Council of Trent
The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation; the Council issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism, issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the Biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, the veneration of saints. The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, oversaw the first eight sessions, while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions by Pope Pius IV; the consequences of the Council were significant in regards to the Church's liturgy and practices. During its deliberations, the Council made the Vulgate the official example of the Biblical canon and commissioned the creation of a standard version, although this was not achieved until the 1590s.
In 1565, a year after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed and his successor Pius V issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in 1566, 1568 and 1570. These, in turn, led to the codification of the Tridentine Mass, which remained the Church's primary form of the Mass for the next four hundred years. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869. On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals but not on the major problems that confronted the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe. A few months on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses in Wittenberg. Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time, but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church, if necessary with a council in Germany and free of the Papacy. After the Pope condemned in Exsurge Domine fifty-two of Luther's theses as heresy, German opinion considered a council the best method to reconcile existing differences.
German Catholics, diminished in number, hoped for a council to clarify matters. It took a generation for the council to materialise because of papal reluctance, given that a Lutheran demand was the exclusion of the papacy from the Council, because of ongoing political rivalries between France and Germany and the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean. Under Pope Clement VII, troops of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Papal Rome in 1527, "raping, burning, the like had not been seen since the Vandals". Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel were used for horses. This, together with the Pontiff's ambivalence between Germany, led to his hesitation. Charles V favoured a council, but needed the support of King Francis I of France, who attacked him militarily. Francis I opposed a general council due to partial support of the Protestant cause within France. In 1532 he agreed to the Nuremberg Religious Peace granting religious liberty to the Protestants, in 1533 he further complicated matters when suggesting a general council to include both Catholic and Protestant rulers of Europe that would devise a compromise between the two theological systems.
This proposal met the opposition of the Pope for it gave recognition to Protestants and elevated the secular Princes of Europe above the clergy on church matters. Faced with a Turkish attack, Charles held the support of the Protestant German rulers, all of whom delayed the opening of the Council of Trent. In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X, Martin Luther burned the document and appealed for a general council. In 1522 German diets joined in the appeal, with Charles V seconding and pressing for a council as a means of reunifying the Church and settling the Reformation controversies. Pope Clement VII was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France, after Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis and his reply to the University of Cologne, set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance. Pope Paul III, seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer confined to a few preachers, but had won over various princes in Germany, to its ideas, desired a council.
Yet when he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was unanimously opposed. Nonetheless, he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea. Paul III issued a decree for a general council to be held in Mantua, Italy, to begin on 23 May 1537. Martin Luther wrote the Smalcald Articles in preparation for the general council; the Smalcald Articles were designed to define where the Lutherans could and could not compromise. The council was ordered by the Emperor and Pope Paul III to convene in Mantua on 23 May 1537, it failed to convene after another war broke out between France and Charles V, resulting in a non-attendance of French prelates. Protestants refused to attend as well. Financial difficulties in Mantua led the Pope in the autumn of 1537 to move the council to Vicenza, where participation was poor; the Council was postponed indefinitely on 21 May 1539. Pope Paul III initiated several internal Church reforms while Emperor Charles V convened with Protestants at an imperial diet in Regensburg, to reconcile differences.
Unity failed betw
Italians
The Italians are a Romance ethnic group and nation native to the Italian peninsula and its neighbouring insular territories. Most Italians share a common culture, ancestry or language. All Italian nationals are citizens of the Italian Republic, regardless of ancestry or nation of residence and may be distinguished from people of Italian descent without Italian citizenship and from ethnic Italians living in territories adjacent to the Italian Peninsula without Italian citizenship; the majority of Italian nationals are speakers of a regional variety thereof. However, many of them speak another regional or minority language native to Italy. In 2017, in addition to about 55 million Italians in Italy, Italian-speaking autonomous groups are found in neighbouring nations: a quarter million are in Switzerland, a large population is in France, the entire population of San Marino, there are smaller groups in Slovenia and Croatia in Istria and Dalmatia; because of the wide-ranging diaspora, about 5 million Italian citizens and nearly 80 million people of full or partial Italian ancestry live outside their own homeland, which include the 62.5% of Argentina's population, 1/3 of Uruguayans, 40% of Paraguayans, 15% of Brazilians, people in other parts of Europe bordering Italy, the Americas and the Middle East.
Italians have influenced and contributed to diverse fields, notably the arts and music and technology, cuisine, jurisprudence and business both abroad and worldwide. Furthermore, Italian people are known for their localism, both regionalist and municipalist; the Latin name Italia according to Strabo's Geographica was used by Greeks to indicate the southwestern tip of the Italian peninsula, corresponding to the current region of Calabria, from the strait of Messina to the line connecting the gulf of Salerno and gulf of Taranto. It most originates with Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle"; the bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. The name was extended to include all the Italian peninsula south of the Rubicon, still by the end of the 1st century BC, to all of the peninsula and beyond. Latin Italicus as a substantive meaning "a man of Italy" is first recorded in Pliny the Elder, Letters 9.23.
The adjective italianus, from which are derived the Italian name of the Italians is medieval. The Italian peninsula was divided into a multitude of tribal or ethnic territory prior to the Roman conquest of Italy in the 3rd century BC. After a series of wars between Greeks and Etruscans, the Latins, with Rome as their capital, gained the ascendancy by 272 BC, completed the conquest of the Italian peninsula by 218 BC; this period of unification was followed by one of conquest in the Mediterranean, beginning with the First Punic War against Carthage. In the course of the century-long struggle against Carthage, the Romans conquered Sicily and Corsica. In 146 BC, at the conclusion of the Third Punic War, with Carthage destroyed and its inhabitants enslaved, Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean; the process of Italian unification, the associated Romanization, culminated in 88 BC, when, in the aftermath of the Social War, Rome granted its Italian allies full rights in Roman society, extending Roman citizenship to all Italic peoples.
From its inception, Rome was a republican city-state, but four famous civil conflicts destroyed the republic: Lucius Cornelius Sulla against Gaius Marius and his son, Julius Caesar against Pompey, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus against Mark Antony and Octavian, Mark Antony against Octavian. Octavian, the final victor, was accorded the title of Augustus by the Senate and thereby became the first Roman emperor. Augustus created for the first time an administrative region called Italia with inhabitants called "Italicus populus", stretching from the Alps to Sicily: for this reason historians like Emilio Gentile called him Father of Italians. In the 1st century BC, Italia was still a collection of territories with different political statuses; some cities, called municipia, had some independence from Rome, while others, the coloniae, were founded by the Romans themselves. Around 7 BC, Augustus divided Italy into eleven regiones. During the Crisis of the Third Century the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasions, military anarchy and civil wars, hyperinflation.
In 284, emperor Diocletian restored political stability. The importance of Rome declined; the seats of the Caesars were Augusta Treverorum for Constantius Chlorus and Sirmium (on the Riv
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th-century church in Rome, Italy, in the Trastevere rione, devoted to the Roman martyr Saint Cecilia. The first church on this site was founded in the 3rd century, by Pope Urban I. Tradition holds; the baptistery associated with this church, together with the remains of a Roman house of the early Empire, was found during some excavations under the Chapel of the Relics. By the late fifth century, at the Synod of 499 of Pope Symmachus, the church is mentioned as the Titulus Ceciliae. On 22 November 545, Pope Vigilius was celebrating the Feast of the saint in the church, when the emissary of Empress Theodora, Anthemius Scribo, captured him. Pope Paschal I rebuilt the church in 822, moved here the relics of St Cecilia from the Catacombs of St Calixtus. More restorations followed in the 18th century; the Cardinal priest, assigned to Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is Gualtiero Bassetti. His predecessors include: are Pope Stephen III, Pope Martin IV, Adam Easton, Pope Innocent VIII, Thomas Wolsey, Pope Gregory XIV, Michele Mazzarino, Giuseppe Doria Pamphili, Mariano Rampolla, Carlo Maria Martini.
Since 1527, a community of Benedictine nuns has lived in the monastery next to Santa Cecilia, has had charge of the basilica. The inscriptions found in Santa Cecilia, a valuable source illustrating the history of the church, have been collected and published by Vincenzo Forcella; the church has a façade built in 1725 by Ferdinando Fuga, which incloses a courtyard decorated with ancient mosaics, columns and a cantharus. Its decoration includes the coat of arms and the dedication to the titular cardinal who paid for the facade, Francesco Cardinal Acquaviva d'Aragona. Among the artifacts remaining from the 13th century edifice are a mural painting depicting the Final judgment by Pietro Cavallini in the choir of the monks, the ciborium in the presbytery by Arnolfo di Cambio; the Gothic ciborium is surrounded by four marble columns white and black, decorated with statuettes of angels, saints and evangelists. The apse has remains of 9th century mosaics depicting the Redeemer with Saints Paul, Paschal I, Peter and Agatha.
The ceiling of Cappella dei Ponziani was decorated God the Father with evangelists by Antonio del Massaro. The Cappella delle Reliquie was provided with an altarpiece by Luigi Vanvitelli; the nave is frescoed with the Apotheosis of Santa Cecilia by Sebastiano Conca. The church contains two altarpieces by Guido Reni: Saints Valerian and Cecilia and a Decapitation of Saint Cecilia. Under the ciborium of di Cambio that shelters the main altar, is a glass case enclosing the white marble sculpture of St Cecilia by the late-Renaissance sculptor Stefano Maderno. A marble slab in the pavement in front of the case, quotes Maderno's sworn statement that he has recorded the body as he saw it when the tomb was opened in 1599; the statue depicts the three axe strokes described in the 5th-century account of her martyrdom. It underscores the incorruptibility of her cadaver, which miraculously still had congealed blood after centuries; this statue could be conceived as proto-Baroque, since it depicts no idealized moment or person, but a theatric scene, a naturalistic representation of a dead or dying saint.
It is striking, because it precedes by decades the similar high-Baroque sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Melchiorre Cafà. The crypt is decorated in cosmatesque stylr, contains the relics of St. Cecilia and her husband St. Valerian. In the apse of the crypt are the remains of an altar whose inscription indicates that it was dedicated by Pope Gregory VII on 3 June 1080. Jacobus Laderchius, S. Cæciliæ virg. Et mart. Acta et Transtyberina basilica 2 vols.. Vincenzo Forcella, Inscrizioni delle chiese di Roma, pp. 17-46. Bertha Ellen Lovewell, The Life of St. Cecilia. Torquato Picarelli, Basilica e casa romana di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Torquato Piccarelli, Monografia storica anecdotica della chiesa, cripta, e casa di S. Cecilia in Trastevere. Neda Parmegiani and Alberto Pronti, Il complesso di S. Cecilia in Trastevere. Anna Maria Panzera, The Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Valentina Oliva, La basilica di Santa Cecilia. Media related to Santa Cecilia in Trastevere at Wikimedia Commons Chris Nyborg, "Santa Cecilia in Trastevere".
Armellini, Mariano, "S. Cecilia in Trastevere", Le chiese di Roma dal secolo IV al XIX, Tipografia Vaticana, 1891. Through Bill Thayer's site, Lacus Curtius. Kunsthistorie.com, photogallery
Vatican Library
The Vatican Apostolic Library, more known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally established in 1475, although it is much older, it is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts, it has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, which include some 8,500 incunabula. The Vatican Library is a research library for history, philosophy and theology; the Vatican Library is open to anyone who can document research needs. Photocopies for private study of pages from books published between 1801 and 1990 can be requested in person or by mail. Pope Nicholas V envisioned a new Rome with extensive public works to lure pilgrims and scholars alike to the city to begin its transformation. Nicolas decided that he wanted to create a'public library' for Rome, meant to be seen as an institution for humanist scholarship, his death prevented him from carrying out his plan of a public library, but his idea lived on with his successor Pope Sixtus IV who established what is now known as the Vatican Library.
In March 2014, the Vatican Library began an initial four-year project of digitising its collection of manuscripts, to be made available online. The Vatican Secret Archives were separated from the library at the beginning of the 17th century. Scholars have traditionally divided the history of the library into five periods, Pre-Lateran, Avignon, Pre-Vatican and Vatican; the Pre-Lateran period, comprising the initial days of the library, dated from the earliest days of the Church. Only a handful of volumes survive from this period, though some are significant; the Lateran era began when the library moved to the Lateran Palace and lasted until the end of the 13th century and the reign of Pope Boniface VIII, who died in 1303, by which time he possessed one of the most notable collections of illuminated manuscripts in Europe. However, in that year, the Lateran Palace was burnt and the collection plundered by Philip IV of France; the Avignon period was during the Avignon Papacy, when seven successive popes resided in Avignon, France.
This period saw a great growth in book collection and record keeping by the popes in Avignon, between the death of Boniface and the 1370s when the Papacy returned to Rome. The Pre-Vatican period ranged from about 1370 to 1446; the library was scattered during this time, with parts in Rome and elsewhere. In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a public library at the Vatican, in part to re-establish Rome as a destination for scholarship. Nicholas combined some 350 Greek and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial Library of Constantinople. Pope Nicholas expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library; the knowledgeable Pope encouraged the inclusion of pagan classics. Nicolas was important in saving many of the Greek works and writings during this time period that he had collected while traveling and acquired from others.
In 1455, the collection had grown to 1200 books. Nicholas' death in 1455 prevented the completion of his vision of a public library, but it was finished in 1475 by his successor Pope Sixtus IV, named the Palatine Library. During the papacy of Sixtus IV, acquisitions were made in "theology and atristic literature"; the number of manuscripts is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475 or 2,527 in 1481, when librarian Bartolomeo Platina produced a signed listing. At the time it was the largest collection of books in the Western world. During his reign, Pope Julius II commissioned the expansion of the building. Around 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned the architect Domenico Fontana to construct a new building for the library, still used today, it was after this. During the Counter-Reformation, access to the library's collections was limited following the introduction of the Index of banned books. Scholars' access to the library was restricted Protestant scholars. Restrictions were lifted during the course of the 17th century, Pope Leo XIII formally reopened the library to scholars in 1883.
In 1756, Abbot Piaggio conserver of ancient manuscripts in the Vatican Library used a machine he invented, to unroll the first Herculaneum papyri, which took him months. In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte arrested Pope Pius VII, removed the contents of the library to Paris; the contents were returned in three years after the defeat of Napoleon. In 1992 the library had 2 million catalogued items. In 1995 art history teacher Anthony Melnikas from Ohio State University stole three leaves from a medieval manuscript once owned by Francesco Petrarch. One of the stolen leaves contains an exquisite miniature of a farmer threshing grain. A fourth leaf from an unknown source was discovered in his possession by the U. S. Customs agents. Melnikas was trying to sell the pages to an art dealer, who alerted Father Leonard E. Boyle, the librarian director; the Library is located inside the Vatican Palace, the entrance is through the Belvedere Courtyard. When Pope Sixtus V commissioned the expansion and the new building of the Vatican Library, he had a three-story wing built right across Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere, thus bisecting it and changing Bramante's work significantly.
At the bottom of a grand staircase a large statue of Hippolytus de
Urbino
Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482. The town, nestled on a high sloping hillside, retains much of its picturesque medieval aspect, it hosts the University of Urbino, founded in 1506, is the seat of the Archbishop of Urbino. Its best-known architectural piece is the Palazzo Ducale, rebuilt by Luciano Laurana; the city is located in a predominantly hilly area, at the foothills of the Northern Apennines and the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines. The city is in the southern area of Montefeltro, an area classified as medium-high seismic risk. In the database of earthquakes developed by the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, nearly 65 seismic events have affected the town of Urbino between 26 March 1511 and 26 March 1998, they include 24 April 1741, when the shocks were stronger than VIII on the Mercalli intensity scale, with an epicenter in Fabriano.
The modest Roman town of Urbinum Mataurense became an important strategic stronghold in the Gothic Wars of the 6th century, captured in 538 from the Ostrogoths by the Byzantine general Belisarius, mentioned by the historian Procopius. Though Pepin the Short presented Urbino to the Papacy in 754–56, independent traditions were expressed in its commune, around 1200, it came into the possession of the House of Montefeltro. Although these noblemen had no direct authority over the commune, they could pressure it to elect them to the position of podestà, a title that Bonconte di Montefeltro managed to obtain in 1213, with the result that Urbino's population rebelled and formed an alliance with the independent commune of Rimini regaining control of the town in 1234. Though, the Montefeltro noblemen took control once more, held it until 1508. In the struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, when factions supported either the Papacy or the Holy Roman Empire the 13th and 14th century Montefeltro lords of Urbino were leaders of the Ghibellines of the Marche and in the Romagna region.
The most famous member of the Montefeltro family, Federico da Montefeltro, ruled as Duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482. A successful condottiere, a skillful diplomat and an enthusiastic patron of art and literature, he took over in 1444 as the son of Guidantonio, after a conspiracy and the murder of the legitimate Oddantonio, hated for his "unbridled lust" and for the excessive taxation exercised during his seventeen months in office. Federico set his hand to the political imperative and began a reorganization of the state, which included a restructuring of the city according to a modern conception - comfortable and beautiful. Thanks to his efforts, for the nearly four decades of his rule the government aimed at this purpose, thanks to the Duke's extraordinary qualities combined with a considerable fortune, he realized this dream. At his court, Piero della Francesca wrote on the science of perspective, Francesco di Giorgio Martini wrote his Trattato di architettura and Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, wrote his poetical account of the chief artists of his time.
Federico's brilliant court, according to the descriptions in Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, set standards of what would characterize a modern European "gentleman" for centuries to come. Cesare Borgia dispossessed Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, Elisabetta Gonzaga in 1502, with the complicity of his father, Pope Alexander VI. After the attempt of Pope Leo X to appoint a young Medici as duke, thwarted by the early death of Lorenzo II de Medici in 1519, Urbino was part of the Papal States, under the dynasty of the dukes Della Rovere, they moved the court to the city of Pesaro in 1523 and Urbino began a slow decline that would continue until the last decades of the seventeenth century. In 1626, Pope Urban VIII definitively incorporated the Duchy into the papal dominions, the gift of the last Della Rovere duke, in retirement after the assassination of his heir, to be governed by the archbishop; the state was ruled thereafter by a papal legate belonging to high ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Following the annexation of the duchy by the Papal States, the rich artistic heritage of the Ducal Palace went to form, for the most part, the dowry of the last direct descendant of the Della Rovere, Vittoria della Rovere, who married Ferdinand II de Medici. These works went on to form the core of the future Uffizi Gallery. Among the works that went to Florence is the diptych of the Dukes of Urbino by Piero della Francesca. Other works of the Ducal Palace were brought to Rome, such as the Barberini Ex Tables of Fra Carnevale and the famous library, absorbed by the Vatican Library in 1657; the eighteenth century opened with the election to the papacy of Cardinal Giovan Francesco Albani Urbino, under the name of Clement XI. This was a windfall for the city and was its last great era in terms of arts and culture, thanks to funding by Pope Albani and his family. Major renovation of several buildings and monasteries took place. In addition, due to the patronage of the Pope and of his family, the Duomo di Urbino received many improve
Albania
Albania the Republic of Albania, is a country in Southeast Europe on the Adriatic and Ionian Sea within the Mediterranean Sea. It shares land borders with Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, North Macedonia to the east, Greece to the south and a maritime border with Italy to the west. Geographically, the country displays varied climatic, geological and morphological conditions, defined in an area of 28,748 km2, it possesses remarkable diversity with the landscape ranging from the snow-capped mountains in the Albanian Alps as well as the Korab, Skanderbeg and Ceraunian Mountains to the hot and sunny coasts of the Albanian Adriatic and Ionian Sea along the Mediterranean Sea. The area of Albania was populated by various Illyrian and Ancient Greek tribes as well as several Greek colonies established in the Illyrian coast; the area was annexed in the 3rd century by Romans and became an integral part of the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Illyricum. The autonomous Principality of Arbër emerged in 1190, established by archon Progon in the Krujë, within the Byzantine Empire.
In the late thirteenth century, Charles of Anjou conquered Albanian territories from the Byzantines and established the medieval Kingdom of Albania, which at its maximal extension was extending from Durrës along the coast to Butrint in the south. In the mid-fifteenth century, it was conquered by the Ottomans; the modern nation state of Albania emerged in 1912 following the defeat of the Ottomans in the Balkan Wars. The modern Kingdom of Albania was invaded by Italy in 1939, which formed Greater Albania, before becoming a Nazi German protectorate in 1943. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, a Communist state titled the People's Socialist Republic of Albania was founded under the leadership of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour; the country experienced widespread social and political transformations in the communist era, as well as isolation from much of the international community. In the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1991, the Socialist Republic was dissolved and the fourth Republic of Albania was established.
Politically, the country is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic and developing country with an upper-middle income economy dominated by the tertiary sector followed by the secondary and primary sector. It went through a process of transition, following the end of communism in 1990, from a centralized to a market-based economy, it provides universal health care and free primary and secondary education to its citizens. The country is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, UNESCO, NATO, WTO, COE, OSCE and OIC, it is an official candidate for membership in the European Union. In addition it is one of the founding members of the Energy Community, including the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and Union for the Mediterranean; the term Albania is the medieval Latin name of the country. It may be derived from the Illyrian tribe of Albani recorded by Ptolemy, the geographer and astronomer from Alexandria, who drafted a map in 150 AD, which shows the city of Albanopolis located northeast of the city of Durrës.
The term may have a continuation in the name of a medieval settlement called Albanon or Arbanon, although it is not certain that this was the same place. In his history written in the 10th century, the Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates was the first to refer to Albanoi as having taken part in a revolt against Constantinople in 1043 and to the Arbanitai as subjects of the Duke of Dyrrachium. During the Middle Ages, the Albanians called their country Arbëri or Arbëni and referred to themselves as Arbëreshë or Arbëneshë. Nowadays, Albanians call their country Shqipëria; as early as the 17th century the placename Shqipëria and the ethnic demonym Shqiptarë replaced Arbëria and Arbëresh. The two terms are popularly interpreted as "Land of the Eagles" and "Children of the Eagles"; the first traces of human presence in Albania, dating to the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic eras, were found in the village of Xarrë close to Sarandë and Dajti near Tiranë. The objects found in a cave near Xarrë include flint and jasper objects and fossilized animal bones, while those found at Mount Dajt comprise bone and stone tools similar to those of the Aurignacian culture.
The Paleolithic finds of Albania show great similarities with objects of the same era found at Crvena Stijena in Montenegro and north-western Greece. Several Bronze Age artefacts from tumulus burials have been unearthed in central and southern Albania that show close connection with sites in south-western Macedonia and Lefkada, Greece. Archaeologists have come to the conclusion that these regions were inhabited from the middle of the third millennium BC by Indo-European people who spoke a Proto-Greek language. A part of this population moved to Mycenae around 1600 BC and founded the Mycenaean civilisation there. In ancient times, the territory of modern Albania was inhabited by a number of Illyrian tribes; the Illyrian tribes never collectively regarded themselves as'Illyrians', it is unlikely that they used any collective nomenclature for themselves. The name Illyrians seems to be the name applied to a specific Illyrian tribe, the first to come in contact with the ancient Greeks during the Bronze Age, causing the name Illyrians to be applied pars pro toto to all people of similar language and customs.
The territory known as Illyria corresponded to the area east of the Adriatic sea, extending in the south to the mouth of the Vjosë river. The first accou
Albanians
The Albanians are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula and are identified by a common Albanian ancestry, culture and language. They live in Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia as well as in Croatia and Italy, they constitute a diaspora with several communities established in the Americas and Oceania. The ethnogenesis of the Albanians and the Albanian language is a matter of controversy among the historians and ethnologists, they appear for the first time in historical records from the 11th century mentioning a tribe of people living in the area which today constitutes the mountainous region around the Mat and Drin. The Shkumbin splits the Albanians into two cultural and linguistical subgroups, the Ghegs and Tosks, though both groups identify with a common ethnic and national culture; the history of the Albanian diaspora is centuries old and has its roots in migration from the Middle Ages established in Southern Europe and subsequently on across other parts of the world. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, sizeable numbers of Albanians migrated to escape either various social, economic or political difficulties.
One population who became the Arvanites settled Southern Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries assimilating into and now self-identifying as Greeks. Another population who emerged as the Arbëreshës settled Sicily and Southern Italy constituting the oldest continuous Albanian diaspora. Smaller populations such as the Arbanasis whose migration dates back to the 18th century are located in Southern Croatia and scattered across Southern Ukraine. In the 13th century, the Ghegs converted to Roman Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy as a means to resist the Slavic Serbs. In the 15th century, Skanderbeg led the medieval Albanian resistance to the Ottoman conquest. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Albanians in large numbers converted to Islam, in part due to the privileged legal and social position of Muslims in the empire and coercion by Ottoman authorities in times of war. Albanians attained important political and military positions within the Ottoman Empire and culturally contributed to the wider Muslim world.
Following the Albanian National Awakening, during the Balkan Wars, in 1912, Albanians were partitioned between the newly-formed Independent Albania and Serbia and Montenegro. From 1945 to 1992, Albania was ruled by a communist government. Albanians in neighbouring Yugoslavia underwent periods of discrimination that concluded with the breakup of that state in the early 1990s and the independence of Kosovo in 2008; the Albanians and their country Albania have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is "Shqiptar", plural "Shqiptarë". From these ethnonyms, names for Albanians were derived in other languages, that were or still are in use. In English "Albanians"; the term "Albanoi" is first encountered twice in the works of Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates, the term "Arvanitai" is used once by the same author. He referred to the "Albanoi" as having taken part in a revolt against the Byzantine Empire in 1043, to the "Arbanitai" as subjects of the Duke of Dyrrachium; these references have been disputed as to.
Historian E. Vranoussi believes, she notes that the same term in medieval Latin meant "foreigners". The reference to "Arvanitai" from Attaliates regarding the participation of Albanians in a rebellion around 1078 is undisputed. In Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi" with a range of variants were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were called by the classicising name Illyrians; the first reference to the Albanian language dates to the latter 13th century. The ethnonym Albanian has been hypothesized to be connected to and stem from the Albanoi, an Illyrian tribe mentioned by Ptolemy with their centre at the city of Albanopolis. Linguists believe that the alb part in the root word originates from an Indo-European term for a type of mountainous topography, from which other words such as alps are derived. Through the root word alban and its rhotacized equivalents arban and arbar, the term in Albanian became rendered as Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë for the people and Arbënia/Arbëria for the country.
The Albanian language was referred to as Arbërisht. While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does have connotations to Classical Antiquity, the Albanian language employs a different ethnonym, with modern Albanians referring to themselves as Shqiptarë and to their country as Shqipëria. Two etymologies have been proposed for this ethnonym: one, derived from the etymology from the Albanian word for eagle. In Albanian folk etymology, this word denotes a bird totem, dating from the times of Skanderbeg as displayed on the Albanian flag; the other is within scholarship that connects it to the verb'to speak' from the Latin "excipere". In this instance the Albanian endonym like Slav and others would have been a term connoting "those who speak [intelligibly, th
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). 
