title: The Rising (album)

text: Springsteen was compelled to record the album when, in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, a stranger in an adjacent vehicle rolled down his window and said: "We need you now". A few of the songs were written before the attacks. The title track tells the story of a firefighter going up the World Trade Center as survivors flee, and evokes the image of peoples' spirits rising up like angels with a "dream of life". "My City of Ruins" was originally performed in, and written about, Asbury Park. After Springsteen performed it on a post-September 11 "" telethon, the song achieved a particular resonance. "Further On (Up the Road)" was performed live in Madison Square Garden at the end of the Springsteen-E Street Reunion Tour, and was professionally recorded, although it was not included in the HBO, DVD, or CD versions of "". "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" was originally written in the 1990s and played during a soundcheck on the Reunion Tour. Springsteen has commented that "Nothing Man" was originally completed in 1994, but re-recorded for this album. "Worlds Apart," the most experimental song on the album, features a heavy Middle Eastern influence along with Qawwali singers in the introduction. "The Fuse," another experimental track, features a subtle hip hop beat and vocal looping. A re-recorded version of the song, with an orchestral backing, features in the Spike Lee-directed film "25th Hour". "Mary's Place" is directly inspired by Sam Cooke's "Meet Me at Mary's Place"; The gospel-like "My City of Ruins" is organized around the melody line of Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready".


title: The Rising (album)

text: Following the biggest pre-release promotion of Springsteen's career and a tour, "The Rising" became Springsteen's sixth No. 1 album on the US "Billboard" 200, and topped the charts in six other countries, including the UK.


title: The Rising (album)

text: "The Rising" received widespread acclaim from critics. Metacritic gave it an aggregate score of 82 / 100, based on 21 reviews. In "Rolling Stone", Kurt Loder lauded it as a triumphant and cohesive album that possesses a "bold thematic concentration and penetrating emotional focus". Thom Jurek of "AllMusic" called it "one of the very best examples... of how popular art can evoke a time period and all of its confusing and often contradictory notions, feelings and impulses." David Browne, writing in "Entertainment Weekly", felt that Springsteen's message had a renewed relevance, while his occasionally overburdened lyrics were saved by lively and vivid music. Keith Phipps of "The A.V. Club" wrote that the musically confident album showcased Springsteen's strength as an empathic songwriter. "Uncut" magazine called "The Rising" "a brave and beautiful album of humanity, hurt and hope from the songwriter best qualified to speak to and for his country ... A towering achievement."


title: The Rising (album)

text: In a mixed review for "The Guardian", Alexis Petridis found the music to be awkwardly old-fashioned, with the best songs featuring strong melodies, as he judged the lyrics to be simplistic and unambiguous. Keith Harris of "The Village Voice" criticised it as being vague and unworldly, and lacking in real-life characters "responding in their idiosyncratic ways." Robert Christgau cited "Paradise", "Nothing Man", "The Rising", and "My City of Ruins" as "choice cuts", but concluded that the album "isn't worth your time or money". He felt that a marked patriotism "dragged down" the album with "overburdened emotions and conceptual commonplaces".


title: The Rising (album)

text: "The Rising" was voted the sixth-best album of 2002 in the Pazz & Jop. Christgau, the poll's creator and supervisor, ranked the title track as the year's tenth best single. "Kludge" included it on their best albums of 2002. In 2011, "Rolling Stone" named it the fifteenth best album of the 2000s. The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". It won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2003; although nominated for the Album of the Year award as well, it was beaten by Norah Jones's debut album "Come Away with Me". The title song "The Rising" was also a Grammy recipient.


title: The Rising (album)

text: Although "The Rising" was a response to 9/11, many see it as a more universal anthem of resilience and hope. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Dan DeLuca of the "Philadelphia Inquirer" said: "The songs make contextual sense in the aftermath of 9/11, but the specific details that give them power are allusive. 'Lonesome Day,' 'You're Missing,' and 'My City of Ruins' are about the hollowing devastation of that day, but the language is universal, so the sentiments are by no means frozen in time." The song "My City of Ruins" has been used in response to tragedies other than 9/11, such as the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. In 2006, while on tour supporting his "" album, Springsteen performed the song at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The song received an emotional response from the crowd given its refrain of "Come on rise up!" "The Rising", given its message of hope in the face of adversity. The song "The Rising" also featured prominently at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.


title: The Rising (album)

text: This album was published as a double LP. Track 1 - 4, 5 - 8, 9 - 11, 12 - 15 were recorded respectively on the four sides.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: Pyre is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Supergiant Games. It was released in July 2017 for Microsoft Windows, Linux and PlayStation 4, and in August 2017 for macOS. Elements from sports games were incorporated to the title's gameplay. It was the third game developed by Supergiant following "Transistor" (2014) and it received generally positive reviews upon release.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: The game takes place in a high fantasy setting. The story is told through on-screen narrative passages that include a hyperlink-type system used by the player-character to explore the story further. In addition to guiding the exiles during "Rites" which resemble a sports game, the Reader must determine how to help support or improve the party, by performing activities such as scavenging for supplies, learning more of the world's lore, or mentoring the exiles to improve their abilities.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: Through the land, the party encounters other groups of exiles, which starts the Rites, the game's combat system which was described by Marty Silva of "IGN" as a mix of "Defense of the Ancients", "Rocket League", and Supergiant's previous game, "Transistor". Rites takes place on a field with two columns of flame, or pyres, at opposite ends and the three exiles facing off against three opponents on a top-down perspective. Each team attempts to destroy the opposing pyre by launching a single glowing orb at it, which steadily whittles away at its health. The player only controls one character at a time by passing the orb among the three. A character traveling with the orb is vulnerable to being temporarily banished from the Rites if an enemy's aura touches them, which would drop the orb at their feet. The different characters have various skills that aid them in the Rites, such as dashes or long-range projectiles. Each of the player's characters also have different passive abilities, such as one that can move quickly about the arena but does little damage to the opponent's pyre, while another is slow and bulky, but can do the greatest damage.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: The game includes a local multiplayer mode which allows two players controlling separate teams to compete. Supergiant was unsure if they would be able to include online multiplayer in time for the game's launch and opted to keep this mode to local as well as player-versus-computer matches for release.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: The concept of "Pyre" came out from prototyping several game ideas by Supergiant Games, according to creative director Greg Kasavin, eventually coming to the theme of "what happens when you face defeat, and have to come back from it the next day, look your friends in the face, look yourself in the mirror, and deal with the consequences of the decisions you made". In trying to devise gameplay around the nature of failure, they came to see the use of sports as a metaphor for combat, featuring non-violent gameplay but consequences of losing. To connect these battles, the developers came onto the use of a narrative idea to have the player guide their party across an overworld, making decisions on where to go based on available resources and timing. They worked through prototyping to adjust how this part of the game would affect the Rites, adjusting the interaction of these two gameplay systems to get an appropriate balance. Kasavin stated they were worried that as some aspects of the game may be confusing, players that were not invested in the game's narrative would not come to appreciate some of these systems, and that if they were providing enough variation in the game to retain the player's interest over time.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: The game was announced in April 2016 and first demonstrated in playable form at the 2016 Penny Arcade Expo shortly afterwards. Kasavin and his team used this PAX testing to help evaluate how they had set up some of these gameplay systems. The game was released on July 25, 2017.


title: Pyre (video game)

text: IGN praised the integration of narrative choices and gameplay in Pyre, writing that "Branching storylines have become common in games, but it’s rare that one integrates momentous, gut-wrenching choices with the other elements of its gameplay as deftly as Pyre does." Ars Technica liked the visuals of the game, particularly the hand drawn character portraits, calling them "personality-loaded" and additionally praising the animation of the game. Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer criticized the Rite gameplay, feeling that the teammates did not help the player much, saying that "the rest of your team stands still while you control them".


title: Pyre (video game)

text: "Eurogamer" ranked the game 41st on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017", and EGMNow ranked it 17th in their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017, while "Polygon" ranked it 22nd on their list of the 50 best games of 2017. The game was nominated for "Best PC Game", "Best RPG", "Best Art Direction", "Best Story", and "Most Innovative" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards; it was also nominated for "Best Shopkeeper" (Falcon Ron) and "Best Cast of Characters" in Giant Bomb's 2017 Game of the Year Awards. It won the award for "Best Indie" in "Game Informer"s 2017 RPG of the Year Awards.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Helen Bates "Penny" Chenery (January 27, 1922 – September 16, 2017) (married names: Penny Tweedy until 1974 and later Penny Ringquist until 1980) was an American sportswoman who bred and owned Secretariat, the 1973 winner of the Triple Crown. The youngest of three children, she graduated from The Madeira School in 1939 and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Smith College, then studied at the Columbia Business School, where she met her future husband, John Tweedy, Sr., a Columbia Law School graduate. In March 2011, Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, awarded Chenery an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Penny Chenery was born in 1922 in New Rochelle, New York, and was raised in Pelham Manor, New York. The youngest of three children, she was named Helen Bates Chenery after her mother. Her father, Christopher Chenery, a Virginian, was driven by early poverty to become a millionaire, a goal he accomplished by 1928 by founding utility companies, first Federal Water Service, and then Southern Natural Gas Company. In 1936, he founded Meadow Stable, a thoroughbred racing and horse breeding operation at The Meadow in Caroline County, Virginia.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Chenery had a love of horses from a young age, and learned to ride at age five. Believing her appreciation for horses was inherited from her father, Chenery stated, "My father really loved horses. I think a parent often communicates his love to a child." She shared many of her father's interests and goals, including business. She attended the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, a prestigious girls' boarding school with an excellent equestrian program. Chenery was captain of the Equestrian Team in her senior year at Madeira. Following her graduation, she attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, majoring in American Studies.


title: Penny Chenery

text: After graduating in 1943, Chenery worked as an assistant for Gibbs and Cox, a company that designed war craft for the Normandy invasion; subsequent to the invasion, she quit her job to join the Red Cross, at the urging of her brother. In 1945 she traveled to France as a Doughnut Girl to help war-weary soldiers transition to ships home at the end of World War II.


title: Penny Chenery

text: When Chenery returned from Europe in 1946, her father was concerned that she had no employable skills, so he offered to pay her the equivalent of the highest job offer she could get if she would go to graduate school instead. Chenery decided to attend Columbia Business School where she was one of 20 women in a class of 800 men. At Columbia, she met John (Jack) Bayard Tweedy. At her parents' suggestion, she dropped out of school a few months short of her MBA to marry Jack. They moved to Denver, Colorado, where he practiced oil and gas law. They had four children: Sarah, Kate, Christopher, and John Jr.. The Tweedys spent much of their time in Vail, Colorado. because Jack Tweedy was one of the former members of the 10th Mountain Division in World War II who founded Vail Ski Resort in the early 1960s. He was later Chairman of the Board of Vail Associates.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Chenery's life changed when her mother died suddenly and her father became ill in late 1967. He entered New Rochelle Hospital in April 1968 and remained there until his death in January 1973. Due to Mr. Chenery's advancing senility, Meadow Stable, the Chenery thoroughbred breeding and racing operation in Virginia, had been neglected in the mid-1960s and was no longer profitable. Chenery's siblings wanted to sell the operation since their father could no longer manage it. Chenery, however, hoped to fulfill her father's dream of winning the Kentucky Derby. The board of Meadow Stud elected her president and in 1968, she began the long process of cutting costs, repairing facilities and returning the stable to profitability. In 1969, she fired long-time trainer Casey Hayes. On the advice of longtime family friend and business associate Bull Hancock of Claiborne Farm, Chenery hired Roger Laurin to train and manage the Meadow Stable horses. With Laurin's help, the stable began to produce a few stakes winning horses in 1969 and 1970. However, in May 1971, Roger Laurin left the Meadow to train for the much vaunted Phipps family stables, so Chenery turned to his father, Lucien Laurin, as a temporary substitute. However, Laurin Sr. decided to stay on when the Meadow's homebred Riva Ridge brought in over $500,000 in purses in the fall of 1971. In May, 1972 Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby and in June Belmont Stakes, thus fulfilling Mr. Chenery's lifelong dream of producing a great horse. That same year, another Meadow colt, the two-year-old Secretariat had such a dominant fall season that he became American Horse of the Year which was a rare honor for a two-year-old. The following year, Secretariat captured the imagination of racing fans worldwide when he became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, setting records that still stand in all three races and winning the Belmont by an unheard-of 31 lengths. Both horses were inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. When Chenery's father died in January 1973, his estate owed such a large tax bill that it could only be satisfied by syndicating the breeding rights to Secretariat and Riva Ridge to a consortium of breeders. Chenery made headlines by successfully syndicating Secretariat for $6.08 million and Riva Ridge for $5 million. Eventually the Meadow in Doswell, Virginia, also was sold to settle the estate. Chenery moved many of the remaining horses to Long Island, N.Y. and continued racing.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Although Penny Chenery gets the credit for managing Secretariat's racing career, Christopher Chenery was the genius behind the matching of Somethingroyal and Bold Ruler to produce Secretariat. In 1965 he set up the deal by which two Meadow mares would be bred annually to top sire Bold Ruler, owned by Ogden Phipps. Each year the owners would flip for the right to choose among the foals. The Meadow sent their best mare Somethingroyal to Bold Ruler several times and had already produced a stakes winner, Syrian Sea, a full sister to Secretariat. In 1969, Penny Chenery who by then managed Meadow Stable, lost the coin toss. This gave her the right to first choice of the foals in 1970, but that year there was only one foal: Secretariat.


title: Penny Chenery

text: After Secretariat, Chenery continued to breed and race horses under the Meadow silks with her greatest success coming in Saratoga Dew, who became the first New York-bred horse ever to win an Eclipse Award when the filly was voted the 1992 American Champion Three-Year-Old Filly.


title: Penny Chenery

text: In 1983, Chenery, Martha F. Gerry, and Allaire du Pont became the first women to be admitted as members of The Jockey Club. From 1976 to 1984, Chenery served as president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. Also in 1976, she became a member of the Executive Committee of the American Horse Council, the horse industry trade association in Washington, DC. She also served as a member of the judges' panel of the Jockey Club, which bestows the Dogwood Dominion Award. In addition, she helped found the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, an organization dedicated to saving Thoroughbred horses no longer able to compete on the racetrack from possible neglect, abuse and slaughter.


title: Penny Chenery

text: In 2003, the Arlington Park track established the annual "Penny Chenery Distinguished Woman in Racing Award". In 2006, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association honored her with the Eclipse Award of Merit for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in thoroughbred racing. In 2009, she was awarded the Smith College Medal for extraordinary professional achievement and outstanding service to her community.


title: Penny Chenery

text: In 2018, The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame named Ms. Chenery a Pillar of the Turf, the highest honor given to owners and breeders of Thoroughbreds.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Chenery moved from Colorado to Long Island, New York, in 1972. She and John Tweedy divorced in 1974. In 1976, she married Lennart Ringquist, an executive in the motion pictures industry, divorcing in 1980. She moved to Lexington, Kentucky in the early 1990s and in 2005 moved to Boulder, Colorado to spend her final years near her children.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Penny Chenery died on September 16, 2017, at her home in Boulder, Colorado from complications from a stroke. She was 95 years old.


title: Penny Chenery

text: Chenery was portrayed by actress Diane Lane in the 2010 motion picture "Secretariat", released on October 8, 2010. Chenery herself appeared in a cameo role in the film as a spectator at the Belmont Stakes. She was the subject of several books and articles as well as the 2013 documentary Penny and Red (Landlocked Films) made by filmmaker John Tweedy.


title: Setting (narrative)

text: A setting (or backdrop) is the time and geographic location within a narrative, either non-fiction or fiction. It is a literary element. The setting initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. The setting can be referred to as story world or "milieu" to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.


title: Setting (narrative)

text: Setting may refer to the social milieu in which the events of a novel occur. The elements of the story setting include the passage of time, which may be static in some stories or dynamic in others with, for example, changing seasons.


title: Setting (narrative)

text: A setting can take three basic forms. One is the natural world, or in an outside place. In this setting, the natural landscapes of the world play an important part in a narrative, along with living creatures and different times of weather conditions and seasons. The second form exists as the cultural and historical background in which the narrative resides. Past events that have impacted the cultural background of characters or locations are significant in this way. The third form of a setting is a public or private place that has been created/maintained and/or resided in by people. Examples of this include a house, a park, a street, a school, etc.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (full name: ), , often known as (al-)Razi or by his Latin name Rhazes, also rendered Rhasis, was a Persian physician, philosopher and alchemist who lived during the Islamic Golden Age. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of medicine, and also wrote on logic, astronomy and grammar. He is also known for his criticism of religion, especially with regard to the concepts of prophethood and revelation.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: A comprehensive thinker, al-Razi made fundamental and enduring contributions to various fields, which he recorded in over 200 manuscripts, and is particularly remembered for numerous advances in medicine through his observations and discoveries. An early proponent of experimental medicine, he became a successful doctor, and served as chief physician of Baghdad and Ray hospitals. As a teacher of medicine, he attracted students of all backgrounds and interests and was said to be compassionate and devoted to the service of his patients, whether rich or poor. He was the first to clinically distinguish between smallpox and measles, and suggest sound treatment for the former.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Through translation, his medical works and ideas became known among medieval European practitioners and profoundly influenced medical education in the Latin West. Some volumes of his work "Al-Mansuri", namely "On Surgery" and "A General Book on Therapy", became part of the medical curriculum in Western universities. Edward Granville Browne considers him as "probably the greatest and most original of all the Muslim physicians, and one of the most prolific as an author". Additionally, he has been described as the father of pediatrics, and a pioneer of obstetrics and ophthalmology. Notably, he became the first physician to recognize the reaction of the eye's pupil to light.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi was born in the city of Ray (modern Rey, also the origin of his name "al-Razi"), into a family of Persian stock and was a native speaker of Persian language. Ray was situated on the Great Silk Road that for centuries facilitated trade and cultural exchanges between East and West. It is located on the southern slopes of the Alborz mountain range situated near Tehran, Iran.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: In his youth, al-Razi moved to Baghdad where he studied and practiced at the local bimaristan (hospital). Later, he was invited back to Rey by Mansur ibn Ishaq, then the governor of Ray, and became a bimaristan's head. He dedicated two books on medicine to Mansur ibn Ishaq, "The Spiritual Physic" and "Al-Mansūrī on Medicine". Because of his newly acquired popularity as physician, al-Razi was invited to Baghdad where he assumed the responsibilities of a director in a new hospital named after its founder al-Muʿtaḍid (d. 902 CE). Under the reign of Al-Mutadid's son, Al-Muktafi (r. 902-908) al-Razi was commissioned to build a new hospital, which should be the largest of the Abbasid Caliphate. To pick the future hospital's location, al-Razi adopted what is nowadays known as an evidence-based approach suggesting having fresh meat hung in various places throughout the city and to build the hospital where meat took longest to rot.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: He spent the last years of his life in his native Rey suffering from glaucoma. His eye affliction started with cataracts and ended in total blindness. The cause of his blindness is uncertain. One account mentioned by Ibn Juljul attributed the cause to a blow to his head by his patron, Mansur ibn Ishaq, for failing to provide proof for his alchemy theories; while Abulfaraj and Casiri claimed that the cause was a diet of beans only. Allegedly, he was approached by a physician offering an ointment to cure his blindness. Al-Razi then asked him how many layers does the eye contain and when he was unable to receive an answer, he declined the treatment stating "my eyes will not be treated by one who does not know the basics of its anatomy".


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: The lectures of al-Razi attracted many students. As Ibn al-Nadim relates in "Fihrist", al-Razi was considered a "shaikh", an honorary title given to one entitled to teach and surrounded by several circles of students. When someone raised a question, it was passed on to students of the 'first circle'; if they did not know the answer, it was passed on to those of the 'second circle', and so on. When all students would fail to answer, al-Razi himself would consider the query. Al-Razi was a generous person by nature, with a considerate attitude towards his patients. He was charitable to the poor, treated them without payment in any form, and wrote for them a treatise "Man La Yaḥḍuruhu al-Ṭabīb", or "Who Has No Physician to Attend Him", with medical advice. One former pupil from Tabaristan came to look after him, but as al-Biruni wrote, al-Razi rewarded him for his intentions and sent him back home, proclaiming that his final days were approaching. According to Biruni, al-Razi died in Rey in 925 sixty years of age. Biruni, who considered al-Razi his mentor, among the first penned a short biography of al-Razi including a bibliography of his numerous works.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Ibn al-Nadim recorded an account by al-Razi of a Chinese student who copied down all of Galen's works in Chinese as al-Razi read them to him out loud after the student learned fluent Arabic in 5 months and attended al-Razi's lectures.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: After his death, his fame spread beyond the Middle East to Medieval Europe, and lived on. In an undated catalog of the library at Peterborough Abbey, most likely from the 14th century, al-Razi is listed as a part author of ten books on medicine.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi was one of the world's first great medical experts. He is considered the father of psychology and psychotherapy.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Smallpox appears when blood "boils" and is infected, resulting in vapours being expelled. Thus juvenile blood (which looks like wet extracts appearing on the skin) is being transformed into richer blood, having the color of mature wine. At this stage, smallpox shows up essentially as "bubbles found in wine" (as blisters)... this disease can also occur at other times (meaning: not only during childhood). The best thing to do during this first stage is to keep away from it, otherwise this disease might turn into an epidemic.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: This diagnosis is acknowledged by the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1911), which states: "The most trustworthy statements as to the early existence of the disease are found in an account by the 9th-century Persian physician Rhazes, by whom its symptoms were clearly described, its pathology explained by a humoral or fermentation theory, and directions given for its treatment."


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's book "al-Judari wa al-Hasbah" ("On Smallpox and Measles") was the first book describing smallpox and measles as distinct diseases. It was translated more than a dozen times into Latin and other European languages. Its lack of dogmatism and its Hippocratic reliance on clinical observation show al-Razi's medical methods. For example, he wrote:The eruption of smallpox is preceded by a continued fever, pain in the back, itching in the nose and nightmares during sleep. These are the more acute symptoms of its approach together with a noticeable pain in the back accompanied by fever and an itching felt by the patient all over his body. A swelling of the face appears, which comes and goes, and one notices an overall inflammatory color noticeable as a strong redness on both cheeks and around both eyes. One experiences a heaviness of the whole body and great restlessness, which expresses itself as a lot of stretching and yawning. There is a pain in the throat and chest and one finds it difficult to breathe and cough. Additional symptoms are: dryness of breath, thick spittle, hoarseness of the voice, pain and heaviness of the head, restlessness, nausea and anxiety. (Note the difference: restlessness, nausea and anxiety occur more frequently with "measles" than with smallpox. At the other hand, pain in the back is more apparent with smallpox than with measles). Altogether one experiences heat over the whole body, one has an inflamed colon and one shows an overall shining redness, with a very pronounced redness of the gums. (Rhazes, Encyclopaedia of Medicine)


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi compared the outcome of patients with meningitis treated with blood-letting with the outcome of those treated without it to see if blood-letting could help.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi contributed in many ways to the early practice of pharmacy by compiling texts, in which he introduces the use of "mercurial ointments" and his development of apparatus such as mortars, flasks, spatulas and phials, which were used in pharmacies until the early twentieth century.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: On a professional level, al-Razi introduced many practical, progressive, medical and psychological ideas. He attacked charlatans and fake doctors who roamed the cities and countryside selling their nostrums and "cures". At the same time, he warned that even highly educated doctors did not have the answers to all medical problems and could not cure all sicknesses or heal every disease, which was humanly speaking impossible. To become more useful in their services and truer to their calling, al-Razi advised practitioners to keep up with advanced knowledge by continually studying medical books and exposing themselves to new information. He made a distinction between curable and incurable diseases. Pertaining to the latter, he commented that in the case of advanced cases of cancer and leprosy the physician should not be blamed when he could not cure them. To add a humorous note, al-Razi felt great pity for physicians who took care for the well being of princes, nobility, and women, because they did not obey the doctor's orders to restrict their diet or get medical treatment, thus making it most difficult being their physician.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: This 23-volume set medical textbooks contains the foundation of gynaecology, obstetrics and ophthalmic surgery


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: This monumental medical encyclopedia in nine volumes—known in Europe also as "The Large Comprehensive" or "Continens Liber" ("جامع الكبير") ——contains considerations and criticism on the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, and expresses innovative views on many subjects. Because of this book alone, many scholars consider al-Razi the greatest medical doctor of the Middle Ages.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: The "al-Hawi" is not a formal medical encyclopedia, but a posthumous compilation of al-Razi's working notebooks, which included knowledge gathered from other books as well as original observations on diseases and therapies, based on his own clinical experience. It is significant since it contains a celebrated monograph on smallpox, the earliest one known. It was translated into Latin in 1279 by Faraj ben Salim, a physician of Sicilian-Jewish origin employed by Charles of Anjou, and after which it had a considerable influence in Europe.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: The "al-Hawi" also criticized the views of Galen, after al-Razi had observed many clinical cases which did not follow Galen's descriptions of fevers. For example, he stated that Galen's descriptions of urinary ailments were inaccurate as he had only seen three cases, while al-Razi had studied hundreds of such cases in hospitals of Baghdad and Rey.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi was possibly the first Persian doctor to deliberately write a home medical manual (remedial) directed at the general public. He dedicated it to the poor, the traveller, and the ordinary citizen who could consult it for treatment of common ailments when a doctor was not available. This book is of special interest to the history of pharmacy since similar books were very popular until the 20th century. Al-Razi described in its 36 chapters, diets and drug components that can be found in either an apothecary, a market place, in well-equipped kitchens, or and in military camps. Thus, every intelligent person could follow its instructions and prepare the proper recipes with good results.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Some of the illnesses treated were headaches, colds, coughing, melancholy and diseases of the eye, ear, and stomach. For example, he prescribed for a feverish headache: " 2 parts of "duhn" (oily extract) of rose, to be mixed with 1 part of vinegar, in which a piece of linen cloth is dipped and compressed on the forehead". He recommended as a laxative, " 7 drams of dried violet flowers with 20 pears, macerated and well mixed, then strained. Add to this filtrate, 20 drams of sugar for a drink. In cases of melancholy, he invariably recommended prescriptions, which included either poppies or its juice (opium), "Cuscuta epithymum" (clover dodder) or both. For an eye-remedy, he advised myrrh, saffron, and frankincense, 2 drams each, to be mixed with 1 dram of yellow arsenic formed into tablets. Each tablet was to be dissolved in a sufficient quantity of coriander water and used as eye drops.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi dedicated this work to his patron Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Manṣūr, the Samanid governor of Ray. A Latin translation of it was edited in the 16th century by the Dutch anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: In his book "Doubts about Galen", al-Razi rejects several claims made by the Greek physician, as far as the alleged superiority of the Greek language and many of his cosmological and medical views. He links medicine with philosophy, and states that sound practice demands independent thinking. He reports that Galen's descriptions do not agree with his own clinical observations regarding the run of a fever. And in some cases he finds that his clinical experience exceeds Galen's.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: He criticized Galen's theory that the body possessed four separate "humors" (liquid substances), whose balance are the key to health and a natural body-temperature. A sure way to upset such a system was to insert a liquid with a different temperature into the body resulting in an increase or decrease of bodily heat, which resembled the temperature of that particular fluid. Al-Razi noted that a warm drink would heat up the body to a degree much higher than its own natural temperature. Thus the drink would trigger a response from the body, rather than transferring only its own warmth or coldness to it. ("Cf." I. E. Goodman)


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: This line of criticism essentially had the potential to completely refute Galen's theory of humors, as well as Aristotle's theory of the four elements, on which it was grounded. Al-Razi's own alchemical experiments suggested other qualities of matter, such as "oiliness" and "sulphurousness", or inflammability and salinity, which were not readily explained by the traditional fire, water, earth, and air division of elements.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's challenge to the current fundamentals of medical theory was quite controversial. Many accused him of ignorance and arrogance, even though he repeatedly expressed his praise and gratitude to Galen for his contributions and labours, saying:


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: I prayed to God to direct and lead me to the truth in writing this book. It grieves me to oppose and criticize the man Galen from whose sea of knowledge I have drawn much. Indeed, he is the Master and I am the disciple. Although this reverence and appreciation will and should not prevent me from doubting, as I did, what is erroneous in his theories. I imagine and feel deeply in my heart that Galen has chosen me to undertake this task, and if he were alive, he would have congratulated me on what I am doing. I say this because Galen's aim was to seek and find the truth and bring light out of darkness. I wish indeed he were alive to read what I have published.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's "The Diseases of Children" was the first monograph to deal with paediatrics as an independent field of medicine.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's interest in alchemy and his strong belief in the possibility of transmutation of lesser metals to silver and gold was attested half a century after his death by Ibn an-Nadim's book, "The Philosopher's Stone" ("Lapis Philosophorum" in Latin). Nadim attributed a series of twelve books to al-Razi, plus an additional seven, including his refutation to al-Kindi's denial of the validity of alchemy. Al-Kindi (801–873 CE) had been appointed by the Abbasid Caliph Ma'mun founder of Baghdad, to 'the House of Wisdom' in that city, he was a philosopher and an opponent of alchemy. Al-Razi's two best-known alchemical texts, which largely superseded his earlier ones: "al-Asrar" (الاسرار "The Secrets"), and "Sirr al-Asrar" (سر الاسرار "The Secret of Secrets"), which incorporates much of the previous work.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Apparently al-Razi's contemporaries believed that he had obtained the secret of turning iron and copper into gold. Biographer Khosro Moetazed reports in "Mohammad Zakaria Razi" that a certain General Simjur confronted al-Razi in public, and asked whether that was the underlying reason for his willingness to treat patients without a fee. "It appeared to those present that al-Razi was reluctant to answer; he looked sideways at the general and replied":I understand alchemy and I have been working on the characteristic properties of metals for an extended time. However, it still has not turned out to be evident to me, how one can transmute gold from copper. Despite the research from the ancient scientists done over the past centuries, there has been no answer. I very much doubt if it is possible...


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's works present the first systematic classification of carefully observed and verified facts regarding chemical substances, reactions and apparatus, described in a language almost entirely free from mysticism and ambiguity.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's metaphysical doctrine derives from the theory of the "five eternals", according to which the world is produced out of an interaction between God and four other eternal principles (soul, matter, time, and place). He accepted a pre-socratic type of atomism of the bodies, and for that he differed from both the falasifa and the mutakallimun. While he was influenced by Plato and the medical writers, mainly Galen, he rejected taqlid and thus expressed criticism about some of their views. This is evident from the title of one of his works, "Doubts About Galen".


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: A number of contradictory works and statements about religion have been ascribed to al-Razi. Many sources claim that al-Razi viewed prophecy and revealed religion as unnecessary and delusional, claiming that all humans have the ability to access and discover truth (including the existence of God) through God-given reason. According to these sources, his skepticism of prophecy and view that no one group or religion has privileged access to the truth is driven by his view that all people have an equal basic capacity for rationality and discovery of truth, and that apparent differences in this capacity are simply a feature of interest, opportunity, and effort. Because of his supposed rejection of prophecy and acceptance of reason as the primary method for accessing the truth, al-Razi came to be admired as a freethinker by some.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: According to al-Biruni's "Bibliography of al-Razi" ("Risāla fī Fihrist Kutub al-Rāzī"), al-Razi wrote two "heretical books": ""Fī al-Nubuwwāt" ("On Prophecies") and ""Fī Ḥiyal al-Mutanabbīn" ("On the Tricks of False Prophets"). According to Biruni, the first "was claimed to be against religions" and the second "was claimed as attacking the necessity of the prophets." However, Biruni also listed some other works of al-Razi on religion, including "Fi Wujub Da‘wat al-Nabi ‘Ala Man Nakara bi al-Nubuwwat" ("Obligation to Propagate the Teachings of the Prophet Against Those who Denied Prophecies") and "Fi anna li al-Insan Khaliqan Mutqinan Hakiman" ("That Man has a Wise and Perfect Creator"), listed under his works on the "divine sciences". None of his works on religion are now extant in full.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Sarah Stroumsa has argued that al-Razi was a freethinker who rejected all revealed religions. However, Peter Adamson holds that al-Razi did not reject revealed religion and was rather a believer in Islam, on the basis of more recent evidence. He states:It is worth noting that Stroumsa’s work predates Rashed’s discovery of this evidence in Fakhr al-Dīn, so that she did not have the benefit of being able to consider how this new information could be reconciled with the Proofs. That is the goal I will set for myself in this chapter. I should lay my cards on the table and say that I am persuaded by Rashed’s account, and do not believe that Razi was staging a general attack on prophecy or religion as Abū Ḥātim would have us think.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: The views and quotes that are often ascribed to al-Razi where he appears to be critical of religion are found in a book written by Abu Hatim al-Razi, called "Aʿlām al-nubuwwa" (Signs of Prophecy), which documents a debate between Abu Hatim and al-Razi. Abu Hatim was an Isma'ili missionary who debated al-Razi, but whether he has faithfully recorded the views of al-Razi is disputed. Some historians claim that Abu Hatim accurately represented al-Razi's scepticism of revealed religion while others argue that Abu Hatim's work should be treated with scepticism given that he is a hostile source of al-Razi's beliefs and might have portrayed him as a heretic to discount his critique of the Ismāʿīlīs.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: According to Abdul Latif al-'Abd, Islamic philosophy professor at Cairo University, Abu Hatim and his student, Ḥamīd al-dīn Karmānī (d. after 411AH/1020CE), were Isma'ili extremists who often misrepresented the views of al-Razi in their works. This view is also corroborated by early historians like al-Shahrastani who noted "that such accusations should be doubted since they were made by Ismāʿīlīs, who had been severely attacked by Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā Rāzī". Al-'Abd points out that the views allegedly expressed by al-Razi contradict what is found in al-Razi's own works, like the "Spiritual Medicine" ("Fī al-ṭibb al-rūḥānī"). Peter Adamson concurs that Abu Hatim may have "deliberately misdescribed" al-Razi's position as a rejection of Islam and revealed religions. Instead, al-Razi was only arguing against the use of miracles to prove Muhammad's prophecy, anthropomorphism, and the uncritical acceptance of "taqlīd" vs "naẓar". Adamson points out to a work by Fakhr al-din al-Razi where al-Razi is quoted as citing the Quran and the prophets to support his views.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: In contrast, earlier historians such as Paul Kraus and Sarah Stroumsa accepted that the extracts found in Abu Hatim's book were either said by al-Razi during a debate or were quoted from a now lost work. According to the debate with Abu Hatim, al-Razi denied the validity of prophecy or other authority figures, and rejected prophetic miracles. He also directed a scathing critique on revealed religions and the miraculous quality of the Quran. They suggest that this lost work is either his famous "al-ʿIlm al-Ilāhī" or another shorter independent work called "Makharīq al-Anbiyāʾ" ("The Prophets' Fraudulent Tricks"). Abu Hatim, however, did not explicitly mention al-Razi by name in his book, but referred to his interlocutor simply as the "mulḥid" (lit. "heretic").


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Al-Razi's religious and philosophical views were later criticized by Abu Rayhan Biruni and Avicenna in the early 11th century. Biruni in particular wrote a short treatise ("risala") dealing with al-Razi, criticizing him for his sympathy with Manichaeism, his Hermetical writings, his religious and philosophical views, for refusing to mathematize physics, and his active opposition to mathematics. Avicenna, who was himself a physician and philosopher, also criticized al-Razi. During a debate with Biruni, Avicenna stated:


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: Nasr-i-Khosraw posthumously accused him of having plagiarized Iranshahri, whom Khosraw considered the master of al-Razi.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: The modern-day Razi Institute in Karaj and Razi University in Kermanshah were named after him. A "Razi Day" ("Pharmacy Day") is commemorated in Iran every 27 August.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: In June 2009, Iran donated a "Scholars Pavilion" or Chartagi to the United Nations Office in Vienna, now placed in the central Memorial Plaza of the Vienna International Center. The pavilion features the statues of al-Razi, Avicenna, Abu Rayhan Biruni, and Omar Khayyam.


title: Abu Bakr al-Razi

text: While "The Bulletin of the World Health Organization" (May 1970) noted that his "writings on smallpox and measles show originality and accuracy, and his essay on infectious diseases was the first scientific treatise on the subject".


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: Daddy's Home is the sixth studio album by American musician St. Vincent, released on May 14, 2021 by Loma Vista Recordings. Like its predecessor, "Masseduction" (2017), Annie Clark produced the album alongside Jack Antonoff. "Daddy's Home" was inspired by Clark's father's release from prison at the end of 2019, as well as the musical palette of New York City in the first half of the 1970s. The record musically incorporates 1970s inspired rock and psychedelic music. The album won the award for Best Alternative Music Album at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: In May 2010, Clark's father, Richard Clark was convicted on of one count of conspiracy, seven counts of wire fraud, five counts of securities fraud, and one count of money laundering. During his incarceration, Clark released four albums: "Strange Mercy" (2011), "St. Vincent" (2014) and "Masseduction" (2017), receiving a growing amount of attention with each album. After his release in 2019, Clark was inspired to write the album's title track and also found inspiration in music made in New York City from 1971–1975, a contrast to her previous albums which were categorized as indie rock.


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: On December 15, 2020, Clark revealed that she would be releasing her sixth studio album in 2021. On February 25, 2021, street posters revealed that the album would be released on May 14, 2021. Clark released the album's lead single, "Pay Your Way in Pain" on March 5, 2021. In a profile with "The Forty-Five" following the single's release, she stated that the theme of the album would be her father's release from prison. Clark added that she wanted to narrate her "story", opining that his release from prison was "a good starting point".


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: Upon release, "Daddy's Home" received widespread critical acclaim. On the review aggregation website Metacritic, it received an average score of 85 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". AnyDecentMusic? collated reviews giving the album an average score of 8.2 out of 10 based on 32 reviews.


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: "Rolling Stone" called it "a mutant strain of retro pop steeped in New York lore", and Tom Doyle of "Mojo" hailed it as "a full conceptual realisation, filled with great melodies, deep grooves, colourful characterisations and sonic detail that reveals itself over repeated plays."


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: The Daddy's Home Tour is a concert tour by American singer St. Vincent in support of her sixth album "Daddy's Home". The tour is visiting North America, Europe and Asia between 2021 and 2022.


title: Daddy's Home (St. Vincent album)

text: The following setlist was obtained from the concert held at Central Park in Atlanta on October 22, 2021, as part of the Shaky Knees Music Festival. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The Temple of Saint Sava () is a Serbian Orthodox church which sits on the Vračar plateau in Belgrade, Serbia. It was planned as the bishopric seat and main cathedral of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church and an important figure in medieval Serbia. It is built on the presumed location of St. Sava's grave. His coffin had been moved from Mileševa Monastery to Belgrade. The coffin was placed on a pyre and burnt in 1595 by Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha. Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko were finally chosen to be the architects in 1932 after a second revised competition in 1926–27 (for which no first award was granted, Nestorović being runner up). This sudden decision instigated an important debate in interwar Yugoslavia which centered around the temple's size, design and symbolic national function. This was accompanied by a sizeable increase in the base area of the ambitiously conceived project. The new design departed from the competition guidelines issued in 1926, and was to replicate the dimensions and architecture of Hagia Sophia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The first stone was laid in 1935. When Yugoslavia was under occupation in 1941, the construction was approximately ten metres high. The incomplete building was used as a depot by the German army and Tito's partisans. After the war, the Orthodox Church was unsuccessful in its attempt to secure permission to complete the building. Permission was granted in 1984, and the architect Branko Pešić was commissioned to adapt the project to new construction techniques. On May 12, 1985, a liturgy was held at the temple with 100,000 people in attendance. This marked a turning point in the then-communist country; the church had reinstated its position and the communist elite had to back down from a decade-long ban prohibiting the construction of the church. In June 1989, the concrete dome of the temple, weighing 4,000 tonnes and constructed entirely on the ground, was raised to its present position. This was a landmark achievement in construction.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: It is the largest Orthodox church in Serbia, one of the largest Eastern Orthodox churches and it ranks among the largest churches in the world. It is the most recognisable building in Belgrade and a landmark, as its dominating dome resembles that of the Hagia Sophia, after which it had been modelled. The church contains a rigorous symmetrical layout with a great sensitivity to light due to its large dome and four apses. Its interior cladding with of gold mosaics is almost complete. The initiative for the mosaic decoration inside the dome was secured by a donation of the Russian Federation, while the larger remainder of the mosaic cladding was successively financed by the Republic of Serbia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Vladimir Putin of Russia visited the church in January 2019 and announced that the Russian state would finance parts of the remaining works in the mosaic cladding. He symbolically laid a stone in a mosaic with the presentation of the Mandylion. Putin was formally invited to attend the consecration of the church, which was then scheduled for the end of 2020 but the ceremony has not yet occurred owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Following the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque in July 2020, the Patriarch of Serbia Irinej and Serbia's president Aleksandar Vučić in August 2020 expressed their wish the Saint Sava Church would symbolically replace the Hagia Sophia, after which it was modelled, and become a ″New Hagia Sophia″.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: In May 2021, the entire Vračar plateau which surrounds the church was declared a spatial cultural-historical unit, and placed under the state protection as the Saint Sava's Plateau. The rationale in government's decision included "symbolical, memorial, cultural-historical, architectural-urban and artistic values of the locality, which represents memory spot of two turning points in Serbian history: Burning of Saint Sava's relics and the First Serbian Uprising".


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The church stands on the Vračar plateau in Belgrade. It is located at the sight axes of the important commercial traffic artery from the old city to the SE outskirts. It is visible from the Ulica Kralja Milana, between Terazije and Slavija Square, which is in extension of the axis. The church is the terminus and landmark of the intended boulevard in the first urban plan of Belgrade made by Emilijan Josimović from the second half of the 19th century. With its architectural form paraphrasing the Byzantine Haghia Sophia, the builders hoped that it will eventually evolve into a universal center of Orthodoxy. Moscow also had at the time lost prominence within Orthodoxy, as the October revolution sidelined religion in Russia and a compensation was intended. The Yugoslav communists also obstructed work on the church, as they banned further construction at the site after World War II. After a long delay, the church rose in 1985. In 2004 all works on the outside had been finished, the expected consecration with the finished interior space is expected to be held at the end of 2020.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The church lies on the western promontory of the Vračar-Plateau at 134 m height. It is located 500 m south of Belgrade's main square, Slavija square. The base of the church is 18 m above Belgrade's traditional geographic center, the Terazije square and the main pedestrian lane, the Knez Mihajlova ulica. It is also 10 m higher than Tašmajdan park, where the second biggest church in Belgrade St. Mark's and the Serbian Parliament, the Skupština are located. As it lies also 63 m above the confluence of the Sava River into the Danube, St. Sava is a primary natural viewpoint and from its massive dome a visible landmark for the city. From the publicly accessible gallery around the dome, a view on the urban fabric of Belgrade is possible. A lift will be installed after interior works are finished for all visitors of the church.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Below the foundation of St. Sava, pass the double-tubes of the Belgrade rail-commuter network, BG Voz This necessitated a redesign of the original plan of the crypt.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Saint Sava (1175–1235), the patron saint and national hero of the Serbian people, was born Rastko Nemanja in 1175, the son of Serbian Grand Župan Stephen (r. 1166–1196). Serbia was still a relatively young nation, having freed itself from the Byzantine Empire in the previous century. In 1077 Duklja became the first Serb kingdom, its founding being intimately interconnected with the establishment of the Roman Catholic Bishopric of Bar. Toward the end of the 12th century, the new state Raška, centered in what is now southern Serbia, rose as a second Serbian nation. Stephen Nemanja ruled Raška. In 1196 he, like his son Rastko before him, moved to the Eastern Orthodox monastic center on Mount Athos in Greece, where he was known as the monk Simeon. Soon afterward, he joined with his son to rebuild the ruined Monastery of Hilandar, on Mount Athos, which had been given to the Serbian people by the Byzantine emperor. Simeon died there in 1199. Sava organized after his return to Serbia the Serbian Orthodox Church and was consecrated the first archbishop of the Serbian church by Patriarch Manul I of Constantinople (r. 1216–1222), the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Sava died in 1236 after his unparalleled second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Egypt and Mount Sinai, in Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria. He was later canonized and named the patron saint of Serbian schools and school-children.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: In 1594, Serbs rose up against Ottoman rule in Banat, during the Long War (1591–1606) which was fought at the Austrian-Ottoman border in the Balkans. The Serbian patriarchate and rebels had established relations with foreign states, and had in a short time captured several towns, including Vršac, Bečkerek, Lipova, Titel and Bečej, although the uprising was quickly suppressed. The rebels had, in the character of a holy war, carried war flags with the icon of Saint Sava.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The war banners had been consecrated by Patriarch John I Kantul, whom the Ottoman government later had hanged in Istanbul. Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha ordered that the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava located in the Mileševa monastery be brought by military convoy to Belgrade. Along the way, the Ottoman convoy had people killed in their path so that the rebels in the woods would hear of it. The relics were publicly incinerated by the Ottomans, on 27 April 1595, as it was placed on a pyre and burnt on the Vračar plateau, and the ashes scattered. According to Nikolaj Velimirović the flames were seen over the Danube.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: On the 300th anniversary of the burning of Saint Sava's body, a group of Serbian Orthodox believers founded the Society for the Construction of the Cathedral of Saint Sava on Vračar with the idea of building a cathedral on the site. Initially a small church was constructed and the search began to find an adequate design.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The church is widely regarded as an important symbol of the Byzantine revival architecture, that dominated church architecture from Russia to the Balkans in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In particular, it had to serve Serbs as a symbol of the afterlife of the medieval Serbian empire. Especially in the context of Yugoslavia, a Serbo-Byzantine culture was favoured both by the Yugoslav king Aleksandar I Karadjordjević and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The adoption of a pattern that followed the prototype of the Haghia Sophia in Constantinople illustrates the idea that Serbs are legitimate heirs to imperial Byzantium. Belgrade was visioned as a new imperial center of Orthodoxy, which had a particular resonance in the context of the demise of Moscow being the communist capital when the church was planned.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Date and location of the Burning of Saint Sava's relics remained disputed. Given years are 1594 and 1595, while the proposed locations, as the name Vračar was applied to the much wider territory than it occupies today, include: Crveni Krst, suggested by who erected reddish Vozarev Krst at the spot, which gave name to the entire neighborhood of Crveni Krst ("Red Cross"); mound of "Čupina Humka", in Tašmajdan, previously known as Little Vračar, which is the preferred location of modern historians; Vračar plateau, which attracted the widest public acceptance.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: In 1894, which was then celebrated as the 300th anniversary of the burning, consensus was reached to build the church on the third plateau location. In 1895 the "Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar" was founded in Belgrade. The major part of the parcel donated for the construction came from Scottish missionary Francis Mackenzie, who purchased and developed this part of the city in the late 19th century. By the 1900 "ukaz" of King Alexander Obrenović, the planned church was declared a "nationwide edifice". A small church was built at the future place of the temple, and it was later moved so the construction of the temple could begin.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: In 1906, an architectural design competition for the future church was announced. Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences was authorized to judge the project, and it rejected all five applications as insufficient. A series of wars followed (First Balkan War in 1912, Second Balkan War in 1913, World War I in 1914–1918), which stopped all construction activities. After the war, in 1919, the Society was re-established.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: A renewed competition was announced in 1926. Beside the church itself, it was to include buildings of the Patriarchate, Ministry of Religion, Seminary and . The competition rules stipulated that the new church must be in the style of the Serbo-Byzantine architecture, from the period of Prince Lazar (late 14th century). There were 24 submissions. Though the first and third prizes were not awarded, a second-place submission was handed to the architect .


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Soon, the project itself, but also the idea of the church and its proposed style became a matter of fierce public debate. In 1905, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović proposed his idea of building the Vidovdan Temple. Fragments of the future building were exhibited in the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia at the major Rome 1911 exhibition. The full-scale model was then exhibited by Meštrović in London in 1915. The idea of Meštrović was that epics of all Yugoslav ethnicities are the same and he wanted to represent all "three tribes" (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in the monumental temple. He sculpted caryatides for the entrance of the future temple, which are today in the hallways of the National Museum in Belgrade. Meštrović planned to build it at Gazimestan, on Kosovo, between the rivers of Sitnica and Lab.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After World War I, Serbia was integrated into the new Yugoslav State, thus the idea for the memorial church transformed into a more ambitious project. In the second competition a church with a ground area of 60 x 60 m was publicly announced.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: A new impetus came from the foundation of an association to build a memorial church on Vračar. The managing board was held by the patriarch Dimitrije. The church was thought to have a built area of 3000 m, to tower 80 m and offer space to 6.000 faithful. The church was to pay reference to close national building traditions and resemble edifices in late Byzantine art of the so-called "Morava style", highlighting locally built churches commissioned under the reign of Lazar of Serbia (1329-1389) and his successors. The churches from the second half of the 14th century had all a trikonchic floor-plans, a cross-in-square design and some important royal burial places and memorial monasteries were also five-domed. One specification said that only Yugoslav or Russian architects are eligible for entries in the competition. It favoured especially Serbian nationals and Russian émigré architects, who were the main representatives in the neo-Byzantine movement which had graduated at the Vienna Academy of Arts, where Serbian students were lectured by Theophil von Hansen at the end of the 19th century in neo-Byzantine tendencies. They figured prominently in the competition of 1926–27.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The guidelines of the competition stated that the building should be the "greatest and most monumental building in the country, and have ultimate artistic importance".


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: With the preparation and implementation of the second International Congress of Byzantine Studies 1927 in Belgrade, tendencies of the neo-Byzantine movement culminated in Yugoslavia. The clerical hierarchy sought a church in the tradition of historicism based on classical Byzantine models, more precisely on buildings in the then-called "Serbo-Byzantine Style". The competition marked a climax in neo-Byzantine tendencies in Serbia which saw also the rising of Monastery Gračanica as the ultimate achievement of the late Byzantine architecture and an acclaimed model for the building of the new church on Vračar, even so it was not requested.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: It was coincidental that the call for entries was listed on 3 November 1926 in Politika and the competition should be held on 30 April 1927, several months prior to the International Congress of Byzantine Studies 10–14 December 1927. Discourses in the Serbo-Byzantine movement derived not directly from the sphere of architecture, but established here from studies in humanities, which retrospectively sought to highlight the importance of the Byzantine commonwealth to the Serbian cultural tradition. The main proponents came from Russia. With an important Russian émigré community, Belgrade had become after World War I a center of this tendency. Russian émigré architects had become the main architects for public buildings during the reign of the Yugoslav king Aleksandar I, they were located atop the hierarchy and were preferably engaged for building representative government edifices.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The competition itself was not successful, no first-prize winner was announced. None of the entries sufficed the public and professional opinion. Most entries had even not fulfilled the guidelines, most proposed designs were based on models of the Gračanica Monastery as the main representative of national Serbian medieval architecture or even the Haghia Sophia. It is believed that the Jury had recommended the two models. As with the Katholikon of Gračanica, its design was regarded the highpoint of the national architecture, and the competition manifested as the initial point in an evolving discourse about architecture and national identity in Serbian art. Gračanica, even not belonging to the group of memorial monasteries whose royal founders build them as burial places, became a chosen inspiration for the architects. They saw it as a modern source of inspiration in the quest for a true national style.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The second competition saw 22 (24?) entries from major architects in the country. All final proposals had to be submitted before May 1927. Besides Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko, entries came from Dragiša Brašovan, Milan Zloković, Milutin Borisavljević, Branko Krstić and Petar Krstić, Žarko Tatić, Aleksej Papkov, Miladin Prljević, Branče Marinković and Žikica Piperski, Aleksander Vasić and others. The commission had Patriarch Dimitrije, Jovan Cvijić, Andra Stevanović and Bogdan Popović, Pera Popović and Momir Korunović. The commission declined to name a winning entry, as none of the entries had fulfilled the tender criteria. The commission criticised the minor quality of most of the entries.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Five years after the second competition, 1932, and two years after the new Patriarch Patriarch Varnava took office, the Committee unexpectedly announced that the second-prize entry and the runners-up were chosen to be combined for the final project. That was followed by the similarly unexpected suggestion that the new cathedral should be reminiscent of Haghia Sophia. Bogdan Nestorović's entry 1927 was based upon the Gračanica model and had only touched some elements that resemble the plan of the Hagia Sophia, while the entry of Aleksandar Deroko even more reminiscent of Haghia Sophia was by no means a copy or anywhere close to the appearance of the imperial church. There were additional complaints about the plan to build an immense monument that was to be of national importance for Yugoslavs, given the fact that the cult of Saint Sava was a largely Serbian legacy. Despite the public debate, the realization of the Nestorović-Deroko project took shape after 1932. Vojislav Zađin was chosen as the engineer. Still, construction of the church couldn't start for several more years, in which the architects finalized their plans, as the size of the church and the dimensions grew. The decision process occurred amidst political turmoil, the Yugoslav kingdom became a royal dictatorship in 1929, the Croatian politician Stjepan Radić was killed in parliament 1928 and King Alexander was assassinated in Marseilles, France in 1934, and the idea of integral "Yugoslavism" died with him. Especially during the hot phase of the debate 1931–32 a paradox happened, after two years of royal dictatorship the state adopted a new constitution (3 September 1931), following a new ideological path to unitarization. At the same time, the pan-Yugoslavian theme in building the church of Saint Sava was dropped, and its function in the Serbian tradition was adopted by the Serbian clergy. By the time the church was to announce the new plans, integral Yugoslavism had been adopted as state ideology, with the parallel decision of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Saint Sava was to represent only Serbian Orthodox believers, a genuine and active counterreaction was established. This path had started immediately after Varnava took office in 1930, vocal support of Yugoslav national unity remained only declarative, as Yugoslavism was meant only in the context of Serbian supremacy and under a Serbian sign.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: During the debate, some even pushed for the construction of the Vidovdan Temple instead. Especially vocal was art historian . He and his supporters opted for the "Yugoslav, not Serbian Pantheon". They also rejected the Byzantine design, as it only symbolized "one tribe". Meštrović supported Strajnić, insisting that the new "Yugoslav style" should be created, instead of the sacred architecture that would fit only one of the denominations. King Alexander Karađorđević publicly didn't support any solution, but privately pushed for the Meštrović's temple. The King was a major proponent of integral Yugoslavism and changed the state's name to Yugoslavia. Meštrović, as the most important representative of the idea of the "autochthonous Yugoslav art and architecture", was his favorite artist.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After the 1926–27 competition had no winner, the project remained dormant for three years. The "Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar" called the University of Belgrade in 1930 to delegate "two specialists" to join the Society and Nestorović in further elaborating on the design of the church. The faculty proposed two professors, Dragutin Ðorđević, from the architectural department of the Technical University, a known project engineer and Aleksandar Deroko, lecturer at the chair of Byzantine and Old Serbian Architecture. Meanwhile, only Aleksandar Deroko joined Bogdan Nestorović in the fulfilment of the task. Both architects were asked to submit separate new plans based to the new guidelines defined by the technical department of the "Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar". On 1 and 2 January 1932 their definitive plans were published for the first time by the newspaper Politika. The plans appeared as images of plaster models for the future church. Both of the new models differed from the previous competition entries of Nestorovic and Deroko in 1927. In contrast to their sketches from 1927, when their entries differed markedly in silhouette, materials, composition and general appearance, the new proposals now looked very similar. References to the national tradition had vanished, neither of the two models was based in any way in design on the "Morava"-churches or Gračanica. The visual difference to the five year older proposals was even substantiated by the information in the accompanying text, where a 33 m measuring dome, which would dominate the church, was quoted. Without doubt the two similar plans had now been drafted authoritatively through the supervision of the society. The two authors acknowledged the Haghia Sophia. The similarity to the Haghia Sophia was apparent, and it did not stem from the authors' preferences, but from authoritative requirements which they had been asked to follow. The obligation set by Patriarch Varnava in 1930, that the church should be reminiscent of Byzantium was now, two years later, fixed in the newspapers' headlines, which stated the "Style was set definitively to be Byzantine". Varnavas and the Society's decision was uncompromising as the newspaper article stated: "With the model of Mr. Nestorović and the model of Mr. Deroko, it was exactly hit what was asked for - the church has to be completely Byzantine, resembling Haghia Sophia in Constantinople".


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After this revelation, the newspaper headlines alleged that the Society had deliberately and unexpectedly given "the directive, that the church of Saint Sava should resemble the Haghia Sophia in Constantinople" and that its plan was accepted as the definitive design of the church. This was never denied. Nor the two architects, who accepted their part which they were assigned to. With it, a transition from the 1926-27 guidelines had happened, as Byzantium was now the key element for the identity in which the church would be built.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The resulting final result in the design process was set in the concept of Nestorović whereto certain corrections should be made in collaboration with Alekandar Deroko, which had been decided even before their two models were presented to the public. With this combination, both architects were to make the final blueprint. Despite the publicly announced models not being the final blueprint of the church, the accompanying newspaper text had announced them as the final appearance, which caused an avalanche of negative reactions in the public and among experts. The dispute from a sequence of opinions published by the newspaper Vreme started on 23 January 1931.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After the king dropped his earlier veto on the decision to stop the further planning on the church, the opposing Club of Architects dropped its critical campaign after they were invited to the patriarch. A critical stage of further work occurred in an unstable society from 1932 to 1935. National antagonisms increased and the state saw nine different governments. Under such circumstances the planned church became even more Byzantized, it became a symbol of a political identity and not only an esthetic and stylistic predilection of its planners. The stylistic transformation of its plans to the imperialistic architectural narration is a testimony to the phenomenon which by far surpassed questioning architecture per se and is a mirror to social and political contexts of the state. With it, the episode during which the church was debated, it bears conclusive witness to the drama behind the international political life of Yugoslavia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: With the invocation of Justinian's Haghia Sophia the size of the church was even larger than that called for in the initial competition. As they developed their project, Nestoroviċ and Deroko reflected the growing enthusiasm of one part of the population that wanted Belgrade to have one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world. The size, height and weight of the dome were meant to surpass the grandeur of Haghia Sophia. From the initially planned 60 x 60 m, the church had now grown to a square of 80 x 90 m and could hold 10.000 instead of 6.000 worshippers. The diameter of the dome had much enlarged and was to compete with some of the great domed cathedrals of late antiquity, renaissance, baroque and the historicism epoch. As thus the only reference for the synthetic redraft of the Nestorović/Deroko design came from the Haghia Sophia, which possessed a dome that initially had a diameter of 33 m. As it had been the cathedral of the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, its design was naturally imposed on the Belgrade Cathedral, as it was more appropriate for its urban context, than were the minor monastic churches of rural areas. With it, the idea to orient to national tradition was abandoned. This decision was highly criticised by public opinion, but not by the professional public, which didn't find many arguments for the proposal of building such a great church on the basis of the national tradition. The homogeneity of the interior space had come into consideration, which had been so successfully accomplished in the universally acclaimed Haghia Sophia. With the evolution of the model, Nestorović synthesized this with the proposal of Deroko into a final model, which resembled the dimensions of the Haghia Sophia and paraphrased several of its architectural achievements, but had created an interior space of its very own. It had a strictly centrally planned design with four apses which create a very dense, spacious and yet intimate interior.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The adoption of the "Haghia Sophia" was led by impulses from western academic circles and literature, above all French and German, which acknowledged the Byzantine tradition in the rationality of construction from which followed spatial clarity, shown in a logical visually apparent image of the constructive system in the building structure.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Since the beginning of the development of the scholarly discipline of architectural history in Serbia, St. Sophia has been referred to as a superior realization, equivalently in the importance of its constructive solution, structure and spatial effects. This was reasonably a reverberation of the global presentation of this church, whose modern life, from the beginning of the middle of the 19th century, became surprisingly dynamic and complex. The magnetic attraction of its architectural solution boosted towards the end of the 19th century and reached its highest amplitude in Serbia in the interwar years. Owing to its architectural uniqueness, St. Sophia is often regarded as a structure without examples and imitation, though the Justinianian church remained an "archetype-building" - and not in the context of its place in Byzantine architecture, rather as symbol of Byzantine cultural authenticity and partly superiority - from which it gained in importance in the narratives in the relationship between the Byzantine and Serbian identities and in the parentologic metaphor of the link between Byzantium and the medieval Serbian state.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Forty years after the initial idea, construction of the church began on 10 May 1935, 340 years after the burning of Saint Sava's remains. The cornerstone was laid by Metropolitan Gavrilo of Montenegro, (the future Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo V). The project was designed by Aleksandar Deroko and Bogdan Nestorović, aided by civil engineer Vojislav Zađina. The work lasted until Second World War Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The church's foundation had been completed, and the walls erected to the height of 7 and 11 meters. After the 1941 bombing of Belgrade, work ceased altogether. The occupying German army used the unfinished church as the Wehrmacht's parking lot, while in 1944 the Red Army, and later the Yugoslav People's Army used it for the same purpose. After that, it was used for storage by various companies. The Society for Building of the Church ceased to exist and has not been revived. Children who grew up in the vicinity, including the future President of Serbia Boris Tadić, didn't know the intended purpose of the unfinished construction, so they played inside thinking it was a ruin of an old castle. The granite slabs, intended for the construction of the church, were used for the building of the Tomb of People's Heroes in 1948, in the Kalemegdan section of the Belgrade Fortress.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After the end of World War II, the building site was closed due to the changing political situation and the dominant ideological position of communism in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Soon after the war, the material and financial possibilities to resume construction were dim. The communist elite identified themselves as atheists and rejected the request of the Serbian Orthodox Church to build the site. The unfinished building was transformed to a playground and even various circus troupes used it for their purposes.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Despite decades of efforts by the Serbian Patriarch German to continue building (and after he made 88 requests from 1958 onwards, of which 82 were sent to the President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito, to which Tito never personally replied) all of them were rejected by government authorities. Permission was finally granted in 1984 when the patriarch was invited to Dušan Čkrebić, President of Presidency of Serbia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: 1948 saw the closing of the association to support the building of Saint Sava, her duties were transferred to the board of the patriarchy. In 1953 all belongings of the association to build Saint Sava were confiscated by the Secretary of the Interior Ministry via the decree 2/3-11.855. Even the existing foundation walls were seized and transferred to the people's property.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The decree never arrived at church authorities. Despite this, the church took legal action to counter the nationalisation of its property. In 1962 they were told by the Bureau of Religious Affairs that nationalized property can not be returned to church.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After German had been named Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1958, he personally championed the issue. During his term of office it was one of his main concerns to commence with construction. He sent every month a titular bishop to the mayor of Belgrade, to request the removal of garages and all non-religious objects. After this was achieved, 88 requests were sent to various government agencies, who sent him from "pillar to post", from the lowest state agencies to regional authorities, the agencies of the city and executive organs of Serbian and Yugoslav governments.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: On 28 April 1966, the synod of the Serbian Orthodox church was offered by the president of the executive chamber of the Serbian government, Dragim Stamenković, to roof foundation walls and transform them into a church museum or a fresco gallery. As they were aware that no better offer would arrive, they agreed to transform it temporarily into a church museum, but rejected the fresco museum proposal. After that, the communist leader outplayed them, as the communist rulers declared that the church had consented to transfer the decision-making regarding all problems related to Saint Sava to the executive chamber of the Socialist Republic of Serbia. The church even received a changed record of their meeting, as it read that the church had agreed that the locality was to become a "museum of church antiquities" and "fresco gallery" under state supervision. The church, recognising its marginalisation, withdrew its consent and repeatedly demanded to build the planned church. Émigré circles were approached for financial support, which the government dismissed. After the Serbian National Library was erected before the entrance of the building, the church was asked by the president of the Serbian Parliament Dragoslav Draža Marković to relocate its property.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: A sudden turn came after Dušan Čkrebić was elected president of the Serbian Collective State Presidency in May 1984. He decided to use a legal loophole. The decision to ban the construction came from the top of the Communist party, and had a status of "political stand" which no one challenged for decades. It was never published by any state, political organ, nor was printed in the State Gazette. Therefore, no changing or abolishing old decrees, or bringing a new one, was needed. He consulted numerous political figures, including President of the Assembly of Serbia Slobodan Gligorijević, secretary-general of the Serbian League of Communists Ivan Stambolić and Slobodan Milošević, then head of the city Communist organization. No one objected, except for the veteran's organization branch in Vračar.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: So, on 19 June 1985, Čkrebić informed German and all the members of synod the church had the full right to build Saint Sava as planned on the foreseen place, saying later that he felt this was his "civilizational obligation" and "removal of shame from his generation". Čkrebić suggested to not make his decision public to avoid any counter action and restart work without notifying public. Suddenly all the functionaries, even those in highest positions, which had previously rejected the church building had implicitly tolerated the decision of their younger comrades and remained supportive. Naturally this decision was received as a media bomb and became a public sensation.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: On 12 May 1985, 100,000 people gathered in Belgrade to celebrate with the Serbian Patriarch and twenty bishops a liturgy inside the walls of Saint Sava. Still a part of a communist country, the event marked one of the historic turning points that symbolised the fall of communism in Europe. It was a turning point not only for the building of Saint Sava, but also for the demise of the political concept that lay behind the state atheism of communist Yugoslavia. The rising of the building also marked the return of religion to Yugoslavia.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Architect Branko Pešić was selected as the new architect of the church. He revised the original plans in order to make better use of new materials and building techniques. Construction of the building began again on 12 August 1985. The original design project proposed a structure composed of masonry and partly reinforced concrete. The state of the existing foundations was learned after detailed investigative work. The four central bell towers were founded on 532 "Simplex" piles, 6 m in depth. The massive perimeter walls are laid on strip foundation 4 m in depth. The quality of the various materials used, i.e. brick, concrete, reinforcement, marble, etc. had been established through investigative work. Detailed survey of the existing structure, the as-built outlines were determined, and served as a starting point for further design and construction work.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: From the resumption of construction, the building was re-planned to use a very high level of assembling methods of all parts of the static system, although the complex geometrical shapes of the building made it necessary to use some new and unique methods. As the building was built from pre-assembled concrete slabs, a technological model had to be implemented to provide parallel works, secure quality and build economically. With innovation in the building procedure, the speed of "assembling" the building could be greatly enhanced. Construction was resumed on the level of the original design which used a combination of brick and concrete was cancelled. These lower levels were preserved with the foundation structure, which had to be repaired. The four-wing section had to be separated from the central part by way of expansion joints. Tying up of the foundations, the existing part and the new structure of forthcoming stages were achieved with reinforced concrete columns and tie-beams. Expansion joints in the wing sections were carried out along the line of intersection between the semi-domes and the main arches, and vertically down the bell towers up to the foundations.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The continued construction was designed as a fully prefabricated reinforced concrete element structure. From the geometrically complicated form in view of its structural points, the single elements had to be broken down into precast components outlined with straight lines to the greatest possible extent. Walls had been designed as hollow boxes, which, when assembled, give the building its massive appearance.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: All arched shapes of the galleries and vaults were transformed into assemblies of elements curved into two dimensions, which, having been erected, formed three-dimensional shapes. The semi-domes and the dome have been linearized by designing a system of arched trusses and two layers of curved decking. The precast parts were bound into a whole by in-situ cast parts of the structure which provided the required safety and longevity of the building.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The bell towers were initially started as a combination of brick and concrete columns and were continued as concrete box-structures for providing the greatest possible resistance of the towers and the least possible weight. This part of the building was completed by applying the sliding shuttering method (slip-form), with the advantages of prefabrication.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The central part of the building includes four main arches between the bell towers and the central dome with the pendentive underneath and the dome on top. Each arch spans 24 m, which is one of the widest vault spans achieved, as most of the European great domes rest on 8 or 16 pillars. Only Hagia Sophia's dome rests on only four pillars with a span between the arches reaching 31 m. It is still the widest span between the arches of any historical sacral building and still the biggest dome which was erected on only four pillars.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: It was found that the type of foundation chosen in the initial design lacked adequate strength to carry the loads imposed from the whole building. With the new materials and design methods, weight was reduced by 30-40 %. Before the lifting of the main dome the "Simplex" piles below the main tower-column had to be improved for carrying gravity and other loads. The foundation pile was partly replaced. While the initial foundation were only 6 m deep, the new ones with 1,4 m diameter reached a depth of 17 m and reached solid rock.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The structural analyses were made with dynamic calculation models using the "TABS" model from Berkely University. All the dimensioning of the elements was done in accordance with European and Yugolsav codes. For the lifting procedures, instruments were placed into the structures to compute the data collected which were analysed by computers. All relevant data was monitored live during the lifting of the heavy assembled elements of the main arches, pendentif and the main dome. Deflection, jack's strokes, leveling of supports, deformations and stresses of main elements were analysed.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The greatest achievement of the construction process was lifting of the 4,000 ton central dome, which was built on the ground, together with the copper plate and the cross, and later lifted onto the vaulted arches. The lifting, which took 20 days with the specially constructed hydraulic machines, was finished on 26 June 1989.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Before the dome could be lifted, the four main arches had to be brought into place. The four arches are the elements linking the bell towers both physically and in terms of communication. All four pairs of arches were very successfully lifted and fixed into position between January and June 1988. On the outer arches, which belong to the wing section, the semi-domes were formed, each consisting of eight curved, reinforced concrete trusses covered with curved slab decking. The assembly of the arches was done on the ground from pre-fabricated slabs, with their weight of 4000 kN each, they were lifted with "chains" to their intended position. The lifting of heavy loads to great heights was remarkably easily achieved, which as an innovation was a completely new system especially designed for the building. The chains were tested against safety factor of overloading between 1.6 and 2.2. As the expansion-joint arch rests "hanging" from chains in the lifted position, its own columns had to be subsequently cast underneath. They were then relaxed and together with the columns, form a framed system in a "portal" configuration. As the arches are major elements in the structural safety of the dome, they were analyzed in detail in all stages of static live, both in terms of stresses and deflections. The dimensions of the arches were reduced, optimized, so that the resulting structure could become as light as possible for technological purposes, and at the same time strong enough for the lifespan of the building.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The main work was the heavy-assembly-pushing technology in the raising of the main dome. The dome, weighing 4000 tonnes, was lifted by pushing. For the, dome the main gallery, spanning 39,5 m in diameter, which bears the dome and connects to the four bell-towers was prefabricated inside the central square. It sat as a monolith on gravel embankment of 120 cm height.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: As thus it could be completed in one phase with the supporting gallery, the dome and the cross and copper covering. Works began in November 1988 and assembly was finished at the end of February 1989. The main dome was assembled from 24 curved, reinforced concrete trusses with two layers of decking forming outer skins around either flanges of the trusses. The bottom decking was intended for mosaic ornament on the inner surface of the dome. The electro-hydraulic lifting equipment prescribed by KMG "Trudbenik" was designed and delivered by the Hydraulic and Pneumatic equipment and devices factory "Prva Petoletka".


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The assembly-lifting of the dome structure, with completely executed copper covering works and cross, weighing from the ground up to the designated position at +40,09 m was done at speeds restricted to 2,5 m/day for safety reasons. With a hydraulic integral lifting power of ca. , proportional serve-valves as well as strike and pressure pickup was done on all four reactive supports simultaneously. Computers led the unity lifting, vertical stepping of 110 mm in one step was realized by application of reinforced concrete slab-cribbing in all reactive supports by robots, which were successively placed under the jacks of the dome. Lifting to 13 m was done with supports passing by the bell-towers in order not to destroy the columns of the galleries. From there, the equipment and support steel (pi shaping) girder were moved into the slits which were left intentionally during the slip-forming of the columns. For each day, casting had to be done in situ around the cribbing slabs in order to finalize 2,5 m of columns per day. The columns were stiff enough for 2,5 m and lifting was restricted to five hours a day.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: Over 280 electronic elastomers were placed throughout the dome and its elements, all hydraulic components, were supplied by measurement instruments on information about jack's stroke and jack pressure which were fed to a specially designed computer to control the automatic lifting operation. A fully independent outside electronic leveling system was attached to the computer control, which secured the exact levelling information, and could stop the lifting operation in case of mislevelling greater than 5 mm. One of two working Pc-At clones was collecting and monitoring of over 24 essential data during the performance operation which was finished without mistakes.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The last lifting operations were performed at level +39,69 m, while the top of the dome had reach approximately 80 m in elevation. With the lifting method no risky and complicated assemblies were necessary at this height. All the covering works of the copper sheet on wooden basis and the cross had been performed in March and April, while the dome was still on the ground.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After the lifting of the dome, the pendentive was assembled again at ground level underneath the main dome. It represents the transitional tie element through which the rectilinear plan of the church naos changes to the circular plan of the main dome. With the lifting of the pendentive, the central part of the church was rounded off.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The structural connection between the pendentive and the main dome supports the dome in four positions. It was done by means of hydraulic jacks capable to produce 3000 kN each (12.000 kN in total). The pendentive will suffice for later additional loads from applied mortar, mosaic cladding and marble cladding on the facade.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: The pendentive was lifted again by chains. The weight of the pendentive, about 1100 Mp, spanning in perpendicular direction 24*24 m and 14 m height was lifted to 28 m beneath the main dome. This was achieved during two days at the end of January 1990. It was lifted in 36 hours, with speeds at 2,0 m/h. It reached an accuracy within the prescribed technological design with 5 cm tolerance.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: After the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, the works were halted again. Patriarch Pavle, known for his asceticism, thought that such an expensive works are inappropriate when people are beaten and impoverished. After becoming a prime minister in 2001, Zoran Đinđić talked with patriarch and convinced him to continue the works.


title: Church of Saint Sava

text: , the exterior of the church was complete. The bells and windows had been installed, and the façade completed. The Russian Academy of Arts under the guidance of Nikolay Aleksandrovich Mukhin is currently working on the internal decoration. On 22 February 2018, during the presentation of the new internal decoration, the decorated cupola was donated to the Serbian Orthodox Church.