Romagnol dialect
Romagnol is a group of related dialects of the Emilian-Romagnol language spoken in the historical region of Romagna, today in the south-eastern part of Emilia-Romagna. The name itself is derived from the Lombard name for the region Romania, it is spoken outside the region in the neighboring province of Pesaro-Urbino and in the independent country of San Marino. It is classified as a threatened language, due to older generations having “neglected to pass on the dialect as a native tongue to the next generation”. While contemporaneous with modern Standard Italian, it is technically a member of the Gallo-Italic branch and more comparable to the “northern group” of Italian dialects; this includes the dialects Emilian, Ligurian and Piedmontese. It is sometimes considered a subdialect of a larger Emilian-Romagnol language, which encompasses a broad continuum of dialects spanning the region of Emilia-Romagna. West of Romagna, the Emilian language is spoken; the border with Emilian-speaking areas is the Sillaro river, which runs 25 km east from Bologna to the west of.
Emilian is spoken, to the east, in Imola, the language is Romagnol. In Emilia-Romagna, Emilian is spoken in all the rest of the region moving from the Sillaro river to the west, up to Piacenza; the Reno River is the dialect of Ferrara. Romagnol is spoken in some villages northwards of the Reno River, such as Argenta, Emilia–Romagna and Filo, where people of Romagnol origin live alongside people of Ferrarese origin. Ferrara goes into Emilian language territory. Outside Emilia-Romagna, Romagnol is spoken in the Republic of San Marino, in the Marecchia Valley, in the Conca Valley and in all of the Pesaro e Urbino province. Romagnol's first acknowledgement outside regional literature was in Dante Alighieri’s treatise De vulgari eloquentia, wherein Dante compares “the language of Romagna” to his native Tuscan dialect. In 1629, the author Adriano Banchieri wrote the treatise Discorso della lingua Bolognese, which countered Dante’s claim that the Tuscan dialect was better, arguing his belief that Bolognese was superior in “naturalness, softness and usefulness.”
Romagnol received more recognition. There is a large repertoire of folklore legends and fables in Romagnol, due to its role in local geopolitical history. Romagna’s geographic diversity was home to a variety of lifestyles and trade backgrounds, such as “the mountaineers of the Alps, the fisherman of the Adriatic, the farmers of the plains, the city folk,” which in turn, allowed for a large range of topics and themes present in the literature. Darker themes, such as poverty and pessimism, are known to be common subjects of Romagnol poetry and prose; the first appearance of a distinct Romagnol literary work is "Sonetto romagnolo" by Bernardino Catti, from Ravenna, printed 1502. It is written in a mixture of Romagnol; the first Romagnol poem dates back to the end of 16th century: E Pvlon matt. Cantlena aroica, a mock-heroic poem based on Orlando Furioso and written by an anonymous author from San Vittore di Cesena; the original poem comprised twelve cantos. The first Romagnol poet to win fame was the cleric Pietro Santoni.
He was the teacher of one of the most famous Italian poets of his time. In 1840 the first Romagnol-Italian Dictionary was published by Antonio Morri, printed in Faenza; the 20th century saw a flourishing of Romagnol literature. Theatrical plays and books of a high quality were produced; some of the best known Romagnol authors are: Raffaello Baldini, who won in 1988 the "Premio Viareggio" and in 1995 the "Premio Bagutta," known for long pessimistic poems and prose Tonino Guerra, wrote poems during his exile to WWII-era Germany, focusing on people of suffering and poverty Olindo Guerrini, with "Sonetti romagnoli" Aldo Spallicci, an antifascist exiled from Romagna. He wrote poems such as "Rumâgna" that were descriptive of Romagna Unlike Standard Italian, not all nouns end in a theme vowel. Masculine nouns lack theme vowels and feminine nouns terminate in "a." To form plurals, masculine nouns and adjectives undergo lexically-specified ablaut. In the case of feminine nouns and adjectives, "a" becomes "i" or deletes if after a consonant cluster or double consonant.
Though both languages derive their lexicon from Vulgar Latin, some words differ in gender. Italian and Romagnol share much of the same features. Both languages are SVO in simple sentences. Verbs are conjugated according to tense and person. Romagnol has 4 conjugations compared to Italian's 3: the 1st, êr. One marked difference in syntax between Romagnol and Italian is that pronouns are obligatory, some verbs in Romagnol use a reflexive construction where Italian uses an intransitive construction. Verbs that are impersonal in Romagnol use "avèr," in contrast with Italian which uses "essere." Though the subject is null, an expletive pronoun inserts itself in the specifier position, much like English's "it". Italian: è piovuto, It rained Romagnol: l'à piuvù, It rainedAdditionally, whereas Standard Italian and other Northern dialects omit the definite article before “singular names and names of relatives,” Romagnol
Myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives or stories that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. The main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans. Stories of everyday human beings, although of leaders of some type, are contained in legends, as opposed to myths. Myths are endorsed by rulers and priests or priestesses, are linked to religion or spirituality. In fact, many societies group their myths and history together, considering myths and legends to be true accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its form. Other myths explain how a society's customs and taboos were established and sanctified. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and enactment of rituals; the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers.
Today, the study of myth continues in a wide variety of academic fields, including folklore studies and psychology. The term mythology may either refer to the study of myths in general, or a body of myths regarding a particular subject; the academic comparisons of bodies of myth is known as comparative mythology. Since the term myth is used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be political: many adherents of religions view their religion's stories as true and therefore object to the stories being characterised as myths. Scholars now speak of Christian mythology, Jewish mythology, Islamic mythology, Hindu mythology, so forth. Traditionally, Western scholarship, with its Judaeo-Christian heritage, has viewed narratives in the Abrahamic religions as being the province of theology rather than mythology. Labelling all religious narratives as myths can be thought of as treating different traditions with parity. Definitions of myth to some extent vary by scholar.
Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko offers a cited definition: Myth, a story of the gods, a religious account of the beginning of the world, the creation, fundamental events, the exemplary deeds of the gods as a result of which the world and culture were created together with all parts thereof and given their order, which still obtains. A myth expresses and confirms society's religious values and norms, it provides a pattern of behavior to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of cult. Scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, popular misconception or imaginary entity. However, while myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth is thought to differ from genres such as legend and folktale in that neither are considered to be sacred narratives; some kinds of folktales, such as fairy stories, are not considered true by anyone, may be seen as distinct from myths for this reason.
Main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans, while legends feature humans as their main characters. However, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants and faeries. Conversely and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time. For example, the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, seem distantly to originate in historical events of the fifth and eighth-centuries and became mythologised over the following centuries. In colloquial use, the word myth can be used of a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story; this usage, pejorative, arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. However, as used by folklorists and academics in other relevant fields, such as anthropology, the term myth has no implication whether the narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.
In present use, mythology refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures. Folklorist Alan Dundes defines myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Dundes classified a sacred narrative as "a story that serves to define the fundamental worldview of a culture by explaining aspects of the natural world and delineating the psychological and social practices and ideals of a society". Anthropologist Bruce Lincoln defines myth as "ideology in narrative form." The compilation or description of myths is sometimes known as mythography, a term which can be used of a scholarly anthology of myths. Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include Ovid, whose tellings of myths have been profoundingly influential.
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Faenza Cathedral
Faenza Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral built in the style of the Tuscan Renaissance in central Faenza, Italy. It is dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle. Construction of the cathedral began in 1474, on the site of a previous cathedral about which little is known, by order of Carlo II Manfredi, while his brother Federico was bishop of Faenza; the architect was the Florentine Giuliano da Maiano. Construction finished in 1515; the dedication to Saint Peter did not take place until 1581. The cathedral has the status of a basilica minor; the brick façade was left incomplete, in the sense that it was never faced in marble or stone. The church is built on a Latin cross ground plan. In the interior Giuliano appears to have been influenced by Brunelleschi's design of San Lorenzo, Florence in the use of alternating columns and pillars noticeable in the arcades separating the central nave from the two side-aisles; the interior houses numerous works of art Renaissance sculpture. Of especial note are: the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin of Graces, built as a diocesan sanctuary, which contains a fresco of 1412, depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary breaking arrows, symbolising the dangers against which she offers protection.
The cathedral contains a crucifix sculpted by an unknown Northern European wood sculptor and, by Innocenzo da Imola, the Bonaccorsi Altarpiece, a 16th-century table still with its original gold and carved cornice and a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus and Saints John the Baptist and Paul, Joachim and Ann. The wooden choir stalls by the high altar are from 1513. Since 1898 the body of Saint Peter Damian has been buried in a side chapel. On the cathedral square in front of the building are the arcades known as the Portico degli Orefici, built about 1610, the monumental fountains, the bronzes of which date from the 17th century. Bellezza fede e cultura, Itinerari nella diocesi Faenza-Modigliana, under the direction of the Ufficio diocesano per l'arte sacra e i beni culturali. Faenza: Tipografia faentina Il Duomo di Faenza: Faenza: Tipografia faentina La Madonna delle Grazie di Faenza, Notizie storiche, under the direction of the Arciconfraternita della Beata Vergine delle Grazie.
Faenza: Tipografia faentina Il duomo di Faenza, under the direction of Antonio Savioli. Florence: Nardini TerrediFaenza.it: cathedral
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Bergerac, France [6]
Gmunden, Austria [7]
Jingdezhen, China [8]
Marousi, Greece [9]
Rijeka, Croatia [10]
Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany [11]
Talavera de la Reina, Spain [12]
Timişoara, Romania [13]
Toki, Japan [14]
