Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. Starting on 14 May 1643 when Louis was 4 years old, his reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power. Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital, he sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.
Louis encouraged and benefited from the work of prominent political and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, André Charles Boulle, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine, Marais, Le Brun, Bossuet, Le Vau, Charles, Claude Perrault, Le Nôtre. Under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished; the revocation forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis' long reign, France was the leading European power, it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of the Spanish Succession. There were two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce and pique", Louis sensed that warfare was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war.
He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he was named Louis Dieudonné and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years, his mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as his birth a miracle of God. Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, his lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, make the concession of appointing her head of the council. Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time.
Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed. Both were interested in food and theatre, it is likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother; this long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as: "Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed by blood." It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule. During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children François de Villeroy, divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy. On 14 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris.
This action made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers, she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne nominated Saint Vincent de Paul as her spiritual adviser, which helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question. Anne kept the direction of religious policy in her hand until 1661. Anne wanted to give her son a victorious kingdom, her rationales for choosing Mazarin were his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, she left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin. The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor of France Pierre Séguier, in his post. Séguier was the pers
Martin Luther
Martin Luther, was a German professor of theology, priest, a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, he came to reject several practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517, his refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor. Luther taught that salvation and eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin, his theology challenged the authority and office of the Pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge, opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these, all of Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, though Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.
His translation of the Bible into the German vernacular made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible, his hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry. In two of his works, Luther expressed antagonistic views towards Jews, his rhetoric was not directed at Jews alone, but towards Roman Catholics and nontrinitarian Christians. Luther died with his decree of excommunication by Pope Leo X still effective. Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder and his wife Margarethe on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptized the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours.
His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council. The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means" and notes that Luther's enemies wrongly described her as a whore and bath attendant, he had several brothers and sisters, is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob. Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer, he sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium": grammar and logic. Luther compared his education there to purgatory and hell. In 1501, at the age of 17, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he described as a beerhouse and whorehouse.
He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been described as "a day of rote learning and wearying spiritual exercises." He received his master's degree in 1505. In accordance with his father's wishes, he enrolled in law but dropped out immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, Gabriel Biel, he was influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of the greatest thinkers and to test everything himself by experience. Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter's emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question institutions, but not God.
Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, Scripture therefore became important to him. On 2 July 1505, while returning to university on horseback after a trip home, a lightning bolt struck near Luther during a thunderstorm. Telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" He came to view his cry for help as a vow. He left university, sold his books, entered St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on 17 July 1505. One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends. Luther himself seemed saddened by the move; those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, not again," he said. His father was furious over. Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer and frequent confession. Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair, he said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul."
Johann von Staupitz, his superior, pointed
Isocrates
Isocrates, an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. Among the most influential Greek rhetoricians of his time, Isocrates made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works. Greek rhetoric is traced to Corax of Syracuse, who first formulated a set of rhetorical rules in the fifth century BC, his pupil Tisias was influential in the development of the rhetoric of the courtroom, by some accounts was the teacher of Isocrates. Within two generations, rhetoric had become an important art, its growth driven by social and political changes such as democracy and courts of law. Isocrates received a first-rate education, he was influenced by his sophist teachers and Gorgias, was closely acquainted with Socrates. After the Peloponnesian War, his family lost its wealth, Isocrates was forced to earn a living, his professional career is said to have begun with logography: he was a hired courtroom speechwriter. Athenian citizens did not hire lawyers. Instead, they would hire people like Isocrates to write speeches for them.
Isocrates had a great talent for this. His weak voice motivated him to publish pamphlets and although he played no direct part in state affairs, his written speech influenced the public and provided significant insight into major political issues of the day. Around 392 BC he set up his own school of rhetoric, proved to be not only an influential teacher, but a shrewd businessman, his fees were unusually high, he accepted no more than nine pupils at a time. Many of them went on to be philosophers and historians; as a consequence, he amassed a considerable fortune. According to Pliny the Elder he could sell a single oration for twenty talents. According to George Norlin, Isocrates defined rhetoric as outward feeling and inward thought of not expression, but reason and imagination. Like most who studied rhetoric before and after him, Isocrates believed it was used to persuade ourselves and others, but used in directing public affairs. Isocrates described rhetoric as "that endowment of our human nature which raises us above mere animality and enables us to live the civilized life."
Isocrates unambiguously defined his approach in the treatise Against the Sophists. This polemic was written to explain and advertise the reasoning and educational principles behind his new school, he promoted broad-based education by speaking against two types of teachers: the Eristics, who disputed about theoretical and ethical matters, the Sophists, who taught political debate techniques. While Isocrates is viewed by many as being a rhetor and practicing rhetoric, he refers to his study as philosophia—which he claims as his own. Against the Sophists is Isocrates' first published work where he gives an account of philosophia, his principal method is to contrast his ways of teaching with Sophistry. While Isocrates does not go against the Sophist method of teaching as a whole, he emphasizes his disagreement with bad Sophistry practices. Isocrates' program of rhetorical education stressed the ability to use language to address practical problems, he referred to his teachings as more of a philosophy than a school of rhetoric.
He emphasized that students needed three things to learn: a natural aptitude, inborn, knowledge training granted by teachers and textbooks, applied practices designed by educators. He stressed civic education, training students to serve the state. Students would practice delivering speeches on various subjects, he considered natural ability and practice to be more important than rules or principles of rhetoric. Rather than delineating static rules, Isocrates kairos, his school lasted for over fifty years, in many ways establishing the core of liberal arts education as we know it today, including oratory, history, citizenship and morality. Prior to Isocrates, teaching consisted of first-generation Sophists, walking from town to town as itinerants, who taught any individuals interested in political occupations how to be effective in public speaking; some popular itinerants of the late 5th century BC include Protagoras. Around 392-390 BC, Isocrates founded his academy in Athens at the Lyceum, known as the first academy of rhetoric.
The foundation of this academy brought students to Athens to study. Prior to this, teachers travelled amongst cities giving lectures to anyone interested; the first students in Isocrates’ school were Athenians. However, after he published the Panegyrius in 380 BC, his reputation spread to many other parts of Greece. Following the founding of Isocrates’ academy, Plato founded his own academy as a rival school of philosophy. Isocrates encouraged his students to wander and observe public behavior in the city to learn through imitation, his students aimed to learn. Some of his students included Isaeus, Hypereides, Theopompus and Timotheus. Many of these students remained under the instruction of Isocrates for three to four years. Timotheus had such a great appreciation for Isocrates that he erected a statue at Eleusis and dedicated it to him; because of Plato's attacks on the sophists, Isocrates' school — having its roots, if not the entirety of its mission, in rhetoric, the domain of the sophists — came to be viewed as unethical and deceitful.
Yet man
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people." In 2012–13, the National Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, an additional 15,506 metres of manuscript material. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT; the National Library of Australia, while formally established by the passage of the National Library Act 1960, had been functioning as a national library rather than a Parliamentary Library since its inception. In 1901, a Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was established to serve the newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia. From its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a national collection. In 1907 the Joint Parliamentary Library Committee under the Chairmanship of the Speaker, Sir Frederick William Holder defined the objective of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in the following words: The Library Committee is keeping before it the ideal of building up, for the time when Parliament shall be established in the Federal Capital, a great Public Library on the lines of the world-famed Library of Congress at Washington.
The present library building was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden in the Late Twentieth Century Stripped Classical style; the foyer is decorated in marble, with stained-glass windows by Leonard French and three tapestries by Mathieu Matégot. The building was listed on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004. In 2012–13 the Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, with an estimated additional 2,325,900 items held in the manuscripts collection; the Library's collections of Australiana have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers and illustrators are sought and well represented—whether published in Australia or overseas; the Library's collection includes all formats of material, from books, journals and manuscripts to pictures, maps, oral history recordings, manuscript papers and ephemera.
92.1% of the Library's collection has been catalogued and is discoverable through the online catalogue. The Library has digitized over 174,000 items from its collection and, where possible, delivers these directly across the Internet; the Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques, maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive. The Library collects material produced by Australians, for Australians or about the Australian experience in all formats—not just printed works—books, newspapers, posters and printed ephemera—but online publications and unpublished material such as manuscripts and oral histories. A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson; the Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance. The Library's considerable collections of general overseas and rare book materials, as well as world-class Asian and Pacific collections which augment the Australiana collections.
The print collections are further supported by extensive microform holdings. The Library maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection; the Library houses the largest and most developing research resource on Asia in Australia, the largest Asian language collections in the Southern hemisphere, with over half a million volumes in the collection, as well as extensive online and electronic resources. The Library collects resources about all Asian countries in Western languages extensively, resources in the following Asian languages: Burmese, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Thai and Vietnamese; the Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers and bibliophiles. These collections include: Australian Buddhist Library Collection Braga Collection Claasz Collection Coedes Collection London Missionary Society Collection Luce Collection McLaren-Human Collection Otley Beyer Collection Sakakibara Collection Sang Ye Collection Simon Collection Harold S. Williams Collection The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Library's catalogue.
The National Library holds an extensive collection of manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space; the collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Pacific. The collection holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have been received as part of formed book collections; the Australian manuscript collections date from the period of maritime exploration and settlement in the 18th century until the present, with the greatest area of strength dating from the 1890s onwards. The collection includes a large number of outstanding single items, such as the 14th century Chertsey Cartulary, the journal of James Cook on the HM Bark Endeavour, inscribed on t
Royal Library of the Netherlands
The Royal Library of the Netherlands is based in The Hague and was founded in 1798. The mission of the Royal Library of the Netherlands, as presented on the library's web site, is to provide "access to the knowledge and culture of the past and the present by providing high-quality services for research and cultural experience"; the initiative to found a national library was proposed by representative Albert Jan Verbeek on August 17 1798. The collection would be based on the confiscated book collection of William V; the library was founded as the Nationale Bibliotheek on November 8 of the same year, after a committee of representatives had advised the creation of a national library on the same day. The National Library was only open to members of the Representative Body. King Louis Bonaparte gave the national library its name of the Royal Library in 1806. Napoleon Bonaparte transferred the Royal Library to The Hague as property, while allowing the Imperial Library in Paris to expropriate publications from the Royal Library.
In 1815 King William I of the Netherlands confirmed the name of'Royal Library' by royal resolution. It has been known as the National Library of the Netherlands since 1982, when it opened new quarters; the institution became independent of the state in 1996, although it is financed by the Department of Education and Science. In 2004, the National Library of the Netherlands contained 3,300,000 items, equivalent to 67 kilometers of bookshelves. Most items in the collection are books. There are pieces of "grey literature", where the author, publisher, or date may not be apparent but the document has cultural or intellectual significance; the collection contains the entire literature of the Netherlands, from medieval manuscripts to modern scientific publications. For a publication to be accepted, it must be from a registered Dutch publisher; the collection is accessible for members. Any person aged 16 years or older can become a member. One day passes are available. Requests for material take 30 minutes.
The KB hosts several open access websites, including the "Memory of the Netherlands". List of libraries in the Netherlands European Library Nederlandse Centrale Catalogus Books in the Netherlands Media related to Koninklijke Bibliotheek at Wikimedia Commons Official website
Oettingen in Bayern
Oettingen in Bayern is a town in the Donau-Ries district, in Swabia, Germany. It is situated 29 km northwest of Donauwörth, 14 km northeast of Nördlingen; the town is located on the river Wörnitz, a tributary of the Danube, lies on the northern edge of the Nördlinger Ries, a meteorite crater 25 km in diameter. The town consists of the municipalities of Erlbach, Lehmingen, Niederhofen and Oettingen; the Oettinger Brewery, which make Germany's best-selling brand of beer, has its main brewery and headquarters in Oettingen. Neolithic remains indicate that the region was settled by around 5000 BC. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Bronze Age settlement and a Roman village; the old town centre has a unusual aspect. From 1522 to 1731, the town was split between the Protestant house of Oettingen-Oettingen and the Roman Catholic house of Oettingen-Wallerstein, which built the baroque facades; as well as one side of the street being Protestant and the other side being Catholic, one side used the Julian calendar, the other side used the Gregorian calendar.
Each side had its own synagogue. Unlike nearby Dinkelsbühl, which survived World War II unscathed, Oettingen was damaged on 23 February 1945 by an Allied bombing raid, part of Operation Clarion, in which 48 aircraft dropped some 500 bombs on the town, killing 199 persons. Königsturm The tower of the lower gate, the so-called King's Tower, is the only one along the city fortifications to have been preserved; the lower outskirts used to be located on the outside, were secluded by an exterior lower gate. The lower level still exhibits remains of the tower from the 13th century; the city governors together with the citizens constructed a new tower in 1594–96. Cells from the city jail remain on the inside. Rathaus The city hall is one of the most outstanding examples of the Swabian Half-timbered style; the stone entry level and portal were built in 1431, while the upper floors and the impressive roof framework come from 1480. The nearby civic house from the 17th century was connected to the city hall during renovations.
The city hall today is the seat of municipal government and governing body of Oettingen, the city license bureau is found on the ground floor. Marktplatz The marketplace forms the centre of Oettingen, the weekly farmers' market takes place here on Fridays. Worth noting is the architectural layout: on the east side, the gables are Baroque, on the west side, they are half-timbered; the Storks of Oettingen Storks have been nesting in Oettingen at least since the time of Count Ludwig XVI, Ludwig was a friend of the storks. According to legend, when the count left the town after the Schmalkaldic War, the storks moved away and did not come back. Much in 1563 when the count came back, the storks, returned to the town and have remained there to this day. Altes Gymnasium The building was built in 1724 under the direction of Albert Ernest II by Johann Christian Lüttich, it accommodated the Latin School, established in 1563, served to educate the children of the parish and of the city governors. Rainer Stadelmann, Egyptologist House of Oettingen-Oettingen House of Oettingen-Spielberg House of Oettingen-Wallerstein Alte Ansichten von Oettingen Jewish Encyclopedia