Hulk Hogan Chases Billionaire Dreams With Beer for MAGA Faithful

Hulk Hogan Chases Billionaire Dreams With Beer for MAGA Faithful

The 71-year-old launched Real American Beer in June, shortly before endorsing Trump. Now comes the hard part: building a real business.

By Sabah Meddings

November 1, 2024 at 7:30 AM PDT

In a signature move from his wrestling days, Hulk Hogan tore off his shirt and flexed his giant biceps from the stage of this summer's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to endorse Donald Trump, calling him “my hero.”

The next night at a beach bar in the Ozarks, the 71-year-old used his return to the national spotlight to hawk his latest business: Real American Beer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-11-01/how-hulk-hogan-built-real-american-the-beer-endorsed-by-trump

"World War Hulk" is a comic book crossover storyline that ran through a self-titled limited series and various titles published by Marvel Comics in 2007, featuring the Hulk.[1]

The series consists of five main issues titled World War Hulk, with Greg Pak as writer and John Romita Jr. as penciller, and three other limited series: World War Hulk: Front Line, World War Hulk: Gamma Corps, and World War Hulk: X-Men. It also ran through several other Marvel comics series.

The plot is the culmination of a series of events that began with the Hulk being tricked into space by the Illuminati and a Life Model Decoy of Nick Fury. Planet Hulk shows the Hulk's subsequent exile and his imminent return to Earth to seek revenge on the Illuminati.

Publication history

The story, a crossover throughout various series, began in the one-shot World War Hulk Prologue: World Breaker (May 2007), written by Peter David and penciled by Sean Phillips, Al Rio, and Lee Weeks. Marvel followed this with Incredible Hulk vol. 2 #106–111 and World War Hulk: Frontline #1–6[2] as parallel stories following the impact of the Hulk's return on various characters. The crossover extended into regular issues of Avengers: The Initiative, Ghost Rider, Heroes for Hire, Irredeemable Ant-Man, The Punisher War Journal, and Iron Man, as well as a miniseries starring the Hulk and the X-Men and a newly created group, the Gamma Corps.[3] The stories ran from summer through fall, beginning in issues cover-dated July 2007.[4] Initially scheduled to end in October, Marvel announced through the October 10 Diamond Dateline retail newsletter that the final titles in the crossover would be delayed until mid to late November.[5]

Plot

After the Illuminati (Black Bolt, Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, and Reed Richards) banished Hulk from Earth,[6] the spacecraft they used explodes, killing Hulk's pregnant wife.[7] Blaming the Illuminati for her death, and more powerful than ever because of his time spent absorbing the radiation levels on Planet Sakaar, Hulk returns to Earth for revenge with his allies, the Warbound: Hiroim, Korg, Elloe Kaifi, Miek, No-Name of the Brood, Arch-E-5912, and Mung.

Stopping at the Moon, the Hulk defeats Inhuman king Black Bolt. The Hulk proceeds to Manhattan, New York where he demands the presence of The Illuminati.[8]

He travels to the home of the X-Men, where Professor X, absent from the decision to send the Hulk off-planet, admits he would have agreed with the decision, but also tells him he would not have agreed to permanent exile. The Hulk defeats several teams of X-Men [9] and battles the Juggernaut but leaves after learning of the M-Day incident, believing that Xavier has suffered enough.[10]

The Hulk returns to Manhattan and battles the superhuman-operative team Gamma Corps[11] and Ghost Rider.[12] Hulk defeats Iron Man, destroying Stark Tower in the process.[8] The Hulk and his Warbound next defeat the New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, Doc Samson and the Fantastic Four (including Black Panther and Storm). The Hulk attaches "obedience disks" to the defeated, imprisoned superheroes, preventing them from using their powers.[13]

After a brief battle involving Hercules, Amadeus Cho, Namora, and Angel, the Hulk defeats General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and a U.S. Army force.[13] The Hulk then encounters Doctor Strange, who mystically merges with a powerful old enemy, Zom.[14] Hulk defeats the Zom-possessed Doctor Strange, causing the demonic entity to flee.[15]

An imprisoned Tony Stark (Iron Man) communicates with S.H.I.E.L.D., revealing an emergency plan to engulf Manhattan in the Negative Zone, thereby annihilating the Hulk and all other positive matter on the island, should the heroes fail.[16]

The Hulk and the Warbound transform Madison Square Garden into a gladiatorial arena.[14] Meanwhile, he repels an assassination attempt from Scorpion,[17] and a confrontation with the Initiative.[18]

Following speeches from the Hulk's human supporters, the Hulk arranges for Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Black Bolt, and Mister Fantastic to fight a tentacled alien and later battle each other to the death, as a cheering audience watches.[19] The Hulk declares his intention was for "justice and not murder", and nobody had to or would die. He plans to destroy New York City and leave the Avengers to their shame.

The Sentry arrives and attacks the Hulk. Sentry and the Hulk battle, leveling the city, until they revert into Robert Reynolds and Bruce Banner with Reynolds passing out. Angered that the Hulk disappeared, Warbound member Miek attacks Banner. Rick Jones pushes Banner aside and is injured, causing Banner to return to Hulk form. As the Hulk attacks the Warbound, Miek reveals the explosion that started this war was not caused by the Illuminati, but by Red King loyalists. Miek chose not to prevent it, hoping the incident would encourage the Hulk to keep destroying. Overwhelming rage causes the Hulk to unwillingly radiate energy that threatens Earth. Stark activates a series of weaponized satellites that open fire on the Hulk, leaving him unconscious in his Bruce Banner form.[20]

S.H.I.E.L.D. later imprisons Banner in a facility three miles underground, with the other Warbound members having been taken into U.S. military custody.[20]

Namor was spared from the Hulk's wrath, as Hulk discovered early on that Namor was the sole Illuminati member who voiced his opposition to banishing the Hulk from the outset and predicting Hulk's eventual return and quest for vengeance.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Hulk 

Trump at RNC: Our Planet Is Teetering on the Edge of World War III

Donald Trump decried rising geopolitical tensions and detailed his economic vision in his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Photo: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg News

By Wall Street Journal

July 18, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/video/trump-at-rnc-our-planet-is-teetering-on-the-edge-of-world-war-iii/3CCADAC9-7345-47D1-9B1E-2F22642CF5DE?mod=WSJvidctr_upnext_pos4

The Mega Powers was a tag team in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from 1987 to 1989, consisting of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, and managed by Savage's wife, Miss Elizabeth. Lust and jealousy surrounding her led to the team's demise and subsequent feud, culminating in a match at WrestleMania V. They briefly reformed in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1994 as The Monster Maniacs before returning to their original name. They then interacted regularly thereafter as both teammates and rivals, particularly as members of the New World Order (nWo), until their departures from WCW in 2000.

History

World Wrestling Federation (1987–1993)

Formation (1987)

Prior to the fall of 1987, Hogan and Savage were bitter enemies. In fact, from late 1985 through mid-summer 1987, the two often wrestled for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Hogan was able to defeat Savage on many of these occasions, although Savage gained some important countout and disqualification victories over Hogan as well. While Hogan was the most popular star in the WWF during most of this time, Savage—who was the WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion for many of their matches in 1986 and early 1987—had gained a strong following even during his heel days, and by July 1987, was starting to get more cheers than boos. A slow face turn for Savage was beginning, and gained credibility when an angle was started involving The Honky Tonk Man (a heel who had since won the Intercontinental Championship) began making disparaging comments about Savage. To aid in Savage's face turn, the WWF began booking him against various heels, including King Kong Bundy and Killer Khan, with those matches taking place prior to his first match against Honky.

The Mega Powers officially formed their alliance, then, on the October 3, 1987 Saturday Night's Main Event XII (taped September 23, 1987), when Savage sought to win the Intercontinental Championship from Honky Tonk Man. When Savage hit his diving elbow drop finisher on Honky for the pin, The Hart Foundation came in and attacked Savage, getting Honky disqualified.[1]

When Honky shoved Miss Elizabeth to the mat, who was trying to stop them, she ran away to the backstage area; meanwhile, Honky completed his attempt to break his guitar over Savage's head. Shortly afterward, Miss Elizabeth returned with Savage's former rival Hulk Hogan, who came and saved Savage from the assault.[1] Afterwards, Savage extended his hand in friendship to Hogan, who accepted and the three paraded around the ring with their hands adjoined.[1] Their alliance solidified Savage's change into a fan favorite, which had been brewing for weeks as fan support grew for him. Later that night, during a backstage interview with Gene Okerlund, Savage and Hogan shook hands again and Savage referred to themselves for the first time as the Mega Powers. Hogan stated that "the combination of 'Hulkamania' and 'Macho Madness' may become the most powerful force in WWF history".

Over the next four months, Hogan and Savage would team up several times. The first being at a house show in Vancouver, BC, on November 10, 1987. It was a six-man tag team match with Hogan and Savage teaming with Jim Duggan to defeat the team of King Kong Bundy, Rick Rude and Harley Race. Their second tag team match was held in Huntsville, Alabama on January 5, 1988. It was a dark match at a television taping where Hogan and Savage defeated the team of Honky Tonk Man and the Hart Foundation in a handicap match. Another six-man tag team match was held in Montreal on February 8, 1988, with Hogan and Savage teaming up with Ricky Steamboat to defeat the Honky Tonk Man and the Hart Foundation.

On the March 12, 1988 episode of Saturday Night's Main Event XV, Savage wrestled Ted DiBiase in a singles match. DiBiase was accompanied by Virgil and André The Giant. Halfway through the match the referee ejected Virgil from ringside for outside interference. The match ended when Andre took advantage of the referee being incapacitated and rammed Savage into the ringpost. When the referee came to he counted Savage out of the ring. Following the match, Virgil returned to the ring and joined DiBiase and Andre in a 3-on-1 beating of Savage. Miss Elizabeth ran away from ringside and when she returned she was with Hulk Hogan, who ran into the ring carrying a steel chair. Hogan saved Savage from any further attacks by chasing the trio out of the ring. Afterwards, Hogan helped Savage back to his feet.

WrestleMania IV (1988)

Main article: WrestleMania IV

A tournament was made to decide a new WWF World Heavyweight Champion after Hogan "lost" the title to André the Giant at The Main Event I on February 5, 1988. André immediately surrendered the belt to Ted DiBiase. It was revealed that DiBiase had hired referee Dave Hebner's twin brother, Earl, to pretend to be Dave and give Hogan a bogus three count when Hulk's shoulder was clearly off the mat before the count of three. Between the referee cheating Hogan, André forfeiting the title and DiBiase's illegal attempt to buy the title, this caused WWF President Jack Tunney to declare the championship vacant.

Hogan and André were both given byes in the first round of the tournament, but fought to a double-disqualification in the quarterfinals. This had the side effect of giving Ted DiBiase a bye in the semifinals. Ultimately, Savage and DiBiase met in the final match of the tournament. DiBiase did all that he could to take out Savage (including the constant interference of André, who was acting as DiBiase's second for this match), but he couldn't keep him down. Savage eventually went to Miss Elizabeth, whispering something to her. She ran backstage, as the fans were trying to figure out what was going on.

A few minutes later, Miss Elizabeth re-emerged with Hogan. André and DiBiase seemed shocked by the turn of events. Hogan got revenge on DiBiase by hitting him in the back with a steel chair while André had distracted the referee by preventing Savage from getting to the ropes while locked in DiBiase's Million Dollar Dream.[1] Savage was able to hit his diving elbow drop finisher and got the three count. After the match, they celebrated as a group.

A few months later, with Hogan on leave of absence from the WWF and Savage feuding with DiBiase over the title, DiBiase and André attacked Savage during an interview segment prompting Savage to challenge the two to a tag team match against him and a partner of his choosing, which was accepted. Savage then revealed that his partner would be the returning Hogan and that they would meet André and DiBiase at SummerSlam.

SummerSlam (1988)

Main article: SummerSlam (1988)

Their official televised debut match as a tag team was at SummerSlam '88. They went against André the Giant and Ted DiBiase in a match billed as "The Mega Powers versus the Mega Bucks". Jesse Ventura, a longtime supporter of Savage's but a longtime adversary of Hogan's, served as referee for this match. The match didn't go as planned for the Mega Bucks. Miss Elizabeth exposed her assets in skimpy panties after stripping off her skirt to the heels, resulting in the Mega Powers coming back to win the match. Ventura counted but hesitated at two, so Savage forced the three-count.

Feud with The Twin Towers and split (1988–1989)

At the 1988 Survivor Series, Hogan and Savage captained a team that faced a five-member squad headed by Big Boss Man and Akeem (who by now were being billed as The Twin Towers). Hogan and Savage eventually won the match (last eliminating King Haku, Big Boss Man and Akeem had been counted out and disqualified, respectively); during the post-match posing, Hogan again began acting friendly toward Miss Elizabeth, visibly annoying Savage. In a post-match interview, pro-heel commentator Jesse Ventura interviewed Savage, playing up Savage's growing anger regarding Hogan's behavior toward Miss Elizabeth. However, Miss Elizabeth was not the only reason Hogan and Savage had issues with each other during their stint as a team.

The two had an uneasy relationship, particularly when it became obvious Hogan would act friendly and/or protective toward Miss Elizabeth. On Saturday Night's Main Event XVII and XX, Hogan was insistent on Miss Elizabeth appearing at ringside for his matches versus King Haku, Akeem, and Bad News Brown. In the latter instance, Miss Elizabeth's was endangered by Akeem and his allies, Slick and King Haku when Big Boss Man grabbed Miss Elizabeth and placed her in handcuffs; before Big Boss Man could use his nightstick to strike Miss Elizabeth, Savage ran out and made the save. While Savage showed concern for Miss Elizabeth, he disregarded Hogan, who was still reeling from being attacked by The Big Boss Man and Akeem.

At the 1989 Royal Rumble, Hogan accidentally eliminated Savage in the Royal Rumble match when he went to put out Bad News Brown (with whom Savage was having a concurrent feud). The two appeared to make amends at the behest of their manager, but Savage was clearly upset after the event (which was ultimately won by Big John Studd).

Things came to a full boil on February 3, 1989, on NBC's prime-time special, The Main Event II when the two wrestled The Twin Towers. During the match, Akeem threw Savage out of the ring. Savage was thrown onto Miss Elizabeth, knocking her unconscious. Hogan saw what happened and carried Miss Elizabeth from the ring to the medical area. When Miss Elizabeth was revived, she implored a distraught Hogan to return to the ring to help Savage, who had been left to fight the two gargantuans on his own for several minutes. Hogan eventually called for the tag, but Savage, who was furious with being abandoned during the match, slapped Hogan in the face. After some choice words to a confused Hogan, he took his world championship belt, and stormed back to the locker room. Hogan defeated The Twin Towers by himself. After the match, Hogan went to check on Miss Elizabeth. Savage was back there too, who was caught in mid-tirade yelling to Miss Elizabeth that as world champion he was tired of taking a backseat to both Hogan and Miss Elizabeth in the Mega Powers pecking order. Upon Hogan's arrival, Savage turned his frustration to him, accused Hogan of trying to steal Miss Elizabeth from him, and manipulate the belt away from him. Hogan implored Miss Elizabeth to try and talk some sense into him before Savage attacked him by hitting him in the face with the title belt, sealing the end to their partnership and beginning their feud.

WrestleMania V: The Mega Powers explode (1989)

Main article: WrestleMania V

Hogan's first response to Savage's actions was to challenge him at WrestleMania for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, which Savage eventually accepted. Most of the leadup to the match involved two things: the first being Savage showing (heavily edited and out of context) footage to prove that Hogan "lusted after" Miss Elizabeth, after which Hogan would respond by showing the footage in its proper context and with explanation; and the question of whose corner would Miss Elizabeth be in. Miss Elizabeth ultimately announced she would be in a neutral corner.[1][3]

On April 2, 1989, Hogan and Savage decided to settle the score at WrestleMania V for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Although Miss Elizabeth was stationed in her "neutral corner" for the match, she was eventually ejected from ringside after too many complications were caused by her attempting to assist both men at different points in the match. After an even match between both, Hogan eventually prevailed after kicking out of a Savage's diving elbow drop before "hulking up" and executing the leg drop to become WWF World Heavyweight Champion for the second time.[1][3]

The two would continue their feud in the months following WrestleMania. Savage replaced Miss Elizabeth as his manager with Sensational Sherri after Wrestlemania V and aligned himself with Hogan's co-star from the movie No Holds Barred, Tiny Lister (who appeared in character as Zeus, his role in the film).[3] This extension of the angle would culminate at SummerSlam when Hogan and Brutus Beefcake (with a return appearance by Miss Elizabeth) would defeat Savage and Zeus in the main event, and a December 1989 cage match between the two teams during a pay-per-view event entitled No Holds Barred: The Match, The Movie.[3]

Savage and Hogan would meet one last time for a WrestleMania V rematch on the February 23, 1990 edition The Main Event III with Heavyweight Boxing Champion James "Buster" Douglas as the guest referee.[4] Hogan would come out victorious yet again with Savage knocked out by Douglas post-match.

Post-feud (1991–1993)

After his feud with Hogan came to a final conclusion, Savage began a rivalry with The Ultimate Warrior and cost him his WWF Championship against Sgt. Slaughter at the Royal Rumble in January 1991. Savage and Warrior would face off in a retirement match at WrestleMania VII, which Savage lost. After the match Queen Sherri turned on him, which caused Miss Elizabeth to come from the crowd and save Savage. The actions turned Savage into a hero again, and he left the ring with Miss Elizabeth to a loud ovation from the crowd. Following Hogan's victory over Sgt. Slaughter to regain the WWF Championship at that same event, Savage served as a special guest referee for house show rematches between Hogan and Slaughter from June 30 through August 18. In each of the seven bouts, Hogan successfully retained the title after Slaughter attacked Savage only for Savage to return the favor, thereby assisting Hogan.[5]

On November 16, 1991, Hogan was a guest on Paul Bearer's Funeral Parlor interview segment. When Hogan was attacked by The Undertaker and Ric Flair, Savage (along with Roddy Piper) saved Hogan from the beating.

Savage returned to wrestling in 1992, and he and Hogan both competed in the 1992 Royal Rumble. The two tagged to defeat Jake "The Snake" Roberts and The Berzerker on a February 1 taping of WWF Superstars.[6] They teamed again at a house show on February 10 to defeat Roberts and The Undertaker.[7] The Mega Powers reunited for one final time in the WWF on March 29, 1992, to defeat Ric Flair and Sid Justice by disqualification at a house show at The Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn, Michigan.[8]

Hogan and Savage's real-life friendship unraveled in 1992 when Miss Elizabeth filed for divorce against Savage. In an interview with Radio WWF in 1993, Savage discussed the divorce, openly blaming Hogan and his then-wife Linda for turning Miss Elizabeth against him.[9]

An urban legend was that Savage gave Hogan a black eye with a punch a few days before WrestleMania IX in 1993; however, Hogan stated in his autobiography the black eye came from a jet ski accident incurred days before the event. This was later confirmed in an interview with Mike Schiavello.[10]

Hogan left the WWF in the summer of 1993, while Savage departed near the end of 1994.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Powers

VENICE AND GENOA COMBINE 

For Venice, so far so good: Florence, Naples, and Milan had been ruined. But ironically, the same dumb Valois and Hapsburg giants which had taken out three dangerous rivals were now to turn like Frankenstein’s monsters on the wily new Romans. Venetian manipulations were about to boomerang in the form of an alliance of all of Europe against Venice. This was the famous crisis of the War of the League of Cambrai, which was assembled in 1508-1509. The opposing coalition was made up of the pope (by then the Genoese Giuliano della Rovere, as Julius II), the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, France, Spain, Savoy, Mantua, and Ferrara. The announced purpose of this alliance was to expunge Venice from the face of the earth. It nearly worked. At Agnadello, near the Adda River, the Venetian mercenary army was crushed by an army composed predominantly of Frenchmen. The Venetians were driven all the way down the Po Valley to Padua, and they soon lost that as well. Machiavelli exulted that on the day of Agnadello, the Venetians lost everything that they had conquered in more than 800 years. Machiavelli was himself engaged in operations against Venice, bringing a grant of Florentine cash to the aid of the Franco- Imperial forces holding Verona. With nothing left but the lagoons, the Venetian position was desperate. The doge sent a message to the pope asking for mercy, and announcing that Venice would vacate territory taken in the past from the Papal States. Inside Venice, Agnadello brought on an orgy of hysterical self-flagellation among the terrified patricians. The banker Girolamo Priuli wrote in his diary that Agnadello had been a punishment for the sins of the Venetian nobility, among which he numbered arrogance, violation of promises, lechery in nunneries, sodomy, effeminate dress, and luxurious and lascivious entertainments. Antonio Contarini, newly appointed patriarch of Venice, gave a speech to the Senate in which he characterized the Serenissima as a thoroughly amoral city. The defeat was a punishment for the city’s sins, he said. Nunneries were catering to the sexual needs of the rich and powerful. Homosexuality was so widespread that female prostitutes had complained to him that they had earned so little during their youth that they had to keep working far into their old age. But more significantly, the shock of Agnadello set into motion a strategic review in the Venetian intelligence community which led to very far-reaching conclusions, some of which were not obvious before several decades had gone by. The first Venetian ploy was to attempt to dismember the Cambrai coalition. They started with Pope Julius II. This pontiff was, as already noted, Genoese. Genoa and Venice had engaged in a series of highly destructive wars up till about the end of the fourteenth century, but after that, Genoa gravitated toward the status of junior partner and close associate of the Venetians. The Venetians had bested the Genoese by virtue of superior connections in the East, but otherwise their was a broad area of agreement. The symbol of Genoa was St. George the dragon-slayer, in reality no saint at all but a thinly disguised version of Perseus saving Andromeda by slaying the sea monster, a legend that is centered on the coast of Lebanon. The “George” is said to come from the Gorgon Medusa, whose head Perseus was carrying. Perseus is in turn nothing but a westernized variant of Marduk, the Syrian Apollo, a deity associated with the most evil forces of ancient Assyria and Babylon. The Venetians had their own Marduk cult, although subordinated to St. Mark, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, home of a Dominican monastery and today of the Cini Foundation, one of the highest level think tanks in the world. The modern British preference of Gorgons is too well known to need comment. What probably accounted more directly for Julius II’s decision to reverse his alliances was a deal mediated with the Venetians by Agostino Chigi, the Siena Black Guelph banker from whose financial empire the infamous Siena Group of today derives. He proposed that the Venetians stop buying alum, needed in textile and glass manufacture, from the Turks, but contract for a large shipment at higher prices from the alum mines at Tolfa in the Papal States – mines for which he, Chigi, was acting as agent. To sweeten the pot, Chigi offered the Venetians tens of thousands of ducats in much-needed loans. 

The Venetians, fearing a rapid French offensive, accepted. Their own state finances were in total shambles. Only the Chigi loan allowed them to hire enough Swiss mercenaries to hold out against the French and the Imperial Landsknechte. To provide a plausible cover for his move, Julius II suddenly discovered that the real issue was not Venice after all, but the need to expel the barbarians (primarily the French) from Italy. Julius stipulated an alliance with Venice. He then set up the slogan of Fuori Barbari! (Kick the Barbarians out!) which is still recorded by credulous writers of Italian school books as the beginning of the struggle to unify Italy. Even the Venetian mercenaries, mostly Swiss, began using the battle cry of “Italy and Freedom!” Thus the post-Agnadello crisis was overcome. Some years later the Venetians tried the same tactic in reverse, this time with more lasting success. By 1525 the prevalent barbarians in Italy were the forces of Emperor Charles V, who had defeated the French at Pavia, capturing King Francis I. The French lost their hold on Naples and Milan. At this point Doge Andrea Gritti, whose portrait by Tiziano speaks volumes about his personality, decided to agitate once again the banner of Italian freedom. This took the form of the Holy League of Cognac “for the restoration of Italian liberty,” uniting France, Venice, Milan, Florence, and the Papal States under Pope Clement VIII Medici. After having set up this alliance, designed to play the French against Charles V once again to destroy Medici-controlled Rome, the last intact Renaissance center, the Venetians retired into defensive positions to await the outcome. Venetian capacities to manipulate Charles V were formidable indeed. The emperor’s bankers and intelligencers were the Fuggers of Augsburg, a banking house and a city that must be regarded as Venetian satellites, within a context of very heavy Venetian control of the cities of the Danube valley. Virtually every young male member of the Fugger family, and of their colleagues the Welsers as well, was sent to Venice for a period of apprenticeship at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. This was the case with Jacob Fugger the Rich. Venice was the pivot for Fugger metals trading, especially toward the East. Thus, the Venetians stayed in their phony war posture against Charles V, while the imperial army of Lutheran Lanzi under Georg Frundsberg devastated Italy. The sack of Rome in 1527 was the direct outcome of this combined Venetian diplomacy and manipulation. To make Charles V’s triumph complete, the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria, commanding the French fleet, defected to the imperial side. A Doria coup in Genoa then established a permanent de facto alliance with Venice. In 1530, Charles V was crowned as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Italy in a ceremony at Bologna. Garrisons of imperial troops were shortly stationed in every major city. Thanks to the tenacious policy of the Venetians, the main centers of the Renaissance had been subverted or destroyed. Venice was the only major Italian state which had retained real sovereignty. With the end of the Renaissance, Venice could feel free to start a delphic Renaissance among the throngs of intellectuals seeking asylum in the lagoons. 

THE CREATION OF THE JESUITS 

The “long autumn of the Italian Renaissance in Venice” during the rest of the sixteenth century was only one deployment among several. Another was the promotion of the Protestant Reformation. The more immediate controllers of Martin Luther have yet to be identified, but this is something of a secondary matter. Luther’s agitation in Wittenberg was merely one more example of protests against the papacy and the Curia that had been chronic and endemic for decades. What gave Luther and the rest of the Protestant reformers real clout was a publicity and diffusion of their ideas that owed much to the Venetian publishing establishment. The Venetian presses quickly turned out 40,000 copies of the writings of Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and the heresiarch Juan Valdes, especially popular in Italy. Pope Leo X publicly denounced the University of Padua as the hotbed of inspiration of the German disease of Lutheranism. Clearly, Venetian interest was well-served by a schismatic movement that would embroil Germany, France, and the rest of Europe in a series of easily profiled conflicts. In addition, a conflict between reformers and counter- reformers, all owing allegiance to Aristotle, would severely undercut the influence of Erasmus and others like him. Venetian influence on both Reformation and Counter- Reformation can be seen most clearly in the remarkable career of Gasparo Contarini, who did not let the fact that he was a Protestant in theology, well before Luther, prevent him from founding the Society of Jesus. Contarini was the scion of one of Venice’s most prestigious Longhi families. The Contarinis had produced seven doges, and Gasparo had his sights set on being the eighth, before he was tapped to serve Venice as a member of the College of Cardinals. He served the Serene Republic as ambassador to the court of Charles V, and as ambassador to the Vatican, where he took a role in setting up the Medici Pope Clement VII for the 1527 sack of Rome. Toward the end of his life, Contarini was sent as papal legate to the Imperial Diet at Regenburg, where he represented the Roman point of view in debates with schismatics like Melancthon. There, he had a hand in destroying any compromise between the Lutherans and the Emperor Charles, which would have helped to end the bloodshed and dissension of the Reformation years. What does this sublime Venetian patrician have to do with the founding of the Jesuit order by that itinerant and deranged mystic, Ignatius of Loyola? Ignatius was the creature of Venice, and of Contarini in particular. In 1521, Ignatius was wounded while fighting the French in one of the wars of Charles V. During his convalescence, he underwent his much-touted mystical crisis, after which he took up the life of a hobo. Making his way around Europe seeking funding for a pilgrimage to the holy land, Ignatius found his way to Venice, where he camped out in St. Mark’s Square and lived by begging. One evening the Venetian oligarch Marcantonio Trevisan was sleeping in his golden palace, and had a vision. An angel came to him asking, “Why are you sleeping so soundly in your warm bed, while in the square there is a holy man, a poor pilgrim who needs your help?” Trevisan rushed downstairs to find Ignatius, who became his house guest, fleas and all. After that, Ignatius was given an audience with the doge, Andrea Gritti, who offered him passage to Cyprus on a Venetian warship as first leg of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Ignatius continued his travels, but soon returned to Venice to develop relationships with other members of the oligarchy. These included Gasparo Contarini’s nephew Pietro, who became a recipient of Ignatius’ patented brainwashing treatment, the Exercitationes Spirituales. Then Ignatius made his way to Rome. Here he became the protégé of Gasparo Contarini, who had been appointed to the College of Cardinals by Pope Paul III Farnese. The cardinal took the Exercitationes Spirituales, and appointed Ignatius his personal confessor and spiritual advisor. By 1540, Contarini had personally interceded with the pope against Ignatius’ enemies within the church hierarchy to ensure the founding of the Society of Jesus as a new Church order. In June 1539, Contarini personally traveled to the pope’s summer residence at Tivoli, and prevailed on the pontiff to let him read aloud the statutes of the new order composed by Ignatius. The pope must have been favorably impressed by something. His approving comment Hic est digitus Dei, (”Here is the finger of God”), has become a feature of the turgid Jesuit homiletics. 

The Venetian Conspiracy

« Against Oligarchy

Webster G. Tarpley

https://ia600902.us.archive.org/1/items/pdfy--vMPBwiHw_IDIeob/Against%20Oligarchy%20by%20Webster%20Griffin%20Tarpley.pdf 

Ring name(s)     Hollywood Hogan[1]

Hollywood Hulk Hogan[2]

Hulk Boulder[3]

Hulk Hogan[4]

Hulk Machine[5][2]

Mr. America[2]

Sterling Golden[6]

Terry Boulder[2]

The Super Destroyer[2]

Billed height 6 ft 7 in (201 cm)[4]

Billed weight 302 lb (137 kg)[4]

Billed from Hollywood, California

(as Hollywood Hogan)

Venice Beach, California[4]

(as Hulk Hogan)

Washington, D.C.

(as Mr. America)[7]

Trained by Hiro Matsuda[2]

Debut August 9, 1977

Retired January 27, 2012

Website hulkhogan.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan

Ringside Collectibles WrestlingFigures.com

May 27, 2019  · 

Happy Birthday Natalya!

#WrestlingFigures #Mattel #WWE #Natalya #Raw #SDLive

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The establishment of the date of the Nativity festival on the 25th December in Christianity was not in fact formally agreed upon for hundreds of years after the era of Jesus’ supposed life and death. In the late pagan Roman Empire, the 25th day of December was celebrated as Natalis Invicti – the rebirth of the deified ‘Unconquerable Sun’ – Sol Invictus. Although introduced as a late Imperial Cult under Aurelian in 274CE (250 years or so after the death of Jesus) the cult of Sol Invictus was probably in response to the profusion of mystery cults throughout the Roman Empire which employed the iconography of a youthful solar male god, seemingly derived from the older depictions of older gods such as Apollo, Adonis and Attis. Adonis, etymologically at least, appears to have a Semitic origin (compare Adonai – ‘Lord’). These had their origins in the principles of Solar godhood attached to the great ‘static’ or ‘official’ mystery cults of the 1st millennium BCE: Those of Delian Apollo, Apollo at Delphi, Eleusis, Samothrace and the mysteries of Cybele and Attis in Phrygia, among others. Such cults generally relied upon visitation of geographical loci – fixed cult sites – and the participation in initiatory ritual for the purposes of either receiving oracles, healing or higher knowledge. They themselves may have developed from popular extensions of the originally more closely-guarded inner mystery ritual traditions surrounding the elite classes of kings and religious hierophants of the earlier ‘palatial’ cultures (Minoan and Mycenaean), themselves copying the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures, which are the oldest for which we have evidence, and were in continuity until at least the start of the 1st millennium CE.

Wars with Carthage and the great movements of the ‘barbarian’ Celts during Rome’s Late Republican Era (c.3rdC BCE) led to the importation of ‘foreign’ mystery religions such as that of Cybele and her ecstatic priests into Rome during the late Punic wars. Another popular ecstatic religious mystery cult was that of the Bacchanalia (Dionysia) from Greece. The Celtic fanaticism towards the solar god Apollo (whom they knew as Belenos) caused them to actually invade Greece and sack Delphi in 179BCE! These events, along with Rome’s increasing expansion and cultural interaction led to the surge in popularity of mystery religions in general during the late Republican era, such that by the 1stC CE  Roman Emperors were themselves visiting Eleusis and Samothrace to become initiates. These cults purported to explain the secrets of the sun, the moon, the planets and stars and the deepest mysteries of nature, death and regeneration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the life-giving Sun was a key part of this, and became part of a new ‘elementalism’ and drive towards simplification and ‘portability’ of mythology.

As the Roman and Greek cultural polities expanded and prospered, initiatory mystery religions became less an indulgence of the elites, and also less attached to fixed geographical locations, developing into a plethora of mobile ideological ‘franchises’ enjoyed by more ordinary persons. These almost certainly plagiarised the secrets and mythological frameworks of the older ‘official’ mysteries whose (often wealthy) initiates and suppliants were supposed to keep their secrets on pain of death or spiritual torment, and such mysteries were gradually bought out into the open and discussed and theorised over. This process was aided by the diffusion of literacy and the spread of and development of the ideas of the ‘Philosophers ‘of classical and Hellenistic era ‘Magna Graecia’ who sought to analyse the constancies and truths behind ancient orally-transmitted mythology.

A good example of such reductionist processes at their apotheosis are the ‘Hermetic’ and ‘Gnostic’ cults in Hellenized Asia Minor, Middle East and North Africa, of which Christianity was to emerge as an early branch within the fractious and millenarianist Hasmonean-era Jewish world with its significant diaspora. These employed Pythagorean, Platonic and Epicurean reductionist theories and a discourse involving the principles of the soul as a form of undying light in their prophetic religious narratives, barely hiding such ideas behind the character narratives of older mythologies.

Such explicit intellectualism was not to everyone’s taste, of course, and other more semiotic forms of mystery cults based upon ritual, myth and symbolism served the needs of those with more traditional (less orientalised) tastes. Orphism was perhaps the oldest and best-established of these traditions – possibly the ‘granddaddy’ of them all, with its origins in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE at least. Its initiates sought to ‘purify’ themselves in order to achieve a better afterlife. Mithraism was certainly the most popular of the newer cults, spreading from Asia Minor into the most northern and western extents of the Roman Empire between the 1st and 3rd centuries of the Common Era. Similar popular mystery religions centred around the Thracian god Sabazios (a regional relative of Dionysus) and European syncretic cults involving the Celtic gods, such as that of the ‘Danubian Horsemen’ involving Epona in Eastern and northern Europe, and a profusion of others more poorly understood due to paucity of material evidence. These all had the common trait of emphasising the position of the characters of ‘Sol’ and ‘Luna’ in their iconography – almost as a ‘badge’ of their ‘mystery’ status.

https://atlanticreligion.com/tag/sol-invictus/

Helen Louise Smith Hart[9][10] (February 16, 1924 – November 4, 2001), matriarch of the Hart family. Was married to Stu Hart from December 31, 1947, until her death. Stu and Helen had 12 children, born from 1948 to 1965, as listed below. Helen had initially been told by doctors that she might not be able to bear children at all because she was born prematurely. This turned out to be incorrect[11] and Helen originally wanted to have 15 children but could not for medical reasons.[12][13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_wrestling_family

Natalie Katherine Neidhart-Wilson[10] (née Neidhart; born May 27, 1982) is a Canadian-American professional wrestler and columnist. She is signed to WWE, where she performs on the Raw brand under the ring name Natalya. She is a two-time women's world champion, having won the Divas Championship and SmackDown Women's Championship once each. She is also a one-time WWE Women's Tag Team Champion with Tamina. She is a third generation professional wrestler, and is also the daughter of Hart Foundation member and Hall of Famer Jim Neidhart.

Neidhart is a member of the Hart wrestling family through her mother. She trained in the Hart family Dungeon under the tutelage of her uncles Ross and Bruce Hart. From 2000 to 2001, she worked for the Matrats promotion, before debuting for Stampede Wrestling in 2003. In 2004 and 2005, she wrestled abroad in England and Japan. She became the inaugural Stampede Women's Pacific Champion in 2005, and won the SuperGirls Championship the following year.

In 2007, Neidhart signed with WWE and spent time in Deep South Wrestling, Ohio Valley Wrestling, and Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) developmental territories. While in FCW, she managed her cousin, Harry Smith, and her husband, T.J. Wilson. She debuted on the main roster in 2008, allying herself with Victoria. The following year she and Wilson were joined by Smith to form The Hart Dynasty.

In 2010, Neidhart won the Divas Championship. In 2017, she became the SmackDown Women's Champion after defeating Naomi at SummerSlam. She is the first woman in WWE history to hold both the Divas Championship and the SmackDown Women's Championship. From 2013 to 2019, Neidhart was a main cast member of the reality television series Total Divas. She has set six records as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for female WWE wrestlers – most pay-per-view appearances, most matches, most wins, most Raw matches, most SmackDown matches, and most WrestleMania matches.[11] Neidhart is the longest-signed female WWE wrestler, actively being with the company since 2007.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalya_Neidhart

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Natty Ice, also known as Natural Ice, is an ice beer brewed by Anheuser-Busch with 5.9% ABV: 

Taste: Natty Ice has a smooth, refreshing taste and clean finish. 

Brewing process: Anheuser-Busch's ice-brewing process lowers the temperature of the beer below freezing, which creates ice crystals that give Natty Ice its signature taste. 

Ingredients: Natty Ice is made with a blend of American-grown and imported hops, malt, and corn. 

Nutrition: A 12 fl oz can of Natty Ice contains 130 calories, 1.1 g of protein, and 8.9 g of carbs. 

Popularity: Natty Ice is a popular choice among college students. 

You can buy Natty Ice at many retailers, including: Yankee Spirits, Discount Drug Mart, Elevated Beer Wine & Spirits, and Dillons Food Stores.

https://www.google.com/search?q=natty+ice&oq=natty+ice&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgwIABBFGDkYsQMYgAQyDAgAEEUYORixAxiABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABNIBCDE4ODdqMGoxqAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 

Stewart Edward Hart OC (May 3, 1915 – October 16, 2003) was a Canadian amateur and professional wrestler, wrestling booker, promoter, and coach. He is best known for founding and handling Stampede Wrestling, a professional wrestling promotion based in Calgary, Alberta, teaching many individuals at its associated wrestling school "The Dungeon" and establishing a professional wrestling dynasty consisting of his relatives and close trainees. As the patriarch of the Hart wrestling family, Hart is the ancestor of many wrestlers, most notably being the father of Bret and Owen Hart as well as the grandfather of Natalya Neidhart, Teddy Hart and David Hart Smith.

Hart was born to a poor Saskatchewan family but became a successful amateur wrestler during the 1930s and early 1940s, holding many national championships, as well as engaging in many other sports. He began wrestling for show in 1943 with the Royal Canadian Navy while serving in World War II as he could not go to the 1940 Summer Olympics due to the war. After leaving the service he travelled to America and debuted professionally for the New York wrestling territory[d] in 1946. Hart was considered very handsome and a good in-ring performer, focusing on a submission-like and technical style of wrestling, but despite this and being popular in general he was not given a major spotlight, and soon after marrying Helen Smith, whom he met in New York City, he created his own promotion in Edmonton, Alberta, which would be known as Stampede Wrestling[e] and took over the surrounding wrestling territory which covered most of western Canada and the US state of Montana. The territory would go on to become known as the Stampede territory thenceforth. In 1949, Stu and Helen moved to Great Falls, Montana. Hart's promotion featured a large variety of outside stars from the wrestling industry as well as homegrown talent for whom he booked storylines. Beginning from the 1950s Hart helped train a large number of people for his company and gained a reputation as one of the best teachers in the wrestling business. In October 1951, Stu and Helen moved to Calgary, Alberta, into what would become the famous Hart House.

Hart remained an active full-time wrestler until the 1960s when he entered semi-in-ring retirement, thereafter he would focus mostly on promoting, booking and teaching, as well as raising his twelve children with Helen while still appearing in the ring sporadically until the 1980s. Throughout his career, Hart almost exclusively portrayed a heroic character, a so-called "babyface" role and only held one professional title, the NWA Northwest Tag Team Championship. After selling his territory to Titan Sports, Inc. in 1984, Hart would make several appearances on WWF television and Pay-Per-View with his wife, often involved in storylines surrounding his sons Bret and Owen and several of his sons-in-law who were signed to the company. He continued to teach wrestling at his home in Calgary until the 1990s when he suffered a severe leg injury and had to stop engaging excessively with students, leaving most of the work for his sons Bruce and Keith. He died at age 88 in October 2003 after suffering from multiple medical issues.

Hart is regarded by many, including major wrestling historian and sports journalist Dave Meltzer, as one of the most influential and important figures in professional wrestling history and an icon of the artform. His greatest contribution to the art was as a promoter and trainer. Along with Bret and Owen, Hart's trainees included future world champions Fritz Von Erich, Superstar Billy Graham, Chris Jericho, Edge, Christian, Mark Henry, Chris Benoit, and Jushin Thunder Liger. Hart was a member of the inaugural Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame class in 1996 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010 by his son Bret. Hart was also well known for his involvement in over thirty charities, for which he was named a Member of the Order of Canada,[Quote 2] the second highest honour for merit which can be given in Canada and the highest civilian honour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Hart 

The first member of the family who was known to use the name "Rothschild" was Isaak Elchanan Rothschild, born in 1577. The name is derived from the German zum rothen Schild (with the old spelling "th"), meaning "at the red shield", in reference to the house where the family lived for many generations (in those days, houses were designated not by numbers, but by signs displaying different symbols or colours). A red shield can still be seen at the centre of the Rothschild coat of arms. The family's ascent to international prominence began in 1744, with the birth of Mayer Amschel Rothschild in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He was the son of Amschel Moses Rothschild (born circa 1710),[13] a money changer who had traded with the Prince of Hesse. Born in the "Judengasse", the ghetto of Frankfurt, Mayer developed a finance house and spread his empire by installing each of his five sons in the five main European financial centres to conduct business. The Rothschild coat of arms contains a clenched fist with five arrows symbolising the five dynasties established by the five sons of Mayer Rothschild, in a reference to Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth." The family motto appears below the shield: Concordia, Integritas, Industria (Unity, Integrity, Industry).[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

When his grandson, Naftali Hirz left the "House at the Red Shield" in 1664 and moved to the Hinterpfann (a tenement in the back of a house at the northern end of the Judengasse), he took the name Rothschild with him."

The Family ‹ Rothschild Name & Arms :: The Rothschild Archive

https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/the_rothschild_name_and_arms/any_questions

From Middle High German hirz, from Old High German hiruz, from Proto-West Germanic *herut, from Proto-Germanic *herutaz. Compare Dutch hert, English hart."

Hirsch - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hirsch#:~:text=German-,Etymology,Compare%20Dutch%20hert%2C%20English%20hart.

The word “Hirz” has its origins in Arabic and is often used to refer to a fortified or protected place. In its broader sense, it represents a location or space that is enclosed and fortified, offering a sense of safety and protection to those inside."

What is Islamic Hirz and Amulet? - MyRings Boutique

https://www.myrings.co/blog/what-is-islamic-hirz-and-amulet/#:~:text=The%20word%20%E2%80%9CHirz%E2%80%9D%20has%20its,and%20protection%20to%20those%20inside.

Herzl is a beautiful boy's name of Yiddish origin. Borrowed from the name Hirsh, Herzl means “deer,” making it a special way to dote on your little one's delicate nature."

Herzl - Baby Name Meaning, Origin and Popularity (thebump.com)

https://www.thebump.com/b/herzl-baby-name

The ancestral home of the Herzl family is in the German province of Bavaria. Herzl is a German nickname surname. Such names came from eke-names, or added names, that described their initial bearer through reference to a physical characteristic or other attribute. It is a name for a kindhearted or stalwart individual, and is derived from the German word herz, which means heart."

Herzl Name Meaning, Family History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms (houseofnames.com)

https://www.houseofnames.com/herzl-family-crest

Old English heorte "heart (hollow muscular organ that circulates blood); breast, soul, spirit, will, desire; courage; mind, intellect," from Proto-Germanic *hertan- (source also of Old Saxon herta, Old Frisian herte, Old Norse hjarta, Dutch hart, Old High German herza, German Herz, Gothic hairto), from PIE root *kerd- "heart.""

heart | Etymology, origin and meaning of heart by etymonline

https://www.etymonline.com/word/heart

[666] 6. 1On the side of the superior general, what will aid toward this union of hearts are the qualities of his person [G], to be treated in Part IX [723-25], with which he will perform his office, 2which is to be for all the members a head from which the influence required for the end sought by the Society ought to descend to them all. 3It is thus from the general as head that all authority of the provincials should flow, from the provincials that of the local superiors, and from the local superiors that of the individual members. 4And from this same head, or at least by his commission and approval, should likewise come the appointing of missions. And the same should apply to communicating the graces of the Society. 5For the more the subjects are dependent upon their superiors, the better will the love, obedience, and union among them be preserved." The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." Jeremiah 17:9-10

6. The delegates commit to working with the schools to enhance the way parents and families are invited into our education and formation." The Rio Papers International Congress for Jesuit Education Delegates Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 2017

The Rio Papers (googleusercontent.com)

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ce18dDJhSfoJ:https://jesuitinstitute.org/Resources/Rio%2520Papers.pdf&cd=51&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Administration/administrators of temporal goods: 1. Of the Society in general: those who are administrators [326, 327, 419-21, 740-745, 759, 815]; the powers they have [743-745]; in what spirit and with what care and dedication the temporal goods of the Society are to be administered [305], 216 §§1, 2-4; social justice is to be safeguarded and fostered in the investment of money, 217; nothing is to be changed in or derogated from norms and instructions without permission, 216 §3; an account of one s administration is to be rendered [326, 741, 759], 167; especially so at the end of the t e rm s o f o f f i c e o f l o c a l superiors and treasurers, 222; negligent or wasteful superiors are to be corrected, 216 §4 2. Of one s own goods: is to be yielded from the beginning of novitiate and after first vows, 57 3. Of the goods of others: not to be undertaken without permission of the general, 166; administration of deposits of money from externs, whether in cash or in negotiable paper, should not be undertaken, 219. See also Buildings; Contracts in general, and in particular: Alienation of goods; Debts; Deposits; Gifts; Investment of money; Legacy; Rentals; Revenues"

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

The Union Générale.

Meanwhile the Nationalist and Reactionary parties in France desired to counterbalance the "Semitic" influence of the Rothschilds by establishing a banking concern which should be essentially Catholic. Accordingly in 1876 the Union Générale was founded with a capital of 4,000,000 francs, increased to 25,000, 000 fraces in 1878 under the direction of a certain Bontoux. After various vicissitudes, graphically described by Zola in his novel "L'Argent," the Union failed, and brought many of the Catholic nobility of France to ruin, leaving the Rothschilds still more absolutely the undisputed leaders of French finance, but leaving also a legacy of hatred which had much influence on the growth of the anti-Semitic movement in France. Something analogous occurred in England when the century-long competition of the Barings and the Rothschilds culminated in the failure of the former in 1893; but in this case the Rothschilds came to the rescue of their rivals and prevented a universal financial catastrophe. It is a somewhat curious sequel to the attempt to set up a Catholic competitor to the Roths-childs that at the present time the latter are the guardians of the papal treasure.

Of recent years the Rothschilds have consistently refused to have anything to do with loans to Russia, owing to the anti-Jewish legislation of that empire, though on one occasion the members of the Paris house joined in a loan to demonstrate their patriotism as Frenchmen."

ROTHSCHILD - JewishEncyclopedia.com

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12909 

Jacob Rothschild, Banker Who Broke From His Fabled Family, Dies at 87

The fourth Baron Rothschild, he left the family banking dynasty to start his own company, becoming a powerful financier, patron of the arts and philanthropist.

Mr. Rothschild retired as head of RIT Capital Partners in 2019. That year, his personal wealth was estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to be more than $1 billion.

Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild was born in Berkshire, England, on April 29, 1936, to Victor Rothschild, the third Baron Rothschild, and his first wife, Barbara Judith (Hutchinson) Rothschild.

Mr. Rothschild studied history at Oxford before joining the family bank. After he resigned to head RIT, he became involved in a series of ventures, including an unsuccessful bid in 1989 with other investors to take over British American Tobacco for $21 billion.

He maintained a wide network of international connections, acting as deputy chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB Television, and as an adviser to then-Prince Charles. He was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Blackstone Group, a leading private equity group, and co-founded the J. Rothschild Assurance Group in 1991, a wealth management company now known as St. James’s Place.

Not all his maneuvers were free of controversy. In 2003, British media reports said he had struck a trusteeship deal with Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a Russian oil tycoon and Putin foe, to transfer Mr. Khodorkovsky’s stake in the Yukos oil company to Mr. Rothschild in the event of his arrest. Mr. Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 and later exiled. Mr. Rothschild did not confirm the reports.

Alongside his career as a high-powered financier, Mr. Rothschild played an energetic if sometimes secretive role in Israel, overseeing his family’s long-running philanthropic activities there as head of the Yad Hanadiv foundation.

Over the decades, the Rothschilds quietly sponsored major projects, including the construction of Israel’s Parliament, Supreme Court and National Library, none of which bear the family’s name. “We’ve tried not to be in the headlines,” Mr. Rothschild told The Jerusalem Report in 2012, adding, “Our tradition has been that we don’t shout from the rooftops what we are doing.”

He took over Yad Hanadiv after the death in 1988 of Dorothy de Rothschild, the foundation’s chairwoman and an aunt of his. She bequeathed him estates in Buckinghamshire, England.

Image

An aerial view of sprawling stone manor house built in the ornate style of a French chateau. A highly manicured garden the length of the house can be seen in the background. 

Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild built Waddesdon Manor in the 1880s. It is now overseen by Britain’s National Trust, but Mr. Rothschild struck a deal in which the building would house the family’s enormous collection of art.Credit...David Goddard/Getty Images

The ownership of one of the properties, Waddesdon Manor, built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in the 1880s in the style of a French chateau, had already been transferred to the nonprofit National Trust in 1957. But Mr. Rothschild struck an unusual deal with the trust to administer the manor as a home for the Rothschilds’ collection of an estimated 15,000 works of art and objects, and for his personal collection of Rothschild wines, mainly from the Bordeaux region of France.

Mr. Rothschild was a principal benefactor of the manor’s restoration and played a part in other ambitious projects, including the regeneration of Somerset House, an 18th-century building overlooking the River Thames in London. Among many arts-related positions in Britain and elsewhere, he chaired the trustees of London’s National Gallery from 1985 to 1991.

Mr. Rothschild married Serena DUNN, a racehorse owner, in 1961; she died in 2019. He had four children, Hannah, Beth, Emily and Nathaniel, and a number of grandchildren. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

For all his standing among the world’s wealthy elite, Mr. Rothschild was openly critical of some of his peers in the international financial system. In 2012, four years after the economic crisis of 2008, he told The Jerusalem Report that he had “a lot of sympathy with people who protested about some of the excesses in the world of finance.”

“After all, here are characters who have made great fortunes, who have been in charge of a system which has been very damaging to many interests in the last five to 10 years,” he said. “They have had enormous benefits, but the banking system as a whole has had a crippling effect in a number of areas throughout the world.”

Victor Mather contributed reporting.

After a long career as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times based in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, Alan Cowell became a freelance contributor in 2015, based in London.

  More about Alan Cowell

See more on: Rothschild Family

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/business/jacob-rothschild-dead.html  

The Monument to the Royal Stuarts is a memorial in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City State. It commemorates the last three members of the Royal House of Stuart: James Francis Edward Stuart ("the Old Pretender", d. 1766), his elder son Charles Edward Stuart ("the Young Pretender" or "Bonnie Prince Charlie", d. 1788), and his younger son, Henry Benedict Stuart ("the Cardinal Duke of York", d. 1807). The Jacobites recognised these three as kings of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The marble monument is by Antonio Canova (1757–1822), the most celebrated Italian sculptor of his day. It was erected in 1819.

Description

The monument takes the form of a truncated obelisk. It carries bas relief profile portraits of the three exiled princes, and the following inscription:

IACOBO·III

IACOBI·II·MAGNAE·BRIT·REGIS·FILIO

KAROLO·EDVARDO

ET·HENRICO·DECANO·PATRVM·CARDINALIVM

IACOBI·III·FILIIS

REGIAE·STIRPIS·STVARDIAE·POSTREMIS

ANNO·M·DCCC·XIX

("To James III, son of King James II of Great Britain, to Charles Edward and to Henry, Dean of the Cardinal Fathers, sons of James III, the last of the Royal House of Stuart. 1819")

Below the inscription are two weeping angels, symbolising the lost hopes of the exiled Stuarts.

The monument to the Royal Stuarts was originally commissioned by Monsignor Angelo Cesarini, executor of the estate of Henry Benedict Stuart. Among the subscribers, curiously, was King George IV, who (once the Jacobite threat to his throne had ended with the death of Cardinal Stuart in 1807) was an admirer of the Stuart legend.[1]

The monument stands towards the back of the basilica in the left aisle opposite the door from which people coming down the spiral staircase from the dome and roof exit. It is frequently adorned with flowers by Jacobite romantics.

Burials

The monument is, strictly speaking, a cenotaph, not a tomb. The three Stuarts are buried in the crypt below the basilica. James Francis Edward Stuart was buried here at his death in 1766. When Charles Edward Stuart died in 1788, he was buried in the Basilica of St Peter Apostle in Frascati. When his brother Henry Benedict Stuart died in 1807, both brothers were laid to rest next to their father in the crypt of St. Peter's. Three separate tombstones were erected on the site.

Until 1938 the bodies of the three Stuarts were buried where the tomb of Pius XI now stands. In that year the bodies were moved slightly further east on the left side of the crypt, to make room for Pius's tomb. In 1939 a single sarcophagus was erected over the three graves. On top of the sarcophagus is a bronze pillow on which is placed a bronze crown. On the front of the sarcophagus is the same inscription quoted above.

Other monuments

Opposite the monument to the Royal Stuarts in St. Peter's Basilica is a monument to Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James Francis Edward Stuart and mother of Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart. Its inscription reads:

MARIA CLEMENTINA M. BRITANN.

FRANC. ET HIBERN. REGINA

("Maria Clementina, Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland"[a])

Queen Christina of Sweden, the only other monarch with a memorial in the church, also lies entombed in the crypt below the basilica, with the Royal Stuarts. She abdicated her throne in 1654 to convert to Catholicism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Royal_Stuarts 

SACROS LATERAN ECCLES

OMNIUM URBIS ET ORBIS

ECCLESIARUM MATER

ET CAPUT

English Translation:

HOLY LATERAN CHURCH,

MOTHER AND HEAD

OF ALL CHURCHES

Basilica of St. John Lateran

The Main or East Façade

https://catholic-resources.org/Photos/Rome-Churches.htm

It is hypothesized that the name comes either from Latin caput, meaning "head", and means "chief" or "head of state".

https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-did-hugh-capet-get-his-name.html

The House of Capet (French: Maison capétienne) ruled the Kingdom of France from 987 to 1328. It was the most senior line of the Capetian dynasty – itself a derivative dynasty from the Robertians and the Karlings.

The direct line of the House of Capet came to an end in 1328, when the three sons of Philip IV (reigned 1285–1314) all failed to produce surviving male heirs to the French throne. With the death of Charles IV (reigned 1322–1328), the throne passed to the House of Valois, descended from a younger brother of Philip IV.

Royal power would pass on, in 1589, to another Capetian branch, the House of Bourbon, descended from the youngest son of Louis IX (reigned 1226–1270). From 1830 on it would go to a Bourbon cadet branch, the House of Orléans, always remaining in the hands of agnatic descendants of Hugh Capet himself a descendant of Charlemagne, except for the 10-year reign of Emperor Napoleon.

Names

The House of Capet (French: Maison capétienne) were also called the Direct Capetians (Capétiens directs), the House of France (la maison de France), or simply the Capets. Historians in the 19th century came to apply the name "Capetian" to both the ruling house of France and to the wider-spread male-line descendants of Hugh Capet (c. 939 – 996). Contemporaries did not use the name "Capetian" (see House of France). The Capets were sometimes called "the Third Race of Kings" (following the Merovingians and the Carolingians). The name "Capet" derives from the nickname (of uncertain meaning) given to Hugh, the first Capetian king.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Capet

Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Fitzempress and Henry Curtmantle,[2] was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. During his reign he controlled England, substantial parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France (including Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine), an area that altogether was later called the Angevin Empire, and also held power over Scotland and the Duchy of Brittany.

Henry became politically and militarily involved by the age of fourteen in the efforts of his mother, Matilda (daughter of Henry I of England), to claim the English throne, at that time held by Matilda's cousin Stephen of Blois. Henry's father, Geoffrey, made him Duke of Normandy in 1150, and upon Geoffrey's death in 1151, Henry inherited Anjou, Maine and Touraine. His marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine brought him control of the Duchy of Aquitaine. Thus, he controlled most of France. Henry's military expedition to England in 1153 resulted in King Stephen agreeing, by the Treaty of Wallingford, to leave England to Henry, and he inherited the kingdom at Stephen's death a year later. Henry was an energetic and ruthless ruler, driven by a desire to restore the royal lands and prerogatives of his grandfather Henry I. During the early years of his reign Henry restored the royal administration in England, which had almost collapsed during Stephen's reign, and re-established hegemony over Wales. Henry's desire to control the English Church led to conflict with his former friend Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This controversy lasted for much of the 1160s and resulted in Becket's murder in 1170. Soon after his accession Henry came into conflict with Louis VII of France, his feudal overlord, and the two rulers fought, over several decades, what has been termed a "cold war". Henry expanded his empire at Louis's expense, taking Brittany and pushing east into central France and south into Toulouse; despite numerous peace conferences and treaties, no lasting agreement was reached.

Henry and Eleanor had eight children. Three of their sons would rule as king, though Henry the Young King only as co-ruler rather than sole monarch, as he predeceased his father. As his sons grew up, Henry struggled to find ways to satisfy their desires for land and immediate power, and tensions rose over the future inheritance of the empire, encouraged by Louis VII and his son Philip II, who ascended to the French throne in 1180. In 1173 Henry's heir apparent, "Young Henry", rebelled against his father; he was joined by his brothers Richard and Geoffrey and by their mother. Several European states allied themselves with the rebels, and the Great Revolt was only defeated by Henry's vigorous military action and talented local commanders, many of them "new men" appointed for their loyalty and administrative skills. Young Henry and Geoffrey led another revolt in 1183, during which Young Henry died of dysentery. Geoffrey died in 1186. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland provided lands for Henry's youngest son, John. By 1189, Philip swayed Richard to his side, leading to a final rebellion. Decisively defeated by Philip and Richard and suffering from a bleeding ulcer, Henry retreated to Chinon Castle in Anjou. He died soon afterwards and was succeeded by his son Richard I.

Henry's empire quickly collapsed during the reign of his son John (who succeeded Richard in 1199), but many of the changes Henry introduced during his lengthy rule had long-term consequences. Henry's legal changes are generally considered to have laid the basis for the English Common Law, while his intervention in Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland shaped the development of their societies, histories, and governmental systems. Historical interpretations of Henry's reign have changed considerably over time. Contemporary chroniclers such as Gerald of Wales and William of Newburgh, though sometimes unfavourable, generally laud his achievements. In the 18th century, scholars argued that Henry was a driving force in the creation of a genuinely English monarchy and, ultimately, a unified Britain. During the Victorian expansion of the British Empire, historians were keenly interested in the formation of Henry's own empire, but they also criticised certain aspects of his private life and treatment of Becket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_II_of_England

Alan fitz Flaad (c. 1060 – after 1120) was a Breton knight, probably recruited as a mercenary by Henry I of England in his conflicts with his brothers.[1] After Henry became King of England, Alan became an assiduous courtier and obtained large estates in Norfolk, Sussex, Shropshire, and elsewhere in the Midlands, including the feudal barony and castle of Oswestry in Shropshire.[2][3][4] His duties included supervision of the Welsh border.[5] He is now noted as the progenitor of the FitzAlan family, the Earls of Arundel (1267–1580), and the House of Stuart,[6] although his family connections were long a matter of conjecture and controversy.

Career

Arrival in England

Flaad and his son Alan had come to the favourable notice of King Henry I of England who, soon after his accession, brought Flaad and Alan to England. Eyton, consistently following the theory of the Scottish origins of the Stewarts, thought this was because he was part of the entourage of the Queen, Matilda of Scotland,[7] Round pointed out that Henry had been besieged in Mont-Saint-Michel during his struggle with his brothers,[1] an event which probably occurred in 1091. He is known to have recruited Breton troops at that time and, after his surrender, left the scene via the adjoining regions of Brittany, where Dol is situated. This is a likely explanation for the Bretons in the military retinue he brought to England after the death of William Rufus.

Alan's career in England can be traced largely through his presence as a witness to charters granted by the king during his travels in the first decade or more of his reign. Some of his activities were traced by Eyton, and his researches overlap with William Farrer's calendar of Henry I travel. All of the business in which he took part was ecclesiastical, involving grants, sometimes disputed, to churches and monasteries.

Appearances at court

Alan appeared in Henry I's company at least as early as September 1101, probably at a court held in Windsor Castle,[8] when he witnessed important grants to Norwich Cathedral, confirming its foundation and various endowments.[9][10] Next, he appeared with the king at Canterbury in 1103,[11] where he witnessed the grant of a market to the nuns of Malling Abbey and land acquisitions by Rochester Cathedral, then in the process of rebuilding.[12]

Later that year,[13] or early in the next,[14] Alan was with the king in the New Forest, where the business concerned Andover Priory, a daughter house of the great Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Florent de Saumur.[15] He was probably selected deliberately for this meeting because of his family's close connections with Saumur Abbey: one of his uncles was a monk there.[16] William Rufus had decreed that all chapels in the parish of Andover church should be handed over to the monks or destroyed.[17] One problem at issue revolved around the Foxcote chapel, which was evidently being defended from destruction or annexation by Edward de Foscote, a local landowner. Another seems to have been the administration of justice in the monastic estates.[18] Wihenoc, a monk of St Florent, had initiated an action against the reeve of Andover to have these issues clarified and resolved. Alan Fitz Flaad was called upon to witness a compromise, although Foxcote was among the properties confirmed to the priory by Pope Eugenius III in 1146.[19]

In the autumn of 1105, Alan was called to York to witness confirmation of Ralph Paynel's transfer of his refounded Holy Trinity Priory in York to Marmoutier Abbey, Tours[20][21] and his many endowments of the priory itself.[22][23] At some point, he also witnessed the Roger de Nonant's gift of the church at Totnes and various tithes to the Abbey of Ss Sergius and Bacchus at Angers, a gift earmarked as being for the souls of the royal family.[24]

In May 1110, Alan was at court at Windsor again to witness the king's settlement of a property dispute between Hervey le Breton, Bishop of Ely, and Ranulph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, resolved in favour of the former.[25]

Probably only later did he appear as a witness to a royal command issued to Richard de Belmeis I, the Bishop of London and the king's viceroy in Shropshire, to see that justice was done in the case of a disputed prebend at Morville.[26][27] The collegiate church there had been dissolved and replaced with a priory attached to Shrewsbury Abbey[28] and it seems that the son of one of the prebendaries was resisting the loss of what he regarded as his patrimony. Alan is listed among a group of Shropshire magnates, including Corbets and a Peverel, meeting perhaps during Henry I's 1114 military expedition into Wales. Johnson and Cronne tentatively place the meeting at Holdgate Castle in Shropshire. Eyton dates the event earlier, around the time of a royal expedition to Shropshire in 1109.[29] Whatever the date, it shows Alan as an important member of the Shropshire landowning class.

Territorial magnate

Alan's rapid ascent to wealth and power was a symptom of troubled times. The abortive revolt of Robert de Belleme in 1102 had torn apart the Anglo-Norman system of governing the Welsh Marches. With other Breton friends, Alan had been given forfeited lands in Norfolk and Shropshire, including some which had previously belonged to Robert de Belleme himself.[30] Robert had proved a threat to Henry in both the Welsh Marches and in Normandy, so the king was determined to insert reliable supporters to counterbalance or replace his network of supporters. Alan received more land as he proved his worth. A large portfolio of lands in Shropshire and around Peppering, near Arundel in Sussex, was taken from the holdings of Rainald de Bailleul,[31] ancestor of the House of Balliol, which was also later to provide a king of Scotland. These were lands granted to Rainald by William the Conqueror in recognition of his role as Sheriff of Shropshire. There is no evidence that Rainald or his successor, Hugh, were rebels, and it seems that their lands came to Alan as a consequence of his elevation to the shrievalty of the county. He also gained a stake in the very large estates of Ernulf de Hesdin by marriage to his daughter, Avelina.[32]

Religious grants and foundations

Alan was actively involved in a number of grants to religious institutions. One of the grants to Norwich Cathedral that he witnessed in 1101 concerned advowson of the church at Langham, Norfolk, which "had been Alan's", along with the tithes. It is possible this was a donation by himself.[8] At some point unknown he gave the manor of Eaton near Norwich, to Norwich Cathedral, a gift the king promised "to confirm when Alan comes to my court."[33][34] It is unclear whether this implied the king doubted the existence or the authenticity of the monks' charter:[35] it certainly implies that Alan's attendance at court was to be expected. He also made considerable grants of land to Castle Acre Priory,[36] which lay on the boundary of his Norfolk honour of Mileham.[37]

However, his most important grants in Norfolk were to Sporle Priory, another Benedictine house subject to St Florent de Saumur, which he founded.[38] He gave to the monks of St Florent the church at Sporle, its tithes, a man's landholding, a ploughland in Sporle and another in Mileham, firewood and building timber, and pasture for sheep.[39] The Liber Albus of St Florent mentions that one of the monks present when Alan made the gift was Wihenoc, who initiated the action at Andover.[40] Sporle was later endowed with property in Norfolk villages, including Great and Little Palgrave, where the priory had the church,[19] Great Dunham, Hunstanton and Holme-next-the-Sea.[13]

Alan acquired Upton Magna, the manor in Shropshire on which Haughmond Abbey was later built, as part of the group of estates that had belonged to earlier sheriffs.[41] A note at the beginning of the abbey's cartulary dates the foundation to 1100 but attributes it to Alan's son, William Fitz Alan,[42] which is impossible, as he was not yet born.[43] The existence of a religious community at Haughmond is not definitely attested before a grant of a fishery to what was still a priory by William, around 1135.[44] While Eyton assumed that William was the founder, although at a later date than suggested by the introductory note on the cartulary, the Victoria County History account leaves open the possibility that a small semi-eremitic community existed earlier at Haughmond under Alan's protection, without leaving a written trace.[31]

Alan probably gave many small grants of land or property rights. He gave land at his manor of Stretton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire to Burton Abbey.[45] He granted the tithes from his demesne at Burton on Trent to the monks of Léhon in Brittany, where there was a priory subject to the Abbey of Marmoutier: this is known from its confirmation some decades later by his grandson, Alan fitz Jordan.[46] Alan fitz Jordan also confirmed his grandfather's grant to Marmoutier of property at Cuguen,[47] in Brittany, and confirmed or restored Alan fitz Flaad's gift of a mill at Burton to Sele Priory, a small Sussex monastery subordinate to St Florent de Saumur.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_fitz_Flaad 

NINETEEN 

HOUSE OF THE UNICORNS 

THE UNION OF CROWNS 

Scotland’s Royal House of Stewart arose from a marital union of the hereditary lines of Jesus and his brother James — springing from the Merovingians’ own source on the one hand, and from the Celtic Kings of Britain on the other. The Stewarts emerged, therefore, as a truly unique Grail dynasty and have long been known as the ‘House of Unicorns’. We have already seen that the ‘Horn’ of the Unicorn was equivalent to the ‘Blade’ in Grail lore, and both were represented by the male symbol A. Along with the Davidic Lion of Judah and the Franco-Judaic fleur-de-lys, the Desposynic Unicorn was incorporated in the Royal Arms of Scotland. The Unicorn was considered to correspond to the virile Jesus, and was related to the anointing (Messianic) imagery of Psalm (sacred song) 92:10. The mystic beast was among the foremost symbols of the Albigensian Cathars, who were so hideously persecuted by the Inquisition. In medieval legend the Unicorn was always associated with fertility and healing, and Renaissance tapestries portray his head in the lap of the Bride. This alludes to the ancient ritual text of the Sacred Marriage (the Hieros Gamos), ‘The king goes with lifted head to the holy lap,’’ as originally expressed in the poetic rite of old Sumerian Mesopotamia — the land of Noah and Abraham. The Cathars believed that only the Christine horn of the Unicorn could purify the false doctrines that flowed from the Roman Church, and in this regard the revered creature was often portrayed with his horn dipped into a stream or a fountain. Other depictions show the Unicorn trapped within an enclosed garden — confined, but very much alive. The seven tapestry panels of la Dame a la Licorne at the Cluny Museum in Paris were originally from medieval Lyon. The seven Flemish Hunt of the Unicorn panels in the cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, come from 16th-century Languedoc, and show the Unicorn being chased and persecuted. When captured, he is sacrificed, but is then seen alive and well in the garden of the Bride. This is a direct replication of the story of Jesus. The mythological symbolismy of the Unicorn was central to the so-called heresies of Provence that were so brutally condemned by the Church. It was by no chance that the fabulous beast of the Grail bloodline found his place as guardian of the Lion in the Arms of Scotland, along with the early Christian sign of male and female unity (A + V = X) — the well-known Saltire, popularly identified as the cross of St Andrew. When Robert II Stewart (grandson of Robert the Bruce) founded the Scottish Royal House in 1371, the succession was entailed on his heirs in the Scots Parliament. The Plantagenet Houses of York and Lancaster subsequently battled for dominion in England, but lost out to the Tudors. In France, the Valois dynasty fought constant wars against rival claimants, and were succeeded by the Bourbons. But through all of this the Stewarts maintained their uninterrupted dynastic position. Before the High Stewards became Kings of Scots, their family branches were well positioned in terms of noble status, and as time progressed they acquired titles in Lorne, Innermeath, Atholl, Lennox, Doune, Moray and elsewhere. By the late 16th century the name Stewart had become Stuart in the royal line, a change that occurred by way of French association through the Stewart Seigneurs d’Aubignie and Mary Queen of Scots’ first marriage to the Dauphin. Following the childless death of Elizabeth Tudor of England, the Scottish and English Crowns were united in 1603. James VI of Scots was the great-grandson of James IV, and Henry VIII's sister Margaret. He was therefore deemed to be Elizabeth's closest living relative, and was invited to succeed. In fact, England had a suitable heir to the throne in Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, by descent from Henry VII's daughter Mary. Nevertheless, although many were happy enough to recognize a legitimate parallel succession from Henry VII, others were far from content that the King of Scots had become King of England. They did not object to the crowns being united, but they would have preferred a reverse situation, so that an English monarch governed Scotland. As a result, one of history’s greatest political conspiracies was set against James and the Stuart kings. When James VI of Scots arrived in London to become also James I of England, he was confronted by two immediate problems. The first was related to religion. Both Scotland and England were established as Protestant nations, but James had experienced a Presbyterian upbringing whereas England was Anglican. The second difficulty was that the Westminster administration was wholly English, and Scots born before James’s 1603 accession were debarred from government office.

After many failed attempts to gain control of Scotland, the English Parliament had discovered a strategic route to Scottish possession — one that may well have been devised before James was invited to succeed. Once James was settled on the united thrones, a solution to the longstanding ambition was in place: (a) future Kings of Britain would remain based in London, thereby restricting Scottish influence even in the affairs of Scotland; (b) Westminster could eventually dissolve the traditional Scottish Three Estates Parliament; (c) at an appropriate time, the Stuarts could be discredited and deposed, and (d) a puppet monarch of Westminster’s own choosing could then replace the Scottish succession. The perceived outcome of this strategy would be Scotland’s overall subjection to English rule - an ambition which had prevailed since the Plantagenet days of Edward I. And that is precisely what happened from 1688 when King James VII (II) was usurped and sent into exile by Church and parliamentary conspirators. Earlier, in 1560, the austere Presbyterian Kirk (regulated by elders rather than bishops) had become the National Church of Scotland. South of the border, the Anglican Church had existed since Elizabeth I authorized the Thirty-Nine Articles of the English doctrine in 1563. So when the Stuarts succeeded as overall monarchs of Britain, they were expected to uphold two major Churches, each without offence to the other. It was an impossible task — particularly since the king was supposed to be Head of the Church of England. In order to achieve a compromise, the Stuarts founded the Scottish Episcopal Church, which introduced a like structure of Protestant bishops in parallel with the Anglican equivalent. But the kings then had a third Church to uphold, and this made things even more difficult. Over and above this, there was another complication. In addition to being Kings of Britain, the Stuarts were also Kings of Ireland (the Irish Free State was not established until 1921), and therefore had responsibilities towards the Irish people, who were traditionally Catholic. Elizabeth I had ruled without much parliamentary consultation, and had put the crown into considerable debt. King James was in consequence obliged to implement higher taxation. However, in approving this measure, Parliament insisted that he could not rule in the autocratic Elizabethan style. In fact they put forward a series of restrictions which left the King with hardly any individual powers at all. James responded, declaring that by Scots tradition he was not answerable to Parliament but to God and the nation. It was his duty, he maintained, to uphold Scotland’s Written Constitution on behalf of the people, and to take constitutional stands against Parliament and the Church if and when the need arose. But unlike Scotland, England had no Written Constitution (as is still the case), and the people had nothing to protect their rights and liberties. All that existed was a feudal tradition which vested the power of the land in the wealthy upper classes. Throughout the Stuart era, religious differences between rival factions of the Christian Church were very much to the fore. In enforcing the Acts of Uniformity in respect of the Book of Common Prayer, James V1 (I) upset the Catholics and prompted the Gunpowder Plot. Conversely, in introducing his Authorized Version of the Bible, he caused the Protestants to assert that he was siding with Rome. There was no way in which the Stuart king could satisfy the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians and the Catholics without being thoroughly tolerant of them all. The problem was that the Anglican Parliament did not react well to such toleration, especially when it was extended to include Jews as well.

When James’s son Charles I acceded to the throne, his immediate concern was the discriminatory nature of the Westminster Parliament. The ministers were so wrapped up in religious and territorial wrangling that they had forgotten all about managing the country. Charles therefore dissolved the troublesome Parliament in 1629 and instituted his own new administration. By so doing he gained considerable popularity; he also managed to balance the national budget for the first time in centuries. Within six years he was more favourably accepted than any monarch since Henry VII (1485- 1509) — but as the dogmatic Puritans rose to power, so Charles's reign collapsed. The high-minded doctrines of the Anglican bishops had become thoroughly disliked by large sectors of the community. Not surprisingly, the people were quick to follow instead their local Puritan preachers who denounced the episcopacy altogether. King Charles did all he could to salvage the Anglican reputation, but succeeded only in alienating marty potential supporters. During the ongoing struggle with Spain, Charles allied himself with France by marrying Henri IV’s daughter, Henrietta Maria, and this upset both the Anglican Church and the Puritans, for Henrietta Maria was a Catholic. CIVIL WAR After eleven years of self-sufficiency, Charles was obliged to recall his Parliament in 1640. This followed severe problems with the Scottish Kirk, whose nonepiscopal elders had been offended by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s attempt to enforce the Anglican Prayer Book in Presbyterian Scotland. At Westminster the Puritan ministers promptly impeached Archbishop Laud for treason, and he was subsequently beheaded along with King Charles’s deputy, Viscount Strafford. The Puritans then set about abolishing the King’s council of the Star Chamber, and drew up the ‘Grand Remonstrance’ —a list of complaints against the King himself. Having smoothed over the Scottish problem, Charles was then confronted by further troubles the following year in Ireland. There the Catholics were reacting violently against the presence of British Protestants who were being encouraged to migrate in their thousands to Ulster. King Charles endeavoured to raise an army to quell the insurgency, but Parliament refused him the finance, thinking that Charles might turn his army upon themselves. Then in 1642, when Charles tried to arrest five MPs for obstructive behaviour, the gates of London were locked firmly against him — and the result was civil war. In Nottingham the King mustered a force of Royalist Cavaliers, while Oliver Cromwell — an ambitious country MP—assumed command of the Parliamentary forces. His cavalry met the Royalists at Edgehill, but the battle ended indecisively. Unlike the colourful Cavaliers, the Westminster party were indeed puritanical, especially with their severely short haircuts which caused them to be dubbed ‘Roundheads’. Cromwell's breast-plated troopers were given the nickname ‘Ironsides’.’ Following Edgehill, the Roundheads established the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish Kirk: they promised to introduce Presbyterianism into England if the Kirk would supply additional soldiers. This, along with a fee of £30,000 a month (equivalent to around £2,000,000 a month in today’s terms), was sufficient to win the Kirk’s support —and it was as a direct result that Cromwell defeated the Royalists at Marston Moor in 1644. In the following year, Parliament's New Model Army defeated Charles again at Naseby. Only at this stage, however, did the Kirk’s soldiers discover the true nature of their fellow Puritans. They had previously seen them simply as other non-episcopal Protestants, akin to their own Presbyterian society, but now their eyes were opened. It was reported that the Roundheads slaughtered all the Irish women found in the Royalist camp after the Battle of Naseby, and they mutilated the English women with knives. They took the Scotsmen prisoners, gouged out their eyes, cut off their ears, and nailed down their tongues. In the South, people had supported the Puritan cause in large numbers, but now this seemingly temperate sect was seen in a new light as an army of fanatical persecutors — to rival the savage Catholic Inquisitors of the ‘Holy Office’. These same Puritan fanatics were soon destined to pursue their own erstwhile supporters with a vengeance, in their effort to root out witches and sorcerers! It was only a matter of time before King Charles was forced to surrender, and in 1646 he was handed into Parliamentary custody at Newark. Later the same year he began negotiations with the sorely embarrassed Presbyterian Kirk. The elders recognized that in siding with the Puritans they had actively assisted in the downfall of their own royal dynasty (unlike the Scots Episcopalians who had stayed loyal to the Crown). But it was too late to make amends, and although a Scots army was despatched against Cromwell, he defeated it at Preston in August 1648. Early in the following year, King Charles I was tried at Westminster Hall, and beheaded in Whitehall on 30 January 1649. The Puritan army thereafter swept through Ireland, killing thousands of innocent citizens — an atrocity for which the unfortunate English people as a whole were blamed. With no king to consider, Parliament established an interim period of ‘Commonwealth’, and in 1650 Cromwell defeated the late king’s son, Charles, Prince of Wales, at Dunbar. Irrespective of this, the Scots crowned Charles II at Scone on 1 January 1651, and he faced Cromwell's troops again at Worcester. He lost once more, however, but managed to escape to France. Some two years later, in 1653, Oliver Cromwell terminated both his Parliament and the Commonwealth. Appointing himself ‘Lord Protector’, he then ruled by military force alone, and his Protectorate was far more severe than any regime that had ever gone before. At his order, the Anglican Prayer Book was forbidden, along with any form of celebration at Christmas or Easter. Property was sequestrated, education was constrained, and freedom of speech was terminated. Adultery was punished by death, and single mothers were imprisoned. Sports and entertainment were pronounced blasphemous, inns were closed, meetings were prohibited, and punitive fines were imposed at will by the soldiers. Those who dared to pray at all prayed for ‘a speedy return to the protection of the Common Law’. When Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his despotic legacy fell to his son Richard. Fortunately, he was not possessed of his father’s ambition, with the result that it was not long before Charles II was invited back to his kingdoms. The ‘Restoration’ of Charles Stuart to the throne thus occurred in 1660, eleven years after the execution of his father. Charles proved to be a skilful and popular king. He reformed the Anglican Church, and maintained a society wherein all religious denominations were equally accepted. Yet despite these achievements, the Anglican politicians and clergy pursued their imperious course. No matter what the king thought, they had no intention of showing any forbearance towards other religious persuasions, particularly not to the Jews or the Catholics. Moreover, because Charles was married to the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, they insisted that he must have leanings toward the Church of Rome. Parliament therefore passed the restrictive 1673 and 1678 Test Acts, precluding anyone other than Anglicans from holding governmental or public office."

page 397-406

Bloodline of The Holy Grail by Laurence Gardiner

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zsH4O_ls0IgWEYXLXWCo7I3IUi32FJhq/view?usp=sharing

Hart met Martha Joan Patterson in 1982. They married on July 1, 1989, and had two children together: Oje Edward Hart (born March 5, 1992) and Athena Christie Hart (born September 23, 1995).[62][63]

On May 28, 2011, Hart was inducted into the Legends Pro Wrestling "Hall of Fame" by Jack Blaze in Wheeling, West Virginia at their "LPW Hart & Soul Tour" event. The award was accepted by his brother-in-law Jim Neidhart, who was also inducted that night.[citation needed]

Death

See also: Over the Edge (1999) § Owen Hart accident

On May 23, 1999, Hart fell to his death in Kansas City, Missouri, during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event.[64] Hart was in the process of being lowered via harness and grapple line into the ring from the rafters of Kemper Arena for a booked Intercontinental Championship match against The Godfather. In keeping with the Blazer's new "buffoonish superhero" character, he was to begin a dramatic entrance, being lowered to just above ring level, at which time he would act "entangled", then release himself from the safety harness and fall flat on his face for comedic effect—this necessitated the use of a quick release mechanism. It was an elaboration on a Blue Blazer stunt done previously on the Sunday Night Heat before Survivor Series in 1998.[60] Before being lowered into the ring, Hart fell 78 feet (24 m), landing chest-first on the top rope (approximately a foot from the nearest turnbuckle).[65]

Hart had performed the stunt a few times before. Hart's widow Martha has suggested that, by moving around to get comfortable with both the harness and his cape on, Hart unintentionally triggered an early release. Television viewers did not see the incident. During the fall, a pre-taped vignette was being shown on the pay-per-view broadcast as well as on the monitors in the darkened arena. Afterward, while Hart was being worked on by medical personnel inside the ring, the live event's broadcast showed only the audience. Meanwhile, WWF television announcer Jim Ross repeatedly told those watching live on pay-per-view that what had just transpired was not a wrestling angle or storyline and that Hart was hurt badly, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation.[66] Hart was transported to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. While several attempts to revive him were made, he died due to his injuries. The cause of death was later revealed to be internal bleeding from blunt force trauma. The impact severed his aorta, resulting in Hart bleeding to death just minutes later; he was 34 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Hart

The Domus Sanctae Marthae (Latin for Saint Martha's House; Italian: Casa Santa Marta) is a building adjacent to St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Completed in 1996, during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, it is named after Martha of Bethany, who was a sibling to Mary and Lazarus of Bethany. The building functions as a guest house for clergy having business with the Holy See, and as the temporary residence of members of the College of Cardinals while participating in a papal conclave to elect a new pope.

Pope Francis has lived in a suite in the building since his election in March 2013, declining to use the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Sanctae_Marthae 

Martha is a feminine given name (Latin from Ancient Greek Μάρθα (Mártha), from Aramaic מרתא (Mārtā) "the mistress" or "the lady", from מרה "mistress", feminine of מרי "master").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_(given_name)

Stewart is a Scottish surname, also used as a given name. It is possibly derived from the old English word "stigweard", a compound of "stig" meaning household, and "weard", a guardian (ward), or from the Gaelic Stiùbhart meaning steward. Alternative spellings are Stuart, Steward and Steuart. The surname Stewart has large concentrations in the United States (mainly in the Deep South, and the other southern states), United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East England, South West England, Cumbria, Lancashire, and Yorkshire), Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere that has large Scottish or Ulster Scots diaspora.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_(name)

"[148] 2. 1To speak in particular of those who are admitted to become coadjutors in temporal or external matters[3] (under the presupposition that they should not be more numerous than is necessary to aid the Society in occupations which the other members could not fulfill without detriment to the greater service of God [A]), 2th ey ou gh t to be men of good co n - science, peaceful, d ocile, lover s of vir tu e an d p er fect ion , in clin ed to devotion, 3edifying for those inside and outside the house, content with the lot of MARTHA in the Society, well-disposed towards its Institute, and eager to help it for the glory of God our Lord [B]."The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf 

"The Jesuits did indeed follow the Templar Stuarts to the Continent to back the Stuart cause - not because the Stuarts were Templars, but because they were Catholics. Charles Radcliffe, therefore, may well have developed a Jesuit Rite to conceal Templar activity. If so, the Rite seemed to be temporary, since the Stuarts were defeated in 1745."

Scarlet and the Beast by John Daniel

https://ia803001.us.archive.org/28/items/ScarletAndTheBeastJohnDaniel1995/Scarlet%20and%20the%20Beast,%20John%20Daniel%20(1995).pdf

Note 225.—"Jekson. This word is found in the French Cashiers of the high degrees. It is undoubtedly a corruption of Jacquesson, and this a mongrel word compounded of the French Jacques and the English son, and means the son of James, that is, James II. It refers to Charles Edward the Pretender, who was the son, of that abdicated and exiled monarch. It is a significant relic of the system attempted to be introduced by the adherents of the house of Stuart, and by which they expected to enlist Masonry as an instrument to effect the restoration of the Pretender to the throne of England. For this purpose they had altered the legend of the third degree, making it applicable to Charles II., who, being the son of Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I., was designated as 'the widow's son.* "

— Mackey's Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry,

Article Jekson.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aiRCKpDhEaeA0ZuG7vIfCjnPzNMpOzLm/view?usp=sharing

MISSIONS FROM THE SUPREME PONTIFF 

252 §1. To be truly Christian, our service to the Church must be anchored in fidelity to Christ, who makes all things new; to be proper to the Society, it must be done in union with the SUCCESSORS OF PETER[32] 

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms 

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Note 370.—"Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. The 32nd degree of the Ancient and Accepted rite, and for many years, or until the institution of the 33d degree, this was the highest degree, or ne plus ultra of Masonry. The body is styled a Consistory, and should be held in a building of two stories. The officers are, a Thrice Illustrious Commander, First and Second Lieutenants, a Minister of State, a Grand Chancellor, a Grand Treasurer, a Grand Secretary, and a Grand Captain of the Guard. In the East a throne, elevated on seven steps, which is the seat of the Thrice Illustrious Commander, who wears a robe of royal purple, and he and the Lieutenants, wear swords. The collar of this degree is black, lined with scarlet, and in the center, at the point, a double-headed eagle, of silver or gold, on a red Teutonic cross. The apron is of white satin, with a border of gold lace, one inch wide, lined with scarlet; on the flap is a double-headed eagle, on each side of which is the flag of the country in which the body is located, the flag of Prussia and the Beause- -ant of the Kadosh degree; on the apron is the camp of the Crusaders, , which is thus explained; it is composed of an enneagon, within which is ' inscribed a heptagon, within that a pentagon, and in the center an equilateral triangle, within which is a circle. Between the heptagon and pentagon are placed five standards, in the designs of whigjl are five letters, which form a particular word. The first standard is purple, on which is emblazoned the ark of the covenant, with a palm, tree on each side; the ark has the motto Laus Deo. The second is blue, on which is a lion, of gold, couchant, holding in his mouth a golden key, with a collar of the same metal on his neck, and on it is the device, Ad majorem Dei gloriam. The third is white, and displays a heart in flames, with two wings; it is surmounted by a crown of laurels. The fourth is green, and bears a double-headed black eagle, crowned, holding a sword in his right claw, and a bleeding heart in his left. The fifth bears a black ox. on a field of gold. On the sides of the enneagon are nine tents, with flags, representing the divisions of the Masonic army; on the angles are nine pinions, of the same color as the flag of the tent that precedes it. The hall of the Consistory is hung with black, strewed with tears of silver. The jewel is a double-headed white and black eagle, resting on a Teutonic cross, of gold, worn attached to the collar or ribbon. ^The members are called Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret. The moral of the degree teaches opposition to bigotry, superstition, and all the passions and vices which disgrace human nature."—Macoy's Encyclopaedia and Pictionary of Freemasonry, Article Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam or Ad majórem Dei glóriam, also rendered as the abbreviation AMDG, is the Latin motto of the Society of Jesus, an order of the Catholic Church. It means "For the greater glory of God."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_maiorem_Dei_gloriam

"It may be hard to tell at first glance, but not all popes dress exactly alike: there are different articles of clothing for different traditions and seasons. And sometimes a pope will inject their own personal style. Pope Francis, for example, prefers a simple iron cross and plain black shoes that are notably more understated than the red pair favored by his predecessor. We spoke with Father Edward Beck, a CNN contributor and Roman Catholic priest of the Passionist order, to find out more about the pope's wardrobe."

https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/living/gallery/pope-wardrobe/index.html

Note 378.—* 'Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. [Scotch Masonry.] —The fourteenth degree conferred in the Consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret, Scotch Masonry, and the thirty-second upon the catalogue of that system. The assembly is called a Sovereign Consistory. The historical allusions are to the origin of masonry in general, and embrace an explanation of the preceding degrees. The officers are a Sovereign Grand Commander, representing Frederick II,, of Prussia; two Illustrious Liutenant Grand Commanders, Minister of State, Grand Chancellor. Grand Treasurer, Grand Secretary, Grand Architect. Grand Standard Bearer, Grand Captain of the Guards, Grand Master of Ceremonies, Expert Brother, Sentinel and two Guards, The hangings are black, strewed with tears. The apron is white, lined and trimmed with red, displaying the tracingboard of this degree; the movable part has a double-headed eagle. Jewel. a Teutonic Cross. The tracing-board is complicated. The outer figure is a nonagon; within this a heptagon; within this a pentagon; within this an equilateral triangle, and within the last a circle. On the linos of the pentagon are five standards, U. G, N. E, T., being respectively, golden yellow, green, white, azure, and purple. The sides of the nonagon represent the divisions of the masonic army, with the letters I. N. 0. N X. I. L, A. S, Hour of departure, fifth hour after sunset,"—Morris's Masonic Dictionary, Article Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aiRCKpDhEaeA0ZuG7vIfCjnPzNMpOzLm/view?usp=sharing

Fourteenth Rule. Although there is much truth in the assertion that no one can save himself without being predestined and without having faith and grace; we must be very cautious in the manner of speaking and communicating with others about all these things.

The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YC_luOfFWl0Bm0BWkbANKZGC1kkmdHQf/view?usp=sharing

14We ought to act on the principle that everyone who lives under obedience should let himself be carried and directed by Divine Providence through the agency of the superior 15as if he were a lifeless body, which allows itself to be carried to any place and treated in any way; or an old man s staff, which serves at any place and for any purpose in which the one holding it in his hand wishes to employ it. 16For in this way the obedient man ought joyfully to employ himself in any task in which the superior desires to employ him in aid of the whole body of the religious order; 17and he ought to hold it certain that by so doing he conforms himself with the divine will more than by anything else he could do while following his own will and different judgment.[3]"

page 221

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

ON 27 SEPTEMBER 1540, THE SOCIETY OF JESUS RECEIVED PAPAL APPROVAL

https://www.jesuits.global/2021/09/26/on-27-september-1540-the-society-of-jesus-received-papal-approval/

The choice made by General Congregation 32 concerning the mission of the Society in today s world as the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement, must give new vigor to our formation, so that it may respond to the requirements of evangelization in a world that is often infected by atheism and injustices,[5] and may equip our members for entering into dialogue with people and meeting the cultural problems of our times.[6] 

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf 

Guy Fawkes Day – The Jesuit Treason and the Gunpowder Plot

A plan was hatched by a joint collaboration of the Pope and the Jesuits to blow up the House of Lords during the state opening of Parliament on 5th November 1605. Robert Catesby was the leader of a group of English Catholics who plotted to assassinate the protestant King James 1 in the failed gunpowder plot.

Guy Fawkes, a key member of the group was chosen to bomb the parliament owing to his experience as a soldier in the Spanish army. He smuggled 36 barrels of gun powder into a cellar directly below the Parliament which was enough to obliterate the entire building thereby killing all the key members of the state including the king and high ranking officials.

However, through Divine providence, an anonymous letter was sent to a Catholic called William Parker who was a member of the Parliament. The letter warned him to stay away from the opening of the Parliament. Alarmed by this, he brought this to the attention of King James who then ordered a search of the basement of Parliament. Guy Fawkes was found hiding in one of the cellars guarding a stash of gunpowder and explosives. After being tortured, Guy Fawkes revealed that this was a preplanned Jesuit led Catholic conspiracy to annihilate England’s Protestant government and replace it with a Catholic one.

https://www.secretsunlocked.org/bible/bible-history/guy-fawkes-day-the-jesuit-treason-and-the-gunpowder-plot

James I - Peace with Spain

On the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, many hoped that the atmosphere of religious tension would diminish. Her successor was James VI, King of Scotland. James was a Protestant like Elizabeth but he thought of himself as a peacemaker.

As the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, he was also expected to treat Catholics better than Elizabeth. Some Catholics even believed that he might stop their persecution, and allow them to worship freely. 

Under pressure

The King, however, was under pressure from many members of the House of Commons who were strongly anti-Catholic. He also became less sympathetic towards Catholics following the discovery of a series of minor Catholic plots.

The Bye Plot of 1603 was a conspiracy to kidnap the King and force him to repeal anti-Catholic legislation. The Main Plot was an alleged plan by Catholic nobles to remove the King and replace him with his cousin, the Catholic Arabella Stuart.

Catholic convert

Although she was a Protestant, James's wife, Anne of Denmark, converted to Catholicism. This was one of a number of factors that led many Catholics to hope for toleration under his rule.

With Elizabeth I and Philip II of Spain now dead, both countries were keen to conclude fifteen years of war and signed a peace treaty at the Somerset House Conference in London in 1604. 

Catholics hoped that the Spanish would press for toleration of English Catholics in the peace negotiations. In fact they failed to obtain any concessions at all.  

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/the-gunpowder-plot-of-1605/overview/background-to-the-gunpowder-plot/peacemaker---the-new-king

The Crowns of America 

So often one hears politicians quoting the British Constitution as if it actually exists by way of adocumentary privilege — but it does not. It is simply an accumulation of old customs and precedents concerning parliamentary sanctions, together with a number of specific laws defining certain aspects. Since Scotland's 1320 Declaration of Arbroath was nullified by England's Treaty of Union in 1707, the oldest Written Constitution now in force is that of the United States of America. It was adopted in 1787, ratified in 1788, and effected in 1789. In that same year began the French Revolution, which abolished feudalism and ‘absolute’ monarchy in France, thereby influencing politics in much of Europe. In close to 200 years since the Revolution, France and other European States (with Britain as a noticeable exception) have adopted Written Constitutions to protect the rights and liberties of individuals — but who champions these Constitutions on behalf of the people? A popular alternative to absolute monarchy or dictatorship has been found in Republicanism. The Republic of the United States was created primarily to free the emergent nation from the despotism of Britain’s House of Hanover. Yet its citizens tend still to be fascinated by the concept of monarchy. No matter how Republican the spirit, the need for a central symbol remains. Neither a flag nor a president can fulfil this unifying role, for by virtue of the ‘party system’ presidents are always politically motivated. Republicanism was devised on the principle of fraternal status, yet an ideally classless society can never exist in an environment that promotes displays of eminence and superiority by degrees of wealth and possession. For the most part, those responsible for the United States’ morally inspired Constitution were Rosicrucians and Freemasons, notable characters such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Charles Thompson. The last, who designed the Great Seal of the United States of America, was a member of Franklin’s American Philosophical Society — a counterpart of Britain’s Invisible College. The imagery of the Seal is directly related to alchemical tradition, inherited from the allegory of the ancient Egyptian Therapeutate. The eagle, the olive branch, the arrows, and the pentagrams are all occult symbols of opposites: good and evil, male and female, war and peace, darkness and light. On the reverse (as repeated on the dollar bill) is the truncated pyramid, indicating the loss of the Old Wisdom, severed and forced underground by the Church establishment. But above this are the rays of ever-hopeful light, incorporating the ‘all-seeing eye’, used as a symbol during the French Revolution. 

In establishing their Republic, the Americans could still not escape the ideal of a parallel monarchy — a central focus of non-political, patriotic attachment. George Washington was actually offered kingship, but declined because he had no immediately qualifying heritage. Instead he turned to the Royal House of Stuart. In November 1782 four Americans arrived at the San Clemente Palazzo in Florence, the residence of Charles III Stuart in exile. They were Mr Galloway of Maryland, two brothers named Sylvester from Pennsylvania, and Mr Fish, a lawyer from New York. They were taken to Charles Edward by his secretary, John Stewart. Also present was the Hon Charles Hervey-Townshend (later Britain’s ambassador to The Hague) and the Prince's future wife, Marguerite, Comtesse de Massillan. The interview — which revolved around the contemporary transatlantic dilemma — is doctimented in the US Senate archives and in the Manorwater Papers. Writers such as Sir Compton Mackenzie and Sir Charles Petrie have also described the occasion when Charles Edward Stuart was invited to become ‘King of the Americans’. Some years earlier, Charles had been similarly approached by the men of Boston, but once the War of Independence was over George Washington sent his own envoys. It would have been a great irony for the House of Hanover to lose the North American colonies to the Stuarts. But Charles declined the offer for a number of reasons, not the least of which was his lack of a legitimate male heir at the time. He knew that without a due successor the United States could easily fall to Hanover again at his death, thereby defeating the whole Independence effort. Since those days, many other radical events have taken place: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, two major World Wars, and a host of changes as countries have swapped one style of government for another. Meanwhile, civil and international disputes continue just as they did in the Middle Ages. They are motivated by trade, politics, religion, and whatever other banners are flown to justify the constant struggle for territorial and economic control. The Holy Roman Empire has disappeared, the German Reichs have failed, and the British Empire has collapsed. The Russian Empire fell to Communism, which has itself been disgraced and crumbled to ruin, while Capitalism teeters on the very brink of acceptability. With the Cold War now ended, America faces a new threat to her superpower status from the Pacific countries. In the meantime, the nations of Europe band together in what was once a seemingly well conceived economic community, but which is already suffering from the same pressures of individual custom and national sovereignty that beset the Holy Roman Empire. Whether nations are governed by military-style regimes or elected parliaments, by autocrats or democrats, and whether formally described as monarchist, socialist or republican, the net product is always the same: the few control the fate of the many. In situations of dictatorship this is a natural experience — but it should not be the case in a democratic institution based on the principle of majority vote. True democracy is government by the people for the people, in either direct or representative form, ignoring class distinctions and tolerating minority views. The American Constitution sets out an ideal for this form of democracy ... but, in line with other nations, there is always a large sector of the community that is not represented by the party in power. Because presidents and prime ministers are politically tied, and because political parties take their respective turns at individual helms, the inevitable result is a lack of continuity for the nations concerned. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but there is no reliable ongoing institution to champion the civil rights and liberties of people in such conditions of ever-changing leadership. Britain does, at least, retain a monarchy, but it is a politically constrained monarchy, and as such is ineffectual in performing its role as guardian of the nation. The United States, unlike Britain, has a Written Constitution — but has no one with the power to uphold its principles against successive governments who determinedly pursue their own politically vested interests. Is there an answer to the anomaly — an answer that could bring not just a ray of hope but a shining light for the future? There certainly is, but its energy relies on those in governmental service appreciating their roles as ‘representatives’ of society rather than presuming to stand at the head of society. Alongside the political administration, an appointed Constitutional champion would be empowered to keep check on any potential disparities and infringements of the Constitution that might occur. This can be achieved in the manner first envisaged by George Washington and the American Fathers. Their original plan was for a democratic Parliament combined with a working Constitutional Monarchy bound not to Parliament or the Church but to the people and their Written Constitution. In such an environment, sovereignty would ultimately rest with the people, while the monarch (as an operative Guardian of the Realm) would pledge an ‘Oath of Fealty to the Nation’ — not the reverse, as in Britain’s case, whereby the nation pays homage to the sovereignty of Parliament and the monarchy. The unfulfilled ambition of the American Fathers was that government ministers should be elected by the majority vote of the people, but that their actions be directed within the boundaries of the Constitution. Because that Constitution belongs to the people, its champion — as George Washington perceived — should be a monarch whose obligation is not to politics or religion but to the sovereign nation. Through the natural system of heredity (being born and bred to the task), such a Constitutional guardian would provide an ‘ongoing continuity’ of public representation through successive governments. In this regard both monarchs and ministers would be servants of the Constitution on behalf of the Community of the Realm. Such a concept of moral government lies at the very heart of the Grail Code, and it remains within the bounds of possibility for every civilized Nation State. A leading British politician recently claimed that it was not his job to be popular! Not so—a popular minister is a trusted minister, and holding a deserved electoral trust facilitates the democratic process. No minister can honestly expound an ideal of equality in society when that minister is deemed to possess some form of prior lordship over society. Class structure is always decided from above, never from below. It is therefore for those on self-made pedestals to be seen to kick them aside in the interests of harmony and unity. Jesus was not in the least humbled when he washed his Apostles’ feet; he was raised to the realm of a true Grail King — the realm of equality and princely service. This is the eternal ‘Precept of the Sangréal’, and it is expressed in Grail lore with the utmost clarity: only by asking ‘Whom does the Grail serve?’ will the wound of the Fisher King be healed, and the Wasteland returned to fertility.

pages 438-443 "The Sangreal Today"

Bloodline of the Holy Grail by Laurence Gardner

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zsH4O_ls0IgWEYXLXWCo7I3IUi32FJhq/view?usp=sharing

Protocol 15: When the King of Israel sets upon his sacred head the crown offered him by Europe he will become patriarch of the world.

Twelve royal families in Europe today have Grail blood flowing through their veins. Two of them carry the title of "King of Jerusalem:" Otto von Habsburg, Pretender to the Austrian throne, and Juan Carlos, King of Spain.

Scarlet and the Beast

by John Daniel 

https://ia803001.us.archive.org/28/items/ScarletAndTheBeastJohnDaniel1995/Scarlet%20and%20the%20Beast,%20John%20Daniel%20(1995).pdf

We have seen that Pope Francis admits he still "thinks like a Jesuit." Well, fellow Jesuit, Robert Blair Kaiser (in his book Inside the Jesuits) tell us that Francis not only thinks like a Jesuit, but that his actions are due to his "Jesuit DNA". According to a book review  by the Jesuit journal America, Kaiser's book probes "into what it means to think like a Jesuit in the age of Francis. He argues as the outset that Francis "has been driven by his Jesuit DNA to make changes in the Church that have been UP TO NOW UNTHINKABLE."

In a direct reference to Francis' comments that he still 'thinks like a Jesuit' and still "feel" himself a Jesuit, Robert Blair Kaiser in his book Inside the Jesuits contends that the above statement of Francis is most revealing about where this Jesuit Pope is taking the Catholic Church." page 84

"But the inquiring reader might ask, "If there is indeed such a thing, even metaphorically, as 'Jesuit DNA,' then how would we account for the vast number of 'genetic mutations' that one finds in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)? By 'genetic mutations' I refer to the seemingly maverick and self-willed Jesuits that seem to mutiny from time to time.

The answer is simple. In giving these eight Jesuit profiles, Kaiser not only seeks to demonstrate that there is such a thing as metaphorical "Jesuit DNA," but also that Jesuits can very versatile, and that they are required to be that way in order to act their part in virtually any field of action that they may find themselves, WHETHER LEFT-WING social activist, OR CONSERVATIVE RIGHT demagogue, 'President'. In other words, Kaiser shows that the Jesuits are trained to be "all things to all men," since the "end justifies the means." Hence, the Jesuit will play any fiddle that his superiors demand or his role requires. He can play both the fool or the wise statesman-like role." pages 88-89

"To more fully appreciate the practical evils of the Jesuit DNA we must look to history. The most evil socialist movement of the twentieth century, that of Adolf Hitler, was inspired by Jesuit principles. Here is what Hitler said of the influence of the Jesuits on his Nazi Party (a radical communist movement also known as fascism):

"I have learnt most of all from the Jesuit Order... So far, there has been nothing more imposing on earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. A good part of that organization I have transported DIRECT TO MY OWN PARTY... I will tell you a secret. I am founding an Order... In Himmler I see OUR IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA!"

Walther Friedrich Schellenberg (1910-1952), the German SS-Brigadefuhrer who rose through the ranks of Hitler's SS to become the head of foreign intelligence wrote: "The SS had been organized by Himmler ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE JESUIT ORDER. The rules of service and SPIRITUAL EXERCISES PRESCRIBED BY IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA constituted a model which Himmler strove CAREFULLY TO COPY. Absolute obedience was the supreme rule; every order had to be executed without comment."

"Exploring Francis' Jesuit DNA"

Pope Francis Lord of the World

by P.D. Stuart 

23andMe Holding Co. is an American personal genomics and biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, California.[1][2] It is best known for providing a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a saliva sample that is laboratory analysed, using single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping,[3] to generate reports relating to the customer's ancestry and genetic predispositions to health-related topics. The company's name is derived from the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a diploid human cell.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe

The Robertians (sometimes called the Robertines in modern scholarship) are the proposed Frankish family which was ancestral to the Capetian dynasty, and thus to the royal families of France and of many other countries (currently Spain and Luxembourg). The Capetians appear first in the records as powerful nobles serving under the Carolingian dynasty of Charlemagne in West Francia, which later became France. As their power increased, they came into conflict with the older royal family and attained the crown several times before the eventual start of the continuous rule of the descendants of Hugh Capet (ruled 987–996).

Hugh's paternal ancestral family, the Robertians, appear in documents that trace the family back to his great-grandfather Robert the Strong (d. 866). His origins remain unclear, but medieval records hint at an origin in East Francia, in present-day Germany, an area then still also ruled by the Carolingians. In particular, Regino of Prüm (died 915) states that Robert the Strong's son Odo was said to be a relative (nepos) of a Count Meingaud, count of an area near Worms, who died in 892, and there are indications that Maingaud's family used the names Robert and Odo.

Modern proposals about their ancestry further back are based on the idea that there was one family which frequently named its sons Robert, including Robert III of Worms (800–834), Robert the Strong (d. 866), and Robert I of France (866–923). For example, one proposed ancestor is Robert of Hesbaye (c. 800), about whom there are almost no records.

The Robertian family figured prominently amongst the Carolingian nobility and married into this royal family. Eventually, the Robertians themselves produced Frankish kings such as the brothers Odo (reigned 888–898) and Robert I (r. 922–923), then Hugh Capet (r. 987–996), who ruled from his seat in Paris as the first Capetian king of France.

Although Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223) was officially the last monarch of France with the title "King of the Franks" (rex Francorum) and the first to style himself "King of France" (roi de France), in (systematic application of) historiography, Hugh Capet holds this distinction. He founded the Capetians, the royal dynasty that ruled France until the revolution of the Second French Republic in 1848—save during the interregnum of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Members of the family still reign in Europe today : both King Felipe VI of Spain and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg descend from this family through the Bourbon cadet branch of the dynasty.

Origin

The oldest known Robertians probably originated in the county of Hesbaye, around Tongeren in modern-day Belgium. The first certain ancestor is Robert the Strong count of Paris,[1] probably the son of Robert III of Worms, grandson of Robert of Hesbaye, and nephew of Ermengarde of Hesbaye, who was the daughter of Ingram, and wife of Louis the Pious. Other related family includes Cancor, founder of the Lorsch Abbey, his sister Landrada and her son Saint Chrodogang, archbishop of Metz.

History

Robert the Strong

The sons of Robert the Strong were Odo and Robert, who were both king of Western Francia and ruled during the Carolingian era. His daughter Richildis married a count of Troyes. The family became Counts of Paris under Odo and "Dukes of the Franks" under Robert, possessing large parts of the ancient Neustria. Although quarrels continued between Robert's son Hugh the Great and Louis IV of France, they were mended upon the ascension of Lothair I of France (954–986). Lothair greatly expanded the Robertian dominions when he granted Hugh Aquitaine as well as much of Burgundy,[2] both rich and influential territories, arguably two of the richest in France.

The Carolingian dynasty ceased to rule France upon the death of Louis V (d. 987). After the death of Louis, the son of Hugh the Great, Hugh Capet was chosen as king of the Franks, nominally the last ruler of West Francia. Given the resurgence of the Holy Roman Empire title and dignities in the West Francian kingdom, Europe was later believed to have entered a new age, so Hugh came to be known in historiography as the first king of France, as western civilization was perceived to have entered the High Middle Ages period. Hugh was crowned at Noyon on July 3, 987 with the full support of Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. With Hugh's coronation, a new era began for France, and his descendants came to be named, after him, the Capetians. They ruled France as the Capetians, Valois, and Bourbons until the French Revolution. They returned after 1815 and ruled until Louis Philippe was deposed in 1848.

However, they have continued to rule Spain, with two republican interruptions, through the Bourbon Dynasty right down to the current king Felipe VI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertians 

When were the Jesuits restored?

August 7, 1814

Pressured by the royal courts of Portugal, France and Spain, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society, causing Jesuits throughout the world to renounce their vows and go into exile. Pope Pius VII, a Benedictine, restored the Society on August 7, 1814."

https://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/online-resources/video-resources/jesuit-values-videos/suppression-of-the-society-of-jesus

The Capetian dynasty (/kəˈpiːʃən/; French: Capétiens), also known as the House of France, is a dynasty of Frankish origin, and a branch of the Robertians. It is among the largest and oldest royal houses in Europe and the world, and consists of Hugh Capet, the founder of the dynasty, and his male-line descendants, who ruled in France without interruption from 987 to 1792, and again from 1814 to 1848. The senior line ruled in France as the House of Capet from the election of Hugh Capet in 987 until the death of Charles IV in 1328. That line was succeeded by cadet branches, the Houses of Valois and then Bourbon, which ruled without interruption until the French Revolution abolished the monarchy in 1792. The Bourbons were restored in 1814 in the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat, but had to vacate the throne again in 1830 in favor of the last Capetian monarch of France, Louis Philippe I, who belonged to the House of Orléans. Cadet branches of the Capetian House of Bourbon house are still ruling over Spain and Luxembourg."

Name origins and usage

The name of the dynasty derives from its founder, Hugh, who was known as "Hugh Capet".[4] The meaning of "Capet" (a nickname rather than a surname of the modern sort) is unknown. While folk etymology identifies it with "cape", other suggestions indicate it might be connected to the Latin word caput ("head"), and explain it as meaning "chief" or "head".[citation needed]

Historians in the 19th century (see House of France) came to apply the name "Capetian" to both the ruling house of France and to the wider-spread male-line descendants of Hugh Capet. It was not a contemporary practice. The name "Capet" has also been used as a surname for French royalty, particularly but not exclusively those of the House of Capet. One notable use was during the French Revolution, when the dethroned King Louis XVI (a member of the House of Bourbon and a direct male-line descendant of Hugh Capet) and Queen Marie Antoinette (a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine) were referred to as "Louis and Antoinette Capet" (the queen being addressed as "the Widow Capet" after the execution of her husband).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capetian_dynasty 

St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome is considered the mother church of all the Catholic churches in the Western world; inscribed on the church facade for all to see are the Latin words “omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et CAPUT,” meaning, “The mother and HEAD of all the churches of the city and of the world.”

https://www.simplycatholic.com/st-john-lateran-basilica/

In the second prelude, for Chief- Gene ral read highest Leader, and for captain read leader. For the first Leader the Spanish Autograph has Captain General, and for the second (leader), caudillo ; the former title expressing, as Father Rothaan remarks, a Commander-in-Chief of lawful warfare, the latter designating rather the leader of a faction, and being often used in a bad sense, as of a captain of robbers or malefactors. In order to express in some measure this distinction, he has made use of the terms Dux Generalis (LeaderGeneral) and CAPUT (HEAD) in his literal Version. The Common Version makes no distinction ; and hence, in order to render this Version with strict faithfulness, must read, both here and in the next two paragraphs, leader instead of captain, although (as the reader will already have perceived) this latter is the term which erceived) this latter is the term which corresponds the more nearly with the Spanish original. In all three places Father Rothaan has caput : in the third prelude he has again Dux instead of Imperator : see above. In the first point, in order to be strictly with the Common Version, readier?/ and smoky chair in stead of chair offire and smoke ; although this latter is what the Autograph has, a certain great chair of fire and smoke, " in which", observes Father Rothaan, there is no solidity, no true glory, but mere agitation and perpetual disturbance joined with thick darkness"; And this image", he adds, " exhibits the evil spirit such as he is, but not such as he offers himself to men's minds."

The Spiritual Exercises of Loyola

https://ia801306.us.archive.org/8/items/a588350800loyouoft/a588350800loyouoft.pdf 

Head:

1. See Illness, mental

2. The superior general, head of the Society [666]"

page 463

The CONstitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Revelation 13:18

New International Version

"18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[a] That number is 666."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2013%3A18&version=NIV  

Lothair I (Dutch and Medieval Latin: Lotharius; German: Lothar; French: Lothaire; Italian: Lotario; 795 – 29 September 855) was a 9th-century Carolingian emperor (817–855, with his father until 840) and king of Italy (818–855) and Middle Francia (843–855).

Lothair I was the eldest son of the Carolingian emperor Louis I and his wife Ermengarde of Hesbaye,[1] daughter of Ingerman the duke of Hesbaye. On several occasions, Lothair led his full-brothers Pepin I of Aquitaine and Louis the German in revolt against their father to protest against attempts to make their half-brother Charles the Bald a co-heir to the Frankish domains. Upon the father's death, Charles and Louis joined forces against Lothair in a three-year civil war (840–843). The struggles between the brothers led directly to the breakup of the Frankish Empire assembled by their grandfather Charlemagne, and laid the foundation for the development of modern France and Germany.[2]

Early life and reign

Kingdom of Bavaria

Lothair was born in 795, to Louis the Pious and Ermengarde of Hesbaye. His father was the son of the reigning Emperor, Charlemagne. Little is known of Lothair's early life, which was probably passed at the court of his grandfather Charlemagne. In 814, the elderly emperor died, and left his sole surviving legitimate son Louis the Pious as successor to his vast empire. The next year, Lothair would be sent to govern Bavaria for his father, the new emperor.[1] In 817, Louis the Pious[1] drew up his Ordinatio Imperii.[3] In this, Louis designated Lothair as his principal heir and ordered that Lothair would be the overlord of Louis' younger sons Pippin of Aquitaine (who was 20) and Louis the German (who was 13), as well as his nephew (Lothair's cousin) Bernard of Italy. Lothair would also inherit their lands if they were to die childless. Lothair, aged 22, was then crowned joint emperor by his father at Aachen.[1] At the same time, Aquitaine and Bavaria were granted to his brothers Pippin and Louis, respectively, as subsidiary kingdoms.[3] Following the death of Bernard, brought on by his plotting against and blinding by Louis the Pious, Lothair also received the Kingdom of Italy.[citation needed] In 821, Lothair married Ermengarde (d. 851), daughter of Hugh the Count of Tours.[1]

In 822, he assumed the government of Italy, and at Easter, 5 April 823, he was crowned emperor again by Pope Paschal I, this time at Rome. In November 824, Lothair promulgated a statute, the Constitutio Romana, concerning the relations of pope and emperor, which reserved the supreme power to the secular potentate, and he afterwards issued various ordinances for the good government of Italy.[1]

On Lothair's return to his father's court, his stepmother Judith won his consent to her plan for securing a kingdom for her son Charles, a scheme which was carried out in 829,[1] when the young prince was given Alemannia as king.[citation needed] Lothair, however, soon changed his attitude and spent the succeeding decade in constant strife over the division of the Empire with his father. He was alternately master of the Empire, and banished and confined to Italy, at one time taking up arms in alliance with his brothers and at another fighting against them, whilst the bounds of his appointed kingdom were in turn extended and reduced.[1][4]

Division of the kingdom

The first rebellion began in 830. All three brothers fought their father, whom they deposed. In 831, their father was reinstated and he deprived Lothair of his imperial title and gave Italy to Charles. The second rebellion was instigated by Angilbert II, Archbishop of Milan in 833, and again Louis was deposed in 834. Lothair, through the loyalty of the Lombards and later reconciliations, retained Italy and the imperial position through all remaining divisions of the Empire by his father.[4][5]

When Louis the Pious was dying in 840, he sent the imperial insignia to Lothair, who, disregarding the various partitions, claimed the whole of the Empire. He was 45 years old when his father died. Negotiations with his brother Louis the German and his half-brother Charles, both of whom resisted this claim, were followed by an alliance of the younger brothers against Lothair.[2] A decisive battle was fought at Fontenay-en-Puisaye on 25 June 841, when, in spite of his[1] and his allied nephew Pepin II of Aquitaine's[citation needed] personal gallantry, Lothair was defeated and fled to Aachen. With fresh troops he began a war of plunder, but the forces of his brothers were too strong, and taking with him such treasure as he could collect, he abandoned his capital to them.[1][clarification needed] He met with the leaders of the Stellinga in Speyer and promised them his support in return for theirs, but Louis and then the native Saxon nobility put down the Stellinga in the next years.[citation needed]

Peace negotiations began, and in June 842 the brothers met on an island in the Saône. They agreed to an arrangement which developed, after much difficulty and delay, into the Treaty of Verdun, signed in August 843. By this, Lothair received the imperial title as well as northern Italy and a long stretch of territory from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, essentially along the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhône; this territory includes the regions Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, and Provence. He soon ceded Italy to his eldest son, Louis, and remained in his new kingdom, engaging in alternate quarrels and reconciliations with his brothers and in futile efforts to defend his lands from the attacks of the Northmen (as Vikings were known in Frankish writings) and the Saracens (as those loyal to the various Fatimids, Umayyads and Abbasides are known in Frankish writings).[1][5]

In 845 the count of Arles, Fulcrad, led a rebellion in Provence. The emperor put it down and the count joined him in an expedition against the Saracens in Italy in 846.

Death and aftermath

In 855 he became seriously ill, and despairing of recovery renounced the throne, divided his lands among his three sons, and on 23 September entered the monastery of Prüm, where he died six days later. He was buried at Prüm, where his remains were found in 1860.[1] It was at Prüm that Lothair was most commemorated.[6]

The same year, Lothair's kingdom was divided between his three sons[1] in a deal called the Treaty of Prüm: the eldest, Louis II, received Italy and the title of emperor; the second, Lothair II, received Lotharingia; the youngest, Charles, received Provence.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothair_I 

The name Lothair traces its origins to German - Old High German and is derived from two elements: loth, meaning famous, and hari, meaning army. Thus, Lothair directly translates to famous army. This name gained prevalence during the 9th and 10th centuries in the Frankish Empire, which encompassed vast territories of modern-day Germany, France, and Italy.

In history, the name Lothair is notably associated with several prominent figures. The most well-known bearer of this name is Lothair I, who was crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in the year 817. Lothair I was a key figure in the Carolingian dynasty and played a vital role in shaping the political landscape of medieval Europe. His reign marked significant accomplishments and challenges, ultimately cementing his position in history.

In modern-day usage, the name Lothair has become less common but still maintains some presence. It is occasionally bestowed upon children as a nod to their Germanic or medieval heritage, giving them a sense of historical and unique identity. Moreover, the name may occasionally appear in works of literature, films, or other forms of popular culture to evoke a sense of nobility or historicity. Overall, the name Lothair encapsulates the fascinating historical connections of the Frankish Empire and its influential figures.

https://www.ancestry.com/first-name-meaning/lothair

The name Luther traces its origins back to English, where it emerged from the word leod meaning people and here meaning army. This etymology gives rise to the meaning Army of the People, making Luther a name that embodies strength and collective action. Over time, Luther has appeared in various historical contexts, leaving its mark on different cultures and regions around the world.

In history, the name Luther gained prominence with the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther, an influential German theologian and composer, challenged the practices of the Catholic Church and sparked a movement that would reshape the religious and social landscape of Europe. Martin Luther's prolific writings and his translation of the Bible into German played a significant role in spreading Protestantism. His name became synonymous with the reformist movement, and Lutheranism was established as a distinct Christian denomination.

In modern-day usage, the name Luther continues to resonate with historical significance and strength. It is often chosen by parents who desire a name that exudes resilience, leadership, and a connection to the past. The name Luther can be found worldwide, and its usage extends beyond German-speaking countries. As a testament to its enduring appeal, Luther has also found its way into popular culture. Whether it be in literature, film, or music, the name Luther maintains its authoritative presence, leaving an indelible impression on those who hear or bear it.

https://www.ancestry.com/first-name-meaning/luther 

The Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism, the Great Occidental Schism, or the Schism of 1378 (Latin: Magnum schisma occidentale, Ecclesiae occidentalis schisma), was a split within the Catholic Church lasting from 1378 to 1417 in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon both claimed to be the true pope, and were joined by a third line of Pisan claimants in 1409. The schism was driven by personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon Papacy being closely associated with the French monarchy.

The papacy had resided in Avignon since 1309, but Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. The Catholic Church split in 1378 after Gregory XI's death and Urban VI's election. A group of French cardinals declared his election invalid and elected Clement VII as pope. After several attempts at reconciliation, the Council of Pisa (1409) declared that both rivals were illegitimate and elected a third purported pope. The schism was finally resolved when the Pisan claimant Antipope John XXIII called the Council of Constance (1414–1418). The Council arranged the renunciation of both Roman pope Gregory XII and Pisan antipope John XXIII. The Avignon antipope Benedict XIII was excommunicated, while Pope Martin V was elected and reigned from Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism 

The Diet of Worms of 1521 (German: Reichstag zu Worms [ˈʁaɪçstaːk tsuː ˈvɔʁms]) was an imperial diet (a formal deliberative assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire called by Emperor Charles V and conducted in the Imperial Free City of Worms. Martin Luther was summoned to the diet in order to renounce or reaffirm his views in response to a Papal bull of Pope Leo X. In answer to questioning, he defended these views and refused to recant them. At the end of the diet, the Emperor issued the Edict of Worms (Wormser Edikt), a decree which condemned Luther as "a notorious heretic" and banned citizens of the Empire from propagating his ideas. Although the Protestant Reformation is usually considered to have begun in 1517, the edict signals the first overt schism.

The diet was conducted from 28 January to 25 May 1521 at the Bischofshof palace in Worms, with the Emperor presiding.[1] Other imperial diets took place at Worms in the years 829, 926, 1076, 1122, 1495, and 1545, but unless plainly qualified, the term "Diet of Worms" usually refers to the assembly of 1521.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of_Worms 

416 Finally, those means that are proposed by our holy father Saint Ignatius in Part X of the Constitutions for the preservation and development not only of the body or exterior of the Society but also of its spirit, and for the attainment of the objective it seeks, which is to aid souls to reach their ultimate and supernatural end, [10] are to be observed eagerly and diligently by all, with a truly personal sense of responsibility for its increase and development, for the praise and service of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and the help of souls. [11]

L. D. S. "

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

Rosicrucianism is a theosophy advanced by an invisible order of spiritual knights who in spreading Christian Hermeticism, Kabbalah,

and Gnosis seek to enliven and to preserve the memory of Divine

Wisdom, understood as a feminine flame of love called SOFIA or

Shekhinah, exoterically given as a fresh unfolded rose, yet, more akin to the BLUE FIRE of alchemy, the blue virgin. Rosicrucians have no organisation and there are no recognizable Rosicrucian individuals, but the order makes its presence known by leaving behind engrammatic writings in the genre of Hermetic-Platonic Christianity.

The historical roots of Hermeticism is to be located in Ancient

Egypt. Long before the rise of Christianity, Hermetic texts were structured around the belief that organisms contain sparks of a Divine mind unto which they each strive to attend. Things easily transform into others, thereby generating certain cyclical patterns, cycles that periodically renew themselves on a cosmic scale. These transformations of life and death were enacted in the Hermetic Mysteries in Ancient Egypt through the gods Isis, Horus, and Osiris. In the Alexandrian period these myths were reshaped into Hermetic discourses on the transformations of the self with Thot, the scribal god. These discourses were introduced in the west in 1474 when Marsilio Ficino translated the Hermetic Pimander from the Greek. The story of Christian Rosencreutz can be seen as a new version of these mysteries, specifically tempered by German Paracelsian philosophy on the Lion of the darkest night, a biblical icon for how the higher self lies slumbering in consciousness." 

Rose Cross Over The Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism In Northern Europe

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vWI_uTVg5lzNCDm16itq-PLSavozNR_F/view?usp=sharing

Rosa Jesuitica, oder Jesuitische Rottgesellen, das ist, Eine Frag ob die Zween Orden, der ganandten Ritter von der Neerscharen Jesu, und der Rosen-Creuzer ein einiger Ordensen: per J. P. D. a S. Jesuitarum Protectorum. Prague, 1620.” (4to).

This is a truly curious tract upon the “relations of the Jesuits and the Rosicrucians."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dT28PyPUPfqDfC0iVg7nGFsle8vYBXLf/view?usp=sharing

THE CONFLICT: PRIORY OF SION VERSUS KNIGHTS TEMPLAR 

Secret societies by virtue of their very secrecy have often kept historians at bay, and the historians, reluctant to confess their ignorance, prefer to diminish the consequence of their subject. Freemasonry.. is of vital importance to any social, psychological, cultural or political history of eighteenth-century Europe, and even to the founding of the United States; but most history books don't even mention it. It is almost as if an implicit policy obtained: If something cannot be exhaustively documented, it must be irrelevant and thereby not worth discussing I at all. Investigators of the Holy Grail' Freemasonry, French and English, as we know it today, finds its loots in two organizations of the Middle Ages - the Priory of Sion and the Order of the Knights Templar. What follows is the fascinating, if sometimes complicated and obscure history, of how these two modern, anti-Christian secular secret societies - English and French Freemasonry - developed from two groups that themselves had roots in the occult. We will see how the Priory of Sion desired to rule the world from the throne of David in Jerusalem through its counterfeit Jewish Merovingian bloodline, and how its own creation, the Knights Templar, moved beyond its role as police and protector of Sion to financial masters of medieval Europe. We will trace the alliance of Sion and the Templars, their dispute over the discovery of Solomon's treasures, and the terrible intrigues which followed that led to the undoing of the Templars in their struggle over wealth, power, and politics. We will reveal the beliefs of these two groups: that Jesus fathered children by Mary Magdalene; that a spiritual god of good (Satan) battles a material god of evil; that Lucifer, not Jesus, deserves worship; that a "Spear of Destiny" (later sought and possessed by Hitler) allows the holder to rule the world. We will also present data about the whereabouts of King Solomon's wealth, the plan to one day return it to Jerusalem, and reveal that the ultimate goal of these two groups is world government, and that their descendants, English and French Freemasonry, desire the same. The Historical Trail: The Priory of Sion and the Holy Grail In 1982 and 1986 three secular revisionist authors, Michael Baigent~ Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln published Holy Blood, Holy Grail followed by The Messianic Legacy. These two books dramatically reveal a secret order structured in the manner of Freemasonry, and founded in Europe twelve centuries before the Grand Lodge was officially formed in 1717. This order protects both the Holy Grail and the Merovingian bloodline, which bloodline carried Mystery Babylon into the Catholic Church in 496 A.D. 56 The Holy Grail, of course, is the so-called cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper. The Merovingians, owners of the Holy Grail, teach that Jesus fathered children by Mary Magdalene. The Merovingians claim to be the offspring of that "holy" union, and as such, assert they are Jews of the Davidic line. 

In Revelation 17:3-5 the apostle John describes a vision, which Rev. J. R. Church in Guardians of the Grail believes is fulfilled in the Grail legend. The Whore of Babylon is holding in her hand a golden cup full of blasphemy. Church believes the cup is the blasphemous Holy Grail Another element of the Grail legend is the spear supposed to have pierced the side of Jesus, also known as the Spear of Longinus or the Spear of Destiny. Whoever possesses this spear, so the legend goes, will rule the world. The Merovingians, whose descendants are the Habsburg pretenders to the Austrian throne today, are in possession of the spear. It is on display in the Habsburg museum in Vienna, Austria~ No one, however, knows the location of the Holy Grail. At least no one is telling. Although heretical, this secret society should not be discounted, for it is alive and well today. In fact, in 1956, an Order calling itself the Prieure de Sion, or Priory of Sion, registered itself publicly for the first time with the French government. (Sion is French for Zion.) It is from this Order that the legend of the Holy Grail originated five centuries after Christ's death. Rev. Church remarks of this organization: This mysterious group is presently made up of over 9,000 men, including Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and Moslems. The members of this secret sect should be considered unfaithful to their respective beliefs, for in reality they are neither Christian nor Catholic, they are neither Jew nor Moslem. Their doctrine sidesteps the basic tenets of those beliefs and replaces them with the teachings of their greatest prophet - whom they believe to be Buddha.2 From this secret order J. R. Church believes will come the Anti-Christ, for he writes, "Their ultimate goal is world government!'"

Scarlet and the Beast by John Daniel

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zCd0nFuvnM4OYWuVW5QUBCpsTfBv5bYx/view?usp=sharing 

Pope Francis Unveils Christmas Nativity With Baby Jesus Atop A Keffiyeh

The pontiff declared "Enough wars, enough violence!" while presenting a scene by two Palestinian artists near the Vatican on Saturday.

Kelby Vera

By 

Kelby Vera

Dec 8, 2024, 07:29 PM EST 

Pope Francis made a plea for peace while unveiling a nativity featuring baby Jesus nestled in a keffiyeh in Vatican City on Saturday.

The pontiff declared “Enough wars, enough violence!” while receiving a delegation of representatives from the Palestinian groups that organized the project by Bethlehem-based artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, Vatican News reported.

Part of a series of scenes from a collection titled “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024,” the biblical tableau shows figures of the holy family carved from olive wood while baby Jesus lies atop a keffiyeh, a style of scarf worn across the Middle East which has become a symbol of Palestinians’ resistance to the ongoing occupation by Israel.

Above the family is a panel of glass inscribed with, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to all people” in Latin and Arabic. 

At the event, the pope went on to tell his audience to “remember the brothers and sisters, who, right there [in Bethlehem] and in other parts of the world, are suffering from the tragedy of war,” according to the Times of Israel.

Following the nativity’s dedication, the New Arab reported that a mass for peace and a ceasefire in the region took place at the Angeli Chapel.

Pope Francis has previously called the public to support a ceasefire between Palestine and Israel as well as the safe release of hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attacks.

The head of the Holy See directly questioned Israel’s aggressive military response in interviews from a new book published last month, in which he calls for an investigation into whether Israel’s actions in Palestine “fits into the technical definition” of genocide.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pope-francis-baby-jesus-keffiyeh-nativity_n_67560b2fe4b06b50ac931068 

Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu Hardcover – May 1, 2018

by Anshel Pfeffer (Author)

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A deeply reported biography of the scandal-plagued Israeli Prime Minister, showing that we cannot understand Israel -- its history, present, and future -- without first understanding the life and worldview of the man who leads it

Benjamin Netanyahu is embroiled in numerous scandals, all of his own making, and may soon be ousted from the office he has held longer than any prior Israeli Prime Minister outside of David Ben Gurion. But Bibi, as he is known by friend and foe alike, is no stranger to controversy. For many in Israel and elsewhere, he is an embarrassment, a threat to democracy, even a precursor to Donald Trump. He nevertheless continues to dominate Israeli public life -- and he may yet survive his current crises, the most challenging of his career. How can we explain Netanyahu's rise, his hold on Israeli politics, and his outsized role on the world's stage?

In Bibi, the Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer argues that we must view Netanyahu as representing the triumph of the underdogs in the Zionist enterprise. Born in 1949, one year after the state of Israel itself, Netanyahu came of age in a nation dominated by liberal, secular Zionists. Yet Netanyahu's grandfather and father bequeathed to him a brand of Zionism integrating Jewish nationalism and religious traditionalism, and he identified with the groups at the margins of Israeli society: right-wing Revisionists, orthodox, Mizrahi Jews, and small-time professionals living in the new towns and cities dotting the Israeli landscape. Netanyahu cultivated each faction individually and then fused them into a coalition that has frequently proven unstoppable in Israeli politics.

Netanyahu is also a child of America, where he spent many years as a young man, and where he learned the techniques of modern political campaigns as well as the necessity of controlling the media cycle. The product of the affluent East Coast Jewish community and the Reagan era, Netanyahu's politics and worldview were formed as much by American Cold War conservatism as by his family's hardline right-wing Zionism.

As Pfeffer demonstrates in this penetrating biography, Netanyahu's influence will endure even if his career soon comes to an end. The Israel he has helped make is a hybrid of ancient phobia and high-tech hope, tribalism and globalism -- just like the man himself.

https://www.amazon.com/Bibi-Turbulent-Times-Benjamin-Netanyahu/dp/0465097820

Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American psychological horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on Ira Levin's 1967 novel. The film stars Mia Farrow as a newlywed living in Manhattan who becomes pregnant, but soon begins to suspect that her neighbors have sinister intentions regarding her and her baby. The film's supporting cast includes John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, Angela Dorian, and Charles Grodin in his feature film debut.

The film deals with themes related to paranoia, women's liberation, Catholicism, and the occult.[3] While it is primarily set in New York City, the majority of principal photography for Rosemary's Baby took place in Los Angeles throughout late 1967. The film was released on June 12, 1968, by Paramount Pictures. It was a critical and box office success, grossing over $30 million in the United States, and received acclaim from critics. The film was nominated for several accolades, including multiple Golden Globe Award nominations and two Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actress (for Ruth Gordon) and the Golden Globe in the same category. Since its release, Rosemary's Baby has been widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

The movie successfully launched a titular franchise, which includes a 1976 made-for-TV sequel, a streaming exclusive prequel, Apartment 7A (2024), and a television miniseries adaptation.

Plot

In 1965, Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband, stage actor Guy, tour the Bramford, a large Renaissance Revival apartment building in Manhattan. They notice the previous tenant, an elderly woman who recently died, displayed odd behaviors. For example, she moved heavy furniture in front of a linen closet she had still been using. Despite warnings from their current landlord and friend, Hutch, about the Bramford's dark past, Rosemary and Guy move in.

In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets a young woman, Terry Gionoffrio, a recovering drug addict whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouses' elderly neighbors, have taken in. The Woodhouses first meet the Castevets when they return home to find Terry dead of an apparent suicide, having jumped from the Castevets' seventh-floor apartment. They have dinner with the couple, but Rosemary finds them meddlesome. She is bothered when Minnie gives her Terry's pendant as a good luck charm, saying it contains "tannis root". Unexpectedly, Guy, initially reluctant to socialize with the Castevets, becomes seemingly fascinated with Roman, visiting with him repeatedly.

Guy is cast in a prominent play after the lead actor inexplicably goes blind. With his career flourishing, Guy wants him and Rosemary to have a baby. On the night that they plan to conceive, Minnie brings over individual cups of chocolate mousse for their dessert. When Rosemary complains that it has a chalky "undertaste", Guy criticizes her as being ungrateful. Rosemary consumes a bit more to mollify Guy, then discreetly discards the rest. Soon after, she grows dizzy and passes out. In a dream state, Rosemary hallucinates being raped by a demonic presence. The next morning, Guy explains the scratches covering her body by claiming that he did not want to miss "baby night" and that he had raped her while she was unconscious. He says he has since cut his nails.

Rosemary becomes pregnant, with the baby due on June 28. The elated Castevets insist that Rosemary go to their close friend, Dr. Abraham Sapirstein, a prominent obstetrician, rather than her own physician, Dr. Hill. During her first trimester, Rosemary suffers severe abdominal pains and loses weight. By Christmas, her gaunt appearance alarms her friends as well as Hutch, who has been researching the Bramford's history. Before he can share his findings with Rosemary, he falls into a mysterious coma. Rosemary, unable to withstand the pain, insists on seeing Hill, while Guy argues against it, saying Sapirstein will be offended. As they argue, the pains suddenly stop and Rosemary feels the baby move.

Three months later, Hutch's friend, Grace Cardiff, informs Rosemary that Hutch is dead. Before dying, he briefly regained consciousness and said to give Rosemary a book on witchcraft, All of Them Witches, along with the cryptic message: "The name is an anagram." Using Scrabble tiles, Rosemary works out that Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato, the son of a former Bramford resident and a reputed Satanist. She suspects that the Castevets and Sapirstein belong to a coven and want her baby. Guy discounts this and later throws the book away, making Rosemary suspicious. Terrified, she goes to Hill for help, but Hill assumes she is delusional and calls Sapirstein; he arrives with Guy to take her home and they threaten to commit her to a psychiatric hospital if she does not comply.

Rosemary locks herself into the apartment. Somehow, coven members get in, and Sapirstein sedates Rosemary, who goes into labor and gives birth. When Rosemary awakens, she is told the baby was stillborn. As she recovers, though, she notices her pumped breast milk is being saved rather than discarded. She stops taking her prescribed pills, becoming less groggy. When Rosemary hears an infant crying, Guy claims tenants with a newborn have moved in upstairs.

Believing her baby is alive, Rosemary discovers a hidden door in the linen closet leading directly into the Castevets' apartment, the same closet the previous tenant had blocked and the same hidden door the coven members had used to access the Woodhouses' apartment. Guy, the Castevets, Sapirstein and other coven members are gathered around a bassinet draped in black with an upside down cross hanging over it. Peering inside, Rosemary is horrified and demands to know what is wrong with her baby's eyes. Roman proclaims that the child, Adrian, is Satan's son and the supposed Antichrist, and that he "has his father's eyes". He urges Rosemary to mother her child, promising she does not have to join the coven. When Guy attempts to calm her, saying they will be rewarded and can conceive their own children, she spits in his face. After hearing the infant's cries, however, Rosemary gives in to her maternal instincts and gently rocks the cradle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_(film)

The Pope's foreign travel programme for 1994 was suspended due to a fall resulting in hip-replacement surgery. Visits to Belgium, the United States, and Lebanon were cancelled as a result. The visits to Belgium and the United States took place in 1995, while the visit to Lebanon was delayed until 1997.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pastoral_visits_of_Pope_John_Paul_II

Countdown to the Messiah 

Daniel 9:24 gives the Hebrew Nation a 483 year countdown to the year that the Messiah would arrive on the scene (column 2 row 3 of our next table). Luke records that Jesus began to be about 30 years old when he was revealed as the Messiah at the Jordan River baptism.

it is forty years before the total Desolation of the Temple and the Nation by the Roman army, the people of the prince that shall come, as foretold by Daniel and Jesus. If any period of time deserves the title, “Time of Jacob’s Trouble” it would be this forty years. And if those days had not been shortened no flesh (Jacob) would have been saved, but for the Elect's sake (those obedient Hebrew's who would spread the gospel) those days of persecution were shortened to prevent the annihilation of even the elect. Many try to apply this verse to the days preceding the return of Messiah but this is not logical because the elect will all be resurrected at that time so those days will not need to be shortened for their sake. Because first century Christians were a sect of the Jews it was necessary for the Elect to survive the desolation of the Hebrew Nation at the end of that century.

The Rapture Will Be Cancelled

by Nicklas Arthur

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hwvsMLXT7Z35KlbSdXw6x5EH0VLHPZsM/view?usp=sharing

When is Easter in 2034?

Days To

https://days.to › when-is › easter › 2034

When is Easter in 2034? In 2034, Easter will be: Sunday, 9 April 2034. 

Star Trek: First Contact is a 1996 American science fiction film directed by Jonathan Frakes in his feature film debut. It is the eighth movie of the Star Trek franchise, and the second starring the cast of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the film, the crew of the starship USS Enterprise-E travel back in time from the 24th century to the 21st century to stop the cybernetic Borg from conquering Earth by changing the past.

Three and a half years later the Messiah is crucified, by no coincidence

After the release of Star Trek Generations in 1994, Paramount Pictures tasked writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore with developing the next film in the series. Braga and Moore wanted to feature the Borg in the plot, while producer Rick Berman wanted a story involving time travel. The writers combined the two ideas; they initially set the film in Renaissance Italy, but changed the time period that the Borg corrupted to the mid-21st century, after fearing the Renaissance idea would feel kitschy. After two better-known directors turned down the job, cast member Jonathan Frakes was chosen to direct to make sure the task fell to someone who understood Star Trek.

The film's script required the creation of new starship designs, including a new USS Enterprise. Production designer Herman Zimmerman and illustrator John Eaves collaborated to make a sleeker ship than its predecessor. Principal photography began with weeks of location shooting in Arizona and California, before production moved to new sets for the ship-based scenes. The Borg were redesigned to appear as though they were converted into machine beings from the inside-out; the new makeup sessions took four times as long as their appearances on the television series. Effects company Industrial Light & Magic rushed to complete the film's special effects in less than five months. Traditional optical effects techniques were supplemented with computer-generated imagery. Jerry Goldsmith composed the film’s score.

Star Trek: First Contact was released on November 22, 1996, and was the highest-grossing film on its opening weekend. It grossed a worldwide total of $146 million. Critical reception was mostly positive; critics including Roger Ebert considered it to be one of the best Star Trek films. The Borg and the special effects were lauded, while characterization was less evenly received. Scholarly analysis of the film has focused on Captain Jean-Luc Picard's parallels to Herman Melville's Ahab and the nature of the Borg. First Contact was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Makeup, and won three Saturn Awards. It was followed by Star Trek: Insurrection in 1998.

Plot

In the 24th century, Captain Jean-Luc Picard awakens from a nightmare in which he relives his assimilation by the cybernetic Borg six years earlier. He is contacted by Starfleet, who inform him of a new Borg threat against Earth. Picard's orders are for his ship, USS Enterprise, to patrol the Neutral Zone in case of Romulan aggression; Starfleet is worried that Picard is too emotionally involved with the Borg to join the fight.

Learning the fleet is losing the battle, the Enterprise crew disobeys orders and heads for Earth, where a single Borg Cube ship holds its own against a group of Starfleet vessels. Enterprise arrives in time to assist the crew of USS Defiant and its commander, the Klingon Worf. Picard takes control of the fleet and directs the surviving ships to concentrate their firepower on a seemingly unimportant point on the Borg ship.[2] The Cube launches a smaller spherical ship towards Earth before being destroyed. Enterprise pursues the sphere into a temporal vortex. As the sphere disappears, Enterprise discovers Earth has been altered—it is now populated by Borg. Realizing the Borg have used time travel to change the past, Enterprise follows the sphere through the vortex.[3]

Enterprise arrives hundreds of years in the past on April 4, 2063, the day before the historic warp drive flight that leads to humanity's first encounter with alien life. The crew realizes the Borg are trying to prevent first contact and assimilate humanity while the planet is recovering from a devastating war. After destroying the Borg sphere, an away team transports down to Zefram Cochrane's warp ship, Phoenix, in Bozeman, Montana. Picard has Cochrane's assistant Lily Sloane sent back to Enterprise for medical attention. The captain returns to the ship and leaves Commander William T. Riker on Earth to make sure Phoenix's flight proceeds as planned.[4] While in the future Cochrane is seen as a hero, in reality he built the Phoenix for financial gain and is reluctant to be the historic figure the crew describes.[3]

A group of Borg invade Enterprise's lower decks, assimilating some of the crew and modifying the ship. Picard and a team attempt to reach engineering to disable the Borg with a corrosive gas, but are forced back; the android Data is captured in the melee. A frightened Lily corners Picard with a weapon, but he gains her trust. The two escape the Borg-infested area of the ship by creating a diversion in the holodeck.[4] Picard, Worf, and the ship's navigator, Lieutenant Hawk, travel outside the ship in space suits to stop the Borg from using the navigational deflector to call for reinforcements, but Hawk is assimilated in the process. As the Borg assimilate more decks, Worf suggests destroying the ship, but Picard angrily calls him a coward. Lily confronts the captain and makes him realize he is acting irrationally because of his own past with the Borg. Picard apologises to Worf and orders the activation of the ship's self-destruct and evacuation of the crew to escape pods, while he stays behind to rescue Data.[5]

As Cochrane, Riker, and engineer Geordi La Forge prepare to activate the warp drive on Phoenix, Picard discovers that the Borg Queen has grafted human skin onto Data, giving him the sensation of touch he has long desired so that she can obtain the android's encryption codes to the Enterprise computer. Although Picard offers himself to the Borg in exchange for Data's freedom, Data refuses to leave, deactivates the self-destruct, and fires torpedoes at Phoenix. At the last moment the torpedoes miss, and the Queen realizes Data deceived her.[5] The android ruptures a coolant tank, and the corrosive vapor eats away the biological components of the Borg as well as Data's new skin.

With the Borg threat neutralized, Cochrane completes his warp flight.[3] Later that night, the crew watches from a distance as an alien Vulcan ship, attracted by the Phoenix warp test, lands on Earth. Cochrane greets the aliens. Having ensured the correction of the timeline, Picard bids Lily farewell and the Enterprise crew slip away and return to the 24th century.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_First_Contact 

Year Day First Day of Spring Falls on First Day of Spring

2034 Monday March 20, 2034

https://www.primarygames.com/seasons/spring/when_is_spring.php

March 2034 Moon Details

The Full Moon for this month will occur early in the month on Sunday, March 5th. The New Moon will happen later in March on Monday, March 20th.

https://www.moongiant.com/moonphases/march/2034/#:~:text=March%202034%20Moon%20Details,March%20on%20Monday%2C%20March%2020th. 

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (or simply New Moon) is a 2009 American romantic fantasy film directed by Chris Weitz from a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the 2006 novel New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.[2] It is the sequel to Twilight (2008) and the second installment in The Twilight Saga film series. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprising their roles as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, respectively.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga:_New_Moon

Jeremiah 27:6

6 iNow I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, jmy servant, kand I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him.

Read Full Chapter

Jeremiah 43:10

10 and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, zmy servant, aand I will set his throne above these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his royal canopy over them.

Read Full Chapter

Isaiah 44:28

28  who says of mCyrus, ‘He is nmy shepherd,

and he shall fulfill all my purpose’;

saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’

oand of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’”

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Isaiah 45:1

Cyrus, God’s Instrument

1  Thus says the Lord to phis anointed, to Cyrus,

qwhose right hand I have grasped,

to subdue nations before him

and rto loose the belts of kings,

to open doors before him

that gates may not be closed:

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Ezekiel 29:18–20

18 m“Son of man, nNebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre. Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed bare, yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had performed against her. 19 Therefore thus says the Lord God: oBehold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; pand he shall carry off its wealth1 qand despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army. 20 rI have given him the land of Egypt as his payment for which he labored, because they worked for me, declares the Lord God.

Read Full Chapter

https://www.esv.org/Jeremiah+27:6;Jeremiah+43:10;Isaiah+44:28;Isaiah+45:1;Ezekiel+29:18%E2%80%9320/ 

A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question.[1] It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies (e.g., in politics), or may be used in argumentation inadvertently.[2]

The term was popularized in 1807 by English polemicist William Cobbett, who told a story of having used a strong-smelling smoked fish to divert and distract hounds from chasing a rabbit.[3]

Logical fallacy

As an informal fallacy, the red herring falls into a broad class of relevance fallacies. Unlike the straw man, which involves a distortion of the other party's position,[4] the red herring is a seemingly plausible, though ultimately irrelevant, diversionary tactic.[5] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a red herring may be intentional or unintentional; it is not necessarily a conscious intent to mislead.[1]

The expression is mainly used to assert that an argument is not relevant to the issue being discussed. For example, "I think we should make the academic requirements stricter for students. I recommend you support this because we are in a budget crisis, and we do not want our salaries affected." The second sentence, though used to support the first sentence, does not address that topic.

Intentional device

In fiction and non-fiction, a red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion.[6][7][8] For example, the character of Bishop Aringarosa in Dan BROWN's The Da Vinci Code is presented for most of the novel as if he is at the centre of the church's conspiracies, but is later revealed to have been innocently duped by the true antagonist of the story. The character's name is a loose Italian translation of "red herring" (aringa rosa; rosa actually meaning 'pink', and very close to rossa, 'red').[9]

A red herring is found in the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, where the murderer writes at the crime scene the word Rache ('revenge' in German), leading the police—and the reader—to mistakenly presume that a German was involved.

A red herring is often used in legal studies and exam problems to mislead and distract students from reaching a correct conclusion about a legal issue, intended as a device that tests students' comprehension of underlying law and their ability to properly discern material factual circumstances.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as "an able prosecutor on the way up".[37] In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie BROWN, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission.[37] In February 1998, San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan recruited Harris as an assistant district attorney.[38] There, she became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases—particularly three-strikes cases. In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, working for city attorney Louise Renne.[39] Harris ran the Family and Children's Services Division, representing child abuse and neglect cases. Renne endorsed Harris during her D.A. campaign.[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris

Donald Jasper Harris, OM (born August 23, 1938) is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics.[1]

He is the father of US Vice President and current Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris and lawyer Maya Harris.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Harris 

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump 

Danney Lee Williams Jr. (born December 7, 1985) is a man from Little Rock, Arkansas who claims to be the biological son of Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States.[1] Blood tests ruled out Clinton as the father.[1][2]

Background

Williams was born in 1985 to Danney Williams Sr. and Bobbie Ann Williams.

The story came to notice in the late 1990s when reporting by Newsmax led by celebrity tabloid magazine Star to commission a paternity test prove whether Williams is actually Clinton's biological son.[3] Time magazine cited Star on July 18, 1999 to say that there was no match.[4]

The story was revived in 2016 before the 2016 presidential election and pushed by a number of media outlets including Newsmax, the Drudge Report,[3] as well as WorldNetDaily,[1] and the New York Daily News.[1]

Due to some uncertainties with the original test by Star, Snopes concluded that the claim was unproven.[3] The Washington Post stated that, while the test could not prove Clinton was the father, it did conclusively rule him out as the father.[1]

On October 19, 2016, Williams' lawyers announced their intentions to file a paternity suit to prove that Clinton's DNA matched Williams'.[5] Williams wrote to Monica Lewinsky asking for her dress in order to obtain a sample of Clinton's DNA. However, Lewinsky never replied to Williams.[6] A partial analysis of Clinton's blood, and thus his DNA, was already part of the public record because of the Lewinsky affair investigation.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danney_Williams 

Thomas Trace Beatie (born 1974[1]) is an American public speaker, author, and advocate of transgender rights and sexuality issues, with a focus on transgender fertility and reproductive rights.[2]

Beatie came out as a trans man in early 1997. Beatie had gender-affirming surgery in March 2002 and became known as "the pregnant man" after he became pregnant through artificial insemination in 2007.[3] Beatie chose to be pregnant, with donated sperm,[4][5] because his wife Nancy was sterile.

The couple filed for divorce in 2012. The Beatie case is the first of its kind on record, where a documented legal male gave birth within a marriage to a woman, and for the first time, a court challenged a marriage where the husband gave birth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Beatie 

Silicone breast implants are filled with silicone gel. 

https://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/breast-augmentation/implants

silicone (n.)

coined 1863 in German from silico-, combining form indicating the presence of silicon, + -one.

also from 1863

Entries linking to silicone

silicon (n.)

nonmetallic element, 1817, coined by British chemist Thomas Thomson from silica (silicon dioxide), from which it was isolated. The name is patterned on carbon, etc. Silicon chip is attested from 1965; Silicon Valley for the Santa Clara Valley near San Francisco is attested by 1974, in reference to the concentration there of manufacturers of silicon chips used in computers, watches, etc.

-one 

chemical suffix, from Greek -one, female patronymic (as in anemone, "daughter of the wind," from anemos); in chemical use denoting a "weaker" derivative. Its use in forming acetone (1830s) gave rise to the specialized chemical sense.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/silicone

Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer",[22] he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century.

After working on his difference engine he announced his invention in 1822, in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, titled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables",[23] he also designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an analytical engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The engine would incorporate an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.[24][25]

The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Babbage’s, Inc.

10741 King William Drive

Dallas, Texas 75220

U.S.A.

(214) 401-9000

Fax: (214) 401-9002

Public Company

Incorporated: 1983

Employees: 2,400

Sales: $233.4 million

Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ

SICs: 5734 Computer & Software Stores

Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California.[5] The university's campus surrounds the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís which traces its founding to 1777. The campus mirrors the Mission's architectural style and is one of the finest groupings of Mission Revival architecture and other Spanish Colonial Revival styles. The university is classified as a "Doctoral/Professional" university.[6]

The university offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees through its six colleges, the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education and Counseling Psychology, Leavey School of Business, School of Engineering, Jesuit School of Theology, and School of Law. It enrolls 6,115 undergraduate students and about 3,063 postgraduate students as of Fall 2022.

Santa Clara's sports teams are called the Broncos. Their colors are red and white. The Broncos compete at the NCAA Division I levels as members of the West Coast Conference in 19 sports. Broncos have won NCAA championships in both men's and women's soccer. Santa Clara's student athletes include current or former 58 MLB,[7] 40 NFL,[8] and 12 NBA players and 13 Olympic gold medalists.

Santa Clara's faculty and alumni include U.S. Senators and House representatives, a Pulitzer Prize winner, numerous billionaires and U.S. governors, a Director of the CIA, a U.S. Secretary of Defense, a U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a White House Press Secretary and a United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Santa Clara has Fulbright Scholars as well as 4 Rhodes Scholars.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_University

1885 was a year a full century before the modern time of Marty McFly: 1985. It had been 20 years since Hill Valley's founding and a festival was held to honor the anniversary.

The town consisted of two major dirt streets which intersected at Courthouse Square and the construction of a new county courthouse and clock tower. One of the streets went to the Hill Valley Train Station.

Most of the surrounding countryside was mountains and valleys with deciduous trees and farther out desert with mesas to the north of the town and the ravine to the southeast of the town.

https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1885

Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) was an American lawyer and public official who served as the first female and 78th United States attorney general. Reno, a member of the Democratic Party, held the position from 1993 to 2001, making her the second-longest serving attorney general, behind only William Wirt.

Reno was born and raised in Miami, Florida. After leaving to attend Cornell University and Harvard Law School, she returned to Miami where she started her career at private law firms. Her first foray into government was as a staff member for the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. She then worked for the Dade County State Attorney's Office before returning to private practice. She was elected to the Office of State Attorney five times and was the first woman to serve as a state attorney in Florida. President Bill Clinton appointed her attorney general in 1993, a position she held until Clinton left office in 2001.

The following Department of Justice actions occurred during Reno's tenure:

The 51-day Waco siege standoff and resulting 76 deaths—the Branch Davidians—in Waco, Texas. (The standoff began on February 28, 1993, twelve days before Reno was installed as attorney general). Reno stated in congressional testimony that she authorized the FBI assault on the Branch Davidians because of reports that militia groups were en route to Waco during the standoff "either to help [Branch Davidian leader David] Koresh or to attack him."[48] The FBI had also, erroneously, reported to Reno that children were being abused at the compound.[49] Reno publicly expressed her regret of the decision to storm the compound, and accepted full responsibility for the loss of life.[50]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno 

Ellen G. White in a group at Reno, Nevada, camp meeting 1888.

14 And deceived them that dwell on the earth by the signs which were permitted to him to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make the [t]image of the [u]beast, which had the wound of a sword, and did live.

Revelation 13:14

14We ought to act on the principle that everyone who lives under obedience should let himself be carried and directed by Divine Providence through the agency of the superior 15as if he were a lifeless body, which allows itself to be carried to any place and treated in any way; or an old man s staff, which serves at any place and for any purpose in which the one holding it in his hand wishes to employ it. 16For in this way the obedient man ought joyfully to employ himself in any task in which the superior desires to employ him in aid of the whole body of the religious order; 17and he ought to hold it certain that by so doing he conforms himself with the divine will more than by anything else he could do while following his own will and different judgment.[3]"

page 221

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

Ellen Gould White (née Harmon; November 26, 1827 – July 16, 1915) was an American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Along with other Adventist leaders such as Joseph Bates and her husband James White, she was instrumental within a small group of early Adventists who formed what became known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White is considered a leading figure in American vegetarian history.[2] Smithsonian named her among the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_G._White

Scottish doctor Alexander Wood is credited with inventing the modern hypodermic syringe in 1853. His goal was to treat pain in just one area of the body. He attached a hollow needle, an earlier invention by Irish doctor Francis Rynd, to a plunger.

Using his newly invented hypodermic syringe he was able to inject pain relief medicine to the area which was causing pain. His first patient was a woman experiencing neuralgia, which causes intense pain after nerve damage. She was injected at the site of her pain with the pain relief medicine morphia. Morphia was a mixture of sherry and morphine, a powerful pain relief medicine.

https://medicine.uq.edu.au/blog/2018/12/history-syringes-and-needles

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky[a] (née Hahn von Rottenstern; 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831 – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian and American mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy.

Born into an aristocratic family in Yekaterinoslav, then in the Russian Empire (now Dnipro in Ukraine), Blavatsky traveled widely around the empire as a child. Largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her later claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas, and India. She also claimed that during this period she encountered a group of spiritual adepts, the "Masters of the Ancient Wisdom", who sent her to Shigatse, Tibet, where they trained her to develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky

Masonic Pan-German Thule Society Brings Forth Third Reich #421 

The author of this poster accurately portrays the origin of the Nazi Party being high-level Freemasonry, which in fact was controlled by Vatican Jesuits. From the top down (L-R) is the sauvastika and sword, emblem of the Thule Society; the hexagram signifying Rome’s Sabbatian Frankists leading Hitler’s Masonic Jewish Labor Zionists; the Masonic Skull and Bones placed on the caps of all SS members; Co-Mason Madame Blavatsky; German Freemason Guido von List; Bavarian Jesuit Coadjutor Heinrich Himmler who led Masonic worship in the crypt at the SS’s Wewelsburg Castle; Hitler’s mentor, Jesuit Coadjutor Dietrich Echart; sauvastikas linking British Freemasonry to the Third Reich, British Freemason Rudyard Kipling using sauvastikas on his book title-pages; and Munich University professor and friend of Jesuit Edmund A. Walsh, Jesuit Coadjutor Karl Haushofer, associate of Rothschild Masonic Jew/OTO-member Ignace Trebitsch-Lincoln. From this secret “covered” lodge of racial German Freemasonry Hitler would attack “Jewish Freemasonry” in accordance with the writings of the Jesuits set forth in their La Civilta Cattolica for fifty years. 

Photo was forwarded to the author by an Internet researcher.

Vatican Assassins:

“Wounded In The House Of My Friends”

Third Edition

by Eric Jon Phelps

https://ia802505.us.archive.org/28/items/EricJonPhelpsVaticanAssassins3rdEdition/Eric%20Jon%20Phelps%20-%20Vatican%20Assassins%203rd%20Edition.pdf

Plimpton 322 is a Babylonian clay tablet, notable as containing an example of Babylonian mathematics. It has number 322 in the G.A. Plimpton Collection at Columbia University.[1] This tablet, believed to have been written around 1800 BC, has a table of four columns and 15 rows of numbers in the cuneiform script of the period.

This table lists two of the three numbers in what are now called Pythagorean triples, i.e., integers a, b, and c satisfying a2 + b2 = c2. From a modern perspective, a method for constructing such triples is a significant early achievement, known long before the Greek and Indian mathematicians discovered solutions to this problem.

There has been significant scholarly debate on the nature and purpose of the tablet. For readable popular treatments of this tablet see Robson (2002) recipient of the Lester R. Ford Award for expository excellence in mathematics or, more briefly, Conway & Guy (1996). Robson (2001) is a more detailed and technical discussion of the interpretation of the tablet's numbers, with an extensive bibliography.

Provenance and dating

Plimpton 322 is partly broken, approximately 13 cm wide, 9 cm tall, and 2 cm thick. New York publisher George Arthur Plimpton purchased the tablet from an archaeological dealer, Edgar J. Banks, in about 1922, and bequeathed it with the rest of his collection to Columbia University in the mid-1930s. According to Banks, the tablet came from Senkereh, a site in southern Iraq corresponding to the ancient city of Larsa.[2]

The tablet is believed to have been written around 1800 BC (using the middle chronology),[3] based in part on the style of handwriting used for its cuneiform script: Robson (2002) writes that this handwriting "is typical of documents from southern Iraq of 4000–3500 years ago." More specifically, based on formatting similarities with other tablets from Larsa that have explicit dates written on them, Plimpton 322 might well be from the period 1822–1784 BC.[4] Robson points out that Plimpton 322 was written in the same format as other administrative, rather than mathematical, documents of the period.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322

This Babylonian clay tablet, called Plimpton 322, was created around 1750 BCE in Sumeria, during the reign of Hammurabi the Great.

While more than 1000 years older than Pythagoras, the rows and columns on this table contain Pythagorean triples: integer solutions for the equation a2+b2=c2. For example, (3, 4, 5) is a Pythagorean triple because 32+42=52.

The exact purpose of the tablet has been debated by archeologists. Some think that it was a “teachers aid”, designed to help generate right-angled triangles. Others think it may be a very early trigonometry table.

https://mathigon.org/timeline/plimpton-322 

Aristotle[A] (Attic Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, romanized: Aristotélēs;[B] 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.

Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.

Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.

Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.

Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

The shadowy world of Skull and Bones

Yale’s secretive Skull and Bones society has long generated conspiracy theories about its hidden power. Now, two Bonesmen are facing off for the U.S. presidency. What’s behind the group’s mystique?

BY THE WEEK STAFF

LAST UPDATED JANUARY 8, 2015

What is Skull and Bones?

It’s the oldest and most impenetrable of Yale University’s several “secret societies,” a fraternal club ostensibly dedicated to forging young men (and now women) into leaders in all walks of American life. Only 15 students are selected for membership each year. For much of the society’s history, the chosen few were the elite of the elite—top athletes, campus newspaper editors, the leaders of student organizations, wealthy scions of high breeding. The 2,600 “Bones” alumni include President William Howard Taft, diplomat W. Averell Harriman, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Time magazine founder Henry Luce, conservative patriarch William F. Buckley Jr., both Presidents Bush, and Sen. John Kerry. This elite roster, coupled with its persistent secrecy, has bred intense speculation about the group’s power to determine world events.

How did it get started?

The group was founded in 1832, by a Yale senior named William Russell. At the time, hush-hush fraternal organizations like the Masons were all the rage in the U.S. But the Masons’ popularity and power generated a backlash among people who resented their elitism; dark rumors arose about the group’s secret rituals. Anti-Masonic sentiment grew so strong, in fact, that Phi Beta Kappa, the national academic honor association, distanced itself by renouncing its own oath of secrecy. Offended that Phi Beta Kappa would succumb to such populist passions, Russell responded by forming an even more secret society with 14 other students. He called it the Eulogian Club, after the Greek goddess of eloquence. The Eulogians adopted as their symbol a foreboding death’s-head, and that skull and bones eventually became the society’s name.

Is there an initiation ceremony?

Yes, though for decades it was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, rumors circulated that initiates were stripped, beaten, and forced to lie in a coffin while relating their sexual history, thus baring their souls to their new comrades. But as Alexandra Robbins related in her 2002 book Secrets of the Tomb, the modern-day ceremony is far less dramatic—and far more sophomoric. Initiates are led to the group’s unmarked, Greco-Egyptian vault, in New Haven, where the clocks run five minutes fast. There, in rooms filled with shabby furniture, stuffed animals, and old engravings, they are met by members dressed as outlandish figures, like the devil and Don Quixote. At various points they are blindfolded, jostled violently, given a secret oath, and forced to drink “blood” (some say it’s Kool-Aid, others Gatorade) from a skull called a “Yorick.” Eventually, the neophytes kiss the toe of a member dressed as the pope and are dubbed “Knights of Eulogia.”

Why do they do this?

It’s all part of the bonding process. “It was an opportunity to build friendships with 14 people whom I otherwise wouldn’t have come across in college years,” one member told Robbins. The camaraderie is reinforced by weekly meetings and bizarre traditions. Bonesmen refer to nonmembers as “barbarians,” employ cryptic references to the club’s totemic number of 322, and deliberately leave the room if any barbarian mentions their society’s name. Bonesmen vow to take care of their brothers after Yale, as they move into positions of wealth and power. Some say a Bonesman, once initiated, is virtually guaranteed wealth and security for life.

Is that true?

Not exactly, but the Bones has served as one of the nation’s most effective old-boy networks. President George W. Bush stands as a case in point. He partly bankrolled his first oil company, as well as his run for Texas governor, with loans and donations from fellow Bonesmen. Five of them, including SEC head William Donaldson, now serve in his administration. It’s this tight web of influence that has fueled a host of conspiracy theories.

Such as?

It’s whispered, for instance, that Skull and Bones helped underwrite Hitler’s rise to power. In fact, Hitler’s financier once stashed $3 million in the Union Banking Corp., whose directors included Prescott Bush, father of the first President Bush and a Bonesman himself. Similarly, several Bonesmen in the FDR administration, including Secretary of War Henry Stimson, were key players in the Manhattan Project; from this, some have deduced that the dropping of the atomic bomb was a Bonesmen plot. The society has also been blamed for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and for plunging the U.S. into Vietnam—because Bonesmen like William and McGeorge Bundy held prominent foreign-policy posts during the Kennedy and Johnson years.

So does the society run the world?

Not quite. It’s true that Bonesmen have occupied top-tier positions at an impressive array of powerful institutions, like the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations, Morgan Stanley, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Federal Reserve. But the same could be said of Yalies in general, or Harvard graduates, or other Ivy Leaguers. And in future years, Skull and Bones is likely to be far less influential than it has been in the past.

Why is that?

Like most campus organizations, it has become politically correct. Skull and Bones now actively seeks out women and minorities; white, Anglo-Saxon males have become a minority within the current membership. Bonesmen—and Boneswomen—now spend much of their time sharing “life histories” with the group, to better understand one another’s perspective. Members no longer consider themselves part of an elite cadre destined to run the world; they defensively joke about “the old white guys” who used to run the society. On the Yale campus, Bones members are now viewed with bemused scorn—not envy. “It almost seems,” wrote Franklin Foer in The New Republic in 2000, “that the current crop of Bonespersons maintain vows of secrecy because they are genuinely embarrassed by their affiliation.”

https://theweek.com/articles/528748/shadowy-world-skull-bones

World, the: 1. It is proper to our vocation: to go to diverse places and live in whatever part of the world and to be sent wherever the greater service of God and the help of souls can be hoped for [82, 92, 304, 308, 588, 603, 605, 626, 749]; to this purpose is directed the vow of special obedience to the supreme pontiff regarding missions, FI no. 3 [603, 605], 2 §1; consequently a complete availability, mobility, and universality are necessary, 110, 121 4°, 242 §3, 246 7°, 248, 259, 411; at the service of which is chastity, 144 §2; consequently our community is a community for dispersion, 255 §1, 312, 314 §2, 315, 317; thus also the need for communicating with different cultures of the world and for insertion into them, 99 §2, 106 §2, 110, 111, 246 2°; and for promoting that perfect and open cooperation among the members of the entire Society, of whatever province or region they may be, 396 §2. See also Cooperation, interprovincial and supraprovincial; Culture(s); Insertion 2. God is present in the world: exercising the ministry of healing and reconciliation, 246 4°; thus he is there to be sought and found, 223 §§3-4; the world, in great part afflicted with atheism and injustice and increasingly divided by diverse economic, social, and ethnic systems and by other sources of division and opposition, 59 §2, 223 §3, 246 4° 3. The world, as distinguished from religious life: is to be left behind, trampled underfoot, and renounced [30, 50, 53, 61, 66, 297]; it is to be despised because of the love for and imitation of Christ [101]; contempt for it assists in the union of minds and hearts [671]: customs which smack of the world are not to be introduced, 322. 

The Constitutions of The Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms

A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts 

THE INSTITUTE OF JESUIT SOURCES SAINT LOUIS, 1996 

https://web.archive.org/web/20200211182223/https://jesuitas.lat/uploads/the-constitutions-of-the-society-of-jesus-and-their-complementary-norms/Constitutions%20and%20Norms%20SJ%20ingls.pdf

What does Genesis 3:22 mean?

Who is God talking to in this verse when He says that the man has become like "one of us?" Some Bible scholars see this as a reference to the Trinity: God the Father speaking to the Holy Spirit and to Christ. Logic suggests, and Scripture confirms, that all three aspects of the Trinity were present from before the foundation of the world. Other scholars think that maybe God was speaking to nearby angels, one of whom is mentioned in the following verses.

In any case, God confirms the serpent's half-truth that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has made Adam and Eve like God, in one way. However, this is certainly not the way the snake led them to believe.

According to God's curses, Adam's and Eve's knowledge of good and evil would lead to great frustration, pain, and heartache. They would experience happiness and receive good gifts from God along the way, to be sure, but their days would be punctuated by conflict. In addition, their disobedience, knowing evil, meant that they and their offspring would be capable of continuing to commit great evil.

Although part of the curse, God's oracle that Adam would eventually die was also an act of mercy. Adam's hard life and ability to rebel against God and do harm to others would be limited—unless he ate from the Tree of Life. That would lead to an unending, hopeless existence separated from God.

Apparently, the fruit of the Tree of Life would provide physical immortality to Adam and Eve. For their own good and the good of all, God would not allow this. To be spiritually dead while remaining physically alive forever could only bring endless suffering. It's interesting to note that, depending on how one translated the original Hebrew, God doesn't appear to even finish His sentence before removing Adam and Eve from the garden in the next verse.

https://www.bibleref.com/Genesis/3/Genesis-3-22.html

Day 322: The Ascension

Introduction to THE CHURCH (with Jeff Cavins)

Acts 1; Romans 1; Proverbs 26:24-26

The Acts Of The Apostles

Author:

St. Luke is the author of the Acts of the Apostles, which continues the story of his Gospel. 

That the two books had the same writer is clear from their introductions and from their continuity.

They are, in essence, a single narrative, yet they were rarely found as a single combined work in manuscript form.

As in the Gospel, Acts is addressed to Theophilus (“beloved of God”), who is either a person or a symbol of the Christian faithful in general.

Date:

The Acts of the Apostles, like Luke, offers no acknowledgement of the destruction of Jerusalem AD 70 or of persecutions of Christians in Rome beginning AD 64. 

Furthermore, it ends with St. Paul still under house arrest awaiting trial in Rome around AD 62.

Therefore, it is likely that Acts was written around AD 62 or 63.

Audience:

As with his Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles is directed to a broad audience that includes both Gentiles and Jews of the Diaspora as well as probably even the people of Samaria.

His purpose was to describe the growth and strength of the fledgling Church to the broader community of believers.

Main Themes:

The Acts of the Apostles describes the activities of the Apostles immediately following the Ascension of Christ as they received the Holy Spirit and boldly preached the Gospel. 

It shows their transformation from timid men into articulate and assertive witnesses for Christ as they endured persecution and hardship while achieving great success in winning converts.

St. Luke’s narrative displays the authority of St. Peter deftly, established by Christ as the head of the Apostles, and his role in guiding the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, particularly in dealing with the issues of Apostolic Succession and of welcoming Gentiles into the Church.

The latter half of Acts details the missionary journeys of St. Paul, of which St. Luke was at least an occasional eyewitness.

His message is that the Gospel message is meant for both Jews and Gentiles and that St. Paul’s extraordinary call by Christ renders him an Apostle.

His treatment of St. Paul is almost apologetic as he affirms his apostolic status through a series of parallels with the ministry of St. Peter, including the content of their preaching, their ability to heal the crippled and raise the dead, their being filled with the Holy Spirit and their ability to confer the same, and their miraculous deliverances from imprisonment.

(*The Didache Bible RSV-CE Ignatius Edition, 2006)

Acts 1:1-5 The Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke as a continuation of his Gospel and was addressed to an audience already familiar with his previous book. The author offers a very brief summary of the Gospel before continuing into the story of the early Church. 

Theophilus: A Greek word meaning “loved by God.” It could have been referring to an individual, but more likely it is a personification of the entire Christian community. (CCC 512-513)

Ch 1:3-4 Many proofs: The empty tomb and the many appearances of the risen Christ attest to the truth of his Resurrection.

Forty days: The number forty represents a period of preparation, such as the forty days and nights of the great Flood (cf. Gn 7:4), the number of days Moses was on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments (cf. Ex 34:28), and the period Christ fasted in the wilderness before beginning his public ministry (cf. Mt 4:1-2).

Speaking of the kingdom of God: Christ spent these forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension providing his Apostles with further instruction for their coming mission. The Feast of the Ascension is celebrated forty days after Easter. (CCC 639, 659)

Ch 1:6-11 Despite all they had witnessed and all they had been taught, the Apostles still expected Christ would reestablish an earthly kingdom for his people such as existed in the time of David. Their ignorance or lack of insight remained because the Holy Spirit had not yet descended upon them, which would happen only after his Ascension into Heaven. Christ pushed aside the question to remind them of the coming gift of the Holy Spirit and their divine mission to take the Gospel to all corners of the world. It was not Christ’s role to reveal whether the Father had any such plans for an earthly kingdom but to bring salvation to every person. (CC 474, 672-673, 1287)

Ch 1:8 The language used here (“come upon you”) to describe the descent of the Holy Spirit is similar to that expressed by Gabriel in describing how Mary would conceive the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 1:35), indicating that it is one and the same Spirit. 

Witnesses: The Greek is martys, from which “martyr” is derived; a martyr bears witness to the Faith even unto death. The Apostles would bear witness to Christ not only with their words but also by laying down their lives. 

Jerusalem...end of the earth: Sometimes referred to as the theology of geography, a blueprint for the spread of the Gospel, beginning in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria and from there to the entire Gentile world. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, the mission of Christ had been entrusted to the Apostles. (CCC 686, 730, 735, 857, 942)

Ch 1:9-11 In Christ’s last post-Resurrection appearance on earth, he ascended into Heaven. Only he who had descended from Heaven could ascend into Heaven. By his return to the Father, Christ took on his role of Advocate on our behalf.

Two men: Angels who announced that Christ would return.

In the same way: Christ will return just as he departed, coming down from Heaven on a cloud on the last day to act as judge of every individual both living and dead.

A cloud: In Scripture, a cloud is often a symbol of God in veiled glory. (CCC 333, 659, 661, 665, 678-679, 697)

Ch 1:12-26 Luke reveals much about the hierarchy and teaching authority of the early Church. Christ instituted the Apostles as a college or assembly with Peter at its head. Peter was clearly recognized as the spiritual leader of the Church and the Vicar of Christ on earth. He is mentioned fifty-six times in this book and is always presented in a position of authority. It was Peter who called for an election of the Apostle to replace Judas, who betrayed Christ and had since died. The number twelve symbolized the twelve tribes of Israel, and it was important for there to be twelve Apostles for the establishment of the Church at Pentecost. (CCC 85, 880, 881)

Ch 1:14 Mary, Mother of the Church, prayed with the Apostles as they awaited the promised Holy Spirit, who would teach, guide, and strengthen them. Likewise, prayerful preparation for the reception of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, puts us in a better disposition, increasing our capacity to profit from the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is through prayer that the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ and at the same time transforms our life into the life of Christ. (CCC 721, 726, 963, 965, 1310, 2617, 2623, 2373)

Ch 1:20 Office: The Greek episkope connotes a position of lawful authority. The early Church used this to describe the office of bishop (cf. 1 Tm 3:1). The election of Matthias is the first example of Apostolic Succession. The Pope and bishops trace their office in an unbroken line to the Apostles and, thus, are their true successors. (CCC 77, 1087, 1555, 1576)

Ch 1:21-22 The criterion for choosing Judas’s successor was that the candidate had to have been a witness to Christ’s entire public ministry and to his Resurrection. The Apostles were eyewitnesses to the ministry of Christ and his Resurrection. (CCC 642, 995)

Ch 1:26 Cast lots: A manner of selection similar to drawing straws. The Apostles believed that God had already made the decision and would reveal his choice for the new Apostle in this manner. 

(*The Didache Bible RSV-CE Ignatius Edition, 2006)

The Letter of Paul to the Romans

Author:

St. Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” who was called personally by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, is the undisputed author of Romans.

Born a Jew of the Diaspora, he was a Roman citizen by birth and a rabbinical Pharisee and a rhetorician by education.

Because his mission was primarily to the Gentile Christians outside Palestine, St. Paul wrote his Epistles in Greek, which required the expression of the truths of the Faith in a different language and to a new culture, resulting in the assimilation of the concepts that have influenced the development of Christian thought greatly.

Date:

Considering the evidence from both Romans and the Acts of the Apostles regarding St. Paul’s efforts to raise funds for the Christian community of Jerusalem (cf. Rom 15:25-29; Acts 20:1-3), scholars agree that St. Paul wrote this Epistle AD 57 or 58, toward the end of his third missionary journey while he was in Corinth.

Although not his first Epistle chronologically, it is placed first among his writings in the canon perhaps because it is arguably his most important Epistle and lays the foundation for his preaching and theology.

Audience:

As the title indicates, this Epistle was written to the Christian community in Rome, which was thriving in a predominantly pagan environment.

There were few Jewish synagogues in Rome at the time, and Christianity first arrived probably by way of pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.

It took root soon among the Gentiles of Rome.

St. Paul wrote this Epistle before his first visit to Rome, when the Christian community probably was still attached to the synagogues. 

He arrived in Rome eventually, spending his first years there under house arrest until his execution around AD 64 to 67)

Main Themes:

The encompassing theme of Romans is that sinful people are incapable of redeeming themselves. 

We find redemption not by the observance of the Law but through the gratuitous gift of grace obtained through faith in Christ, made possible by his Death and Resurrection (cf. 5:1-21).

From the context of Romans, it appears that both the Jewish and Gentile Christians suffered from excessive pride, with the Jews claiming superiority as the Chosen People and the Gentiles believing that they had replaced Israel as the New People of God.

St. Paul assured both groups of their equal guilt for sin as well as their equal standing in the Church. 

God has remained true to his covenant to Israel but has expanded his embrace to include “all Israel,” he wrote, because Gentiles who respond to his grace become part of Israel in the way that a branch is grafted onto a living tree.

Israel, in the restoration, not unites Jews and Gentiles alike (cf. Chapter 11).

During the Protestant Reformation some misinterpreted St. Paul’s words to teach that salvation is derived from “faith alone.”

The Catholic and patristic views, however, has always understood the necessity of both faith and works in God’s plan of salvation. 

As St. Paul asserted, the gift of grace is a prerequisite for fulfilling the moral law and in fact demands that we do so.

Good works and the keeping of the moral law comprise our proper response to this grace and our living out the New Commandment of Love.

(*The Didache Bible RSV-CE Ignatius Edition 2006)

Romans 1:1-15 At the time he wrote this letter, Paul had not yet visited the Christian community in Rome. Writing from Corinth, he introduced himself as “an apostle” and declared his wish to help strengthen the faithful and win new converts by preaching the Gospel. He called himself “a servant of Jesus Christ,” because he had dedicated himself to carrying out the mission that Christ had entrusted to him. The phrase could also be translated “a slave of Christ,” which mirrors the life of Christ who, as Paul would later write, chose to take the “form of a servant” (cf. Phil 2:7) to bring about our salvation. The vocation to Holy Orders is a call to serve Christ and his Church in persona Christi capitis (“in the Person of Christ the Head). (CCC 876)

Ch 1:2-4 Designated Son of God...from the dead: Christ in his divine nature is the co-eternal Son of God. With his Resurrection and the glorification of his Body, his redemptive work and his divine Sonship would be fully recognized. 

Descended from David: Scripture had foretold that the Messiah would come from the ancestral line of King David. (CCC 445, 437, 496, 516-518, 648)

Ch 1:5 Obedience of faith: This refers to the full and wholehearted acceptance of the Gospel, the “good news” of salvation won for us by Christ. We correspond to the gift of faith, which is a light to the intellect and impulse to the will, by freely assenting to both this light and impulse. Our model for this obedience of faith is Mary, whose humble and trusting response to the angel made possible the Incarnation (cf. Lk 1:38). (CCC 26, 50-53, 142-144, 154, 494, 2087)

Ch 1:7 Saints: Paul often referred to the Christian faithful in this way. In common usage, we usually reserve this word for those who have died and have been canonized by a formal process. However, the Church recognizes the “Communion of Saints,” which includes the Pilgrim Church on earth (those faithful still living), the Church Suffering (those who are in Purgatory), and the rest of the Church who enjoy the direct vision of God (those who are in Heaven). This use of the word “saints” emphasizes the universal call to holiness, which was understood by the early Church. (CCC 946-948, 954-962, 2813)

Ch 1:8 Your faith is proclaimed in all the world: There was much travel and commerce between Palestine and Rome in the first century. No doubt Christianity was introduced and flourished at least in part through the witness of Christian travelers. Later in the letter, we will learn that Prisca and Aquila-the couple who had left Rome when the Jews were expelled by the Emperor Claudius several years earlier and with whom Paul worked in Corinth and Ephesus-were back in Rome by this time. In the same way, word spread that the Christian community in Rome was thriving. Even though he had never visited Rome, Paul would also have been known to the Roman Christians at least by reputation for the same reason. (CCC 674)

Ch 1:14-17 Greeks and to barbarians: At the time of Christ, those who spoke languages other than Greek were called barbarians. Salvation is available to both Jews and non-Jews whose faith makes them righteous, that is, accepting of God’s mercy and forgiveness that brings the promise of eternal life.

To the Jew first: Christ’s instructions were to preach the Gospel first to the Jews, then to the Samaritans, and lastly to the Gentiles who populated the rest of the world (cf. Acts 1:8). (CCC 1310, 2623, 2673)

Ch 1:17 Faith for faith: The life of Jesus Christ and his teaching form the nucleus of our faith, clarified by tradition and taught by the Church. These truths are meant to be fully lived and practiced.

Righteousness: The term refers both to God’s fulfillment of his promises to Israel and to the gift of grace that allows persons to enter into a loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. (CCC 1814)

Ch 1:18-32 To exemplify the opposite of righteousness, Paul described the immoral lifestyles of the ancient world. The existence of God is readily knowable through natural means because God reveals himself through his creation. Nevertheless, they mainly ignored the Revelation of God in creation and, thus, rejected God and made themselves idols to worship. It followed that they ignored any semblance of objective morality. Perverse sexual practices, hateful dispositions, and violent behavior characterized the lives of a significant portion of the population. Those who have faith in God bear some responsibility for the spread of ignorance of God and a lack of objective morality due to their failure to more perfectly reflect the sanctity of Jesus Christ. (CCC 398, 404-406, 2087, 2125)

Ch 1:19-23 God wants to reveal his truth to every individual. A preamble to the fullness of the truth contained in the Gospel is implicit Revelation of the existence of God through creation. Moreover, God inscribes the heart of every human person with a knowledge of the natural law, which grants us a natural ability, within the reach of human reason, to differentiate good from evil.

Minds were darkened: Habitually consenting to and continuing in sin has a deleterious effect upon our free will and our ability to discern right and wrong. The intellect and heart can become so corrupted that we become enslaved to sin. (CCC 32-34, 287, 1147, 1776, 1954)

Ch 1:24-25 God gave them up: God does not force his grace and mercy upon any person out of respect for our free will. When sinners persist in sin by rejecting the objective moral law written on their hearts, God allows them to remain in the state they have chosen.

Exchanged the truth about God for a lie: The Catholic Church was established by Christ, and it is the will of God that all people be united in this communion. The Church is the Sacrament of Salvation, the conduit of God’s grace through which all-even those who are not formally members of the Church-receive redemption. While divisions between theological and doctrinal differences exist between the Catholic Church and other Christian churches and communities, the Church recognizes a strong commonality in many beliefs. Even among non-Christians, the Church shares solidarity in certain shared beliefs and in our common origin and destination as fellow members of the human race. (CCC 841-845)

Ch 1:26-27 Dishonorable passions: Included are all sexual relations outside of marriage. The descriptions in these verses may cover more than one type of perverse sexual behavior, but stated explicitly among these are homosexual acts. The Church does not profess to know the cause of homosexual inclination, but the moral issue remains the same regardless of its origin. Homosexual, or same-sex, attraction-though not sinful-is objectively disordered in that these inclinations do not tend toward sexual complementarity, which is ordered to the unity of the spouses and the procreation of new life. Homosexual acts, on the other hand, are always intrinsically disordered and gravely sinful. The Church recognizes that persons who suffer same-sex attraction often endure it as a heavy cross to carry. She invites persons with homosexual inclinations to live self-denial, pray, stay close to the Sacraments, and remain active in the Church as they seek a life of chastity. (CCC 1768-1775, 2357)

Ch 1:28-32 Approve those who practice them: Lacking a sound moral conscience, the pagans would find such sinful behaviors quite acceptable. This attitude tacitly encourages sin. (CCC 1777, 1852)

(*The Didache Bible RSV-CE Ignatius Edition, 2006)

If the cross is the coronation of Jesus as the messianic king, and if Jesus’ resurrection marks the momentous beginnings of a new creation, then the story of Jesus’ kingship needs a kingdom, and the first day of the new creation can only mean more work lies ahead. 

Who becomes a king without intending to rule and build a kingdom? 

What does the first day of a new creation mean if not the tilling of creation’s garden so that it bears much fruit? 

This is precisely the story that the Acts of the Apostles intends to tell. 

Through his Church, Jesus extends his kingdom to the end of the earth, and all who are baptized into Christ are made new creations bearing the abundant fruit of life in the Holy Spirit. 

St. Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, sets out the three sections of this period when he recalls Jesus’ words to the apostles, “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

Act one of this period will focus on Jesus’ sending of his Spirit and the apostles’ witness to those in Jerusalem. 

Act two will see the scattering of the early Christians due to persecution with the result that the gospel reaches into Judea and Samaria. 

Finally, act three will highlight the Church’s mission to the Gentiles and the expansion of the gospel to the end of the earth. 

Act 1: Witnesses in Jerusalem 

The “Acts” of the Apostles 

In the same way that the title “gospel” evoked the biography of a king to its first-century readers, the title “Acts” in Acts of the Apostles likewise evoked a royal literary genre. 

The importance of “acts” (in Greek, praxis) goes back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who observed that history cannot teach us universals because what happens is by chance and accident. 

However, Aristotle noted that there is practical value to be gained from the study of history. 

By observing the virtuous deeds and actions (praxis) of great men, one can learn the habits necessary for building up the polis (city-state). 

The most famous and important “Acts” in the first century were the “Acts (praxis) of Caesar Augustus” recorded in A.D. 14. 

The deeds (praxis) of Augustus were published not only to give him honor but to provide an example for imitation. 

In other words, the deeds of Augustus provided the example for how the city and kingdom of Rome was to be built up. 

By evoking this literary genre, Luke is saying that the deeds (praxis) of the apostles illustrate the kind of virtuous life necessary for building a new civilization—and not just any civilization, but the Kingdom of God. 

Just as the deeds (praxis) of Augustus established the great Roman Imperium, the deeds of the apostles build up the new universal Imperium, the Kingdom of God (or, as St. Augustine will later describe it, the “City of God”). 

Apostolic Office 

Luke begins Acts by reminding Theophilus that in his earlier book (i.e., the gospel of Luke), he related “all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1; emphasis added). 

This short statement highlights Luke’s understanding that the story of Jesus in the gospels continues in the life of the Church. 

Indeed, a careful reading of Acts reveals that the stories of Peter and Paul contain many important parallels to the story of Jesus. 

In writing his two works, Luke communicated what he learned from Paul—namely, that the life of Jesus is embodied and continued in the Church, his Body. 

As Acts opens, Jesus tells the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they receive the “promise of the Father,” which is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4). 

Forty days after his resurrection, the apostles “see Jesus lifted up” as he ascends into heaven, a seemingly small point but one pregnant with meaning. 

Just before Elijah was taken up to heaven, his disciple Elisha asked if he could receive a double portion of Elijah’s spirit (2 Kgs 2:9). 

Elijah responded that if Elisha saw him as he ascended to heaven that would be a sign that Elisha would receive his request. 

Elisha saw Elijah ascend and went forth outdoing Elijah in mighty deeds and miracles. 

Now the disciples see Jesus ascend to heaven, and, like Elisha, they will soon receive the gift of God’s Spirit at Pentecost and go forth performing mighty deeds. 

Peter takes the role of apostolic leader. He quotes two psalms that speak of a righteous sufferer betrayed by a friend and applies these to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. 

Quoting from Psalm 69:25, Peter says, “His office let another take” (Acts 1:20). 

The twelve apostles function not only as witnesses of Jesus but also as office holders in his Kingdom. 

When one dies, another must take the apostolic office, indicating the importance of organization and leadership in the Church at its very outset. 

This organization takes the shape of a new Israel, with twelve overseers who recall the twelve sons of Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel. 

The fact that the apostles cast lots to choose Matthias, a faithful disciple and witness to Jesus, to fill the vacant apostolic office has importance in light of Israel’s story. 

In the Davidic kingdom, the priestly duties of the sons of Aaron, who were “officers of the sanctuary and officers of God,” were assigned according to lot (1 Chr 24:5). 

By casting lots to choose Judas’ replacement, who will take up the duties of the apostolic office in Jesus’ kingdom, Peter and the disciples indicate their understanding that the apostolic office is a priestly office. 

The casting of lots for priestly service also recalls the opening story of Luke’s gospel, in which the priest Zachariah was chosen by lot to serve at the altar of incense. 

Thus, the story of Jesus (in the gospel of Luke) opened with a priest chosen by lot in the Temple at Jerusalem, and now the story of the Church (in the Acts of the Apostles) begins in Jerusalem with the casting of lots and a new priestly order. 

The Temple sets the stage for God’s actions in both stories. 

(*Walking With God: A Journey Through The Bible by Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins)

Key Event 65: Ascension (Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:6-11)

Jesus' Ascension marks his definitive enthronement at the right hand of the Father, fulfilling the vision of Daniel, in which the Son of Man ascends to the "Ancient of Days" and receives everlasting dominion (see Dan 7:13-14; CCC 664).  Christ's kingdom began with his coming, is now present in the Church, and will reach its fulfillment when he returns in glory.

Key Event 66: Witness in Jerusalem (Acts 1:1-8:4)

The Acts of the Apostles tells how the first Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit in accord with Jesus' promise.  They boldly witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ in three distinct waves: first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  As a result of the initial evangelization in and around Jerusalem, many thousands become believers (Acts 2:41, 47; 4:4; 5:14).

https://www.thebibleinayearstudyguide.com/day-322

Acts 1

1599 Geneva Bible

The Acts of the Holy Apostles, Written by Luke the Evangelist

1 1 Luke tieth this history to his Gospel. 9 Christ being taken into heaven. 10 The Apostles,  11 being warned by the Angels,  12 to return, 14 and give themselves to prayer. 15 By Peter’s motion, 18 into Judas the traitor’s place. 26 Matthias is chosen.

1 I have made the [a]former treatise, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to [b]do and teach,

2 Until the day that he was taken up, after that he through the holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the Apostles, whom he had chosen:

3 [c]To whom also he presented himself alive after that he had suffered, by many [d]infallible tokens, being seen of them by the space of forty days, and speaking of those things which appertained to the kingdom of God.

4 And when he had [e]gathered them together, he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which said he, ye have heard of me.

5 For John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized [f]with the holy Ghost within these few days.

6 [g]When they therefore were come together they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time [h]restore the kingdom to Israel?

7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times, or the [i]seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

8 But ye shall receive power of the holy Ghost, when he shall come on you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

9 [j]And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up: for a cloud took him up out of their sight.

10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel.

11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? This Jesus which is taken up [k]from you into heaven, shall so come, as ye have seen him go into heaven.

12 ¶ Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount that is called the mount of Olives, which is near to Jerusalem, being from it a Sabbath [l]day’s journey.

13 [m]And when they were [n]come in, they went up into an upper chamber, where abode both Peter and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zealot, and Judas James’s brother.

14 These all [o]continued with [p]one accord in [q]prayer and supplication with the [r]women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his [s]brethren.

15 [t]And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said (now the number of [u]names that were in one place were about an hundred and twenty.)

16 [v]Ye men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, Which the holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before of Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.

17 For he was numbered with us, and had obtained fellowship in this ministration.

18 He therefore hath [w]purchased a field with the reward of iniquity: and when he had [x]thrown down himself headlong, he brast asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

19 And it is known unto all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, insomuch, that that field is called in their own language, Akel Dama, that is, The field of blood.

20 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be void, and let no man dwell therein: also, Let another take his [y]charge.

21 [z]Wherefore of these men which have companied with us, all the time that the Lord Jesus was [aa]conversant among us,

22 Beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that he was taken up [ab]from us, must one of them be made a witness with us of his resurrection.

23 [ac]And they [ad]presented two, Joseph called Barsabas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias.

24 And they prayed, saying, Thou Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen,

25 That he may take the [ae]room of this ministration and Apostleship, from which Judas hath [af]gone astray, to go to his own place.

26 Then they gave forth their lots: and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was by a common consent counted with the eleven Apostles.

Footnotes

Acts 1:1 A passing over from the history of the Gospel, that is, from the history of the sayings and doings of Christ, unto the acts of the Apostles.

Acts 1:1 The acts of Jesus are the miracles and doings which showed his Godhead, and his most perfect holiness and example of his doctrine.

Acts 1:3 Christ did not straightway ascend into heaven after his resurrection: because he would thoroughly prove his resurrection: and with his presence confirm his Apostles in the doctrine, which they had heard.

Acts 1:3 He calleth those infallible tokens, which are otherwise [termed] necessary: now in that Christ spake, and walked, and ate, and was felt of many, these are sure signs and tokens that he truly rose again.

Acts 1:4 They were dispersed here and there, but he gathereth them together that they might altogether be witnesses of his resurrection.

Acts 1:5 Either of the Father, or of me: so that either the Father or Christ is set here against John, as the holy Ghost is against the water, as things answerable the one to the other.

Acts 1:6 We must fight before we triumph: and we ought not curiously to search after those things, which God hath not revealed.

Acts 1:6 To the old and ancient state.

Acts 1:7 That is, the fit occasions that serve to doing of matters which the Lord hath appointed to bring things to pass in.

Acts 1:9 After that Christ had promised the full virtue of the holy Ghost, wherewith he would govern his Church, although he should be absent in body, he took up his body from us into heavenly tabernacles, there to continue until the latter day of judgment, as the Angels witness.

Acts 1:11 That is, out of your sight.

Acts 1:12 About two miles.

Acts 1:13 Ecclesiastical assemblies to hear the word, and to make common prayer, were first instituted and kept in private houses by the Apostles.

Acts 1:13 They went into the house, which the Church hath chosen at that time to be a receipt for the whole assembly.

Acts 1:14 The Greek word signified an invincible constancy, and steadiness.

Acts 1:14 It is to good purpose, that this concord is mentioned: for those prayers are most acceptable to God which are made with agreeing minds and wills.

Acts 1:14 The disciples prayed for the sending of the holy Ghost, and also to be delivered from present dangers wherewith they were beset.

Acts 1:14 For it was behoovable to have the wives confirmed, who were afterward to be partakers of the dangers with their husbands.

Acts 1:14 With his kinfolks.

Acts 1:15 Peter is made the mouth and interpreter of the whole company of the Apostles, either by secret revelation of the holy Ghost, or by express judgment of the Congregation.

Acts 1:15 Because men are commonly billed and enrolled by their names.

Acts 1:16 Peter preventeth the offense that might be taken of the falling away of Judas the betrayer, showing that all things which came unto him, were foretold by God.

Acts 1:18 Luke considered not Judas’s purpose, but that that followed of it, and so we used to say, that a man hath procured himself harm, not that his will and purpose was so, but in respect of that which followed.

Acts 1:18 The Greek words signify thus much, that Judas fell down flat and was rent in sunder in the middle, with a marvelous huge noise.

Acts 1:20 His office and ministry David wrote these words against Doeg the King’s herdsman: And these words, Shepherd, Sheep, and Flock, are put over to the Church office and ministry, so that the Church and the offices thereof are called by these names.

Acts 1:21 The Apostles deliberate upon nothing, but first they consult and take advisement by God’s word: and again they do nothing that concerneth and is behoovable for the whole body of the Congregation, without making the Congregation privy unto it.

Acts 1:21 Word for word, went in and out, which kind of speech betokeneth as much in the Hebrew tongue, as the exercising of a public and painful office, when they speak of such as are in any public office, Deut. 31:2; 1 Chron. 27:1.

Acts 1:22 From our company.

Acts 1:23 Apostles must be chosen immediately from God, and therefore after prayers, Matthias is chosen by lot, which is as it were GOD’S own voice.

Acts 1:23 Openly, and by the voices of all the whole company.

Acts 1:25 That he may be fellow and partaker of this ministry.

Acts 1:25 Departed from, or fallen from: And it is a Metaphor taken from the way: For callings are signified by the name of ways, with the Hebrews.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%201&version=GNV