1.
Emilia-Romagna
–
Emilia-Romagna is an administrative Region of Northeast Italy, comprising the historical regions of Emilia and Romagna. It has an area of 22,446 km2, and about 4.4 million inhabitants, Emilia-Romagna is one of the wealthiest and most developed regions in Europe, with the third highest GDP per capita in Italy. Bologna, its capital, has one of Italys highest quality of life indices, the name Emilia-Romagna is a legacy of Ancient Rome. Emilia derives from the via Aemilia, the Roman road connecting Rome to northern Italy, completed in 187 B. C. and named after the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Romagna derives from Romània, the name of the Eastern Roman Empire applied to Ravenna by the Lombards when the western Empire had ceased to exist, before the Romans took control of present-day Emilia-Romagna, it had been part of the Etruscan world and then that of the Gauls. During the first thousand years of Christianity trade flourished, as did culture and religion, afterwards the University of Bologna—arguably the oldest university in Europe—and its bustling towns kept trade and intellectual life alive. After the referendum of 2006, seven municipalities of Montefeltro were detached from the Province of Pesaro, the municipalities are Casteldelci, Maiolo, Novafeltria, Pennabilli, San Leo, SantAgata Feltria and Talamello. On 20 and 29 May 2012 two powerful earthquakes hit the area and they killed at least 27 people and caused churches and factories to collapse. The 5.8 magnitude quake left 14,000 people homeless, the region of Emilia-Romagna consists of nine provinces and covers an area of 22,446 km2, ranking sixth in Italy. Nearly half of the consists of plains while 27% is hilly. The regions section of the Apennines is marked by areas of flisch, badland erosion, the mountains stretch for more than 300 km from the north to the south-east, with only three peaks above 2,000 m – Monte Cimone, Monte Cusna and Alpe di Succiso. The plain was formed by the retreat of the sea from the Po basin. Almost entirely marshland in ancient times, its history is characterised by the work of its people to reclaim. All the rivers rise locally in the Apennines except for the Po, the northern border of Emilia-Romagna follows the path of the river for 263 km. Emilia Romagna has been a populated area since ancient times. Inhabitants over the centuries have radically altered the landscape, building cities, reclaiming wetlands, all these transformations in past centuries changed the aspect of the region, converting large natural areas to cultivation, up until the 1960s. The trend then changed, and agricultural lands began giving way to residential and industrial areas, the increase of urban-industrial areas continued at very high rates until the end of the 2010s. In the same period, hilly and mountainous areas saw an increase in the registration of semi-natural areas, land use changes can have strong effects on ecological functions
2.
Italy
–
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
3.
Eastern Orthodox Church
–
The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that it is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission to the apostles. It practices what it understands to be the original Christian faith, the Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of autocephalous churches, each typically governed by a Holy Synod. It teaches that all bishops are equal by virtue of their ordination, prior to the Council of Chalcedon in AD451, the Eastern Orthodox had also shared communion with the Oriental Orthodox churches, separating primarily over differences in Christology. Eastern Orthodoxy spread throughout the Roman and later Eastern Roman Empires and beyond, playing a prominent role in European, Near Eastern, Slavic, and some African cultures. As a result, the term Greek Orthodox has sometimes used to describe all of Eastern Orthodoxy in general. However, the appellation Greek was never in use and was gradually abandoned by the non-Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox churches. Its most prominent episcopal see is Constantinople, there are also many in other parts of the world, formed through immigration, conversion and missionary activity. The official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Catholic Church and it is the name by which the church refers to itself in its liturgical or canonical texts, in official publications, and in official contexts or administrative documents. Orthodox teachers refer to the Church as Catholic and this name and longer variants containing Catholic are also recognized and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Orthodox writers. The common name of the Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, is a shortened practicality that helps to avoid confusions in casual use, for this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as Greek, even before the great schism. After 1054, Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople and this identification with Greek, however, became increasingly confusing with time. Missionaries brought Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. Today, many of those same Roman churches remain, while a large number of Orthodox are not of Greek national origin. Eastern, then, indicates the element in the Churchs origin and development, while Orthodox indicates the faith. While the Church continues officially to call itself Catholic, for reasons of universality, the first known use of the phrase the catholic church occurred in a letter written about 110 AD from one Greek church to another. Quote of St Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, thus, almost from the very beginning, Christians referred to the Church as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same Church, a number of other Christian churches also make a similar claim, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church, not directly from the Orthodox Church, the depth of this meaning in the Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word Orthodox itself, a union of Greek orthos and doxa
4.
Canonization
–
Originally, persons were recognized as saints without any formal process. Later, different processes were developed, such as used today in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The first persons honored as saints were the martyrs, pious legends of their deaths were considered affirmations of the truth of their faith in Christ. The Roman Rites Canon of the Mass contains only the names of martyrs, along with that of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, since 1962, that of St. Joseph her spouse. By the fourth century, however, confessors—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by word, examples of such people are Saint Hilarion and Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the East, and Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Hilary of Poitiers in the West. Their names were inserted in the diptychs, the lists of saints venerated in the liturgy. Since the witness of their lives was not as unequivocal as that of the martyrs and this process is often referred to as local canonization. This approval was required even for veneration of a reputed martyr, and Saint Cyprian recommended that the utmost diligence be observed in investigating the claims of those who were said to have died for the faith. Evidence was sought from the records of the trials or from people who had been present at the trials. Saint Augustine of Hippo tells of the procedure which was followed in his day for the recognition of a martyr, the bishop of the diocese in which the martyrdom took place set up a canonical process for conducting the inquiry with the utmost severity. Other churches still use the older practice, in the Catholic Church, canonization is a decree that allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite. For permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed, only acceptance of the cultus by the Pope made the cultus universal, because he alone can rule the universal Catholic Church. In the Medieval West, the Apostolic See was asked to intervene in the question of canonizations so as to more authoritative decisions. Swibert by Pope Leo III in 804, thereafter, recourse to the judgment of the Pope was had more frequently. Pope Urban II, Pope Calixtus II, and Pope Eugene III conformed to this discipline, a decree of Pope Alexander III1170 gave the prerogative to the ope thenceforth, so far as the Western Church was concerned. However, the procedure initiated by the decretal of Pope Alexander III was confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III issued on the occasion of the canonization of St. Cunegunda in 1200. The bull of Pope Innocent III resulted in increasingly elaborate inquiries to the Apostolic See concerning canonizations and he further regulated both of these acts by issuing his Decreta servanda in beatificatione et canonizatione Sanctorum on 12 March 1642. His work published from 1734-8 governed the proceedings until 1917, the article Beatification and canonization process in 1914 describes the procedures followed until the promulgation of the Codex of 1917
5.
Calendar of saints
–
The word feast in this context does not mean a large meal, typically a celebratory one, but instead an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a Menologion, Menologion may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels. As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to days in some traditions or completely removed. For example, St. Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, when the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March. Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, the Roman Catholic calendars of saints in their various forms, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in the Roman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally, Saint Martin of Tours is said to be the first or at least one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint. The title confessor was used for saints, who had confessed their faith in Christ by their lives rather than by their deaths. Martyrs are regarded as dying in the service of the Lord, a broader range of titles was used later, such as, Virgin, Pastor, Bishop, Monk, Priest, Founder, Abbot, Apostle, Doctor of the Church. Pope Pius XII added a common formula for Popes, the 1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The present Roman Missal has common formulas for the Dedication of Churches, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Martyrs, Pastors, Doctors of the Church, Virgins, some Christians continue the tradition of dating by saints days, their works may appear dated as The Feast of Saint Martin. Poets such as John Keats commemorate the importance of The Eve of Saint Agnes, as different Christian jurisdictions parted ways theologically, differing lists of saints began to develop. In the present ordinary form of the Roman Rite, feast days are ranked as solemnities and those who use even earlier forms of the Roman Rite rank feast days as Doubles, Semidoubles, and Simples. See Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite, in the Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the Russian Orthodox Church they are, Great Feasts, middle, each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows, All-Night Vigils, Polyeleos, Great Doxology, Sextuple. There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and Double, in Double Feasts the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed in Typikon, the liturgy book. In the Church of England, there are Principal Feasts and Principal Holy Days, Festivals, Lesser Festivals, and Commemorations. com
