Occult Encyclopedia - User contributions [en]

Book of Magical Charms

2022-02-20T22:18:05Z

KS:

The '''Book of Magical Charms''', also known as '''Newberry 5017''', is a handwritten occult commonplace [[grimoire]] composed in England in the seventeenth century and currently in the holdings of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. The original volume, which has dos-à-dos binding, has no title nor any named author— "Book of Magical Charms" is the title assigned to it by the library staff who acquired it in 1988 along with a bundle of medical texts. Its pages were written using iron gall ink and likely a quill pen using Latin and archaic English, and contain numerous passages regarding charms for things such as healing a toothache or recovering a lost voice as well as how to talk to spirits. Although the book's principal author is not named, he was identified in 2017 from his handwriting as a London lawyer named Robert Ashley. Ashley likely composed the book over the course of his lifetime. No copies of the book were ever made.

The Newberry Library has made the book's pages available for the public to read and transcribe/translate.

[[Category: Grimoires]]

Book of Magical Charms

2022-02-20T22:17:37Z

KS: Created page with "The '''Book of Magical Charms'''also known as '''Newberry 5017''', is a handwritten occult commonplace grimoire composed in England in the seventeenth century and currentl..."

The '''Book of Magical Charms'''also known as '''Newberry 5017''', is a handwritten occult commonplace [[grimoire]] composed in England in the seventeenth century and currently in the holdings of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. The original volume, which has dos-à-dos binding, has no title nor any named author— "Book of Magical Charms" is the title assigned to it by the library staff who acquired it in 1988 along with a bundle of medical texts. Its pages were written using iron gall ink and likely a quill pen using Latin and archaic English, and contain numerous passages regarding charms for things such as healing a toothache or recovering a lost voice as well as how to talk to spirits. Although the book's principal author is not named, he was identified in 2017 from his handwriting as a London lawyer named Robert Ashley. Ashley likely composed the book over the course of his lifetime. No copies of the book were ever made.

The Newberry Library has made the book's pages available for the public to read and transcribe/translate.

[[Category: Grimoires]]

Omoplatoscopy

2022-02-20T18:39:51Z

KS: Redirected page to Spatulamancy

#redirect[[Spatulamancy]]

Scapulimancy

2022-02-20T18:39:10Z

KS: Redirected page to Spatulamancy

#redirect[[Spatulamancy]]

Spatulamancy

2022-02-20T18:38:32Z

KS:

'''Spatulamancy''' or '''Scapulimancy''' (also termed '''omoplatoscopy''') is the practice of [[divination]] by use of scapulae or speal bones (shoulder blades). It is most widely practiced in China and the Sinosphere but has also been independently developed in the West.

Historically, scapulimancy has taken two major forms. In the first, "apyromantic", the scapula of an animal was simply examined after its slaughter. This form was widespread in Europe, Northern Africa and the Near East. However, the second form, "pyromantic" scapulimancy, involving the heating or burning of the bone and interpretation of the results, was practiced in East Asia and North America.

[[Category: Divination]]

Spatulamancy

2022-02-20T18:37:09Z

KS:

'''Spatulamancy''' or '''Scapulimancy''' (also termed '''omoplatoscopy''') is the practice of divination by use of scapulae or speal bones (shoulder blades). It is most widely practiced in China and the Sinosphere, but has also been independently developed in the West.

Historically, scapulimancy has taken two major forms. In the first, "apyromantic", the scapula of an animal was simply examined after its slaughter. This form was widespread in Europe, Northern Africa and the Near East. However, the second form, "pyromantic" scapulimancy, involving the heating or burning of the bone and interpretation of the results, was practiced in East Asia and North America.

Spatulamancy

2022-02-20T18:36:22Z

KS: Created page with "Spatulamancy or Scapulimancy (also spelled scapulomancy and scapulamancy, also termed omoplatoscopy or speal bone reading) is the practice of divination by use of scapulae or..."

Spatulamancy or Scapulimancy (also spelled scapulomancy and scapulamancy, also termed omoplatoscopy or speal bone reading) is the practice of divination by use of scapulae or speal bones (shoulder blades). It is most widely practiced in China and the Sinosphere, but has also been independently developed in the West.

Historically, scapulimancy has taken two major forms. In the first, "apyromantic", the scapula of an animal was simply examined after its slaughter. This form was widespread in Europe, Northern Africa and the Near East. However, the second form, "pyromantic" scapulimancy, involving the heating or burning of the bone and interpretation of the results, was practiced in East Asia and North America.

Chiromancy

2022-02-20T18:34:12Z

KS: /* =Modern palmistry */

'''Palmistry''', also known as '''palm reading''', '''chiromancy''', or '''chirology''', is the practice of fortune-telling through the study of the palm. The practice is found all over the world, with numerous cultural variations. Those who practice chiromancy are generally called palmists, hand readers, hand analysts, or chirologists.

There are many and often conflicting— interpretations of various lines and palmar features across various teachings of palmistry. Palmistry is practiced by the Hindu Brahmins, and is also indirectly referenced in the Book of Job. The contradictions between different interpretations, as well as the lack of evidence for palmistry's predictions, have caused palmistry to be viewed as a pseudoscience by academics.

==History==
===Ancient palmistry===
Palmistry is a practice common to many different places on the Eurasian landmass; it has been practiced in the cultures of India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Persia, Sumeria, Canaan and Babylonia.

The acupuncturist Yoshiaki Omura describes its roots in Hindu astrology (known in Sanskrit as jyotish), Chinese Yijing (I Ching), and Roma fortune tellers. Several thousand years ago, the Hindu sage Valmiki is thought to have written a book comprising 567 stanzas, the title of which translates in English as The Teachings of Valmiki Maharshi on Male Palmistry. From India, the art of palmistry spread to China, Tibet, Egypt, Persia and to other countries in Europe.

Palmistry also progressed independently in Greece where Anaxagoras practiced it. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) reportedly discovered a treatise on the subject of palmistry on an altar of Hermes, which he then presented to Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.), who took great interest in examining the character of his officers by analyzing the lines on their hands. A chapter of a 17th-century sex manual, misattributed to Aristotle, is occasionally incorrectly cited as being the treatise in question. The text it is not contained in his canonical works.

Palmistry is indirectly referenced in the Book of Job, which is dated by scholars to between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE.

In Renaissance magic, palmistry (known as "chiromancy") was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts", along with necromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, and spatulamancy (scapulimancy).[13] During the 16th century the art of palmistry was actively suppressed by the Catholic Church. Both Pope Paul IV and Pope Sixtus V issued papal edicts against various forms of divination, including palmistry.

===Modern palmistry===
Palmistry experienced a revival in the modern era starting with Captain Casimir Stanislas D'Arpentigny's publication La Chirognomie in 1839.

The Chirological Society of Great Britain was founded in London by Katharine St. Hill in 1889 with the stated aim to advance and systematise the art of palmistry and to prevent charlatans from abusing the art. Edgar de Valcourt-Vermont (Comte C. de Saint-Germain) founded the American Chirological Society in 1897.

A pivotal figure in the modern palmistry movement was the Irish William John Warner, known by his sobriquet, Cheiro. After studying under gurus in India, he set up a palmistry practice in London and enjoyed a wide following of famous clients from around the world, including famous celebrities like Mark Twain, W. T. Stead, Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Oscar Wilde, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Edison, the Prince of Wales, General Kitchener, William Ewart Gladstone, and Joseph Chamberlain. So popular was Cheiro as a "society palmist" that even those who were not believers in the occult had their hands read by him. The skeptical Mark Twain wrote in Cheiro's visitor's book that he had "exposed my character to me with humiliating accuracy".

Edward Heron-Allen, an English polymath, published various works including the 1883 book, Palmistry – A Manual of Cheirosophy, which is still in print. There were attempts at formulating some sort of scientific basis for the art, most notably in the 1900 publication The Laws of Scientific Hand Reading by William Gurney Benham.

In 1970, Parker Brothers published a game designed by Maxine Lucille Fiel called "Touch-Game of Palmistry" which allowed players have "palm reading and analysis" through selecting cards that matched designated palm features.

[[Category: Divination]]

Chiromancy

2022-02-20T18:33:50Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

'''Palmistry''', also known as '''palm reading''', '''chiromancy''', or '''chirology''', is the practice of fortune-telling through the study of the palm. The practice is found all over the world, with numerous cultural variations. Those who practice chiromancy are generally called palmists, hand readers, hand analysts, or chirologists.

There are many and often conflicting— interpretations of various lines and palmar features across various teachings of palmistry. Palmistry is practiced by the Hindu Brahmins, and is also indirectly referenced in the Book of Job. The contradictions between different interpretations, as well as the lack of evidence for palmistry's predictions, have caused palmistry to be viewed as a pseudoscience by academics.

==History==
===Ancient palmistry===
Palmistry is a practice common to many different places on the Eurasian landmass; it has been practiced in the cultures of India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Persia, Sumeria, Canaan and Babylonia.

The acupuncturist Yoshiaki Omura describes its roots in Hindu astrology (known in Sanskrit as jyotish), Chinese Yijing (I Ching), and Roma fortune tellers. Several thousand years ago, the Hindu sage Valmiki is thought to have written a book comprising 567 stanzas, the title of which translates in English as The Teachings of Valmiki Maharshi on Male Palmistry. From India, the art of palmistry spread to China, Tibet, Egypt, Persia and to other countries in Europe.

Palmistry also progressed independently in Greece where Anaxagoras practiced it. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) reportedly discovered a treatise on the subject of palmistry on an altar of Hermes, which he then presented to Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.), who took great interest in examining the character of his officers by analyzing the lines on their hands. A chapter of a 17th-century sex manual, misattributed to Aristotle, is occasionally incorrectly cited as being the treatise in question. The text it is not contained in his canonical works.

Palmistry is indirectly referenced in the Book of Job, which is dated by scholars to between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE.

In Renaissance magic, palmistry (known as "chiromancy") was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts", along with necromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, and spatulamancy (scapulimancy).[13] During the 16th century the art of palmistry was actively suppressed by the Catholic Church. Both Pope Paul IV and Pope Sixtus V issued papal edicts against various forms of divination, including palmistry.

===Modern palmistry==
Palmistry experienced a revival in the modern era starting with Captain Casimir Stanislas D'Arpentigny's publication La Chirognomie in 1839.

The Chirological Society of Great Britain was founded in London by Katharine St. Hill in 1889 with the stated aim to advance and systematise the art of palmistry and to prevent charlatans from abusing the art. Edgar de Valcourt-Vermont (Comte C. de Saint-Germain) founded the American Chirological Society in 1897.

A pivotal figure in the modern palmistry movement was the Irish William John Warner, known by his sobriquet, Cheiro. After studying under gurus in India, he set up a palmistry practice in London and enjoyed a wide following of famous clients from around the world, including famous celebrities like Mark Twain, W. T. Stead, Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Oscar Wilde, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Edison, the Prince of Wales, General Kitchener, William Ewart Gladstone, and Joseph Chamberlain. So popular was Cheiro as a "society palmist" that even those who were not believers in the occult had their hands read by him. The skeptical Mark Twain wrote in Cheiro's visitor's book that he had "exposed my character to me with humiliating accuracy".

Edward Heron-Allen, an English polymath, published various works including the 1883 book, Palmistry – A Manual of Cheirosophy, which is still in print. There were attempts at formulating some sort of scientific basis for the art, most notably in the 1900 publication The Laws of Scientific Hand Reading by William Gurney Benham.

In 1970, Parker Brothers published a game designed by Maxine Lucille Fiel called "Touch-Game of Palmistry" which allowed players have "palm reading and analysis" through selecting cards that matched designated palm features.

[[Category: Divination]]

Palmistry

2022-02-20T18:28:27Z

KS: Redirected page to Chiromancy

#redirect[[Chiromancy]]

Chiromancy

2022-02-20T18:27:25Z

KS:

Chiromancy

2022-02-20T18:26:49Z

KS: Created page with "'''Palmistry''', also known as '''palm reading''', chiromancy, or chirology, is the practice of fortune-telling through the study of the palm. The practice is found all over t..."

'''Palmistry''', also known as '''palm reading''', chiromancy, or chirology, is the practice of fortune-telling through the study of the palm. The practice is found all over the world, with numerous cultural variations. Those who practice chiromancy are generally called palmists, hand readers, hand analysts, or chirologists.

There are many and often conflicting— interpretations of various lines and palmar features across various teachings of palmistry. Palmistry is practiced by the Hindu Brahmins, and is also indirectly referenced in the Book of Job. The contradictions between different interpretations, as well as the lack of evidence for palmistry's predictions, have caused palmistry to be viewed as a pseudoscience by academics.

Pyromancy

2022-02-20T18:25:01Z

KS:

'''Pyromancy''' (from Greek pyr, “fire,” and manteia, “divination”) is the art of [[divination]] by means of fire.

==History of pyromancy==
Due to the importance of fire in society in prehistory and its continued importance within civilizations, it is quite likely that pyromancy was one of the earlier forms of divination, arising independently in many civilizations around the world.

In much of Western Culture, fire was often associated with a god, or was revered as a god itself. Fire was associated with a living being--it ate, breathed, grew, decayed, and died--in both Western and non-Western religions. Fire was so basic to the human experience that it persisted in the minds of humanity as an element close to nature.

Fire rituals in Mesopotamia and Eurasia were thought to originate with Ancient Zoroastrian rituals around the use of fire in temples and on altars. Ancient Zoroastrians believe fire to have been “the most holy spirit” from which all life was born, and was used as a central icon in many rituals.

In the Old Testament, fire was often associated with divine intervention; with the burning bush guiding the decision of Moses, and the pillar of fire guiding the Israelites in the wilderness. Even the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah was accomplished through divine retribution.

Greek legends of the origins of fire speaks to the importance of fire to separate humans from animals. To many Ancient Greeks, fire was a godly element bestowed by higher forces; given to humanity by the Titan Prometheus. It is said that in Greek society, virgins at the Temple of Athena in Athens regularly practiced pyromancy. It is also likely the followers of Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and the forge, practiced pyromancy.

In Renaissance magic, pyromancy was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts," along with [[necromancy]], [[geomancy]], [[aeromancy]], [[hydromancy]], [[chiromancy]] (palmistry), and [[scapulimancy]].

Fire rituals in East Asia most often revolved around animal bones. In Ancient China, Japan, and Tibet, bones from animal scapula (the shoulder bone) would be thrown into fires, and the cracks would be interpreted to divine the future. In Japan, specifically, turtle shells would also be used as a ritualistic divination technique. In Tibet such divination was used to understand natural phenomena otherwise inexplicable to villagers. Lamps using animal fat were often burned by ancient Tibetan peoples, and the smoke and flames were interpreted as the guidance of natural forces.

==Types of pyromancy==
The most basic form of pyromancy is that in which the diviner observes flames, from a sacrificial fire, a candle, or another source of flame, and interprets the shapes that he or she sees within them. There are several variations on pyromancy, however, some of which are as follows:

Alomancy, divination by salt, one type of which involves casting salt into a fire
Botanomancy, divination by burning plants
Capnomancy, divination by smoke; light, thin smoke that rose straight up was a good omen; otherwise, a bad one.
Causinomancy, divination by burning (non-specific as to the object burned)
Daphnomancy (also, Empyromancy), divination by burning laurel leaves
Osteomancy, divination using bones, one type of which involves heating to produce cracks
Plastromancy, divination using turtle plastrons; in China, this was done by heating pits carved into them.
Scapulimancy, divination by scapulae; in Asia and North America, this was done pyromantically.
Sideromancy, divination by burning straw with an iron.

[[Category: Divination]]

Pyromancy

2022-02-20T18:24:35Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

Aeromancy

2022-02-20T18:14:01Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

'''Aeromancy''' (from Greek ἀήρ aḗr, "air", and manteia, "divination") is divination conducted by interpreting atmospheric conditions. Alternate spellings include arologie, aeriology and aërology.

==Practice==
Aeromancy uses cloud formations, wind currents and cosmological events such as comets to attempt to divine the future. There are sub-types of this practice which are as follows: austromancy (wind divination), ceraunoscopy (observing thunder and lightning), chaomancy (aerial vision), meteormancy (meteors and shooting stars), and nephomancy (cloud divination).

==History==
The first recorded instance of the word aeromancy being used was found in Chambers, Cycl. Supp, 1753. It was defined as "That department of science which treats of the atmosphere", rather than a form of divination. However, variations on the word have been used throughout history with the earliest instance being in the Bible, though the practice is thought to have been used by the ancient Babylonian priests.

Damascius, the last of the Neoplatonists, records an account of nephomancy in the 5th century CE, during the reign of Leo I:

<blockquote>Wherefore one finds a woman in the days of Leo the Roman emperor who knew neither by sense of hearing nor by the ancient practices the art of divination by clouds. The woman came from Aigai in Cilicia, having come from the family of the Orestiadai who dwell on the mountain at Komana in Cappadocia. Her family went back to the Peloponnese. She took thought for a man entrusted with a military command who was sent with others to the war against the Vandals in Sicily. She prayed to foresee the future by dream and prayed facing the rising sun. Her father prescribed and commanded her in a dream to pray toward the west. When she prayed, a cloud from the upper air stood around the sun, and became enlarged and took the shape of a man. Another cloud sheared off and rendered itself of equal size and took the shape of a wild lion. It went into a great rage and, having made a great chasm, the lion swallowed the man. The human, cloud-made shape was like a Goth. A little more about the apparitions; Thereupon the emperor Leo slew Aspar himself, the hegemon of the Goths (in Constantinople) and his children. From that time Anthusa has continued until now without interruption to practice the custom of mantic predition through clouds.</blockquote>

==Cultural influence==
Aeromancy was mentioned in Deuteronomy 18 as being condemned by Moses. It is also condemned by Albertus Magnus in Speculum Astronomiae, who describes the practice as a derivative of necromancy. The practice was debunked by Luis de Valladolid in his 1889 work ''Historia de vita et doctrina Alberti Magni''.

In Renaissance magic, aeromancy was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts," along with necromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy (palmistry), and spatulamancy (scapulimancy).

[[Category: Divination]]

Hydromancy

2022-02-20T18:07:47Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

'''Hydromancy''' (Ancient Greek ὑδρομαντεία, water-divination, from ὕδωρ, water, and μαντεία, divination) is a method of [[divination]] by means of water, including the color, ebb and flow, or ripples produced by pebbles dropped in a pool.

The Jesuit M. A. Del Rio (1551–1608) described several methods of hydromancy. The first method described depicts a ring hanging by a string that is dipped into a vessel of water which was shaken. A judgment or prediction is made by the number of times which the ring strikes the sides of the vessel.

A second method is when three pebbles are thrown into standing water and observations are made from the circles formed when the objects strike the water.

The third method described depended upon the agitation of the water, this custom was prevalent among Oriental Christians of annually baptizing that element.

A fourth method used colors of the water and figures appearing in it. Varro stated that many prognostications were made in this way concerning the Mithridatic War. This branch of the divination proved so important that it was given a separate name and there arose from it the divination of fountains whose waters were frequently visited.

Pausanias (2nd century AD) described the fountain near Epidaurus dedicated to Ino into which loaves were thrown by worshippers hoping to receive an oracle from the goddess. If the loaves were accepted they sank in the water which meant good fortune, but if they were washed up from the fountain it meant bad luck.

A custom of ancient Germanic tribes was to throw newborn children into the Rhine. It was thought if the child was spurious he would drown, but if he was legitimate he would swim. Such a custom appears to be a precursor of the 17th century custom of "swimming witches" perhaps related to the Anglo-Saxon law of [[trial by water]].

In a fifth method of hydromancy mysterious words are pronounced over a glass of water, then observations are made of its spontaneous ebullience.

In the sixth method a drop of oil was let drop into a vessel of water, this furnished a mirror through which wondrous things became visible.

The seventh method of hydromancy was cited by Clemens Alexandrinus who noted that women of Germany watched the whirls and courses of rivers for prognostic interpretations. The identical fact was mentioned by J. L. Vives in his Commentary upon St. Augustine.

In Renaissance magic, hydromancy was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts," along with [[necromancy]], [[geomancy]], [[aeromancy]], [[pyromancy]], [[chiromancy]] (palmistry), and [[spatulamancy]] (scapulimancy).

[[Caregory: Divination]]

Geomancy

2022-02-20T17:59:51Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

'''Geomancy''' (Greek: γεωμαντεία, "earth divination") is a method of [[divination]] that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand. The most prevalent form of divinatory geomancy involves interpreting a series of 16 figures formed by a randomized process that involves recursion, followed by analyzing them, often augmented with astrological interpretations.

Geomancy was practiced by people from all social classes. It was one of the most popular forms of divination throughout Africa and Europe, particularly during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

In Renaissance magic, geomancy was classified as one of the seven "forbidden arts", along with [[necromancy]], [[hydromancy]], [[aeromancy]], [[pyromancy]], [[chiromancy]] (palmistry), and [[spatulamancy]] (scapulimancy).

[[Category: Divination]]

Lunar eclipse

2022-02-19T14:02:59Z

KS: Created page with "A '''lunar eclipse''' occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are exactly or very closely aligned (in..."

A '''lunar eclipse''' occurs when the [[Moon]] moves into the [[Earth]]'s shadow. This can occur only when the [[Sun]], Earth, and Moon are exactly or very closely aligned (in syzygy) with Earth between the other two, and only on the night of a full moon. The type and length of a lunar eclipse depend on the Moon's proximity to either node of its orbit.

The reddish color of totally eclipsed Moon is caused by Earth completely blocking direct sunlight from reaching the Moon, with the only light reflected from the lunar surface has been refracted by Earth's atmosphere. This light appears reddish for the same reason that a sunset or sunrise does: the Rayleigh scattering of bluer light.

Unlike a solar eclipse, which can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world, a lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth. A total lunar eclipse can last up to nearly 2 hours, while a total solar eclipse lasts only up to a few minutes at any given place, because the Moon's shadow is smaller. Also unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view without any eye protection or special precautions, as they are dimmer than the full Moon.

[[Category: Planets]]

Constantine the Great

2022-02-19T14:00:39Z

KS: Redirected page to Constantine I

#redirect[[Constantine I]]

Constantine I

2022-02-19T14:00:10Z

KS: Created page with "The colossal foot of Constantine the Great '''Constantine the Great''' was a Roman emperor reigning from 306 to 337. Born in N..."

[[File:Foot of Constantine the Great.jpg|thumb|The colossal foot of Constantine the Great]]
'''Constantine the Great''' was a Roman emperor reigning from 306 to 337. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea (now Niš, Serbia), he was the son of Flavius Constantius (a Roman army officer born in Dacia Ripensis who had been one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy). His mother, Helena, was Greek and of low birth. Constantine served with distinction under the Roman emperors Diocletian and Galerius. He began by campaigning in the eastern provinces (against barbarians, and the Persians) before he was recalled in the west (in AD 305) to fight alongside his father in Britain. After his father's death in 306, Constantine became emperor; he was acclaimed by his army at Eboracum (York, England). He emerged victorious in the civil wars against emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire by 324.

Upon his ascension to emperor, Constantine enacted numerous reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile units (comitatenses), and garrison troops (limitanei) capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—such as the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century with citizens of Roman culture once more.

Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.[notes 2] Although he lived much of his life as a pagan, and later as a catechumen, he began to favor Christianity beginning in 312, finally becoming a Christian and being baptised by either Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop, as attested by many notable Arian historical figures, or Pope Sylvester I, which is maintained by the Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire. He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem and was deemed the holiest place in all of Christendom. The papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the fabricated Donation of Constantine. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor" and he did favour the Christian Church. While some modern scholars debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of Christianity,[notes 3] he is venerated as a saint in Eastern Christianity, and did much for pushing Christianity towards the mainstream of Roman culture.

The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire and a pivotal moment in the transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. He built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople (now Istanbul) after himself. It subsequently became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, the later Eastern Roman Empire being referred to as the Byzantine Empire by modern historians. His more immediate political legacy was that he replaced Diocletian's Tetrarchy with the de facto principle of dynastic succession, by leaving the empire to his sons and other members of the Constantinian dynasty. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church held him up as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity. Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of his reign, due to the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Trends in modern and recent scholarship have attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship.

[[Category: People]]

Gregorian calendar

2022-02-19T13:52:54Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

The '''Gregorian calendar''' is the calendar used in most of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day 'tropical' or 'solar' year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. The rule for leap years is:

<blockquote>Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 are. — United States Naval Observatory</blockquote>

There were two reasons to establish the Gregorian calendar. First, the Julian calendar assumed incorrectly that the average solar year is exactly 365.25 days long, an overestimate of a little under one day per century, and thus has a leap year every four years without exception. The Gregorian reform shortened the average (calendar) year by 0.0075 days to stop the drift of the calendar with respect to the equinoxes. Second, in the years since the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325, the excess leap days introduced by the Julian algorithm had caused the calendar to drift such that the (Northern) spring equinox was occurring well before its nominal 21 March date. This date was important to the Christian churches because it is fundamental to the calculation of the date of Easter. To reinstate the association, the reform advanced the date by 10 days: Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582. In addition, the reform also altered the lunar cycle used by the Church to calculate the date for Easter, because astronomical new moons were occurring four days before the calculated dates. It is notable that whilst the reform introduced minor changes, that the calendar continued to be fundamentally based on the same geocentric theory as its predecessor.

The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe and their overseas possessions. Over the next three centuries, the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries also moved to what they called the Improved calendar, with Greece being the last European country to adopt the calendar (for civil use only) in 1923. To unambiguously specify a date during the transition period (in contemporary documents or in history texts), both notations were given, tagged as 'Old Style' or 'New Style' as appropriate. During the 20th century, most non-Western countries also adopted the calendar, at least for civil purposes.

[[Category: Conventions]]

Gutenberg Bible

2022-02-19T03:27:11Z

KS:

The '''Gutenberg Bible''' (also known as the '''42-line Bible''', the '''Mazarin Bible''' or the '''B42''') was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its historical significance. It is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, in present-day Germany. Forty-nine copies (or substantial portions of copies) have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed (he cited sources for both numbers). The 36-line Bible, said to be the second printed Bible, is also referred to sometimes as a Gutenberg Bible, but may be the work of another printer.

=== Text ===
The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the Vulgate, contains the Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is mainly the work of Jerome who began his work on the translation in 380 AD, with emendations from the Parisian Bible tradition, and further divergences (the Paris Bible, one of many Bible translations in the Middle Ages, is also known as the "Thirteenth-Century Bible", "Old French Bible" or, in French, Bible du XIIIe siècle).

=== Printing history ===
While it is unlikely that any of his early publications would bear his name, the initial expense of press equipment and materials and of the work to be done before the Bible was ready for sale suggests that he may have started with more lucrative texts, including several religious documents, a German poem, and some editions of Aelius Donatus's Ars Minor, a popular Latin grammar school book. Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is Gutenberg's 31-line Indulgence which is known to already exist on 22 October 1454.

Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing process. The first sheets were rubricated by being passed twice through the printing press, using black and then red ink. This was soon abandoned, with spaces being left for rubrication to be added by hand.

Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page. Finally, the print run was increased, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1–32 and 129–158 of volume I and folios 1–16 and 162 of volume II.

The most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt. It is not known how many copies were printed, with the 1455 letter citing sources for both 158 and 180 copies. Scholars today think that examination of surviving copies suggests that somewhere between 160 and 185 copies were printed, with about three-quarters on paper and the others on vellum.

=== The production process: Das Werk der Bücher ===
A vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible owned by the U.S. Library of Congress
In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Johannes Gutenberg refers to the process as Das Werk der Bücher ("the work of the books"). He had introduced the printing press to Europe and created the technology to make printing with movable types finally efficient enough for the mass production of entire books to be feasible.

Many book-lovers have commented on the high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful books ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted.

=== Pages ===
The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (10 leaves, or 20 printed pages) were combined to a single physical section, called a quinternion, that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as four leaves or as many as 12 leaves. Some sections may have been printed in a larger number, especially those printed later in the publishing process, and sold unbound. The pages were not numbered. The technique was not new, since it had been used to make blank "white-paper" books to be written afterwards. What was new was determining beforehand the correct placement and orientation of each page on the five sheets to result in the correct sequence when bound. The technique for locating the printed area correctly on each page was also new. The 42-line Bible was printed on the size of paper known as 'Royal'. A full sheet of Royal paper measures 42 x 60 centimetres and a single untrimmed folio leaf measures 42 x 30 cm. There have been attempts to claim that the book was printed on larger paper measuring 44.5 x 30.7 cm, but this assertion is contradicted by the dimensions of existing copies. For example, the leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, measure 40 × 28.6 cm. This is typical of other folio Bibles printed on Royal paper in the fifteenth century. Most fifteenth-century printing papers have a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.4 (e.g. 30:42 cm) which is mathematically a ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. Man suggests that this ratio was chosen to match the so-called Golden Ratio of 1:1.6; in fact the ratios are not at all similar (a difference of about 12 per cent). The ratio of 1:1.4 was a long established one for medieval paper sizes. A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,288 pages(4 X 322 = 1288) (usually bound in two volumes); with four pages per folio-sheet, 322 sheets of paper are required per copy. The Bible's paper consists of linen fibers and is thought to have been imported from Caselle in Piedmont, Italy based on the watermarks present throughout the volume.

=== Ink ===
In Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating. Head of collections at the British Library, Dr Kristian Jensen, described it thus: "if you look [at the pages of The Gutenberg Bible] closely you will see this is a very shiny surface. When you write you use a water-based ink, you put your pen into it and it runs off. Now if you print that's exactly what you don't want. One of Gutenberg's inventions was an ink which wasn't ink, it's a varnish. So what we call printer's ink is actually a varnish, and that means it sticks to its surface."

=== Type ===
The first part of the Gutenberg idea was using a single, hand-carved character to create identical copies of itself. Cutting a single letter could take a craftsman a day of work. A single page taking 2500 letters made this way was impractical. A less labour-intensive method of reproduction was needed. Copies were produced by stamping the original into an iron plate, called a matrix. A rectangular tube was then connected to the matrix, creating a container in which molten type metal could be poured. Once cooled, the solid metal form was released from the tube. The fundamental innovation is that this matrix can be used to produce many duplicates of the same letter. The result of each molding was a rectangular block of metal with the form of the desired character protruding from the end. This piece of type could be put in a line, facing up, with other pieces of type. These lines were arranged to form blocks of text, which could be inked and pressed against paper, transferring the desired text to the paper.

Each unique character requires a master piece of type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g. the character "ﬁ", commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15,600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment.

=== Type style ===
The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher. The name Textura refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification, that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of the column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words. He also let the punctuation marks go beyond the vertical line using hanging punctuation, which was used to make the justification of the massive black characters stronger to the eye.

=== Rubrication, illumination and binding ===
Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this practice was quickly abandoned at an unknown date, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives.The spacious margin allowed illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay. Some copies were never decorated. The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of the surviving copies. It is possible that 13 of these copies received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London. The vellum Bibles were more expensive, and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated. There has been speculation that the "Master of the Playing Cards," an unidentified engraver who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving," was partly responsible for the illumination of the copy held by the Princeton University library. However, all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's illustrated playing cards.
Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt. Most copies were divided into two volumes, the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes.

=== Early owners ===
The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with initial sales to owners as far away as England and possibly Sweden and Hungary. At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins, about three years' wages for a clerk. Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of ordinary income wouldn't have been able to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals. At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories; others may have been for display rather than use, and a few were certainly used for study.[page needed] Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laypeople for donation to religious institutions.

=== Influence on later Bibles ===
The Gutenberg Bible had a profound effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for several later editions, including the 36 Line Bible, Mentelin's Latin Bible, and the first and third Eggestein Bibles. The third Eggestein Bible was set from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible now in Cambridge University Library. The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century.

=== Forgeries ===
Joseph Martini, a New York book dealer, found that the Gutenberg Bible held by the library of the General Theological Seminary in New York had a forged leaf, carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel. It was impossible to tell when the leaf had been inserted into the volume. It was replaced in the fall of 1953, when a patron donated the corresponding leaf from a defective Gutenberg second volume which was being broken up and sold in parts.[page needed] This made it "the first imperfect Gutenberg Bible ever restored to completeness."[page needed] In 1978, this copy was sold for US$2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, Germany.

==Locations of known complete Gutenberg Bibles==
As of 2009, 49 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have pages or even whole volumes missing. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves, which are likely to represent about another 16 copies. Many of these fragments have survived because they were used as part of the binding of later books.12 copies on vellum survive, although only four of these are complete and one is of the New Testament only.

Copy numbers listed below are as found in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, taken from a 1985 survey of existing copies by Ilona Hubay; the two copies in Russia were not known to exist in 1985, and therefore were not catalogued.

Gutenberg Bible

2022-02-19T03:17:02Z

KS: Created page with "The '''Gutenberg Bible'' (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe...."

The '''Gutenberg Bible'' (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its historical significance. It is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, in present-day Germany. Forty-nine copies (or substantial portions of copies) have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed (he cited sources for both numbers).
The 36-line Bible, said to be the second printed Bible, is also referred to sometimes as a Gutenberg Bible, but may be the work of another printer.
Text

Gutenberg Bible in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the Vulgate, contains the Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is mainly the work of Jerome who began his work on the translation in 380 AD, with emendations from the Parisian Bible tradition, and further divergences (the Paris Bible, one of many Bible translations in the Middle Ages, is also known as the "Thirteenth-Century Bible", "Old French Bible" or, in French, Bible du XIIIe siècle).[citation needed]
Printing history
While it is unlikely that any of his early publications would bear his name, the initial expense of press equipment and materials and of the work to be done before the Bible was ready for sale suggests that he may have started with more lucrative texts, including several religious documents, a German poem, and some editions of Aelius Donatus's Ars Minor, a popular Latin grammar school book.[page needed][page needed]
Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is Gutenberg's 31-line Indulgence which is known to already exist on 22 October 1454.
Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing process. The first sheets were rubricated by being passed twice through the printing press, using black and then red ink. This was soon abandoned, with spaces being left for rubrication to be added by hand.[citation needed]

Spine of the Lenox copy
Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page. Finally, the print run was increased, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1–32 and 129–158 of volume I and folios 1–16 and 162 of volume II.
The most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt. It is not known how many copies were printed, with the 1455 letter citing sources for both 158 and 180 copies. Scholars today think that examination of surviving copies suggests that somewhere between 160 and 185 copies were printed, with about three-quarters on paper and the others on vellum.[page range too broad] [page range too broad]
The production process: Das Werk der Bücher

A vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible owned by the U.S. Library of Congress
In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Johannes Gutenberg refers to the process as Das Werk der Bücher ("the work of the books"). He had introduced the printing press to Europe and created the technology to make printing with movable types finally efficient enough for the mass production of entire books to be feasible.
Many book-lovers have commented on the high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful books ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted.[page needed]
Pages

First page of the first volume: the epistle of St Jerome to Paulinus from the University of Texas copy. The page has 40 lines.
The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (10 leaves, or 20 printed pages) were combined to a single physical section, called a quinternion, that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as four leaves or as many as 12 leaves. Some sections may have been printed in a larger number, especially those printed later in the publishing process, and sold unbound. The pages were not numbered. The technique was not new, since it had been used to make blank "white-paper" books to be written afterwards. What was new was determining beforehand the correct placement and orientation of each page on the five sheets to result in the correct sequence when bound. The technique for locating the printed area correctly on each page was also new.[citation needed]
The 42-line Bible was printed on the size of paper known as 'Royal'. A full sheet of Royal paper measures 42 x 60 centimetres and a single untrimmed folio leaf measures 42 x 30 cm. There have been attempts to claim that the book was printed on larger paper measuring 44.5 x 30.7 cm,[page needed] but this assertion is contradicted by the dimensions of existing copies. For example, the leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, measure 40 × 28.6 cm. This is typical of other folio Bibles printed on Royal paper in the fifteenth century. Most fifteenth-century printing papers have a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.4 (e.g. 30:42 cm) which is mathematically a ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. Man suggests that this ratio was chosen to match the so-called Golden Ratio of 1:1.6; in fact the ratios are not at all similar (a difference of about 12 per cent). The ratio of 1:1.4 was a long established one for medieval paper sizes. A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,288 pages(4 X 322 = 1288) (usually bound in two volumes); with four pages per folio-sheet, 322 sheets of paper are required per copy. The Bible's paper consists of linen fibers and is thought to have been imported from Caselle in Piedmont, Italy based on the watermarks present throughout the volume.
Ink
In Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating. Head of collections at the British Library, Dr Kristian Jensen, described it thus: "if you look [at the pages of The Gutenberg Bible] closely you will see this is a very shiny surface. When you write you use a water-based ink, you put your pen into it and it runs off. Now if you print that's exactly what you don't want. One of Gutenberg's inventions was an ink which wasn't ink, it's a varnish. So what we call printer's ink is actually a varnish, and that means it sticks to its surface."[better source needed]
Type
The first part of the Gutenberg idea was using a single, hand-carved character to create identical copies of itself. Cutting a single letter could take a craftsman a day of work. A single page taking 2500 letters made this way was impractical. A less labour-intensive method of reproduction was needed. Copies were produced by stamping the original into an iron plate, called a matrix. A rectangular tube was then connected to the matrix, creating a container in which molten type metal could be poured. Once cooled, the solid metal form was released from the tube. The fundamental innovation is that this matrix can be used to produce many duplicates of the same letter. The result of each molding was a rectangular block of metal with the form of the desired character protruding from the end. This piece of type could be put in a line, facing up, with other pieces of type. These lines were arranged to form blocks of text, which could be inked and pressed against paper, transferring the desired text to the paper.[citation needed]
Each unique character requires a master piece of type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g. the character "ﬁ", commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15,600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment.[page needed]
Type style
The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher. The name Textura refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification, that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of the column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words.[full citation needed] He also let the punctuation marks go beyond the vertical line using hanging punctuation, which was used to make the justification of the massive black characters stronger to the eye.[citation needed]
Rubrication, illumination and binding

Detail showing both rubrication and illumination.
Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this practice was quickly abandoned at an unknown date, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives.[page needed]
The spacious margin allowed illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay. Some copies were never decorated. The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of the surviving copies. It is possible that 13 of these copies received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London. The vellum Bibles were more expensive, and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated.[page needed]
There has been speculation that the "Master of the Playing Cards," an unidentified engraver who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving," was partly responsible for the illumination of the copy held by the Princeton University library. However, all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's illustrated playing cards.
Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt. Most copies were divided into two volumes, the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes.[page needed]
Early owners
The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with initial sales to owners as far away as England and possibly Sweden and Hungary.[page needed][page range too broad] At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins, about three years' wages for a clerk.[page needed] Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of ordinary income wouldn't have been able to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals.[page needed] At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories; others may have been for display rather than use, and a few were certainly used for study.[page needed] Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laypeople for donation to religious institutions.[page range too broad]
Influence on later Bibles
The Gutenberg Bible had a profound effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for several later editions, including the 36 Line Bible, Mentelin's Latin Bible, and the first and third Eggestein Bibles. The third Eggestein Bible was set from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible now in Cambridge University Library. The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century.[page range too broad]
Forgeries
Joseph Martini, a New York book dealer, found that the Gutenberg Bible held by the library of the General Theological Seminary in New York had a forged leaf, carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel. It was impossible to tell when the leaf had been inserted into the volume. It was replaced in the fall of 1953, when a patron donated the corresponding leaf from a defective Gutenberg second volume which was being broken up and sold in parts.[page needed] This made it "the first imperfect Gutenberg Bible ever restored to completeness."[page needed] In 1978, this copy was sold for US$2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, Germany.

==Locations of known complete Gutenberg Bibles==
As of 2009, 49 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have pages or even whole volumes missing. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves, which are likely to represent about another 16 copies. Many of these fragments have survived because they were used as part of the binding of later books.[page range too broad] 12 copies on vellum survive, although only four of these are complete and one is of the New Testament only.

Copy numbers listed below are as found in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, taken from a 1985 survey of existing copies by Ilona Hubay; the two copies in Russia were not known to exist in 1985, and therefore were not catalogued.

Rebecca Nurse

2022-02-19T03:14:13Z

KS: Created page with "'''Rebecca Nurse''' (February 13, 1621 – July 19, 1692) is a woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed by hanging in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692..."

'''Rebecca Nurse''' (February 13, 1621 – July 19, 1692) is a woman who was accused of witchcraft and executed by hanging in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was fully exonerated less than twenty years later.

She was the wife of Francis Nurse, had several children and grandchildren, and was a well-respected member of the community. She was tried and convicted in the spring and summer of 1692 and executed on July 19.

This occurred during a time when parts of the government and people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay were seized with witch-phobia. Her married sisters Mary Eastey and Sarah Cloyce were also accused. Mary was convicted and executed, but Sarah managed to survive.

==Early life==
The daughter of William (c. 1598–1672) and Joanna a Towne (c. 1595/99–1682) (née Blessing), Rebecca Nurse was born in Great Yarmouth, England in 1621. Born February 13, 1621, her baptism is recorded as February 21, 1621. Her family emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling in Salem, although most of the Towne family would eventually move inland to Topsfield. Rebecca had three sisters, Susan (baptized October 26, 1625; died July 29, 1630), Mary (baptized August 24, 1634; executed 1692) and Sarah. She also had three brothers, Edmund (baptized June 1628), Jacob (baptized March 11, 1631 or 1632) and Joseph (born c. 1639).

Sometime around 1644, she married Francis Nurse (or Nourse; 1618–1695), who was also born in England. Her husband was a "tray maker" by trade, who likely made many other wooden household items. Due to the rarity of such household goods, such artisans were esteemed. They raised their family in Salem village (modern day Danvers, Massachusetts). The couple had eight children: four daughters and four sons. Their names were John Nurse (born 1645), Rebecca Nurse (born 1647), Samuel Nurse (born 1649), Elizabeth Nurse (born 1655 or 1656), Mary Nurse (born 1657 – 28 June 1749), Francis Nurse (born 1660 or 1661), Sarah Nurse (born 1662) and Benjamin Nurse (born in 1665 or 1666). In 1672, Francis Nurse served as Salem's Constable. It was later written that Rebecca had "acquired a reputation for exemplary piety that was virtually unchallenged in the community," making her one of the "unlikely" persons to be accused of witchcraft.

In 1678 they were offered the opportunity to lease-to-own a 300-acre (120 ha) farm in the rural village area of Salem (today Danvers, Massachusetts), originally a part of a grant given to Townsend Bishop in 1636. This farm still exists, and is today preserved as the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. Rebecca and Francis frequented the Salem Village meeting house and Francis was quite active in the community becoming well respected in Salem Village; he was often asked to serve as mediator to help settle matters. The Nurses officially remained members to the Salem Towne church until their deaths, despite being very active within the village community. In 1699 the Nurses' children were able to officially purchase the farm outright and remained for multiple generations.

==Accusation and trial==
On March 23, 1692, a warrant was issued for her arrest based upon accusations made by Edward and John Putnam. Upon hearing of the accusations, the frail 71-year-old Nurse, often described as an invalid, said, "I am innocent as the child unborn, but surely, what sin hath God found out in me unrepented of, that He should lay such an affliction on me in my old age."

A public outcry greeted the accusations made against her, as she was considered to be a woman of very pious character, who lived in amity with her neighbours, and had a reputation for benevolence as well as piety: even her neighbor Sarah Holton, who had accused Rebecca of acting quite unreasonably in a quarrel over some trespassing pigs, later changed her mind and spoke in Rebecca's defence. Thirty-nine of the most prominent members of the community signed a petition on Nurse's behalf. At age 71, she was one of the oldest accused. The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, who normally regarded the guilt of the accused as self-evident, took a notably different attitude in Rebecca's case, as they also did in the case of her sister Mary Eastey. They told Rebecca openly that if she was innocent, they prayed that God would show her innocence, for "it is a sad thing to see church members accused". Hathorne was no doubt influenced by the fact that his sister Elizabeth Porter was a close friend of Rebecca, and one of her staunchest defenders.

Her trial began on June 30, 1692. In accordance with the procedures at the time, Mrs. Nurse, like others accused of witchcraft, represented herself since she was not allowed to have a lawyer. By dint of her respectability, many members of the community testified on her behalf, including her family members. Often the "afflicted" would break into fits and claim Nurse was tormenting them. Such so-called "spectral evidence" was allowed into the trial to show that Satan was afflicting others in the community at the behest of the accused. In response to their outbursts Nurse stated, "I have got nobody to look to but God."

In the end, the jury ruled Nurse not guilty. Due to the public outcry and renewed fits and spasms by the "afflicted", the judges reviewed her case with the jury. One particular point was emphasized, and the jury requested a second chance of deliberation (a legal practice used in those days). The jury asked Rebecca to explain her remark that another accused witch, Deliverance Hobbs, was "of her company", the implication being that they had both signed a pact with the Devil.[citation needed] Fatally, Rebecca, who was hard of hearing, did not hear the question: she later explained to her children that she was referring to this woman as a fellow "accused" witch. However the jury had changed their verdict and sentenced Nurse to death on July 19, 1692.[citation needed] In view of the urgent pleas of her family, and the abundant evidence of her good character, including a moving letter from the foreman of Nurse's jury, the Governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, granted a reprieve, only for it to later be rescinded.

==Death and aftermath==
Many people described Nurse as "the woman of self-dignity", due to her collected behavior on the gallows. As was the custom, after she was hanged, her body was buried in a shallow grave near the execution spot. They were considered unfit for a Christian burial in a churchyard. According to oral tradition, Nurse's family secretly returned after dark and dug up her body, which they interred properly on their family homestead. Although her exact resting place has never been confirmed her descendants erected a tall granite memorial in the family plot in 1885 at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead cemetery in Danvers (formerly Salem Village), Massachusetts. The inscription on the monument reads:

"Rebecca Nurse, Yarmouth, England 1621. Salem, Mass., 1692.
O Christian Martyr who for Truth could die
When all about thee owned the hideous lie!
The world redeemed from Superstition's sway
Is breathing freer for thy sake today."

In 1706, her accuser, Ann Putnam, Jr., gave a public church confession upon entering the Salem Village congregation. She expressed great remorse for her role against Rebecca and her two sisters, Mary Eastey and Sarah Cloyce, in particular: "I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father's family in the year about '92; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing of Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were taken away or accused."

The Nurse family accepted Ann's apology and were reconciled with her: by contrast, they never forgave Samuel Parris, the village minister, whom they held personally to blame for their bereavement – "none can know what we suffered by the loss of such a mother" – and they did not rest until Parris was removed from office in 1697. In 1711, her children petitioned the government for a reversal of attainer and were granted compensation for Rebecca's wrongful death. In 1712, the Salem Towne church reversed the verdict of excommunication it had passed on her: "that it be no longer a reproach to her memory or an occasion of grief to her children".

In 1892, the community erected a second monument recognizing the 40 neighbors, led by Israel and Elizabeth (Hathorne) Porter, who took the risk of publicly supporting Nurse by signing a petition to the court on her behalf in 1692. One signer was General Israel Putnam's father.

The Nurse family remained in the home for many generations. Eventually the Nurse family homestead was sold to Phineas Putnam, a cousin of Rebecca's great-great grandson Benjamin, in 1784. The Putnam family remained until about 1905. By 1909 the farm was saved by volunteers and turned into a historic house museum that includes the original house and cemetery, on 27 of the original 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land.
In 2021, the 400th anniversary of Nurse's birth, the first full biography of her life will be published, Daniel A. Gagnon's A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse.

[[Category: People]]

Nicolaus Copernicus

2022-02-19T03:06:57Z

KS: Created page with "Copernicus '''Nicolaus Copernicus''' (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer,..."

[[File:Mikołaj Kopernik.jpg|thumb|Copernicus]]
'''Nicolaus Copernicus''' (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.

The publication of Copernicus' model in his book ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution.

Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics—and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law.

Some time before 1514 Copernicus made available to friends his "Commentariolus" ("Little Commentary"), a manuscript describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis. It contained seven basic assumptions (detailed below). Thereafter he continued gathering data for a more detailed work.

At about 1532 Copernicus had basically completed his work on the manuscript of ''Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestiumm''; but despite urging by his closest friends, he resisted openly publishing his views, not wishing—as he confessed—to risk the scorn "to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses."

In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining Copernicus's theory. Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals heard the lectures and were interested in the theory. On 1 November 1536, Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua, wrote to Copernicus from Rome:

"Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject ..."

By then Copernicus's work was nearing its definitive form, and rumors about his theory had reached educated people all over Europe. Despite urgings from many quarters, Copernicus delayed publication of his book, perhaps from fear of criticism—a fear delicately expressed in the subsequent dedication of his masterpiece to Pope Paul III. Scholars disagree on whether Copernicus's concern was limited to possible astronomical and philosophical objections, or whether he was also concerned about religious objections.

==''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium''==
Copernicus was still working on ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (even if not certain that he wanted to publish it) when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a Wittenberg mathematician, arrived in Frombork. Philipp Melanchthon, a close theological ally of Martin Luther, had arranged for Rheticus to visit several astronomers and study with them. Rheticus became Copernicus's pupil, staying with him for two years and writing a book, Narratio prima (First Account), outlining the essence of Copernicus's theory. In 1542 Rheticus published a treatise on trigonometry by Copernicus (later included as chapters 13 and 14 of Book I of De revolutionibus). Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen the favorable first general reception of his work, Copernicus finally agreed to give De revolutionibus to his close friend, Tiedemann Giese, bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing by the German printer Johannes Petreius at Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany. While Rheticus initially supervised the printing, he had to leave Nuremberg before it was completed, and he handed over the task of supervising the rest of the printing to a Lutheran theologian, Andreas Osiander.

Osiander added an unauthorised and unsigned preface, defending Copernicus' work against those who might be offended by its novel hypotheses. He argued that "different hypotheses are sometimes offered for one and the same motion [and therefore] the astronomer will take as his first choice that hypothesis which is the easiest to grasp." According to Osiander, "these hypotheses need not be true nor even probable. If they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough."

[[Category: People]]

File:Mikołaj Kopernik.jpg

2022-02-19T03:00:43Z

KS:

Religious policies of Constantius II

2022-02-19T00:54:46Z

KS:

The '''religious policies of Constantius II''' were a mixture of toleration for some pagan practices and repression for other pagan practices. He also sought to advance the Arian or Semi-Arianian heresy within Christianity. These policies may be contrasted with the religious policies of his father, Constantine the Great, whose Catholic orthodoxy was espoused in the Nicene Creed and who largely tolerated paganism in the Roman Empire. Constantius also sought to repress Judaism.

==Policies concerning paganism==
Laws dating from the 350s prescribed the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices, and for the worshipping of idols. Pagan temples were shut down, and the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate meeting house. There were also frequent episodes of ordinary Christians destroying, pillaging and desecrating many ancient pagan temples, tombs and monuments. Paganism was still popular among the population at the time. The emperor's policies were passively resisted by many governors and magistrates.

==Anti-paganism acts==
Constantius II's legislation began with the banning of the pagan practice of sacrifice. This was in keeping with his personal maxim was: "Cesset superstitio; sacrificiorum aboleatur insania" (Let superstition cease; let the folly of sacrifices be abolished). According to Libanius, Constantius was effectively under the control of others who inspired him to end pagan sacrifices.

With the collapse of official government sanctioned pagan rites, private cults attempted to infiltrate the temples. In the year 353 Constantius prohibited pagan sacrifice under the penalty of death. He also shut down some temples, forbade access to them, and ended their subsidies of public taxes.

Consistent with Christian theology, Constantius carried out on an active campaign against magicians, astrologers and other diviners. This may also be due to his becoming fearful that others might use these means to make someone else emperor.

In 357 Constantius removed the Altar of Victory in the Senate house because of the complaints of some Christian Senators. This altar had been installed by Augustus in 29 BC; each Senator had traditionally made a sacrifice upon the altar before entering the Senate house. This altar was later restored, either silently, soon after Constantius' departure, or by the emperor Julian.

The pretender Magnentius killed Constans. Although he used Christian symbols on his coins, he revoked the anti-paganism legislation of Constans and even permitted the celebration of nocturnal sacrifices. Three years later, in the year 353, Constantius defeated Magnentius and once again forbade the performance of the rituals. This law seems to have had little effect as we find Constantius once again legislating against paganism in 356. Constantius now declared that anyone found guilty of attending sacrifices or of worshipping idols would be executed. It appears the magistrates were uncomfortable with carrying out this law; it was largely ignored.

==Relative moderation==
The government's policies could not be rigidly executed due to the strength of paganism among the population. No matter what the imperial edicts declared in their fearful threats, the vast numbers of pagans, and the passive resistance of pagan governors and magistrates rendered them largely impotent in their application. Consequently, the emperor never attempted to disband the various Roman priestly colleges or the Vestal Virgins, He never acted against the various pagan schools. He even ordered the election of a priest for Africa. Also, he remained as the pontifex maximus until his death, and was deified by the Roman Senate after his death. The effects of policy were enough to contribute to a widespread trend towards Christian conversion, though not enough to make paganism extinct. The relative moderation of Constantius' actions toward paganism is reflected by the fact that it was not until over 20 years after Constantius' death, during the reign of Gratian, that any pagan senators protested their religion's treatment.

==Actions of ordinary Christians==
Some Christians encouraged the emperor to take even more extreme measures in their zeal to stamp out paganism, e.g. in the aftermath of the abolition of sacrifices. Firmicus Maternus, a convert to Christianity, urged: "Paganism, most holy emperors, must be utterly destroyed and blotted out, and disciplined by the severest enactments of your edicts, lest the deadly delusion of the presumption continue to stain the Roman world" and "How fortunate you are that God, whose agents you are, has reserved for you the destruction of idolatry and the ruin of profane temples."

Constantius enacted another law that exacted a fine from those who were guilty of vandalizing sites holy to pagans and placed the care of these monuments and tombs under the pagan priests.

===Policies concerning Christianity===
Although often considered an Arian, Constantius ultimately preferred a third, compromise version that lay somewhere in between Arianism and the Nicene Creed, retrospectively called Semi-Arianism. During his reign he attempted to mold the Christian church to follow this compromise position, convening several Christian councils. The most notable of these were the Council of Rimini and its twin at Seleucia, which met in 359 and 360 respectively. "Unfortunately for his memory the theologians whose advice he took were ultimately discredited and the malcontents whom he pressed to conform emerged victorious," writes the historian A.H.M. Jones. "The great councils of 359–60 are therefore not reckoned ecumenical in the tradition of the church, and Constantius II is not remembered as a restorer of unity, but as a heretic who arbitrarily imposed his will on the church."

Christian-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Exemption from compulsory public service for the clergy
Exemption from compulsory public service for the sons of clergy
Tax exemptions for clergy and their servants, and later for their family
Tax exemption for land owned by the church, but clergy-owned land not tax exempt.
Clergy and the issue of private property
Bishops exempted from being tried in secular courts
Christian prostitutes only able to be bought by members of the clergy or other state-approved Christians

===Policies concerning Judaism===
Judaism faced some severe restrictions under Constantius, who seems to have followed an anti-Jewish policy in line with that of his father. Early in his reign, Constantius issued a double edict in concert with his brothers limiting the ownership of slaves by Jewish people and banning marriages between Jews and Christian women. A later edict issued by Constantius after becoming sole emperor decreed that a person who was proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism would have all of his property confiscated by the state. However, Constantius' actions in this regard may not have been so much to do with Jewish religion as with Jewish business—apparently, privately owned Jewish businesses were often in competition with state-owned businesses. As a result, Constantius may have sought to provide an advantage to state-owned businesses by limiting the skilled workers and slaves available to Jewish businesses.

Jew-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Weaving women who moved from working for the government to working for Jews must be restored to the government
Jews may not marry Christian women
Jews may not attempt to convert Christian women
Any non-Jewish slave bought by a Jew will be confiscated by the state
If a Jew attempts to circumcise a non-Jewish slave, the slave will be freed and the Jew shall face capital punishment
Any Christian slaves owned by a Jew will be taken away and freed
A person who is proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism shall have their property confiscated by the state.

[[Category: People]]

Religious policies of Constantius II

2022-02-19T00:26:15Z

KS:

The '''religious policies of Constantius II''' were a mixture of toleration for some pagan practices and repression for other pagan practices. He also sought to advance the Arian or Semi-Arianian heresy within Christianity. These policies may be contrasted with the religious policies of his father, Constantine the Great, whose Catholic orthodoxy was espoused in the Nicene Creed and who largely tolerated paganism in the Roman Empire. Constantius also sought to repress Judaeism.

==Policies concerning paganism==
Laws dating from the 350s prescribed the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices, and for the worshipping of idols. Pagan temples were shut down, and the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate meeting house. There were also frequent episodes of ordinary Christians destroying, pillaging and desecrating many ancient pagan temples, tombs and monuments. Paganism was still popular among the population at the time. The emperor's policies were passively resisted by many governors and magistrates.

==Anti-paganism acts==
Constantius II's legislation began with the banning of the pagan practice of sacrifice. This was in keeping with his personal maxim was: "Cesset superstitio; sacrificiorum aboleatur insania" (Let superstition cease; let the folly of sacrifices be abolished). According to Libanius, Constantius was effectively under the control of others who inspired him to end pagan sacrifices.

With the collapse of official government sanctioned pagan rites, private cults attempted to infiltrate the temples. In the year 353 Constantius prohibited pagan sacrifice under the penalty of death. He also shut down some temples, forbade access to them, and ended their subsidies of public taxes.

Consistent with Christian theology, Constantius carried out on an active campaign against magicians, astrologers and other diviners. This may also be due to his becoming fearful that others might use these means to make someone else emperor.

In 357 Constantius removed the Altar of Victory in the Senate house because of the complaints of some Christian Senators. This altar had been installed by Augustus in 29 BC; each Senator had traditionally made a sacrifice upon the altar before entering the Senate house. This altar was later restored, either silently, soon after Constantius' departure, or by the emperor Julian.

The pretender Magnentius killed Constans. Although he used Christian symbols on his coins, he revoked the anti-paganism legislation of Constans and even permitted the celebration of nocturnal sacrifices. Three years later, in the year 353, Constantius defeated Magnentius and once again forbade the performance of the rituals. This law seems to have had little effect as we find Constantius once again legislating against paganism in 356. Constantius now declared that anyone found guilty of attending sacrifices or of worshipping idols would be executed. It appears the magistrates were uncomfortable with carrying out this law; it was largely ignored.

==Relative moderation==
The government's policies could not be rigidly executed due to the strength of paganism among the population. No matter what the imperial edicts declared in their fearful threats, the vast numbers of pagans, and the passive resistance of pagan governors and magistrates rendered them largely impotent in their application. Consequently, the emperor never attempted to disband the various Roman priestly colleges or the Vestal Virgins, He never acted against the various pagan schools. He even ordered the election of a priest for Africa. Also, he remained as the pontifex maximus until his death, and was deified by the Roman Senate after his death. The effects of policy were enough to contribute to a widespread trend towards Christian conversion, though not enough to make paganism extinct. The relative moderation of Constantius' actions toward paganism is reflected by the fact that it was not until over 20 years after Constantius' death, during the reign of Gratian, that any pagan senators protested their religion's treatment.

==Actions of ordinary Christians==
Some Christians encouraged the emperor to take even more extreme measures in their zeal to stamp out paganism, e.g. in the aftermath of the abolition of sacrifices. Firmicus Maternus, a convert to Christianity, urged: "Paganism, most holy emperors, must be utterly destroyed and blotted out, and disciplined by the severest enactments of your edicts, lest the deadly delusion of the presumption continue to stain the Roman world" and "How fortunate you are that God, whose agents you are, has reserved for you the destruction of idolatry and the ruin of profane temples."

Constantius enacted another law that exacted a fine from those who were guilty of vandalizing sites holy to pagans and placed the care of these monuments and tombs under the pagan priests.

===Policies concerning Christianity===
Although often considered an Arian, Constantius ultimately preferred a third, compromise version that lay somewhere in between Arianism and the Nicene Creed, retrospectively called Semi-Arianism. During his reign he attempted to mold the Christian church to follow this compromise position, convening several Christian councils. The most notable of these were the Council of Rimini and its twin at Seleucia, which met in 359 and 360 respectively. "Unfortunately for his memory the theologians whose advice he took were ultimately discredited and the malcontents whom he pressed to conform emerged victorious," writes the historian A.H.M. Jones. "The great councils of 359–60 are therefore not reckoned ecumenical in the tradition of the church, and Constantius II is not remembered as a restorer of unity, but as a heretic who arbitrarily imposed his will on the church."

Christian-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Exemption from compulsory public service for the clergy
Exemption from compulsory public service for the sons of clergy
Tax exemptions for clergy and their servants, and later for their family
Tax exemption for land owned by the church, but clergy-owned land not tax exempt.
Clergy and the issue of private property
Bishops exempted from being tried in secular courts
Christian prostitutes only able to be bought by members of the clergy or other state-approved Christians

===Policies concerning Judaism===
Judaism faced some severe restrictions under Constantius, who seems to have followed an anti-Jewish policy in line with that of his father. Early in his reign, Constantius issued a double edict in concert with his brothers limiting the ownership of slaves by Jewish people and banning marriages between Jews and Christian women. A later edict issued by Constantius after becoming sole emperor decreed that a person who was proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism would have all of his property confiscated by the state. However, Constantius' actions in this regard may not have been so much to do with Jewish religion as with Jewish business—apparently, privately owned Jewish businesses were often in competition with state-owned businesses. As a result, Constantius may have sought to provide an advantage to state-owned businesses by limiting the skilled workers and slaves available to Jewish businesses.

Jew-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Weaving women who moved from working for the government to working for Jews must be restored to the government
Jews may not marry Christian women
Jews may not attempt to convert Christian women
Any non-Jewish slave bought by a Jew will be confiscated by the state
If a Jew attempts to circumcise a non-Jewish slave, the slave will be freed and the Jew shall face capital punishment
Any Christian slaves owned by a Jew will be taken away and freed
A person who is proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism shall have their property confiscated by the state.

[[Category: People]]

Religious policies of Constantius II

2022-02-19T00:25:19Z

KS: Created page with "The '''religious policies of Constantius II''' were a mixture of toleration for some pagan practices and repression for other pagan practices. He also sought to advance the Ar..."

The '''religious policies of Constantius II''' were a mixture of toleration for some pagan practices and repression for other pagan practices. He also sought to advance the Arian or Semi-Arianian heresy within Christianity. These policies may be contrasted with the religious policies of his father, Constantine the Great, whose Catholic orthodoxy was espoused in the Nicene Creed and who largely tolerated paganism in the Roman Empire. Constantius also sought to repress Judaeism.

==Policies concerning paganism==
Laws dating from the 350s prescribed the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices, and for the worshipping of idols. Pagan temples were shut down, and the Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate meeting house. There were also frequent episodes of ordinary Christians destroying, pillaging and desecrating many ancient pagan temples, tombs and monuments. Paganism was still popular among the population at the time. The emperor's policies were passively resisted by many governors and magistrates.

==Anti-paganism acts==
Constantius II's legislation began with the banning of the pagan practice of sacrifice. This was in keeping with his personal maxim was: "Cesset superstitio; sacrificiorum aboleatur insania" (Let superstition cease; let the folly of sacrifices be abolished). According to Libanius, Constantius was effectively under the control of others who inspired him to end pagan sacrifices.

With the collapse of official government sanctioned pagan rites, private cults attempted to infiltrate the temples. In the year 353 Constantius prohibited pagan sacrifice under the penalty of death. He also shut down some temples, forbade access to them, and ended their subsidies of public taxes.

Consistent with Christian theology, Constantius carried out on an active campaign against magicians, astrologers and other diviners. This may also be due to his becoming fearful that others might use these means to make someone else emperor.

In 357 Constantius removed the Altar of Victory in the Senate house because of the complaints of some Christian Senators. This altar had been installed by Augustus in 29 BC; each Senator had traditionally made a sacrifice upon the altar before entering the Senate house. This altar was later restored, either silently, soon after Constantius' departure, or by the emperor Julian.

The pretender Magnentius killed Constans. Although he used Christian symbols on his coins, he revoked the anti-paganism legislation of Constans and even permitted the celebration of nocturnal sacrifices. Three years later, in the year 353, Constantius defeated Magnentius and once again forbade the performance of the rituals. This law seems to have had little effect as we find Constantius once again legislating against paganism in 356. Constantius now declared that anyone found guilty of attending sacrifices or of worshipping idols would be executed. It appears the magistrates were uncomfortable with carrying out this law; it was largely ignored.

==Relative moderation==
The government's policies could not be rigidly executed due to the strength of paganism among the population. No matter what the imperial edicts declared in their fearful threats, the vast numbers of pagans, and the passive resistance of pagan governors and magistrates rendered them largely impotent in their application. Consequently, the emperor never attempted to disband the various Roman priestly colleges or the Vestal Virgins, He never acted against the various pagan schools. He even ordered the election of a priest for Africa. Also, he remained as the pontifex maximus until his death, and was deified by the Roman Senate after his death. The effects of policy were enough to contribute to a widespread trend towards Christian conversion, though not enough to make paganism extinct. The relative moderation of Constantius' actions toward paganism is reflected by the fact that it was not until over 20 years after Constantius' death, during the reign of Gratian, that any pagan senators protested their religion's treatment.

==Actions of ordinary Christians==
Some Christians encouraged the emperor to take even more extreme measures in their zeal to stamp out paganism, e.g. in the aftermath of the abolition of sacrifices. Firmicus Maternus, a convert to Christianity, urged: "Paganism, most holy emperors, must be utterly destroyed and blotted out, and disciplined by the severest enactments of your edicts, lest the deadly delusion of the presumption continue to stain the Roman world" and "How fortunate you are that God, whose agents you are, has reserved for you the destruction of idolatry and the ruin of profane temples."

Constantius enacted another law that exacted a fine from those who were guilty of vandalizing sites holy to pagans and placed the care of these monuments and tombs under the pagan priests.

===Policies concerning Christianity===
Although often considered an Arian, Constantius ultimately preferred a third, compromise version that lay somewhere in between Arianism and the Nicene Creed, retrospectively called Semi-Arianism. During his reign he attempted to mold the Christian church to follow this compromise position, convening several Christian councils. The most notable of these were the Council of Rimini and its twin at Seleucia, which met in 359 and 360 respectively. "Unfortunately for his memory the theologians whose advice he took were ultimately discredited and the malcontents whom he pressed to conform emerged victorious," writes the historian A.H.M. Jones. "The great councils of 359–60 are therefore not reckoned ecumenical in the tradition of the church, and Constantius II is not remembered as a restorer of unity, but as a heretic who arbitrarily imposed his will on the church."

Christian-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Exemption from compulsory public service for the clergy
Exemption from compulsory public service for the sons of clergy
Tax exemptions for clergy and their servants, and later for their family
Tax exemption for land owned by the church, but clergy-owned land not tax exempt.
Clergy and the issue of private property
Bishops exempted from being tried in secular courts
Christian prostitutes only able to be bought by members of the clergy or other state-approved Christians

===Policies concerning Judaism==
Judaism faced some severe restrictions under Constantius, who seems to have followed an anti-Jewish policy in line with that of his father. Early in his reign, Constantius issued a double edict in concert with his brothers limiting the ownership of slaves by Jewish people and banning marriages between Jews and Christian women. A later edict issued by Constantius after becoming sole emperor decreed that a person who was proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism would have all of his property confiscated by the state. However, Constantius' actions in this regard may not have been so much to do with Jewish religion as with Jewish business—apparently, privately owned Jewish businesses were often in competition with state-owned businesses. As a result, Constantius may have sought to provide an advantage to state-owned businesses by limiting the skilled workers and slaves available to Jewish businesses.

Jew-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:

Weaving women who moved from working for the government to working for Jews must be restored to the government
Jews may not marry Christian women
Jews may not attempt to convert Christian women
Any non-Jewish slave bought by a Jew will be confiscated by the state
If a Jew attempts to circumcise a non-Jewish slave, the slave will be freed and the Jew shall face capital punishment
Any Christian slaves owned by a Jew will be taken away and freed
A person who is proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism shall have their property confiscated by the state.

[[Category: People]]

Pagan

2022-02-19T00:19:28Z

KS: KS moved page Pagan to Paganism

#REDIRECT [[Paganism]]

Paganism

2022-02-19T00:19:28Z

KS: KS moved page Pagan to Paganism

'''Paganism''' (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi (soldiers of Christ). Alternative terms in Christian texts were hellene, gentile, and heathen. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".

During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a belief in false god(s). The origin of the application of the term pagan to polytheism is debated. In the 19th century, paganism was adopted as a self-descriptor by members of various artistic groups inspired by the ancient world. In the 20th century, it came to be applied as a self-descriptor by practitioners of Modern Paganism, Neopagan movements and Polytheistic reconstructionists. Modern pagan traditions often incorporate beliefs or practices, such as nature worship, that are different from those in the largest world religions.

Contemporary knowledge of old pagan religions and beliefs comes from several sources, including anthropological field research records, the evidence of archaeological artifacts, and the historical accounts of ancient writers regarding cultures known to Classical antiquity. Most modern pagan religions existing today (Modern or Neopaganism) express a world view that is pantheistic, panentheistic, polytheistic or animistic, but some are monotheistic.

[[Category: Religions]]

Paganism

2022-02-19T00:18:57Z

KS: Created page with "'''Paganism''' (from classical Latin pāgānus "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empi..."

Inquisition

2022-02-19T00:15:02Z

KS: Created page with "The '''Inquisition''' was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records ha..."

The '''Inquisition''' was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but that cases of repeat unrepentant heretics were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation (e.g. apostasy or heresy), particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, including the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.
During the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the scope of the Inquisition grew significantly in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. During this period, the Inquisition conducted by the Holy See was known as the Roman Inquisition. The Inquisition also expanded to other European countries, resulting in the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused particularly on the anusim (people who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will) and on Muslim converts to Catholicism. The scale of the persecution of converted Muslims and converted Jews in Spain and Portugal was the result of suspicions that they had secretly reverted to their previous religions, although both religious minority groups were also more numerous on the Iberian Peninsula than in other parts of Europe.

During this time, Spain and Portugal operated inquisitorial courts not only in Europe, but also throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This resulted in the Goa Inquisition, the Peruvian Inquisition, and the Mexican Inquisition, among others.

With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was abolished in the early 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the Spanish American wars of independence in the Americas. The institution survived as part of the Roman Curia, but in 1908 it was renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. In 1965, it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[[Category: Organizations]]

Church of Scientology

2022-02-19T00:10:28Z

KS: Created page with "thumb The '''Church of Scientology''' is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administr..."

[[File:Scientology-croce.png|thumb]]
The '''Church of Scientology''' is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business or a new religious movement. The movement has been the subject of a number of controversies, and the Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgements as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business. In 1979, several executives of the Church were convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a U.S. Federal Court. The Church itself was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2009, a decision upheld by the supreme Court of Cassation in 2013. The German government classifies Scientology as an anti-constitutional sect. In France, it has been classified as a dangerous cult. In some countries, it has managed to attain legal recognition as a religion.

The Church of Scientology International (CSI) is officially the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for guiding local Scientology churches. Its international headquarters are located at the Gold Base, in an unincorporated area of Riverside County, California near San Jacinto. Scientology Missions International is under CSI and oversees Scientology missions, which are local Scientology organizations smaller than churches. The Church of Spiritual Technology (CST) is the organization which owns all the copyrights of the estate of L. Ron Hubbard.

All Scientology management organizations are controlled exclusively by members of the Sea Org, which is a legally nonexistent paramilitary organization for the "elite, innermost dedicated core of Scientologists". David Miscavige is the highest-ranking Sea Org officer, holding the rank of captain.

[[Category: Organizations]]

Giordano Bruno

2022-02-19T00:06:54Z

KS:

[[File:GiordanoBrunoCampodeiFiori cropped.jpg|thumb|Bruno]]
'''Giordano Bruno''', born '''Filippo Bruno''', January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no "center".

Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was not taken lightly by the church, nor was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation). The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science, although most historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views. However some historians do contend that the main reason for Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views. Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Islamic astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Genesis-like legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth. Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.

[[Category: People]]

File:GiordanoBrunoCampodeiFiori cropped.jpg

2022-02-19T00:06:20Z

KS:

Giordano Bruno

2022-02-19T00:05:01Z

KS: Created page with "'''Giordano Bruno''', born '''Filippo Bruno''', January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological t..."

'''Giordano Bruno''', born '''Filippo Bruno''', January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no "center".

Starting in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was not taken lightly by the church, nor was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation). The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science, although most historians agree that his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views. However some historians do contend that the main reason for Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views. Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Islamic astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Genesis-like legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth. Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.

[[Category: People]]

Galileo Galilei

2022-02-18T23:57:45Z

KS:

[[File:Galileo Galilei .jpg|thumb|Galileo]]
'''Galileo Galilei''' (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as '''Galileo''', was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath, from the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and analysis of lunar craters and sunspots.
Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism (Earth rotating daily and revolving around the sun) was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was foolish, absurd, and heretical since it contradicted Holy Scripture.
Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated both the Pope and the Jesuits who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials, summarizing work he had done around forty years earlier.

==Controversy over comets and The Assayer==
In 1619, Galileo became embroiled in a controversy with Father Orazio Grassi, professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano. It began as a dispute over the nature of comets, but by the time Galileo had published The Assayer (Il Saggiatore) in 1623, his last salvo in the dispute, it had become a much wider controversy over the very nature of science itself. The title page of the book describes Galileo as philosopher and "Matematico Primario" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[citation needed]
Because The Assayer contains such a wealth of Galileo's ideas on how science should be practised, it has been referred to as his scientific manifesto. Early in 1619, Father Grassi had anonymously published a pamphlet, An Astronomical Disputation on the Three Comets of the Year 1618, which discussed the nature of a comet that had appeared late in November of the previous year. Grassi concluded that the comet was a fiery body that had moved along a segment of a great circle at a constant distance from the earth, and since it moved in the sky more slowly than the Moon, it must be farther away than the Moon.

Grassi's arguments and conclusions were criticized in a subsequent article, Discourse on Comets, published under the name of one of Galileo's disciples, a Florentine lawyer named Mario Guiducci, although it had been largely written by Galileo himself. Galileo and Guiducci offered no definitive theory of their own on the nature of comets, although they did present some tentative conjectures that are now known to be mistaken. (The correct approach to the study of comets had been proposed at the time by Tycho Brahe.) In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner, and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work. The Jesuits were offended, and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano, purporting to be one of his own pupils.

The Assayer was Galileo's devastating reply to the Astronomical Balance. It has been widely recognized as a masterpiece of polemical literature, in which "Sarsi's" arguments are subjected to withering scorn. It was greeted with wide acclaim, and particularly pleased the new pope, Urban VIII, to whom it had been dedicated. In Rome, in the previous decade, Barberini, the future Urban VIII, had come down on the side of Galileo and the Lincean Academy.

Galileo's dispute with Grassi permanently alienated many Jesuits, and Galileo and his friends were convinced that they were responsible for bringing about his later condemnation, although supporting evidence for this is not conclusive.

==Controversy over heliocentrism==
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the center of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies, or Tycho Brahe's new system blending geocentrism with heliocentrism. Opposition to heliocentrism and Galileo's writings on it combined religious and scientific objections. Religious opposition to heliocentrism arose from biblical passages implying the fixed nature of the Earth. Scientific opposition came from Brahe, who argued that if heliocentrism were true, an annual stellar parallax should be observed, though none was at the time. Aristarchus and Copernicus had correctly postulated that parallax was negligible because the stars were so distant. However, Tycho countered that since stars appear to have measurable angular size, if the stars were that distant and their apparent size is due to their physical size, they would be far larger than the Sun. In fact, it is not possible to observe the physical size of distant stars without modern telescopes.

Galileo defended heliocentrism based on his astronomical observations of 1609. In December 1613, the Grand Duchess Christina of Florence confronted one of Galileo's friends and followers, Benedetto Castelli, with biblical objections to the motion of the Earth. Prompted by this incident, Galileo wrote a letter to Castelli in which he argued that heliocentrism was actually not contrary to biblical texts, and that the Bible was an authority on faith and morals, not science. This letter was not published, but circulated widely. Two years later, Galileo wrote a letter to Christina that expanded his arguments previously made in eight pages to forty pages.

By 1615, Galileo's writings on heliocentrism had been submitted to the Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolò Lorini, who claimed that Galileo and his followers were attempting to reinterpret the Bible, which was seen as a violation of the Council of Trent and looked dangerously like Protestantism. Lorini specifically cited Galileo's letter to Castelli. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself and his ideas. At the start of 1616, Monsignor Francesco Ingoli initiated a debate with Galileo, sending him an essay disputing the Copernican system. Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed. Ingoli may have been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy, with the essay providing the basis for the Inquisition's actions. The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism. It borrowed primarily from Tycho Brahe's arguments, notably that heliocentrism would require the stars as they appeared to be much larger than the Sun. The essay also included four theological arguments, but Ingoli suggested Galileo focus on the physical and mathematical arguments, and he did not mention Galileo's biblical ideas.
In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture". The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth's movement "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith". Pope Paul V instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to deliver this finding to Galileo, and to order him to abandon heliocentrism. On 26 February, Galileo was called to Bellarmine's residence and ordered "to abandon completely ... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction.
For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the admonition of Galileo in 1616. Galileo's resulting book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Earlier, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, "Simplicio" in Italian), the name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". This portrayal of Simplicio made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book: an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the Copernican theory.[citation needed]
Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the Copernican advocacy.[citation needed]
Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings in September 1632. He finally arrived in February 1633 and was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged. Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of the condemned opinions, and initially he denied even defending them. However, he was eventually persuaded to admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defence of Copernicanism. In view of Galileo's rather implausible denial that he had ever held Copernican ideas after 1616 or ever intended to defend them in the Dialogue, his final interrogation, in July 1633, concluded with his being threatened with torture if he did not tell the truth, but he maintained his denial despite the threat.

The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts:

Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" (though he was never formally charged with heresy, relieving him of facing corporal punishment), namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.

He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day, this was commuted to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life.

His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase "And yet it moves". There was a claim that a 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon. The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death. Based on the painting, Stillman Drake wrote "there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death". However, an intensive investigation by astrophysicist Mario Livio has revealed that said painting is most probably a copy of a 1837 painting by the Flemish painter Roman-Eugene Van Maldeghem.

After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence in 1634, where he spent part of his life under house arrest. Galileo was ordered to read the Seven Penitential Psalms once a week for the next three years. However, his daughter Maria Celeste relieved him of the burden after securing ecclesiastical permission to take it upon herself.

It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarised work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials, published in Holland to avoid the censor. This book was highly praised by Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called the "father of modern physics". He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice.

Dava Sobel argues that prior to Galileo's 1633 trial and judgement for heresy, Pope Urban VIII had become preoccupied with court intrigue and problems of state and began to fear persecution or threats to his own life. In this context, Sobel argues that the problem of Galileo was presented to the pope by court insiders and enemies of Galileo. Having been accused of weakness in defending the church, Urban reacted against Galileo out of anger and fear. Mario Livio places Galileo and his discoveries in modern scientific and social contexts. In particular, he argues that the Galileo affair has its counterpart in science denial.

[[Category: People]]

Galileo Galilei

2022-02-18T23:57:17Z

KS:

[[File:Galileo Galilei.jpg|thumb|Galileo]]
'''Galileo Galilei''' (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as '''Galileo''', was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath, from the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and analysis of lunar craters and sunspots.
Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism (Earth rotating daily and revolving around the sun) was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was foolish, absurd, and heretical since it contradicted Holy Scripture.
Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated both the Pope and the Jesuits who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials, summarizing work he had done around forty years earlier.

==Controversy over comets and The Assayer==
In 1619, Galileo became embroiled in a controversy with Father Orazio Grassi, professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano. It began as a dispute over the nature of comets, but by the time Galileo had published The Assayer (Il Saggiatore) in 1623, his last salvo in the dispute, it had become a much wider controversy over the very nature of science itself. The title page of the book describes Galileo as philosopher and "Matematico Primario" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[citation needed]
Because The Assayer contains such a wealth of Galileo's ideas on how science should be practised, it has been referred to as his scientific manifesto. Early in 1619, Father Grassi had anonymously published a pamphlet, An Astronomical Disputation on the Three Comets of the Year 1618, which discussed the nature of a comet that had appeared late in November of the previous year. Grassi concluded that the comet was a fiery body that had moved along a segment of a great circle at a constant distance from the earth, and since it moved in the sky more slowly than the Moon, it must be farther away than the Moon.

Grassi's arguments and conclusions were criticized in a subsequent article, Discourse on Comets, published under the name of one of Galileo's disciples, a Florentine lawyer named Mario Guiducci, although it had been largely written by Galileo himself. Galileo and Guiducci offered no definitive theory of their own on the nature of comets, although they did present some tentative conjectures that are now known to be mistaken. (The correct approach to the study of comets had been proposed at the time by Tycho Brahe.) In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner, and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work. The Jesuits were offended, and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano, purporting to be one of his own pupils.

The Assayer was Galileo's devastating reply to the Astronomical Balance. It has been widely recognized as a masterpiece of polemical literature, in which "Sarsi's" arguments are subjected to withering scorn. It was greeted with wide acclaim, and particularly pleased the new pope, Urban VIII, to whom it had been dedicated. In Rome, in the previous decade, Barberini, the future Urban VIII, had come down on the side of Galileo and the Lincean Academy.

Galileo's dispute with Grassi permanently alienated many Jesuits, and Galileo and his friends were convinced that they were responsible for bringing about his later condemnation, although supporting evidence for this is not conclusive.

==Controversy over heliocentrism==
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the center of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies, or Tycho Brahe's new system blending geocentrism with heliocentrism. Opposition to heliocentrism and Galileo's writings on it combined religious and scientific objections. Religious opposition to heliocentrism arose from biblical passages implying the fixed nature of the Earth. Scientific opposition came from Brahe, who argued that if heliocentrism were true, an annual stellar parallax should be observed, though none was at the time. Aristarchus and Copernicus had correctly postulated that parallax was negligible because the stars were so distant. However, Tycho countered that since stars appear to have measurable angular size, if the stars were that distant and their apparent size is due to their physical size, they would be far larger than the Sun. In fact, it is not possible to observe the physical size of distant stars without modern telescopes.

Galileo defended heliocentrism based on his astronomical observations of 1609. In December 1613, the Grand Duchess Christina of Florence confronted one of Galileo's friends and followers, Benedetto Castelli, with biblical objections to the motion of the Earth. Prompted by this incident, Galileo wrote a letter to Castelli in which he argued that heliocentrism was actually not contrary to biblical texts, and that the Bible was an authority on faith and morals, not science. This letter was not published, but circulated widely. Two years later, Galileo wrote a letter to Christina that expanded his arguments previously made in eight pages to forty pages.

By 1615, Galileo's writings on heliocentrism had been submitted to the Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolò Lorini, who claimed that Galileo and his followers were attempting to reinterpret the Bible, which was seen as a violation of the Council of Trent and looked dangerously like Protestantism. Lorini specifically cited Galileo's letter to Castelli. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself and his ideas. At the start of 1616, Monsignor Francesco Ingoli initiated a debate with Galileo, sending him an essay disputing the Copernican system. Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed. Ingoli may have been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy, with the essay providing the basis for the Inquisition's actions. The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism. It borrowed primarily from Tycho Brahe's arguments, notably that heliocentrism would require the stars as they appeared to be much larger than the Sun. The essay also included four theological arguments, but Ingoli suggested Galileo focus on the physical and mathematical arguments, and he did not mention Galileo's biblical ideas.
In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture". The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth's movement "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith". Pope Paul V instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to deliver this finding to Galileo, and to order him to abandon heliocentrism. On 26 February, Galileo was called to Bellarmine's residence and ordered "to abandon completely ... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction.
For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the admonition of Galileo in 1616. Galileo's resulting book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Earlier, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, "Simplicio" in Italian), the name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". This portrayal of Simplicio made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book: an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the Copernican theory.[citation needed]
Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the Copernican advocacy.[citation needed]
Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings in September 1632. He finally arrived in February 1633 and was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged. Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of the condemned opinions, and initially he denied even defending them. However, he was eventually persuaded to admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defence of Copernicanism. In view of Galileo's rather implausible denial that he had ever held Copernican ideas after 1616 or ever intended to defend them in the Dialogue, his final interrogation, in July 1633, concluded with his being threatened with torture if he did not tell the truth, but he maintained his denial despite the threat.

The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts:

Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" (though he was never formally charged with heresy, relieving him of facing corporal punishment), namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.

He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day, this was commuted to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life.

His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase "And yet it moves". There was a claim that a 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon. The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death. Based on the painting, Stillman Drake wrote "there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death". However, an intensive investigation by astrophysicist Mario Livio has revealed that said painting is most probably a copy of a 1837 painting by the Flemish painter Roman-Eugene Van Maldeghem.

After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence in 1634, where he spent part of his life under house arrest. Galileo was ordered to read the Seven Penitential Psalms once a week for the next three years. However, his daughter Maria Celeste relieved him of the burden after securing ecclesiastical permission to take it upon herself.

It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarised work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials, published in Holland to avoid the censor. This book was highly praised by Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called the "father of modern physics". He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice.

Dava Sobel argues that prior to Galileo's 1633 trial and judgement for heresy, Pope Urban VIII had become preoccupied with court intrigue and problems of state and began to fear persecution or threats to his own life. In this context, Sobel argues that the problem of Galileo was presented to the pope by court insiders and enemies of Galileo. Having been accused of weakness in defending the church, Urban reacted against Galileo out of anger and fear. Mario Livio places Galileo and his discoveries in modern scientific and social contexts. In particular, he argues that the Galileo affair has its counterpart in science denial.

[[Category: People]]

Galileo Galilei

2022-02-18T23:56:47Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

[ File:Galileo Galilei .jpg|thumb|Galileo]]
'''Galileo Galilei''' (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as '''Galileo''', was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath, from the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and analysis of lunar craters and sunspots.
Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism (Earth rotating daily and revolving around the sun) was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was foolish, absurd, and heretical since it contradicted Holy Scripture.
Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated both the Pope and the Jesuits who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials, summarizing work he had done around forty years earlier.

==Controversy over comets and The Assayer==
In 1619, Galileo became embroiled in a controversy with Father Orazio Grassi, professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano. It began as a dispute over the nature of comets, but by the time Galileo had published The Assayer (Il Saggiatore) in 1623, his last salvo in the dispute, it had become a much wider controversy over the very nature of science itself. The title page of the book describes Galileo as philosopher and "Matematico Primario" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[citation needed]
Because The Assayer contains such a wealth of Galileo's ideas on how science should be practised, it has been referred to as his scientific manifesto. Early in 1619, Father Grassi had anonymously published a pamphlet, An Astronomical Disputation on the Three Comets of the Year 1618, which discussed the nature of a comet that had appeared late in November of the previous year. Grassi concluded that the comet was a fiery body that had moved along a segment of a great circle at a constant distance from the earth, and since it moved in the sky more slowly than the Moon, it must be farther away than the Moon.

Grassi's arguments and conclusions were criticized in a subsequent article, Discourse on Comets, published under the name of one of Galileo's disciples, a Florentine lawyer named Mario Guiducci, although it had been largely written by Galileo himself. Galileo and Guiducci offered no definitive theory of their own on the nature of comets, although they did present some tentative conjectures that are now known to be mistaken. (The correct approach to the study of comets had been proposed at the time by Tycho Brahe.) In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner, and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work. The Jesuits were offended, and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance, under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano, purporting to be one of his own pupils.

The Assayer was Galileo's devastating reply to the Astronomical Balance. It has been widely recognized as a masterpiece of polemical literature, in which "Sarsi's" arguments are subjected to withering scorn. It was greeted with wide acclaim, and particularly pleased the new pope, Urban VIII, to whom it had been dedicated. In Rome, in the previous decade, Barberini, the future Urban VIII, had come down on the side of Galileo and the Lincean Academy.

Galileo's dispute with Grassi permanently alienated many Jesuits, and Galileo and his friends were convinced that they were responsible for bringing about his later condemnation, although supporting evidence for this is not conclusive.

==Controversy over heliocentrism==
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the center of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies, or Tycho Brahe's new system blending geocentrism with heliocentrism. Opposition to heliocentrism and Galileo's writings on it combined religious and scientific objections. Religious opposition to heliocentrism arose from biblical passages implying the fixed nature of the Earth. Scientific opposition came from Brahe, who argued that if heliocentrism were true, an annual stellar parallax should be observed, though none was at the time. Aristarchus and Copernicus had correctly postulated that parallax was negligible because the stars were so distant. However, Tycho countered that since stars appear to have measurable angular size, if the stars were that distant and their apparent size is due to their physical size, they would be far larger than the Sun. In fact, it is not possible to observe the physical size of distant stars without modern telescopes.

Galileo defended heliocentrism based on his astronomical observations of 1609. In December 1613, the Grand Duchess Christina of Florence confronted one of Galileo's friends and followers, Benedetto Castelli, with biblical objections to the motion of the Earth. Prompted by this incident, Galileo wrote a letter to Castelli in which he argued that heliocentrism was actually not contrary to biblical texts, and that the Bible was an authority on faith and morals, not science. This letter was not published, but circulated widely. Two years later, Galileo wrote a letter to Christina that expanded his arguments previously made in eight pages to forty pages.

By 1615, Galileo's writings on heliocentrism had been submitted to the Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolò Lorini, who claimed that Galileo and his followers were attempting to reinterpret the Bible, which was seen as a violation of the Council of Trent and looked dangerously like Protestantism. Lorini specifically cited Galileo's letter to Castelli. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself and his ideas. At the start of 1616, Monsignor Francesco Ingoli initiated a debate with Galileo, sending him an essay disputing the Copernican system. Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed. Ingoli may have been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy, with the essay providing the basis for the Inquisition's actions. The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism. It borrowed primarily from Tycho Brahe's arguments, notably that heliocentrism would require the stars as they appeared to be much larger than the Sun. The essay also included four theological arguments, but Ingoli suggested Galileo focus on the physical and mathematical arguments, and he did not mention Galileo's biblical ideas.
In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture". The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth's movement "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith". Pope Paul V instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to deliver this finding to Galileo, and to order him to abandon heliocentrism. On 26 February, Galileo was called to Bellarmine's residence and ordered "to abandon completely ... the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction.
For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing a book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the admonition of Galileo in 1616. Galileo's resulting book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Earlier, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, "Simplicio" in Italian), the name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". This portrayal of Simplicio made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book: an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the Copernican theory.[citation needed]
Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take the suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the Copernican advocacy.[citation needed]
Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings in September 1632. He finally arrived in February 1633 and was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged. Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of the condemned opinions, and initially he denied even defending them. However, he was eventually persuaded to admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defence of Copernicanism. In view of Galileo's rather implausible denial that he had ever held Copernican ideas after 1616 or ever intended to defend them in the Dialogue, his final interrogation, in July 1633, concluded with his being threatened with torture if he did not tell the truth, but he maintained his denial despite the threat.

The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts:

Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" (though he was never formally charged with heresy, relieving him of facing corporal punishment), namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.

He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day, this was commuted to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life.

His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase "And yet it moves". There was a claim that a 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon. The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death. Based on the painting, Stillman Drake wrote "there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death". However, an intensive investigation by astrophysicist Mario Livio has revealed that said painting is most probably a copy of a 1837 painting by the Flemish painter Roman-Eugene Van Maldeghem.

After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence in 1634, where he spent part of his life under house arrest. Galileo was ordered to read the Seven Penitential Psalms once a week for the next three years. However, his daughter Maria Celeste relieved him of the burden after securing ecclesiastical permission to take it upon herself.

It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarised work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials, published in Holland to avoid the censor. This book was highly praised by Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called the "father of modern physics". He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice.

Dava Sobel argues that prior to Galileo's 1633 trial and judgement for heresy, Pope Urban VIII had become preoccupied with court intrigue and problems of state and began to fear persecution or threats to his own life. In this context, Sobel argues that the problem of Galileo was presented to the pope by court insiders and enemies of Galileo. Having been accused of weakness in defending the church, Urban reacted against Galileo out of anger and fear. Mario Livio places Galileo and his discoveries in modern scientific and social contexts. In particular, he argues that the Galileo affair has its counterpart in science denial.

[[Category: People]]

File:Galileo Galilei .jpg

2022-02-18T20:16:11Z

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Liber Officiorum Spirituum

2022-02-17T04:48:10Z

KS: Created with content derivved from Wikipedia

The '''Liber Officiorum Spirituum''' (English: The Book of the Office of Spirits) was a demonological grimoire and a major source for [[Johann Weyer]]'s [[Pseudomonarchia Daemonum]] and the [[Ars Goetia]]. The original work (if it is a single work) has not been located, but some derived texts bearing the title have been found, some in the Sloane manuscripts, some in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Each version bears many similarities to each other and to the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and the Ars Goetia, though they are far from identical.

==History==
Johannes Trithemius mentions two separate works (Liber quoque Officiorum, and De Officiis Spirituum), indicating that the text may have branched off by his time. Weyer, in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, lists his source as Liber officiorum spirituum. [[Thomas Rudd]] titles his copy of the Ars Goetia as Liber Malorum Spirituum.

The most detailed version is a direct but poor translation from English to Latin. This version was either copied or translated by Englishman John Porter in 1583. This version was owned by artist Richard Cosway. Upon his death in the 1820s, it passed hands to a bookshop owned by John Denley, bought by an occultist named George W. Graham on behalf of a Magical organization known as "the Society of the Mercurii." In the hands of the Mercurii, it came into the possession of Robert Cross Smith in 1822, who had John Palmer copy it. With Smith's death in 1832, the copy was passed on to Frederick Hockley. At some later date, Hockley acquired the first half of Porter's original manuscript, and attempted to compile both Porter's and Palmer's versions into a single version.

Sloane MS 3824 (from the mid-seventeenth century) features a number of elements from the Book of the Office of Spirits and is an early form of the Lemegeton. MS 3853 is titled The Office of Spirits, starts off nearly identical to more complete Porter version.

Hockley's version, and some portions of the other known versions, were published in 2011 by Teitan Press as A Book of the Office of Spirits.

The manuscript Hockley copied from was translated and edited by Daniel Harms and Joseph Peterson in 2015 as The Book of Oberon.

[[Category: Grimoires]]

Occult:VisualEditor

2022-02-17T04:41:19Z

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This is a switch between the Visual Editor and the regular one

File:Mercury.png

2022-02-17T04:36:57Z

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Jupiter

2022-02-17T04:32:30Z

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[[File: Jupiter.jpg|thumb|The symbol for Jupiter]]
'''Jupiter''' is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus. People have been observing it since prehistoric times; it was named after the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods, because of its observed size.

==Astrology==
Jupiter is the thinking-person’s planet. As the guardian of the abstract mind, this planet rules higher learning, and bestows upon us a yen for exploring ideas, both intellectually and spiritually. Intellectually speaking, Jupiter assists us in formulating our ideology. In the more spiritual realm, Jupiter lords over religions and philosophy. A search for the answers is what Jupiter proposes, and if it means spanning the globe to find them, well, that’s probably why Jupiter also rules long-distance travel. In keeping with this theme, Jupiter compels us to assess our ethical and moral values; it also addresses our sense of optimism.

Luck and good fortune are associated with Jupiter for good reason. This is a kind and benevolent planet, one that wants us to grow and flourish in a positive way. Jupiter may be judge and jury, but it’s mostly an honorable helpmate, seeing to it that we’re on the right path. While our success, accomplishments and prosperity are all within Jupiter’s realm, this largesse can, at times, deteriorate into laziness and sloth (Jupiter, at its worst, is associated with weight gain!). More often than not, however, Jupiter will guide us down the primrose path.

Leisure time is also one Jupiter’s pastimes. Sports of all kinds, games of chance and a stroll in the park with the family pet (Jupiter loves animals) –- these are all ruled by this planet. Finally, Jupiter often presages great wealth, material and otherwise. This is a good friend in the heavens!

It takes Jupiter about 12 years to circle the [[zodiac]] (the planet visits an average of one sign a year). It is masculine energy and rules both [[Sagittarius]] and [[Pisces]], and the Ninth and Twelfth Houses.

[[Category: Planets]]

Jupiter

2022-02-17T04:31:37Z

KS:

[[File: Jupiter.jpg|thumb|The symbol for Jupiter]]
'''Jupiter''' is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus. People have been observing it since prehistoric times; it was named after the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods, because of its observed size.

Jupiter is the thinking-person’s planet. As the guardian of the abstract mind, this planet rules higher learning, and bestows upon us a yen for exploring ideas, both intellectually and spiritually. Intellectually speaking, Jupiter assists us in formulating our ideology. In the more spiritual realm, Jupiter lords over religions and philosophy. A search for the answers is what Jupiter proposes, and if it means spanning the globe to find them, well, that’s probably why Jupiter also rules long-distance travel. In keeping with this theme, Jupiter compels us to assess our ethical and moral values; it also addresses our sense of optimism.

Luck and good fortune are associated with Jupiter for good reason. This is a kind and benevolent planet, one that wants us to grow and flourish in a positive way. Jupiter may be judge and jury, but it’s mostly an honorable helpmate, seeing to it that we’re on the right path. While our success, accomplishments and prosperity are all within Jupiter’s realm, this largesse can, at times, deteriorate into laziness and sloth (Jupiter, at its worst, is associated with weight gain!). More often than not, however, Jupiter will guide us down the primrose path.

Leisure time is also one Jupiter’s pastimes. Sports of all kinds, games of chance and a stroll in the park with the family pet (Jupiter loves animals) –- these are all ruled by this planet. Finally, Jupiter often presages great wealth, material and otherwise. This is a good friend in the heavens!

It takes Jupiter about 12 years to circle the [[zodiac]] (the planet visits an average of one sign a year). It is masculine energy and rules both [[Sagittarius]] and [[Pisces]], and the Ninth and Twelfth Houses.

[[Category: Planets]]

Jupiter

2022-02-17T04:30:02Z

KS: Created page with "The symbol for Jupiter '''Jupiter'' is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than t..."

[[File: Jupiter.jpg|thumb|The symbol for Jupiter]]
'''Jupiter'' is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus. People have been observing it since prehistoric times; it was named after the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods, because of its observed size.
\Jupiter is the thinking-person’s planet. As the guardian of the abstract mind, this planet rules higher learning, and bestows upon us a yen for exploring ideas, both intellectually and spiritually. Intellectually speaking, Jupiter assists us in formulating our ideology. In the more spiritual realm, Jupiter lords over religions and philosophy. A search for the answers is what Jupiter proposes, and if it means spanning the globe to find them, well, that’s probably why Jupiter also rules long-distance travel. In keeping with this theme, Jupiter compels us to assess our ethical and moral values; it also addresses our sense of optimism.

Luck and good fortune are associated with Jupiter for good reason. This is a kind and benevolent planet, one that wants us to grow and flourish in a positive way. Jupiter may be judge and jury, but it’s mostly an honorable helpmate, seeing to it that we’re on the right path. While our success, accomplishments and prosperity are all within Jupiter’s realm, this largesse can, at times, deteriorate into laziness and sloth (Jupiter, at its worst, is associated with weight gain!). More often than not, however, Jupiter will guide us down the primrose path.

Leisure time is also one Jupiter’s pastimes. Sports of all kinds, games of chance and a stroll in the park with the family pet (Jupiter loves animals) –- these are all ruled by this planet. Finally, Jupiter often presages great wealth, material and otherwise. This is a good friend in the heavens!

It takes Jupiter about 12 years to circle the zodiac (the planet visits an average of one sign a year). It is masculine energy and rules both Sagittarius and Pisces, and the Ninth and Twelfth Houses.

[[Category: Planets]]

File:Jupiter.jpg

2022-02-17T04:29:20Z

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Uranus

2022-02-17T04:24:11Z

KS: Created page with "The symbols for Uranus '''Uranus''' is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus, who, according t..."

[[File:Uranus.jpg|thumb|The symbols for Uranus]]
'''Uranus''' is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus, who, according to Greek mythology, was the great-grandfather of Ares ([[Mars]]), grandfather of Zeus ([[Jupiter]]) and father of Cronus ([[Saturn]]). It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. Uranus is similar in composition to [[Neptune]], and both have bulk chemical compositions which differ from that of the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. For this reason, scientists often classify Uranus and Neptune as "ice giants" to distinguish them from the other giant planets.

==Astrology==
Uranus rules surprise and all things unexpected. It also rules the future and new technology, including all that is newly invented and all that is unimagined and yet to come. It is the "father" of electricity.

Innovative, unpredictable, resourceful, imaginative, idiosyncratic and experimental, Uranus also rules creativity and scientific genius. Uranus’s job is to break rules and demolish established patterns or structures, creating sudden-even radical-change. Uranus always works in sudden ways, and is called the Great Awakener.

Uranus gives a strong impulse for rebellion, independence, and even shock. Exciting and liberating, Uranus will overturn anything traditional, conventional or orthodox that it deems has outlived its usefulness.

This planet produces quick, liberating results, blending fact with intuition in its quest to discover universal truths. Uranus is considered the higher octave of intellectual [[Mercury]], and is strongly objective and brainy, with no emotional side. Those people with strong Uranian influences in their charts are trailblazers and forerunners in their communities.

Since Uranus also holds sway over social change, it also regulates the global brotherhood of man and all humanitarian concerns, including environmental issues. Uranus rules the [[Aquarius]].

This planet stays in a sign for seven years and therefore takes 84 years to circle the zodiac.

[[Category: Planets]]

Category:Monarchs

2022-02-17T04:21:14Z

KS: Created page with "This category includes all monarchs with articles in the Occult Encyclopedia"

This category includes all monarchs with articles in the Occult Encyclopedia