1.
Tournai
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Tournai, known in Dutch as Doornik, is a Walloon city and municipality of Belgium located 85 kilometres west-southwest of Brussels, on the river Scheldt, in the province of Hainaut. Tournai is part of the Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, which had 2,155,161 residents in 2008, along with Tongeren, Tournai is the oldest city in Belgium and it has played an important role in the countrys cultural history. Tournai is located in the Wallonia region of Belgium, at the limit of the Flemish plain, in the basin of the River Scheldt. Administratively, the town is part of the Province of Hainaut and it is also a municipality that is part of the French-speaking Community of Belgium. Tournai has its own arrondissements, both administrative and judicial and its area of 213.75 square kilometres makes it the largest municipality in size in Belgium, it is also the largest in population in Western Hainaut. Rocks from the Tournai area date from the Carboniferous Period and have used to define the Tournaisian Age. Tournai stone is a limestone which takes a polish and was used particularly in the Romanesque period for sculpted items such as Tournai fonts. It is also enough to have been used locally for pavements. It is sometimes called Tournai marble, though this is geologically inaccurate, Tournai, known as Tornacum, was a place of minor importance in Roman times, a stopping place where the Roman road from Cologne on the Rhine to Boulogne on the coast crossed the river Scheldt. It was fortified under Maximian in the 3rd century AD, when the Roman limes was withdrawn to the string of outposts along the road and it came into the possession of the Salian Franks in 432. Under king Childeric I, whose tomb was discovered there in 1653, in 486, Clovis moved the center of power to Paris. In turn, a son of Tournai, Eleutherius, became bishop of the newly created bishopric of Tournai. In 862 Charles the Bald, first king of Western Francia and still to become Holy Roman Emperor, after the partition of the Frankish empire by the Treaties of Verdun and of Meerssen, Tournai remained in the western part of the empire, which in 987 became France. The city participated in 11th-century rise of towns in the Low Countries, with a cloth industry based on English wool. An ambitious rebuilding of the cathedral was initiated in 1030, the stone Pont des Trous over the Scheldt, with defensive towers at either end, was built in 1290, replacing an earlier wooden structure. During the 15th century, the textile trade boomed and it became an important supplier of tapestry. The art of painting flourished too, Jacques Daret, Robert Campin and it was captured in 1513 by Henry VIII of England, making it the only Belgian city ever to have been ruled by England. It was also represented in the 1515 Parliament of England, the city was handed back to French rule in 1519, following the Treaty of London
2.
Hainaut (province)
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Hainaut is a province of Belgium in the Walloon region. Its capital is Mons and the most populous city is Charleroi, also the major urban, economic. The city is also the capital of Hainaut and one of the most important commercial centers in Belgium. Hainaut province is divided into 7 administrative districts, subdivided into a total of 69 municipalities and it has an area of 3,800 square kilometres. The patron saint of the province Hainaut is Saint Waltrude, Official web site of the Hainaut province Official gateway to the Hainaut The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Hainaut Euro Info Centre Hainaut Walloon Settlers Monument
3.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Ecclesiastical district
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The particular churches and liturgical rites of the Catholic Church are closely related yet distinct. The term church refers to an ordered assembly of the faithful, whereas the term rite refers to a liturgical, theological. Therefore, even though particular churches and liturgical rites are often closely interrelated, in Catholic canon law, a particular church is an ecclesiastical community headed by a bishop or someone recognised as the equivalent of a bishop. There are two kinds of churches, Autonomous particular church or Church sui iuris, In this context the descriptors autonomous and sui iuris are synonymous. These are aggregations of local churches that share a specific liturgical, theological and canonical tradition. They have also called particular Churches or rites. The largest such autonomous particular church is the Latin Church, the other 23 are referred to collectively as the Eastern Catholic Churches, headed by bishops who have the title and rank of Patriarch or Major Archbishop. In Catholic ecclesiology, a church is an assembly of the faithful, hierarchically ordered, to be a sacrament of the Mystical Body of Christ in the world, a church must have both a head and members. The sacramental sign of Christ the head is the sacred hierarchy – the bishops, priests, more specifically, it is the local bishop, with his priests and deacons gathered around and assisting him in his office of teaching, sanctifying and governing. Thus, the church is fully present sacramentally wherever there is a sign of Christ the head, a bishop and those who assist him, each diocese is therefore considered a particular church. In this sense of church, the list of churches in the Catholic Church has only one member, within the Catholic Church there are local particular churches, of which dioceses are the most familiar form. Other forms include territorial abbacies, apostolic vicariates and apostolic prefectures, the Code of Canon Law states, Particular Churches, in which and from which the one and only Catholic Church exists, are principally dioceses. A list of Catholic dioceses, of which on 31 December 2011 there were 2,834, is given at List of Catholic dioceses and these are known as autonomous churches. There are 24 such autonomous Catholic churches, One Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, although each of them has its own specific heritage, they are all in full communion with the Pope in Rome. For the particular churches within the Catholic Church, whether autonomous ritual churches or dioceses, are seen as not simply branches, theologically, each is considered to be the embodiment in a particular place or for a particular community of the one, whole Catholic Church. It is in these and formed out of them that the one, there are 24 autonomous churches, one Latin Church and twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, a distinction by now more historical than geographical. The term sui iuris means, literally, of its own law, although all of the particular churches espouse the same beliefs and faith, their distinction lies in their varied expression of that faith through their traditions, disciplines, and canon law. All are in communion with the Holy See, for this kind of particular church, the 1983 Code of Canon Law uses the unambiguous phrase autonomous ritual Church
6.
Roman Catholic Diocese of Tournai
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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tournai is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic church in Belgium. The diocese was formed in 1146, by the splitting of the diocese of Noyon and it is now suffragan of the archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. As early as the half of the 3rd century St. Piat evangelized Tournai, some writers represent him as the first bishop. Towards the end of the 3rd century the Emperor Maximian rekindled the persecutions, the barbarian invasions began shortly afterwards. This lasted from the end of the 3rd century till the end of the 5th century, St. Remigius profited by the good will of the Frankish monarchy to organize the Catholic hierarchy in the north of Gaul. He confided the Diocese of Arras and Cambrai to St. Vaast and it was probably its character of royal city which secured for Tournai this premature creation, but it soon lost its rank of capital by the departure of the Merovingian court. Nevertheless it kept its own bishops for nearly a century, then about 626 or 627, under the episcopate of St. Achar and it was only in 1146 that Tournai received its own bishop. Among its bishops may be mentioned, St. Eleutherius, St. Achar, after the Treaty of Utrecht the French were replaced by Germans, Johann Ernst, Count of Löwenstein-Wertheim, Franz Ernst, Count of Salm-Reifferscheid, Wilhelm Florentine, Prince of Salm-Salm. The union of the see with Noyon and the removal thither of the seat of the bishopric had favoured the growth of the power of the chapter. The privilege possessed by the chapter under the old régime of being composed only of nobles and scholars necessarily attracted to it the most distinguished for birth, illustrious names of France and Belgium are inscribed in the registers of the archives or on the tombstones of the cathedral. The cathedral,439 feet long by 216 feet wide, is surmounted by 5 towers 273 feet high, the nave and transept are Romanesque, and the choir is primary Gothic, begun in 1242 and finished in 1325. Originally the boundaries of the diocese must have been those of the Civitas Turnacensium mentioned in the Notice des Gaules, the prescriptions of councils and the interest of the Church both favoured these boundaries, and they were retained throughout the Middle Ages. The diocese then extended along the bank of the Schelde from the Scarpe to the North Sea, with the exception of the Vier-Ambachten. The Schelde thus formed the boundary between the Dioceses of Tournai and Cambrai, cutting in two the towns of Termonde, Ghent, Oudenarde, and Tournai itself, the shore of the North Sea between the Schelde and the Yser was wholly included within the perimeter. On the other side of the Yser was the Diocese of Thérouanne, there began the Diocese of Arras, which bordered Tournai as far as the confluence of the Scarpe and the Schelde at Mortgne, France. This vast diocese was divided into three archdeaneries and twelve deaneries. In 1559 in order to more successful war against Protestantism. The ancient Diocese of Tournai was divided, nearly two-thirds of its territory being taken away, the outlines of the archdeaneries of Bruges and Ghent formed the new diocese of Bruges and diocese of Ghent, and six parishes passed to the new diocese of Ypres
7.
Cathedral
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A cathedral is a Christian church which contains the seat of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. The counterpart term for such a church in German is Dom from Latin domus ecclesiae or domus episcopalis, also Italian Duomo, Dutch Domkerk, when the church at which an archbishop or metropolitan presides is specifically intended, the term kathedrikos naos is used. In addition, both the Catholic Church and Orthodox churches have formed new dioceses within formerly Protestant lands for converts, consequently, it is not uncommon to find Christians in a single city being served by three or more cathedrals of differing denominations. In the Catholic tradition, the term cathedral correctly applies only to a church houses the seat of the bishop of a diocese. The abbey church of a territorial abbacy serves the same function, the Catholic Church also uses the following terms. A pro-cathedral is a parish or other church used temporarily as a cathedral, usually while the cathedral of a diocese is under construction, renovation and this designation applies only as long as the temporary use continues. A co-cathedral is a cathedral in a diocese that has two sees. A proto-cathedral is the cathedral of a transferred see. The cathedral church of a bishop is called the metropolitan cathedral. The term cathedral actually carries no implication as to the size or ornateness of the building, nevertheless, most cathedrals are particularly impressive edifices. The building is now under renovation and restoration for solemn dedication under the title Christ Cathedral in 2018, in the ancient world the chair, on a raised dais, was the distinctive mark of a teacher or rhetor and thus symbolises the bishops role as teacher. A raised throne within a hall was also definitive for a Late Antique presiding magistrate. The history of cathedrals starts in the year 313, when the emperor Constantine the Great personally adopted Christianity, in the third century, the phrase ascending the platform, ad pulpitum venire, becomes the standard term for Christian ordination. During the siege of Dura Europos in 256, a complete Christian house church, or domus ecclesiae was entombed in a bank, surviving when excavated. Otherwise the large room had no decoration or distinctive features at all, in 269, soon after Dura fell to the Persian army, a body of clerics assembled a charge sheet against the bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, in the form of an open letter. Characteristically a Roman magistrate presided from a throne in a large, richly decorated and aisled rectangular hall called a basilica. The earliest of these new basilican cathedrals of which remains are still visible is below the Cathedral of Aquileia on the northern tip of the Adriatic sea. The three halls create a courtyard, in which was originally located a separate baptistery
Belgium
Media related to Cathédrale Notre-Dame, Tournai at Wikimedia Commons
