unsurpassed for years.[81] The 76th Academy Awards ceremony, in which The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (pre-telecast box office earnings of US$368 million) received 11 Awards including Best Picture, drew 43.56 million viewers.[82] The most watched ceremony based on Nielsen ratings to date, however, was the 42nd Academy Awards (Best Picture Midnight Cowboy) which drew a 43.4% household rating on April 7, 1970.[83]
+
+By contrast, ceremonies honoring films that have not performed well at the box office tend to show weaker ratings, despite how much critically acclaimed those films have been. The 78th Academy Awards which awarded low-budget independent film Crash (with a pre-Oscar gross of US$53.4 million) generated an audience of 38.64 million with a household rating of 22.91%.[84] In 2008, the 80th Academy Awards telecast was watched by 31.76 million viewers on average with an 18.66% household rating, the lowest-rated and least-watched ceremony at the time, in spite of celebrating 80 years of the Academy Awards.[85] The Best Picture winner of that particular ceremony was another independent film (No Country for Old Men).
+
+The 92nd Academy Awards drew an average of 23.6 million viewers -- a new low.
+
+The Academy Film Archive holds copies of every Academy Awards ceremony since the 1949 Oscars and material on many prior ceremonies, along with ancillary material related to more recent shows. Copies are held on a variety of film, video, and digital formats.[86]
+
+In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented at a banquet dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. From 1930 to 1943, the ceremony alternated between two venues: the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
+
+Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood then hosted the awards from 1944 to 1946, followed by the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1948. The 21st Academy Awards in 1949 were held at the Academy Award Theatre at what had been the Academy's headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.[87]
+
+From 1950 to 1960, the awards were presented at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. With the advent of television, the awards from 1953 to 1957 took place simultaneously in Hollywood and New York, first at the NBC International Theatre (1953) and then at the NBC Century Theatre, after which the ceremony took place solely in Los Angeles. The Oscars moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California, in 1961. By 1969, the Academy decided to move the ceremonies back to Downtown Los Angeles, this time to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Music Center. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the ceremony returned to the Shrine.
+
+In 2002, Hollywood's Dolby Theatre (previously known as the Kodak Theatre) became the presentation's current venue.[88]
+
+In the first year of the awards, the Best Directing award was split into two categories (Drama and Comedy). At times, the Best Original Score award has also been split into separate categories (Drama and Comedy/Musical). From the 1930s through the 1960s, the Art Direction (now Production Design), Cinematography, and Costume Design awards were likewise split into two categories (black-and-white films and color films). Prior to 2012, the Production Design award was called Art Direction, while the Makeup and Hairstyling award was called Makeup.
+
+In August 2018, the Academy announced that several categories would not be televised live, but rather be recorded during commercial breaks and aired later in the ceremony.[91]
+Following dissent from Academy members, they announced that they would indeed air all 24 categories live. This followed a number of proposals (among them, the introduction of a Popular Film category) that the Academy had announced but did not implement.[92]
+
+The Board of Governors meets each year and considers new award categories. To date, the following categories have been proposed:
+
+The Special Academy Awards are voted on by special committees, rather than by the Academy membership as a whole. They are not always presented on an annual basis.
+
+Due to the positive exposure and prestige of the Academy Awards, many studios spend millions of dollars and hire publicists specifically to promote their films during what is typically called the "Oscar season". This has generated accusations of the Academy Awards being influenced more by marketing than by quality. William Friedkin, an Academy Award-winning film director and former producer of the ceremony, expressed this sentiment at a conference in New York in 2009, describing it as "the greatest promotion scheme that any industry ever devised for itself".[99]
+
+Tim Dirks, editor of AMC's filmsite.org, has written of the Academy Awards:
+
+Unfortunately, the critical worth, artistic vision, cultural influence and innovative qualities of many films are not given the same voting weight. Especially since the 1980s, moneymaking "formula-made" blockbusters with glossy production values have often been crowd-pleasing titans (and Best Picture winners), but they haven't necessarily been great films with depth or critical acclaim by any measure.[100]
+
+A recent technique that has been claimed to be used during the Oscar season is the whisper campaign. These campaigns are intended to spread negative perceptions of other movies nominated and are believed to be perpetrated by those that were involved in creating the movie. Examples of whisper campaigns include the allegations against Zero Dark Thirty suggesting that it justifies torture and the claim that Lincoln distorts history.[101]
+
+Typical criticism of the Academy Awards for Best Picture is that among the winners and nominees there is an over-representation of romantic historical epics, biographical dramas, romantic dramedies and family melodramas, most of which are released in the U.S. the last three months of the calendar year. The Oscars have been infamously known for selecting specific genres of movies to be awarded. This has led to the coining of the term 'Oscar bait', describing such movies. This has led at times to more specific criticisms that the Academy is disconnected from the audience, e.g., by favoring 'Oscar bait' over audience favorites, or favoring historical melodramas over critically acclaimed movies that depict current life issues.[102]
+
+The Academy Awards have long received criticism over its lack of diversity among the nominees.[103][104][105] This criticism is based on the statistics from every Academy Awards since 1929, which shows us that only 6.4% of academy award nominees have been non-white and since 1991, 11.2% of nominees have been non-white, with the rate of winners being even more polarizing.[106] More white actresses have won Oscars for yellowface portrayals of Asian characters than actual Asian actresses.[107][108] The 88th awards ceremony became the target of a boycott, popularized on social media with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, based on critics' perception that its all-white acting nominee list reflected bias. In response, the Academy initiated "historic" changes in membership by the year 2020.[109][110]
+
+Acting prizes in certain years have been criticized for not recognizing superior performances so much as being awarded for personal popularity,[111] to make up for a "snub" for a performance/work that proved in time to be more popular and/or renowned than the one actually awarded, or presented as a "career honor" to recognize a distinguished nominee's entire body of work.[27]
+
+Following the 91st Academy Awards in February 2019 in which the Netflix-broadcast film Roma had been nominated for ten awards including the Best Picture category, Steven Spielberg and other members of the Academy discussed changing the requirements through the Board of Governors for films as to exclude those from Netflix and other media streaming services. Spielberg had been concerned that Netflix as a movie production and distribution studio could spend much more than typical Oscar-winning films and have much wider and earlier distribution than other Best Picture-nominated films, while still being able to meet the minimal theatrical-run status to qualify for an Oscar.[112] The United States Department of Justice, having heard of this potential rule change, wrote a letter to the Academy in March 2019, cautioning them that placing additional restrictions on films that originate from streaming media services without proper justification could raise anti-trust concerns against the Academy.[113] Following its April 2019 board meeting, the Academy Board of Governors agreed to retain the current rules that allow for streaming media films to be eligible for Oscars as long as they enjoy limited theatrical runs.[114]
+
+Some winners critical of the Academy Awards have boycotted the ceremonies and refused to accept their Oscars. The first to do so was screenwriter Dudley Nichols (Best Writing in 1935 for The Informer). Nichols boycotted the 8th Academy Awards ceremony because of conflicts between the Academy and the Writers' Guild.[115] Nichols eventually accepted the 1935 award three years later, at the 1938 ceremony. Nichols was nominated for three further Academy Awards during his career.
+
+George C. Scott became the second person to refuse his award (Best Actor in 1970 for Patton) at the 43rd Academy Awards ceremony. Scott described it as a "meat parade", saying, "I don't want any part of it."[116][117][118]
+
+The third person to refuse the award was Marlon Brando, who refused his award (Best Actor for 1972's The Godfather), citing the film industry's discrimination and mistreatment of Native Americans. At the 45th Academy Awards ceremony, Brando sent actress and civil rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather to read a 15-page speech, detailing his criticisms, which was booed by the audience.[119][115]
+
+At the 89th Academy Awards ceremony, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the recipient of the Best Picture award, instead of Moonlight, the actual winner. Beatty had been given the wrong envelope and after hesitating during the announcement, handed the envelope to Dunaway, which listed Emma Stone as Best Actress for La La Land and led to the confusion. The proper winner was announced after the acceptance speeches by La La Land producers Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt.
+
+The following year, Beatty and Dunaway were invited back as presenters of the Best Picture award, which they accomplished without error.[120]
+
+Nine films have been disqualified before an official award ceremony because they violated the regulations:[123]
+
+One film was disqualified after winning the award, and had the winner return the Oscar:
+
+The following events are closely associated with the annual Academy Awards:
+
+It has become a tradition to give out gift bags to the presenters and performers at the Oscars. In recent years, these gifts have also been extended to award nominees and winners.[124] The value of each of these gift bags can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars. In 2014, the value was reported to be as high as US$80,000.[125] The value has risen to the point where the U.S. Internal Revenue Service issued a statement regarding the gifts and their taxable status.[126]
+Oscar gift bags have included vacation packages to Hawaii and Mexico and Japan, a private dinner party for the recipient and friends at a restaurant, videophones, a four-night stay at a hotel, watches, bracelets, spa treatments, bottles of vodka, maple salad dressing, weight-loss gummie candy and up to $25,000 worth of cosmetic treatments and rejuvenation procedures such as lip fillers and chemical peels from New York City facial plastic surgeon Konstantin Vasyukevich.[124][127][128][129][130] Some of the gifts have even had a "risque" element to them; in 2014, the adult products retailer Adam & Eve had a "Secret Room Gifting Suite". Celebrities visiting the gifting suite included Judith Hoag, Carolyn Hennesy, Kate Linder, Chris Mulkey, Jim O'Heir, and John Salley.[131]
+
+From 2006 onwards, results are Live+SD; all previous years are live viewing.[132]
+
+The term "Oscar" is a registered trademark of the AMPAS; however, in the Italian language, it is used generically to refer to any award or award ceremony, regardless of which field.[140][141]

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+
+Ceres /ˈsɪəriːz/[16] (minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. With a diameter of 940 km (580 mi), Ceres is both the largest of the asteroids and the only likely dwarf planet inside Neptune's orbit.[c] It is the 25th-largest body in the Solar System within the orbit of Neptune.[17]
+
+Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered (by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory on 1 January 1801).[18] It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after many other objects in similar orbits were discovered.
+
+Ceres is the object in the asteroid belt closest to being fully rounded by its own gravity,[19] although Vesta and perhaps other asteroids were so in the past. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, peaking once at opposition every 15 to 16 months, which is its synodic period.[13] Thus even at its brightest, it is too dim to be seen by the naked eye, except under extremely dark skies. Ceres has been classified as a C-type asteroid[12] and, due to the presence of clay minerals, as a G-type asteroid.[20]
+
+Ceres appears to be partially differentiated into a muddy (ice-rock) mantle/core and a less-dense but stronger crust that is at most 30 percent ice.[15] It probably no longer has an internal ocean of liquid water, but there is brine that can flow through the outer mantle and reach the surface.[21] The surface is a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. Cryovolcanoes such as Ahuna Mons form at the rate of about one every fifty million years. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres.[22] This was unexpected because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets. The atmosphere, however, is transient and of the minimal kind known as an exosphere.[21]
+
+The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015.[23][24][25]
+
+Johann Elert Bode, in 1772, first suggested that an undiscovered planet could exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.[26] Kepler had already noticed the gap between Mars and Jupiter in 1596.[26] Bode based his idea on the Titius–Bode law which is a now-discredited hypothesis that was first proposed in 1766.  Bode observed that there was a regular pattern in the size of the orbits of known planets, and that the pattern was marred only by the large gap between Mars and Jupiter.[26][27] The pattern predicted that the missing planet ought to have an orbit with a radius near 2.8 astronomical units (AU).[27] William Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781[26] near the predicted distance for the next body beyond Saturn increased faith in the law of Titius and Bode, and in 1800, a group headed by Franz Xaver von Zach, editor of the Monatliche Correspondenz, sent requests to twenty-four experienced astronomers (whom he dubbed the "celestial police"), asking that they combine their efforts and begin a methodical search for the expected planet.[26][27] Although they did not discover Ceres, they later found several large asteroids.[27]
+
+One of the astronomers selected for the search was Giuseppe Piazzi, a Catholic priest at the Academy of Palermo, Sicily. Before receiving his invitation to join the group, Piazzi discovered Ceres on 1 January 1801.[28][29] He was searching for "the 87th [star] of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la Caille", but found that "it was preceded by another".[26] Instead of a star, Piazzi had found a moving star-like object, which he first thought was a comet.[30] Piazzi observed Ceres a total of 24 times, the final time on 11 February 1801, when illness interrupted his observations. He announced his discovery on 24 January 1801 in letters to only two fellow astronomers, his compatriot Barnaba Oriani of Milan and Johann Elert Bode of Berlin.[31] He reported it as a comet but "since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet".[26] In April, Piazzi sent his complete observations to Oriani, Bode, and Jérôme Lalande in Paris. The information was published in the September 1801 issue of the Monatliche Correspondenz.[30]
+
+By this time, the apparent position of Ceres had changed (mostly due to Earth's orbital motion), and was too close to the Sun's glare for other astronomers to confirm Piazzi's observations. Toward the end of the year, Ceres should have been visible again, but after such a long time it was difficult to predict its exact position. To recover Ceres, Carl Friedrich Gauss, then 24 years old, developed an efficient method of orbit determination.[30] In only a few weeks, he predicted the path of Ceres and sent his results to von Zach. On 31 December 1801, von Zach and Heinrich W. M. Olbers found Ceres near the predicted position and thus recovered it.[30]
+
+The early observers were only able to calculate the size of Ceres to within an order of magnitude. Herschel underestimated its diameter as 260 km in 1802, whereas in 1811 Johann Hieronymus Schröter overestimated it as 2,613 km.[32][33]
+
+Piazzi originally suggested the name Cerere Ferdinandea for his discovery, after the goddess Ceres (Roman goddess of agriculture, Cerere in Italian, who was believed to have originated in Sicily and whose oldest temple was there) and King Ferdinand of Sicily.[26][30] "Ferdinandea", however, was not acceptable to other nations and was dropped.
+Ceres was called Hera for a short time in Germany.[34]
+In Modern Greek, it is called Dímitra (Δήμητρα), after Demeter, the Greek equivalent of the Roman Cerēs. (To distinguish the asteroid 1108 Demeter in Greek, the classical form of the name, Dimítir (Δημήτηρ) is used.) All other languages but Chinese use a variant of Ceres/Cerere: e.g. Russian Церера Tseréra, Arabic سيريس Sīrīs, Japanese ケレス Keresu. Even Chinese uses the Latin name for the goddess, as 刻瑞斯 kèruìsī, but it calques the asteroid as 'grain-god(dess) star' (穀神星 gǔshénxīng).
+
+The regular adjectival forms of the name are Cererian[35][36] /sɪˈrɪəriən/[37] and Cererean[38] (with the same pronunciation),[39] both derived from the Latin oblique stem Cĕrĕr-.[40] The irregular form Ceresian /sɪˈriːziən/ is occasionally seen for the goddess (as in the sickle-shaped Ceresian Lake), as are, by analogy with cereal, the forms Cerean /ˈsɪəriən/[41] and Cerealian /sɛriˈeɪliən/.[42]
+
+The old astronomical symbol of Ceres is a sickle, ⟨⚳⟩,[43] similar to Venus' symbol ⟨♀⟩ but with a break in the circle.  It has a variant ⟨⚳⟩, reversed under the influence of the initial letter 'C' of 'Ceres'.  These symbols were later replaced with the generic asteroid symbol of a numbered disk, ⟨①⟩.[30][44]
+
+Cerium, a rare-earth element discovered in 1803, was named after Ceres.[45][d] In the same year another element was also initially named after Ceres, but when cerium was named, its discoverer changed the latter to palladium, after the second asteroid, 2 Pallas.[47]
+
+The categorization of Ceres has changed more than once and has been the subject of some disagreement. Johann Elert Bode believed Ceres to be the "missing planet" he had proposed to exist between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of 419 million km (2.8 AU) from the Sun.[26] Ceres was assigned a planetary symbol, and remained listed as a planet in astronomy books and tables (along with 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, and 4 Vesta) for half a century.[26][30][48]
+
+As other objects were discovered in the neighborhood of Ceres, it was realized that Ceres represented the first of a new class of objects.[26] In 1802, with the discovery of 2 Pallas, William Herschel coined the term asteroid ("star-like") for these bodies,[48] writing that "they resemble small stars so much as hardly to be distinguished from them, even by very good telescopes".[49] As the first such body to be discovered, Ceres was given the designation 1 Ceres under the modern system of minor-planet designations. By the 1860s, the existence of a fundamental difference between asteroids such as Ceres and the major planets was widely accepted, though a precise definition of "planet" was never formulated.[48]
+
+The 2006 debate surrounding Pluto and what constitutes a planet led to Ceres being considered for reclassification as a planet.[50][51] A proposal before the International Astronomical Union for the definition of a planet would have defined a planet as "a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid-body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet".[52] Had this resolution been adopted, it would have made Ceres the fifth planet in order from the Sun.[53] This never happened, however, and on 24 August 2006 a modified definition was adopted, carrying the additional requirement that a planet must have "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit". By this definition, Ceres is not a planet because it does not dominate its orbit, sharing it as it does with the thousands of other asteroids in the asteroid belt and constituting only about 25% of the belt's total mass.[54] Bodies that met the first proposed definition but not the second, such as Ceres, were instead classified as dwarf planets.
+
+Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Main Belt.[12]
+It has sometimes been assumed that Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet, and that it is therefore no longer considered an asteroid. For example, a news update at Space.com spoke of "Pallas, the largest asteroid, and Ceres, the dwarf planet formerly classified as an asteroid",[55] whereas an IAU question-and-answer posting states, "Ceres is (or now we can say it was) the largest asteroid", though it then speaks of "other asteroids" crossing Ceres' path and otherwise implies that Ceres is still considered an asteroid.[56] The Minor Planet Center notes that such bodies may have dual designations.[57] The 2006 IAU decision that classified Ceres as a dwarf planet also implied that it is simultaneously an asteroid. It introduces the category of small Solar System body, as objects that are neither planets nor dwarf planets, and states that they 'currently include most of the Solar System asteroids'. The only object among the asteroids that would prevent all asteroids from being SSSBs is Ceres. Lang (2011) comments "the [IAU has] added a new designation to Ceres, classifying it as a dwarf planet. ... By [its] definition, Eris, Haumea, Makemake and Pluto, as well as the largest asteroid, 1 Ceres, are all dwarf planets", and describes it elsewhere as "the dwarf planet–asteroid 1 Ceres".[58] NASA continues to refer to Ceres as an asteroid,[59] as do various academic textbooks.[60][61] However, NASA has at least once referred to Vesta as the largest asteroid.[62]
+
+Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, within the asteroid belt and closer to the orbit of Mars, with a period of 4.6 Earth years.[3] The orbit is moderately inclined (i = 10.6° compared to 7° for Mercury and 17° for Pluto) and moderately eccentric (e = 0.08 compared to 0.09 for Mars).[3]
+
+The diagram illustrates the orbits of Ceres (blue) and several planets (white and gray). The segments of orbits below the ecliptic are plotted in darker colors, and the orange plus sign is the Sun's location. The top left diagram is a polar view that shows the location of Ceres in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. The top right is a close-up demonstrating the locations of the perihelia (q) and aphelia (Q) of Ceres and Mars. In this diagram (but not in general), the perihelion of Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from those of Ceres and several of the large main-belt asteroids, including 2 Pallas and 10 Hygiea. The bottom diagram is a side view showing the inclination of the orbit of Ceres compared to the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
+
+Ceres was once thought to be a member of an asteroid family.[63] The asteroids of this family share similar proper orbital elements, which may indicate a common origin through an asteroid collision some time in the past. Ceres was later found to have spectral properties different from other members of the family, which is now called the Gefion family after the next-lowest-numbered family member, 1272 Gefion.[63] Ceres appears to be merely an interloper in the Gefion family, coincidentally having similar orbital elements but not a common origin.[64]
+
+Ceres is in a near-1:1 mean-motion orbital resonance with Pallas (their proper orbital periods differ by 0.2%).[65] However, a true resonance between the two would be unlikely; due to their small masses relative to their large separations, such relationships among asteroids are very rare.[66] Nevertheless, Ceres is able to capture other asteroids into temporary 1:1 resonant orbital relationships (making them temporary trojans) for periods up to 2 million years or more; fifty such objects have been identified.[67]
+
+Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars can all appear to cross the Sun, or transit it, from a vantage point on Ceres. The most common transits are those of Mercury, which usually happen every few years, most recently in 2006 and 2010. The most recent transit of Venus was in 1953, and the next will be in 2051; the corresponding dates are 1814 and 2081 for transits of Earth, and 767 and 2684 for transits of Mars.[68]
+
+The rotation period of Ceres (the Cererian day) is 9 hours and 4 minutes. It has an axial tilt of 4°.[9] This is small enough for Ceres's polar regions to contain permanently shadowed craters that are expected to act as cold traps and accumulate water ice over time, similar to the situation on the Moon and Mercury. About 0.14% of water molecules released from the surface are expected to end up in the traps, hopping an average of 3 times before escaping or being trapped.[9]
+
+Ceres has a mass of 9.39×1020 kg as determined from the Dawn spacecraft.[69] With this mass Ceres composes approximately a third of the estimated total 3.0 ± 0.2×1021 kg mass of the asteroid belt,[70] or 1.3% of the mass of the Moon. Ceres is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium, and thus to being a dwarf planet. However, there are some deviations from an equilibrium shape that have yet to be fully explained.[19]  Among Solar System bodies, Ceres is intermediate in size between the smaller asteroid Vesta and the larger moon Tethys, and approximately the size of the large trans-Neptunian object Orcus. Its surface area is approximately the same as the land area of India or Argentina.[71] In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth.[72]
+
+Ceres is the smallest object likely to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, being 600 km smaller and less than half the mass of Saturn's moon Rhea, the next smallest likely (but unproven) object.[73] Modeling has suggested Ceres could have a small metallic core from partial differentiation of its rocky fraction,[74][75]
+but the data is consistent with a mantle of hydrated silicates and no core.[19]
+
+The surface of Ceres is "remarkably" homogeneous on a global scale, and is rich in carbonates and ammoniated phyllosilicates that have been altered by water.[19] However, water ice in the regolith varies from approximately 10% in polar latitudes to much drier, even ice-free, in the equatorial regions.[15][19] Another large-scale variation is found in three large shallow basins (planitia) with degraded rims; these may be cryptic craters, and two of the three have higher than average ammonium concentrations.[19]
+
+The water ocean that is thought to have existed early in Ceres's history should have left an icy layer under the surface as it froze. The fact that Dawn found no evidence of such a layer suggests that Ceres's original crust was at least partially destroyed by later impacts, thoroughly mixing the ice with the salts and silicate-rich material of the ancient seafloor and the material beneath.[19]
+
+Ceres' surface is warm enough that surface ice sublimates in the near vacuum.  Material left behind by sublimation of could explain the dark surface of Ceres compared to the icy moons of the outer Solar System.[citation needed]
+
+Studies by the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that graphite, sulfur, and sulfur dioxide are present on Ceres's surface. The former is evidently the result of space weathering on Ceres's older surfaces; the latter two are volatile under Cererian conditions and would be expected to either escape quickly or settle in cold traps, and are evidently associated with areas with recent geological activity.[76]
+
+Prior to the Dawn mission, only a few surface features had been unambiguously detected on Ceres. High-resolution ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 1995 showed a dark spot on its surface, which was nicknamed "Piazzi" in honor of the discoverer of Ceres.[20] This was thought to be a crater. Later near-infrared images with a higher resolution taken over a whole rotation with the Keck telescope using adaptive optics showed several bright and dark features moving with Ceres' rotation.[77][78] Two dark features had circular shapes and were presumed to be craters; one of them was observed to have a bright central region, whereas another was identified as the "Piazzi" feature.[77][78] Visible-light Hubble Space Telescope images of a full rotation taken in 2003 and 2004 showed eleven recognizable surface features, the natures of which were then undetermined.[11][79] One of these features corresponds to the "Piazzi" feature observed earlier.[11]
+
+These last observations indicated that the north pole of Ceres pointed in the direction of right ascension 19 h 24 min (291°), declination +59°, in the constellation Draco, resulting in an axial tilt of approximately 3°.[11] Dawn later determined that the north polar axis actually points at right ascension 19 h 25 m 40.3 s (291.418°), declination +66° 45' 50" (about 1.5 degrees from Delta Draconis), which means an axial tilt of 4°.[80]
+
+Dawn revealed that Ceres has a heavily cratered surface; nevertheless, Ceres does not have as many large craters as expected, likely due to past geological processes.[81][82] An unexpectedly large number of Cererian craters have central pits, perhaps due to cryovolcanic processes, and many have central peaks.[83] Ceres has one prominent mountain, Ahuna Mons; this peak appears to be a cryovolcano and has few craters, suggesting a maximum age of no more than a few hundred million years.[84][85] A later computer simulation has suggested that there were originally other cryovolcanoes on Ceres that are now unrecognisable due to viscous relaxation.[86] Several bright spots have been observed by Dawn, the brightest spot ("Spot 5") located in the middle of an 80-kilometer (50 mi) crater called Occator.[87] From images taken of Ceres on 4 May 2015, the secondary bright spot was revealed to actually be a group of scattered bright areas, possibly as many as ten. These bright features have an albedo of approximately 40%[88] that are caused by a substance on the surface, possibly ice or salts, reflecting sunlight.[89][90] A haze periodically appears above Spot 5, the best known bright spot, supporting the hypothesis that some sort of outgassing or sublimating ice formed the bright spots.[90][91] In March 2016, Dawn found definitive evidence of water molecules on the surface of Ceres at Oxo crater.[92][93]
+
+On 9 December 2015, NASA scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO4·6H2O); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays.[94] Near-infrared spectra of these bright areas were reported in 2017 to be consistent with a large amount of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) and smaller amounts of ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) or ammonium bicarbonate (NH4HCO3).[95][96] These materials have been suggested to originate from the recent crystallization of brines that reached the surface from below.[97][98][99][98][100]
+
+Organic compounds (tholins) were detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater,[101][102] and most of the planet's surface is extremely rich in carbon,[103] with approximately 20% carbon by mass in its near surface.[104][105] The carbon content is more than five times higher than in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites analyzed on Earth.[105] The surface carbon shows evidence of being mixed with products of rock-water interactions, such as clays.[104][105] This chemistry suggests Ceres formed in a cold environment, perhaps outside the orbit of Jupiter, and that it accreted from ultra-carbon-rich materials in the presence of water, which could provide conditions favorable to organic chemistry.[104][105] Its presence on Ceres is evidence that the basic ingredients for life can be found throughout the universe.[103]
+
+The active geology of Ceres is driven by ice and brines, with an overall salinity of around 5%. Altogether,  Ceres is approximately 40% or 50% water by volume, compared to 0.1% for Earth, and 73% rock by weight.[15]
+
+The fact that the surface has preserved craters smaller than 300 km in diameter indicate that the outermost layer of Ceres is on the order of 1000 times stronger than water ice. This is consistent with a mixture of silicates, hydrated salts and methane clathrates, with no more than approximately 30% water ice.[19]
+
+The thickness and density of the crust is not well constrained. There are competing 2-layer and 3-layer models of the Cererian interior, not counting a possible small metallic core.
+
+In the three-layer model, Ceres is thought to consist of an inner muddy mantle of hydrated rock, such as clays, an intermediate layer of brine and rock (mud) down to a depth of at least 100 km, and an outer, 40-km thick crust of ice, salts and hydrated minerals.[107] It's unknown if it contains a rocky or metallic core, but the low central density suggests it may retain about 10% porosity.[15] 
+One study estimated the densities of the core and mantle/crust to be 2.46–2.90 and 1.68–1.95 g/cm3, with the mantle and crust being 70–190 km thick. Only partial dehydration (expulsion of ice) from the core is expected, while the high density of the mantle relative to water ice reflects its enrichment in silicates and salts.[8] That is, the core, mantle and crust all consist of rock and ice, though in different ratios.
+
+The mineral composition can only be determined indirectly for the outer 100 km. The 40-km thick solid outer crust is a mixture of ice, salts, and hydrated minerals. Under that is a layer that may contain a small amount of brine. This extends to a depth of at least the 100-km limit of detection. Under that is thought to be a mantle dominated by hydrated rocks such as clays. It is not possible to tell if Ceres' deep interior contains liquid or a core of dense material rich in metal.[108]
+
+In one two-layer model, Ceres consists of a core of chondrules and a mantle of mixed ice and micron-sized solid particulates ("mud"). Sublimation of ice at the surface would leave a deposit of hydrated particulates perhaps 20 meters thick. There are range to the extent of differentiation that is consistent with the data, from a large, 360-km core of 75% chondrules and 25% particulates and a mantle of 75% ice and 25% particulates, to a small, 85-km core consisting nearly entirely of particulates and a mantle of 30% ice and 70% particulates. With a large core, the core–mantle boundary should be warm enough for pockets of brine. With a small core, the mantle should remain liquid below 110 km. In the latter case, a 2% freezing of the liquid reservoir would compress the liquid enough to force some to the surface, producing cryovolcanism.[109]
+
+The model may be compared to estimates that Ceres has averaged one cryovolcano every 50 million years.[110]
+
+Another model notes that Dawn data is consistent with a partial differentiation of Ceres into a volatile-rich crust and a denser mantle of hydrated silicates. A range of densities for the crust and mantle can be calculated from the types of meteorite thought to have impacted Ceres. With CI-class meteorites (density 2.46 g/cc), the crust would be approximately 70 km thick and have a density of 1.68 g/cc; with CM-class meteorites (density 2.9 g/cc), the crust would be approximately 190 km thick and have a density of 1.9 g/cc. Best-fit from admittance modeling yields a crust approximately 40 km thick with a density of approximately 1.25 g/cc, and a mantle/core density of approximately 2.4 g/cc.[19]
+
+There are indications that Ceres has a tenuous water vapor atmosphere outgassing from water ice on the surface, making it an active asteroid.[111][112][113][114]
+
+Surface water ice is unstable at distances less than 5 AU from the Sun,[115] so it is expected to sublime if it is exposed directly to solar radiation. Water ice can migrate from the deep layers of Ceres to the surface, but escapes in a very short time.
+
+In early 2014, using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, it was discovered that there are several localized (not more than 60 km in diameter) mid-latitude sources of water vapor on Ceres, which each give off approximately 1026 molecules (or 3 kg) of water per second.[116][117][e] Two potential source regions, designated Piazzi (123°E, 21°N) and Region A (231°E, 23°N), have been visualized in the near infrared as dark areas (Region A also has a bright center) by the W. M. Keck Observatory. Possible mechanisms for the vapor release are sublimation from approximately 0.6 km2 of exposed surface ice, or cryovolcanic eruptions resulting from radiogenic internal heat[116] or from pressurization of a subsurface ocean due to growth of an overlying layer of ice.[120] Surface sublimation would be expected to be lower when Ceres is farther from the Sun in its orbit, whereas internally powered emissions should not be affected by its orbital position. The limited data available was more consistent with cometary-style sublimation;[116] however, subsequent evidence from Dawn strongly suggests ongoing geologic activity could be at least partially responsible.[121][122]
+
+Studies using Dawn's gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) reveal that Ceres is accelerating electrons from the solar wind regularly; although there are several possibilities as to what is causing this, the most accepted is that these electrons are being accelerated by collisions between the solar wind and a tenuous water vapor exosphere.[123]
+
+In 2017, Dawn confirmed that Ceres has a transient atmosphere that appears to be linked to solar activity. Ice on Ceres can sublimate when energetic particles from the Sun hit exposed ice within craters.[124]
+
+Ceres is a surviving protoplanet (planetary embryo) that formed 4.56 billion years ago, the only one surviving in the inner Solar System, with the rest either merging to form terrestrial planets or being ejected from the Solar System by Jupiter.[125] However, its composition is not consistent with a formation in the asteroid belt. It seems rather that Ceres formed as a centaur, most likely between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, and was scattered into the asteroid belt as Jupiter migrated outward.[15] The discovery of ammonia salts in Occator crater supports an origin in the outer Solar System.[126] However, the presence of ammonia ices can be attributed to impacts by comets, and ammonia salts are more likely to be native to the surface.[127]
+
+The geological evolution of Ceres was dependent on the heat sources available during and after its formation: friction from planetesimal accretion, and decay of various radionuclides (possibly including short-lived extinct radionuclides such as aluminium-26). These are thought to have been sufficient to allow Ceres to differentiate into a rocky core and icy mantle soon after its formation.[75] This process may have caused resurfacing by water volcanism and tectonics, erasing older geological features.[citation needed] Ceres's relatively warm surface temperature implies that any of the resulting ice on its surface would have gradually sublimated, leaving behind various hydrated minerals like clay minerals and carbonates.[citation needed]
+
+Today, Ceres has become considerably less geologically active, with a surface sculpted chiefly by impacts; nevertheless, evidence from Dawn reveals that internal processes have continued to sculpt Ceres's surface to a significant extent, in stark contrast to Vesta[128] and of previous expectations that Ceres would have become geologically dead early in its history due to its small size.[129] There are significant amounts of water ice in its crust.[102]
+
+Although not as actively discussed as a potential home for microbial extraterrestrial life as Mars, Europa, Enceladus, or Titan, there is evidence that Ceres' icy mantle was once a watery subterranean ocean. The remote detection of organic compounds and the presence of water with 20% carbon by mass in its near surface, could provide conditions favorable to organic chemistry.[104][105]
+
+When in opposition near its perihelion, Ceres can reach an apparent magnitude of +6.7.[131] This is generally regarded as too dim to be visible to the naked eye, but under ideal viewing conditions, keen eyes with 20/20 vision may be able to see it. The only other asteroids that can reach a similarly bright magnitude are 4 Vesta and, when in rare oppositions near their perihelions, 2 Pallas and 7 Iris.[132] When in conjunction, Ceres has a magnitude of around +9.3, which corresponds to the faintest objects visible with 10×50 binoculars; thus it can be seen with such binoculars in a naturally dark and clear night sky around new moon.
+
+Some notable observations and milestones for Ceres include the following:
+
+In 1981, a proposal for an asteroid mission was submitted to the European Space Agency (ESA). Named the Asteroidal Gravity Optical and Radar Analysis (AGORA), this spacecraft was to launch some time in 1990–1994 and perform two flybys of large asteroids. The preferred target for this mission was Vesta. AGORA would reach the asteroid belt either by a gravitational slingshot trajectory past Mars or by means of a small ion engine. However, the proposal was refused by ESA. A joint NASA–ESA asteroid mission was then drawn up for a Multiple Asteroid Orbiter with Solar Electric Propulsion (MAOSEP), with one of the mission profiles including an orbit of Vesta. NASA indicated they were not interested in an asteroid mission. Instead, ESA set up a technological study of a spacecraft with an ion drive. Other missions to the asteroid belt were proposed in the 1980s by France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, but none were approved.[137] Exploration of Ceres by fly-by and impacting penetrator was the second main target of the second plan of the multiaimed Soviet Vesta mission, developed in cooperation with European countries for realisation in 1991–1994 but canceled due to the Soviet Union disbanding.
+
+The Chinese Space Agency is designing a sample-return mission from Ceres that would take place during the 2020s.[138]
+
+The Calathus Mission is a concept to Occator Crater at Ceres, to return a sample of the bright carbonate faculae and dark organics to Earth.[139][140]
+
+In the early 1990s, NASA initiated the Discovery Program, which was intended to be a series of low-cost scientific missions. In 1996, the program's study team recommended as a high priority a mission to explore the asteroid belt using a spacecraft with an ion engine. Funding for this program remained problematic for several years, but by 2004 the Dawn vehicle had passed its critical design review.[141]
+
+It was launched on 27 September 2007, as the space mission to make the first visits to both Vesta and Ceres. On 3 May 2011, Dawn acquired its first targeting image 1.2 million kilometers from Vesta.[142] After orbiting Vesta for 13 months, Dawn used its ion engine to depart for Ceres, with gravitational capture occurring on 6 March 2015[143] at a separation of 61,000 km,[144] four months prior to the New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
+
+Dawn's mission profile called for it to study Ceres from a series of circular polar orbits at successively lower altitudes. It entered its first observational orbit ("RC3") around Ceres at an altitude of 13,500 km on 23 April 2015, staying for only approximately one orbit (fifteen days).[25][145] The spacecraft subsequently reduced its orbital distance to 4,400 km for its second observational orbit ("survey") for three weeks,[146] then down to 1,470 km ("HAMO;" high altitude mapping orbit) for two months[147] and then down to its final orbit at 375 km ("LAMO;" low altitude mapping orbit) for at least three months.[148]
+
+The spacecraft instrumentation includes a framing camera, a visual and infrared spectrometer, and a gamma-ray and neutron detector. These instruments examined Ceres' shape and elemental composition.[149] On 13 January 2015, Dawn took the first images of Ceres at near-Hubble resolution, revealing impact craters and a small high-albedo spot on the surface, near the same location as that observed previously. Additional imaging sessions, at increasingly better resolution took place on 25 January 4, 12, 19 and 25 February 1 March, and 10 and 15 April.[150]
+
+Pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots (or high-albedo features) inside a crater (different from the bright spots observed in earlier Hubble images[151]) were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, leading to speculation about a possible cryovolcanic origin[152][153][154] or outgassing.[155] On 3 March 2015, a NASA spokesperson said the spots are consistent with highly reflective materials containing ice or salts, but that cryovolcanism is unlikely.[156] However, on 2 September 2016, scientists from the Dawn team claimed in a Science paper that a massive cryovolcano called Ahuna Mons is the strongest evidence yet for the existence of these mysterious formations.[157][158] On 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several.[159] On 9 December 2015, NASA scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO4·6H2O); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays.[94] In June 2016, near-infrared spectra of these bright areas were found to be consistent with a large amount of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), implying that recent geologic activity was probably involved in the creation of the bright spots.[97][98][100] In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth.[72] From June to October 2018, Dawn orbited Ceres from as close as 35 km (22 mi) and as far away as 4,000 km (2,500 mi).[160][161] The Dawn mission ended on 1 November 2018 after the spacecraft ran out of fuel.
+
+In October 2015, NASA released a true-color portrait of Ceres made by Dawn.[162] In February 2017, organics (tholins) were detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater (see image).[101][102]
+
+Dawn's arrival in a stable orbit around Ceres was delayed after, close to reaching Ceres, it was hit by a cosmic ray, making it take another, longer route around Ceres in back, instead of a direct spiral towards it.[163]
+
+The following imagemap of Ceres is divided into 15 quadrangles. They are named after the first craters whose names the IAU approved in July 2015.[165] The map image(s) were taken by the Dawn space probe.
+
+2004Hubble Space Telescope
+
+14 April 2015; Dawn22,000 km (14,000 mi)
+
+6 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)
+
+16 May 2015; Dawn7,500 km (4,700 mi)(1;2;3)
+
+22 May 2015; Dawn5,100 km (3,200 mi)(1;2;3;4;5) (Ezinu crater: context;closeup)
+
+23 April 2015; Dawn1st Map Orbit - RC313,600 km (8,500 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24) (3D: 1;5;6;7) (animation)
+
+6 June 2015: Dawn2nd Map Orbit - SRVY4,400 km (2,700 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54)
+
+17 August 2015: Dawn3rd Map Orbit - HAMO1,470 km (910 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54;55;56;57;58;59;60;61;62;63;64;65;66;67;68;69;70;71;72;73;74;75;76;77;78;79;80;81;82;83;84;85;86;87;88;89)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOa385 km (239 mi)(a;b;c;d;e;1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;m1;m2;m3;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54;55;56;57;58;59;60;61;62;63;64;65;66;67;68;69;70;71;72;73;74;75;76;77;78;79;80;81;82;83)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOb385 km (239 mi)(84;85;86;87;88;89;90;91;92;93;94;95;96;97;98;99;100;101;102;103;104;105;106;107;108;109;110;111;112;113;114;115;116;117;118;119;120;121;122;123;124;125;126;127;128;129;130;131;132;133;134;135;136;137;138;139;140;141;142;143;144;145;146;147;148;149)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOc385 km (239 mi)(150;151;152;153;154;155;156;157;158;159;160;161;162;163;164;165;166;167;168;169;170;171;172;173;174;175;176;177;178;179;180;181;182;183;184;185;186;187;188;189;190;191;192;193;194;195;196;197;198;199;200;201;202;203;204;205;206;207 – end)
+
+6 June 2018: DawnFinal Map Orbit35 km (22 mi)OccatorCrater:(Boulders;Landslides;EasternRim-1;EasternRim-2)(view on commons)
+
+4 February 2015; Dawn90,000 km (56,000 mi)
+
+29 April 2017: Dawn20,000 km (12,000 mi)
+
+4 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)
+
+4 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)bright spots
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".

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+
+Ceres /ˈsɪəriːz/[16] (minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. With a diameter of 940 km (580 mi), Ceres is both the largest of the asteroids and the only likely dwarf planet inside Neptune's orbit.[c] It is the 25th-largest body in the Solar System within the orbit of Neptune.[17]
+
+Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered (by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory on 1 January 1801).[18] It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after many other objects in similar orbits were discovered.
+
+Ceres is the object in the asteroid belt closest to being fully rounded by its own gravity,[19] although Vesta and perhaps other asteroids were so in the past. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, peaking once at opposition every 15 to 16 months, which is its synodic period.[13] Thus even at its brightest, it is too dim to be seen by the naked eye, except under extremely dark skies. Ceres has been classified as a C-type asteroid[12] and, due to the presence of clay minerals, as a G-type asteroid.[20]
+
+Ceres appears to be partially differentiated into a muddy (ice-rock) mantle/core and a less-dense but stronger crust that is at most 30 percent ice.[15] It probably no longer has an internal ocean of liquid water, but there is brine that can flow through the outer mantle and reach the surface.[21] The surface is a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. Cryovolcanoes such as Ahuna Mons form at the rate of about one every fifty million years. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres.[22] This was unexpected because large bodies in the asteroid belt typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets. The atmosphere, however, is transient and of the minimal kind known as an exosphere.[21]
+
+The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015.[23][24][25]
+
+Johann Elert Bode, in 1772, first suggested that an undiscovered planet could exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.[26] Kepler had already noticed the gap between Mars and Jupiter in 1596.[26] Bode based his idea on the Titius–Bode law which is a now-discredited hypothesis that was first proposed in 1766.  Bode observed that there was a regular pattern in the size of the orbits of known planets, and that the pattern was marred only by the large gap between Mars and Jupiter.[26][27] The pattern predicted that the missing planet ought to have an orbit with a radius near 2.8 astronomical units (AU).[27] William Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781[26] near the predicted distance for the next body beyond Saturn increased faith in the law of Titius and Bode, and in 1800, a group headed by Franz Xaver von Zach, editor of the Monatliche Correspondenz, sent requests to twenty-four experienced astronomers (whom he dubbed the "celestial police"), asking that they combine their efforts and begin a methodical search for the expected planet.[26][27] Although they did not discover Ceres, they later found several large asteroids.[27]
+
+One of the astronomers selected for the search was Giuseppe Piazzi, a Catholic priest at the Academy of Palermo, Sicily. Before receiving his invitation to join the group, Piazzi discovered Ceres on 1 January 1801.[28][29] He was searching for "the 87th [star] of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la Caille", but found that "it was preceded by another".[26] Instead of a star, Piazzi had found a moving star-like object, which he first thought was a comet.[30] Piazzi observed Ceres a total of 24 times, the final time on 11 February 1801, when illness interrupted his observations. He announced his discovery on 24 January 1801 in letters to only two fellow astronomers, his compatriot Barnaba Oriani of Milan and Johann Elert Bode of Berlin.[31] He reported it as a comet but "since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet".[26] In April, Piazzi sent his complete observations to Oriani, Bode, and Jérôme Lalande in Paris. The information was published in the September 1801 issue of the Monatliche Correspondenz.[30]
+
+By this time, the apparent position of Ceres had changed (mostly due to Earth's orbital motion), and was too close to the Sun's glare for other astronomers to confirm Piazzi's observations. Toward the end of the year, Ceres should have been visible again, but after such a long time it was difficult to predict its exact position. To recover Ceres, Carl Friedrich Gauss, then 24 years old, developed an efficient method of orbit determination.[30] In only a few weeks, he predicted the path of Ceres and sent his results to von Zach. On 31 December 1801, von Zach and Heinrich W. M. Olbers found Ceres near the predicted position and thus recovered it.[30]
+
+The early observers were only able to calculate the size of Ceres to within an order of magnitude. Herschel underestimated its diameter as 260 km in 1802, whereas in 1811 Johann Hieronymus Schröter overestimated it as 2,613 km.[32][33]
+
+Piazzi originally suggested the name Cerere Ferdinandea for his discovery, after the goddess Ceres (Roman goddess of agriculture, Cerere in Italian, who was believed to have originated in Sicily and whose oldest temple was there) and King Ferdinand of Sicily.[26][30] "Ferdinandea", however, was not acceptable to other nations and was dropped.
+Ceres was called Hera for a short time in Germany.[34]
+In Modern Greek, it is called Dímitra (Δήμητρα), after Demeter, the Greek equivalent of the Roman Cerēs. (To distinguish the asteroid 1108 Demeter in Greek, the classical form of the name, Dimítir (Δημήτηρ) is used.) All other languages but Chinese use a variant of Ceres/Cerere: e.g. Russian Церера Tseréra, Arabic سيريس Sīrīs, Japanese ケレス Keresu. Even Chinese uses the Latin name for the goddess, as 刻瑞斯 kèruìsī, but it calques the asteroid as 'grain-god(dess) star' (穀神星 gǔshénxīng).
+
+The regular adjectival forms of the name are Cererian[35][36] /sɪˈrɪəriən/[37] and Cererean[38] (with the same pronunciation),[39] both derived from the Latin oblique stem Cĕrĕr-.[40] The irregular form Ceresian /sɪˈriːziən/ is occasionally seen for the goddess (as in the sickle-shaped Ceresian Lake), as are, by analogy with cereal, the forms Cerean /ˈsɪəriən/[41] and Cerealian /sɛriˈeɪliən/.[42]
+
+The old astronomical symbol of Ceres is a sickle, ⟨⚳⟩,[43] similar to Venus' symbol ⟨♀⟩ but with a break in the circle.  It has a variant ⟨⚳⟩, reversed under the influence of the initial letter 'C' of 'Ceres'.  These symbols were later replaced with the generic asteroid symbol of a numbered disk, ⟨①⟩.[30][44]
+
+Cerium, a rare-earth element discovered in 1803, was named after Ceres.[45][d] In the same year another element was also initially named after Ceres, but when cerium was named, its discoverer changed the latter to palladium, after the second asteroid, 2 Pallas.[47]
+
+The categorization of Ceres has changed more than once and has been the subject of some disagreement. Johann Elert Bode believed Ceres to be the "missing planet" he had proposed to exist between Mars and Jupiter, at a distance of 419 million km (2.8 AU) from the Sun.[26] Ceres was assigned a planetary symbol, and remained listed as a planet in astronomy books and tables (along with 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, and 4 Vesta) for half a century.[26][30][48]
+
+As other objects were discovered in the neighborhood of Ceres, it was realized that Ceres represented the first of a new class of objects.[26] In 1802, with the discovery of 2 Pallas, William Herschel coined the term asteroid ("star-like") for these bodies,[48] writing that "they resemble small stars so much as hardly to be distinguished from them, even by very good telescopes".[49] As the first such body to be discovered, Ceres was given the designation 1 Ceres under the modern system of minor-planet designations. By the 1860s, the existence of a fundamental difference between asteroids such as Ceres and the major planets was widely accepted, though a precise definition of "planet" was never formulated.[48]
+
+The 2006 debate surrounding Pluto and what constitutes a planet led to Ceres being considered for reclassification as a planet.[50][51] A proposal before the International Astronomical Union for the definition of a planet would have defined a planet as "a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid-body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet".[52] Had this resolution been adopted, it would have made Ceres the fifth planet in order from the Sun.[53] This never happened, however, and on 24 August 2006 a modified definition was adopted, carrying the additional requirement that a planet must have "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit". By this definition, Ceres is not a planet because it does not dominate its orbit, sharing it as it does with the thousands of other asteroids in the asteroid belt and constituting only about 25% of the belt's total mass.[54] Bodies that met the first proposed definition but not the second, such as Ceres, were instead classified as dwarf planets.
+
+Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Main Belt.[12]
+It has sometimes been assumed that Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet, and that it is therefore no longer considered an asteroid. For example, a news update at Space.com spoke of "Pallas, the largest asteroid, and Ceres, the dwarf planet formerly classified as an asteroid",[55] whereas an IAU question-and-answer posting states, "Ceres is (or now we can say it was) the largest asteroid", though it then speaks of "other asteroids" crossing Ceres' path and otherwise implies that Ceres is still considered an asteroid.[56] The Minor Planet Center notes that such bodies may have dual designations.[57] The 2006 IAU decision that classified Ceres as a dwarf planet also implied that it is simultaneously an asteroid. It introduces the category of small Solar System body, as objects that are neither planets nor dwarf planets, and states that they 'currently include most of the Solar System asteroids'. The only object among the asteroids that would prevent all asteroids from being SSSBs is Ceres. Lang (2011) comments "the [IAU has] added a new designation to Ceres, classifying it as a dwarf planet. ... By [its] definition, Eris, Haumea, Makemake and Pluto, as well as the largest asteroid, 1 Ceres, are all dwarf planets", and describes it elsewhere as "the dwarf planet–asteroid 1 Ceres".[58] NASA continues to refer to Ceres as an asteroid,[59] as do various academic textbooks.[60][61] However, NASA has at least once referred to Vesta as the largest asteroid.[62]
+
+Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, within the asteroid belt and closer to the orbit of Mars, with a period of 4.6 Earth years.[3] The orbit is moderately inclined (i = 10.6° compared to 7° for Mercury and 17° for Pluto) and moderately eccentric (e = 0.08 compared to 0.09 for Mars).[3]
+
+The diagram illustrates the orbits of Ceres (blue) and several planets (white and gray). The segments of orbits below the ecliptic are plotted in darker colors, and the orange plus sign is the Sun's location. The top left diagram is a polar view that shows the location of Ceres in the gap between Mars and Jupiter. The top right is a close-up demonstrating the locations of the perihelia (q) and aphelia (Q) of Ceres and Mars. In this diagram (but not in general), the perihelion of Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from those of Ceres and several of the large main-belt asteroids, including 2 Pallas and 10 Hygiea. The bottom diagram is a side view showing the inclination of the orbit of Ceres compared to the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
+
+Ceres was once thought to be a member of an asteroid family.[63] The asteroids of this family share similar proper orbital elements, which may indicate a common origin through an asteroid collision some time in the past. Ceres was later found to have spectral properties different from other members of the family, which is now called the Gefion family after the next-lowest-numbered family member, 1272 Gefion.[63] Ceres appears to be merely an interloper in the Gefion family, coincidentally having similar orbital elements but not a common origin.[64]
+
+Ceres is in a near-1:1 mean-motion orbital resonance with Pallas (their proper orbital periods differ by 0.2%).[65] However, a true resonance between the two would be unlikely; due to their small masses relative to their large separations, such relationships among asteroids are very rare.[66] Nevertheless, Ceres is able to capture other asteroids into temporary 1:1 resonant orbital relationships (making them temporary trojans) for periods up to 2 million years or more; fifty such objects have been identified.[67]
+
+Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars can all appear to cross the Sun, or transit it, from a vantage point on Ceres. The most common transits are those of Mercury, which usually happen every few years, most recently in 2006 and 2010. The most recent transit of Venus was in 1953, and the next will be in 2051; the corresponding dates are 1814 and 2081 for transits of Earth, and 767 and 2684 for transits of Mars.[68]
+
+The rotation period of Ceres (the Cererian day) is 9 hours and 4 minutes. It has an axial tilt of 4°.[9] This is small enough for Ceres's polar regions to contain permanently shadowed craters that are expected to act as cold traps and accumulate water ice over time, similar to the situation on the Moon and Mercury. About 0.14% of water molecules released from the surface are expected to end up in the traps, hopping an average of 3 times before escaping or being trapped.[9]
+
+Ceres has a mass of 9.39×1020 kg as determined from the Dawn spacecraft.[69] With this mass Ceres composes approximately a third of the estimated total 3.0 ± 0.2×1021 kg mass of the asteroid belt,[70] or 1.3% of the mass of the Moon. Ceres is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium, and thus to being a dwarf planet. However, there are some deviations from an equilibrium shape that have yet to be fully explained.[19]  Among Solar System bodies, Ceres is intermediate in size between the smaller asteroid Vesta and the larger moon Tethys, and approximately the size of the large trans-Neptunian object Orcus. Its surface area is approximately the same as the land area of India or Argentina.[71] In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth.[72]
+
+Ceres is the smallest object likely to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, being 600 km smaller and less than half the mass of Saturn's moon Rhea, the next smallest likely (but unproven) object.[73] Modeling has suggested Ceres could have a small metallic core from partial differentiation of its rocky fraction,[74][75]
+but the data is consistent with a mantle of hydrated silicates and no core.[19]
+
+The surface of Ceres is "remarkably" homogeneous on a global scale, and is rich in carbonates and ammoniated phyllosilicates that have been altered by water.[19] However, water ice in the regolith varies from approximately 10% in polar latitudes to much drier, even ice-free, in the equatorial regions.[15][19] Another large-scale variation is found in three large shallow basins (planitia) with degraded rims; these may be cryptic craters, and two of the three have higher than average ammonium concentrations.[19]
+
+The water ocean that is thought to have existed early in Ceres's history should have left an icy layer under the surface as it froze. The fact that Dawn found no evidence of such a layer suggests that Ceres's original crust was at least partially destroyed by later impacts, thoroughly mixing the ice with the salts and silicate-rich material of the ancient seafloor and the material beneath.[19]
+
+Ceres' surface is warm enough that surface ice sublimates in the near vacuum.  Material left behind by sublimation of could explain the dark surface of Ceres compared to the icy moons of the outer Solar System.[citation needed]
+
+Studies by the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that graphite, sulfur, and sulfur dioxide are present on Ceres's surface. The former is evidently the result of space weathering on Ceres's older surfaces; the latter two are volatile under Cererian conditions and would be expected to either escape quickly or settle in cold traps, and are evidently associated with areas with recent geological activity.[76]
+
+Prior to the Dawn mission, only a few surface features had been unambiguously detected on Ceres. High-resolution ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 1995 showed a dark spot on its surface, which was nicknamed "Piazzi" in honor of the discoverer of Ceres.[20] This was thought to be a crater. Later near-infrared images with a higher resolution taken over a whole rotation with the Keck telescope using adaptive optics showed several bright and dark features moving with Ceres' rotation.[77][78] Two dark features had circular shapes and were presumed to be craters; one of them was observed to have a bright central region, whereas another was identified as the "Piazzi" feature.[77][78] Visible-light Hubble Space Telescope images of a full rotation taken in 2003 and 2004 showed eleven recognizable surface features, the natures of which were then undetermined.[11][79] One of these features corresponds to the "Piazzi" feature observed earlier.[11]
+
+These last observations indicated that the north pole of Ceres pointed in the direction of right ascension 19 h 24 min (291°), declination +59°, in the constellation Draco, resulting in an axial tilt of approximately 3°.[11] Dawn later determined that the north polar axis actually points at right ascension 19 h 25 m 40.3 s (291.418°), declination +66° 45' 50" (about 1.5 degrees from Delta Draconis), which means an axial tilt of 4°.[80]
+
+Dawn revealed that Ceres has a heavily cratered surface; nevertheless, Ceres does not have as many large craters as expected, likely due to past geological processes.[81][82] An unexpectedly large number of Cererian craters have central pits, perhaps due to cryovolcanic processes, and many have central peaks.[83] Ceres has one prominent mountain, Ahuna Mons; this peak appears to be a cryovolcano and has few craters, suggesting a maximum age of no more than a few hundred million years.[84][85] A later computer simulation has suggested that there were originally other cryovolcanoes on Ceres that are now unrecognisable due to viscous relaxation.[86] Several bright spots have been observed by Dawn, the brightest spot ("Spot 5") located in the middle of an 80-kilometer (50 mi) crater called Occator.[87] From images taken of Ceres on 4 May 2015, the secondary bright spot was revealed to actually be a group of scattered bright areas, possibly as many as ten. These bright features have an albedo of approximately 40%[88] that are caused by a substance on the surface, possibly ice or salts, reflecting sunlight.[89][90] A haze periodically appears above Spot 5, the best known bright spot, supporting the hypothesis that some sort of outgassing or sublimating ice formed the bright spots.[90][91] In March 2016, Dawn found definitive evidence of water molecules on the surface of Ceres at Oxo crater.[92][93]
+
+On 9 December 2015, NASA scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO4·6H2O); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays.[94] Near-infrared spectra of these bright areas were reported in 2017 to be consistent with a large amount of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) and smaller amounts of ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) or ammonium bicarbonate (NH4HCO3).[95][96] These materials have been suggested to originate from the recent crystallization of brines that reached the surface from below.[97][98][99][98][100]
+
+Organic compounds (tholins) were detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater,[101][102] and most of the planet's surface is extremely rich in carbon,[103] with approximately 20% carbon by mass in its near surface.[104][105] The carbon content is more than five times higher than in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites analyzed on Earth.[105] The surface carbon shows evidence of being mixed with products of rock-water interactions, such as clays.[104][105] This chemistry suggests Ceres formed in a cold environment, perhaps outside the orbit of Jupiter, and that it accreted from ultra-carbon-rich materials in the presence of water, which could provide conditions favorable to organic chemistry.[104][105] Its presence on Ceres is evidence that the basic ingredients for life can be found throughout the universe.[103]
+
+The active geology of Ceres is driven by ice and brines, with an overall salinity of around 5%. Altogether,  Ceres is approximately 40% or 50% water by volume, compared to 0.1% for Earth, and 73% rock by weight.[15]
+
+The fact that the surface has preserved craters smaller than 300 km in diameter indicate that the outermost layer of Ceres is on the order of 1000 times stronger than water ice. This is consistent with a mixture of silicates, hydrated salts and methane clathrates, with no more than approximately 30% water ice.[19]
+
+The thickness and density of the crust is not well constrained. There are competing 2-layer and 3-layer models of the Cererian interior, not counting a possible small metallic core.
+
+In the three-layer model, Ceres is thought to consist of an inner muddy mantle of hydrated rock, such as clays, an intermediate layer of brine and rock (mud) down to a depth of at least 100 km, and an outer, 40-km thick crust of ice, salts and hydrated minerals.[107] It's unknown if it contains a rocky or metallic core, but the low central density suggests it may retain about 10% porosity.[15] 
+One study estimated the densities of the core and mantle/crust to be 2.46–2.90 and 1.68–1.95 g/cm3, with the mantle and crust being 70–190 km thick. Only partial dehydration (expulsion of ice) from the core is expected, while the high density of the mantle relative to water ice reflects its enrichment in silicates and salts.[8] That is, the core, mantle and crust all consist of rock and ice, though in different ratios.
+
+The mineral composition can only be determined indirectly for the outer 100 km. The 40-km thick solid outer crust is a mixture of ice, salts, and hydrated minerals. Under that is a layer that may contain a small amount of brine. This extends to a depth of at least the 100-km limit of detection. Under that is thought to be a mantle dominated by hydrated rocks such as clays. It is not possible to tell if Ceres' deep interior contains liquid or a core of dense material rich in metal.[108]
+
+In one two-layer model, Ceres consists of a core of chondrules and a mantle of mixed ice and micron-sized solid particulates ("mud"). Sublimation of ice at the surface would leave a deposit of hydrated particulates perhaps 20 meters thick. There are range to the extent of differentiation that is consistent with the data, from a large, 360-km core of 75% chondrules and 25% particulates and a mantle of 75% ice and 25% particulates, to a small, 85-km core consisting nearly entirely of particulates and a mantle of 30% ice and 70% particulates. With a large core, the core–mantle boundary should be warm enough for pockets of brine. With a small core, the mantle should remain liquid below 110 km. In the latter case, a 2% freezing of the liquid reservoir would compress the liquid enough to force some to the surface, producing cryovolcanism.[109]
+
+The model may be compared to estimates that Ceres has averaged one cryovolcano every 50 million years.[110]
+
+Another model notes that Dawn data is consistent with a partial differentiation of Ceres into a volatile-rich crust and a denser mantle of hydrated silicates. A range of densities for the crust and mantle can be calculated from the types of meteorite thought to have impacted Ceres. With CI-class meteorites (density 2.46 g/cc), the crust would be approximately 70 km thick and have a density of 1.68 g/cc; with CM-class meteorites (density 2.9 g/cc), the crust would be approximately 190 km thick and have a density of 1.9 g/cc. Best-fit from admittance modeling yields a crust approximately 40 km thick with a density of approximately 1.25 g/cc, and a mantle/core density of approximately 2.4 g/cc.[19]
+
+There are indications that Ceres has a tenuous water vapor atmosphere outgassing from water ice on the surface, making it an active asteroid.[111][112][113][114]
+
+Surface water ice is unstable at distances less than 5 AU from the Sun,[115] so it is expected to sublime if it is exposed directly to solar radiation. Water ice can migrate from the deep layers of Ceres to the surface, but escapes in a very short time.
+
+In early 2014, using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, it was discovered that there are several localized (not more than 60 km in diameter) mid-latitude sources of water vapor on Ceres, which each give off approximately 1026 molecules (or 3 kg) of water per second.[116][117][e] Two potential source regions, designated Piazzi (123°E, 21°N) and Region A (231°E, 23°N), have been visualized in the near infrared as dark areas (Region A also has a bright center) by the W. M. Keck Observatory. Possible mechanisms for the vapor release are sublimation from approximately 0.6 km2 of exposed surface ice, or cryovolcanic eruptions resulting from radiogenic internal heat[116] or from pressurization of a subsurface ocean due to growth of an overlying layer of ice.[120] Surface sublimation would be expected to be lower when Ceres is farther from the Sun in its orbit, whereas internally powered emissions should not be affected by its orbital position. The limited data available was more consistent with cometary-style sublimation;[116] however, subsequent evidence from Dawn strongly suggests ongoing geologic activity could be at least partially responsible.[121][122]
+
+Studies using Dawn's gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) reveal that Ceres is accelerating electrons from the solar wind regularly; although there are several possibilities as to what is causing this, the most accepted is that these electrons are being accelerated by collisions between the solar wind and a tenuous water vapor exosphere.[123]
+
+In 2017, Dawn confirmed that Ceres has a transient atmosphere that appears to be linked to solar activity. Ice on Ceres can sublimate when energetic particles from the Sun hit exposed ice within craters.[124]
+
+Ceres is a surviving protoplanet (planetary embryo) that formed 4.56 billion years ago, the only one surviving in the inner Solar System, with the rest either merging to form terrestrial planets or being ejected from the Solar System by Jupiter.[125] However, its composition is not consistent with a formation in the asteroid belt. It seems rather that Ceres formed as a centaur, most likely between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, and was scattered into the asteroid belt as Jupiter migrated outward.[15] The discovery of ammonia salts in Occator crater supports an origin in the outer Solar System.[126] However, the presence of ammonia ices can be attributed to impacts by comets, and ammonia salts are more likely to be native to the surface.[127]
+
+The geological evolution of Ceres was dependent on the heat sources available during and after its formation: friction from planetesimal accretion, and decay of various radionuclides (possibly including short-lived extinct radionuclides such as aluminium-26). These are thought to have been sufficient to allow Ceres to differentiate into a rocky core and icy mantle soon after its formation.[75] This process may have caused resurfacing by water volcanism and tectonics, erasing older geological features.[citation needed] Ceres's relatively warm surface temperature implies that any of the resulting ice on its surface would have gradually sublimated, leaving behind various hydrated minerals like clay minerals and carbonates.[citation needed]
+
+Today, Ceres has become considerably less geologically active, with a surface sculpted chiefly by impacts; nevertheless, evidence from Dawn reveals that internal processes have continued to sculpt Ceres's surface to a significant extent, in stark contrast to Vesta[128] and of previous expectations that Ceres would have become geologically dead early in its history due to its small size.[129] There are significant amounts of water ice in its crust.[102]
+
+Although not as actively discussed as a potential home for microbial extraterrestrial life as Mars, Europa, Enceladus, or Titan, there is evidence that Ceres' icy mantle was once a watery subterranean ocean. The remote detection of organic compounds and the presence of water with 20% carbon by mass in its near surface, could provide conditions favorable to organic chemistry.[104][105]
+
+When in opposition near its perihelion, Ceres can reach an apparent magnitude of +6.7.[131] This is generally regarded as too dim to be visible to the naked eye, but under ideal viewing conditions, keen eyes with 20/20 vision may be able to see it. The only other asteroids that can reach a similarly bright magnitude are 4 Vesta and, when in rare oppositions near their perihelions, 2 Pallas and 7 Iris.[132] When in conjunction, Ceres has a magnitude of around +9.3, which corresponds to the faintest objects visible with 10×50 binoculars; thus it can be seen with such binoculars in a naturally dark and clear night sky around new moon.
+
+Some notable observations and milestones for Ceres include the following:
+
+In 1981, a proposal for an asteroid mission was submitted to the European Space Agency (ESA). Named the Asteroidal Gravity Optical and Radar Analysis (AGORA), this spacecraft was to launch some time in 1990–1994 and perform two flybys of large asteroids. The preferred target for this mission was Vesta. AGORA would reach the asteroid belt either by a gravitational slingshot trajectory past Mars or by means of a small ion engine. However, the proposal was refused by ESA. A joint NASA–ESA asteroid mission was then drawn up for a Multiple Asteroid Orbiter with Solar Electric Propulsion (MAOSEP), with one of the mission profiles including an orbit of Vesta. NASA indicated they were not interested in an asteroid mission. Instead, ESA set up a technological study of a spacecraft with an ion drive. Other missions to the asteroid belt were proposed in the 1980s by France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, but none were approved.[137] Exploration of Ceres by fly-by and impacting penetrator was the second main target of the second plan of the multiaimed Soviet Vesta mission, developed in cooperation with European countries for realisation in 1991–1994 but canceled due to the Soviet Union disbanding.
+
+The Chinese Space Agency is designing a sample-return mission from Ceres that would take place during the 2020s.[138]
+
+The Calathus Mission is a concept to Occator Crater at Ceres, to return a sample of the bright carbonate faculae and dark organics to Earth.[139][140]
+
+In the early 1990s, NASA initiated the Discovery Program, which was intended to be a series of low-cost scientific missions. In 1996, the program's study team recommended as a high priority a mission to explore the asteroid belt using a spacecraft with an ion engine. Funding for this program remained problematic for several years, but by 2004 the Dawn vehicle had passed its critical design review.[141]
+
+It was launched on 27 September 2007, as the space mission to make the first visits to both Vesta and Ceres. On 3 May 2011, Dawn acquired its first targeting image 1.2 million kilometers from Vesta.[142] After orbiting Vesta for 13 months, Dawn used its ion engine to depart for Ceres, with gravitational capture occurring on 6 March 2015[143] at a separation of 61,000 km,[144] four months prior to the New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
+
+Dawn's mission profile called for it to study Ceres from a series of circular polar orbits at successively lower altitudes. It entered its first observational orbit ("RC3") around Ceres at an altitude of 13,500 km on 23 April 2015, staying for only approximately one orbit (fifteen days).[25][145] The spacecraft subsequently reduced its orbital distance to 4,400 km for its second observational orbit ("survey") for three weeks,[146] then down to 1,470 km ("HAMO;" high altitude mapping orbit) for two months[147] and then down to its final orbit at 375 km ("LAMO;" low altitude mapping orbit) for at least three months.[148]
+
+The spacecraft instrumentation includes a framing camera, a visual and infrared spectrometer, and a gamma-ray and neutron detector. These instruments examined Ceres' shape and elemental composition.[149] On 13 January 2015, Dawn took the first images of Ceres at near-Hubble resolution, revealing impact craters and a small high-albedo spot on the surface, near the same location as that observed previously. Additional imaging sessions, at increasingly better resolution took place on 25 January 4, 12, 19 and 25 February 1 March, and 10 and 15 April.[150]
+
+Pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots (or high-albedo features) inside a crater (different from the bright spots observed in earlier Hubble images[151]) were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, leading to speculation about a possible cryovolcanic origin[152][153][154] or outgassing.[155] On 3 March 2015, a NASA spokesperson said the spots are consistent with highly reflective materials containing ice or salts, but that cryovolcanism is unlikely.[156] However, on 2 September 2016, scientists from the Dawn team claimed in a Science paper that a massive cryovolcano called Ahuna Mons is the strongest evidence yet for the existence of these mysterious formations.[157][158] On 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several.[159] On 9 December 2015, NASA scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO4·6H2O); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays.[94] In June 2016, near-infrared spectra of these bright areas were found to be consistent with a large amount of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), implying that recent geologic activity was probably involved in the creation of the bright spots.[97][98][100] In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth.[72] From June to October 2018, Dawn orbited Ceres from as close as 35 km (22 mi) and as far away as 4,000 km (2,500 mi).[160][161] The Dawn mission ended on 1 November 2018 after the spacecraft ran out of fuel.
+
+In October 2015, NASA released a true-color portrait of Ceres made by Dawn.[162] In February 2017, organics (tholins) were detected on Ceres in Ernutet crater (see image).[101][102]
+
+Dawn's arrival in a stable orbit around Ceres was delayed after, close to reaching Ceres, it was hit by a cosmic ray, making it take another, longer route around Ceres in back, instead of a direct spiral towards it.[163]
+
+The following imagemap of Ceres is divided into 15 quadrangles. They are named after the first craters whose names the IAU approved in July 2015.[165] The map image(s) were taken by the Dawn space probe.
+
+2004Hubble Space Telescope
+
+14 April 2015; Dawn22,000 km (14,000 mi)
+
+6 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)
+
+16 May 2015; Dawn7,500 km (4,700 mi)(1;2;3)
+
+22 May 2015; Dawn5,100 km (3,200 mi)(1;2;3;4;5) (Ezinu crater: context;closeup)
+
+23 April 2015; Dawn1st Map Orbit - RC313,600 km (8,500 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24) (3D: 1;5;6;7) (animation)
+
+6 June 2015: Dawn2nd Map Orbit - SRVY4,400 km (2,700 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54)
+
+17 August 2015: Dawn3rd Map Orbit - HAMO1,470 km (910 mi)(1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54;55;56;57;58;59;60;61;62;63;64;65;66;67;68;69;70;71;72;73;74;75;76;77;78;79;80;81;82;83;84;85;86;87;88;89)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOa385 km (239 mi)(a;b;c;d;e;1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36;37;38;39;40;m1;m2;m3;41;42;43;44;45;46;47;48;49;50;51;52;53;54;55;56;57;58;59;60;61;62;63;64;65;66;67;68;69;70;71;72;73;74;75;76;77;78;79;80;81;82;83)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOb385 km (239 mi)(84;85;86;87;88;89;90;91;92;93;94;95;96;97;98;99;100;101;102;103;104;105;106;107;108;109;110;111;112;113;114;115;116;117;118;119;120;121;122;123;124;125;126;127;128;129;130;131;132;133;134;135;136;137;138;139;140;141;142;143;144;145;146;147;148;149)
+
+10 December 2015: Dawn4th Map Orbit - LAMOc385 km (239 mi)(150;151;152;153;154;155;156;157;158;159;160;161;162;163;164;165;166;167;168;169;170;171;172;173;174;175;176;177;178;179;180;181;182;183;184;185;186;187;188;189;190;191;192;193;194;195;196;197;198;199;200;201;202;203;204;205;206;207 – end)
+
+6 June 2018: DawnFinal Map Orbit35 km (22 mi)OccatorCrater:(Boulders;Landslides;EasternRim-1;EasternRim-2)(view on commons)
+
+4 February 2015; Dawn90,000 km (56,000 mi)
+
+29 April 2017: Dawn20,000 km (12,000 mi)
+
+4 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)
+
+4 May 2015; Dawn13,600 km (8,500 mi)bright spots
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".

en/937.html.txt

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+
+
+The red deer (Cervus elaphus) is one of the largest deer species. The red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Asia Minor, Iran, parts of western Asia, and central Asia. It also inhabits the Atlas Mountains region between Morocco and Tunisia in northwestern Africa, being the only species of deer to inhabit Africa. Red deer have been introduced to other areas, including Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.[2][3] In many parts of the world, the meat (venison) from red deer is used as a food source.
+
+Red deer are ruminants, characterized by a four-chambered stomach. Genetic evidence indicates the red deer as traditionally defined is a species group, rather than a single species, although it remains disputed as to exactly how many species the group includes.[4][5] The closely related and slightly larger American elk or wapiti, native to North America and eastern parts of Asia, had been regarded as a subspecies of red deer, but recently it has been established as a distinct species. It is probable that the ancestor of all red deer, including wapiti, originated in central Asia and resembled sika deer.[6]
+
+Although at one time red deer were rare in parts of Europe, they were never close to extinction. Reintroduction and conservation efforts, such as in the United Kingdom and Portugal,[7] have resulted in an increase of red deer populations, while other areas, such as North Africa, have continued to show a population decline.
+
+The red deer is the fourth-largest deer species behind moose, elk and sambar deer. It is a ruminant, eating its food in two stages and having an even number of toes on each hoof, like camels, goats and cattle. European red deer have a relatively long tail compared to their Asian and North American relatives. Subtle differences in appearance are noted between the various subspecies of red deer, primarily in size and antlers, with the smallest being the Corsican red deer found on the islands of Corsica and Sardinia and the largest being the Caspian red deer[8] (or maral) of Asia Minor and the Caucasus Region to the west of the Caspian Sea. The deer of central and western Europe vary greatly in size, with some of the largest deer found in the Carpathian Mountains in Central Europe.[6] Western European red deer, historically, grew to large size given ample food supply (including people's crops), and descendants of introduced populations living in New Zealand and Argentina have grown quite large in both body and antler size. Large red deer stags, like the Caspian red deer or those of the Carpathian Mountains, may rival the wapiti in size. Female red deer are much smaller than their male counterparts.
+
+The male (stag) red deer is typically 175 to 250 cm (69 to 98 in) long and weighs 160 to 240 kg (350 to 530 lb); the female (hind) is 160 to 210 cm (63 to 83 in) long and weighs 120 to 170 kg (260 to 370 lb).[citation needed] The tail adds another 12 to 19 cm (4.7 to 7.5 in) and shoulder height is about 95 to 130 cm (37 to 51 in).[9] In Scotland, stags average 201 cm (79 in) in head-and-body length and 122 cm (48 in) high at the shoulder and females average 180 cm (71 in) long and 114 cm (45 in) tall.[9] Size varies in different subspecies with the largest, the huge but small-antlered deer of the Carpathian Mountains (C. e. elaphus), weighing up to 500 kg (1,100 lb). At the other end of the scale, the Corsican red deer (C. e. corsicanus) weighs about 80 to 100 kg (180 to 220 lb), although red deer in poor habitats can weigh as little as 53 to 112 kg (120 to 250 lb).[10] European red deer tend to be reddish-brown in their summer coats. The males of many subspecies also grow a short neck mane during the autumn. The male deer of the British Isles and Norway tend to have the thickest and most noticeable manes. Male Caspian red deer (C. e. maral) and Spanish red deer (C. e. hispanicus) do not carry neck manes. Male deer of all subspecies, however, tend to have stronger and thicker neck muscles than female deer, which may give them an appearance of having neck manes. Red deer hinds (females) do not have neck manes. The European red deer is adapted to a woodland environment.[11]
+
+Only the stags have antlers, which start growing in the spring and are shed each year, usually at the end of winter. Antlers typically measure 71 cm (28 in) in total length and weigh 1 kg (2.2 lb), although large ones can grow to 115 cm (45 in) and weigh 5 kg (11 lb).[9] Antlers, which are made of bone, can grow at a rate of 2.5 cm (1 in) a day. A soft covering known as velvet helps to protect newly forming antlers in the spring. European red deer antlers are distinctive in being rather straight and rugose, with the fourth and fifth tines forming a "crown" or "cup" in larger males. Any tines in excess of the fourth and fifth tine will grow radially from the cup, which are generally absent in the antlers of smaller red deer, such as Corsican red deer. Western European red deer antlers feature "bez" (second) tines that are either absent or smaller than the brow tines. However, bez tines occur frequently in Norwegian red deer. Antlers of Caspian red deer carry large bez tines and form less-developed cups than western European red deer, their antlers are thus more like the "throw back" top tines of the wapiti (C. canadensis), known as maraloid characteristics. A stag can (exceptionally) have antlers with no tines, and is then known as a switch. Similarly, a stag that does not grow antlers is a hummel. The antlers are testosterone-driven and as the stag's testosterone levels drop in the autumn, the velvet is shed and the antlers stop growing.[12]  With the approach of autumn, the antlers begin to calcify and the stags' testosterone production builds for the approaching rut (mating season).
+
+During the autumn, all red deer subspecies grow thicker coats of hair, which helps to insulate them during the winter. Autumn is also when some of the stags grow their neck manes.[6] The autumn/winter coat of most subspecies are most distinct. The Caspian red deer's winter coat is greyer and has a larger and more distinguished light rump-patch (like wapiti and some central Asian red deer) compared to the Western European red deer, which has more of a greyish-brown coat with a darker yellowish rump patch in the winter. By the time summer begins, the heavy winter coat has been shed; the animals are known to rub against trees and other objects to help remove hair from their bodies. Red deer have different colouration based on the seasons and types of habitats, with grey or lighter colouration prevalent in the winter and more reddish and darker coat colouration in the summer.[13] Most European red deer have reddish-brown summer coats, and some individuals may have a few spots on the backs of their summer coats.
+
+The Cervus genus ancestors of red deer first appear in fossil records 12 million years ago during the Miocene in Eurasia.[14]
+
+The European red deer is found in southwestern Asia (Asia Minor and Caucasus regions), North Africa and Europe. The red deer is the largest non-domesticated land mammal still existing in Ireland.[14] The Barbary stag (which resembles the western European red deer) is the only member of the deer family represented in Africa, with the population centred in the northwestern region of the continent in the Atlas Mountains.[15] As of the mid-1990s, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria were the only African countries known to have red deer.[16]
+
+In the Netherlands, a large herd (c. 3000 animals counted in late 2012) lives in the Oostvaarders Plassen, a nature reserve. Ireland has its own unique subspecies. In France the population is thriving, having multiplied fivefold in the last half-century, increasing from 30,000 in 1970 to approximately 160,000 in 2014. The deer has particularly expanded its footprint into forests at higher altitudes than before. 
+In the UK, indigenous populations occur in Scotland, the Lake District, and the South West of England (principally on Exmoor).[17] Not all of these are of entirely pure bloodlines, as some of these populations have been supplemented with deliberate releases of deer from parks, such as Warnham or Woburn Abbey, in an attempt to increase antler sizes and body weights. The University of Edinburgh found that, in Scotland, there has been extensive hybridisation with the closely related sika deer.[18]
+
+Several other populations have originated either with "carted" deer kept for stag hunts being left out at the end of the hunt, escapes from deer farms, or deliberate releases. Carted deer were kept by stag hunts with no wild red deer in the locality and were normally recaptured after the hunt and used again; although the hunts are called "stag hunts", the Norwich Staghounds only hunted hinds (female red deer), and in 1950, at least eight hinds (some of which may have been pregnant) were known to be at large near Kimberley and West Harling;[19] they formed the basis of a new population based in Thetford Forest in Norfolk. Further substantial red deer herds originated from escapes or deliberate releases in the New Forest, the Peak District, Suffolk, Lancashire, Brecon Beacons, and North Yorkshire, as well as many other smaller populations scattered throughout England and Wales, and they are all generally increasing in numbers and range. A census of deer populations in 2007 and again in 2011 coordinated by the British Deer Society records the red deer as having continued to expand their range in England and Wales since 2000,[20] with expansion most notable in the Midlands and East Anglia.[21]
+
+In New Zealand, red deer were introduced by acclimatisation societies along with other deer and game species. The first red deer to reach New Zealand were a pair sent by Lord Petre in 1851 from his herd at Thorndon Park, Essex, to the South Island, but the hind was shot before they had a chance to breed. Lord Petre sent another stag and two hinds in 1861, and these were liberated near Nelson, from where they quickly spread. The first deer to reach the North Island were a gift to Sir Frederick Weld from Windsor Great Park and were released near Wellington; these were followed by further releases up to 1914.[22] Between 1851 and 1926, 220 separate liberations of red deer involved over 800 deer.[23] In 1927, the State Forest Service introduced a bounty for red deer shot on their land, and in 1931, government control operations were commenced. Between 1931 and March 1975, 1,124,297 deer were killed on official operations.
+
+The introduced red deer have adapted well and are widely hunted on both islands; many of the 220 introductions used deer originating from Scotland (Invermark) or one of the major deer parks in England, principally Warnham, Woburn Abbey or Windsor Great Park. Some hybridisation happened with the closely related American elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) introduced in Fiordland in 1921. New Zealand red deer produce very large antlers and are regarded as amongst the best in the world by hunters. Along with the other introduced deer species, they are, however, officially regarded as a noxious pest and are still heavily culled using professional hunters working with helicopters, or even poisoned.[citation needed]
+
+The first red deer to reach Australia were probably the six that Prince Albert sent in 1860 from Windsor Great Park to Thomas Chirnside, who was starting a herd at Werribee Park, south west of Melbourne in Victoria. Further introductions were made in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. Today, red deer in Australia range from Queensland south through New South Wales into Victoria and across to South Australia, with the numbers increasing. The Queensland, Victorian and most New South Wales strains can still be traced to the early releases, but South Australia's population, along with all others, is now largely recent farm escapees. This is having adverse effects on the integrity of wild herds, as now more and larger herds are being grown due to the superior genetics that have been attained by selective breeding.
+
+In Argentina and Chile, the red deer has had a potentially adverse impact on native animal species, such as the South Andean deer or huemul; the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources has labelled the animal as one of the world's 100 worst invaders.[24]
+
+Red deer in Europe generally spend their winters at lower altitudes in more wooded terrain. During the summer, they migrate to higher elevations where food supplies are greater and better for the calving season.
+
+Until recently, biologists considered the red deer and elk or wapiti (C. canadensis) the same species, forming a continuous distribution throughout temperate Eurasia and North America. This belief was based largely on the fully fertile hybrids that can be produced under captive conditions.[25][26][27]
+
+Genetic evidence clearly shows the wapiti and red deer form two separate species.[28][29][30]
+Among red deer, the easternmost forms (from the Caspian Sea to western China) form a primordial subgroup, which includes the Yarkand deer and Bactrian deer (the two may be synonymous).[28]
+
+Another member of the red deer group which may represent a separate species is C. corsicanus.[31] If so, C. corsicanus includes the subspecies C. e. barbarus (perhaps a synonym of C. e. corsicanus), and is restricted to Maghreb in North Africa, Corsica, and Sardinia.[28][31]
+
+The International Union for Conservation of Nature originally listed nine subspecies of red deer (Cervus elaphus): three as endangered, one as vulnerable, one as near threatened, and four without enough data to give a category (Data Deficient). The species as a whole, however, is listed as least concern.[1] However, this was based on the traditional classification of red deer as one species (Cervus elaphus), including the wapiti. The common red deer is also known as simply red deer.
+
+Selected members of the red deer species group are listed in the table below. Of the ones listed, C. e. hippelaphus, C. e. scoticus, and C. e. bactrianus may all be junior synonyms.[28]
+
+Cervus elaphus appeared in the Europe by the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene around 800,000 years ago. These earliest forms belonged to the palaeosubspecies Cervus elaphus acoronatus. Other palaeosubspecies are known, including those belonging to C. elaphus rianensis from the Middle Pleistocene of Italy, C. elaphus siciliae from the late Middle and Late Pleistocene of Sicily.[32]
+
+Mature red deer (C. elaphus) usually stay in single-sex groups for most of the year. During the mating season, called the rut, mature stags compete for the attentions of the hinds and will then try to defend the hinds they attract. Rival stags challenge opponents by belling and walking in parallel. This allows combatants to assess each other's antlers, body size and fighting prowess. If neither stag backs down, a clash of antlers can occur, and stags sometimes sustain serious injuries.[15]
+
+Dominant stags follow groups of hinds during the rut, from August into early winter. The stags may have as many as 20 hinds to keep from other, less attractive males.[36][citation needed] Only mature stags hold harems (groups of hinds), and breeding success peaks at about eight years of age. Stags two to four years old rarely hold harems and spend most of the rut on the periphery of larger harems, as do stags over 11 years old. Young and old stags that do acquire a harem hold it later in the breeding season than those stags in their prime. Harem-holding stags rarely feed and lose up to 20% of their body weight. Stags that enter the rut in poor condition are less likely to make it through to the peak conception period.[15]
+
+Male European red deer have a distinctive roar during the rut, which is an adaptation to forested environments, in contrast to male American elk stags which "bugle" during the rut in adaptation to open environments. The male deer roars to keep his harem of females together. The females are initially attracted to those males that both roar most often and have the loudest roar call. Males also use the roar call when competing with other males for females during the rut, and along with other forms of posturing and antler fights, is a method used by the males to establish dominance.[11] Roaring is most common during the early dawn and late evening, which is also when the crepuscular deer are most active in general.
+
+Female red deer reach sexual maturity at 2 years of age.[37] Red deer mating patterns usually involve a dozen or more mating attempts before the first successful one. There may be several more matings before the stag will seek out another mate in his harem. Red deer are among the mammals exhibiting homosexual behavior.[38] Females in their second autumn can produce one or very rarely two offspring per year. The gestation period is 240 to 262 days, and the offspring weigh about 15 kg (33 lb). After two weeks, calves are able to join the herd and are fully weaned after two months.[39] All red deer calves are born spotted, as is common with many deer species, and lose their spots by the end of summer. However, as in many species of Old World deer, some adults do retain a few spots on the backs of their summer coats.[6] The offspring will remain with their mothers for almost one full year, leaving around the time the next season's offspring are produced.[11] The gestation period is the same for all subspecies.
+
+Red deer live over 20 years in captivity and in the wild they live 10 to 13 years, though some subspecies with less predation pressure average 15 years.
+
+Male red deer retain their antlers for more than half the year, and are less gregarious and less likely to group with other males when they have antlers. The antlers provide self-defence, as does a strong front-leg kicking action performed by both sexes when attacked. Once the antlers are shed, stags tend to form bachelor groups which allow them to cooperatively work together. Herds tend to have one or more members watching for potential danger, while the remaining members eat and rest.[11]
+
+After the rut, females form large herds of up to 50 individuals. The newborn calves are kept close to the hinds by a series of vocalizations between the two, and larger nurseries have an ongoing and constant chatter during the daytime hours. When approached by predators, the largest and most robust females may make a stand, using their front legs to kick at their attackers. Guttural grunts and posturing is used with all but the most determined of predators with great effectiveness. Aside from humans and domestic dogs, the grey wolf is probably the most dangerous predator European red deer encounter. Occasionally, the brown bear will prey on European red deer.[11] Eurasian lynx and wild boars sometimes prey on the calves. The leopard in Asia Minor (now extinct) probably preyed on eastern European red deer. Both the Barbary lion and the Barbary leopard probably once preyed on Atlas stags in the Atlas Mountains, although the Barbary lion is now extinct in the wild, and the Barbary leopard is either very rare or extinct. In the past they were also hunted by the now extinct Caspian tiger.
+
+Red deer are widely depicted in cave art found throughout European caves, with some of the artwork dating from as early as 40,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic. Siberian cave art from the Neolithic of 7,000 years ago has abundant depictions of red deer, including what can be described as spiritual artwork, indicating the importance of this mammal to the peoples of that region (Note: these animals were most likely wapiti (C. canadensis) in Siberia, not red deer).[40]
+Red deer are also often depicted on Pictish stones (circa 550–850 AD), from the early medieval period in Scotland, usually as prey animals for human or animal predators. In medieval hunting, the red deer was the most prestigious quarry, especially the mature stag, which in England was called a hart.
+
+Red deer are held in captivity for a variety of reasons. The meat of the deer, called venison, was until recently[date missing] restricted in the United Kingdom to those with connections to the aristocratic or poaching communities, and a licence was needed to sell it legally, but it is now widely available in supermarkets, especially in the autumn. The Queen still follows the custom of offering large pieces of venison to members of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom and others. Some estates in the Scottish Highlands still sell deer-stalking accompanied by a gillie in the traditional way, on unfenced land, while others operate more like farms for venison. Venison is widely considered to be both flavourful and nutritious. It is higher in protein and lower in fat than either beef or chicken.[41]
+
+The red deer can produce 10 to 15 kg (22 to 33 lb) of antler velvet annually.[citation needed] On ranches in New Zealand, China, Siberia, and elsewhere,[42] this velvet is collected and sold to markets in East Asia, where it is used for holistic medicines, with South Korea being the primary consumer. In Russia, a medication produced from antler velvet is sold under the brand name Pantokrin (Russian: Пантокри́н; Latin: Pantocrinum).[citation needed]
+The antlers themselves are also believed by East Asians to have medicinal purposes and are often ground up and used in small quantities.
+
+Historically, related deer species such as central Asian red deer, wapiti, Thorold's deer, and sika deer have been reared on deer farms in Central and Eastern Asia by Han Chinese, Turkic peoples, Tungusic peoples, Mongolians, and Koreans.[citation needed] In modern times, western countries such as New Zealand and United States have taken to farming European red deer for similar purposes.
+
+Deer hair products are also used in the fly fishing industry, being used to tie flies.[citation needed]
+
+Deer antlers are also used for decorative purposes and have been used for artwork, furniture and other novelty items. Deer antlers were and still are the source material for horn furniture. Already in the 15th century trophies of case were used for clothes hook, storage racks and chandeliers, the so-called "lusterweibchen". In the 19th century the European nobility discovered among others the red deer antlers as perfect object for fashioning their manors and hunting castles. This fashion trend splashes over to upper- and middle-class households in the mid of the 19th century.
+
+With the increasing popularity of the World Expositions mainly producers of horn furniture in Germany, Austria and the United States showed their ideas of horn furniture and a kind of series manufacturing began. Heinrich Friedrich Christoph Rampendahl and Friedrich Wenzel are only two acknowledged companies to be named. In recent times deer antler home decors can be found in home styling magazines.[43]
+
+Mature Spanish red deer bellowing during the rut
+
+Red deer tracks in Commanster, in the Ardennes of Belgium
+
+Young stag in Great Glen in Scotland
+
+A soft covering known as velvet helps to protect newly forming antlers in the spring. Glen Torridon, Scotland
+
+One male and three females in the Salburua wetlands of Basque Country in Spain
+
+Hind with juvenile in Great Glen in Scotland
+
+Young stags fleeing on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia

en/938.html.txt

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+
+
+A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus Prunus, and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit).
+
+Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet Prunus avium and the sour Prunus cerasus. The name 'cherry' also refers to the cherry tree and its wood, and is sometimes applied to almonds and visually similar flowering trees in the genus Prunus, as in "ornamental cherry" or "cherry blossom". Wild cherry may refer to any of the cherry species growing outside cultivation, although Prunus avium is often referred to specifically by the name "wild cherry" in the British Isles.
+
+Many cherries are allied to the subgenus Prunus subg. Cerasus, which is distinguished by having the flowers in small corymbs of several together (not singly, nor in racemes), and by having smooth fruit with only a weak groove along one side, or no groove. The subgenus is native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with two species in America, three in Europe, and the remainder in Asia. Other cherry fruits are borne on racemes and called bird cherries.
+
+The English word cherry derives from Old Northern French or Norman cherise from the Latin cerasum,[1] referring to an ancient Greek region, Kerasous (Κερασοῦς) near Giresun, Turkey, from which cherries were first thought to be exported to Europe.[2]
+The indigenous range of the sweet cherry extends through most of Europe, western Asia, and parts of northern Africa, and the fruit has been consumed throughout its range since prehistoric times. A cultivated cherry is recorded as having been brought to Rome by Lucius Licinius Lucullus from northeastern Anatolia, also known as the Pontus region, in 72 BC.[3]
+
+Cherries were introduced into England at Teynham, near Sittingbourne in Kent, by order of Henry VIII, who had tasted them in Flanders.[4][5][6]
+
+Cherries arrived in North America early in the settlement of Brooklyn, New York (then called "New Netherland") when the region was under Dutch sovereignty. Trades people leased or purchased land to plant orchards and produce gardens, "Certificate of Corielis van Tienlioven that he had found 12 apple, 40 peach, 73 cherry trees, 26 sage plants.., behind the house sold by Anthony Jansen from Salee [Morocco, Africa] to Barent Dirksen [Dutchmen],... ANNO 18th of June 1639."[7]
+
+The cultivated forms are of the species sweet cherry (P. avium) to which most cherry cultivars belong, and the sour cherry (P. cerasus), which is used mainly for cooking. Both species originate in Europe and western Asia; they usually do not cross-pollinate. Some other species, although having edible fruit, are not grown extensively for consumption, except in northern regions where the two main species will not grow. Irrigation, spraying, labor, and their propensity to damage from rain and hail make cherries relatively expensive. Nonetheless, demand is high for the fruit. In commercial production, sour cherries, as well as sweet cherries sometimes, are harvested by using a mechanized "shaker".[8] Hand picking is also widely used for sweet as well as sour cherries to harvest the fruit to avoid damage to both fruit and trees.
+
+Common rootstocks include Mazzard, Mahaleb, Colt, and Gisela Series, a dwarfing rootstock that produces trees significantly smaller than others, only 8 to 10 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) tall.[9] Sour cherries require no pollenizer, while few sweet varieties are self-fertile.[9]
+
+A cherry tree will take three to four years once it is planted in the orchard to produce its first crop of fruit, and seven years to attain full maturity.[10]
+
+Like most temperate-latitude trees, cherry trees require a certain number of chilling hours each year to break dormancy and bloom and produce fruit. The number of chilling hours required depends on the variety. Because of this cold-weather requirement, no members of the genus Prunus can grow in tropical climates. (See "production" section for more information on chilling requirements)
+
+Cherries have a short growing season and can grow in most temperate latitudes.[10] Cherries blossom in April (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the peak season for the cherry harvest is in the summer. In southern Europe in June, in North America in June, in England in mid-July, and in southern British Columbia (Canada) in June to mid-August. In many parts of North America, they are among the first tree fruits to flower and ripen in mid-Spring.
+
+In the Southern Hemisphere, cherries are usually at their peak in late December and are widely associated with Christmas. 'Burlat' is an early variety which ripens during the beginning of December, 'Lapins' ripens near the end of December, and 'Sweetheart' finish slightly later.[11]
+
+Generally, the cherry can be a difficult fruit tree to grow and keep alive.[9]  In Europe, the first visible pest in the growing season soon after blossom (in April in western Europe) usually is the black cherry aphid ("cherry blackfly", Myzus cerasi), which causes leaves at the tips of branches to curl, with the blackfly colonies exuding a sticky secretion which promotes fungal growth on the leaves and fruit. At the fruiting stage in June/July (Europe), the cherry fruit fly (Rhagoletis cingulata and Rhagoletis cerasi) lays its eggs in the immature fruit, whereafter its larvae feed on the cherry flesh and exit through a small hole (about 1 mm diameter), which in turn is the entry point for fungal infection of the cherry fruit after rainfall.[12] In addition, cherry trees are susceptible to bacterial canker, cytospora canker, brown rot of the fruit, root rot from overly wet soil, crown rot, and several viruses.[9]
+
+The following cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:
+
+See cherry blossom and Prunus for ornamental trees.
+
+In 2014, world production of sweet cherries was 2.25 million tonnes, with Turkey producing 20% of this total. Other major producers of sweet cherries were the United States and Iran. World production of sour cherries in 2014 was 1.36 million tonnes, led by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Poland.
+
+Major commercial cherry orchards in West Asia are in Turkey, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, and Israel.
+
+Major commercial cherry orchards in Europe are in Turkey, Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean regions, and to a smaller extent in the Baltic States and southern Scandinavia.
+
+In France since the 1920s, the first cherries of the season come in April/May from the region of Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales),[38] where the local producers send, as a tradition since 1932, the first crate of cherries to the president of the Republic.[39]
+
+In the United States, most sweet cherries are grown in Washington, California, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Michigan.[40] Important sweet cherry cultivars include Bing, Ulster, Rainier, Brooks, Tulare, King, and Sweetheart.[41] Both Oregon and Michigan provide light-colored 'Royal Ann' ('Napoleon'; alternately 'Queen Anne') cherries for the maraschino cherry process. Most sour (also called tart) cherries are grown in Michigan, followed by Utah, New York, and Washington.[40] Sour cherries include 'Nanking' and 'Evans'. Traverse City, Michigan is called the "Cherry Capital of the World",[42] hosting a National Cherry Festival and making the world's largest cherry pie. The specific region of northern Michigan known for tart cherry production is referred to as the "Traverse Bay" region.
+
+Most cherry varieties have a chilling requirement of 800 or more hours, meaning that in order to break dormancy, blossom, and set fruit, the winter season needs to have at least 800 hours where the temperature is below 45 °F (7 °C). “Low chill” varieties requiring 300 hours or less are Minnie Royal and Royal Lee, requiring cross-pollinization, whereas the cultivar, Royal Crimson, is self-fertile.[43]  These varieties extend the range of cultivation of cherries to the mild winter areas of southern US. This is a boon to California producers of sweet cherries, as California is the second largest producer of sweet cherries in the US.[44]
+
+Native and non-native sweet cherries grow well in Canada's provinces of Ontario and British Columbia where an annual cherry festival has been celebrated for seven consecutive decades in the Okanagan Valley town of Osoyoos.[45] In addition to the Okanagan, other British Columbia cherry growing regions are the Similkameen Valley and Kootenay Valley, all three regions together producing 5.5 million kg annually or 60% of total Canadian output.[46] Sweet cherry varieties in British Columbia include 'Rainier', 'Van', 'Chelan', 'Lapins', 'Sweetheart', 'Skeena', 'Staccato', 'Christalina' and 'Bing'.
+
+In Australia, cherries are grown in all the states except for the Northern Territory.  The major producing regions are located in the temperate areas within New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.  Western Australia has limited production in the elevated parts in the southwest of the state.  Key production areas include Young, Orange and Bathurst in New South Wales, Wandin, the Goulburn and Murray valley areas in Victoria, the Adelaide Hills region in South Australia, and the Huon and Derwent Valleys in Tasmania.
+
+Key commercial varieties in order of seasonality include 'Empress', 'Merchant', 'Supreme', 'Ron's seedling', 'Chelan', 'Ulster', 'Van', 'Bing', 'Stella', 'Nordwunder', 'Lapins', 'Simone', 'Regina', 'Kordia' and 'Sweetheart'.  New varieties are being introduced, including the late season 'Staccato' and early season 'Sequoia'.  The Australian Cherry Breeding program is developing a series of new varieties which are under testing evaluation.[47]
+
+The New South Wales town of Young is called the "Cherry Capital of Australia" and hosts the National Cherry Festival.
+
+Raw sweet cherries are 82% water, 16% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and negligible in fat (table). As raw fruit, sweet cherries provide little nutrient content per 100 g serving, as only dietary fiber and vitamin C are present in moderate content, while other vitamins and dietary minerals each supply less than 10% of the Daily Value (DV) per serving, respectively (table).[48]
+
+Compared to sweet cherries, raw sour cherries contain 50% more vitamin C per 100 g (12% DV) and about 20 times more vitamin A (8% DV), beta-Carotene in particular  (table).[49]
+
+Cherry wood is valued for its rich color and straight grain in manufacturing fine furniture, particularly desks, tables and chairs.[50][51]
+
+The list below contains many Prunus species that bear the common name cherry, but they are not necessarily members of the subgenus Cerasus, or bear edible fruit. For a complete list of species, see List of Prunus species. Some common names listed here have historically been used for more than one species, e.g. "rock cherry" is used as an alternative common name for both P. prostrata and P. mahaleb and "wild cherry" is used for several species.

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+
+
+Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spanish: [miˈɣel de θeɾˈβantes saaˈβeðɾa]; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS)[6] was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel,[7][8][9] and one of the pinnacles of literature.[10][11]
+
+Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, many of its details are disputed or unknown, and the bulk of his surviving work was produced in the three years preceding his death. Despite this, his influence and literary contribution are reflected by the fact Spanish is often referred to as "the language of Cervantes".[12]
+
+In 1569, Cervantes was forced to leave Spain and moved to Rome, where he worked in the household of a cardinal. In 1570, he enlisted in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571. He served as a soldier until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates; after five years in captivity, he was ransomed, and returned to Madrid.
+
+His first significant novel, titled La Galatea, was published in 1585, but he continued to work as a purchasing agent, then later a government tax collector. Part One of Don Quixote was published in 1605, Part Two in 1615. Other works include the 12 Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels); a long poem, the Viaje del Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus); and Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (Eight Plays and Eight Entr'actes). Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda), was published posthumously in 1616.
+
+Despite his subsequent fame, much of Cervantes' life is uncertain, including his name, background and what he looked like. Although he signed himself Cerbantes, his printers used Cervantes, which became the common form. In later life, Cervantes used Saavedra, the name of a distant relative, rather than the more usual Cortinas, after his mother.[13] But historian Luce López-Baralt, claimed that it comes from the word «shaibedraa» that in crippled Arabic dialect is single-handed, his nickname during his captivity.[14]
+
+Another area of dispute are his ethnic origins. In the 16th century, many Spaniards were descended either from Moriscos, Muslims who remained after the conquest of Granada in 1492, or Conversos, Jews who converted to Catholicism after expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. An estimated 20% of the Spanish population in the south fell into one of these categories, and it has been suggested Cervantes' mother may have been one of these New Christians.[15] However, others refute this theory.[16]
+
+No confirmed portrait of the author is known to exist. The one most often associated with Cervantes is attributed to Juan de Jáuregui, but both names were added at a later date.[17] The El Greco painting in the Museo del Prado, known as Retrato de un caballero desconocido, or Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman, is cited as 'possibly' depicting Cervantes, but there is no evidence for this.[18] The portrait by Luis de Madrazo, at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, was painted in 1859, based on his imagination.[19] The image that appears on Spanish euro coins of €0.10, €0.20, and €0.50 is based on a bust, created in 1905.[20]
+
+It is generally accepted Miguel de Cervantes was born around 29 September 1547, in Alcalá de Henares. He was the second son of barber-surgeon Rodrigo de Cervantes and his wife, Leonor de Cortinas (c. 1520–1593).[21] Rodrigo came from Córdoba, Andalusia, where his father Juan de Cervantes was an influential lawyer.[22]
+
+Rodrigo was frequently in debt, or searching for work, and moved constantly. Leonor came from Arganda del Rey, and died in October 1593, at the age of 73; surviving legal documents indicate she had seven children, could read and write, and was a resourceful individual with an eye for business. When Rodrigo was imprisoned for debt from October 1553 to April 1554, she supported the family on her own.[23]
+
+Cervantes' siblings were Andrés (born 1543), Andrea (born 1544), Luisa (born 1546), Rodrigo (born 1550), Magdalena (born 1554) and Juan. They lived in Córdoba until 1556, when his grandfather died. For reasons that are unclear, Rodrigo did not benefit from his will and the family disappears until 1564 when he filed a lawsuit in Seville.[24]
+
+Seville was then in the midst of an economic boom, and Rodrigo managed rented accommodation for his elder brother Andres, who was a junior magistrate. It is assumed Cervantes attended the Jesuit college in Seville, where one of the teachers was Jesuit playwright Pedro Pablo Acevedo, who moved there in 1561 from Córdoba.[25] However, legal records show his father got into debt once more, and in 1566, the family moved to Madrid.[26]
+
+In the 19th century, a biographer discovered an arrest warrant for a Miguel de Cervantes, dated 15 September 1569, who was charged with wounding Antonio de Sigura in a duel.[27] Although disputed at the time, largely on the grounds such behaviour was unworthy of so great an author, it is now accepted as the most likely reason for Cervantes leaving Madrid.[28]
+
+He eventually made his way to Rome, where he found a position in the household of Giulio Acquaviva, an Italian bishop who spent 1568 to 1569 in Madrid, and was appointed Cardinal in 1570.[29] When the 1570 to 1573 Ottoman–Venetian War began, Spain formed part of the Holy League, a coalition formed to support the Venetian Republic. Possibly seeing an opportunity to have his arrest warrant rescinded, Cervantes went to Naples, then part of the Crown of Aragon.[30]
+
+The military commander in Naples was Alvaro de Sande, a friend of the family, who gave Cervantes a commission under the Marquis de Santa Cruz. At some point, he was joined in Naples by his younger brother Rodrigo.[30] In September 1571, Cervantes sailed on board the Marquesa, part of the Holy League fleet under Don John of Austria, illegitimate half brother of Phillip II of Spain; on 7 October, they defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto.[31]
+
+According to his own account, although suffering from malaria, Cervantes was given command of a 12-man skiff, small boats used for assaulting enemy galleys. The Marquesa lost 40 dead, and 120 wounded, including Cervantes, who received three separate wounds, two in the chest, and another that rendered his left arm useless. His actions at Lepanto were a source of pride to the end of his life,[b] while Don John approved no less than four separate pay increases for him.[33]
+
+In Journey to Parnassus, published two years before his death in 1616, Cervantes claimed to have "lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right".[34] As with much else, the extent of his disability is unclear, the only source being Cervantes himself, while commentators cite his habitual tendency to praise himself.[c] [35] However, they were serious enough to earn him six months in hospital at Messina, Sicily.[36]
+
+Although he returned to service in July 1572, records show his chest wounds were still not completely healed in February 1573.[37] Based mainly in Naples, he joined expeditions to Corfu and Navarino, and took part in the 1573 occupation of Tunis and La Goulette, which were recaptured by the Ottomans in 1574.[38] Despite Lepanto, the war overall was an Ottoman victory, and the loss of Tunis a military disaster for Spain. Cervantes returned to Palermo, where he was paid off by the Duke of Sessa, who gave him letters of commendation.[39]
+
+In early September 1575, Cervantes and Rodrigo left Naples on the galley Sol; as they approached Barcelona on 26 September, their ship was captured by Ottoman corsairs, and the brothers taken to Algiers, to be sold as slaves, or–as was the case of Cervantes and his brother–held for ransom, if this would be more lucrative than their sale as slaves.[40] Rodrigo was ransomed in 1577, but his family could not afford the fee for Cervantes, who was forced to remain.[41] Turkish historian Rasih Nuri İleri found evidence suggesting Cervantes worked on the construction of the Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex, which means he spent at least part of his captivity in Istanbul.[42][43][44]
+
+By 1580, Spain was occupied integrating Portugal, and suppressing the Dutch Revolt, while the Ottomans were at war with Persia; the two sides agreed a truce, leading to an improvement of relations.[45] After almost five years, and four escape attempts, in 1580 Cervantes was set free by the Trinitarians, a religious charity that specialised in ransoming Christian captives, and returned to Madrid.[46]
+
+While Cervantes was in captivity, both Don John and the Duke of Sessa died, depriving him of two potential patrons, while the Spanish economy was in dire straits. This made finding employment difficult; other than a period in 1581 to 1582, when he was employed as an intelligence agent in North Africa, little is known of his movements prior to 1584.[47]
+
+In April of that year, Cervantes visited Esquivias, to help arrange the affairs of his recently deceased friend and minor poet, Pedro Lainez. Here he met Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (c. 1566?–1626), eldest daughter of the widowed Catalina de Palacios; her husband died leaving only debts, but the elder Catalina owned some land of her own. This may be why in December 1584, Cervantes married her daughter, then between 15 and 18 years old.[48] The first use of the name Cervantes Saavedra appears in 1586, on documents related to his marriage.[13]
+
+Shortly before this, his illegitimate daughter Isabel was born in November. Her mother, Ana Franca, was the wife of a Madrid inn keeper; they apparently concealed it from her husband, but Cervantes acknowledged paternity.[49] When Ana Franca died in 1598, he asked his sister Magdalena to take care of her.[50]
+
+In 1587, Cervantes was appointed as a government purchasing agent, then became a tax collector in 1592. They were also subject to price fluctuations, which could go either way; he was briefly jailed several times for 'irregularities', but quickly released. Several applications for positions in Spanish America were rejected, although modern critics note images of the colonies appear in his work.[34]
+
+From 1596 to 1600, he lived primarily in Seville, then returned to Madrid in 1606, where he remained for the rest of his life.[51] In later years, he received some financial support from the Count of Lemos, although he was excluded from the retinue Lemos took to Naples when appointed Viceroy in 1608.[34] In July 1613, he joined the Third Order Franciscan, then a common way for Catholics to gain spiritual merit.[52] It is generally accepted Cervantes died on 16 April 1616; the symptoms described, including intense thirst, correspond to diabetes, then untreatable.[53]
+
+In accordance with his will, Cervantes was buried in the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians, in central Madrid.[54] His remains went missing when moved during rebuilding work at the convent in 1673, and in 2014, historian Fernando de Prado launched a project to rediscover them.[55]
+
+In January 2015, Francisco Etxeberria, the forensic anthropologist leading the search, reported the discovery of caskets containing bone fragments, and part of a board, with the letters 'M.C.'.[56] Based on evidence of injuries suffered at Lepanto, on 17 March 2015 they were confirmed as belonging to Cervantes along with his wife and others.[57] They were formally reburied at a public ceremony in June 2015.[58]
+
+Cervantes claims to have written over 20 plays, of which only two survive, El trato de Argel, based on his experiences in captivity, and El cerco de Numancia. Such works were extremely short-lived, and even Lope de Vega, the best-known playwright of the day, could not live on their proceeds.[5] In 1585, he published La Galatea, a conventional Pastoral romance that received little contemporary notice; despite promising to write a sequel, he never did so.[59]
+
+Aside from these, and some poems, by 1605, Cervantes had not been published for 20 years. In Don Quixote, he challenged a form of literature that had been a favourite for more than a century, explicitly stating his purpose was to undermine 'vain and empty' chivalric romances.[60] His portrayal of real life, and use of everyday speech in a literary context was considered innovative, and proved instantly popular. First published in January 1605, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza featured in masquerades held to celebrate the birth of Philip IV on 8 April.[50]
+
+He finally achieved a degree of financial security, while its popularity led to demands for a sequel. In the foreword to his 1613 work, Novelas ejemplares, dedicated to his patron, the Count of Lemos, Cervantes promises to produce one, but was pre-empted by an unauthorised version published in 1614, published under the name Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. It is possible this delay was deliberate, to ensure support from his publisher and reading public; Cervantes finally produced the second part of Don Quixote in 1615.[61]
+
+The two parts of Don Quixote are different in focus, but similar in their clarity of prose, and realism; the first was more comic, and had greater popular appeal.[62] The second part is often considered more sophisticated and complex, with a greater depth of characterisation and philosophical insight.[63]
+
+In addition to this, he produced a series of works between 1613 and his death in 1616. They include a collection of tales titled Exemplary Novels, similar in style to picaresque novels written by Lazarillo de Tormes. This was followed by Viaje del Parnaso, or Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes, and Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, completed just before his death, and published posthumously in January 1617.
+
+He was rediscovered by English writers in the mid-18th century; literary editor John Bowle argued Cervantes was as significant as any of the Greek and Roman authors then popular, and published an annotated edition in 1781. Now viewed as a significant work, at the time it proved a failure.[64] However, Don Quixote has been translated into all major languages, in 700 editions. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes suggested Cervantes and his contemporary William Shakespeare form part of a narrative tradition, which includes Homer, Dante, Defoe, Dickens, Balzac, and Joyce.[65]
+
+Sigmund Freud claimed he learnt Spanish to read Cervantes in the original; he particularly admired The Dialogue of the Dogs (El coloquio de los perros), from Exemplary Tales. Two dogs, Cipión and Berganza, share their stories; as one talks, the other listens, occasionally making comments. From 1871 to 1881, Freud and his close friend, Eduard Silberstein, wrote letters to each other, using the pennames Cipión and Berganza.[66]
+
+The tricentennial of Don Quixote's publication in 1905 was marked with celebrations in Spain;[67] the 400th anniversary of his death in 2016, saw the production of Cervantina, a celebration of his plays by the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico in Madrid.[68] The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library, the largest digital archive of Spanish-language historical and literary works in the world, is named after the author.
+
+As listed in Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes:[69]
+
+Generally considered a mediocre poet, few survive; some appear in La Galatea, while he also wrote Dos Canciones à la Armada Invencible.
+
+His sonnets are considered his best work, particularly Al Túmulo del Rey Felipe en Sevilla, Canto de Calíope and Epístola a Mateo Vázquez. Viaje del Parnaso, or Journey to Parnassus, is his most ambitious verse work, an allegory that consists largely of reviews of contemporary poets.
+
+He published 16 dramatic works including eight full-length plays (Spanish links to plays included), only two of which survive;
+
+He also wrote 8 short farces (entremeses):
+
+These plays and entremeses made up Ocho Comedias y ocho entreméses nuevos, nunca representados[86] (Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes, Never Before Performed), which appeared in 1615.[citation needed] The dates and order of composition of Cervantes' entremeses are unknown.[citation needed] Faithful to the spirit of Lope de Rueda, Cervantes endowed them with novelistic elements, such as simplified plot, the type of descriptions normally associated with a novel, and character development. Cervantes included some of his dramas among the works he was most satisfied with.[citation needed]
+
+Don Quixote is the subject of a multitude of works in other fields of art, including ballet, films, television, music and opera.
+
+This person whom you see here, with an oval visage, chestnut hair, smooth open forehead, lively eyes, a hooked but well-proportioned nose, and silvery beard that twenty years ago was golden, large moustaches, a small mouth, teeth not much to speak of, for he has but six, in bad condition and worse placed, no two of them corresponding to each other, a figure midway between the two extremes, neither tall nor short, a vivid complexion, rather fair than dark, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, and not very lightfooted: this, I say, is the author of Galatea, Don Quixote de la Mancha, The Journey to Parnassus, which he wrote in imitation of Cesare Caporali Perusino, and other works which are current among the public, and perhaps without the author's name. He is commonly called MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA.

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+
+
+The Airbus A300 is a wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Airbus.
+In September 1967, aircraft manufacturers in the UK, France, and West Germany signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a large airliner.
+Germany and France reached an agreement on 29 May 1969 after the British withdrew from the project on 10 April 1969.
+European collaborative aerospace manufacturer Airbus Industrie was formally created on 18 December 1970 to develop and produce it.
+The prototype first flew on 28 October 1972.
+
+The first twin-engine widebody airliner, the A300 typically seats 247 passengers in two classes over a range of 5,375 to 7,500 km (2,900 to 4,050 nmi).
+Initial variants are powered by CF6-50 or JT9D turbofans and have a three-crew flight deck.
+The improved A300-600 has a two-crew cockpit and updated GE CF6-80 or PW4000 engines, it made its first flight on 8 July 1983 and entered service later that year.
+The A300 is the basis of the smaller A310 (first flight: 1982) and was adapted in a freighter version.
+Its cross section was retained for the larger A340 (1991) and A330 (1992).
+It is also the basis for the oversize Beluga transport (1994).
+
+Launch customer Air France introduced the type on 23 May 1974.
+After limited demand initially, sales took off as the type was proven in early service, beginning three decades of steady orders.
+It has a similar capacity to the Boeing 767-300, introduced in 1986, but lacked the 767-300ER range.
+During the 1990s, the A300 became popular with cargo aircraft operators, as passenger airliner conversions or as original builds.
+Production ceased in July 2007 after 561 deliveries.
+
+During the 1960s, European aircraft manufacturers such as Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation, based in the UK, and Sud Aviation of France, had ambitions to build a new 200-seat airliner for the growing civil aviation market. While studies were performed and considered, such as a stretched twin-engine variant of the Hawker Siddeley Trident and an expanded development of the British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Eleven, designated the BAC Two-Eleven, it was recognized that if each of the European manufacturers were to launch similar aircraft into the market at the same time, neither would achieve sales volume needed to make them viable.[4] In 1965, a British government study, known as the Plowden Report, had found British aircraft production costs to be between 10% and 20% higher than American counterparts due to shorter production runs, which was in part due to the fractured European market. To overcome this factor, the report recommended the pursuit of multinational collaborative projects between the region's leading aircraft manufacturers.[5][6][7]
+
+European manufacturers were keen to explore prospective programs; the proposed 260-seat wide-body HBN 100 between Hawker Siddeley, Nord Aviation, and Breguet Aviation being one such example.[4][8] National governments were also keen to support such efforts amid a belief that American manufacturers could dominate the European Economic Community;[9] in particular, Germany had ambitions for a multinational airliner project to invigorate its aircraft industry, which had declined considerably following the Second World War.[5] During the mid-1960s, both Air France and American Airlines had expressed interest in a short-haul twin-engine wide-body aircraft, indicating a market demand for such an aircraft to be produced.[5][10] In July 1967, during a high-profile meeting between French, German, and British ministers, an agreement was made for greater cooperation between European nations in the field of aviation technology, and "for the joint development and production of an airbus".[4][11] The word airbus at this point was a generic aviation term for a larger commercial aircraft, and was considered acceptable in multiple languages, including French.[11]
+
+Shortly after the July 1967 meeting, French engineer Roger Béteille was appointed as the technical director of what would become the A300 program, while Henri Ziegler, chief operating office of Sud Aviation, was appointed as the general manager of the organization and German politician Franz Josef Strauss became the chairman of the supervisory board.[4] Béteille drew up an initial work share plan for the project, under which French firms would produce the aircraft's cockpit, the control systems, and lower-center portion of the fuselage, Hawker Siddeley would manufacture the wings, while German companies would produce the forward, rear and upper part of the center fuselage sections. Addition work included moving elements of the wings being produced in the Netherlands, and Spain producing the horizontal tail plane.[4][8]
+
+An early design goal for the A300 that Béteille had stressed the importance of was the incorporation of a high level of technology, which would serve as a decisive advantage over prospective competitors. As such, the A300 would feature the first use of composite materials of any passenger aircraft, the leading and trailing edges of the tail fin being composed of glass fibre reinforced plastic.[12][7] Béteille opted for English as the working language for the developing aircraft, as well against using Metric instrumentation and measurements, as most airlines already had US-built aircraft.[12] These decisions were partially influenced by feedback from various airlines, such as Air France and Lufthansa, as an emphasis had been placed on determining the specifics of what kind of aircraft that potential operators were seeking. According to Airbus, this cultural approach to market research had been crucial to the company's long-term success.[12]
+
+On 26 September 1967, the British, French, and West German governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding to start development of the 300-seat Airbus A300.[8][13][14] At this point, the A300 was only the second major joint aircraft programme in Europe, the first being the Anglo-French Concorde.[11] Under the terms of the memorandum, Britain and France were each to receive a 37.5 per cent work share on the project, while Germany received a 25 per cent share. Sud Aviation was recognized as the lead company for A300, with Hawker Siddeley being selected as the British partner company.[4] At the time, the news of the announcement had been clouded by the British Government's support for the Airbus, which coincided with its refusal to back BAC's proposed competitor, the BAC 2-11, despite a preference for the latter expressed by British European Airways (BEA).[11] Another parameter was the requirement for a new engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce to power the proposed airliner; a derivative of the in-development Rolls-Royce RB211, the triple-spool RB207, capable of producing of 47,500 lbf.[15]
+
+In December 1968, the French and British partner companies (Sud Aviation and Hawker Siddeley) proposed a revised configuration, the 250-seat Airbus A250. It had been feared that the original 300-seat proposal was too large for the market, thus it had been scaled down to produce the A250.[10][16][7] The dimensional changes involved in the shrink reduced the length of the fuselage by 5.62 meters and the diameter by 0.8 meters, reducing the overall weight by 25 tonnes.[12][17]:16 For increased flexibility, the cabin floor was raised so that standard LD3 freight containers could be accommodated side-by-side, allowing more cargo to be carried. Refinements made by Hawker Siddeley to the wing's design provided for greater lift and overall performance; this gave the aircraft the ability to climb faster and attain a level cruising altitude sooner than any other passenger aircraft.[12] It was later renamed the A300B.[11][16]
+
+Perhaps the most significant change of the A300B was that it would not require new engines to be developed, being of a suitable size to be powered by Rolls-Royce's RB211, or alternatively the American Pratt & Whitney JT9D and General Electric CF6 powerplants; this switch was recognized as considerably reducing the project's development costs.[16][13][17]:16–17 To attract potential customers in the US market, it was decided that General Electric CF6-50 engines would power the A300 in place of the British RB207; these engines would be produced in co-operation with French firm Snecma.[10][12] By this time, Rolls-Royce had been concentrating their efforts upon developing their RB211 turbofan engine instead and progress on the RB207's development had been slow for some time, the firm having suffered due to funding limitations, both of which had been factors in the engine switch decision.[7][16][17]:17–18
+
+On 10 April 1969, a few months after the decision to drop the RB207 had been announced, the British government announced that they would withdraw from the Airbus venture.[16][8] In response, West Germany proposed to France that they would be willing to contribute up to 50% of the project's costs if France was prepared to do the same.[16] Additionally, the managing director of Hawker Siddeley, Sir Arnold Alexander Hall, decided that his company would remain in the project as a favoured sub-contractor, developing and manufacturing the wings for the A300, which would later become pivotal in later versions' impressive performance from short domestic to long intercontinental flights.[7][11][17]:18 Hawker Siddeley spent £35 million of its own funds, along with a further £35 million loan from the West German government, on the machine tooling to design and produce the wings.[16][8]
+
+On 29 May 1969, during the Paris Air Show, French transport minister Jean Chamant and German economics minister Karl Schiller signed an agreement officially launching the Airbus A300, the world's first twin-engine widebody airliner.[4] The intention of the project was to produce an aircraft that was smaller, lighter, and more economical than its three-engine American rivals, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar.[12] In order to meet Air France's demands for an aircraft larger than 250-seat A300B, it was decided to stretch the fuselage to create a new variant, designated as the A300B2, which would be offered alongside the original 250-seat A300B, henceforth referred to as the A300B1. On 3 September 1970, Air France signed a letter of intent for six A300s, marking the first order to be won for the new airliner.[12][8][17]:21
+
+In the aftermath of the Paris Air Show agreement, it was decided that, in order to provide effective management of responsibilities, a Groupement d'intérêt économique would be established, allowing the various partners to work together on the project while remaining separate business entities.[4] On 18 December 1970, Airbus Industrie was formally established following an agreement between Aérospatiale (the newly merged Sud Aviation and Nord Aviation) of France and the antecedents to Deutsche Aerospace of Germany, each receiving a 50 per cent stake in the newly formed company.[12][8][5] In 1971, the consortium was joined by a third full partner, the Spanish firm CASA, who received a 4.2 per cent stake, the other two members reducing their stakes to 47.9 per cent each.[12][17]:20 In 1979, Britain joined the Airbus consortium via British Aerospace, which Hawker Siddeley had merged into, which acquired a 20 per cent stake in Airbus Industrie with France and Germany each reducing their stakes to 37.9 per cent.[7][8][5]
+
+Airbus Industrie was initially headquartered in Paris, which is where design, development, flight testing, sales, marketing, and customer support activities were centered; the headquarters was relocated to Toulouse in January 1974.[10][12] The final assembly line for the A300 was located adjacent to Toulouse Blagnac International Airport. The manufacturing process necessitated transporting each aircraft section being produced by the partner companies scattered across Europe to this one location. The combined use of ferries and roads were used for the assembly of the first A300, however this was time-consuming and not viewed as ideal by Felix Kracht, Airbus Industrie's production director.[12] Kracht's solution was to have the various A300 sections brought to Toulouse by a fleet of Boeing 377-derived Aero Spacelines Super Guppy aircraft, by which means none of the manufacturing sites were more than two hours away. Having the sections airlifted in this manner made the A300 the first airliner to use just-in-time manufacturing techniques, and allowed each company to manufacture its sections as fully equipped, ready-to-fly assemblies.[12][5]
+
+In September 1969, construction of the first prototype A300 began.[17]:20 On 28 September 1972, this first prototype was unveiled to the public, it conducted its maiden flight from Toulouse–Blagnac International Airport on 28 October that year.[11][8][13] This maiden flight, which was performed a month ahead of schedule, lasted for one hour and 25 minutes; the captain was Max Fischl and the first officer was Bernard Ziegler, son of Henri Ziegler.[12] On 5 February 1973, the second prototype performed its maiden flight.[8] The flight test program, which involved a total of four aircraft, was relatively problem-free, accumulating 1,580 flight hours throughout.[17]:22 In September 1973, as part of promotional efforts for the A300, the new aircraft was taken on a six-week tour around North America and South America, to demonstrate it to airline executives, pilots, and would-be customers.[12] Amongst the consequences of this expedition, it had allegedly brought the A300 to the attention of Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines, one of the "big four" U.S. airlines.[18]
+
+On 15 March 1974, type certificates were granted for the A300 from both German and French authorities, clearing the way for its entry into revenue service.[18] On 23 May 1974, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification was received.[17]:22 The first production model, the A300B2, entered service in 1974, followed by the A300B4 one year later.[10] Initially, the success of the consortium was poor, in part due to the economic consequences of the 1973 oil crisis,[10][11][8] but by 1979 there were 81 A300 passenger liners in service with 14 airlines, alongside 133 firm orders and 88 options.[18] Ten years after the official launch of the A300, the company had achieved a 26 per cent market share in terms of dollar value, enabling Airbus Industries to proceed with the development of its second aircraft, the Airbus A310.[18] It was the launch of the Airbus A320 in 1987 that firmly established Airbus as a major player in the aircraft market – over 400 orders were placed before the narrow-body airliner had flown its first flight, compared to 15 for the A300 in 1972.[citation needed]
+
+The Airbus A300 is a wide-body medium-to-long range airliner; it has the distinction of being the first twin-engine wide-body aircraft in the world.[10][11][19][14] In 1977, the A300 became the first ETOPS-compliant aircraft, due to its high performance and safety standards.[8] Another world-first of the A300 is the use of composite materials on a commercial aircraft, which was used on both secondary and later primary airframe structures, decreasing overall weight and improving cost-effectiveness.[19] Other firsts included the pioneering use of center-of-gravity control, achieved by transferring fuel between various locations across the aircraft, and electrically signaled secondary flight controls.[20]
+
+The A300 is powered by a pair of underwing turbofan engines, either General Electric CF6 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines; the sole use of underwing engine pods allowed for any suitable turbofan engine to be more readily used.[14] The lack of a third tail-mounted engine, as per the trijet configuration used by some competing airliners, allowed for the wings to be located further forwards and to reduce the size of the vertical stabilizer and elevator, which had the effect of increasing the aircraft's flight performance and fuel efficiency.[17]:21[5]
+
+Airbus partners had employed the latest technology, some of which having been derived from Concorde, on the A300. According to Airbus, new technologies adopted for the airliner were selected principally for increased safety, operational capability, and profitability.[19] Upon entry into service in 1974, the A300 was a very advanced plane, which went on to influence later airliner designs. The technological highlights include
+advanced wings by de Havilland (later BAE Systems) with
+supercritical airfoil sections for economical performance and
+advanced aerodynamically efficient flight control surfaces.
+The 5.64 m (222 in) diameter circular fuselage section allows an eight-abreast passenger seating and is wide enough for 2 LD3 cargo containers side-by-side.
+Structures are made from metal billets, reducing weight.
+It is the first airliner to be fitted with wind shear protection.
+Its advanced autopilots are capable of flying the aircraft from climb-out to landing,
+and it has an electrically controlled braking system.
+
+Later A300s incorporated other advanced features such as the Forward-Facing Crew Cockpit, which enabled a two-pilot flight crew to fly the aircraft alone without the need for a flight engineer, the functions of which were automated; this two-man cockpit concept was a world-first for a wide-body aircraft.[10][20][17]:23–24 Glass cockpit flight instrumentation, which used cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors to display flight, navigation, and warning information, along with fully digital dual autopilots and digital flight control computers for controlling the spoilers, flaps, and leading-edge slats, were also adopted upon later-built models.[19][21] Additional composites were also made use of, such as carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), as well as their presence in an increasing proportion of the aircraft's components, including the spoilers, rudder, air brakes, and landing gear doors.[22] Another feature of later aircraft were the addition of wingtip fences, which generated greater aerodynamic performance (first introduced on the A310-300).[citation needed]
+
+In addition to passenger duties, the A300 became widely used by air freight operators; according to Airbus, it is the best selling freight aircraft of all time.[20] Various variants of the A300 were built to meet customer demands, often for diverse roles such as aerial refueling tankers, freighter models (new-build and conversions), combi aircraft, military airlifter, and VIP transport. Perhaps the most visually unique of the variants is the A300-600ST Beluga, an oversize cargo-carrying model operated by Airbus to carry aircraft sections between their manufacturing facilities.[20] The A300 was the basis for, and retained a high level of commonality with, the second airliner produced by Airbus, the smaller Airbus A310.[19]
+
+On 23 May 1974, the first A300 to enter service performed the first commercial flight of the type, flying from Paris to London, for Air France.[8][18]
+
+Immediately after the launch, sales of the A300 were weak for some years, with most orders going to airlines that had an obligation to favor the domestically made product – notably Air France and Lufthansa, the first two airlines to place orders for the type.[18][5] Following the appointment of Bernard Lathière as Henri Ziegler's replacement, an aggressive sales approach was adopted. Indian Airlines was the world's first domestic airline to purchase the A300, ordering three aircraft with three options. However, between December 1975 and May 1977, there were no sales for the type. During this period a number of "whitetail" A300s – completed but unsold aircraft – were completed and stored at Toulouse, and production fell to half an aircraft per month amid calls to pause production completely.[18]
+
+During the flight testing of the A300B2, Airbus held a series of talks with Korean Air on the topic of developing a longer-range version of the A300, which would become the A300B4. In September 1974, Korean Air placed an order for 4 A300B4s with options for 2 further aircraft; this sale was viewed as significant as it was the first non-European international airline to order Airbus aircraft. Airbus had viewed South-East Asia as a vital market that was ready to be opened up and believed Korean Air to be the 'key'.[10][18][17]:23
+
+Airlines operating the A300 on short haul routes were forced to reduce frequencies to try and fill the aircraft. As a result, they lost passengers to airlines operating more frequent narrow body flights. Eventually, Airbus had to build its own narrowbody aircraft (the A320) to compete with the Boeing 737 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80. The savior of the A300 was the advent of Extended Range Twin Operations (ETOPS), a revised FAA rule which allows twin-engine jets to fly long-distance routes that were previously off-limits to them. This enabled Airbus to develop the aircraft as a medium/long range airliner.
+
+In 1977, US carrier Eastern Air Lines leased four A300s as an in-service trial.[18] Frank Borman, ex-astronaut and the then CEO of the airline, was impressed that the A300 consumed 30% less fuel, even more economical than expected, in contrast to his fleet of Lockheed L-1011 TriStars and proceeded to order 23 A300s, becoming the first U.S. customer for the type. This order is often cited as the point at which Airbus came to be seen as a serious competitor to the large American aircraft-manufacturers Boeing and McDonnell Douglas.[10][18][8] Aviation author John Bowen alleged that various concessions, such as loan guarantees from European governments and compensation payments, were a factor in the decision as well.[5] The Eastern Air Lines breakthrough was shortly followed by an order from Pan Am. From then on, the A300 family sold well, eventually reaching a total of 816 delivered aircraft.[1]
+
+In December 1977, Aerocondor Colombia became the first Airbus operator in Latin America, leasing one Airbus A300B4-2C, named Ciudad de Barranquilla.
+
+During the late 1970s, Airbus adopted a so-called 'Silk Road' strategy, targeting airlines in the Far East.[18][5] As a result, The aircraft found particular favor with Asian airlines, being bought by Japan Air System, Korean Air, China Eastern Airlines, Thai Airways International, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Philippine Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, China Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, Indian Airlines, Trans Australia Airlines and many others. As Asia did not have restrictions similar to the FAA 60-minutes rule for twin-engine airliners which existed at the time, Asian airlines used A300s for routes across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea.
+
+In 1977, the A300B4 became the first ETOPS compliant aircraft,[23] qualifying for Extended Twin Engine Operations over water, providing operators with more versatility in routing. In 1982 Garuda Indonesia became the first airline to fly the A300B4-200FF. By 1981, Airbus was growing rapidly, with over 300 aircraft sold and options for 200 more planes for over forty airlines.[citation needed]
+
+In 1989, Chinese operator China Eastern Airlines received its first A300; by 2006, the airline operated around 18 A300s, making it the largest operator of both the A300 and the A310 at that time. On 31 May 2014, China Eastern officially retired the last A300-600 in its fleet, having begun drawing down the type in 2010.[24]
+
+From 1997 to 2014, a single A300, designated A300 Zero-G, was operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as a reduced-gravity aircraft for conducting research into microgravity; the A300 is the largest aircraft to ever have been used in this capacity. A typical flight would last for two and a half hours, enabling up to 30 parabolas to be performed per flight.[25][26]
+
+By the 1990s, the A300 was being heavily promoted as a cargo freighter.[17]:24 The largest freight operator of the A300 is FedEx Express, which has 68 A300 aircraft in service. UPS Airlines also operates 52 freighter versions of the A300. The final version was the A300-600R and is rated for 180-minute ETOPS. The A300 has enjoyed renewed interest in the secondhand market for conversion to freighters; large numbers were being converted during the late 1990s.[17]:24–25 The freighter versions – either new-build A300-600s or converted ex-passenger A300-600s, A300B2s and B4s – account for most of the world freighter fleet after the Boeing 747 freighter.[citation needed]
+
+The A300 provided Airbus the experience of manufacturing and selling airliners competitively. The basic fuselage of the A300 was later stretched (A330 and A340), shortened (A310), or modified into derivatives (A300-600ST Beluga Super Transporter). In March 2006, Airbus announced the impending closure of the A300/A310 final assembly line,[27] making them the first Airbus aircraft to be discontinued. The final production A300, an A300F freighter, performed its initial flight on 18 April 2007,[28] and was delivered to FedEx Express on 12 July 2007.[29] Airbus has announced a support package to keep A300s flying commercially.
+Airbus offers the A330-200F freighter as a replacement for the A300 cargo variants.[30]
+
+The useful life of the UPS fleet of 52 A300s delivered from 2000 to 2006 will be extended to 2035 by a flight deck upgrade based around Honeywell Primus Epic avionics : new displays and flight management system (FMS), improved 3-D weather radar, a central maintenance system, and a new version of the current enhanced ground proximity warning system.
+With a light usage of only two to three cycles per day, it will not reach the maximum number of cycles by then.
+The first modification will be made at Airbus Toulouse in 2019 and certified in 2020.[31]
+As of July 2017, there are 211 A300s in service with 22 operators, with the largest operator being FedEx Express with 68 A300-600F aircraft.[32]
+
+Over 200 A300s still operate today.
+
+Only two were built: the first prototype, registered F-WUAB, then F-OCAZ, and a second aircraft, F-WUAC, which was leased in November 1974 to Trans European Airways (TEA) and re-registered OO-TEF. TEA instantly subleased the aircraft for six weeks to Air Algérie, but continued to operate the aircraft until 1990. It had accommodation for 300 passengers (TEA) or 323 passengers (Air Algérie) with a maximum weight of 132 t and two General Electric CF6-50A engines of 220 kN thrust. The A300B1 was five frames shorter than the later production versions, being only 50.97 m (167.2 ft) in length.
+
+The first production version. Powered by General Electric CF6 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines (the same engines that powered the 747 or the DC-10) of between 227 and 236 kN thrust, it entered service with Air France in May 1974. The prototype A300B2 made its first flight on 28 June 1973 and was certificated by the French and German authorities on 15 March 1974 and FAA approval followed on 30 May 1974. The first production A300B2 (A300 number 5) made its maiden flight on 15 April 1974 and was handed over to Air France a few weeks later on 10 May 1974. The A300B2 entered revenue service on 23 May 1974 between Paris and London.
+
+The major production version features a centre fuel tank for increased fuel capacity (47,500 kg) and new wing-root Krüger flaps which were later made available as an option for the B2.[33] Production of the B2 and B4 totalled 248. The first A300B4 (the 9th A300) flew on 25 December 1974 and was certified on 26 March 1975. The first delivery was made to Germanair (which later merged into Bavaria Germanair) on 23 May 1975.
+
+Officially designated A300B4-600, this version is nearly the same length as the B2 and B4 but has increased space because it uses the A310 rear fuselage and horizontal tail. It has higher-power CF6-80 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines and uses the Honeywell 331-250 auxiliary power unit (APU).[36] Other changes include an improved wing featuring a recambered trailing edge, the incorporation of simpler single-slotted Fowler flaps, the deletion of slat fences, and the removal of the outboard ailerons after they were deemed unnecessary on the A310.[37] The A300-600 made its first flight on 8 July 1983 and entered service later that year with Saudi Arabian Airlines. A total of 313 A300-600s (all versions) have been sold. The A300-600 also has a similar cockpit to the A310, eliminating the need for a flight engineer. The FAA issues a single type rating which allows operation of both the A310 and A300-600.
+
+Airbus had demand for an aircraft smaller than the A300.
+On 7 July 1978, the A310 (initially the A300B10) was launched with orders from Swissair and Lufthansa.
+On 3 April 1982, the first prototype conducted its maiden flight and it received its type certification on 11 March 1983.
+
+Keeping the same eight-abreast cross-section, the A310 is 6.95 m (22.8 ft) shorter than the initial A300 variants, and has a smaller 219 m2 (2,360 sq ft) wing, down from 260 m2 (2,800 sq ft).
+The A310 introduced a two-crew glass cockpit, later adopted for the A300-600 with a common type rating.
+It was powered by the same General Electric CF6-80 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D then PW4000 turbofans.
+It can seat 220 passengers in two classes, or 240 in all-economy, and can fly up to 5,150 nmi (9,540 km).
+It has overwing exits between the two main front and rear door pairs.
+
+In April 1983, the aircraft entered revenue service with Swissair and competed with the Boeing 767-200, introduced six months before.
+Its longer range and ETOPS regulations allowed it to be operated transatlantic flights.
+Until the last delivery in June 1998, 255 aircraft were produced, as it was succeeded by the larger Airbus A330-200.
+It has cargo aircraft versions, and was derived into the Airbus A310 MRTT military tanker/transport.
+
+Commonly referred to as the Airbus Beluga or "Airbus Super Transporter," these five airframes are used by Airbus to ferry parts between the company's disparate manufacturing facilities, thus enabling workshare distribution. They replaced the four Aero Spacelines Super Guppys previously used by Airbus.
+
+ICAO code: A3ST
+
+As of October 2016, the A300 has been involved in 75 accidents and incidents, including 35 hull-losses and 1,435 fatalities.[38]
+
+Four A300s are currently preserved:
+
+Data through end of December 2007.[1]
+
+Related development
+
+Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
+
+Related lists