title: Church of Ireland

text: Since Ireland was now considered a Papal fief, its bishops were appointed by Rome but generally adopted English liturgy and saints, such as Edward the Confessor, and Thomas Becket. In 1536, the Irish Parliament followed their English colleagues by accepting Henry VIII of England as head of the church, rather than the Pope. This marks the founding of the reformed Church of Ireland, confirmed when Henry became King of Ireland in 1541. Largely restricted to Dublin, led by Archbishop George Browne, it expanded under Edward VI, until Catholicism was restored by his sister Mary I in 1553.


title: Church of Ireland

text: When Elizabeth I of England became queen in 1558, only five bishops accepted her Religious Settlement, and most of the Irish clergy had to be replaced. This was hampered by the church's relative poverty, while adapting to the changes of regime damaged the reputation of those who remained. Hugh Curwen was Dean of Hereford until 1555, when Mary made him Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, before returning to the reformed church in 1558. Despite accusations of 'moral delinquency', he remained Archbishop and Lord Chancellor until 1567, when he was appointed Bishop of Oxford.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The absence of Gaelic-speaking ministers led to the adoption of a gradualist policy, similar to that used in Catholic areas of Northern England. 'Occasional conformity' allowed the use of pre-Reformation rites, combined with acceptance of the established Church; this practice persisted in both England and Ireland well into the mid-18th century.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Lack of Irish Gaelic literature was another restriction; shortly before his death in 1585, Nicholas Walsh began translation of the New Testament. Continued by John Kearny and Nehemiah Donnellan, it was finally printed in 1602 by William Daniel, who also translated the Book of Common Prayer, or BCP, in 1606. An Irish version of the Old Testament was published in 1685 by Narcissus Marsh, but the revised BCP was not available until 1712.


title: Church of Ireland

text: At the beginning of the 17th century, most native Irish were Catholic, with Protestant settlers in Ulster establishing an independent Presbyterian church. Largely confined to an English-speaking minority in The Pale, the most important figure of the Church's development was Dublin-born theologian and historian, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh from 1625 to 1656. In 1615, the Church of Ireland drew up its own confession of faith, similar to the English version, but more detailed, less ambiguous and often explicitly Calvinist. When the Thirty-Nine Articles were formally adopted by the Irish church in 1634, Ussher ensured they were in addition to the Irish Articles; however, they were soon superseded by the Thirty Nine Articles, which remain in use to the present day.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Under Charles I, the Church of Ireland claimed to be the original and universal church, while the Papacy was an innovation, thus vesting it with the supremacy of Apostolic succession. This argument was supported by Ussher, and Charles' former personal chaplain, John Leslie, a key supporter of Caroline reforms in Scotland, appointed bishop of Derry & Raphoe in 1633. During the 1641–1653 Irish Confederate Wars, nearly two-thirds of Ireland was controlled by the largely Catholic Confederacy, and in 1644, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini became Papal Nuncio to Ireland. Irish Catholicism had developed greater tolerance for Protestants, while sharing their hostility to elaborate ritual. Rinuccini's insistence on following Roman liturgy, and attempts to re-introduce ceremonies such as foot washing divided the Confederacy, and contributed to its rapid collapse in the 1649–1652 Cromwell's re-conquest of Ireland.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church was re-established after the 1660 Restoration of Charles II and in January 1661, meetings by 'Papists, Presbyterians, Independents or separatists' were made illegal. In practice, the penal laws were loosely enforced and after 1666, Protestant Dissenters and Catholics were allowed to resume their seats in the Parliament of Ireland. In 1685, the Catholic James II became king with considerable backing in all three kingdoms; this changed when his policies seemed to go beyond tolerance for Catholicism and into an attack on the established church. His prosecution of the Seven Bishops in England for seditious libel in June 1688 destroyed his support base, while many felt James lost his right to govern by ignoring his coronation Oath to maintain the primacy of the Protestant religion.


title: Church of Ireland

text: This made oaths a high-profile issue, since ministers of the national churches of England, Scotland and Ireland were required to swear allegiance to the ruling monarch. When the 1688 Glorious Revolution replaced James with his Protestant daughter and son-in-law, Mary II and William III, a minority felt bound by their previous oath and refused to swear another. This led to the Non-Juring schism, although for the vast majority, this was a matter of personal conscience, rather than political support for James.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Irish church was less affected by this controversy, although the Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh became a Non-Juror, as did a handful of the clergy, including Jacobite propagandist Charles Leslie. The Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland is traditionally viewed as beginning in 1691 when the Treaty of Limerick ended the 1689–1691 Williamite War. The Church re-established control and the 1697 Banishment Act expelled Catholic bishops and regular clergy from Ireland, leaving only the so-called secular clergy.


title: Church of Ireland

text: In 1704, the Test Act was extended to Ireland; this effectively restricted public office to members of the Church of Ireland and officially remained in place until the 1829 Catholic Relief Act. However, the practice of occasional conformity continued, while many Catholic gentry by-passed these restrictions by educating their sons as Protestants, their daughters as Catholics; Edmund Burke, who was raised Church of Ireland but whose parents simultaneously raised his sister Juliana Catholic, is one example.


title: Church of Ireland

text: It is estimated fewer than 15 – 20% of the Irish population were nominally members of the church, which remained a minority under pressure from both Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists. The 1719 Toleration Act allowed Nonconformists freedom of worship, while the Irish Parliament paid their ministers a small subsidy known as the 'regium donum.'


title: Church of Ireland

text: Although willing to permit a degree of flexibility, like their English counterparts, Irish bishops viewed their status as the national church to be non-negotiable and used their seats in the Irish House of Lords to enforce this. However, in 1725 Parliament passed the first in a series of 'temporary' Indemnity Acts, which allowed office holders to 'postpone' taking the oaths; the bishops were willing to approve these, since they could be repealed at any point.


title: Church of Ireland

text: In the 17th century, religious and political beliefs were often assumed to be the same; thus Catholics were considered political subversives, simply because of their religion. During the 18th century, sectarian divisions were replaced by a growing sense of Irish autonomy; in 1749, Bishop Berkeley issued an address to the Catholic clergy, urging them to work together with the church in the (Irish) national interest. After 1750, the government increasingly viewed Catholic emancipation as a way to reduce the power of Protestant nationalists like the United Irishmen; this had potential implications for the church since the requirement non-church members pay tithes was deeply resented. The movement ended after the 1798 Rebellion and Ireland's incorporation with Britain.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Following the legal union of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain by the Act of Union 1800, the Church of Ireland was also united with the Church of England to form the United Church of England and Ireland. At the same time, one archbishop and three bishops from Ireland (selected by rotation) were given seats in the House of Lords at Westminster, joining the two archbishops and twenty-four bishops from the Church of England.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Irish Church was over-staffed, with 22 bishops, including 4 archbishops, for an official membership of 852,000, less than that of the Church of England's Diocese of Durham. The Church Temporalities (Ireland) Act 1833 reduced these to 12, as well as making financial changes. Part of a series of reforms by the 1830–1834 Whig government that included the Reform Act 1832, it caused deep political splits. The implications of government legislating church governance was a contributory factor in the Oxford Movement and had wide repercussions for the Anglican Communion.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Another source of resentment was the funding of the Church by tithes imposed on all Irish subjects, even though the majority were not members. This led to anomalies like the incumbent of a living near Bessborough, who in 1833 was receiving £1,000 per year, despite the fact the parish had no Protestants or even a church. The "Tithe War" of 1831–36 led to their replacement by the "tithe rent charge" but they did not entirely disappear until the Irish Church Act 1869.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Act ended the Church's status as a state organisation; its bishops were removed from the House of Lords and its property transferred to the government. Compensation was paid but in the immediate aftermath, parishes faced great difficulty in local financing after the loss of rent-generating lands and buildings.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The head of the Church of Ireland is, "ex officio", the Archbishop of Armagh. In 1870, immediately prior to its disestablishment, the Church provided for its internal government, led by a General Synod, and with financial and administrative support by a Representative Church Body. Like other Irish churches, the Church of Ireland did not divide when Ireland was partitioned in the 1920s and it continues to be governed on an all-Ireland basis.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The polity of the Church of Ireland is episcopal church governance, as in other Anglican churches. The church maintains the traditional structure dating to pre-Reformation times, a system of geographical parishes organised into dioceses. There were more than 30 of these historically, grouped into four provinces; today, after consolidation over the centuries, there are eleven Church of Ireland dioceses or united dioceses, each headed by a bishop and belonging to one of two surviving provinces. In May 2019 the Church of Ireland Synod agreed to the merger of the dioceses of Tuam, Killala and Achonry with Limerick and Killaloe. Full merger will come into effect on the resignation or retirement of either of the current bishops. The new diocese is known as Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe and is part of the province of Dublin.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The leader of the southern province is the Archbishop of Dublin, at present Michael Jackson; that of the northern province is the Archbishop of Armagh, at present Francis John McDowell. These two archbishops are styled Primate of Ireland and Primate of All Ireland respectively, suggesting the ultimate seniority of the latter. Although he has relatively little absolute authority, the Archbishop of Armagh is respected as the church's general leader and spokesman, and is elected in a process different from those for all other bishops.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Doctrine, canon law, church governance, church policy, and liturgical matters are decided by the church's general synod. The general synod comprises two houses, the House of Bishops and the House of Representatives. The House of Bishops includes the 10 diocesan bishops and two archbishops, forming one order. The House of Representatives is made up of two orders, clergy and laity. The order of clergy holds one third of the seats while the laity holds two-thirds of the seats. As of 2017, there are 216 clergy members and 432 lay members in the House of Representatives. The membership of the House of Representatives is made up of delegates from the dioceses, with seats allocated to each diocese's clergy and laity in specific numbers; these delegates are elected every three years. The general synod meets annually, and special meetings can be called by the leading bishop or one third of any of its orders.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Changes in policy must be passed by a simple majority of both the House of Bishops and the House of Representatives. Changes to doctrine, for example the decision to ordain women as priests, must be passed by a two-thirds majority of both Houses. The two sit together for general deliberations but separate for some discussions and voting. While the House of Representatives always votes publicly, often by orders, the House of Bishops has tended to vote in private, coming to a decision before matters reach the floor of the synod. This practice has been broken only once when, in 1999, the House of Bishops voted unanimously in public to endorse the efforts of the Archbishop of Armagh, the Diocese of Armagh and the Standing Committee of the General Synod in their attempts to resolve the crisis at the Church of the Ascension at Drumcree near Portadown.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church's internal laws are formulated as bills proposed to the Houses of the general synod, which when passed become Statutes. The church's governing document, its constitution, is modified, consolidated and published by way of statute also, the most recent edition, the 13th, being published in 2003.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The representative body of the Church of Ireland, often called the "Representative Church Body" (RCB), is the corporate trustee of the church, as established by law, and much of the church's property is vested in it. The members of the RCB are the bishops plus diocesan delegates and twelve co-opted members, and it meets at least four times a year. The staff of the representative body are analogous to clerical civil servants, and among other duties they oversee property, including church buildings, cemeteries and investments, administer some salaries and pensions, and manage the church library. While parishes, dioceses, and other parts of the church structure care for their particular properties, this is often subject to RCB rules.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Church of Ireland embraces three orders of ministry: deacons, priests (or presbyters) and bishops. These orders are distinct from positions such as rector, vicar or canon.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Each diocese or united diocese is led by its Ordinary, one of the ten bishops and two archbishops, and the Ordinary may have one or more Archdeacons to support them, along with a Rural Dean for each group of parishes. There is a diocesan synod for each diocese; there may be separate synods for historic dioceses now in unions. These synods comprise the bishop along with clergy and lay representatives from the parishes, and subject to the laws of the church, and the work of the general synod and its committees and the representative body and its committees, oversee the operation of the diocese. Each diocesan synod in turn appoints a diocesan council to which it can delegate powers.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Each parish has a presiding member of the clergy, assisted by two churchwardens and often also two glebewardens, one of each type of warden being appointed by the clerical incumbent, and one by popular vote. All qualified adult members of the parish comprise the general vestry, which meets annually, within 20 days each side of Easter, as the Easter Vestry. There is also a select vestry for the parish, or sometimes for each active church in a parish, comprising the presiding cleric and any curate assistants, along with relevant churchwardens and glebewardens and a number of members elected at the Easter Vestry meeting. The select vestry assists in the care and operation of the parish and one or more church buildings.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Special provisions apply to the management and operation of five key cathedrals, in Dublin (which contains two Church of Ireland cathedrals), Armagh, Down, and Belfast.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church has disciplinary and appeals tribunals, and diocesan courts, and a court of the general synod.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Church of Ireland experienced a major decline in membership during the 20th century, both in Northern Ireland, where around 65% of its members live, and in the Republic of Ireland. The church is still the second-largest in the Republic of Ireland, with 126,414 members in 2016 (minus 2% compared to the 2011 census results) and the third-largest in Northern Ireland, with around 260,000 members. In 2016, a peer-reviewed study published in the "Journal of Anglican Studies" by "Cambridge University Press" found that the Church of Ireland has approximately 384,176 total members and 58,000 active baptised members.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Church of Ireland has two cathedrals in Dublin: within the line of the walls of the old city is Christ Church Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishop of Dublin, and just outside the old walls is St. Patrick's Cathedral, which the church designated as the National Cathedral for Ireland in 1870. Cathedrals also exist in the other dioceses.


title: Church of Ireland

text: There is also the metropolitan cathedral church of Ireland, situated in Armagh, St Patrick's Cathedral. This cathedral is the seat of the archbishop and metropolitan, the Most Reverend John McDowell.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church's central offices are in Rathmines, adjacent to the former Church of Ireland College of Education, and the church's library is in Churchtown. Teacher training now occurs within the Dublin City University Institute of Education, overseen by the Church of Ireland Centre, based at the former All Hallows College. The church operates a seminary, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, in Rathgar, in the south inner suburbs of Dublin.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The churches of the Anglican Communion are linked by affection and common loyalty. They are in full communion with the See of Canterbury and thus the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his person, is a unique focus of Anglican unity. He calls the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of Primates, and is President of the Anglican Consultative Council. The contemporary Church of Ireland, despite having a number of High Church (often described as Anglo-Catholic) parishes, is generally on the Low Church end of the spectrum of world Anglicanism. Historically, it had little of the difference in churchmanship between parishes characteristic of other Anglican provinces, although a number of markedly liberal, High Church or Evangelical parishes have developed in recent decades. It was the second province of the Anglican Communion after the Anglican Church of New Zealand (1857) to adopt, on its 1871 disestablishment, synodical government. It was also one of the first provinces to begin ordaining women to the priesthood (1991).


title: Church of Ireland

text: GAFCON Ireland was launched on 21 April 2018, in Belfast, with 320 attendees from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. International speakers included Archbishops Peter Jensen (retired Archbishop of Sydney) and Gregory Venables (Primate of the Anglican Church of South America). The Church of Ireland was represented at GAFCON III, held on 17–22 June 2018 in Jerusalem, by a six-member delegation which included two bishops; Ferran Glenfield of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh and Harold Miller of Down and Dromore. Their participation was criticised by some members of the Church of Ireland. The Church of Ireland is not a member of GAFCON and the church communicated that attendance by clergy was unofficial in "a personal capacity" and the General Synod has voted against GAFCON's statement on the Lambeth Conference. GAFCON supporters refuted their critics claims, saying that they endorse Lambeth 1.10 resolution on human sexuality, which is still the official stance of the Church of Ireland, but has been rejected by the liberal provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Rev. Charles Raven stated: "the charge that GAFCON is a breakaway or separatist group is not supported by the evidence. It is a movement of reform and revitalisation which has enabled faithful Anglicans to remain within the Communion, especially in North America and Brazil. While being clear that participation in its common life is based upon fidelity to the biblical gospel, not merely upon historic ties, the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration of 2008 says quite unequivocally that 'Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion'."


title: Church of Ireland

text: Like many other Anglican churches, the Church of Ireland is a member of many ecumenical bodies, including the World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and the Irish Council of Churches. It is also a member of the Porvoo Communion.


title: Church of Ireland

text: In 1999, the church voted to prohibit the flying of flags other than St Patrick's flag and the Flag of the Anglican Communion. However, the Union Flag continues to fly on many churches in Northern Ireland.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church has an official website. Its journal is "The Church of Ireland Gazette", which is editorially independent, but the governing body of which is appointed by the church. Many parishes and other internal organizations also produce newsletters or other publications, as well as maintaining websites.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The centre of the Church of Ireland's teaching is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The basic teachings of the church include:


title: Church of Ireland

text: The 16th-century apologist, Richard Hooker, posits that there are three sources of authority in Anglicanism: scripture, tradition and reason. It is not known how widely accepted this idea is within Anglicanism. It is further posited that the three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way. In Hooker's model, scripture is the primary means of arriving at doctrine; things stated plainly in scripture are accepted as true. Issues that are ambiguous are determined by tradition, which is checked by reason.


title: Church of Ireland

text: In recent decades, the church has ordained women to all offices. In 1984, the General Synod approved the ordination of women to the diaconate and, in 1987, the first woman, Katherine Poulton, was ordained as a deacon. In 1990 the church began ordaining women to the priesthood. The first two women ordained were Kathleen Margaret Brown and Irene Templeton. In 2013, the church appointed its first female bishop, Pat Storey.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The church has been divided over aspects of human sexuality. In 2002, the issue became pertinent as a vicar provided a blessing for a lesbian couple. The denomination announced a period of discernment to allocate time to the perspectives within the discussion. In 2010, a congregation was recognised by the church for receiving an LGBTI award for offering services for LGBTI people. The Church of Ireland canon defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and does not perform same-sex marriages, but the church also supported the legal right of same-sex couples to register a civil marriage.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Civil partnerships have been allowed since 2005. The church has no official position on civil unions. In 2008, "the Church of Ireland Pensions Board ha[d] confirmed that it will treat civil partners the same as spouses." The General Synod adopted the Pensions Board's policy in 2008. In 2011, a cleric in the Church of Ireland entered into a same-sex civil partnership with his bishop's permission. Assurances of sexual abstinence were not required from the cleric. In 2012, the church's Clergy Pension Fund continued to recognise that "the pension entitlement of a member's registered civil partner will be the same as that of a surviving spouse." Regarding cohabitation, the church said that "any view of cohabitation has to be the intention of the couple to lifelong loyalty and faithfulness within their relationship." In 2004, then Archbishop John Neill said that the "Church would support the extension of legal rights on issues such as tax, welfare benefits, inheritance and hospital visits to cohabiting couples, both same gender and others." The church recognises four general viewpoints within the denomination ranging from opposition to acceptance toward same-gender relationships.


title: Church of Ireland

text: Prior to the referendum on same-sex marriage, the church remained neutral on the issue. In 2015, the Bishop of Cork, the Rt. Rev. Paul Colton, Bishop Michael Burrows of Cashel, and two retired archbishops of Dublin endorsed same-sex marriage. While voting "no" on gay marriage, Bishop Pat Storey endorsed civil unions. Also, 55 clergy signed a letter supporting the blessing of same-sex couples. In its pastoral letter, the church reiterated that, presently, church marriages are only for heterosexual couples, but that clergy may offer prayers for same-sex couples. When asked about clergy entering into civil same-sex marriages, the letter stated that "all are free to exercise their democratic entitlements once they are enshrined in legislation. However, members of the clergy, are further bound by the Ordinal and by the authority of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland." Services of Thanksgiving for same-sex marriage have taken place in congregations; for example, St. Audoen's Church hosted "a service of thanksgiving" for same-sex marriage. LGBTI services are also allowed by the Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross.


title: Church of Ireland

text: REFORM Ireland, a conservative lobby, has criticised the official letter as "a dangerous departure from confessing Anglicanism" and continues to oppose same-sex marriage recognition. Reflecting division, the church deferred its report on same-sex marriage to listen to all voices. "The Church of Ireland Gazette", although "editorially independent", endorsed a blessing rite for same-sex couples. Many congregations, including cathedrals, have become publicly affirming of LGBTI rights. A church report has determined that "the moral logic underpinning the negative portrayal of same-sex eroticism in Scripture does not directly address committed, loving, consecrated same-sex relationships today". In 2017, the General Synod considered a proposal to request for public services of thanksgiving for same-sex couples, but the proposal was not passed; the church's select committee on human sexuality recommended that the bishops continue to study the issues. There were 176 votes against the motion to request public services, 146 in favour, and 24 abstentions. The Bishop of Cork, Paul Colton, declared his support for same-sex marriage ceremonies in the Church of Ireland.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The first translation of the Book of Common Prayer into Irish was published in 1606. An Irish translation of the revised prayer book of 1662 was published in 1712.


title: Church of Ireland

text: The Church of Ireland has its own Irish language body, "Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise" ("Irish Guild of the Church"). This was founded in 1914 to bring together members of the Church of Ireland interested in the Irish language and Gaelic culture and to promote the Irish language within the Church of Ireland. The guild aims to link its programmes with the Irish language initiatives which have been centred round Christ Church Cathedral. It holds services twice a month in Irish.


title: Church of Ireland

text: From 1926 to 1995, the church had its own Irish-language teacher training college, "Coláiste Moibhí". Today, there are a number of interdenominational "Gaelscoileanna" (schools where Irish-medium education is applied).


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The Ostrogothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of Italy (), existed under the control of the Germanic Ostrogoths in Italy and neighbouring areas from 493 to 553.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: In Italy, the Ostrogoths led by Theodoric the Great killed and replaced Odoacer, a Germanic soldier, erstwhile-leader of the "foederati" in Northern Italy, and the "de facto" ruler of Italy, who had deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. Under Theodoric, its first king, the Ostrogothic kingdom reached its zenith, stretching from modern southern France in the west to the modern western Serbia in the southeast. Most of the social institutions of the late Western Roman Empire were preserved during his rule. Theodoric called himself "Gothorum Romanorumque rex" ("King of the Goths and Romans"), demonstrating his desire to be a leader for both peoples.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Starting in 535, the Byzantine Empire invaded Italy under Justinian I. The Ostrogothic ruler at that time, Witiges, could not defend the kingdom successfully and was finally captured when the capital Ravenna fell. The Ostrogoths rallied around a new leader, Totila, and largely managed to reverse the conquest, but were eventually defeated. The last king of the Ostrogothic Kingdom was Teia.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The Ostrogoths were the eastern branch of the Goths. They settled and established a powerful state in Dacia, but during the late 4th century, they came under the dominion of the Huns. After the collapse of the Hunnic empire in 454, large numbers of Ostrogoths were settled by Emperor Marcian in the Roman province of Pannonia as "foederati". Unlike most other foederati formations, the Goths were not absorbed into the structure and traditions of the Roman military but retained a strong identity and cohesion of their own. In 460, during the reign of Leo I, because the payment of annual sums had ceased, they ravaged Illyricum. Peace was concluded in 461, whereby the young Theodoric Amal, son of Theodemir of the Amals, was sent as a hostage to Constantinople, where he received a Roman education.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: In previous years, a large number of Goths, first under Aspar and then under Theodoric Strabo, had entered service in the Roman army and were a significant political and military power in the court of Constantinople. The period 477-483 saw a complex three-way struggle among Theodoric the Amal, who had succeeded his father in 474, Theodoric Strabo, and the new Eastern Emperor Zeno. In this conflict, alliances shifted regularly, and large parts of the Balkans were devastated by it.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: In the end, after Strabo's death in 481, Zeno came to terms with Theodoric. Parts of Moesia and Dacia ripensis were ceded to the Goths, and Theodoric was named "magister militum praesentalis" and consul for 484. Barely a year later, Theodoric and Zeno fell out, and again Theodoric's Goths ravaged Thrace. It was then that the thought occurred to Zeno and his advisors to kill two birds with one stone, and direct Theodoric against another troublesome neighbour of the Empire - the Italian kingdom of Odoacer.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: In 476, Odoacer, leader of the foederati in the West, had staged a coup against the rebellious "magister militum" Orestes, who was seeking to have his son Romulus Augustulus recognized as Western Emperor in place of Emperor Julius Nepos. Orestes had reneged on the promise of land in Italy for Odoacer's troops, a pledge made to ensure their neutrality in his attack on Nepos. After executing Orestes and putting the teenage usurper in internal exile, Odoacer paid nominal allegiance to Nepos (now in Dalmatia) while effectively operating autonomously, having been raised to the rank of patrician by Zeno. Odoacer retained the Roman administrative system, cooperated actively with the Roman Senate, and his rule was efficient and successful. He evicted the Vandals from Sicily in 477, and in 480 he occupied Dalmatia after the murder of Julius Nepos.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: An agreement was reached between Zeno and Theodoric, stipulating that Theodoric, if victorious, was to rule in Italy as the emperor's representative. Theodoric with his people set out from Moesia in the autumn of 488, passed through Dalmatia and crossed the Julian Alps into Italy in late August 489. The first confrontation with the army of Odoacer was at the river Isonzo (the battle of Isonzo) on August 28. Odoacer was defeated and withdrew towards Verona, where a month later another battle was fought, resulting in a bloody, but crushing, Gothic victory.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Odoacer fled to his capital at Ravenna, while the larger part of his army under Tufa surrendered to the Goths. Theodoric then sent Tufa and his men against Odoacer, but he changed his allegiance again and returned to Odoacer. In 490, Odoacer was thus able to campaign against Theodoric, take Milan and Cremona and besiege the main Gothic base at Ticinum (Pavia). At that point, however, the Visigoths intervened, the siege of Ticinum was lifted, and Odoacer was decisively defeated at the river Adda on 11 August 490. Odoacer fled again to Ravenna, while the Senate and many Italian cities declared themselves for Theodoric.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The Goths now turned to besiege Ravenna, but since they lacked a fleet and the city could be resupplied by sea, the siege could be endured almost indefinitely, despite privations. It was not until 492 that Theodoric was able to procure a fleet and capture Ravenna's harbours, thus entirely cutting off communication with the outside world. The effects of this appeared six months later, when, with the mediation of the city's bishop, negotiations started between the two parties.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: An agreement was reached on 25 February 493, whereby the two should divide Italy between them. A banquet was organised in order to celebrate this treaty. It was at this banquet, on March 15, that Theodoric, after making a toast, killed Odoacer with his own hands. A general massacre of Odoacer's soldiers and supporters followed. Theodoric and his Goths were now masters of Italy.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Like Odoacer, Theodoric was ostensibly a "patricius" and subject of the emperor in Constantinople, acting as his viceroy for Italy, a position recognized by the new Emperor Anastasius in 497. At the same time, he was the king of his own people, who were not Roman citizens. In reality, he acted as an independent ruler, although unlike Odoacer, he meticulously preserved the outward forms of his subordinate position.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The administrative machinery of Odoacer's kingdom, in essence that of the former Empire, was more or less retained by the Ostrogoths. According to the analysis of Jonathan J. Arnold, Theoderic presented himself - and was more or less accepted as - a Roman Emperor. But despite this rhetoric, Italy had undergone significant structural changes in the fifth century, which required that Roman administrative traditions had to be adapted by Theoderic's court. The Senate continued to function normally and was consulted on civil appointments, and the laws of the Empire were still recognized as ruling the Roman population, though Goths were ruled under their own traditional laws. Indeed, as a subordinate ruler, Theodoric did not possess the right to issue his own laws ("leges") in the system of Roman law, but merely edicts ("edicta"), or clarifications on certain details.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The continuity in administration is illustrated by the fact that several senior ministers of Odoacer, like Liberius and Cassiodorus the Elder, were retained in the new kingdom's top positions. The close cooperation between Theodoric and the Roman elite began to break down in later years, especially after the healing of the ecclesiastical rift between Rome and Constantinople (see below), as leading senators conspired with the Emperor. This resulted in the arrest and execution of the "magister officiorum" Boethius and his father-in-law, Symmachus, in 524.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: On the other hand, the army and all military offices remained the exclusive preserve of the Goths. The Goths were settled mostly in northern Italy, and kept themselves largely apart from the Roman population, a tendency reinforced by their different faiths: the Goths were mostly Homoian Christians (''Arians"), while the people they ruled over were adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity. Despite this fact, Theoderic enjoyed good relations with the Roman church, although questions of relative jurisdiction, especially in controversies involving clerics, remained potentially fraught. Jews in Theoderic's kingdom were both disadvantaged and protected as they had been under Roman law, which among other things, provided legal protections for their places of worship. Theodoric's view was clearly expressed in his letters to the Jews of Genoa: "The true mark of "civilitas" is the observance of law. It is this which makes life in communities possible, and which separates man from the brutes. We therefore gladly accede to your request that all the privileges which the foresight of antiquity conferred upon the Jewish customs shall be renewed to you..." and "We cannot order a religion, because no one can be forced to believe against his will."


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: It is in his foreign policy rather than domestic affairs that Theodoric appeared and acted as an independent ruler. By means of marriage alliances, he sought to establish a central position among the barbarian states of the West. As Jordanes states: "...there was no race left in the western realms which Theodoric had not befriended or brought into subjection during his lifetime." This was in part meant as a defensive measure, and in part as a counterbalance to the influence of the Empire. His daughters were wedded to the Visigothic king Alaric II and the Burgundian prince Sigismund, his sister Amalfrida married the Vandal king Thrasamund, while he himself married Audofleda, sister of the Frankish king Clovis I.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: These policies were not always successful in maintaining peace: Theodoric found himself at war with Clovis when the latter attacked the Visigoth dominions in Gaul in 506. The Franks were rapidly successful, killing Alaric in the Battle of Vouillé and subduing Aquitania by 507. However, starting in 508, Theodoric's generals campaigned in Gaul, and were successful in saving Septimania for the Visigoths, as well as extending Ostrogothic rule into southern Gaul (Provence) at the expense of the Burgundians. There in 510 Theodoric reestablished the defunct praetorian prefecture of Gaul. Now Theodoric had a common border with the Visigothic kingdom, where, after Alaric's death, he also ruled as regent of his infant grandson Amalaric.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Family bonds also served little with Sigismund, who as a staunch Chalcedonian Christian cultivated close ties to Constantinople. Theodoric perceived this as a threat and intended to campaign against him, but the Franks acted first and invaded Burgundy in 523, quickly subduing it. Theodoric could only react by expanding his domains in the Provence north of the river Durance up to the Isère.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The peace with the Vandals, secured in 500 with the marriage alliance with Thrasamund, and their common interests as Arian powers against Constantinople, collapsed after Thrasamund's death in 523. His successor Hilderic showed favour to the Nicaean Christians, and when Amalfrida protested, he had her and her entourage murdered. Theodoric was preparing an expedition against him when he died.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Theodoric's relations with his nominal suzerain, the Eastern Roman Emperor, were always strained, for political as well as for religious reasons. Especially during the reign of Anastasius, these led to several collisions, none of which however escalated into general warfare. In 504-505, Theodoric's forces launched a campaign to recover Pannonia and the strategically important town of Sirmium, formerly parts of the praetorian prefecture of Italy, which were now occupied by the Gepids.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The campaign was successful, but it also led to a brief conflict with imperial troops, where the Goths and their allies were victorious. Domestically, the Acacian schism between the patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople, caused by imperial support for the "Henotikon", as well as Anastasius' Monophysite beliefs, played into Theodoric's hands, since the clergy and the Roman aristocracy of Italy, headed by Pope Symmachus, vigorously opposed them.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Thus, for a time, Theodoric could count on their support. The war between the Franks and Visigoths led to renewed friction between Theodoric and the Emperor, as Clovis successfully portrayed himself as the champion of the Western Church against the "heretical" Arian Goths, gaining the Emperor's support. This even led to the dispatch of a fleet by Anastasius in 508, which ravaged the coasts of Apulia.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: With the ascension of Justin I in 518, a more harmonious relationship seemed to be restored. Eutharic, Theodoric's son-in-law and designated successor, was appointed consul for the year 519, while in 522, to celebrate the healing of the Acacian schism, Justin allowed both consuls to be appointed by Theodoric. Soon, however, renewed tension would result from Justin's anti-Arian legislation, and tensions grew between the Goths and the Senate, whose members, as Chalcedonians, now shifted their support to the Emperor.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The suspicions of Theodoric were confirmed by the interception of compromising letters between leading senators and Constantinople, which led to the imprisonment and execution of Boethius in 524. Pope John I was sent to Constantinople to mediate on the Arians' behalf, and, although he achieved his mission, on his return he was imprisoned and died shortly after. These events further stirred popular sentiment against the Goths.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: After the death of Theodoric on 30 August 526, his achievements began to collapse. Since Eutharic had died in 523, Theodoric was succeeded by his infant grandson Athalaric, supervised by his mother, Amalasuntha, as regent. The lack of a strong heir caused the network of alliances that surrounded the Ostrogothic state to disintegrate: the Visigothic kingdom regained its autonomy under Amalaric, the relations with the Vandals turned increasingly hostile, and the Franks embarked again on expansion, subduing the Thuringians and the Burgundians and almost evicting the Visigoths from their last holdings in southern Gaul. The position of predominance which the Ostrogothic Kingdom had enjoyed under Theodoric in the West now passed irrevocably to the Franks.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: This dangerous external climate was exacerbated by the regency's weak domestic position. Amalasuntha was Roman-educated and intended to continue her father's policies of conciliation between Goths and Romans. To that end, she actively courted the support of the Senate and the newly ascended Emperor Justinian I, even providing him with bases in Sicily during the Vandalic War. However, these ideas did not find much favour with the Gothic nobles, who in addition resented being ruled by a woman. They protested when she resolved to give her son a Roman education, preferring that Athalaric be raised as a warrior. She was forced to discharge his Roman tutors, but instead Athalaric turned to a life of dissipation and excess, which would send him to a premature death.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Eventually, a conspiracy started among the Goths to overthrow her. Amalasuntha resolved to move against them, but as a precaution, she also made preparations to flee to Constantinople, and even wrote to Justinian asking for protection. In the event she managed to execute the three leading conspirators, and her position remained relatively secure until, in 533, Athalaric's health began to seriously decline.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Amalasuntha then turned for support to her only relative, her cousin Theodahad, while at the same time sending ambassadors to Justinian and proposing to cede Italy to him. Justinian indeed sent an able agent of his, Peter of Thessalonica, to carry out the negotiations, but before he had even crossed into Italy, Athalaric had died (on 2 October 534), Amalasuntha had crowned Theodahad as king in an effort to secure his support, and he had deposed and imprisoned her. Theodahad, who was of a peaceful disposition, immediately sent envoys to announce his ascension to Justinian and to reassure him of Amalasuntha's safety.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Justinian immediately reacted by offering his support to the deposed queen, but in early May 535, she was executed. This crime served as a perfect pretext for Justinian, fresh from his forces' victory over the Vandals, to invade the Gothic realm in retaliation. Theodahad tried to prevent the war, sending his envoys to Constantinople, but Justinian was already resolved to reclaim Italy. Only by renouncing his throne in the Empire's favour could Theodahad hope to avert war.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The Gothic War between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom was fought from 535 until 554 in Italy, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. It is commonly divided into two phases. The first phase lasted from 535 to 540 and ended with the fall of Ravenna and the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. With the fall of Ravenna, the capital of the kingdom was brought to Pavia, which it became the last centres of Ostrogothic resistance that continued the war and opposed Eastern Roman rule.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: During the second phase (540/541–553), Gothic resistance was reinvigorated under Totila and put down only after a long struggle by Narses, who also repelled the 554 invasion by the Franks and Alamanni. In the same year, Justinian promulgated the Pragmatic Sanction which prescribed Italy's new government. Several cities in northern Italy continued to hold out, however, until the early 560s.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The war had its roots in the ambition of Justinian to recover the provinces of the former Western Roman Empire, which had been lost to invading barbarian tribes in the previous century (the Migration Period). By the end of the conflict Italy was devastated and considerably depopulated. As a consequence, the victorious Byzantines found themselves unable to resist the invasion of the Lombards in 568, which resulted in the loss of large parts of the Italian peninsula.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: Because of the kingdom's short history, no fusion of the two peoples and their art was achieved. However, under the patronage of Theodoric and Amalasuntha, large-scale restoration of ancient Roman buildings was undertaken, and the tradition of Roman civic architecture continued. In Ravenna, new churches and monumental buildings were erected, several of which survive.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: The Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, its baptistry, and the Archiepiscopal Chapel follow the typical late Roman architectural and decorative motifs, but the Mausoleum of Theodoric displays purely Gothic elements, such as its construction not from the usual brick, but of massive slabs of Istrian limestone, or the 300-ton single-piece roof stone.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: All of the surviving literature written in the Ostrogothic kingdom is in Latin, though some older works were copied in Greek and Gothic (e.g. the Codex Argenteus), and the literature is solidly in the Greco-Roman tradition. Cassiodorus, hailing from a distinguished background, and himself entrusted with high offices (consul and "magister officiorum") represents the Roman ruling class. Like many others of his background, he served Theodoric and his heirs loyally and well, something expressed in the writings of the period.


title: Ostrogothic Kingdom

text: In his "Chronica", used later by Jordanes in his "Getica", as well as in the various panegyrics written by him and other prominent Romans of the time for the Gothic kings, Roman literary and historical tradition is put in the service of their Gothic overlords. His privileged position enabled him to compile the "Variae Epistolae", a collection of state correspondence, which gives great insight into the inner workings of the Gothic state. Boethius is another prominent figure of the period. Well-educated and also from a distinguished family, he wrote works on mathematics, music and philosophy. His most famous work, "Consolatio philosophiae", was written while imprisoned on charges of treason.


title: NTFS

text: New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred filesystem on Windows and is supported in Linux and BSD as well. NTFS reading and writing support is provided using a free and open-source kernel implementation known as NTFS3 in Linux and the NTFS-3G driver in BSD. By using the codice_1 command, Windows can convert FAT32/16/12 into NTFS without the need to rewrite all files. NTFS uses several files typically hidden from the user to store metadata about other files stored on the drive which can help improve speed and performance when reading data. Unlike FAT and High Performance File System (HPFS), NTFS supports access control lists (ACLs), filesystem encryption, transparent compression, sparse files and file system journaling. NTFS also supports shadow copy to allow backups of a system while it is running, but the functionality of the shadow copies varies between different versions of Windows.


title: NTFS

text: In the mid-1980s, Microsoft and IBM formed a joint project to create the next generation of graphical operating system; the result was OS/2 and HPFS. Because Microsoft disagreed with IBM on many important issues, they eventually separated; OS/2 remained an IBM project and Microsoft worked to develop Windows NT and NTFS.


title: NTFS

text: The HPFS file system for OS/2 contained several important new features. When Microsoft created their new operating system, they "borrowed" many of these concepts for NTFS. The original NTFS developers were Tom Miller, Gary Kimura, Brian Andrew, and David Goebel.


title: NTFS

text: Probably as a result of this common ancestry, HPFS and NTFS use the same disk partition identification type code (07). Using the same Partition ID Record Number is highly unusual, since there were dozens of unused code numbers available, and other major file systems have their own codes. For example, FAT has more than nine (one each for FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, etc.). Algorithms identifying the file system in a partition type 07 must perform additional checks to distinguish between HPFS and NTFS.


title: NTFS

text: The version number (e.g. v5.0 in Windows 2000) is based on the operating system version; it should not be confused with the NTFS version number (v3.1 since Windows XP).


title: NTFS

text: Although subsequent versions of Windows added new file system-related features, they did not change NTFS itself. For example, Windows Vista implemented NTFS symbolic links, Transactional NTFS, partition shrinking, and self-healing. NTFS symbolic links are a new feature in the file system; all the others are new operating system features that make use of NTFS features already in place.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS is optimized for 4 KB clusters, but supports a maximum cluster size of 2MB. (Earlier implementations support up to 64KB) The maximum NTFS volume size that the specification can support is clusters, but not all implementations achieve this theoretical maximum, as discussed below.


title: NTFS

text: The maximum NTFS volume size implemented in Windows XP Professional is clusters, partly due to partition table limitations. For example, using 64KB clusters, the maximum size Windows XP NTFS volume is 256TB minus 64KB. Using the default cluster size of 4KB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16TB minus 4KB. Both of these are vastly higher than the 128GB limit in Windows XP SP1. Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks support only partition sizes up to 2TB, multiple GUID Partition Table (GPT or "dynamic") volumes must be combined to create a single NTFS volume larger than 2TB. Booting from a GPT volume to a Windows environment in a Microsoft supported way requires a system with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and 64-bit support.


title: NTFS

text: The NTFS maximum theoretical limit on the size of individual files is 16EB ( or ) minus 1KB, which totals 18,446,744,073,709,550,592 bytes. With Windows 10 version 1709 and Windows Server 2019, the maximum "implemented" file size is 8PB minus 2MB or 9,007,199,252,643,840 bytes.


title: NTFS

text: While the different NTFS versions are for the most part fully forward- and backward-compatible, there are technical considerations for mounting newer NTFS volumes in older versions of Microsoft Windows. This affects dual-booting, and external portable hard drives. For example, attempting to use an NTFS partition with "Previous Versions" (Volume Shadow Copy) on an operating system that does not support it will result in the contents of those previous versions being lost. A Windows command-line utility called convert.exe can convert supporting file systems to NTFS, including HPFS (only on Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, and 3.51), FAT16 and FAT32 (on Windows 2000 and later).


title: NTFS

text: FreeBSD 3.2 released in May 1999 included read-only NTFS support written by Semen Ustimenko. This implementation was ported to NetBSD by Christos Zoulas and Jaromir Dolecek and released with NetBSD 1.5 in December 2000. The FreeBSD implementation of NTFS was also ported to OpenBSD by Julien Bordet and offers native read-only NTFS support by default on i386 and amd64 platforms as of version 4.9 released 1 May 2011.


title: NTFS

text: Linux kernel versions 2.1.74 and later include a driver written by Martin von Löwis which has the ability to read NTFS partitions; kernel versions 2.5.11 and later contain a new driver written by Anton Altaparmakov (University of Cambridge) and Richard Russon which supports file read. The ability to write to files was introduced with kernel version 2.6.15 in 2006 which allows users to write to existing files but does not allow the creation of new ones. Paragon's NTFS driver (see below) has been merged into kernel version 5.15, and it supports read/write on normal, compressed and sparse files, as well as journal replaying.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS-3G is a free GPL-licensed FUSE implementation of NTFS that was initially developed as a Linux kernel driver by Szabolcs Szakacsits. It was re-written as a FUSE program to work on other systems that FUSE supports like macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, QNX, and Haiku and allows reading and writing to NTFS partitions. A performance enhanced commercial version of NTFS-3G, called "Tuxera NTFS for Mac", is also available from the NTFS-3G developers.


title: NTFS

text: Captive NTFS, a 'wrapping' driver that uses Windows' own driver , exists for Linux. It was built as a Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) program and released under the GPL but work on Captive NTFS ceased in 2006.


title: NTFS

text: Linux kernel versions 5.15 onwards carry NTFS3, a fully functional NTFS Read-Write driver which works on NTFS versions up to 3.1 and is maintained primarily by the Paragon Software Group with the source code found here.


title: NTFS

text: Mac OS X 10.3 included Ustimenko's read-only implementation of NTFS from FreeBSD. Then in 2006 Apple hired Anton Altaparmakov to write a new NTFS implementation for Mac OS X 10.6. Native NTFS write support is included in 10.6 and later, but is not activated by default, although workarounds do exist to enable the functionality. However, user reports indicate the functionality is unstable and tends to cause kernel panics.


title: NTFS

text: Paragon Software Group sells a read-write driver named "NTFS for Mac OS X", which is also included on some models of Seagate hard drives.


title: NTFS

text: The NetDrive package for OS/2 (and derivatives such as eComStation and ArcaOS) supports a plugin which allows read and write access to NTFS volumes.


title: NTFS

text: Ahead Software developed a "NTFSREAD" driver (version 1.200) for DR-DOS 7.0x between 2002 and 2004. It was part of their Nero Burning ROM software.


title: NTFS

text: In NTFS, each file or folder is assigned a security descriptor that defines its owner and contains two access control lists (ACLs). The first ACL, called discretionary access control list (DACL), defines exactly what type of interactions (e.g. reading, writing, executing or deleting) are allowed or forbidden by which user or groups of users. For example, files in the folder may be read and executed by all users but modified only by a user holding administrative privileges. Windows Vista adds mandatory access control info to DACLs. DACLs are the primary focus of User Account Control in Windows Vista and later.


title: NTFS

text: The second ACL, called system access control list (SACL), defines which interactions with the file or folder are to be audited and whether they should be logged when the activity is successful, failed or both. For example, auditing can be enabled on sensitive files of a company, so that its managers get to know when someone tries to delete them or make a copy of them, and whether he or she succeeds.


title: NTFS

text: Encrypting File System (EFS) provides user-transparent encryption of any file or folder on an NTFS volume. EFS works in conjunction with the EFS service, Microsoft's CryptoAPI and the EFS File System Run-Time Library (FSRTL). EFS works by encrypting a file with a bulk symmetric key (also known as the File Encryption Key, or FEK), which is used because it takes a relatively small amount of time to encrypt and decrypt large amounts of data than if an asymmetric key cipher is used. The symmetric key that is used to encrypt the file is then encrypted with a public key that is associated with the user who encrypted the file, and this encrypted data is stored in an alternate data stream of the encrypted file. To decrypt the file, the file system uses the private key of the user to decrypt the symmetric key that is stored in the data stream. It then uses the symmetric key to decrypt the file. Because this is done at the file system level, it is transparent to the user. Also, in case of a user losing access to their key, support for additional decryption keys has been built into the EFS system, so that a recovery agent can still access the files if needed. NTFS-provided encryption and NTFS-provided compression are mutually exclusive; however, NTFS can be used for one and a third-party tool for the other.


title: NTFS

text: The support of EFS is not available in Basic, Home, and MediaCenter versions of Windows, and must be activated after installation of Professional, Ultimate, and Server versions of Windows or by using enterprise deployment tools within Windows domains.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS is a journaling file system and uses the NTFS Log () to record metadata changes to the volume. It is a feature that FAT does not provide and critical for NTFS to ensure that its complex internal data structures will remain consistent in case of system crashes or data moves performed by the defragmentation API, and allow easy rollback of uncommitted changes to these critical data structures when the volume is remounted. Notably affected structures are the volume allocation bitmap, modifications to MFT records such as moves of some variable-length attributes stored in MFT records and attribute lists, and indices for directories and security descriptors.


title: NTFS

text: The incompatibility of the versions implemented by Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11 prevents Windows 7 (and earlier versions of Windows) from recognizing version 2.0 of the . Backward compatibility is provided by downgrading the to version 1.1 when an NTFS volume is cleanly dismounted. It is again upgraded to version 2.0 when mounting on a compatible version of Windows. However, when hibernating to disk in the logoff state (a.k.a. Hybrid Boot or Fast Boot, which is enabled by default), mounted file systems are not dismounted, and thus the s of any active file systems are not downgraded to version 1.1. The inability to process version 2.0 of the by versions of Windows older than 8.0 results in an unnecessary invocation of the CHKDSK disk repair utility. This is particularly a concern in a multi-boot scenario involving pre- and post-8.0 versions of Windows, or when frequently moving a storage device between older and newer versions. A Windows Registry setting exists to prevent the automatic upgrade of the to the newer version. The problem can also be dealt with by disabling Hybrid Boot.


title: NTFS

text: The USN Journal (Update Sequence Number Journal) is a system management feature that records (in ) changes to files, streams and directories on the volume, as well as their various attributes and security settings. The journal is made available for applications to track changes to the volume. This journal can be enabled or disabled on non-system volumes.


title: NTFS

text: The hard link feature allows different file names to directly refer to the same file contents. Hard links may link only to files in the same volume, because each volume has its own MFT.


title: NTFS

text: Although Hard links use the same MFT record (inode) which records file metadata such as file size, modification date, and attributes, NTFS also caches this data in the directory entry as a performance enhancement. This means that when listing the contents of a directory using FindFirstFile/FindNextFile family of APIs, (equivalent to the POSIX opendir/readdir APIs) you will also receive this cached information, in addition to the name and inode. However, you may not see up-to-date information, as this information is only guaranteed to be updated when a file is closed, and then only for the directory from which the file was opened. This means where a file has multiple names via hard links, updating a file via one name does not update the cached data associated with the other name. You can always obtain up-to-date data using GetFileInformationByHandle (which is the true equivalent of POSIX stat function). This can be done using a handle which has no access to the file itself (passing zero to CreateFile for dwDesiredAccess), and closing this handle has the incidental effect of updating the cached information.


title: NTFS

text: Windows uses hard links to support short (8.3) filenames in NTFS. Operating system support is needed because there are legacy applications that can work only with 8.3 filenames, but support can be disabled. In this case, an additional filename record and directory entry is added, but both 8.3 and long file name are linked and updated together, unlike a regular hard link.


title: NTFS

text: Alternate data streams allow more than one data stream to be associated with a filename (a fork), using the format "filename:streamname" (e.g., "text.txt:extrastream").


title: NTFS

text: NTFS Streams were introduced in Windows NT 3.1, to enable Services for Macintosh (SFM) to store resource forks. Although current versions of Windows Server no longer include SFM, third-party Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) products (such as GroupLogic's ExtremeZ-IP) still use this feature of the file system. Very small ADSs (named "Zone.Identifier") are added by Internet Explorer and recently by other browsers to mark files downloaded from external sites as possibly unsafe to run; the local shell would then require user confirmation before opening them. When the user indicates that they no longer want this confirmation dialog, this ADS is deleted.


title: NTFS

text: Alternate streams are not listed in Windows Explorer, and their size is not included in the file's size. When the file is copied or moved to another file system without ADS support the user is warned that alternate data streams cannot be preserved. No such warning is typically provided if the file is attached to an e-mail, or uploaded to a website. Thus, using alternate streams for critical data may cause problems. Microsoft provides a tool called Streams to view streams on a selected volume. Starting with Windows PowerShell 3.0, it is possible to manage ADS natively with six cmdlets: Add-Content, Clear-Content, Get-Content, Get-Item, Remove-Item, Set-Content.


title: NTFS

text: Malware has used alternate data streams to hide code. As a result, malware scanners and other special tools now check for alternate data streams.


title: NTFS

text: Compression is enabled on a per-folder or per-file basis by setting the 'compressed' attribute. When compression is enabled on a folder, any files moved or saved to that folder will be automatically compressed using LZNT1 algorithm (a variant of LZ77). The compression algorithm is designed to support cluster sizes of up to 4 KB; when the cluster size is greater than 4 KB on an NTFS volume, NTFS compression is not available. Data is compressed in 16-cluster chunks (up to 64 KB in size); if the compression reduces 64KB of data to 60KB or less, NTFS treats the unneeded 4KB pages like empty sparse file clusters—they are not written. This allows for reasonable random-access times as the OS merely has to follow the chain of fragments.


title: NTFS

text: Compression works best with files that have repetitive content, are seldom written, are usually accessed sequentially, and are not themselves compressed. Single-user systems with limited hard disk space can benefit from NTFS compression for small files, from 4KB to 64KB or more, depending on compressibility. Files smaller than approximately 900 bytes are stored within the directory entry of the MFT.


title: NTFS

text: Users of fast multi-core processors will find improvements in application speed by compressing their applications and data as well as a reduction in space used. Even when SSD controllers already compress data, there is still a reduction in I/Os since less data is transferred.


title: NTFS

text: According to research by Microsoft's NTFS Development team, 50–60GB is a reasonable maximum size for a compressed file on an NTFS volume with a 4KB (default) cluster (block) size. This reasonable maximum size decreases sharply for volumes with smaller cluster sizes.


title: NTFS

text: Large compressible files become highly fragmented since every chunk smaller than 64KB becomes a fragment. Flash memory, such as SSD drives do not have the head movement delays and high access time of mechanical hard disk drives, so fragmentation has only a smaller penalty.


title: NTFS

text: If system files that are needed at boot time (such as drivers, NTLDR, winload.exe, or BOOTMGR) are compressed, the system may fail to boot correctly, because decompression filters are not yet loaded. Later editions of Windows do not allow important system files to be compressed.


title: NTFS

text: Since Windows 10, Microsoft has introduced new file compression scheme based on the XPRESS algorithm with 4K/8K/16K block size and the LZX algorithm; both are variants of LZ77 updated with Huffman entropy coding and range coding, which LZNT1 lacked. These compression algorithms were taken from Windows Imaging Format (WIM file).


title: NTFS

text: The new compression scheme is used by CompactOS feature, which reduces disk usage by compressing Windows system files. CompactOS is not an extension of NTFS file compression and does not use the 'compressed' attribute; instead, it sets a reparse point on each compressed file with a WOF (Windows Overlay Filter) tag, but the actual data is stored in an alternate data stream named "WofCompressedData", which is decompressed on-the-fly by a WOF filesystem filter driver, and the main file is an empty sparse file. This design is meant purely for read-only access, so any writes to compressed files result in an automatic decompression.


title: NTFS

text: CompactOS compression is intended for OEMs who prepare OS images with the flag of the tool in Windows ADK, but it can also be manually turned on per file with the flag of the command. CompactOS algorithm avoids file fragmentation by writing compressed data in contiguously allocated chunks, unlike core NTFS compression.


title: NTFS

text: CompactOS file compression is an improved version of WIMBoot feature introduced in Windows 8.1. WIMBoot reduces Windows disk usage by keeping system files in a compressed WIM image on a separate hidden disk partition. Similarly to CompactOS, Windows system directories only contain sparse files marked by a reparse point with a WOF tag, and Windows Overlay Filter driver decompresses file contents on-the-fly from the WIM image. WIMBoot is less effective than CompactOS though, as new updated versions of system files need to be written to the system partition, consuming disk space.


title: NTFS

text: Sparse files are files interspersed with empty segments for which no actual storage space is used. To the applications, the file looks like an ordinary file with empty regions seen as regions filled with zeros; the file system maintains an internal list of such regions for each sparse file. A sparse file does not necessarily include sparse zeros areas; the "sparse file" attribute just means that the file is allowed to have them.


title: NTFS

text: Database applications, for instance, may use sparse files. As with compressed files, the actual sizes of sparse files are not taken into account when determining quota limits.


title: NTFS

text: The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) keeps historical versions of files and folders on NTFS volumes by copying old, newly overwritten data to shadow copy via copy-on-write technique. The user may later request an earlier version to be recovered. This also allows data backup programs to archive files currently in use by the file system.


title: NTFS

text: Windows Vista also introduced persistent shadow copies for use with System Restore and Previous Versions features. Persistent shadow copies, however, are deleted when an older operating system mounts that NTFS volume. This happens because the older operating system does not understand the newer format of persistent shadow copies.


title: NTFS

text: As of Windows Vista, applications can use Transactional NTFS (TxF) to group multiple changes to files together into a single transaction. The transaction will guarantee that either all of the changes happen, or none of them do, and that no application outside the transaction will see the changes until they are committed.


title: NTFS

text: It uses similar techniques as those used for Volume Shadow Copies (i.e. copy-on-write) to ensure that overwritten data can be safely rolled back, and a CLFS log to mark the transactions that have still not been committed, or those that have been committed but still not fully applied (in case of system crash during a commit by one of the participants).


title: NTFS

text: Transactional NTFS does not restrict transactions to just the local NTFS volume, but also includes other transactional data or operations in other locations such as data stored in separate volumes, the local registry, or SQL databases, or the current states of system services or remote services. These transactions are coordinated network-wide with all participants using a specific service, the DTC, to ensure that all participants will receive same commit state, and to transport the changes that have been validated by any participant (so that the others can invalidate their local caches for old data or rollback their ongoing uncommitted changes). Transactional NTFS allows, for example, the creation of network-wide consistent distributed file systems, including with their local live or offline caches.


title: NTFS

text: Microsoft now advises against using TxF: "Microsoft strongly recommends developers utilize alternative means" since "TxF may not be available in future versions of Microsoft Windows".


title: NTFS

text: Disk quotas were introduced in NTFS v3. They allow the administrator of a computer that runs a version of Windows that supports NTFS to set a threshold of disk space that users may use. It also allows administrators to keep track of how much disk space each user is using. An administrator may specify a certain level of disk space that a user may use before they receive a warning, and then deny access to the user once they hit their upper limit of space. Disk quotas do not take into account NTFS's transparent file-compression, should this be enabled. Applications that query the amount of free space will also see the amount of free space left to the user who has a quota applied to them.


title: NTFS

text: Introduced in NTFS v3, NTFS reparse points are used by associating a reparse tag in the user space attribute of a file or directory. Microsoft includes several default tags including symbolic links, directory junction points and volume mount points. When the Object Manager parses a file system name lookup and encounters a reparse attribute, it will "reparse" the name lookup, passing the user controlled reparse data to every file system filter driver that is loaded into Windows. Each filter driver examines the reparse data to see whether it is associated with that reparse point, and if that filter driver determines a match, then it intercepts the file system request and performs its special functionality.


title: NTFS

text: Starting with Windows Vista Microsoft added the built-in ability to shrink or expand a partition. However, this ability does not relocate page file fragments or files that have been marked as unmovable, so shrinking a volume will often require relocating or disabling any page file, the index of Windows Search, and any Shadow Copy used by System Restore. Various third-party tools are capable of resizing NTFS partitions.


title: NTFS

text: Since 2017, Microsoft requires the OneDrive file structure to reside on an NTFS disk. This is because OneDrive Files On-Demand feature uses NTFS reparse points to link files and folders that are stored in OneDrive to the local filesystem, making the file or folder unusable with any previous version of Windows, with any other NTFS file system driver, or any file system and backup utilities not updated to support it.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS is made up of several components including: a partition boot sector (PBS) that holds boot information; the master file table that stores a record of all files and folders in the filesystem; a series of meta files that help structure meta data more efficiently; data streams and locking mechanisms.


title: NTFS

text: Internally, NTFS uses B-trees to index file system data. A file system journal is used to guarantee the integrity of the file system metadata but not individual files' content. Systems using NTFS are known to have improved reliability compared to FAT file systems.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS allows any sequence of 16-bit values for name encoding (e.g. file names, stream names or index names) except 0x0000. This means UTF-16 code units are supported, but the file system does not check whether a sequence is valid UTF-16 (it allows any sequence of short values, not restricted to those in the Unicode standard). In Win32 namespace, any UTF-16 code units are case insensitive whereas in POSIX namespace they are case sensitive. File names are limited to 255 UTF-16 code units. Certain names are reserved in the volume root directory and cannot be used for files. These are codice_2, codice_3, codice_4, codice_5, codice_6, codice_7 (dot), codice_8, codice_9, codice_10, codice_11, codice_12, and codice_13. codice_7 (dot) and codice_13 are both directories; the others are files. The NT kernel limits full paths to 32,767 UTF-16 code units. There are some additional restrictions on code points and file names.


title: NTFS

text: This boot partition format is roughly based upon the earlier FAT filesystem, but the fields are in different locations. Some of these fields, especially the "sectors per track", "number of heads" and "hidden sectors" fields may contain dummy values on drives where they either do not make sense or are not determinable.


title: NTFS

text: The OS first looks at the 8 bytes at 0x30 to find the cluster number of the $MFT, then multiplies that number by the number of sectors per cluster (1 byte found at 0x0D). This value is the sector offset (LBA) to the $MFT, which is described below.


title: NTFS

text: In NTFS, all file, directory and metafile data—file name, creation date, access permissions (by the use of access control lists), and size—are stored as metadata in the Master File Table (MFT). This abstract approach allowed easy addition of file system features during Windows NT's development—an example is the addition of fields for indexing used by the Active Directory and the Windows Search. This also enables fast file search software to locate named local files and folders included in the MFT very quickly, without requiring any other index.


title: NTFS

text: The MFT structure supports algorithms which minimize disk fragmentation. A directory entry consists of a filename and a "file ID" (analogous to the inode number), which is the record number representing the file in the Master File Table. The file ID also contains a reuse count to detect stale references. While this strongly resembles the W_FID of Files-11, other NTFS structures radically differ.


title: NTFS

text: A partial copy of the MFT, called the MFT mirror, is stored to be used in case of corruption. If the first record of the MFT is corrupted, NTFS reads the second record to find the MFT mirror file. Locations for both files are stored in the boot sector.


title: NTFS

text: NTFS contains several files that define and organize the file system. In all respects, most of these files are structured like any other user file ($Volume being the most peculiar), but are not of direct interest to file system clients. These metafiles define files, back up critical file system data, buffer file system changes, manage free space allocation, satisfy BIOS expectations, track bad allocation units, and store security and disk space usage information. All content is in an unnamed data stream, unless otherwise indicated.


title: NTFS

text: These metafiles are treated specially by Windows, handled directly by the codice_16 driver and are difficult to directly view: special purpose-built tools are needed. As of Windows 7, the NTFS driver completely prohibits user access, resulting in a BSoD whenever an attempt to execute a metadata file is made. One such tool is the nfi.exe ("NTFS File Sector Information Utility") that is freely distributed as part of the Microsoft "OEM Support Tools". For example, to obtain information on the "$MFT"-Master File Table Segment the following command is used: codice_17 Another way to bypass the restriction is to use 7-Zip's file manager and go to the low-level NTFS path codice_18 (where codice_19 resembles any drive/partition). Here, 3 new folders will appear: codice_20, codice_21 (a pseudo-folder that 7-Zip uses to attach files deleted from the file system to view), and codice_22 (another pseudo-folder that contains all the NTFS metadata files). This trick can be used from removable devices (USB flash drives, external hard drives, SD Cards, etc.) inside Windows, but doing this on the active partition requires offline access (namely WinRE).


title: NTFS

text: For each file (or directory) described in the MFT record, there is a linear repository of stream descriptors (also named "attributes"), packed together in one or more MFT records (containing the so-called "attributes list"), with extra padding to fill the fixed 1 KB size of every MFT record, and that fully describes the effective streams associated with that file.


title: NTFS

text: Each attribute has an attribute type (a fixed-size integer mapping to an attribute definition in file ), an optional attribute name (for example, used as the name for an alternate data stream), and a value, represented in a sequence of bytes. For NTFS, the standard data of files, the alternate data streams, or the index data for directories are stored as attributes.


title: NTFS

text: According to , some attributes can be either resident or non-resident. The attribute, which contains file data, is such an example. When the attribute is resident (which is represented by a flag), its value is stored directly in the MFT record. Otherwise, clusters are allocated for the data, and the cluster location information is stored as data runs in the attribute.


title: NTFS

text: All attributes of a given file may be displayed by using the nfi.exe ("NTFS File Sector Information Utility") that is freely distributed as part of the Microsoft "OEM Support Tools".


title: NTFS

text: Windows system calls may handle alternate data streams. Depending on the operating system, utility and remote file system, a file transfer might silently strip data streams. A safe way of copying or moving files is to use the BackupRead and BackupWrite system calls, which allow programs to enumerate streams, to verify whether each stream should be written to the destination volume and to knowingly skip unwanted streams.


title: NTFS

text: To optimize the storage and reduce the I/O overhead for the very common case of attributes with very small associated value, NTFS prefers to place the value within the attribute itself (if the size of the attribute does not then exceed the maximum size of an MFT record), instead of using the MFT record space to list clusters containing the data; in that case, the attribute will not store the data directly but will just store an allocation map (in the form of "data runs") pointing to the actual data stored elsewhere on the volume. When the value can be accessed directly from within the attribute, it is called "resident data" (by computer forensics workers). The amount of data that fits is highly dependent on the file's characteristics, but 700 to 800 bytes is common in single-stream files with non-lengthy filenames and no ACLs.


title: NTFS

text: The allocation map is stored in a form of "data runs" with compressed encoding. Each data run represents a contiguous group of clusters that store the attribute value. For files on a multi-GB volume, each entry can be encoded as 5 to 7 bytes, which means a MFT record can store about 100 such data runs. However, as the also has a size limit, it is dangerous to have more than 1 million fragments of a single file on an NTFS volume, which also implies that it is in general not a good idea to use NTFS compression on a file larger than .


title: NTFS

text: The NTFS file system driver will sometimes attempt to relocate the data of some of the attributes that can be made non-resident into the clusters, and will also attempt to relocate the data stored in clusters back to the attribute inside the MFT record, based on priority and preferred ordering rules, and size constraints.


title: NTFS

text: Since resident files do not directly occupy clusters ("allocation units"), it is possible for an NTFS volume to contain more files on a volume than there are clusters. For example, a partition NTFS formats with 19,543,064 clusters of . Subtracting system files (a log file, a 2,442,888-byte Bitmap file, and about 25 clusters of fixed overhead) leaves 19,526,158 clusters free for files and indices. Since there are four MFT records per cluster, this volume theoretically could hold almost 4 × 19,526,158 = 78,104,632 resident files.


title: NTFS

text: Opportunistic file locks (oplocks) allow clients to alter their buffering strategy for a given file or stream in order to increase performance and reduce network use. Oplocks apply to the given open stream of a file and do not affect oplocks on a different stream.


title: NTFS

text: Oplocks can be used to transparently access files in the background. A network client may avoid writing information into a file on a remote server if no other process is accessing the data, or it may buffer read-ahead data if no other process is writing data.


title: NTFS

text: Opportunistic locks have been enhanced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with per-client oplock keys.


title: NTFS

text: Windows NT and its descendants keep internal timestamps as UTC and make the appropriate conversions for display purposes; all NTFS timestamps are in UTC.


title: NTFS

text: For historical reasons, the versions of Windows that do not support NTFS all keep time internally as local zone time, and therefore so do all file systems – other than NTFS – that are supported by current versions of Windows. This means that when files are copied or moved between NTFS and non-NTFS partitions, the OS needs to convert timestamps on the fly. But if some files are moved when daylight saving time (DST) is in effect, and other files are moved when standard time is in effect, there can be some ambiguities in the conversions. As a result, especially shortly after one of the days on which local zone time changes, users may observe that some files have timestamps that are incorrect by one hour. Due to the differences in implementation of DST in different jurisdictions, this can result in a potential timestamp error of up to 4 hours in any given 12 months.


title: Renaissance music

text: Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century "ars nova", the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to Medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the ' "contenance angloise" ' style from Britain to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period.


title: Renaissance music

text: The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410's or 20's – 1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450's – 1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformation in the florid counterpoint of Palestrina (c. 1525 – 1594) and the Roman School.


title: Renaissance music

text: Music was increasingly freed from medieval constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation. On the other hand, rules of counterpoint became more constrained, particularly with regard to treatment of dissonances. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression. Composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists. Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake.


title: Renaissance music

text: Precursor versions of many familiar modern instruments (including the violin, guitar, lute and keyboard instruments) developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to respond to the evolution of musical ideas, and they presented new possibilities for composers and musicians to explore. Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. During the 15th century, the sound of full triads became common, and towards the end of the 16th century the system of church modes began to break down entirely, giving way to functional tonality (the system in which songs and pieces are based on musical "keys"), which would dominate Western art music for the next three centuries.


title: Renaissance music

text: From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works and mixed vocal/instrumental works. A wide range of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, and many others. Beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. Ensembles specializing in music of the Renaissance era give concert tours and make recordings, using modern reproductions of historical instruments and using singing and performing styles which musicologists believe were used during the era.


title: Renaissance music

text: One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the increasing reliance on the interval of the third and its inversion, the sixth (in the Middle Ages, thirds and sixths had been considered dissonances, and only perfect intervals were treated as consonances: the perfect fourth the perfect fifth, the octave, and the unison). Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, with highly independent voices (both in vocal music and in instrumental music). The beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music – in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them to distinguish the different parts. The modal (as opposed to tonal, also known as "musical key", an approach developed in the subsequent Baroque music era, c. 1600–1750) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths or fourths (see the "circle of fifths" for details). An example of a chord progression in which the chord roots move by the interval of a fourth would be the chord progression, in the key of C Major: "D minor/G Major/C Major" (these are all triads; three-note chords). The movement from the D minor chord to the G Major chord is an interval of a perfect fourth. The movement from the G Major chord to the C Major chord is also an interval of a perfect fourth. This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality during the Baroque era.


title: Renaissance music

text: The development of polyphony produced the notable changes in musical instruments that mark the Renaissance from the Middle Ages musically. Its use encouraged the use of larger ensembles and demanded sets of instruments that would blend together across the whole vocal range.


title: Renaissance music

text: As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprises; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular, the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school.


title: Renaissance music

text: The invention of the printing press in 1439 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and music theory texts on a wider geographic scale and to more people. Prior to the invention of printing, written music and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, a time-consuming and expensive process. Demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals allowed the training of large numbers of singers, instrumentalists, and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers, and teachers. Since the printing press made it easier to disseminate printed music, by the end of the 16th century, Italy had absorbed the northern musical influences with Venice, Rome, and other cities becoming centers of musical activity. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier. Opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece.


title: Renaissance music

text: Principal liturgical (church-based) musical forms, which remained in use throughout the Renaissance period, were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end of the era, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular (non-religious) musical forms (such as the madrigal) for religious use. The 15th and 16th century masses had two kinds of sources that were used: monophonic (a single melody line) and polyphonic (multiple, independent melodic lines), with two main forms of elaboration, based on "cantus firmus" practice or, beginning some time around 1500, the new style of "pervasive imitation", in which composers would write music in which the different voices or parts would imitate the melodic and/or rhythmic motifs performed by other voices or parts. Several main types of masses were used:


title: Renaissance music

text: Masses were normally titled by the source from which they borrowed. "Cantus firmus" mass uses the same monophonic melody, usually drawn from chant and usually in the tenor and most often in longer note values than the other voices. Other sacred genres were the madrigale spirituale and the laude.


title: Renaissance music

text: During the period, secular (non-religious) music had an increasing distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is lost. Secular music was music that was independent of churches. The main types were the German Lied, Italian frottola, the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, and the Spanish villancico. Other secular vocal genres included the caccia, rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée, canzonetta, villanella, villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared.


title: Renaissance music

text: Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorders or viols and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common instrumental genres were the toccata, prelude, ricercar, and canzona. Dances played by instrumental ensembles (or sometimes sung) included the basse danse (It. "bassadanza"), tourdion, saltarello, pavane, galliard, allemande, courante, bransle, canarie, piva, and lavolta. Music of many genres could be arranged for a solo instrument such as the lute, vihuela, harp, or keyboard. Such arrangements were called intabulations (It. "intavolatura", Ger. "Intabulierung").


title: Renaissance music

text: Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are heard.


title: Renaissance music

text: According to Margaret Bent: "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness". Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve.


title: Renaissance music

text: These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.