Edigu
Edigu was a Turkic Muslim Emir of the White Horde who founded a new political entity, which came to be known as the Nogai Horde. Edigu was from the Crimean Manghud tribe, the son of Baltychak, a Turkic noble, defeated and killed by Khan Tokhtamysh of the Golden Horde in 1378, he gained fame as a successful general of Tokhtamysh before turning the arms against his master. By 1396, he was a sovereign ruler of a large area stretching between the Volga and Ural rivers, which would be called the Nogai Horde. In 1397 Edigu allied himself with Timur-Qutlugh and was appointed General and commander-in-chief of the Golden Horde armies. In 1399 he inflicted a crushing defeat on Vytautas of Lithuania at the Vorskla River. Thereupon he managed to unite under his rule all Jochi's lands, albeit for the last time in history. In 1406 he located his old enemy Tokhtamysh in Siberia. Edigu's agents killed Tokhtamysh; the following year he raided Volga Bulgaria. In 1408, he staged a destructive Tatar invasion of Russia, which hadn't paid the tribute due to the horde for several decades.
Edigu burnt Nizhny Novgorod, Gorodets and many other towns but failed to take Moscow, though he had still burnt it. Two years Edigu was dethroned in the Golden Horde and had to seek refuge in Khwarezm. Shah Rukh of Herat expelled him back to Sarai, where he was assassinated by one of Tokhtamysh's sons in 1419. Edigu's dynasty in the Nogai Horde continued for about two centuries, until his last descendants moved to Moscow, where they took baptism and became known as Princes Urusov and Yusupov; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. 1906
Anna of Moscow
Anna Vasilievna of Moscow was a Byzantine Empress consort by marriage to John VIII Palaiologos. She died, she was a daughter of Vasily I of Sophia of Lithuania. Her maternal grandparents were his first wife, Anna, she married John VIII in 1414. Her husband was the eldest surviving son of Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena Dragaš. John was named Despotes in 1416 and seems to have assumed the position of co-emperor shortly thereafter. Anna was second in status only to her mother-in-law among the women of the Byzantine court; the history of Doukas records her dying of the "plague" in 1417. She is thought to be a victim of bubonic plague. Following the Black Death this plague continued to strike parts of Europe sporadically until the 17th century, each time with reduced intensity and fatality, suggesting an increased resistance due to genetic selection. Cawley, Her listing, along with her husband., Medieval Lands database, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy
Feudalism
Feudalism was a combination of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. Although derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum in use, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the Middle Ages. In its classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof, feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility revolving around the three key concepts of lords and fiefs. A broader definition of feudalism, as described by Marc Bloch, includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, the peasantry bound by manorialism. Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals, there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.
There is no accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars. The adjective feudal was coined in the 17th century, the noun feudalism used in a political and propaganda context, was not coined until the 19th century, from the French féodalité, itself an 18th-century creation. In a classic definition by François-Louis Ganshof, feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords and fiefs, though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment related only to the "narrow, legal sense of the word". A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's Feudal Society, includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but those of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, those living by their labour, most directly the peasantry bound by manorialism. Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" and Susan Reynolds's Fiefs and Vassals, there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.
Outside a European context, the concept of feudalism is used only by analogy, most in discussions of feudal Japan under the shōguns, sometimes medieval and Gondarine Ethiopia. However, some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism in places as diverse as Spring and Autumn period in China, ancient Egypt, the Parthian empire, the Indian subcontinent and the Antebellum and Jim Crow American South; the term feudalism has been applied—often inappropriately or pejoratively—to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Some historians and political theorists believe that the term feudalism has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society; the term "féodal" was used in 17th-century French legal treatises and translated into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as "feodal government". In the 18th century, Adam Smith, seeking to describe economic systems coined the forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book Wealth of Nations.
In the 19th century the adjective "feudal" evolved into a noun: "feudalism". The term feudalism is recent, first appearing in French in 1823, Italian in 1827, English in 1839, in German in the second half of the 19th century; the term "feudal" or "feodal" is derived from the medieval Latin word feodum. The etymology of feodum is complex with multiple theories, some suggesting a Germanic origin and others suggesting an Arabic origin. In medieval Latin European documents, a land grant in exchange for service was called a beneficium; the term feudum, or feodum, began to replace beneficium in the documents. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one-hundred years earlier; the origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below. The most held theory was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch.
Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term *fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means "cattle" and -ôd means "goods", implying "a moveable object of value." Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with moveable objects of equivalent value, such as arms, horses or food. This was known as feos, a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money; this meaning was applied to land itself, in which land was used to pay for fealty, such as to a vassal. Thus the old word feos meaning movable property changed little by little to feus meaning the exact opposite: landed property. Another theory was put forward by Archibald R. Lewis. Lewis said the origin of'fief' is not feudum, but rather foderum, the earliest attested use being in Astronomus's Vita Hludovici. In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious that says annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant, which can be translated as "Louis forbade that military provender (which they popular
Clock
A clock is an instrument used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units: the day, the lunar month, the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia; some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered as "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels. Traditionally in horology, the term clock was used for a striking clock, while a clock that did not strike the hours audibly was called a timepiece. In general usage today, a "clock" refers to any device for displaying the time.
Watches and other timepieces that can be carried on one's person are distinguished from clocks. Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, clockmaking flourished; the next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock. A major stimulus to improving the accuracy and reliability of clocks was the importance of precise time-keeping for navigation; the electric clock was patented in 1840. The development of electronics in the 20th century led to clocks with no clockwork parts at all; the timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object that vibrates or oscillates at a particular frequency. This object can be a pendulum, a tuning fork, a quartz crystal, or the vibration of electrons in atoms as they emit microwaves. Clocks have different ways of displaying the time. Analog clocks indicate time with moving hands. Digital clocks display a numeric representation of time. Two numbering systems are in use.
Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays. For the blind and use over telephones, speaking clocks state the time audibly in words. There are clocks for the blind that have displays that can be read by touch; the study of timekeeping is known as horology. The word clock derives from the medieval Latin word for "bell". Clocks spread to England from the Low Countries, so the English word came from the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch Klocke; the apparent position of the Sun in the sky moves over the course of each day, reflecting the rotation of the Earth. Shadows cast by stationary objects move correspondingly, so their positions can be used to indicate the time of day. A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface, which has markings that correspond to the hours. Sundials can be vertical, or in other orientations. Sundials were used in ancient times. With the knowledge of latitude, a well-constructed sundial can measure local solar time with reasonable accuracy, within a minute or two.
Sundials continued to be used to monitor the performance of clocks until the modern era. Many devices can be used to mark passage of time without respect to reference time and can be useful for measuring duration or intervals. Examples of such duration timers are incense clocks and the hourglass. Both the candle clock and the incense clock work on the same principle wherein the consumption of resources is more or less constant allowing reasonably precise and repeatable estimates of time passages. In the hourglass, fine sand pouring through a tiny hole at a constant rate indicates an arbitrary, passage of time; the resource is not re-used. Water clocks known as clepsydrae, along with the sundials, are the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day counting tally stick. Given their great antiquity and when they first existed is not known and unknowable; the bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in Babylon and in Egypt around the 16th century BC.
Other regions of the world, including India and China have early evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates are less certain. Some authors, write about water clocks appearing as early as 4000 BC in these regions of the world. Greek astronomer Andronicus of Cyrrhus supervised the construction of the Tower of the Winds in Athens in the 1st century B. C; the Greek and Roman civilizations are credited for advancing water clock design to include complex gearing, connected to fanciful automata and resulted in improved accuracy. These advances were passed on through Byzantium and Islamic times making their way back to Europe. Independently, the Chinese developed their own advanced water clocks（水鐘）in 725 AD, passing their ideas on to Korea and Japan; some water clock designs were developed independently and some knowledge was transferred through the spread of trade. Pre-modern societies do not have the same precise timekeeping requirements that exist in modern industrial societies, where every hour of work or rest is monitored, work may start or finish at any time regardless of external conditions.
Instead, water clocks in ancient societies were used for astrological reasons. These early water clocks were calibrated with a sundial. While never reaching the level of accuracy of a modern timepiece, the water clock was the most a
Rurik dynasty
The Rurik dynasty, or Rurikids, was a dynasty founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who established himself in Novgorod around the year AD 862. The Rurikids were the ruling dynasty of Kievan Rus', as well as the successor principalities of Galicia-Volhynia, Vladimir-Suzdal, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the founders of the Tsardom of Russia, they ruled until the Time of Troubles, following which they were succeeded by the Romanovs. They are one of Europe's oldest royal houses, with numerous existing cadet branches; as a ruling dynasty, the Rurik dynasty held its own in some part of Russia for a total of twenty-one generations in male-line succession, from Rurik to Vasili IV of Russia, a period of more than 700 years. The Rurikid dynasty was founded in 862 by a Varangian prince. Folk history tells of the Finnic and Slavic tribes in the area calling on "'the Varangians, to the Rus' … The Chud, the Slovenes, the Krivichi and the Ves said "Our land is vast and abundant, but there is no order in it.
Come and reign as princes and have authority over us!"' Three brothers came with'their kin' and'all the Rus' in response to this invitation. Rurik set up rule in Novgorod. There is some ambiguity in the Primary Chronicle about the specifics of the story, "hence their paradoxical statement'the people of Novgorod are of Varangian stock, for they were Slovenes.'" However, archaeological evidence such as "Frankish swords, a sword chape and a tortoiseshell brooch" in the area suggest that there was, in fact, a Scandinavian population during the tenth century at the latest. There have been some suggestions that Rurik and his brothers might have been of Finnish or Estonian descent. In Estonian folklore there is a tale of three brothers, namely Rahurikkuja and Truuvaar, who were born as peasants, but through bravery and courageousness all became rulers in foreign countries. Rurik and his brothers founded a state that historians called Kievan Rus′. By the middle of the twelfth century, Kievan Rus′ had dissolved into independent principalities, each ruled by a different branch of the Rurik dynasty.
The dynasty followed the izgoi principle. The Rurik dynasty underwent a major schism after the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, dividing into three branches on the basis of descent from three successive ruling Grand Princes: Izyaslav and Vsevolod. In addition, a line of Polotsk princes assimilated themselves with the princes of Lithuania. In the 10th century the Council of Liubech made some amendments to a succession rule and divided Ruthenia into several autonomous principalities that had equal rights to obtain the Kiev throne. Vsevolod's line became better known as the Monomakhovichi and was the predominant one; the line of Svyatoslav became known as Olegovychi and laid claim to the lands of Chernihiv and Severia. The Izyaslavychi who ruled Turov and Volhynia were replaced by a Monomakhovychi branch. "The Rurikid dynasty… attempted to impose on their diverse polity the integrative concept of russkaia zemlia and the unifying notion of a "Rus′ people". But "Kievan Rus′ was never a unified polity.
It was a loosely bound, ill-defined, heterogeneous conglomeration of lands and cities inhabited by tribes and populous groups whose loyalties were territorial." This caused the Rurik dynasty to dissolve into several sub-dynasties ruling smaller states in the 10th and 11th centuries. These were the Olgoviches of Severia who ruled in Chernigov, Yuryeviches who controlled Vladimir-Suzdal, Romanoviches in Galicia-Volhynia; the Olgoviches descended from Oleg I of Chernigov, a son of Sviatoslav II of Kiev and grandson of Yaroslav the Wise. They continued to rule until the early 14th century when they were torn apart by the emerging Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Grand Duchy of Moscow; the line continued through Oleg's son Vsevolod II of Kiev, grandson Sviatoslav III of Kiev, great-grandson Vsevolod IV of Kiev and great-great grandson Michael of Chernigov, from whose sons the extant lines of the Olegoviches are descended, including the Massalsky, Baryatinsky and Obolensky, including Repnin. Vsevolod I of Kiev was the father of Vladimir II Monomakh, giving rise to the name Monomakh for his progeny.
Two of Vladimir II's sons were Mstislav I of Yuri Dolgorukiy. The Romanoviches were the line of Roman the Great, descended from Mstislav I of Kiev through his son Iziaslav II of Kiev and his grandson Mstislav II of Kiev, father of Roman the Great; the older Monomakhovychi line that ruled Principality of Volhynia, they were crowned kings of Galicia and Volhynia and ruled until 1323. Romanovychi displaced the older line of Izyaslavychi from Turov and Volhynia as well as Rostyslavychi from Galicia; the last were two brothers of Romanovychi and Lev II, who ruled jointly and were slain trying to repel Mongol incursions. The Polish king, Władysław I the Elbow-high, in his letter to the Pope wrote with regret: "The two last Ruthenian kings, firm shields for Poland from the Tatars, left this world and after their death Poland is directly under Tatar threat." Losing their leadership role, however, continued to play a vital role in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Most notably, the Ostrogski fa
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Eastern Orthodox Church the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with 200–260 million members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops in local synods, although half of Eastern Orthodox Christians live in Russia; the church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the Bishop of Rome, but the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by all as primus inter pares of the bishops. As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Near East. Eastern Orthodox theology is based on the Nicene Creed; the church teaches that it is the One, Holy and Apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains, its patriarchates, reminiscent of the pentarchy, autocephalous and autonomous churches reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation.
Of its innumerable sacred mysteries, it recognises seven major sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ; the Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the God-bearer, honoured in devotions. The Eastern Orthodox Church shared communion with the Roman Catholic Church until the East–West Schism in 1054, triggered by disputes over doctrine the authority of the Pope. Before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, the Oriental Orthodox churches shared in this communion, separating over differences in Christology; the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians live in Southeast and Eastern Europe, Cyprus and other communities in the Caucasus region, communities in Siberia reaching the Russian Far East. There are smaller communities in the former Byzantine regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Middle East where it is decreasing due to persecution.
There are many in other parts of the world, formed through diaspora and missionary activity. In keeping with the church's teaching on universality and with the Nicene Creed, Orthodox authorities such as Saint Raphael of Brooklyn have insisted that the full name of the church has always included the term "Catholic", as in "Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church"; the official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the "Orthodox Catholic Church". It is the name by which the church refers to itself in its liturgical or canonical texts, in official publications, in official contexts or administrative documents. Orthodox teachers refer to the church as Catholic; this name and longer variants containing "Catholic" are recognised and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Orthodox writers. The common name of the church, "Eastern Orthodox Church", is a shortened practicality that helps to avoid confusions in casual use. From ancient times through the first millennium, Greek was the most prevalent shared language in the demographic regions where the Byzantine Empire flourished, Greek, being the language in which the New Testament was written, was the primary liturgical language of the church.
For this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as "Greek" before the Great Schism of 1054. After 1054, "Greek Orthodox" or "Greek Catholic" marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople, much as "Catholic" did for communion with Rome; this identification with Greek, became confusing with time. Missionaries brought Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. In addition, struggles between Rome and Constantinople to control parts of Southeastern Europe resulted in the conversion of some churches to Rome, which also used "Greek Catholic" to indicate their continued use of the Byzantine rites. Today, many of those same churches remain, while a large number of Orthodox are not of Greek national origin, do not use Greek as the language of worship. "Eastern" indicates the geographical element in the Church's origin and development, while "Orthodox" indicates the faith, as well as communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
There are additional Christian churches in the east that are in communion with neither Rome nor Constantinople, who tend to be distinguished by the category named "Oriental Orthodox". While the church continues to call itself "Catholic", for reasons of universality, the common title of "Eastern Orthodox Church" avoids casual confusion with the Roman Catholic Church; the first known use of the phrase "the catholic Church" occurred in a letter written about 110 AD from one Greek church to another. The letter states: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be as where Jesus may be, there is the universal Church." Thus from the beginning, Christians referred to the Church as the "One, Holy and Apostolic Church". The Eastern Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same early Church. A number of other Christian churches make a similar claim: the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church and the Oriental Orthodox.
In the Eastern Orthodox v
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