Douai
Douai is a commune in the Nord département in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe some 40 kilometres from Lille and 25 km from Arras, Douai is home to one of the region's most impressive belfries; the population of the metropolitan area, including Lens, was 552,682 in 1999. The main industries in the town are in the metal engineering sectors. Renault has a large vehicle assembly plant near the town, which has produced many well known Renault vehicles, such as the R14, R11, R19, the Megane and Scenic of today; the Gare de Douai railway station is served by regional trains towards Lille, Lens, Saint-Quentin and Valenciennes. It is connected to the TGV network, with high speed trains to Paris, Lyon and other cities, its site corresponds to that of a 4th-century Roman fortress known as Duacum. From the 10th century the town was a romance fiefdom of the counts of Flanders; the town became a flourishing textile market centre during the Middle Ages known as Douay or Doway in English.
In 1384, the county of Flanders passed into the domains of the Dukes of Burgundy and thence in 1477 into Habsburg possessions. In 1667, Douai was taken by the troops of Louis XIV of France, by the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the town was ceded to France. During successive sieges from 1710 to 1712, Douai was completely destroyed by the British Army. By 1713, the town was integrated into France. Douai became the seat of the Parliament of Flanders. Apart from the ferment of the French Revolution, it was again caught up in hostilities in World War I, in 1918, the town was burned and liberated by the British Army after the Battle of Courtrai. World War II brought considerable damage to Douai; the town is still a transportation and commercial center for the area, known up to the Sixties for its coalfield, the richest in northern France. Douai's ornate Gothic style belfry was begun on the site of an earlier tower; the 80 m high structure includes an impressive carillon. The originals, some dating from 1391 were removed in 1917 during World War I by the occupying German forces, who intended to melt them down for the metal.
They were reinstalled after repairs in 1924, but 47 of them were replaced in 1954 to obtain a better sound. An additional larger bell in the summit, a La called "Joyeuse", dates from 1471 and weighs 5.5 tonnes. The chimes are rung by a mechanism every quarter-hour, but are played via a keyboard on Saturday mornings and at certain other times. In 2005 the belfry was included in a list of world heritage sites as a part of object The Belfries of Belgium and France by UNESCO; the substantial Porte de Valenciennes town gate, a reminder of the town's past military importance, was built in 1453. One face is built in Gothic style; the University of Douai was founded under the patronage of Phillip II, when Douai belonged to the Spanish Netherlands. It was prominent, from the 1560s until the French Revolution, as a centre for the education of English Catholics escaping the persecution in England. Connected with the University were not only the English College, founded by William Allen, but the Irish and Scottish colleges and the Benedictine and Jesuit houses.
The Benedictine priory of St Gregory the Great was founded by Saint John Roberts at Douai in 1605, with a handful of exiled English Benedictines who had entered various monasteries in Spain, as the first house after the Reformation to begin conventual life. The community was established within the English Benedictine Congregation and started a college for English Catholic boys who were unable to find a Catholic education at home, pursued studies in the University of Douai. However, the community was expelled at the time of the French Revolution in 1793 and, after some years of wandering settled at Downside Abbey, Somerset, in 1814. Another English Benedictine community, the Priory of St. Edmund, formed in Paris in 1615 by Dom Gabriel Gifford Archbishop of Rheims and primate of France, was expelled from Paris during the Revolution, took over the vacant buildings of the community of St Gregory's in 1818. Following Waldeck-Rousseau's Law of Associations, this community returned to England in 1903, where it was established at Douai Abbey, near Reading.
Douai School continued as an educational establishment for boys until 1999. In 1609 the English College published a translation of the Old Testament, together with the New Testament published at Rheims 27 years earlier, was the Douay-Rheims Bible used by Anglophone Roman Catholics exclusively for more than 300 years. For a time there was a Carthusian monastery in Douai, now the Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai. Founded as University of Douai in 1562, the state university in Northern France was renamed Université impériale de Douai-Lille in 1808 as Université de Lille with faculty expansion from Douai to Lille from mid-19th century onwards. Université Lille Nord de France-Artois University Douai Business School, established in 1991 École des Mines de Douai Nurse School Douai was the birthplace of: Jehan Bellegambe early Flemish painter François Cosserat and engineer Henri-Edmond Cross, painter Gaston Crunelle, classical flautist Charles Alexandre de Calonne, statesman Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, poet Henri-Joseph Dulaurens, novelist Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, sculptor Jacky Henin and Member of the European Parliament Corinne Masiero, actress André Obey, playwright M
Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist. He is considered the most influential artist of Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history, his unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens specialized in making altarpieces, portraits and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat, knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Rubens was a prolific artist; the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were "history paintings", which included religious and mythological subjects, hunt scenes.
He painted portraits of friends, self-portraits, in life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed prints, as well as his own house, he oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria in 1635. His drawings are predominantly forceful and without great detail, he made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium for large works, but he used canvas as well when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Maria Pypelincks, he was named in honour of Saint Paul, because he was born on their solemnity. His father, a Calvinist, mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Habsburg Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the legal adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange, settled at her court in Siegen in 1570, fathering her daughter Christine, born in 1571.
Following Jan Rubens's imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577. The family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, where he was raised as a Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his work, Rubens became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature. By fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the city's leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier artists' works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.
In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy. He stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga; the colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an immediate effect on Rubens's painting, his mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601. There, he copied works of the Italian masters; the Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons was influential on him, as was the art of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He was influenced by the recent naturalistic paintings by Caravaggio. Rubens made a copy of Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ and recommended his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to purchase The Death of the Virgin. After his return to Antwerp he was instrumental in the acquisition of The Madonna of the Rosary for the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp. During this first stay in Rome, Rubens completed his first altarpiece commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.
Rubens travelled to Spain on a diplomatic mission in 1603, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the court of Philip III. While there, he studied the extensive collections of Raphael and Titian, collected by Philip II, he painted an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma during his stay that demonstrates the influence of works like Titian's Charles V at Mühlberg. This journey marked the first of many during his career that combined diplomacy, he returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years, first in Mantua and in Genoa and Rome. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous portraits, such as the Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria, the portrait of Maria di Antonio Serra Pallavicini, in a style that influenced paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, he began a book illustrating the palaces in the city, published in 1622 as Palazzi di Genova. From 1606 to 1608, he was in Rome. During this period Rubens received, with the assistance of Cardinal Jacopo Serra, his most important commission to
Hangzhou
Hangzhou romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang Province in East China. It sits at the head of Hangzhou Bay, which separates Ningbo. Hangzhou grew to prominence as the southern terminus of the Grand Canal and has been one of the most renowned and prosperous cities in China for much of the last millennium; the city's West Lake, a UNESCO World Heritage site west of the city, is among its best-known attractions. A study conducted by PwC and China Development Research Foundation saw Hangzhou ranked first among "Chinese Cities of Opportunity". Hangzhou is considered a World City with a "Beta+" classification according to GaWC. Hangzhou is classified as a sub-provincial city and forms the core of the Hangzhou metropolitan area, the fourth-largest in China. During the 2010 Chinese census, the metropolitan area held 21.102 million people over an area of 34,585 km2. Hangzhou prefecture had a registered population of 9,018,000 in 2015. In September 2015, Hangzhou was awarded the 2022 Asian Games.
It will be the third city in China to host the Asian Games after Beijing 1990 and Guangzhou 2010. Hangzhou, an emerging technology hub and home to the e-commerce giant Alibaba hosted the eleventh G20 summit in 2016; the celebrated neolithic culture of Hemudu is known to have inhabited Yuyao, 100 km north-east of Hangzhou, as far back as seven thousand years ago. It was during this time. Excavations have established that the jade-carving Liangzhu culture inhabited the area around the present city around five thousand years ago; the first of Hangzhou's present neighborhoods to appear in written records was Yuhang, which preserves an old Baiyue name. Hangzhou was made the seat of the prefecture of Hang in AD 589, entitling it to a city wall, constructed two years later. By a longstanding convention seen in other cities like Guangzhou and Fuzhou, the city took on the name of the area it administered and became known as Hangzhou. Hangzhou was at the southern end of China's Grand Canal; the canal evolved over centuries but reached its full length by 609.
In the Tang dynasty, Bai Juyi was appointed governor of Hangzhou. An accomplished poet, his deeds at Hangzhou have led to his being praised as a great governor, he noticed that the farmland nearby depended on the water of West Lake, but due to the negligence of previous governors, the old dyke had collapsed, the lake so dried out that the local farmers were suffering from severe drought. He ordered the construction of a stronger and taller dyke, with a dam to control the flow of water, thus providing water for irrigation and mitigating the drought problem; the livelihood of local people of Hangzhou improved over the following years. Bai Juyi used his leisure time to enjoy the West Lake, visiting it daily, he ordered the construction of a causeway connecting Broken Bridge with Solitary Hill to allow walking, instead of requiring a boat. He had willows and other trees planted along the dyke, making it a beautiful landmark; this causeway was named "Bai Causeway", in his honor. It is listed as one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China.
It was first the capital of the Wuyue Kingdom from 907 to 978 during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Named Xifu at the time, it was one of the three great bastions of culture in southern China during the tenth century, along with Nanjing and Chengdu. Leaders of Wuyue were noted patrons of the arts of Buddhist temple architecture and artwork; the dyke built to protect the city by King Qian Liu gave the Qiantang its modern name. Hangzhou became a cosmopolitan center, drawing scholars from throughout China and conducting diplomacy with neighboring Chinese states, with Japan and the Khitan Liao dynasty. In 1089, while another renowned poet Su Shi was the city's governor, he used 200,000 workers to construct a 2.8 km long causeway across West Lake. The lake was once a lagoon tens of thousands of years ago. Silt blocked the way to the sea and the lake was formed. A drill in the lake-bed in 1975 found the sediment of the sea. Artificial preservation prevented the lake from evolving into a marshland.
The Su Causeway built by Su Shi, the Bai Causeway built by Bai Juyi, a Tang dynasty poet, once the governor of Hangzhou, were both built out of mud dredged from the lake bottom. The lake is surrounded by hills on the western sides; the Baochu Pagoda sits on the Baoshi Hill to the north of the lake. Arab merchants lived in Hangzhou during the Song dynasty, due to the fact that the oceangoing trade passages took precedence over land trade during this time. There were Arabic inscriptions from the 13th century and 14th century. During the period of the Yuan dynasty, Muslims were persecuted through the banning of their traditions, they participated in revolts against the Mongols; the Fenghuangshi mosque was constructed by an Egyptian trader. Ibn Battuta is known to have visited the city of Hangzhou in 1345. During his stay at Hangzhou, he was impressed by the large number of well-crafted and well-painted Chinese wooden ships with colored sails and silk awnings in the canals, he attended a banquet held by Qurtai, the Yuan Mongol administrator of the city, who according to Ibn Battuta, was fond of the skills of local Chinese conjurers.
Hangzhou was chosen as the new capital of the Southern Song dynasty in 1132, wh
Nanjing
Nanjing romanized as Nanking and Nankin, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China and the second largest city in the East China region, with an administrative area of 6,600 km2 and a total population of 8,270,500 as of 2016. The inner area of Nanjing enclosed by the city wall is Nanjing City, with an area of 55 km2, while the Nanjing Metropolitan Region includes surrounding cities and areas, covering over 60,000 km2, with a population of over 30 million. Situated in the Yangtze River Delta region, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, has thus long been a major center of culture, research, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports; the city is one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only less than that of a province.
Nanjing has been ranked seventh in the evaluation of "Cities with Strongest Comprehensive Strength" issued by the National Statistics Bureau, second in the evaluation of cities with most sustainable development potential in the Yangtze River Delta. It has been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honor of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honor Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing boasts many high-quality universities and research institutes, with the number of universities listed in 100 National Key Universities ranking third, including Nanjing University which has a long history and is among the world top 10 universities ranked by Nature Index; the ratio of college students to total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing is one of the top three Chinese scientific research centers, according to the Nature Index strong in the chemical sciences. Nanjing, one of the nation's most important cities for over a thousand years, is recognized as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.
It has been one of the world's largest cities, enjoying peace and prosperity despite wars and disasters. Nanjing served as the capital of Eastern Wu, one of the three major states in the Three Kingdoms period; the city served as the seat of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Japanese puppet regime of Wang Jingwei during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It suffered severe atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre. Nanjing has served as the capital city of Jiangsu province since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, it boasts many important heritage sites, including the Presidential Palace and Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Nanjing is famous for human historical landscapes and waters such as Fuzimiao, Ming Palace, Chaotian Palace, Porcelain Tower, Drum Tower, Stone City, City Wall, Qinhuai River, Xuanwu Lake and Purple Mountain. Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Museum and Nanjing Art Museum; the city has a number of other names, some historical names are now used as names of districts of the city.
When it was the capital of a state, for instance during the ROC, Jing was adopted as the abbreviation of Nanjing. The city first became a Chinese national capital as early as the Jin dynasty; the name Nanjing, which means "Southern Capital", was designated for the city during the Ming dynasty, about six hundred years later. Nanjing is known as Jinling or Ginling and the old name has been used since the Warring States period in the Zhou dynasty. Archaeological discovery shows. Zun, a kind of wine vessel, was found to exist in Beiyinyangying culture of Nanjing in about 5000 years ago. In the late period of Shang dynasty, Taibo of Zhou came to Jiangnan and established Wu state, the first stop is in Nanjing area according to some historians based on discoveries in Taowu and Hushu culture. According to a legend quoted by an artist in Ming dynasty, Chen Yi, King of the State of Wu, founded a fort named Yecheng in today's Nanjing area in 495 BC. In 473 BC, the State of Yue conquered Wu and constructed the fort of Yuecheng on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate.
In 333 BC, after eliminating the State of Yue, the State of Chu built Jinling Yi in the western part of present-day Nanjing. It was renamed Moling during reign of Qin Shi Huang. Since the city experienced destruction and renewal many times; the area was successively part of Kuaiji and Danyang prefectures in Qin and Han dynasty, part of Yangzhou region, established as the nation's 13 supervisory and administrative regions in the 5th year of Yuanfeng in Han dynasty. Nanjing was the capital city of Danyang Prefecture, had been the capital city of Yangzhou for about 400 years from late Han to early Tang. Nanjing first became a state capital in AD 229, when the state of Eastern
De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas
De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu... is a book based on an Italian manuscript written by the most important founding figure of the Jesuit China mission, Matteo Ricci and translated into Latin by his colleague Nicolas Trigault. The book was first published in 1615 in Augsburg; the book's full title is De Christiana expeditione apud sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu. Ex P. Matthaei Riccii eiusdem Societatis commentariis Libri V: Ad S. D. N. Paulum V. In Quibus Sinensis Regni mores, atque instituta, & novae illius Ecclesiae difficillima primordia accurate & summa fide describuntur; as it indicates, the work contained an overview of the late Ming China's geography and culture, its philosophy and religions, described the history of Christianity's inroads into China. The book articulated Ricci's approach for planting Christianity on the Chinese soil: an "accommodationist" policy, as scholars called it, based on the premise of the essential compatibility between Christianity and Confucianism.
With some evolutionary changes, this policy continued to guide Jesuit missionaries in China for the next century. The first major book published in Europe by an author, not only fluent in Chinese and conversant in Chinese culture but had traveled over much of the country, Ricci-Trigault's work was popular, went through at least 16 editions in a number of European languages in the several decades after its first publication; the book is based on "journals" written by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci during his 27 years of residence of China. After Ricci's death his papers, written in Italian, were found by his fellow Jesuits in his Beijing office. A handwritten copy was made, as well as a translation into Portuguese. In 1612, the China Mission's Superior, Niccolo Longobardi appointed another Jesuit, Nicolas Trigault, known for his good Latin writing skills, as the China Mission's procurator in Europe. One of his important tasks was bringing Ricci's journals to Europe and publishing them in a book form after translating them into Latin as well as expanding and editing them.
He sailed from Macau to India on February 9, 1613 and started to work on the manuscript on shipboard. Other tasks interfered during the overland section of his westward journey to Europe and his negotiations with the Jesuit leaders in Rome. Trigault's preface was dated January 14, 1615. French, German and Italian translations followed within the next six years. Ricci's original Italian text was not published until the appearance of the Opere storiche del P. Matteo Ricci, S. J in two volumes in 1911 and 1913; this edition, prepared by the Italian Jesuit historian Pietro Tacchi Venturi, contained Ricci's original text, under the title Commentarj della Cina, as well as Ricci's letters from China. However, Venturi's lack of knowledge of Chinese made it necessary for Fr. Pasquale d'Elia to produce another, better annotated edition of Ricci's manuscripts some 30 years in the 1940s. Notes provided by d'Elia contained the standard transcription and Chinese characters for the Chinese names and words that appeared in Ricci's text in Ricci's original transcription.
Excerpts from De Christiana expeditione appeared in English in Purchas his Pilgrimes in 1625, under the title "A discourse of the Kingdome of China, taken out of Ricius and Trigautius, containing the countrey, government, rites, characters, arts, acts. A complete English translation of the Latin text, by the Jesuit Louis J. Gallagher was published in the US in 1942, with the preface and imprimatur of the Archbishop of Boston Richard Cushing, it was reprinted in 1953. The standard Ricci-Trigault's Latin edition, as well as most translations, are divided into five large sections. Book One is encyclopedic overview of the late-Ming China as seen by Ricci during his 27 years of living in the country, interacting with people of all walks of life, reading Chinese literature; the other four books describe, in chronological order, the story of the Jesuit China missions before, a few years after Ricci's "expedition" into China. While the encyclopedic scope of De Christiana expeditione... can be compared to that of The Travels of Marco Polo, or Juan González de Mendoza's Historia... del gran reyno de la China, its content reveals the author's much closer familiarity with China's language and people than that of the 13th-century Venetian traveler or the 16th-century Mexican bishop, because of Ricci's personal experiences and his studies of Chinese literature.
In his book, Ricci gives a brief overview of China's geography. He talks about its industry and agriculture, explaining th
Mutio Vitelleschi
Rev. Mutio Vitelleschi, S. J. was the sixth Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He was the son of a noble Roman family. Although he was destined for a general ecclesiastical career, a growing desire to enter the Society of Jesus culminated in his taking private vows to enter the novitiate, his parents opposed this because of the promise not to seek ecclesiastical office or status that Jesuits make. However he was able to receive permission from Pope Gregory XIII, a strong supporter of the Jesuits, a concession to enter the novitiate against his family's will. Vitelleschi taught logic in 1588-89, natural philosophy in 1589-90, metaphysics in 1590-91, his lectures on natural philosophy include Physics, De caelo, De generatione, Meteorology. After entering the novitiate on 15 August 1583, he taught in the Roman College, was appointed rector of the English College, enjoying two stints, he was Provincial of the Neapolitan Province, the Roman Province. Apart from his fame as a good teacher and orator, the only historical details that we have from these times are a sermon that he delivered to Pope Gregory, on Good Friday in 1590, on the passion of Christ.
He is portrayed positively as a minor figure in the fictional 1632 series known as the 1632-verse or Ring of Fire series, an alternate history book series, created co-written, coordinated by historian Eric Flint. WALLACE, William A. Galileo's Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions, 18-19. Muzio Vitelleschi in the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University
