title: Cataphract

text: The Romans fought a prolonged and indecisive campaign in the East against the Parthians beginning in 53 BC, commencing with the defeat of Marcus Licinius Crassus (close benefactor of Julius Caesar) and his 35,000 legionaries at Carrhae. This initially unexpected and humiliating defeat for Rome was followed by numerous campaigns over the next two centuries entailing many notable engagements such as: the Battle of Cilician Gates, Mount Gindarus, Mark Antony's Parthian Campaign and finally culminating in the bloody Battle of Nisibis in 217 AD, which resulted in a slight Parthian victory, and Emperor Macrinus being forced to concede peace with Parthia. As a result of this lingering period of exposure to cataphracts, by the 4th century, the Roman Empire had adopted a number of vexillations of mercenary cataphract cavalry (see the Notitia Dignitatum), such as the Sarmatian Auxiliaries. The Romans deployed both native and mercenary units of cataphracts throughout the Empire, from Asia Minor all the way to Britain, where a contingent of 5,500 Sarmatians (including cataphracts, infantry, and non-combatants) were posted in the 2nd century by Emperor Marcus Aurelius (see End of Roman rule in Britain).


title: Cataphract

text: This tradition was later paralleled by the rise of feudalism in Christian Europe in the Early Middle Ages and the establishment of the knighthood particularly during the Crusades, while the Eastern Romans continued to maintain a very active corps of cataphracts long after their Western counterparts fell in 476 AD.


title: Cataphract

text: Cataphracts were almost universally clad in some form of scale armor ( "Folidotos", equivalent to the Roman Lorica squamata) that was flexible enough to give the rider and horse a good degree of motion, but strong enough to resist the immense impact of a thunderous charge into infantry formations. Scale armor was made from overlapping, rounded plates of bronze or iron (most being around one to two millimeters thick), which had two or four holes drilled into the sides, to be threaded with a bronze wire that was then sewn onto an undergarment of leather or animal hide, worn by the horse. A full set of cataphract armor consisted of approximately 1,300 or so "scales" and could weigh an astonishing 40 kilograms or 88 pounds (not inclusive of the rider's body weight). Less commonly, plated mail or lamellar armor (which is similar in appearance but divergent in design, as it has no backing) was substituted for scale armor, while for the most part the rider wore chain mail. Specifically, the horse armor was usually sectional (not joined together as a cohesive "suit"), with large plates of scales tied together around the animal's waist, flank, shoulders, neck and head (especially along the breastplate of the saddle) independently to give a further degree of movement for the horse and to allow the armor to be affixed to the horse reasonably tightly so that it should not loosen too much during movement. Usually but not always, a close-fitting helmet that covered the head and neck was worn by the rider; the Persian variants extended this even further and encased the wearer's entire head in metal, leaving only minute slits for the nose and eyes as openings. Ammianus Marcellinus, a noted Roman historian and general who served in the army of Constantius II in Gaul and Persia and fought against the Sassanid army under Julian the Apostate, described the sight of a contingent of massed Persian cataphracts in the 4th century:


title: Cataphract

text: ...all the companies were clad in iron, and all parts of their bodies were covered with thick plates, so fitted that the stiff-joints conformed with those of their limbs; and the forms of human faces were so skillfully fitted to their heads, that since their entire body was covered with metal, arrows that fell upon them could lodge only where they could see a little through tiny openings opposite the pupil of the eye, or where through the tip of their nose they were able to get a little breath. Of these some, who were armed with pikes, stood so motionless that you would think them held fast by clamps of bronze.


title: Cataphract

text: The primary weapon of practically all cataphract forces throughout history was the lance. Cataphract lances (known in Greek as a "Kontos" ("oar") or in Latin as a "Contus") appeared much like the Hellenistic armies' "sarissae" used by the famed Greek phalanxes as an anti-cavalry weapon. They were roughly four meters in length, with a capped point made of iron, bronze, or even animal bone and usually wielded with both hands. Most had a chain attached to the horse's neck and at the end by a fastening attached to the horse's hind leg, which supported the use of the lance by transferring the full momentum of a horse's gallop to the thrust of the charge. Though they lacked stirrups, the traditional Roman saddle had four horns with which to secure the rider; enabling a soldier to stay seated upon the full impact. During the Sassanid era, the Persian military developed ever more secure saddles to "fasten" the rider to the horse's body, much like the later knightly saddles of Medieval Europe. These saddles had a cantle at the back of the saddle and two guard clamps that curved across the top of the rider's thighs and fastened to the saddle, thereby enabling the rider to stay properly seated, especially during violent contact in battle.


title: Cataphract

text: The penetrating power of the cataphract's lance was recognized as being fearful by Roman writers, described as being capable of transfixing two men at once, as well as inflicting deep and mortal wounds even on opposing cavalries' mounts, and were definitely more potent than the regular one-handed spear used by most other cavalries of the period. Accounts of later period Middle Eastern cavalrymen wielding them told of occasions when it was capable of bursting through two layers of chain mail. There are also reliefs in Iran at Firuzabad showing Persian kings doing battle in a fashion not dissimilar to later depictions of jousts and mounted combat from the Medieval era.


title: Cataphract

text: Cataphracts would often be equipped with an additional side-arm such as a sword or mace, for use in the melee that often followed a charge. Some wore armor that was primarily frontal: providing protection for a charge and against missiles yet offering relief from the weight and encumbrance of a full suit. In yet another variation, cataphracts in some field armies were not equipped with shields at all, particularly if they had heavy body armor, as having both hands occupied with a shield and lance left no room to effectively steer the horse. Eastern and Persian cataphracts, particularly those of the Sassanid Empire, carried bows as well as blunt-force weapons, to soften up enemy formations before an eventual attack, reflecting upon the longstanding Persian tradition of horse archery and its use in battle by successive Persian Empires.


title: Cataphract

text: While they varied in design and appearance, cataphracts were universally the heavy assault force of most nations that deployed them, acting as "shock troops" to deliver the bulk of an offensive manoeuvre, while being supported by various forms of infantry and archers (both mounted and unmounted). While their roles in military history often seem to overlap with lancers or generic heavy cavalry, they should not be considered analogous to these forms of cavalry, and instead represent the separate evolution of a very distinct class of heavy cavalry in the Near East that had certain connotations of prestige, nobility, and "esprit de corps" attached to them. In many armies, this reflected upon social stratification or a caste system, as only the wealthiest men of noble birth could afford the panoply of the cataphract, not to mention the costs of supporting several war horses and ample amounts of weaponry and armor.


title: Cataphract

text: Fire support was deemed particularly important for the proper deployment of cataphracts. The Parthian army that defeated the Romans at Carrhae in 53 BC operated primarily as a combined arms team of cataphracts and horse archers against the Roman heavy infantry. The Parthian horse archers encircled the Roman formation and bombarded it with arrows from all sides, forcing the legionaries to form the Testudo or "tortoise" formation to shield themselves from the huge numbers of incoming arrows. This made them fatally susceptible to a massed cataphract charge, since the testudo made the legionaries immobile and incapable of attacking or defending themselves in close combat against the long reach of the Parthian cataphracts' kontos, a type of lance. The end result was a far smaller force of Parthian cataphracts and horse archers wiping out a Roman army four times their number, due to a combination of fire and movement, which pinned the enemy down, wore them out and left them vulnerable to a deathblow.


title: Cataphract

text: The cataphract charge was very effective due to the disciplined riders and the large numbers of horses deployed. As early as the 1st century BC, especially during the expansionist campaigns of the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties, Eastern Iranian cataphracts employed by the Scythians, Sarmatians, Parthians, and Sassanids presented a grievous problem for the traditionally less mobile, infantry-dependent Roman Empire. Roman writers throughout imperial history made much of the terror of facing cataphracts, let alone receiving their charge. Parthian armies repeatedly clashed with the Roman legions in a series of wars, featuring the heavy usage of cataphracts. Although initially successful, the Romans soon developed ways to crush the charges of heavy horsemen, through use of terrain and maintained discipline.


title: Cataphract

text: Persian cataphracts were a contiguous division known as the "Savaran" (Persian: "سواران", literally meaning "riders") during the era of the Sassanid army and remained a formidable force from the 3rd to 7th centuries until the collapse of the Sassanid Empire. Initially the Sassanid dynasty continued the cavalry traditions of the Parthians, fielding units of super-heavy cavalry. This gradually fell out of favour, and a "universal" cavalryman was developed during the later 3rd century, able to fight as a mounted archer as well as a cataphract. This was perhaps in response to the harassing, nomadic combat style used by the Sassanids' northern neighbours who frequently raided their borders, such as the Huns, Hephthalites, Xiongnu, Scythians, and Kushans, all of which favoured hit and run tactics and relied almost solely upon horse archers for combat. However, as the Roman-Persian wars intensified to the West, sweeping military reforms were again re-established. During the 4th century, Shapur II of Persia attempted to reinstate the super-heavy cataphracts of previous Persian dynasties to counter the formation of the new, Roman Comitatenses, the dedicated, front-line legionaries who were the heavy infantry of the late Roman Empire. The elite of the Persian cataphracts, known as the Pushtigban Body Guards, were sourced from the very best of the "Savaran" divisions and were akin in their deployment and military role to their Roman counterparts, the Praetorian Guard, used exclusively by Roman emperors. Ammianus Marcellinus remarked in his memoirs that members of the Pushtigban were able to impale two Roman soldiers on their spears at once with a single furious charge. Persian cataphract archery also seems to have been again revived in late antiquity, perhaps as a response (or even a stimulus) to an emerging trend of the late Roman army towards mobility and versatility in their means of warfare.


title: Cataphract

text: In an ironic twist, the elite of the East Roman army by the 6th century had become the cataphract, modelled after the very force that had fought them in the east for more than 500 years earlier. During the Iberian and Lazic wars initiated in the Caucasus by Justinian I, it was noted by Procopius that Persian cataphract archers were adept at firing their arrows in very quick succession and saturating enemy positions but with little hitting power, resulting in mostly non-incapacitating limb wounds for the enemy. The Roman cataphracts, on the other hand, released their shots with far more power, able to launch arrows with lethal kinetic energy behind them, albeit at a slower pace.


title: Cataphract

text: Some cataphracts fielded by the later Roman Empire were also equipped with heavy, lead-weight darts called "Martiobarbuli", akin to the plumbata used by late Roman infantry. These were to be hurled at the enemy lines during or just before a charge, to disorder the defensive formation immediately before the impact of the lances. With or without darts, a cataphract charge would usually be supported by some kind of missile troops (mounted or unmounted) placed on either flank of the enemy formation. Some armies formalised this tactic by deploying separate types of cataphract, the conventional, very heavily armored, bowless lancer for the primary charge and a dual purpose, lance-and-bow cataphract for supporting units.


title: Cataphract

text: References to Eastern Roman cataphracts seemed to have disappeared in the late 6th century, as the manual of war known as "Strategikon of Maurice", published during the same period, made no mention of cataphracts or their tactical employment. This absence persisted through most of the Thematic period, until the cataphracts reappeared in Emperor Leo VI's "Sylloge Taktikon", probably reflecting a revival that paralleled the transformation of the Eastern Roman army from a largely defensive force into a largely offensive force. The cataphracts deployed by the Eastern Roman Empire (most noticeably after the 7th century, when Late Latin ceased to be the official language of the empire) were exclusively referred to as "Kataphraktoi", due to the Empire's strong Greek influence, as opposed to the Romanized term "Cataphractarii", which subsequently fell out of use.


title: Cataphract

text: These later Roman cataphracts were a much feared force in their heyday. The army of Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas reconstituted Kataphraktoi during the tenth century and included a complex and highly developed composition of an offensive, blunt-nosed wedge formation. Made up of roughly five hundred cavalrymen, this unit was clearly designed with a single decisive charge in mind as the centre of the unit was composed of mounted archers. These would release volleys of arrows into the enemy as the unit advanced at a trot, with the first four rows of mace-armed Kataphraktoi then penetrating the enemy formation through the resulting disruption (contrary to popular representations, Byzantine Kataphraktoi did not charge, they advanced at a steady medium-pace trot and were designed to roll over an enemy already softened by the archers). It is important to note that this formation is the only method prescribed for Kataphraktoi in the Praecepta Militaria of Emperor Nikephoros which was designed as a decisive hammer-blow which would break the enemy. Due to the rigidity of the formation, it was not possible for it to re-form and execute a second charge in instances where the first blow did not smash the enemy (no feigned flight or repeated charges were possible due to the formation employed). It is for this reason that Byzantine military manuals (Praecepta Militaria and the Taktika) advise where possible, for the use of a second wedge of Kataphraktoi which could be hurled at the enemy in the event that they resisted the initial charge.


title: Cataphract

text: Contemporary depictions, however, imply that Byzantine cataphracts were not as completely armored as the earlier Roman and Sassanid incarnation. The horse armor was noticeably lighter than earlier examples, being made of leather scales or quilted cloth rather than metal at all. Byzantine cataphracts of the 10th century were drawn from the ranks of the middle-class landowners through the "theme" system, providing the Byzantine Empire with a motivated and professional force that could support its own wartime expenditures. The previously mentioned term "Clibanarii" (possibly representing a distinct class of cavalry from the cataphract) was brought to the fore in the 10th and 11th centuries of the Byzantine Empire, known in Byzantine Greek as "Klibanophoros", which appeared to be a throwback to the super-heavy cavalry of earlier antiquity. These cataphracts specialised in forming a wedge formation and penetrating enemy formations to create gaps, enabling lighter troops to make a breakthrough. Alternatively, they were used to target the head of the enemy force, typically a foreign emperor.


title: Cataphract

text: As with the original cataphracts, the Leonian/Nikephorian units seemed to have fallen out of favour and use with their handlers, making their last, recorded appearance in battle in 970 and the last record of their existence in 1001, referred to as being posted to garrison duty. If they had indeed disappeared, then it is possible that they were revived once again during the Komnenian restoration, a period of thorough financial, territorial and military reform that changed the Byzantine army of previous ages, which is referred to separately as the Komnenian army after the 12th century. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118) established a new military force from the ground up, which was directly responsible for transforming the aging Byzantine Empire from one of the weakest periods in its existence into a major economic and military power, akin to its existence during the golden age of Justinian I. However, even in this case, it seems that the cataphract was eventually superseded by other types of heavy cavalry.


title: Cataphract

text: It is difficult to determine when exactly the cataphract saw his final day. After all, cataphracts and knights fulfilled a roughly similar role on the medieval battlefield, and the armored knight survived well into the early modern era of Europe. The Byzantine army maintained units of heavily armored cavalrymen up until its final years, mostly in the form of Western European "Latinikon" mercenaries, while neighbouring Bulgars, Serbs, Avars, Alans, Lithuanians, Khazars and other Eastern European and Eurasian peoples emulated Byzantine military equipment. During medieval times, the Draco banner and Tamga of Sarmatian cataphracts belonging to the tribe of Royal Sarmatians, was used by the Clan of Ostoja and become Ostoja coat of arms.


title: Cataphract

text: As Western European metalwork became increasingly sophisticated, the traditional image of the cataphract's awe-inspiring might and presence quickly evaporated. From the 15th century and onwards, chain mail, lamellar armor, and scale armor seemed to fall out of favour with Eastern noble cavalrymen as elaborate and robust plate cuirasses arrived from the West; this, in combination with the advent of early firearms, cannon and gunpowder, rendered the relatively thin and flexible armor of cataphracts obsolete. Despite these advances, the Byzantine army, often unable to afford newer equipment "en masse", was left ill-equipped and forced to rely on its increasingly archaic military technology. The cataphract finally passed into the pages of history with the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, when the last nation to refer to its cavalrymen as cataphracts fell (see Decline of the Byzantine Empire).


title: Cataphract

text: Horses covered with scale armor are alluded to in the ancient Chinese book of poetry, the "Shi Jing" dating between the 7th to 10th centuries BC—however, this armor did not cover the entire horse and was likely made of hide, not metal as traditionally believed (e.g. by Zhu Xi, Séraphin Couvreur, James Legge, etc.). According to surviving records, the Western Han Dynasty had 5,330 sets of horse armor at the Donghai Armory. Comprehensive full-body armor for horses made of organic materials such as rawhide may have existed as early as the Qin Dynasty according to archaeological discoveries of stone lamellar armor for horses. Comprehensive armor for horses made of metal might have been used in China as early as the Three Kingdoms period, but the usage wasn't widely adapted as most cavalry formation requires maneuverability. It was not until the early 4th century, however, that cataphracts came into widespread use among with the Xianbei tribes of Inner Mongolia and Liaoning, which led to the readoption of cataphracts en masse by Chinese armies during the Jin dynasty (266–420) and Northern and Southern Dynasties era. Numerous burial seals, military figurines, murals, and official reliefs from this period testify to the great importance of armored cavalry in warfare. The later Sui Empire continued the use of cataphracts. During the Tang Empire it was illegal for private citizens to possess horse armor. Production of horse armor was controlled by the government. However, the use of cataphracts was mentioned in many records and literature. Cataphracts were also used in warfare from the Anlushan Rebellion to the fall of the Tang Dynasty. During the Five Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms era, cataphracts were important units in this civil war. In the same period, cataphracts were also popular among nomadic empires, such as the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin dynasties—the heavy cataphracts of the Xia and Jin were especially effective and were known as "Iron Sparrowhawks" and "Iron Pagodas" respectively. The Song Empire also developed cataphract units to counter those of the Liao, Xia, and Jin, but the shortage of suitable grazing lands and horse pastures in Song territory made the effective breeding and maintenance of Song cavalry far more difficult. This added to the Song's vulnerability to continual raids by the emerging Mongol Empire for over two decades, which eventually vanquished them in 1279 at the hands of Kublai Khan. The Yuan dynasty, successors to the Song, were a continuation of the Mongol Empire, and seem to have all but forgotten the cataphract traditions of their predecessors. The last remaining traces of cataphracts in East Asia seems to have faded with the downfall of the Yuan in 1368 and later heavy cavalry never reached the levels of armor and protection for the horses as these earlier cataphracts.


title: Cataphract

text: Other East Asian cultures were also known to have used cataphracts during a similar time period to the Chinese. Meanwhile, the Tibetan Empire used cataphracts as the elite assault force of its armies for much of its history. The Gokturk Khaganates might also have had cataphracts, as the Orkhon inscriptions mentioned Latter Göktürk general Kul-Tegin exchanged armored horses in battle.


title: Cataphract

text: Antigüedad y cristianismo: Monografías históricas sobre la Antigüedad tardía ,Nº 16, pages 397-418.ISSN 0214-7165.


title: Profiterole

text: A profiterole (), cream puff (US), or chou à la crème () is a filled French and Italian choux pastry ball with a typically sweet and moist filling of whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream. The puffs may be decorated or left plain or garnished with chocolate sauce, caramel, or a dusting of powdered sugar. Savory profiterole are also made, filled with pureed meats, cheese, and so on. These were formerly common garnishes for soups.


title: Profiterole

text: The various names may be associated with particular variants of filling or sauce in different places.


title: Profiterole

text: Choux pastry dough is piped through a pastry bag or dropped with a pair of spoons into small balls and baked to form largely hollow puffs. After cooling, the baked profiteroles are injected with filling using a pastry bag and narrow piping tip, or by slicing off the top, filling them, and reassembling. For sweet profiteroles, additional glazes or decorations may then be added.


title: Profiterole

text: The most common presentations are pastry cream, whipped cream, or ice cream filling, topped with powdered sugar or chocolate ganache and possibly more whipped cream. They are also served plain, with a crisp caramel glaze, iced, or with fruit.


title: Profiterole

text: Filled and glazed with caramel, they are assembled into a type of pièce montée called croquembouches, often served at weddings in France and Italy, during the Christmas holiday in France, and are served during important celebrations in Gibraltar. Profiteroles are also used as the outer wall of St. Honoré Cake.


title: Profiterole

text: Choux pastry, the key ingredient of profiteroles, is said to have been invented by the head chef to the court of Catherine de' Medici, who had come to France from her native Florence to marry Henry II.


title: Profiterole

text: The original recipe changed as the years passed, as the pastry cook's art began to develop around the 17th century. A patissier by the name of Avice perfected the pastry in the middle of the eighteenth century and created choux buns, with the 'pâte à Popelin' becoming known as 'pâte à choux', since only choux buns were made from it. It was in the nineteenth century that Antoine Carême perfected the recipe, the same recipe for choux pastry as is used today.


title: Profiterole

text: Profiteroles are served in the banquet scene in the 2017 film "Victoria and Abdul" in which Queen Victoria is seen to be taking great pleasure in devouring her serving of them.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Eric "Garth" Hudson (born August 2, 1937) is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist best known as the keyboardist and occasional saxophonist for rock group the Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He was a principal architect of the group's sound, described as "the most brilliant organist in the rock world" by "Keyboard" magazine. With the deaths of Richard Manuel in 1986, Rick Danko in 1999, and Levon Helm in 2012, Hudson is one of only two living original members of the Band, with the other being Robbie Robertson.


title: Garth Hudson

text: A master of the Lowrey organ, Hudson's other primary instruments are piano, accordion, electronic keyboards, and saxophones (alto, tenor, soprano, baritone, bass). He has been a much-in-demand and respected session musician, performing with dozens of artists, including Elton John, who has cited him as an early influence.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. His parents, Fred James Hudson and Olive Louella Pentland, were musicians. His mother played piano and accordion and sang. His father, a farm inspector who had fought as a fighter pilot in World War I, played drums, C melody saxophone, clarinet, flute and piano. Hudson moved with his family to London, Ontario, around 1940. Starting piano lessons at an early age, Hudson also played organ at his church and his uncle's funeral parlour, and performed country songs on the accordion Classically trained in piano, music theory, harmony and counterpoint, Hudson wrote his first song at the age of eleven and first played professionally with dance bands in 1949, at the age of twelve. He attended Broughdale Public School and Medway High School before studying music (primarily Bach's chorales and "The Well-Tempered Clavier") at the University of Western Ontario. During this period, he grew increasingly frustrated with the rigidity of the classical repertoire, leading him to drop out after a year.


title: Garth Hudson

text: In 1956, he joined London band the Silhouettes. The group relocated to the Windsor/Detroit area where work was more plentiful. It was there, in 1958, that the Silhouettes joined with fellow Londoner Paul "London" Hutchins and became Paul London and the Capers. Hudson primarily played saxophone in the group, and some piano in a style inspired by Johnnie Johnson, but saw his first Lowrey Organ at a show in Detroit and determined that he would get one. The group found moderate success and plenty of work, recording a few songs in Toronto in 1960, changing their name to "...Kapers" with a 'K', recording a few more songs at Chess Studios in Chicago.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Hudson was first approached by Ronnie Hawkins and Levon Helm in the summer of 1961, after a Kapers show in London, and asked to join the Hawks, an offer he declined. The Hawks persisted, and in December 1961, Hudson agreed to join the band on two conditions: that Hawkins buy him a Lowrey organ, and that he be paid an extra $10 a week to give music lessons to the other Hawks. This second condition was in part to justify the move to his parents, who he feared would think he was squandering his years of music education by playing in a rock and roll band. Discussing the thinking behind his early fears in "The Last Waltz", Hudson told interviewer-director Martin Scorsese: "There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good."


title: Garth Hudson

text: When the 24-year-old Hudson joined the Hawks, the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins, the band already consisted of 21-year-old Levon Helm on drums, 18-year-old Robbie Robertson on guitar, 18-year-old Rick Danko on bass and 18-year-old Richard Manuel on piano. The line up that would become the Band was now complete.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Hudson was one of the few organ players in rock and roll and rhythm and blues to eschew the Hammond organ. Upon joining the Hawks, Hudson took the opportunity to negotiate the procurement of a new Lowrey organ as part of his compensation. The Lowrey organ offered a different mix of features, and Hudson stayed with Lowrey right through Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, Bob Dylan and the Band, playing three different models: originally a Festival (FL) console, which was replaced by a Lincolnwood TSO-25 during 1969, and later still a horseshoe console H25 model, as depicted in "The Last Waltz".


title: Garth Hudson

text: Under the strict supervision of Hawkins, the Hawks became an accomplished band. They split from Hawkins in 1963, recorded two singles and toured almost continually, playing in bars and clubs, usually billed as Levon and the Hawks. Hudson started work as a session musician in 1965, playing on John Hammond, Jr.'s "So Many Roads" along with Robertson (guitar) and Helm (drums).


title: Garth Hudson

text: In August 1965, they were introduced to Bob Dylan by manager Albert Grossman's assistant, Mary Martin. In October, Dylan and the Hawks recorded the single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", and in January 1966 they recorded material with Dylan for what would turn into the "Blonde on Blonde" album. Dylan recruited the band to accompany him on his controversial 1966 "electric" tour of the United States, Australia and Europe. (An album of Dylan's 1966 performance with his band, "", was finally released in 1998.) Subsequent to Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident in July 1966, the group settled in a pink house in West Saugerties, New York, near Woodstock. Dylan was a frequent visitor, and Hudson's recordings of their collaborations resulted in "The Basement Tapes".


title: Garth Hudson

text: By 1968, the group recorded its debut album, "Music from Big Pink". The album was recorded in Los Angeles (at Capitol) and New York (at A&R Studio). Capitol originally announced that the group would be called the Crackers, but when Music From Big Pink was released they were officially named the Band. The album includes Hudson's organ showcase, "Chest Fever", a song that in the Band's live shows would be vastly expanded by a solo organ introduction, entitled "The Genetic Method", an improvisational work that would be played differently at each performance. An example can be heard on the live album "Rock of Ages". Hudson is also adept at the accordion, which he played on some of the group's recordings, such as "Rockin Chair", from "The Band"; the traditional "Ain't No More Cane", from "The Basement Tapes"; Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece"; and Bobby Charles's "Down South in New Orleans" during "The Last Waltz". His saxophone solo work can be heard on such songs as "Tears of Rage" (from "Big Pink") and "Unfaithful Servant" (from "The Band"). Hudson is credited with playing all of the brass and woodwinds on the studio version of "Ophelia" from the 1975 album "Northern Lights - Southern Cross". This album, the first to be recorded in the Band's Shangri-La recording studio in Malibu, California, also saw Hudson adding synthesizers to his arsenal of instruments.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Hudson provided innovative accompaniment. For example, the song "Up on Cripple Creek" features Hudson playing a clavinet through a wah-wah pedal to create a swampy sound reminiscent of a Jew's harp or the croak of a frog. This clavinet–wah wah pedal configuration was later adopted by many funk musicians.


title: Garth Hudson

text: The initial iteration of the Band made its final bow as a touring band with a lavish final concert on Thanksgiving Day 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, an all-star tribute concert documented in "The Last Waltz".


title: Garth Hudson

text: The Band released one more album after the Last Waltz, "Islands", and then dissolved. By then, Hudson had married his singer/actress wife, Maud. He had his own property, Big Oak Basin Dude Ranch, in Malibu, which was destroyed by wildfires in 1978, after extensive renovations that included an impressive studio.


title: Garth Hudson

text: He was active during this period as a session musician, performing on movie soundtracks and albums by many other artists, including Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison ("Wavelength") and Leonard Cohen ("Recent Songs"). He composed music for "Our Lady Queen of the Angels", a multimedia show created for the Los Angeles bicentennial in 1980. In the early 1980s he accompanied the Call on one of their albums and appeared with them in a music video which was played on MTV. He can be seen playing two separate keyboards in the Call's video of "the walls came down"


title: Garth Hudson

text: The Band reformed in 1983, with all the original members except Robbie Robertson. Richard Manuel, who had lived at Hudson's ranch in 1978, died by suicide in 1986. Supplemented by a rotating roster of additional musicians, the Band continued to tour, releasing three albums in the 1990s.


title: Garth Hudson

text: In 1990 Hudson, playing accordion and soprano saxophone, along with bandmates Levon Helm and Rick Danko, who harmonized with the vocalists, took part in Roger Waters's massive performance of "The Wall" at the Berlin Wall.


title: Garth Hudson

text: As a member of the Band, Hudson was inducted into the Juno Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.


title: Garth Hudson

text: Hudson released his first solo album, "The Sea to the North", on September 11, 2001. In 2002, with his home in foreclosure and Robertson having bought out his stake in the Band, Hudson was forced to declare bankruptcy for the third time. He continued to record and perform. On July 13, 2002, he was honoured with the Canada South Blues Society's Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Garth Hudson

text: In 2002, he joined with former Flying Burrito Brothers' pedal steel player Sneaky Pete Kleinow to form Burrito Deluxe, with Carlton Moody of the Moody Brothers on lead vocals and guitars, bassist Jeff "Stick" Davis of the Amazing Rhythm Aces and drummer Rick Lonow. The group recorded two albums, "Georgia Peach" and "The Whole Enchilada", before Kleinow departed in 2004 because of health problems.


title: Garth Hudson

text: In 2005, Hudson formed his own 12-piece band, the Best!, with his wife, Maud (who died on February 28, 2022), on vocals. That same year, Garth and Maud Hudson released "Live at the Wolf", a piano and vocal album recorded live at the Wolf Performance Hall in London, Ontario.


title: Garth Hudson

text: He continues as a much-in-demand session player, performing with such artists as Neko Case ("Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" and "Middle Cyclone"), Chris Castle ("Last Bird Home"), Teddy Thompson ("Separate Ways"), the Secret Machines ("Ten Silver Drops"), the Sadies ("Live 2006"), the Lemonheads, Jonah Smith (2006 self-titled debut), Yesterday's News ("The Northside Hotel"), Billy the Kid ("The Lost Cause") and others. He contributed an original electronic score to an off-Broadway production of "Dragon Slayers", written by Stanley Keyes and directed by Brad Mays in 1986 at the Union Square Theatre in New York. The production was restaged with a new cast in Los Angeles in 1990.


title: Garth Hudson

text: A few of the artists Hudson performed with in 2006 are Ronnie Hawkins, the Sadies, Neko Case, Heavy Trash, John Hiatt, the North Mississippi All-Stars, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, and Chris Zaloom, some of which were recorded. Hudson and his talent on piano are prominently featured in the 2007 Daniel Lanois DVD documentary "Here Is What Is."


title: Garth Hudson

text: In 2010, Hudson released "Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration of the Band". The album features Canadian artists covering songs that were recorded by the Band. Hudson plays on every track and co-produced the album with Peter J. Moore. Acts that appear on the album include Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Blue Rodeo, Cowboy Junkies, the Trews, Great Big Sea, Hawksley Workman, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida and Ian Thornley.


title: Warlord

text: A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned territories. The term is most often applied to China in the mid-19th century and the early 20th century. The term can also be used for any supreme military leader.


title: Warlord

text: The first appearance of the word "warlord" dates to 1856, when used by American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson in a highly critical essay on the aristocracy in England, "Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics and letters; the war-lord to the law-lord; the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed."


title: Warlord

text: During the First World War, the term appeared in China as "Junfa" (軍閥), taken from the Japanese "gunbatsu". It was not widely used until the 1920s, when it was used to describe the chaos after 1918, when provincial military leaders took local control and launched the period that would come to be known in China as the Warlord Era. In China, "Junfa" is applied retroactively to describe the leaders of regional armies who threatened or used violence to expand their rule, including those who rose to lead and unify kingdoms.


title: Warlord

text: Warlords were present historically in either pre-modern states or "weak state" societies, and in countries designated "fragile states" or "failed states" in modern times. There is a tremendous degree of variance in the political, economic, and societal organization, structure, and institutions of states where warlordism exists. There is also a divergence of opinion within the field of political science as to what specifically constitutes warlordism, particularly in the context of the historical setting.


title: Warlord

text: There are two major functional distinctions when considering warlords and their relationship with a state.


title: Warlord

text: The first is one in which the warlord functions within the political framework through a degree of bargaining with the state regime so that the warlord, sometimes individually and sometimes in a coalition with other warlords, is acting with the explicit consent of or at least in accord with the regime. This can be viewed as "cooperative warlord politics".


title: Warlord

text: The other is one in which the warlord is operating independently of the state and is viewed as a rebel, insurgent or strategic political competitor of the regime. This is commonly viewed as "ungoverned warlordism".


title: Warlord

text: Warlords can also fall into a hybrid category, temporarily joining a warlord coalition in collusion with the regime or defecting for political expedience—transitioning from one paradigm to the other based upon strategic interests.


title: Warlord

text: The other major consideration in categorizing warlords is through the lens of history. Warlordism was a widespread, dominant political framework that ordered many of the world's societies until the modern state became globally ubiquitous. Often warlord governance in pre-modern state history was constructed along tribal or kinship lines and was congruent with early perception of "nation". In colonial empires warlords served in both cooperative political capacities and as leaders of rebellions. In modern states the presence of warlords is often seen as an indicator of state weakness or failure. American historian David G. Herrmann noted, "Warlordism is the default condition of humanity."


title: Warlord

text: Economist Stergios Skaperdas views warlordism as a default—albeit inefficient—competitive economic model that emerges in states where state capacity is low, but that innately evolves into an institution governing political order that uses violence or the threat of it to secure its access to "rent"-producing resources. It may actually have a stabilizing effect on a region. In both cases there is an inherent inefficiency in the model, as "resources are wasted on unproductive arming and fighting." However, the functionality is often sustainable because it presents citizens with no choice but to accept rent levies in exchange for protection. Charles Tilly, an American political scientist and sociologist, theorized that organized crime can function as a means for war and state making. He argues that the monopoly of crime by the state—in this case being the warlords—is in order to receive protection from external rivals as well as internal political rivals.


title: Warlord

text: Political scientist Jesse Driscoll uses the term "redistribution politics" to classify the bargaining process between warlords and the regime in states where cooperative warlord politics prevails, and when that bargaining leads to accords or informal arrangements concerning the extraction of rent—which can refer to natural resources, territory, labor, revenue or privilege. In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, Driscoll cites "land reform, property ownership and transfers, privatization in non-transparent closed-bid settings, complex credit swaps cemented via marriages, money laundering, price fixing schemes, and bribery", as principal sources of exchange in redistribution politics.


title: Warlord

text: Noted theorist Max Weber suggested that classic feudalism in pre-modern-state Europe was an example of warlordism, as the state regime was unable to "exercise a monopoly on the use of force within its territory" and the monarch relied on the commitment of loyal knights and other nobility to mobilize their private armies in support of the crown for specific military campaigns. As noted French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and political scientists such as E. J. Hobsbawm and Theda Skocpol observed in their analyses of the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution and democratization in Europe, that commitment was contingent upon a bargaining process in which the king or queen had to guarantee additional territory, revenue, status or other privileges, meaning that these early European states were weak and the relationship between the crown and feudal lords constituted the form of interdependent warlordism known as cooperative warlord politics.


title: Warlord

text: Under the feudal system of Europe, nobility—whether feudal lords, knights, princes or barons—were warlords in that they served as regional leaders who exercised military, economic and political control over subnational territories and maintained private armies to maintain that status. While their political power to exercise social order, welfare and regional defense within their territory was derived from hereditary rights or edicts from the monarch, their military strength afforded them independence and strength to negotiate for privileges. Should the feudal lord or other noble withdraw his support from the king, either in rebellion or to form an alliance with a rival kingdom, that feudal lord or noble was now ascribing to the political order of ungoverned warlordism.


title: Warlord

text: Within political science there is a growing body of research and analysis on warlordism that has emerged within weak states that have gained independence as a result of the collapse of empire. Warlord states are disproportionately concentrated within two regions—the former European colonies of Africa and the former Soviet republics of Eurasia.


title: Warlord

text: While warlords are commonly viewed as regional leaders who threaten the sovereignty of a state, there are a number of states where the central government functions in collusion with warlords to achieve its goal of exercising its sovereignty over regions that would otherwise fall outside its control. In such decentralized states, particularly those where armed groups challenge national sovereignty, warlords can serve as useful allies of a central government that is unable to establish a monopoly over the use of force within its national territory.


title: Warlord

text: As political scientist Dr. Ariel Hernandez documented, one example is the Philippines, where successive presidential administrations—at least since Ferdinand Marcos secured power in 1965—have "franchised violence to regional warlords" to counter the inroads of communist insurgents, Islamic rebels and organized criminal gangs. This has led to the formation of at least 93 "Partisan Armed Groups", armed militias loyal to regional warlords who, in exchange for their loyalty and willingness to use their private armies to quell the threats from these opposition groups, are granted a degree of autonomy within designated regions, the exclusive right to use violence and the right "to profit from the 'economy of violence' that they establish in their own areas".


title: Warlord

text: Warlordism in Afghanistan—another state where the central government is unable to extend political, military or bureaucratic control over large swaths of territories outside the capital—functions cooperatively within the framework of the state, at times. The warlords, with their established militias, are able to maintain a monopoly of violence within certain territories. They form coalitions with competing warlords and local tribal leaders to present the central government with a challenge, and often the state will bargain to gain access to resources or "rent", loyalty from the warlord and peace in the region.


title: Warlord

text: In exchange for peaceful coexistence, the warlord coalitions are granted special status and privileges, including the right to maintain "de facto" political rule within the agreed-upon territory, exert force to retain their monopoly over violence and extract rent and resources. "By limiting access to these privileges, members of the dominant warlord coalition create credible incentives to cooperate rather than fight among themselves."


title: Warlord

text: In the case of Afghanistan, state–warlord bargaining sometimes extends beyond these informal accords and elevates to the status of political clientelism, in which the warlords are appointed to formal government positions, such as regional governor; a title which provides them political legitimacy. During the state–warlord bargaining phase, warlords in Afghanistan have a high motivation to prolong war to create political instability, expose weakness of the central state, prompt regional criticism against the government and continue economic extraction.


title: Warlord

text: In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, political scientist Jesse Driscoll emphasizes how the collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated the rise of militant, independence-seeking nationalist movements within the republics—particularly within the Central Asian and Caucasus regions—resulting in armed conflict and civil war. Many strongmen warlords had served in the Soviet military, police units or intelligence services and had experience operating within highly organized bureaucracies. These warlords formed well-structured militias that not only established political and economic control over territories, but institutionalized bureaucracies to establish and maintain their monopolies over violence and rent and "incentivizing the behavior of citizens within a particular geographical space". Driscoll termed this warlordism "militia coalition politics". A truce was reached without any disarmament of militias; instead, the warlord coalitions reached a non-violent "order producing equilibrium", and eventually agreed upon a warlord-friendly civilian figurehead to assume head-of-state duties to demonstrate the legitimacy as a sovereign state to the rest of the world. This opened up Georgia and Tajikistan as states eligible to receive international aid, which thereafter became a major source of "rent" for the warlords, providing them with resources to increase their power and influence over these societies. As Driscoll observed, the "warlords colluded to create a state".


title: Warlord

text: One political theory, pioneered by American economist Mancur Olson, posits that warlords can function as stationary bandits. In some African states, warlord politics can be a product of endowment-rich, extractable resources. Some nations, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, have had stationary bandits who use extraction of resources such as diamonds, cobalt and timber ("conflict resources") in order to increase their political power. They often enforce their right to these resources by claiming to be protecting the people. These warlords, or stationary bandits, often partner with compliant foreign firms and create symbiotic relationships to yield greater power for the warlords and a source of wealth for external firms. The result is a political system in which a dominant coalition of warlords strips and distributes valuable assets in exchange for bureaucratic services and security from foreign firms.


title: Warlord

text: Stationary bandits can amass power because of their economic connections with foreign firms. Oftentimes warlords will exert violence on a particular region in order to gain control. Once in control, these warlords can expropriate the property or resources from the people and land and redistribute the riches in exchange for monetary value. When people live in a particular region dominated by a warlord, they can choose to flee or live within the political structure the warlords have created. If the warlords provide protection against external threats of violence, the people will be likely to stay and continue living and working in that region, even though they are being extorted. The trade-off becomes protection for extraction, and this political framework is common in periphery regions of countries which do not have a strong central government.


title: Warlord

text: Modern-day Afghanistan is a multiethnic, multilingual country inhabited by distinct and often competing tribal societies, its national borders defined only following the Treaty of Rawalpindi of 1919 between the United Kingdom and the Emirate of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was briefly a democratic state until a 1973 coup, which resulted in the April Revolution of 1978.


title: Warlord

text: Historically, power in Afghanistan has been decentralized and governance delegated locally to ethnic tribal leadership. Tribal leaders often act as local warlords, representing either a tribal confederacy, a tribal kinship group or a smaller tribal lineage grouping, and are expected to provide security, justice and social services to their respective "constituencies". There are four dominant ethnic tribes in Afghanistan (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks), as well as a number of proportionally smaller tribes. The Pashtuns are the largest and most dominant ethnic tribe in the country, whose name translates to "Land of the Pashtuns".


title: Warlord

text: The Durand Line, which forms the border between modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, has proved a source of contention in Afghanistan and a source of challenge for the tribal authorities of Afghanistan. The line, which was negotiated between British diplomat and civil servant Mortimer Durand and Afghan Emir Abdur Khan, was a political boundary drawn in 1893 which clearly defined and demarcated the border between Afghanistan and the British Raj. Afghanistan unilaterally disputes the legitimacy of the border. Pashtuns are the prominent ethnic group in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and the Durand Line served to split their traditional homeland between two nation states. The partitioning of their tribal lands is viewed by Pashtun leaders as a threat to their dominance within Afghanistan, emboldening rival ethnic tribes, and has provoked cross-border tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. While having significant political, economic and social impact on Afghanistan, the intervention of the Soviet Union (1979–89), Afghan Civil War (1989–96), Taliban regime (1996–2001, 2021–present) and United States invasion and occupation (2001–2021) have not noticeably disrupted the primacy of ethnic tribal authority, and thus the power and influence of warlords, in ordering Afghan society. Although the United States and its coalition allies have expended a considerable amount of time, effort and resources attempting to foment the centralization of government and consolidation of power in the state with its seat of power in Kabul, tribal warlords continue to maintain political influence and power throughout the country outside of Kabul.


title: Warlord

text: While most warlords have power vested in them through traditional tribal customs, some hold formal regional government positions, but in both cases cooperation with the central government remains voluntary and reliant on incentives. Beginning in 2008, as it became increasingly evident that the central government in Kabul was incapable of extending its power and control to much of the country, the US military and diplomatic corps began exploring the option of engaging ethnic tribal warlords in negotiations, a strategy that continued through the Obama administration.


title: Warlord

text: Warlordism was widespread in Civil War-era Russia (1918–22). Many territories were not under the control of either the Red government in Petrograd (later in Moscow) or the White governments in Omsk and Rostov. These territories were controlled by warlords of various political colors. The Cossack ataman Semyonov held territories in the Transbaikalia region, and the 'Bloody Baron' Ungern von Sternberg was the dictator of Mongolia for a short time. White generals such as Kolchak or Denikin are not considered warlords, because they created a legitimate, though troubled, government and military command.


title: Warlord

text: The term "warlord" was frequently used when Russian and Chechen conflicts were reignited in the 1990s.


title: Warlord

text: Liberia's former president Charles Taylor was indicted as a diamond-embezzling warlord who aided and abetted African rebels who committed heinous atrocities against millions of African people. After seizing power from President Samuel Doe in a rebellion, Taylor won elections in 1997. His critics say that he bullied and bought his way to power, and once he obtained it he established himself as one of the most brutal and murderous warlords in Africa.


title: Warlord

text: During his term of office Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002). His close friends included the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya; the conservative former ruler of Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny; the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré; and a plethora of businessmen—local and foreign—who were bent on making money in Liberia and disregarded UN disapproval. Taylor was detained by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2006 after a period of enforced exile in Nigeria. He was found guilty in April 2012 of all 11 charges levied by the Special Court, including terror, murder and rape. In May 2012 he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.


title: Warlord

text: Local warlords with their own militias began to emerge in the effort to defeat the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860s as the Manchu bannerman armies faltered and the central authorities lost much of their control. The Republic of China was led by Yuan Shikai, a dictator. The modern Warlord Era began in 1916 upon his death. The national government existed and handled foreign affairs but it had little internal control until the late 1920s. A period of provincial and local rule under military strongmen known as the Warlord Era lasted until the Kuomintang (KMT; Chinese Nationalist Party) consolidated its rule over much of the country under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in 1928.


title: Warlord

text: Among the prominent leaders called warlords were Yan Xishan in Shanxi province, Feng Yuxiang, and Wu Peifu, who had reputations as reformers; Zhang Zuolin, who ruled in Manchuria until the Japanese invasion of 1931; and a number of local warlords with infamous reputations, such as Zhang Zongchang. Although Chiang Kai-shek ascended with legitimacy into his role of leadership of the KMT by succeeding Sun Yat-sen and was recognized by foreign nations, Chiang was accused by some of being a warlord because of his rise by military campaign. The two-year Northern Expedition campaign (1926–28) not only defeated the Beiyang Army but also toppled the Beiyang government. Chiang also conquered and conscripted the forces of rival warlords in the Central Plains War of 1930. This war essentially ended the Warlord Era, albeit with the continuing autonomy of several provinces.


title: Warlord

text: After the fall of the Mongol Empire, Mongolia was divided between the Eastern and Western Mongols. At the time of disintegration, many warlords tried to enthrone themselves or rule the khanate jointly; however, there had been powerful "de facto" leaders in all parts of the Mongol Empire before. The empire and the states that emerged from it were born and shaped in part from the heavy influence of roving bandits. These warlords, such as Genghis Khan and his immediate successors, conquered nearly all of Asia and European Russia Roving bandits, contrary to the concept of stationary bandits offered by Mancur Olson, extract from region to region and stay mobile. Warlords in Mongolia could be characterized by this title because of the Mongol Empire's lack of definitive borders and consistent expansion and conquest during the 13th and 14th centuries.


title: Warlord

text: The Twelve Warlords War was a period ranging from 966–68 characterized by chaos and civil war. The reason this period received the title of "Twelve Warlords War", or Anarchy of the 12 Warlords, is because of the struggle for power after the illegitimate succession to the throne by Dương Tam Kha after the death of Ngô Quyền. The ensuing two years were marked by local warlords rebelling in order to seize power within their local governments and challenging the Dương court. As a result, the country fractured into 12 regions, each led by a warlord. This resulted in conflicts and war among the regional warlords, who all sought to expand their territory and enhance their power.


title: Warlord

text: Warlordism in Europe is usually connected to various mercenary companies and their chieftains, which often were "de facto" power-holders in the areas where they resided. Such free companies would arise in a situation when the recognized central power had collapsed, such as in the Great Interregnum in Germany (1254–78), in France during the Hundred Years' War after the Battle of Poitiers, or in the Kingdom of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence.


title: Warlord

text: Free company mercenary captains, such as Sir John Hawkwood, Roger de Flor of Catalan Company or Hugh Calveley, could be considered warlords. Several condottieri in Italy can also be classified as warlords. Ygo Gales Galama was a famous Frisian warlord, and so was his cousin Pier Gerlofs Donia, who was the leader of the Arumer Zwarte Hoop.


title: Warlord

text: The Imperial commanders-in-chief during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I did hold the title "Kriegsherr", of which the direct translation was "warlord", but they were not warlords in the sense of the word today. Other warlords could be found in the British Isles during the Middle Ages and up into the Early Modern period; such examples include Brian Boru of Ireland and Guthrum of the Danelaw, who was the commander of the Great Heathen Army and nearly conquered all of England, Alfred of Anglo-Saxon England, first man to unify the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Europe, although it would not be completed until Edward the Elder's reign, in which he conquered the last remnants of the Danelaw.


title: Warlord

text: Other countries and territories with warlords include, Iraq, Myanmar (Wa State), Russia (Chechnya), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan (Pashtun Tribal Areas), Syria and Tajikistan (Gorno-Badakhshan). Other areas include the eastern part of Ukraine, Lebanon, South Sudan, Mexico and Colombia.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: St. Stephen's Cathedral () is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna and the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, OP. The current Romanesque and Gothic form of the cathedral, seen today in the Stephansplatz, was largely initiated by Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) and stands on the ruins of two earlier churches, the first a parish church consecrated in 1147. The most important religious building in Vienna, St. Stephen's Cathedral has borne witness to many important events in Habsburg and Austrian history and has, with its multi-coloured tile roof, become one of the city's most recognizable symbols.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: By the middle of the 12th century, Vienna had become an important centre of German civilization, and the four existing churches, including only one parish church, no longer met the town's religious needs. In 1137, Bishop of Passau Reginmar and Margrave Leopold IV signed the Treaty of Mautern, which referred to Vienna as a "civitas" for the first time and transferred St. Peter's Church to the Diocese of Passau. Under the treaty, Margrave Leopold IV also received from the bishop extended stretches of land beyond the city walls, with the notable exception of the territory allocated for the new parish church, which would eventually become St. Stephen's Cathedral. Although previously believed built in an open field outside the city walls, the new parish church was in actuality likely built on an ancient cemetery dating to Ancient Roman times; excavations for a heating system in 2000 revealed graves below the surface, which were carbon-dated to the 4th century. This discovery suggests that an even older religious building on this site predated the St. Rupert's Church, which is considered the oldest church in Vienna.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Founded in 1137 following the Treaty of Mautern, the partially constructed Romanesque church was solemnly dedicated in 1147 to Saint Stephen in the presence of Conrad III of Germany, Bishop Otto of Freising, and other German nobles who were about to embark on the Second Crusade. Although the first structure was completed in 1160, major reconstruction and expansion lasted until 1511, and repair and restoration projects continue to the present day. From 1230 to 1245, the initial Romanesque structure was extended westward; the present-day west wall and Romanesque towers date from this period. In 1258, however, a great fire destroyed much of the original building, and a larger replacement structure, also Romanesque in style and reusing the two towers, was constructed over the ruins of the old church and consecrated 23 April 1263. The anniversary of this second consecration is commemorated each year by a rare ringing of the Pummerin bell for three minutes in the evening.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: In 1304, King Albert I ordered a Gothic three-nave choir to be constructed east of the church, wide enough to meet the tips of the old transepts. Under his son Duke Albert II, work continued on the Albertine choir, which was consecrated in 1340 on the 77th anniversary of the previous consecration. The middle nave is largely dedicated to St. Stephen and All Saints, while the north and south nave, are dedicated to St. Mary and the Apostles respectively. Duke Rudolf IV, "the Founder", Albert II's son, expanded the choir again to increase the religious clout of Vienna. On 7 April 1359, Rudolf IV laid the cornerstone for a westward Gothic extension of the Albertine choir in the vicinity of the present south tower. This expansion would eventually encapsulate the entirety of the old church, and in 1430, the edifice of the old church was removed from within as work progressed on the new cathedral. The south tower was completed in 1433, and vaulting of the nave took place from 1446 to 1474. The foundation for a north tower was laid in 1450, and construction began under master Lorenz Spenning, but its construction was abandoned when major work on the cathedral ceased in 1511.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: In 1365, just six years after beginning the Gothic extension of the Albertine choir, Rudolf IV disregarded St. Stephen's status as a mere parish church and presumptuously established a chapter of canons befitting a large cathedral. This move was only the first step in fulfilling Vienna's long-held desire to obtain its own diocese; in 1469, Emperor Frederick III prevailed upon Pope Paul II to grant Vienna its own bishop, to be appointed by the emperor. Despite long-standing resistance by the Bishops of Passau, who did not wish to lose control of the area, the Diocese of Vienna was canonically established on 18 January 1469, with St. Stephen's Cathedral as its mother church. In 1722 during the reign of Karl VI, Pope Innocent XIII elevated the see to an archbishopric.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: During World War II, the cathedral was saved from intentional destruction at the hands of retreating German forces when "Wehrmacht" Captain Gerhard Klinkicht disregarded orders from the city commandant, "Sepp" Dietrich, to "fire a hundred shells and reduce it to rubble". On 12 April 1945, civilian looters lit fires in nearby shops as Soviet Army troops entered the city. The winds carried the fire to the cathedral, where it severely damaged the roof, causing it to collapse. Fortunately, protective brick shells built around the pulpit, Frederick III's tomb, and other treasures, minimized damage to the most valuable artworks. However, the Rollinger choir stalls, carved in 1487, could not be saved. Reconstruction began immediately after the war, with a limited reopening 12 December 1948 and a full reopening 23 April 1952.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The church was dedicated to St. Stephen, also the patron of the bishop's cathedral in Passau, and so was oriented toward the sunrise on his feast day of 26 December, as the position stood in the year that construction began. Built of limestone, the cathedral is long, wide, and tall at its highest point. Over the centuries, soot and other forms of air pollution accumulating on the church have given it a black colour, but recent restoration projects have again returned some portions of the building to their original white.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Standing at tall and affectionately referred to by the city's inhabitants as "Steffl" (a diminutive form of "Stephen"), St. Stephen's Cathedral's massive south tower is its highest point and a dominant feature of the Vienna skyline. Its construction lasted 65 years, from 1368 to 1433. During the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and again during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, it served as the main observation and command post for the defence of the walled city, and it even contains an apartment for the watchmen who, until 1955, manned the tower at night and rang the bells if a fire was spotted in the city. At the tip of the tower stands the double-eagle imperial emblem with the Habsburg-Lorraine coat of arms on its chest, surmounted by a double-armed apostolic cross, which refers to "Apostolic Majesty", the imperial style of kings of Hungary. This emblem replaced earlier crescent and the six-pointed star emblem. The original emblem, as well as a couple of later ones, today can be seen at the Vienna City Museum.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The north tower was originally intended to mirror the south tower, but the design proved too ambitious, considering the era of Gothic cathedrals was nearing its end, and construction was halted in 1511. In 1578, the tower-stump was augmented with a Renaissance cap, nicknamed the "water tower top" by the Viennese. The tower now stands at tall, roughly half the height of the south tower.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The main entrance to the church is named the Giant's Door, or "Riesentor", possibly referring to the thighbone of a mammoth that hung over it for decades after being unearthed in 1443 while digging the foundations for the north tower, or else to the funnel shape of the door, from the Middle High German word "risen", meaning 'sink or 'fall'. The tympanum above the Giant's Door depicts Christ Pantocrator flanked by two winged angels, while on the left and right are the two Roman Towers, or "Heidentürme", that each stand at approximately tall. The name for the towers derives from the fact that they were constructed from the rubble of old structures built by the Romans (German "Heiden" meaning heathens or pagans) during their occupation of the area. Square at the base and octagonal above the roofline, the "Heidentürme" originally housed bells; those in the south tower were lost during World War II, but the north tower remains an operational bell tower. The Roman Towers, together with the Giant's Door, are the oldest parts of the church.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The glory of St. Stephen's Cathedral is its ornately patterned, richly coloured roof, long, and covered by 230,000 glazed tiles. Above the choir on the south side of the building the tiles form a mosaic of the double-headed eagle that is symbolic of the empire ruled from Vienna by the Habsburg dynasty. On the north side, the coats of arms of the City of Vienna and of the Republic of Austria are depicted. In 1945, fire caused by World War II damage to nearby buildings leapt to the north tower of the cathedral and destroyed the wooden framework of the roof. Replicating the original bracing for so large a roof (it rises 38 metres above the floor) would have been cost-prohibitive, so over 600 metric tons of steel bracing were used instead. The roof is so steep that it is sufficiently cleaned by the rain alone and is seldom covered by snow.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven discovered the totality of his deafness when he saw birds flying out of the bell tower as a result of the bells' tolling but could not hear the bells. St. Stephen's Cathedral has 22 bells in total. The largest is officially named for St. Mary, but usually called "Pummerin" ("Boomer") and hangs in the north tower. At , it is the largest in Austria and the second-largest swinging bell in Europe after the "Peter" in Cologne Cathedral).


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Originally cast in 1711 from cannons captured from the Muslim invaders, it was recast (partly from its original metal) in 1951 after crashing onto the floor when its wooden cradle burned during the 1945 fire. The new bell has a diameter of and was a gift from the province of Upper Austria. It sounds on only a few special occasions each year, including the arrival of the new year. Also in this tower are two (formerly three) older bells that are no longer used:


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: and "Zügenglocke" ("processions bell") () cast in 1830. However, the Kleine Glocke was restored at the Grassmayr foundry in Innsbruck in 2017 and rehung in the North Roman Tower.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: A peal of eleven electrically operated bells, cast in 1960, hangs in the soaring south tower. Replacements for other ancient bells also lost in the 1945 fire, they are used during Masses at the cathedral: four are used for an ordinary Mass; the quantity increases to as many as ten for a major holiday Mass; and the eleventh and largest is added when the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna himself is present. From the largest to the smallest, they are named the "St. Stephen" (); "St. Leopold" (); "St. Christopher" (); "St. Leonhard" (); "St. Josef" (); "St. Peter Canisius" (); "St. Pius X" (280 kg); "All Saints" (); "St. Clement Maria Hofbauer" (); "St. Michael" (); and "St. Tarsicius" (). Also in this tallest tower are the "Primglocke" (recast in 1772), which rings on the quarter hour, and the "Uhrschälle" (cast in 1449), which rings on the hour.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The north Roman Tower contains six bells, four of which were cast in 1772, that ring for evening prayers and toll for funerals. They are working bells of the cathedral and their names usually recall their original uses: "Feuerin" ("fire alarm" but now used as a call to evening prayers) cast in 1879; "Kantnerin" (calling the cantors (musicians) to Mass); "Feringerin" (used for High Mass on Sundays); "Bieringerin" ("beer ringer" for last call at taverns); "Poor Souls" (the funeral bell); "Churpötsch" (donated by the local curia in honour of the Maria Pötsch icon in the cathedral), and Kleine Glocke (cast in 1280 and is the oldest bell in the cathedral).


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: During the Middle Ages, major cities had their own set of measures and the public availability of these standards allowed visiting merchants to comply with local regulations. The official Viennese ell length standards for verifying the measure of different types of cloth sold are embedded in the cathedral wall, to the left of the main entrance. The linen ell, also called Viennese yard, () and the drapery ell () length standards consist of two iron bars. According to Franz Twaroch, the ratio between the linen ell and the drapery ell is exactly formula_1. The Viennese ells are mentioned for the first time in 1685 by the Canon Testarello della Massa in his book "Beschreibung der ansehnlichen und berühmten St. Stephans-Domkirchen".


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: A memorial tablet (near location SJC on the Plan below) gives a detailed account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's relationship with the cathedral, including the fact that he had been appointed an adjunct music director here shortly before his death. This was his parish church when he lived at the "Figaro House" and he was married here, two of his children were baptised here, and his funeral was held in the Chapel of the Cross (at location PES) inside.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Adjacent to the catacomb entrance is the Capistran Chancel, the pulpit (now outdoors at location SJC) from which St. John Capistrano and Hungarian general John Hunyadi preached a crusade in 1456 to repel Muslim invasions of Christian Europe. (See: Siege of Belgrade). The 18th century Baroque statue shows the Franciscan friar under an extravagant sunburst, trampling on a beaten Turk. This was the original cathedral's main pulpit inside until it was replaced by Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden's pulpit in 1515.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: A figure of Christ (at location CT) is known affectionately to the Viennese as "Christ with a toothache" (). At the southwest corner (location S) are various memorials from when the area outside the cathedral was a cemetery, as well as a recently restored 15th-century sundial on a flying buttress.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The main part of the church contains 18 altars, with more in the various chapels. The High Altar (HA) and the Wiener Neustadt Altar () (WNA) are the most famous.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The first focal point of any visitor is the distant High Altar, built over seven years from 1641 to 1647 as part of the first refurbishment of the cathedral in the baroque style. The altar was built by Tobias Pock at the direction of Vienna's Bishop Philipp Friedrich Graf Breuner with marble from Poland, Styria and Tyrol. The High Altar represents the stoning of the church's patron St. Stephen. It is framed by figures of patron saints from the surrounding areas – Saints Leopold, Florian, Sebastian and Rochus – and surmounted with a statue of St. Mary which draws the beholder's eye to a glimpse of heaven where Christ waits for Stephen (the first martyr) to ascend from below.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The Wiener Neustädter Altar at the head of the north nave was ordered in 1447 by Emperor Frederick III, whose tomb is located in the opposite direction. On the predella is his famous A.E.I.O.U. device. Frederick ordered it for the Cistercian Viktring Abbey (near Klagenfurt) where it remained until the abbey was closed in 1786 as part of Emperor Joseph II's anti-clerical reforms. It was then sent to the Cistercian monastery of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (founded by Emperor Frederick III) in the city of Wiener Neustadt, and finally sold in 1885 to St. Stephen's Cathedral when the Wiener Neustadt monastery was closed after merging with Heiligenkreuz Abbey.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The Wiener Neustädter Altar is composed of two triptychs, the upper being four times taller than the lower one. When the lower panels are opened, the Gothic grate of the former reliquary depot above the altar is revealed. On weekdays, the four panels are closed and display a drab painted scene involving 72 saints. On Sundays, the panels are opened showing gilded wooden figures depicting events in the life of the Virgin Mary. Restoration began on its 100th anniversary, in 1985 and took 20 years, 10 art restorers, 40,000 man-hours, and €1.3 million to complete, primarily because its large surface area of .


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The Maria Pötsch Icon (MP) is a Byzantine style icon of St. Mary with the child Jesus. The icon takes its name from the Hungarian Byzantine Catholic shrine of Máriapócs (pronounced "Poach"), from where it was transferred to Vienna. The picture shows the Virgin Mary pointing to the child (signifying "He is the way") and the child holding a three-stemmed rose (symbolizing the Holy Trinity) and wearing a prescient cross from his neck. The 50 x 70 cm icon was commissioned in 1676 from painter István Papp by László Csigri upon his release as a prisoner of war from the Turks who were invading Hungary at the time. As Csigri was unable to pay the 6-forint fee the icon was bought by Lőrinc Hurta who donated it to the church of Pócs.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: After claims of two miraculous incidents in 1696 with the mother in the picture allegedly shedding real tears, Emperor Leopold I ordered it brought to St. Stephen's Cathedral, where it would be safe from the Muslim armies that still controlled much of Hungary. Upon its arrival after a triumphal five-month journey in 1697, Empress Eleonora Magdalena commissioned the splendid "Rosa Mystica" oklad and framework (now one of several) for it, and the Emperor personally ordered the icon placed near the High Altar in the front of the church, where it stood prominently from 1697 until 1945. Since then, it has been in a different framework, above an altar under a medieval stone baldachin near the southwest corner of the nave – where the many burning candles indicate the extent of its veneration, especially by Hungarians. Since its arrival the picture has not been seen weeping again but other miracles and answered prayers have been attributed to it, including Prince Eugene of Savoy's victory over the Turks at Zenta few weeks after the icon's installation in the Stephansdom.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The residents of Pócs wanted their holy miracle-working painting returned, but the emperor sent them a copy instead. Since then, the copy has been reported to weep real tears and work miracles, so the village changed its name from merely "Pócs" to "Máriapócs" and has become an important pilgrimage site.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The stone pulpit is a masterwork of late Gothic sculpture. Long attributed to Anton Pilgram, today Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden is thought more likely to be the carver. So that the local language sermon could be better heard by the worshipers in the days before microphones and loudspeakers, the pulpit stands against a pillar out in the nave, instead of in the chancel at the front of the church.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The sides of the pulpit erupt like stylized petals from the stem supporting it. On those Gothic petals are relief portraits of the four original Doctors of the Church (St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great and St. Jerome), each of them in one of four different temperaments and in one of four different stages of life. The handrail of the stairway curving its way around the pillar from ground level to the pulpit has fantastic decorations of toads and lizards biting each other, symbolizing the fight of good against evil. At the top of the stairs, a stone puppy protects the preacher from intruders.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Beneath the stairs is one of the most beloved symbols of the cathedral: a stone self-portrait of the unknown sculptor gawking (German: "gucken") out of a window (German: "fenster") and thus famously known as the "Fenstergucker". The chisel in the subject's hand, and the stonemason's signature mark on the shield above the window led to the speculation that it could be a self-portrait of the sculptor.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Since its earliest days, the cathedral has been surrounded by cemeteries dating back to Roman times, and has sheltered the bodies of notables and commoners. It has always been an honour to be buried inside a church, close to the physical presence of the saints whose relics are preserved there. Those less honoured were buried near, but outside, the church.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Inside the cathedral are the tombs of Prince Eugene of Savoy (PES), commander of the Imperial forces during the War of the Spanish Succession in the "Chapel of The Cross" (northwest corner of the cathedral) and of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor (Fr3), under whose reign the Diocese of Vienna was canonically erected on 18 January 1469, in the Apostles' Choir (southeast corner of the cathedral).


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The construction of Emperor Frederick's tomb spanned over 45 years, starting 25 years before his death. The impressive sarcophagus is made of the unusually dense red marble-like stone found at the Adnet quarry. Carved by Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden, the tomb lid shows Emperor Frederick in his coronation regalia surrounded by the coats of arms of all of his dominions. The body of the tomb has 240 statues and is a glory of medieval sculptural art.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: When the charnel house and eight cemeteries abutting the cathedral's side and back walls closed due to an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1735, the bones within them were moved to the catacombs below the church. Burials directly in the catacombs occurred until 1783 when a new law forbade most burials within the city. The remains of over 11,000 persons are in the catacombs (which may be toured).


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The basement of the cathedral also hosts the Bishops, Provosts and Ducal crypts. The most recent interment in the Bishop's crypt completed in 1952 under the south choir was that of 98-year-old Cardinal Franz König in 2004. Provosts of the cathedral are buried in another chamber. Other members of the cathedral chapter are now buried in a special section at the Zentralfriedhof.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The Ducal Crypt located under the chancel holds 78 bronze containers with the bodies, hearts, or viscera of 72 members of the Habsburg dynasty. Before his death in 1365, Duke Rudolf IV ordered the crypt built for his remains in the new cathedral he commissioned. By 1754, the small rectangular chamber was overcrowded with 12 sarcophagi and 39 urns, so the area was expanded with an oval chamber added to the east end of the rectangular one. In 1956, the two chambers were renovated and their contents rearranged. The sarcophagi of Duke Rudolf IV and his wife were placed upon a pedestal and the 62 urns containing organs were moved from the two rows of shelves around the new chamber to cabinets in the original one.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: St Stephen's Cathedral has an old organ tradition. The first organ is mentioned in 1334. After the 1945 fire, Michael Kauffmann finished a large electric action pipe organ in 1960 with 125 voices and 4 manuals, financed with public donations. In 1991, the Austrian firm of Rieger rebuilt the choir organ. It is a mechanical organ, with 56 voices and 4 manuals.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Preservation and repair of the fabric of the medieval cathedral has been a continuous process at St. Stephen's Cathedral since its original construction in 1147.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The porous limestone is subject to weathering, but coating it with a sealer like silicone would simply trap moisture inside the stone and cause it to crack faster when the water freezes.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The permanent "Dombauhütte" (Construction Department) uses the latest scientific techniques (including laser cleaning of delicate features on stonework), and is investigating a process that would impregnate the cavities within the stone with something that would keep water from having a place to infiltrate.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The most visible current repair project is a multi-year renovation of the tall south tower, for which scaffolding has been installed. Fees from advertising on the netting around the scaffolding were defraying some of the costs of the work, but the concept of such advertising was controversial and has been discontinued. As of December 2008, the majority of the restoration on the south tower has been finished, and most scaffolding removed.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Systematic cleaning of the interior is gradually proceeding around the walls, and an outdoor relief of Christ in Gethsemane is being restored.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: A major project has been recently completed for which visitors and worshippers in St. Stephen's Cathedral had been waiting since 1147: better heating of the church during the winter. Previous systems, including fireplaces, just deposited soot and grease on the artwork, but the new system uses apparatus in many different locations so that there is little moving airflow to carry damaging particles. The church is now heated to around .


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Some of the architectural drawings date from the Middle Ages and are on paper 15 ft long and too fragile to handle. Laser measurements of the ancient cathedral have now been made so that a digital 3-dimensional virtual model of the cathedral now exists in its computers, and detailed modern plans can be output at will. When weathered stonework needs to be repaired or replaced, the computerized system can create life-sized models to guide the nine full-time stonemasons on staff in the on-site workshops against the north wall of the cathedral.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: On 29 March 2014, a 37-year-old man vandalized the interior of the cathedral by pushing the statue of St. Jude Thaddeus from its marble base.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: In January 2020, art historians discovered a mural under layers of dirt on the wall of what is now the cathedral's gift shop. It is believed to be the work of the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: The cathedral has hosted the weddings and funerals of many notable figures in Austrian and European history.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Notable figures buried in the crypt: (For a list of nobility buried in the crypt, see Ducal Crypt, Vienna)


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: As Vienna's landmark, the St. Stephen's Cathedral is featured in media including films, video games, and television shows. These include "The Third Man" and "Burnout 3". The cathedral is also depicted on the Austrian 10 cent euro coins and on the packaging of the Manner-Schnitten wafer treat. The Archdiocese of Vienna allowed the Manner company to use the cathedral as its logo in return for funding the wages of one stonemason doing repair work on the cathedral. In 2008, Sarah Brightman performed a concert promoting her latest album, "Symphony", which was recorded for a TV broadcast and a further DVD release in late September.


title: St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

text: Since 2008, the two sabres of the Balint Balassi Memorial Sword Award, founded by Pal Molnar, have been blessed during a Balassi Mass held a few days before the award ceremony. On 25 January 2013, in the presence of some three hundred Hungarians, Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo blessed the two swords during a Mass celebrated in the cathedral.


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: The Lone Gunmen is an American conspiracy fiction thriller drama television series created by Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz. The program originally aired from , to , on Fox. It is a spin-off of Carter's science fiction television series "The X-Files" and as such is part of "The X-Files" franchise, starring several of the show's characters. Despite positive reviews, its ratings dropped, and the show was canceled after thirteen episodes. The last episode ended on a cliffhanger which was partially resolved in a ninth season episode of "The X-Files" entitled "Jump the Shark".


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: The series revolves around the titular trio The Lone Gunmen: Melvin Frohike, John Fitzgerald Byers, and Richard Langly, private investigators who run a conspiracy theory magazine. They had often helped FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on "The X-Files".


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: Whereas "The X-Files" deals mainly with paranormal events and conspiracies to cover up extraterrestrial contact, "The Lone Gunmen" draws on secret activity of other kinds, such as government-sponsored terrorism, the development of a surveillance society, corporate crime, and escaped Nazis. The show has a light mood and elements of slapstick comedy. The trio are alternately aided and hindered by a mysterious thief named Yves Adele Harlow.


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: In the pilot episode, which aired March 4, 2001 (six months prior to the September 11 attacks), rogue members of the U.S. government remotely hijack an airliner departing Boston, planning to crash it into the World Trade Center, and let anti-American terrorist groups take credit, to gain support for a profitable new war following the Cold War. The heroes ultimately override the controls, foiling the plot.


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: The series was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and in New York City, New York, United States.


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: Fox Home Entertainment officially released the series (along with the episode of "The X-Files" titled "Jump the Shark" which finishes the cliffhanger that ended "The Lone Gunmen" as an additional episode) on a three-disc Region 1 DVD set in the United States on March 29, 2005. In the UK, it was released on January 31, 2006.


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: "The Lone Gunmen" received generally favorable reviews from critics. Julie Salamon of "The New York Times" gave it a favorable review, stating it is "well done: shrewdly filmed, edited and written". "Los Angeles Times" writer Howard Rosenberg gave the series a moderately positive review, saying a "bit of it is pretty funny". Aaron Beierle, writing for DVD Talk, awarded the show 4 stars out of 5. Beierle considered the stories "enjoyable, intelligent and well-written" and described the characters as "terrifically memorable". Eric Profancik, writing for DVD Verdict, stated the material is "pretty good" and described the plots as "strong and unusual stories".


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: About the show's reception, Vince Gilligan, the co-creator of the show, said: "I have such fondness for "The Lone Gunmen". I think it ended way too soon. I was crushed when "The Lone Gunmen" got canceled after its first season. "The Lone Gunmen" to this day is a show I’m still proud of, and I will always be proud of. It sort of points to an interesting phenomenon about television – you can’t really tell in advance whether a show is going to work for an audience. I would hold "The Lone Gunmen" up against anything that I have done before or since. For some reason, timing I guess, being the best thing to point to, it just didn’t click with an audience. If "The Lone Gunmen" had come on maybe a couple of years earlier, or a couple of years later, maybe it would have clicked." He also said: "my absolute belief is that we learn from failure, we don’t learn from success. And that show was in strict terms a failure. Certainly it only lasted 13 episodes and then was out. But I am still proud of that show and we had a lot of fun making it. But the 'failure' of that show–and I use semi finger quotes around the word failure because I enjoyed what we did with it—it doesn't really tell me much going forward. Because so much of television I really believe comes down to timing."


title: The Lone Gunmen (TV series)

text: The pilot episode earned a CSC Award by the Canadian Society of Cinematographers for Best Cinematography – TV Drama by Robert McLachlan.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: Huey, Dewey, and Louie are triplet cartoon characters created by storyboard artist (screenwriter) Carl Barks for The Walt Disney Company from an idea proposed by cartoonist Al Taliaferro and are the nephews of Donald Duck and the grand-nephews of Scrooge McDuck. Like their maternal uncles, the brothers are anthropomorphic white ducks with yellow-orange bills and feet. The boys are sometimes distinguished by the color of their shirts and baseball caps (with Huey wearing red, Dewey wearing blue, and Louie wearing green). They featured in many "Donald Duck" animated shorts and in the television show "DuckTales" and its reboot, but comics remain their primary medium.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: While the boys were originally created as mischief-makers to provoke Donald's famous easily-triggered temper, later appearances, beginning especially in the comic books stories by Carl Barks, showed them growing to be heroes in their own right and valuable assets to him and Uncle Scrooge on their adventures. All three of the triplets are members of the fictional scouting organization of the Junior Woodchucks.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: The trio are collectively the 11th most frequently appearing comic book characters in the world, and outside of the superhero genre, second only to their "Unca Donald". By publishing circulation and readership, they top the international charts, along with their famous uncle.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: Al Taliaferro, the artist for the "Silly Symphony" comic strip, proposed the idea for the film "Donald's Nephews", so that the studio would have duck counterparts to Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, the nephews of Mickey Mouse. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: The memo indicated, “we have decided to actually put a story crew to work on "Donald’s Nephews".” With the short already in production more than eight months before the boys' "Donald Duck" comic strip debut (on October 17, 1937), the animation studio's model sheet and storyline would have been Taliaferro and writer Ted Osborne's frame of reference for the comic strip. Because the strip was an adaptation of the animated shorts, it could utilize ideas from films still in production (DuckTales reversed this, being a TV adaptation of the comics). Similarly, Barks' Junior Woodchuck prototype, "Good Scouts", was released three months after identical scouting uniforms were introduced by Taliaferro and Bob Karp in the comic strip.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: The nephews being triplets who finished each others' sentences was developed by Carl Barks, the screenwriter of "Donald's Nephews", for whom "Happy Hooligan", a comic strip that featured such triplets, was a childhood influence. This characteristic appeared for the first time at the end of the film, as the boys parted with Donald. In the comic strip, it was first implemented a week after the film's release.


title: Huey, Dewey, and Louie

text: The nephews' names were devised by Disney gag man Dana Coty, who took them from Huey Long, Thomas Dewey, and Louis Schmitt, a Disney Studio animator. In translation, the nephews' names often follow the repetition (parachesis) of their names in English, for example, Tupu, Hupu and Lupu (Finnish) and Hyzio, Dyzio and Zyzio (Polish).