1.
Serbian language
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Serbian is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the language of Serbia and one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it is a minority language in Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia. Standard Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, which is also the basis of Standard Croatian, Bosnian, the other dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian in southeastern Serbia, which is transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian. Serbian is practically the only European standard language with complete synchronic digraphia, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, who created the alphabet on phonemic principles. The Latin alphabet was designed by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1830, Serbian is a standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, of the South Slavic subgroup. Other standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian are Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin and it has lower intelligibility with the Eastern South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Macedonian, than with Slovene. The 2011 census show that 42. 88% still declare Serbian to be their native language, Standard Serbian language uses both Cyrillic and Latin script. Even in official government documents this constitutional requirement is rarely enforced, Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them. Media and publishers typically select one alphabet or another, for example, the public broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia, predominantly uses the Cyrillic script whereas the privately run broadcasters, like RTV Pink, predominantly use the Latin script. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors the Cyrillic one and these are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the first conditional and the second conditional, Serbian has active and passive voice. As for the verb forms, Serbian has one infinitive. Most Serbian words are of native Slavic lexical stock, tracing back to the Proto-Slavic language, there are many loanwords from different languages, reflecting cultural interaction throughout history. Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian, Russian, Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik in 1349. In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, however, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. The epic poems were written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to the 1950s
2.
Old Church Slavonic
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Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Church Slavic, was the first Slavic literary language. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica, as the oldest attested Slavic language, OCS provides important evidence for the features of Proto-Slavic, the reconstructed common ancestor of all Slavic languages. The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia in 863, the language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy and were used for government and religious documents and books between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia, in 885, the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by Pope Stephen V in favour of Latin. Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the First Bulgarian Empire, there it was taught at two literary schools, the Preslav Literary School and the Ohrid Literary School. The Glagolitic alphabet was used at both schools, though the Cyrillic script was developed early on at the Preslav Literary School where it superseded Glagolitic. The texts written during this era exhibit certain linguistic features of the vernaculars of the First Bulgarian Empire and these local varieties are collectively known as the Church Slavonic language. In Bosnia was preserved the local Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet, while in Croatia a variant of the Glagolitic alphabet was preserved, see Early Cyrillic alphabet for a detailed description of the script and information about the sounds it originally expressed. For Old Church Slavonic, the segments are reconstructible. The sounds are given in Slavic transliterated form rather than in IPA, as the realisation is uncertain. The letter щ denoted different sounds in different dialects and is not shown in the table, in Bulgaria, it represented the sequence /ʃt/, and it is normally transliterated as št for that reason. Farther west and north, it was probably /c/ or /tɕ/ like in modern Macedonian, Torlakian and Serbian/Croatian, /dz/ appears mostly in early texts, becoming /z/ later on. The distinction between l, n and r, on one hand, and palatal l, n and r, when it is, it is shown by a kamora diacritic over the letter. Accent is not indicated in writing and must be inferred from later languages, the pronunciation of yat ě differed by area. In Bulgaria it was an open vowel, commonly reconstructed as /æ/. The yer vowels ĭ and ŭ are often called ultrashort and were lower, more centralised and shorter than their counterparts i and they disappeared in most positions in the word, already sporadically in the earliest texts but more frequently later on. They also tended to merge with other vowels, particularly ĭ with e and ŭ with o, the exact articulation of the nasal vowels is unclear because different areas tend to merge them with different vowels. ę is occasionally seen to merge with e or ě in South Slavic, ǫ generally merges with u or o, but in Bulgaria, ǫ was apparently unrounded and eventually merged with ŭ
3.
Cyrillic script
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The Cyrillic script /sᵻˈrɪlɪk/ is a writing system used for various alphabets across eastern Europe and north and central Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the alphabet for their national languages. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the official script of the European Union, following the Latin script. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and these additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on, modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great, the new form of letters became closer to the Latin alphabet, several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great. West European typography culture was also adopted, Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri was originally a ligature of Yer and I, iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю, Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, there were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. The letters also had values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers, many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet, the Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, Segoe UI is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8, the development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters show a tendency to be very tall and narrow. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early 18th century, over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type, Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography
4.
Serbia
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Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a sovereign state situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. Relative to its territory, it is a diverse country distinguished by a transitional character, situated along cultural, geographic, climatic. Serbia numbers around 7 million residents, and its capital, Belgrade, following the Slavic migrations to the Balkans from the 6th century onwards, Serbs established several states in the early Middle Ages. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by Rome and the Byzantine Empire in 1217, in the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the regions first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro which dissolved peacefully in 2006, in 2008 the parliament of the province of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community. Serbia is a member of organizations such as the UN, CoE, OSCE, PfP, BSEC. An EU membership candidate since 2012, Serbia has been negotiating its EU accession since January 2014, the country is acceding to the WTO and is a militarily neutral state. Serbia is an income economy with dominant service sector, followed by the industrial sector. The country ranks high on the Social Progress Index as well as the Global Peace Index, relatively high on the Human Development Index, located at the crossroads between Central and Southern Europe, Serbia is found in the Balkan peninsula and the Pannonian Plain. Serbia lies between latitudes 41° and 47° N, and longitudes 18° and 23° E. The country covers a total of 88,361 km2, which places it at 113th place in the world, with Kosovo excluded, the area is 77,474 km2. Its total border length amounts to 2,027 km, all of Kosovos border with Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro are under control of the Kosovo border police. The Pannonian Plain covers the third of the country while the easternmost tip of Serbia extends into the Wallachian Plain. The terrain of the part of the country, with the region of Šumadija at its heart. Mountains dominate the third of Serbia. Dinaric Alps stretch in the west and the southwest, following the flow of the rivers Drina, the Carpathian Mountains and Balkan Mountains stretch in a north–south direction in eastern Serbia. Ancient mountains in the southeast corner of the country belong to the Rilo-Rhodope Mountain system, elevation ranges from the Midžor peak of the Balkan Mountains at 2,169 metres to the lowest point of just 17 metres near the Danube river at Prahovo. The largest lake is Đerdap Lake and the longest river passing through Serbia is the Danube, the climate of Serbia is under the influences of the landmass of Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea
5.
Limestone
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Limestone is a sedimentary rock, composed mainly of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate, about 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestones. The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, most cave systems are through limestone bedrock. The first geologist to distinguish limestone from dolomite was Belsazar Hacquet in 1778, like most other sedimentary rocks, most limestone is composed of grains. Most grains in limestone are skeletal fragments of organisms such as coral or foraminifera. Other carbonate grains comprising limestones are ooids, peloids, intraclasts and these organisms secrete shells made of aragonite or calcite, and leave these shells behind when they die. Limestone often contains variable amounts of silica in the form of chert or siliceous skeletal fragment, some limestones do not consist of grains at all, and are formed completely by the chemical precipitation of calcite or aragonite, i. e. travertine. Secondary calcite may be deposited by supersaturated meteoric waters and this produces speleothems, such as stalagmites and stalactites. Another form taken by calcite is oolitic limestone, which can be recognized by its granular appearance, the primary source of the calcite in limestone is most commonly marine organisms. Some of these organisms can construct mounds of rock known as reefs, below about 3,000 meters, water pressure and temperature conditions cause the dissolution of calcite to increase nonlinearly, so limestone typically does not form in deeper waters. Limestones may also form in lacustrine and evaporite depositional environments, calcite can be dissolved or precipitated by groundwater, depending on several factors, including the water temperature, pH, and dissolved ion concentrations. Calcite exhibits a characteristic called retrograde solubility, in which it becomes less soluble in water as the temperature increases. Impurities will cause limestones to exhibit different colors, especially with weathered surfaces, Limestone may be crystalline, clastic, granular, or massive, depending on the method of formation. Crystals of calcite, quartz, dolomite or barite may line small cavities in the rock, when conditions are right for precipitation, calcite forms mineral coatings that cement the existing rock grains together, or it can fill fractures. Travertine is a banded, compact variety of limestone formed along streams, particularly there are waterfalls. Calcium carbonate is deposited where evaporation of the leaves a solution supersaturated with the chemical constituents of calcite. Tufa, a porous or cellular variety of travertine, is found near waterfalls, coquina is a poorly consolidated limestone composed of pieces of coral or shells. During regional metamorphism that occurs during the building process, limestone recrystallizes into marble
6.
Varvarin
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Varvarin is a town and municipality located in the Rasina District of the central Serbia. Population of the town is 2,133, and population of the municipality is 17,772 and it is part of the Rasina District of Serbia. The town is notable as the site of an 1810 battle during the Russo-Turkish War between the Ottoman Empire and a combined Russian and Serbian army. A statue to the Russian commander Joseph Cornelius ORourke and his men was erected in 1910 on the centenary of their victory in the battle, from 1929 to 1941, Varvarin was part of the Morava Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During the Kosovo war and the break-up of Yugoslavia in the late 20th century, the area around the bridge was filled with hundreds of people celebrating an Orthodox holiday in and around the nearby church, a market place, and a fairground. Ten civilians were killed and 17 severely injured, in two attack waves a few minutes apart, most of the casualties occurred in the second wave, when people had rushed to the bridge to help those wounded in the initial wave. Some survivors were left with permanent disabilities, To this date, in a public statement made by NATO spokesman Jamie Shea on 31 May 1999, he declared the Varvarin bridge a legitimate military target. No explanations or other statements have been issued by NATO since then, the airstrike gave rise to a lawsuit against the German government. The case was decided against the Serbian plaintiffs, but it is under appeal to Germanys highest court, according to the 2011 census results, the municipality of Varvarin has a population of 17,966 inhabitants. Ravne na Koroškem, Slovenia List of places in Serbia Official website
7.
Morava Valley
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The Morava Valley, is a general term which in its widest sense marks valleys of any of three Morava rivers in Serbia, the West Morava, the South Morava and the Great Morava. In the narrow sense, the term is applied only to the Great Morava Valley, the Serbian term follows the general manner of coining river valley names in Serbian using the prefix po- and suffix -je, meaning literally along the Morava. The West Morava Valley is the valley of the West Morava and it is the southernmost Peripannonic region of Serbia. It is parallel, latitudinally elongated, in the west-to-east direction, opposed to the meridian, south-to-north direction of South Morava Valley and Great Morava Valley. It occupies and area of 5,220 square kilometers and generally corresponds to the valley of the West Morava River and sections of its watershed around the rivers of Skrapež, Đetinja, sections include, The Požega Depression - starting point of the West Morava Valley. Tašti field is a place where rivers of Skrapež, Đetinja, Depression is located between the mountains of Krstac on the east, Blagaja on the south, Crna Kosa on the north-west and Loret on the north-east. Depression is known for frequent fogs, due to the abundance in water sources, Central settlement is the town of Požega and smaller settlements are Lučani and Gorobilje. The Ovčar-Kablar Gorge - a narrow of the West Morava valley, the gorge is a meandering and 15 kilometers long. Epigynous in nature, it is a crucial for the genesis of the entire West Morava Valley, the gorge is a location of Ovčar Spa and 10 Serbian Orthodox monasteries, which is why the gorge has been nicknamed Serbian Mount Athos. There are two electrical power plants with artificial lakes, Ovčar and Međuvršje. The Čačak-Kraljevo Depression - the largest tectonic-erosive depression of all in the valley and it covers an area of 270 square kilometers and is elongated for 40 kilometers. Despite being this long, it is located only three mountains, Kotlenik on the north and Jelica and Stolovi on the south. West Morava receives many tributaries in this area, apart from Ibar river, the longest tributary to West Morava, and Gruža, most of them are short and include Dičina, Lađevačka reka, Ribnica, etc. Main settlements are the towns of Čačak, the most populous settlement in the entire West Morava Valley, other smaller settlements include Preljina, Mrčajevci, Ribnica, Adrani, Konarevo, Žiča, etc. most of them suburbs of either Čačak or Kraljevo. The Vrnjci Depression - widening at the confluence of the small Vrnjačka and Lipovačka rivers, area, located between the mountains of Gledić on the north and Goč on the south, is rich in mineral springs. The most popular Serbian mineral spa, Vrnjačka Banja is located in the depression, other settlements include Vrnjci, Gračac and Novo Selo. The Trstenik Depression - depression centered around the town of Trstenik, agricultural area, other settlements include larger villages of Medveđa and Velika Drenova. The Kruševac Depression - final section of the West Morava Valley, itself, extends into the south in the valley of the Rasina River and it is bounded by the Jastrebac mountain on the south
8.
National Museum of Serbia
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The National Museum of Serbia is the largest and oldest museum in Serbia and former Yugoslavia. It is located in the zone of Belgrade on a square area between the Republic Square, former Theatre Square, and three streets Čika Ljubina, Vasina and Laze Pačua. Its main facade is on the Republic Square, the museum was established on May 10,1844. Since it was founded, its collection has grown to over 400,000 objects, currently, the museum is closed for renovation. The National Museum of Serbia building was declared a Monument of Culture of Great Importance in 1979, before erection of the building of the National Museum on this place was famous tavern called Dardanelles, meeting point of cultural and artistic elite of the time. Demolition of the old tavern signified the beginning of the transformation of The Republic Square, building has constructed according to design of architects Andra Stevanović and Nikola Nestorović after a competition on which they received the first prize. It was one of the first building in which was used some form of reinforced concrete for the foundation, actually during the digging foundation trenches, the various pits, wells and basements were encountered because of the proximity of the former Istanbul Gate. Newly built two-storeyed building was a palace of its time. The greatest attention was given to the staircase and the hall with bank windows which as the basic premises of a bank was given a secondary importance. Almost three decades later, a development of Mortgage Bank, influenced a need for a reconstruction of the building. The extension was made without competition by architect Vojin Petrović, who designed the added wing, during World War II Mortgage Bank building was bombed and the central part with the dome was destroyed. After the war, the building got a new purpose when one of the most important national cultural institution moved in. Since its establishing during the Constitutionalist, until the end of the Second World War the National Museum changed location for several times. At a beginning, it was placed in Captain Miša’s building, at the same time the museum art collections were seized and looted by the invaders. During the interwar period the Museum didn’t get its own building, the museum was located in a rented private house in Knez Milos Street 58. In 1935 the New Royal Palacе became the residence of the museum, subsequently it was renamed into the Museum of Prince Paul which consisted of Historical Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1948 the New Palace was restored and became seat of the Republic. For that purpose the Museum was transferred into a building of the former Stock Exchange on the Student Square, the first architectural competition for the proper National Museum building, planned to be on Tašmajdan was announced the following year
9.
Palaeography
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Palaeography or paleography is the study of ancient and historical handwriting. The discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating ancient texts, however, it cannot in general be used to pinpoint dates with high precision. Palaeography can be a skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of an alphabet in each given language has evolved constantly. Second, scribes often used many abbreviations, usually so as to more quickly and sometimes to save space. Knowledge of individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbreviations enables the palaeographer to read, the palaeographer must know, first, the language of the text, and second, the historical usages of various styles of handwriting, common writing customs, and scribal or notarial abbreviations. Philological knowledge of the language, vocabulary, and grammar generally used at a time or place can help palaeographers identify ancient or more recent forgeries versus authentic documents. Knowledge of writing materials is essential to the study of handwriting. Palaeography can be used to provide information about the date at which a document was written, scholars also tend to oversimplify diachronic development, assuming models of simplicity rather than complexity. It spread from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of India, becoming popular and being adopted by many people. The Aramaic script was written in a form with a direction from right to left. One innovation in Aramaic is the matres lectionis system to indicate certain vowels, Early Phoenician-derived scripts did not have letters for vowels, and so most texts recorded just consonants. Most likely as a consequence of changes in North Semitic languages. The letter aleph was employed to write /ā/, he for /ō/, yod for /ī/, Aramaic writing and language supplanted Babylonian cuneiform and Akkadian language, even in their homeland in Mesopotamia. The wide diffusion of Aramaic letters led to its writing being used not only in monumental inscriptions, Aramaic papyri have been found in large numbers in Egypt, especially at Elephantine – among them are official and private documents of the Jewish military settlement in 5 BC. In the Aramaic papyri and potsherds, words are separated usually by a small gap, at the turn of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, the heretofore uniform Aramaic letters developed new forms, as a result of dialectal and political fragmentation in several subgroups. The most important of these is the so-called square Hebrew block script, followed by Palmyrene, Nabataean, Aramaic is usually divided into three main parts, Old Aramaic Middle Aramaic, and Modern Aramaic of the present day. Old Aramaic appeared in the 11th century BC as the language of the first Aramaean states
10.
Epigraphy
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Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition. A person using the methods of epigraphy is called an epigrapher or epigraphist, for example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating the trilingual inscription and it is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often, epigraphy and history are competences practiced by the same person, an epigraph is any sort of text, from a single grapheme to a lengthy document. Epigraphy overlaps other competences such as numismatics or palaeography, when compared to books, most inscriptions are short. Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the sciences of history. Epigraphy also helps identify a forgery, epigraphic evidence formed part of the discussion concerning the James Ossuary, the study of ancient handwriting, usually in ink, is a separate field, palaeography. The character of the writing, the subject of epigraphy, is a quite separate from the nature of the text. Texts inscribed in stone are usually for public view and so they are different from the written texts of each culture. Not all inscribed texts are public, however, in Mycenaean Greece the deciphered texts of Linear B were revealed to be used for economic. Informal inscribed texts are graffiti in its original sense, the science of epigraphy has been developing steadily since the 16th century. Principles of epigraphy vary culture by culture, and the infant science in European hands concentrated on Latin inscriptions at first, individual contributions have been made by epigraphers such as Georg Fabricius, August Wilhelm Zumpt, Theodor Mommsen, Emil Hübner, Franz Cumont, Louis Robert. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, begun by Mommsen and other scholars, has published in Berlin since 1863. It is the largest and most extensive collection of Latin inscriptions, New fascicles are still produced as the recovery of inscriptions continues. The Corpus is arranged geographically, all inscriptions from Rome are contained in volume 6 and this volume has the greatest number of inscriptions, volume 6, part 8, fascicle 3 was just recently published. Specialists depend on such on-going series of volumes in which newly discovered inscriptions are published, often in Latin, Greek epigraphy has unfolded in the hands of a different team, with different corpora. The first is Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of which four volumes came out, again at Berlin and this marked a first attempt at a comprehensive publication of Greek inscriptions copied from all over the Greek-speaking world
11.
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
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The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste or the Holy Forty were a group of Roman soldiers in the Legio XII Fulminata whose martyrdom in 320 for the Christian faith is recounted in traditional martyrologies. They were killed near the city of Sebaste, in Lesser Armenia, victims of the persecutions of Licinius, the earliest account of their existence and martyrdom is given by Bishop Basil of Caesarea in a homily he delivered on their feast day. The Feast of the Forty Martyrs is thus older than Basil himself, among the confessors, one yielded and, leaving his companions, sought the warm baths near the lake which had been prepared for any who might prove inconstant. Thus the number of forty remained complete, at daybreak, the stiffened bodies of the confessors, which still showed signs of life, were burned and the ashes cast into a river. A church was built at Caesarea, in Cappadocia, and it was in church that Basil publicly delivered his homily. Ephrem the Syrian has also eulogized the Forty Martyrs, the cult of the Forty Martyrs is widespread all over the East. The Forty Saints Monastery in Sarandë, modern day Albania, which gave its name in Greek to the city itself, was built in the 6th century AD, and is thought to have been an important pilgrimage site. The Churches of St. Sophia in Ohrid and Kiev contain their depictions, datable to the 11th and 12th centuries, in Aleppo the Armenian Cathedral is dedicated to the Forty Martyrs. The feast day of the Forty Martyrs falls on March 9, there is an intentional play on the number forty being both the number of martyrs and the days in the fast. Their feast also falls during Great Lent so that the endurance of the martyrs will serve as an example to the faithful to persevere to the end in order to attain heavenly reward, byzantine artists were fascinated with the subject that allowed them to graphically show human despair. This is particularly evident in the large 10th-century ivory plaque from the Bode Museum, the subject remains popular among Orthodox iconographers. Special devotion to the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste was introduced at an early date into the West, their feast day is 10 March. The Church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum, built in the century, contains a chapel, built like the church itself on an ancient site. A sixth or seventh-century mural there depicts their martyrdom, the names of the confessors, as we find them also in later sources, were formerly inscribed on this fresco. Acts of these martyrs, written subsequently, in Greek, Syriac and Latin, are yet extant, also a Testament of the Forty Martyrs. 20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia 42 Martyrs of Amorium Forty Martyrs of England and Wales This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Herbermann, Charles. 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste - Eastern Orthodox icon and synaxarion
12.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
13.
Stonemasonry
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The craft of stonemasonry has existed since humanity could use and make tools - creating buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone from the earth. These materials have been used to construct many of the long-lasting, ancient monuments, artifacts, cathedrals, quarrymen split veins, or sheets of rock, and extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground. Sawyers cut these rough blocks into cuboids, to required size with diamond-tipped saws, the resulting block if ordered for a specific component is known as sawn six sides. Banker masons are workshop-based, and specialize in working the stones into the shapes required by a design, this set out on templets. They can produce anything from stones with simple chamfers to tracery windows, detailed mouldings and the more classical architectural building masonry. When working a stone from a block, the mason ensures that the stone is bedded in the right way. Occasionally though some stones need to be orientated correctly for the application, the basic tools, methods and skills of the banker mason have existed as a trade for thousands of years. Carvers cross the line from craft to art, and use their ability to carve stone into foliage, figures. Fixer masons specialize in the fixing of stones onto buildings, using lifting tackle, sometimes modern cements, mastics and epoxy resins are used, usually on specialist applications such as stone cladding. Metal fixings, from simple dowels and cramps to specialised single application fixings, are also used, the precise tolerances necessary make this a highly skilled job. Memorial masons or monumental masons carve gravestones and inscriptions, the modern stonemason undergoes comprehensive training, both in the classroom and in the working environment. Hands-on skill is complemented by intimate knowledge of each type, its application and best uses. The mason may be skilled and competent to carry out one or all of the branches of stonemasonry. In some areas the trend is towards specialization, in other areas towards adaptability, stonemasons use all types of natural stone, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary, while some also use artificial stone as well. Igneous stones, Granite is one of the hardest stones, with great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved into granite, for example in many Cornish churches and the city of Aberdeen. Generally, however, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones, countertops, flooring, igneous stone ranges from very soft rocks such as pumice and scoria to somewhat harder rocks such as tuff and hard rocks such as granite and basalt. Metamorphic, Marble is a fine stone easily workable, that comes in various colours and it has traditionally been used for carving statues, and for facing many Byzantine and Renaissance Italian buildings. Their work was preceded by older sculptors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, the famous Acropolis of Athens is said to be constructed using the Pentelicon marble
14.
Glagolitic script
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The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It was created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a Byzantine monk from Thessaloniki and he and his brother, Saint Methodius, were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, the Glagolitic alphabet ceased to be used in Moravia, the Glagolitic alphabet was preserved only by the Croats, using it from the 12th to the 20th century, mostly in liturgy. The name was not created until many centuries after the scripts creation, the verb glagolati means to speak. It has been conjectured that the name developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word glagolity. In Old Church Slavonic the name is Ⰽⱛⱃⰺⰾⰾⱁⰲⰺⱌⰰ, Кѷрїлловица, the creation of the characters is popularly attributed to Saints Cyril and Methodius, who may have created them to facilitate the introduction of Christianity. It is believed that the letters were fitted to Bulgarian. The number of letters in the original Glagolitic alphabet is not known, in later centuries, the number of letters dropped dramatically, to fewer than 30 in modern Croatian and Czech recensions of the Church Slavic language. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters probably derive from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet but have given an ornamental design. The source of the consonantal letters is unknown. If they were added by Cyril, it is likely that they were taken from a used for Christian scripture. It is frequently proposed that the letters sha Ⱎ, tsi Ⱌ, and cherv Ⱍ were taken from the letters shin ש and tsadi צ of the Hebrew alphabet, however, Cubberley suggests that if a single prototype were presumed, the most likely source would be Armenian. Other proposals include the Samaritan alphabet, which Cyril learned during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson, an alternate theory asserts that Saint Cyril did not develop Glagolitic script, instead improving and codifying a preexisting South Slavic script derived from Linear B. Comparison of Linear A and Linear B with the Glagolitic script finds 20 Glagolitic characters aligning in form and/or phonetics with Linear A and 23 with Linear B, Glagolitic letters were also used as numbers, similarly to Cyrillic numerals. Unlike Cyrillic numerals, which inherited their numeric value from the corresponding Greek letter, the Kiev Missal, found in the 19th century in Jerusalem, was dated to the 10th century. In 886 an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius and they were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves by the Franks. Many of them, however, reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I of Bulgaria to teach, after the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 865, religious ceremonies and Divine Liturgy were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire, using the Byzantine rite. As a result of Boris measures, two academies, one in Ohrid and one in Preslav, were founded, from there, the students traveled to other places and spread the use of their alphabet
15.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
16.
National Museum in Belgrade
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The National Museum of Serbia is the largest and oldest museum in Serbia and former Yugoslavia. It is located in the zone of Belgrade on a square area between the Republic Square, former Theatre Square, and three streets Čika Ljubina, Vasina and Laze Pačua. Its main facade is on the Republic Square, the museum was established on May 10,1844. Since it was founded, its collection has grown to over 400,000 objects, currently, the museum is closed for renovation. The National Museum of Serbia building was declared a Monument of Culture of Great Importance in 1979, before erection of the building of the National Museum on this place was famous tavern called Dardanelles, meeting point of cultural and artistic elite of the time. Demolition of the old tavern signified the beginning of the transformation of The Republic Square, building has constructed according to design of architects Andra Stevanović and Nikola Nestorović after a competition on which they received the first prize. It was one of the first building in which was used some form of reinforced concrete for the foundation, actually during the digging foundation trenches, the various pits, wells and basements were encountered because of the proximity of the former Istanbul Gate. Newly built two-storeyed building was a palace of its time. The greatest attention was given to the staircase and the hall with bank windows which as the basic premises of a bank was given a secondary importance. Almost three decades later, a development of Mortgage Bank, influenced a need for a reconstruction of the building. The extension was made without competition by architect Vojin Petrović, who designed the added wing, during World War II Mortgage Bank building was bombed and the central part with the dome was destroyed. After the war, the building got a new purpose when one of the most important national cultural institution moved in. Since its establishing during the Constitutionalist, until the end of the Second World War the National Museum changed location for several times. At a beginning, it was placed in Captain Miša’s building, at the same time the museum art collections were seized and looted by the invaders. During the interwar period the Museum didn’t get its own building, the museum was located in a rented private house in Knez Milos Street 58. In 1935 the New Royal Palacе became the residence of the museum, subsequently it was renamed into the Museum of Prince Paul which consisted of Historical Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1948 the New Palace was restored and became seat of the Republic. For that purpose the Museum was transferred into a building of the former Stock Exchange on the Student Square, the first architectural competition for the proper National Museum building, planned to be on Tašmajdan was announced the following year
