Spain
Spain the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula, its territory includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country. Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are part of Spanish territory; the country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar. With an area of 505,990 km2, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the fifth in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Spn or Spania.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi and Vandals. The Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces, into the Kingdom of Toledo, which more or less unified politically and all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was documented as Hispania. In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada; this led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion.
Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs. Until Aragon had been an independent kingdom, which had expanded toward the eastern Mediterranean, incorporating Sicily and Naples, had competed with Genoa and Venice. In the early modern period, Spain became the world's first global empire and the most powerful country in the world, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes more than 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were many advancements in the arts, with world-famous painters such as Diego Velázquez; the most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was published during the Golden Age. Spain hosts the world's third-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state.
It is a major developed country and a high income country, with the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization and many other international organisations. While not an official member, Spain has a "Permanent Invitation" to the G20 summits, participating in every summit, which makes Spain a de facto member of the group; the origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, are uncertain due to inadequate evidence, although it is documented that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians referred to the region as Spania, therefore the most accepted etymology is a Semitic-Phoenician one.
Down the centuries there have been a number of accounts and hypotheses: The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged", it may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean. The word in question means "Hyrax" due to Phoenicians confusing the two animals. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia
Rule of Saint Benedict
The Rule of Saint Benedict is a book of precepts written by Benedict of Nursia for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot. The spirit of Saint Benedict's Rule is summed up in the motto of the Benedictine Confederation: pax and the traditional ora et labora. Compared to other precepts, the Rule provides a moderate path between individual zeal and formulaic institutionalism. Benedict's concerns were the needs of monks in a community environment: namely, to establish due order, to foster an understanding of the relational nature of human beings, to provide a spiritual father to support and strengthen the individual's ascetic effort and the spiritual growth, required for the fulfillment of the human vocation, theosis; the Rule of Saint Benedict has been used by Benedictines for 15 centuries, thus St. Benedict is sometimes regarded as the founder of Western monasticism due to reform that his rules had on the current Catholic hierarchy. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that Benedict intended to found a religious order in the modern sense and it was not until the Middle Ages that mention was made of an "Order of Saint Benedict".
His Rule was written as a guide for individual, autonomous communities, all Benedictine Houses still remain self-governing. Advantages seen in retaining this unique Benedictine emphasis on autonomy include cultivating models of bonded communities and contemplative lifestyles. Perceived disadvantages comprise geographical isolation from important activities in adjacent communities. Other perceived losses include inefficiency and lack of mobility in the service of others, insufficient appeal to potential members; these different emphases emerged within the framework of the Rule in the course of history and are to some extent present within the Benedictine Confederation and the Cistercian Orders of the Common and the Strict Observance. Christian monasticism first appeared in the Egyptian desert, in the Eastern Roman Empire a few generations before Benedict of Nursia. Under the inspiration of Saint Anthony the Great, ascetic monks led by Saint Pachomius formed the first Christian monastic communities under what became known as an Abbot, from the Aramaic abba.
Within a generation, both solitary as well as communal monasticism became popular which spread outside of Egypt, first to Palestine and the Judean Desert and thence to Syria and North Africa. Saint Basil of Caesarea codified the precepts for these eastern monasteries in his Ascetic Rule, or Ascetica, still used today in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the West in about the year 500, Benedict became so upset by the immorality of society in Rome that he gave up his studies there, at age fourteen, chose the life of an ascetic monk in the pursuit of personal holiness, living as a hermit in a cave near the rugged region of Subiaco. In time, setting an example with his zeal, he began to attract disciples. After considerable initial struggles with his first community at Subiaco, he founded the monastery of Monte Cassino in 529, where he wrote his Rule near the end of his life. In chapter 73, Saint Benedict alludes to further authorities, he was aware of the Rule written by Pachomius, his Rule shows influence by the Rule of St Augustine of Hippo and the writings of Saint John Cassian.
Benedict's greatest debt, may be to the anonymous document known as the Rule of the Master, which Benedict seems to have radically excised, expanded and corrected in the light of his own considerable experience and insight. Saint Benedict's work expounded upon preconceived ideas that were present in the religious community only making tweak more in line with the time period relevant to his system; the Rule opens with a hortatory preface, in which Saint Benedict sets forth the main principles of the religious life, viz.: the renunciation of one's own will and arming oneself "with the strong and noble weapons of obedience" under the banner of "the true King, Christ the Lord". He proposes to establish a "school for the Lord's service" in which the "way to salvation" shall be taught, so that by persevering in the monastery till death his disciples may "through patience share in the passion of Christ that may deserve to share in his Kingdom". Chapter 1 defines four kinds of monk:Cenobites, those "in a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot".
Anchorites, or hermits, after long successful training in a monastery, are now coping single-handedly, with only God for their help. Sarabaites, living by twos and threes together or alone, with no experience and superior, thus a law unto themselves. Gyrovagues, wandering from one monastery to another, slaves to their own appetites. Chapter 2 describes the necessary qualifications of an abbot, forbids the abbot to make distinctions between persons in the monastery except for particular merit, warns him he will be answerable for the salvation of the souls in his care. Chapter 3 ordains the calling of the brothers to council upon all affairs of importance to the community. Chapter 4 lists 73 "tools for good work", "tools of the spiritual craft" for the "workshop", "the enclosure of the monastery and the stability in the community"; these are the duties of every Christian and are Scriptural either in letter or in spiri
Casinum
Casinum was an ancient town of Italy of Volscian origin. Varro states that the name was Sabine, meant forum vetus, that the town itself was Samnite, but he is wrong; when it came under Roman supremacy is not known, but it received the citizenship in 188 BC. It was the most southeasterly town in Latium adiectum, situated on the Via Latina about 40 miles north-west of Capua, it appears in the history of the Hannibalic War. Varro possessed a villa near it, in which on Mark Antony held his orgies. Towards the end of the republic it was a praefectura, under the empire it appears as a colony, though in two inscriptions it is called municipium. Strabo speaks of it as an important town; the older Volscian Casinum must have stood on the hill above the Roman town, where considerable remains of fortifications in Cyclopean masonry, of finely cut blocks of limestone, still exist. The site is now occupied by the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino founded by St. Benedict himself in 529. A number of Roman inscriptions from Casinum are preserved there.
The wall which runs southwest and west starting from the west side of the monastery, for a total length of about 300 yd. is not so traceable on the other side of the hill, though there is one fragment under the east side of the monastery. The Roman town lay at the foot of the mountain, close to the Via Latina; the amphitheatre, erected by Ummidia Quadratilla, still exists: it is built of opus reticulatum and the five entrances are by arches of larger blocks of stone. The external walls are 59 feet high; the seats in the interior have disappeared. Above it on the hillside is a theatre of opus reticulatum, less well preserved. Close by is a building converted into the Cappella del Crocefisso perhaps a tomb in the Via Latina. On the opposite bank of the Rapido are the ruins called Monticelli, attributed to the villa of Varro, a part of, drawn by the architects of the 16th century; the medieval town of San Germano, which resumed the name Cassino in 1871, lies a little to the north. The cathedral was founded in the 8th century, but the present building was constructed in the 17th century.
The church of S. Maria delle Cinque Torri contains twelve ancient marble columns; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Casinum". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press
Dialogue
Dialogue is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a narrative, philosophical or didactic device, it is chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are found in other traditions including Indian literature. In the 20th century, philosophical treatments of dialogue emerged from thinkers including Mikhail Bakhtin, Paulo Freire, Martin Buber, David Bohm. Although diverging in many details, these thinkers have articulated a holistic concept of dialogue as a multi-dimensional and context-dependent process of creating meaning. Educators such as Freire and Ramón Flecha have developed a body of theory and techniques for using egalitarian dialogue as a pedagogical tool; the term dialogue stems from the Greek διάλογος. The first extant author who uses the term is Plato, in whose works it is associated with the art of dialectic. Latin took over the word as dialogus.
Dialogue as a genre in the Middle East and Asia dates back to ancient works, such as Sumerian disputations preserved in copies from the late third millennium BC, Rigvedic dialogue hymns and the Mahabharata. In the East, In 13th century Japan, dialogue was used in important philosophical works. In the 1200s, Nichiren Daishonin wrote some of his important writings in dialogue form, describing a meeting between two characters in order to present his argument and theory, such as in "Conversation between a Sage and an Unenlightened Man", "On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land", while in other writings he used a question and answer format, without the narrative scenario, such as in "Questions and Answers about Embracing the Lotus Sutra"; the sage or person answering the questions was understood as the author. In the West, Plato has been credited with the systematic use of dialogue as an independent literary form. Ancient sources indicate, that the Platonic dialogue had its foundations in the mime, which the Sicilian poets Sophron and Epicharmus had cultivated half a century earlier.
These works and imitated by Plato, have not survived and we have only the vaguest idea of how they may have been performed. The Mimes of Herodas, which were found in a papyrus in 1891, give some idea of their character. Plato further simplified the form and reduced it to pure argumentative conversation, while leaving intact the amusing element of character-drawing. By about 400 BC he had perfected the Socratic dialogue. All his extant writings, except the Apology and Epistles, use this form. Following Plato, the dialogue became a major literary genre in antiquity, several important works both in Latin and in Greek were written. Soon after Plato, Xenophon wrote his own Symposium. Two French writers of eminence borrowed the title of Lucian's most famous collection. Contemporaneously, in 1688, the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche published his Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, thus contributing to the genre's revival in philosophic circles. In English non-dramatic literature the dialogue did not see extensive use until Berkeley employed it, in 1713, for his treatise, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.
His contemporary, the Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. A prominent 19th-century example of literary dialogue was Landor's Imaginary Conversations. In Germany, Wieland adopted this form for several important satirical works published between 1780 and 1799. In Spanish literature, the Dialogues of Valdés and those on Painting by Vincenzo Carducci are celebrated. Italian writers of collections of dialogues, following Plato's model, include Torquato Tasso, Galiani, a host of others. In the 19th century, the French returned to the original application of dialogue; the inventions of "Gyp", of Henri Lavedan, of others, which tell a mundane anecdote wittily and maliciously in conversation, would present a close analogy to the lost mimes of the early Sicilian poets. English writers including Anstey Guthrie adopted the form, but these dialogues seem to have found less of a popular following among the English than their counterparts written by French authors; the Platonic dialogue, as a distinct genre which features Socrates as a speaker and one or more interlocutors discussing some philosophical question, experienced something of a rebirth in the 20th century.
Authors who have employed it include George Santayana, in his eminent Dialogues in Limbo. Edith Stein and Iris Murdoch used the dialogue form. Stein imagined a dialogue between Thomas Aquinas. Murdoch included not only Socrates and Alcibiades as interlocutors in her work Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues, but featured a young Plato himself as well. More Timothy Williamson wrote Tetralogue, a philosophical exchange on a train between four people with radically different epistemological views. Martin Buber assigns dialogue a pivotal position in his theology, his most influential wor
Battle of Monte Cassino
The Battle of Monte Cassino was a costly series of four assaults by the Allies against the Winter Line in Italy held by Axis forces during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The intention was a breakthrough to Rome. At the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans holding the Rapido-Gari and Garigliano valleys and some of the surrounding peaks and ridges. Together, these features formed the Gustav Line. Monte Cassino, a historic hilltop abbey founded in AD 529 by Benedict of Nursia, dominated the nearby town of Cassino and the entrances to the Liri and Rapido valleys. Lying in a protected historic zone, it had been left unoccupied by the Germans, although they manned some positions set into the steep slopes below the abbey's walls. Repeated pinpoint artillery attacks on Allied assault troops caused their leaders to conclude the abbey was being used by the Germans as an observation post, at the least. Fears escalated along with casualties and in spite of a lack of clear evidence, it was marked for destruction.
On 15 February American bombers dropped 1,400 tons of high explosives. The raid failed to achieve its objective, as German paratroopers occupied the rubble and established excellent defensive positions amid the ruins. Between 17 January and 18 May, Monte Cassino and the Gustav defences were assaulted four times by Allied troops. On 16 May, soldiers from the Polish II Corps launched one of the final assaults on the German defensive position as part of a twenty-division assault along a twenty-mile front. On 18 May, a Polish flag followed by the British Union Jack were raised over the ruins. Following this Allied victory, the German Senger Line collapsed on 25 May; the German defenders were driven from their positions, but at a high cost. The capture of Monte Cassino resulted in 55,000 Allied casualties, with German losses being far fewer, estimated at around 20,000 killed and wounded; the Allied landings in Italy in September 1943 by two Allied armies, following shortly after the Allied landings in Sicily in July, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander, the Commander-in-Chief of the 15th Army Group, were followed by an advance northward on two fronts, one on each side of the central mountain range forming the "spine" of Italy.
On the western front, the American Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, which had suffered heavy casualties during the main landing at Salerno in September, moved from the main base of Naples up the Italian "boot" and on the eastern front the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, advanced up the Adriatic coast. Clark's Fifth Army made slow progress in the face of difficult terrain, wet weather and skillful German defences; the Germans were fighting from a series of prepared positions in a manner designed to inflict maximum damage pulling back while buying time for the construction of the Winter Line defensive positions south of the Italian capital of Rome. The original estimates that Rome would fall by October 1943 proved far too optimistic. Although in the east the German defensive line had been breached on Montgomery's Eighth Army Adriatic front and Ortona was captured by the 1st Canadian Division, the advance had ground to a halt with the onset of winter blizzards at the end of December, making close air support and movement in the jagged terrain impossible.
The route to Rome from the east using Route 5 was thus excluded as a viable option leaving the routes from Naples to Rome, highways 6 and 7, as the only possibilities. Highway 6 ran through the Liri valley, dominated at its south entrance by the rugged mass of Monte Cassino above the town of Cassino. Excellent observation from the peaks of several hills allowed the German defenders to detect Allied movement and direct accurate artillery fire, preventing any northward advance. Running across the Allied line was the fast flowing Rapido River, which rose in the central Apennine Mountains, flowed through Cassino and across the entrance to the Liri valley. There the Liri river joined the Gari to form the Garigliano River. With its fortified mountain defences, difficult river crossings, valley head flooded by the Germans, Cassino formed a linchpin of the Gustav Line, the most formidable line of the defensive positions making up the Winter Line. In spite of its potential excellence as an observation post, because of the fourteen-century-old Benedictine abbey's historical significance, the German C-in-C in Italy, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, ordered German units not to include it in their defensive positions and informed the Vatican and the Allies accordingly in December 1943.
Some Allied reconnaissance aircraft maintained they observed German troops inside the monastery. While this remains unconfirmed, it is clear that once the monastery was destroyed it was occupied by the Germans and proved better cover for their emplacements and troops than an intact structure would have offered; the plan of the Fifth Army commander, Lieutenant General Clark, was for the British X Corps, under Lieutenant General Richard McCreery, on the left of a thirty-kilometer front, to attack on 17 January 1944, across the Garigliano near the coast. The British 46th Infantry Division was to attack on the night of 19 January across the Garigliano below its junction with the Liri in support of the main attack by U
Terra Sancti Benedicti
The Terra Sancti Benedicti was the secular territory, or seignory, of the powerful Abbey of Montecassino, the chief monastery of the Mezzogiorno and one of the first Western monasteries: founded by Benedict of Nursia himself, hence the name of its possessions. The secular holdings had their origin in the donation of Gisulf II of Benevento in 744; the Terra was not large, it formed a contiguous zone around the hill of Montecassino, but it was valuable land and the site of many battles in many wars. It was subject to the Holy See and constituted its own state. In 1057, Pope Victor II declared that the abbot of Montecassino had preeminence over and above all other abbots; the papacy and the Terra Sancti Benedicti
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus. Varro was born in or near Reate to a family thought to be of equestrian rank, always remained close to his roots in the area, owning a large farm in the Reatine plain, reported as near Lago di Ripa Sottile, until his old age, he supported Pompey, reaching the office of praetor, after having been tribune of the people and curule aedile. He was one of the commission of twenty that carried out the great agrarian scheme of Caesar for the resettlement of Capua and Campania. During the civil war he commanded one of Pompey's armies in the Ilerda campaign, he escaped the penalties of being on the losing side in the civil war through two pardons granted by Julius Caesar and after the Battle of Pharsalus. Caesar appointed him to oversee the public library of Rome in 47 BC, but following Caesar's death Mark Antony proscribed him, resulting in the loss of much of his property, including his library.
As the Republic gave way to Empire, Varro gained the favour of Augustus, under whose protection he found the security and quiet to devote himself to study and writing. Varro studied under the Roman philologist Lucius Aelius Stilo, at Athens under the Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Varro proved to be a productive writer and turned out more than 74 Latin works on a variety of topics. Among his many works, two stand out for historians, his Nine Books of Disciplines became a model for encyclopedists Pliny the Elder. The most noteworthy portion of the Nine Books of Disciplines is its use of the liberal arts as organizing principles. Varro decided to focus on identifying nine of these arts: grammar, logic, geometry, musical theory and architecture. Using Varro's list, subsequent writers defined the seven classical "liberal arts of the medieval schools"; the compilation of the Varronian chronology was an attempt to determine an exact year-by-year timeline of Roman history up to his time. It is based on the traditional sequence of the consuls of the Roman Republic — supplemented, where necessary, by inserting "dictatorial" and "anarchic" years.
It has been demonstrated to be somewhat erroneous but has become the accepted standard chronology, in large part because it was inscribed on the arch of Augustus in Rome. Varro's literary output was prolific. Called "the most learned of the Romans" by Quintilian, Varro was recognized as an important source by many other ancient authors, among them Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Virgil in the Georgics, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius and Vitruvius, who credits him with a book on architecture, his only complete work extant, Rerum rusticarum libri tres, has been described as "the well digested system of an experienced and successful farmer who has seen and practised all that he records."One noteworthy aspect of the work is his anticipation of microbiology and epidemiology. Varro warned his contemporaries to avoid swamps and marshland, since in such areas there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases.
De lingua latina libri XXV Rerum rusticarum libri III Saturarum Menippearum libri CL or Menippean Satires in 150 books Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum libri XLI Logistoricon libri LXXVI Hebdomades vel de imaginibus Disciplinarum libri IX De rebus urbanis libri III De gente populi Romani libri IIII De sua vita libri III De familiis troianis De Antiquitate Litterarum libri II De Origine Linguae Latinae libri III Περί Χαρακτήρων Quaestiones Plautinae libri V De Similitudine Verborum libri III De Utilitate Sermonis libri IIII De Sermone Latino libri V De philosophia Most of the extant fragments of these works can be found in the Goetz–Schoell edition of De Lingua Latina, pp. 199–242. Cardauns, B. Marcus Terentius Varro: Einführung in sein Werk. Heidelberger Studienhefte zur Altertumswissenschaft. Heidelberg, Germany: C. Winter, 2001. D’Alessandro, P. Varrone e la tradizione metrica antica. Spudasmata, Bd. 143. Hildesheim. Dahlmann, H. M. Terentius Varro. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft.
Supplement 6, Abretten bis Thunudromon. Edited by Wilhelm Kroll, 1172–1277. Stut
Steglitz-Zehlendorf (borough of Berlin), Germany, since 1969[8][9]
Zamość, Poland, since 1969
Falaise, France, since 1974
Užice, Serbia since 1981
North York, Canada, since 1987
Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, since 1991
Ortona, Italy, since 1991
Casino, Australia, since 1997
Senglea, Malta, since 2003
Olinda, Brazil, since 2006
