From TikTok to Tulsi: How Mike Pence is taking aim at Trump 2.0

The former vice president does not believe the 2024 election was a referendum on interventionist policy

By Morgan Phillips Fox News

Published January 27, 2025 5:00am EST

It’s the second week of the second Trump presidency, and Mike Pence has some concerns.

Coming off a trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the former vice president is more convinced than ever of the need for the U.S. to stand strong against China and bolster Taiwan’s defenses.

"There seems to be this suggestion on both sides of a certain thawing in relations, which in principle I welcome, but not compromising on principles," he told a small group of reporters at the Advancing American Freedom office in Washington, D.C.

And in the new Trump 2.0, Pence is convinced that his brand of neoconservatism is not dead, at least not yet.

"There have been voices of isolationism that have been emerging in our party of late," he said. "I’m not yet convinced that they represent the president's views."

The former vice president does not believe the 2024 election was a referendum on interventionist policy.

"I don't think people were voting for isolationism in 2024."

But Pence refused to endorse President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Pence and Trump fell out after the January 6th Capitol riot, and Trump, in turn, recently suggested that he wouldn't hire anyone who had worked for his former second-in-command.

"There are loud voices, both inside and outside the administration that are calling on America to pull back from, whether it be Eastern Europe, the Asia Pacific, and even some are calling for us to pull back on our longstanding support for Israel," Pence went on.

"One of the things we want to be, Advancing American Freedom and whatever remains of my bully pulpit, is to be an anchor to windward for traditional conservatism within the Republican Party."

In Hong Kong, Pence stood in front of 2,000 people and called for authorities to release Jimmy Lai, an imprisoned media mogul and pro-democracy activist, to the audible gasps of the crowd.

Back at home, he’s calling on Trump to "reconsider" the U.S.-Nippon Steel merger that Biden stopped.

He is also worried his former boss does not fully grasp the dangers of TikTok, after Trump’s newfound embrace of the video-sharing platform where he enjoys 15 million followers. He signed an executive order this week giving TikTok another 75 days in operation after Congress passed a law last year forcing them to divest from Chinese-owned ByteDance or face a ban in the U.S.

"I am concerned that the administration doesn't fully appreciate the issues that animated the need for divestment," said Pence.

"People that are in their 20s and 30s today could be in the Senate – in the House in 10 years. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party is collecting data on Americans, whatever their age or experience is, is not something to be dismissed."

The former vice president said that China is trying to infiltrate public opinion in Taiwan ahead of a possible invasion to try to take over the island.

"The CCP thinks the principal value of TikTok is the ability to impact public opinion at a critical moment," he said. "When I met with leadership in Taiwan, on TikTok they said, in effect, they're dealing with an onslaught of social media propaganda coming out of China into Taiwan, trying to set the stage for whatever action, economic, political or hard power may be coming their way."

It was the first Trump administration that made tough-on-China policies go mainstream, according to Pence.

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"I am convinced that our administration changed the national consensus on China," he said. "I would point out that President Biden never undid the $250 billion in tariffs that we imposed."

Pence said he is also worried about Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned Republican whom Trump has nominated to be his director of national intelligence.

She has "at times over the last two years, been an apologist for Putin. And, you know, has a history of being critical of the use of American power," said Pence.

"I think, if memory serves, she actually criticized when we took out [top Iranian general] Qassem Soleimani."

Trump suggested that he might want to sit down with Iran and work on a new nuclear deal on Thursday. But Pence said he trusts the new administration, particularly officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz, not to get taken for a ride by Iran.

"The first order of business is to go back to isolating around economically, and diplomatically, and making it clear that different from the Iran nuclear deal there, there would have to be a sea change in any policy regarding nuclear weapons or the state of Israel."

"I trust that the administration will be very cautious in any of those interactions."

Pence's group has already come out with a campaign in opposition to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

To do that, the former vice president said he would be anything but retired from public life. He plans to continue to advocate for increasing defense spending – 5% of GDP is his current goal – and to use his voice to convince elected officials to stand strong with America's friends and boost deterrent measures to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The U.S. has a longstanding policy of ambiguity when it comes to whether it would actually stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground with Taiwan if China were to invade. Even in private life, Pence isn't ready to say whether that would be the right move.

"There's an old saying, 'Never say what you'll never do,'" he said.

"We ought to have one hand extended in friendship in exchange, and the other hand resting comfortably on the holster of the arsenal of democracy."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pence-taiwan-tiktok-tulsi-gabbard

Michael Richard Pence (born June 7, 1959) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 under President Donald Trump during his first administration. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 50th governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017, and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013.

Born and raised in Columbus, Indiana, Pence graduated from Hanover College and then from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law before entering private practice. He lost two House bids in 1988 and 1990 and was a conservative radio and television talk show host from 1994 to 1999. After being elected to the House in 2000, Pence represented Indiana's 2nd district from 2001 to 2003 and 6th district from 2003 to 2013. He chaired the Republican Study Committee from 2005 to 2007 and House Republican Conference from 2009 to 2011. He was elected governor of Indiana in 2012.

As governor, Pence initiated the largest tax cut in Indiana's history and pushed for more funding for private education initiatives. He signed bills intended to restrict abortions, including one that prohibited abortions if the reason for the procedure was the fetus's race, gender, or disability, and required funerary services for terminated fetuses, including those resulting from miscarriage; this law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge and prevented from going into effect. After Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he encountered resistance from moderate members of his party, the business community, and LGBT advocates. The backlash against the bill led Pence to approve changes to the law to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and other criteria.

Pence became the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who won the 2016 presidential election. As vice president, Pence chaired the National Space Council following its reestablishment in 2017 as well as the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which was established in early 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pence and Trump lost their bid for re-election in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, although Trump refused to concede, made false or unproven allegations of election fraud, and filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits in multiple states. Despite Trump's urging to overturn the election results and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Pence oversaw the certification of Biden and Harris as the winners of the election. Pence has since distanced himself from Trump, endorsing candidates in primary elections in opposition to those supported by Trump and criticizing Trump's conduct on the day of the Capitol attack.[1] In June 2023, he launched a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but withdrew by the end of October. He chose not to endorse Trump in the general election. Trump chose JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate.

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

Peter’s Pence, in medieval England, an annual tax of a penny paid by landowners to the papal treasury in Rome. Peter’s Pence was instituted during the 7th or 8th century and continued until the 16th century. It also existed in several northern European kingdoms.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Peters-Pence

Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199), known as Richard Cœur de Lion (Old Norman French: Quor de Lion)[2][3] or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior,[4][b][5] was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Gascony; Lord of Cyprus; Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes; and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period. He was the third of five sons of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and was therefore not expected to become king, but his two elder brothers predeceased their father.

By the age of 16, Richard had taken command of his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father.[4] Richard was an important Christian commander during the Third Crusade, leading the campaign after the departure of Philip II of France and achieving several victories against his Muslim counterpart, Saladin, although he finalised a peace treaty and ended the campaign without retaking Jerusalem.[6]

Richard probably spoke both French and Occitan.[7] He was born in England, where he spent his childhood; before becoming king, however, he lived most of his adult life in the Duchy of Aquitaine, in the southwest of France. Following his accession, he spent very little time, perhaps as little as six months, in England. Most of his reign was spent on Crusade, in captivity, or actively defending the French portions of the Angevin Empire. Though regarded as a model king during the four centuries after his death,[8] and seen as a pious hero by his subjects,[9] from the 17th century onward he was gradually perceived by historians as a ruler who preferred to use his kingdom merely as a source of revenue to support his armies, rather than regarding England as a responsibility requiring his presence as ruler.[10] This "Little England" view of Richard has come under increasing scrutiny by modern historians, who view it as anachronistic.[8] Richard I remains one of the few kings of England remembered more commonly by his epithet than his regnal number,[citation needed] and is an enduring iconic figure both in England and in France.[11]

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

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.

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

Steven Terner Mnuchin[1] (/məˈnuːʃɪn/ mə-NOO-shin;[2] born December 21, 1962) is an American investment banker[3] and film producer who served as the 77th United States secretary of the treasury as part of the first cabinet of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021. Serving for nearly a full presidential term, Mnuchin was one of the few high-profile members of Trump's cabinet whom the president did not dismiss during his first term.[4]

Mnuchin was born in New York City. Upon graduating from Yale University in 1985, Mnuchin joined the investment bank Goldman Sachs where his father, Robert Mnuchin, was a general partner. Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, eventually becoming its chief information officer. After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, he worked for and founded several hedge funds and launched Dune Entertainment, a film production company that financed several films for 20th Century Fox. He later served on the boards of Kmart and Sears Holdings. During the financial crisis of 2007–2008 he bought failed residential bank Indymac, which he reorganized as OneWest Bank and resold, becoming embroiled in lawsuits over questionable foreclosures.

Mnuchin joined Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, and was named National Finance Chairman for the campaign. On February 13, 2017, Mnuchin was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of the Treasury by a vote of 53–47.[5] As Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin supported the Trump tax cuts and the tax reform of 2017, and advocated reducing personal and corporate tax rates.[6] In regard to regulatory policy, Mnuchin supported President Trump’s partial repeal of the Dodd–Frank Act, citing the complexity of the legislation.[7]

Early life and education

Steven Mnuchin was born on December 21, 1962, in New York City, the second-youngest son in his family.[8][9] Mnuchin's family is Jewish.[9][10][11] He is the son of Robert E. Mnuchin of Washington, Connecticut, and Elaine Terner Cooper of New York.[12] Robert Mnuchin was a partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading and a member of the management committee. He is also the founder of an art gallery in New York City, the Mnuchin Gallery.[12][13] Mnuchin's great-grandfather, Aaron Mnuchin, a Russian-born diamond dealer who later resided in Belgium, emigrated to the U.S. in 1916.[14]

Mnuchin attended Riverdale Country School in New York City. He graduated from Yale University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in economics.[8][15][16] At Yale, Mnuchin was publisher of the Yale Daily News,[17][18] and was also initiated into Skull and Bones in 1985.[19][20] While a student at Yale, Mnuchin drove a Porsche and lived at New Haven's Taft Hotel.[21]

Mnuchin's first job was as a trainee at investment bank Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, while still studying at Yale.[20][22]

Finance and banking career

Goldman Sachs

Mnuchin graduated from Yale in 1985 and started working for Goldman Sachs, where his father had been employed since 1957.[8][23] Mnuchin started in the mortgage department, and became a partner at Goldman in 1994.[10][24] Until he left the company in 2002, Mnuchin held the following positions as a partner:[25][26]

November 1994 – December 1998: Head of the Mortgage Securities Department

December 1998 – November 1999: Overseeing mortgages, U.S. governments, money markets, and municipals at Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Division

December 1999 – February 2001: Member of the Executive Committee and co-head of the Technology Operating Committee

February 2001 – December 2001: Executive Vice President and co-chief information officer

December 2001 – 2002: Executive vice president, member of the Management Committee, and chief information officer[27]

Mnuchin left Goldman Sachs in 2002 after 17 years of employment, with an estimated $46 million of company stock and $12.6 million in compensation that he received in the months prior to his departure.[10]

Hedge funds

After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, Mnuchin briefly worked as vice-chairman of hedge fund ESL Investments, which is owned by his Yale roommate Edward Lampert.[28] From 2003 to 2004 he worked as Chief Executive Officer at SFM Capital Management, a fund backed by George Soros.[29][30] Mnuchin founded a hedge fund called Dune Capital Management,[31] named for a spot near his house in The Hamptons, in 2004 with two former Goldman partners.[8] After its founding, Mnuchin served as the CEO of the company.[7] The firm invested in at least two Donald Trump projects, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and its namesake in Chicago. Dune Capital Management and other lenders to the skyscraper in Chicago were sued by Trump before a settlement was reached.[32][33]

Mnuchin became a director of Kmart when it exited bankruptcy through an investment by ESL. When the company merged in 2005 with Sears to form Sears Holdings, he continued on the board of the new company until his nomination as Treasury secretary in 2016.[34] After Sears Holdings' bankruptcy in 2018 the company's estate sued the former management, including Lampert and Mnuchin, for "asset stripping" during their tenure.[35] The lawsuit ended in 2022 with a $175 million settlement in the estate's favor.[36]

Mnuchin was outbid by Lone Star Funds on a portfolio of residential mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations being sold by Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis, which sold for $6.7 billion.[8]

Mnuchin has been criticized for his use of offshore entities for investment purposes as a hedge-fund manager, which is a common practice in the industry. Mnuchin has stated: "In no way did I use [offshore entities] to avoid U.S. taxes."[37]

OneWest

Purchase of IndyMac and other loan portfolios

In 2009, a group led by Mnuchin bought California-based residential lender IndyMac, which had been in receivership by the FDIC and owned $23.5 billion in commercial loans, mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities. The purchase price was a $4.7 billion discount to its book value.[38][8] Mnuchin's investment group included George Soros, hedge-fund manager John Paulson, former Goldman Sachs executive J. Christopher Flowers, and Dell Computer founder Michael Dell.[8][39] The FDIC agreed to retain some of the more problematic assets of the bank, and signed a loss-sharing agreement. The FDIC was estimated to be required to pay $2.4 billion to IndyMac under the shared loss agreement.[40] After purchasing IndyMac, renamed OneWest Bank, Mnuchin moved into a 20,000 square foot house in Bel Air to begin his tenure as CEO and chairman.[39] OneWest then bought several other failed banks including First Federal Bank of California in 2009 and La Jolla Bank in 2010. Furthermore, OneWest bought a portfolio belonging to Citi Holdings for $1.4 billion.[8] OneWest was profitable one year after Mnuchin had bought it, and it became the largest bank of Southern California, with assets worth $27 billion.[32]

Sale to CIT

In 2015, Mnuchin sold OneWest to CIT Group for $3.4 billion.[33][32] After the acquisition by CIT, Mnuchin remained at OneWest, and became a member of CIT Group's board of directors.[39] As of August 2016, Mnuchin owned $97 million in CIT Group stock, most of which he had received in exchange for his stake in OneWest.[20] On December 2, 2016, Mnuchin resigned from the board of directors of CIT as a result of his selection as nominee for Secretary of the Treasury.[41]

Foreclosures

OneWest was criticized for aggressively foreclosing on homeowners. In the five years following Mnuchin's acquisition of OneWest, the bank foreclosed on 36,000 homes in California, leading local activists to begin calling Mnuchin "the foreclosure king."[42] The high foreclosure rate might have been a result of the loss sharing agreement with the FDIC, whereby the FDIC had to reimburse OneWest for losses.[8] According to The New York Times, OneWest "was involved in a string of lawsuits over questionable foreclosures, and settled several cases for millions of dollars".[43] Because of these foreclosures, around 100 protesters of Occupy Los Angeles gathered outside Mnuchin's home in October 2011 and held signs that read "Make Banks Pay".[32] Two California fair-housing groups filed complaints to the federal government alleging that OneWest had violated the Fair Housing Act by not lending money to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.[28][33][44]

In November 2016, after OneWest was sold to CIT, the California Reinvestment Coalition submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to learn more about CIT's reverse mortgage subsidiary, Financial Freedom.[44] According to the HUD's response, CIT/Financial Freedom foreclosed on 16,220 federally insured reverse mortgages from April 2009 to April 2016. This represented about 39% of all federally insured reverse mortgage foreclosures during that time. CRC estimated that Financial Freedom serviced only about 17% of the market and thus was foreclosing more than twice as often as its competitors.[45] CIT Group disclosed to investors that it had received subpoenas from HUD's Office of the Inspector General in the third and fourth quarters of 2015.[46] In November 2016, two non-profits filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, alleging redlining by OneWest Bank.[47][48][49]

In 2017 a leaked internal memo from the California attorney general's office was published, stating that the prosecutor's office had found more than a thousand violations of foreclosure law by OneWest during Mnuchin's tenure. The prosecutor, Kamala Harris, had declined to file a civil enforcement suit.[50][51][52]

Liberty Strategic Capital

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Mnuchin established an investment fund, Liberty Strategic Capital. The fund obtained funds from the Saudis, Emirati and Qatari sovereign wealth funds.[53] According to the New York Times, "The scale of Mr. Mnuchin’s fund and its investments from countries where he traveled as Treasury secretary have raised questions about whether he used his government role to enrich himself."[54]

On March 6, 2024 Liberty lead the group of investors including Hudson Bay and Reverence Capital to invest over $1B in NYCB. Mnuchin became a board member of the bank, that was suffering from heavy losses.[55]

On March 14, 2024 Mnuchin announced that he's putting together the group of investors to buy TikTok. “This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” Mnuchin said.[56]

Film production career

In 2004, Mnuchin founded Dune Entertainment as a side business. It financed a number of large-budget films, mostly for 20th Century Fox, including the X-Men film franchise and Avatar.[7][57][58] In 2012, after Dune's deal with 20th Century Fox ended, Mnuchin worked with the filmmaker Brett Ratner and the Australian businessman James Packer to merge his Dune Entertainment company with Ratner and Packer's newly founded RatPac Entertainment joint venture. This formed RatPac-Dune Entertainment, which agreed a financing deal with Warner Bros.

Between 2013 and 2018, RatPac-Dune financed many films for Warner Bros., including American Sniper and Mad Max: Fury Road. Mnuchin was co-chairman of the trio's movie company, Relativity Media, but left seven months before it went bankrupt.[43] A source close to the company said he had resigned because of the potential for a conflict of interest between his duties at Relativity and OneWest.[57] He and other investors reportedly lost $80 million.[58]

Filmography

Year Role Titles

2014 Executive producer The Lego Movie

Winter's Tale

Edge of Tomorrow

Jersey Boys

This Is Where I Leave You

The Judge

Annabelle

Inherent Vice

American Sniper

Blended

2015 Executive producer Run All Night

Get Hard

Mad Max: Fury Road

Entourage

San Andreas

Vacation

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Black Mass

The Intern

Pan

Our Brand Is Crisis

In the Heart of the Sea

Focus

Jupiter Ascending

2016 Executive producer How to Be Single

Midnight Special

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Keanu

The Conjuring 2

Central Intelligence

The Legend of Tarzan

Lights Out

Suicide Squad

Sully

Storks

The Accountant

Collateral Beauty

Producer Rules Don't Apply

2017 Executive producer The Lego Batman Movie

Fist Fight

CHiPs

Going in Style

Unforgettable

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Wonder Woman

The House

Annabelle: Creation

The Disaster Artist

Politics

Donations

Before joining the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016, Mnuchin had been involved in politics only by donating money to campaigns.[59] Between 1995 and 2014, he donated over $120,000 to political organizations, PACs, politicians, and political parties. His contributions to candidates included 11 donations to Republicans and 36 donations to Democrats. The campaigns of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney were among those to which he donated money.[60] Mnuchin later stated most of those donations were favors for friends.[32]

Between June and September 2016, Mnuchin donated over $400,000 to the Republican Party, including donations to Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. Earlier in 2016, Mnuchin had donated $4,000 to Democrats Kamala Harris and Michael Wildes.[60]

2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump

Mnuchin was an early supporter of Trump, and attended his victory party after the New York Republican primary victory on April 19, 2016, for which he received a last-minute invitation.[33] He was called the following day by Trump, who asked him if he wanted to be the national finance chairman of his campaign.[32] Mnuchin, who later said in an interview he had known Trump "for over fifteen years", accepted the offer.[7][32] In a statement announcing the appointment, Trump said: "Steven is a professional at the highest level, with an extensive and very successful financial background." He also said Mnuchin would bring "unprecedented experience and expertise" that would benefit the Republican Party. After being appointed as the Trump campaign's main fundraiser, Mnuchin said: "It's a great privilege to be working with Mr. Trump to create a world-class finance organization to support the campaign in the General Election."[61]

Mnuchin worked with Republican National Committee counterpart Lewis Eisenberg on a late-developing joint operation for the committee and the Trump campaign. Before Mnuchin's appointment, no large-scale fundraising operation had been started for the Trump campaign. The late-summer fundraising goal was close to $500 million.[32] The New York Times described Mnuchin's role during the campaign as "relatively behind the scenes", and the newspaper noticed he never "seemed to seek the spotlight".[7] During an interview, Mnuchin said that because of his connection to the Trump campaign, "a lot of people in California and New York [...] wanted to stop being friends".[62] After Trump won the election, he announced that Mnuchin would join the transition team on November 11.[63]

Political views

In a November 30, 2016, interview on CNBC, Mnuchin called it the Trump administration's job to "make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs". Furthermore, he said his priority was getting a sustained growth of GDP of 3% or 4%. He said in order to get there, "our number one priority is tax reform". Mnuchin said he would reduce corporate taxes to 15%, cut taxes for the middle class, and simplify the tax system. When asked about trade, he said he believed in trade deals with individual countries, as opposed to regional trade deals. Mnuchin said, "This president [...] is going to have open communication with business leaders", when asked about keeping jobs from being offshored to Mexico.[6] During the interview, he also said he wants to "strip back parts of Dodd–Frank" because he argued it was too complicated, and it prevented banks from lending. He called the stripping back of Dodd–Frank "the number-one priority on the regulatory side".[7] David Levinthal, a senior political reporter for Business Insider stated in a 2020 article at the Center for Public Integrity that Mnuchin lacks a definite political orientation and that he was sought by candidate Trump due to his financial connections and ability to raise campaign funds.[64]

Secretary of the Treasury (2017–2021)

Nomination and confirmation

Mnuchin being sworn in at the Oval Office

On November 30, 2016, Donald Trump announced on his website that he would nominate Mnuchin as United States Secretary of the Treasury.[15] In the statement, Trump called Mnuchin a "world-class financier, banker, and businessman", and he said Mnuchin played an important role in developing his "plan to build a dynamic, booming economy". Mnuchin himself said he was "honored to have the opportunity to serve our great country in this important role". He called Trump's economic agenda a "bold" one "that creates good-paying jobs and defends the American worker".[15]

On February 1, 2017, the Senate Finance Committee approved his nomination by a vote of 11–0 with all Democrats boycotting the vote, sending the nomination to the Senate floor.[65]

After the nomination was announced, Mnuchin resigned from his position on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, to which he had donated between $100,000 and $250,000.[66][67] When the pick was announced, Mnuchin was also a member of the boards of UCLA Health System, the NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital, and the Los Angeles Police Foundation.[15]

The New York Times noted that Mnuchin's selection "fits uneasily with much of Mr. Trump's campaign attacks on the financial industry". For example, an ad of Trump's campaign said Goldman Sachs' CEO had "robbed [the] working class". Mnuchin is the third former Goldman-Sachs executive to serve in the job, after Hank Paulson, under President George W. Bush, and Robert Rubin, under President Bill Clinton, in the 2000s and 1990s, respectively.[33]

Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow and Sajid Javid at 11 Downing Street, 2019

During his Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, 2017, Mnuchin was criticized by Democrats for OneWest's foreclosure practices. Mnuchin said: "Since I was first nominated to serve as treasury secretary, I have been maligned as taking advantage of others' hardships in order to earn a buck. Nothing could be further from the truth".[68] During the hearing, it was also noted that Mnuchin had failed to disclose $95 million of real estate that he owned and his role as director of Dune Capital International, an investment fund in a tax haven. Mnuchin described the omissions as mistakes made amid a mountain of bureaucracy.[69]

Following Trump's January 2017 announcement about an investigation into voter registration, it was discovered that Mnuchin is registered to vote in both California and New York.[70]

On February 13, 2017, Mnuchin was confirmed as secretary of the treasury by a vote of 53–47. He received unanimous support from Senate Republicans but from only one Senate Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia.[71]

Tenure

Mnuchin's first official secretary portrait

A close-up of a United States twenty-dollar bill, featuring the signature of Mnuchin.

Artificial intelligence

Mnuchin, when asked in an interview with Mike Allen of Axios "whether he was worried about AI displacing jobs, replied: 'not at all ... I think we are so far away from that' — 50 or 100 years — 'it's not even on my radar screen'." Former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers was among critics of the statement, likening it to climate denial and creationism.[72] Fortune columnist Alan Murray, noting the dispute, said he thought "the core of the misunderstanding is the term 'artificial intelligence'". While he felt Mnuchin expressed understanding of the role of technology in the labor market and also worried that the secretary and President Donald Trump were both in their ways underestimating technology's impact, he thought the climate-denial charge was excessive.[73]

Environment

In January 2020, Mnuchin dismissed environmental activist Greta Thunberg, saying she should go to college and study economics before weighing in on policy.[74] Others responded to Mnuchin, noting that thousands of economists with PhDs had signed a letter calling for taxation of carbon dioxide emissions.[75]

Federal budget and benefits

On June 12, 2017, Mnuchin denied the debt ceiling not being raised before the August recess would cease federal government operations, and said Congress should weigh the option of "changing the timing so that the debt ceiling matches the budget process so we don't have to deal with this in this format" during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing.[76] On June 14, during a prepared testimony ahead of the House subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs, Mnuchin said the budget proposal on the part of the Trump administration "should send a message that the international financial institutions need to operate more efficiently".[77]

On July 13, in response to limited lifespans being reported of Social Security and Medicaid, Mnuchin said: "To help make these programs sustainable into the future, we should focus on strengthening the economy today. Compounding growth will help ease projected shortfalls."[78]

Turkey

On July 27, 2018, at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Argentina, Berat Albayrak, one of the 'Most Successful Economy Ministers' in the field of economy in international politics, met with the President. Berat Albayrak and Steven Mnuchin after the bilateral meeting “We discussed in detail many important issues in the context of our economic cooperation and strategic partnership between our countries.”[79]

Taxes

Mnuchin is a member of the so-called "Big Six", a group of politicians convened to write a tax reform proposal that incorporated input from members of the House of Representatives, Senate, and White House. In addition to Mnuchin, the group consists of senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY); representatives Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Paul Ryan (R-WI); and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.[80]

Shortly after the November 2016 election, Mnuchin, as the planned nominee for secretary of the treasury, stated in an interview with CNBC that "any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class",[81] which Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) subsequently called "The Mnuchin Rule" during his Senate confirmation hearing.[82]

Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network, said a preliminary tax reform proposal by Trump in April 2017 "allocates much of the tax relief to the wealthy" and could increase the budget deficit.[82] In a May 2017 event moderated by CNBC, Mnuchin stated the intent was to deliver a "middle-income tax cut", but that final results depended on the actions of Congress.[83] Mnuchin appeared with White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short in a July 2017 event when they vowed to have the tax reform proposal before Congress after it resumed operations on September 5, and Mnuchin added that "lowering the top [earners'] rate [would be offset by] elimination of huge deductions. So, for most people in the top rate, they're not going to get a tax cut."[84] Mnuchin walked back the "Mnuchin Rule" in a September 2017 interview with CNN prior to the release of the proposed tax reforms, saying the "no absolute tax cut for the upper class" phrase "was never a promise ... never a pledge ... it was what the president's objective was". Under the tax reform proposal, the top tax rate would decline from 39.6 to 35 percent, and the budget deficit would likely increase.[85]

Cabinet meeting in August 2018

During an appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference on May 1, 2017, Mnuchin said the White House and House Republicans were united in views on tax reductions: "We're all on the same page. On 80% of the details, we're in agreement. Another 20%, we need to work through."[86]

During a conference in Ottawa on June 9, Mnuchin said government tax receipts were "coming in somewhat lower", but that this did not concern the administration.[87]

While appearing on ABC News on July 9, Mnuchin confirmed the administration was not considering a tax increase on the American upper class and the upcoming tax plan would finance itself.[88]

Mnuchin advocated for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a bill expected to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit.[89] Mnuchin asserted that the bill would pay for itself by causing explosive economic growth; he promised the treasury was working on an analysis that showed that, and that the analysis would be made public before Congress voted on the legislation.[89] However, on November 30, 2017, sources within the Treasury department said Mnuchin had ordered no analysis of the tax plan and that there was no Treasury analysis that showed that the tax cuts would pay for themselves.[89] In December 2017, the treasury released a one-page report on the tax plan which acknowledged that the plan would not pay for itself through economic growth.[90][91]

In May 2018, Mnuchin instructed his staff to accept a non-low-income tract in Storey County, Nevada, as an Opportunity Zone shortly after attending a Milken Institute event in Beverly Hills with Michael Milken.[92] Milken was already an investor in the Nevada tract.[92] In August 2018, Mnuchin attended a Milkin Institute conference on "opportunity zones" in the Hamptons with Milken and later accepted a flight to Los Angeles with Milken on his private jet.[92] Treasury later issued a regulatory guidance that allows prior investors to benefit from newly designated "opportunity zones".[92]

International relations

Mnuchin led the U.S. delegation to Israel in May 2017 for the inauguration of the newly relocated U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

Mnuchin, Secretary Pompeo Secretary Nielsen and Advisor Kushner with Mexican president-elect López Obrador, July 13, 2018

At a March 18, 2017, meeting of G-20 country finance ministers, Mnuchin supported the Trump administration's trade policy of economic protectionism.[93][94]

During an April 24, 2017, White House briefing, Mnuchin announced Department of Treasury sanctions against the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. He said the sanctions were designed to create accountability for the Bashar al-Assad regime and its supporters in the wake of their violations both of U.N. Security Council resolutions and of the Chemical Weapons Convention.[95]

On June 29, 2017, Mnuchin announced that the U.S. had placed sanctions on the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank. He charged the bank with acting "as a gateway for North Korea to access the U.S. and international financial systems".[96]

Mnuchin and Saudi Arabian Director of PIF and Chairman of Saudi Aramco, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, discuss energy opportunities and investments in the United States, October 31, 2019

On March 15, 2018, Mnuchin unveiled a series of sanctions, first time under CAATSA as well as Executive Order 13694, against various Russian entities and individuals.[97][98]

Beginning in November 2019, Mnuchin facilitated negotiations between the governments of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan with respect to the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam after tripartite negotiations between the three countries languished after eight years of talks.[99] Egypt has opposed the dam, fearing that it will reduce the amount of water it receives from the Nile. In February 2020, Mnuchin stated that "final testing and filling should not take place without an agreement."[100] Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew said Mnuchin's advice to Ethiopia was "ill-advised".[101]

Support for President Trump

While briefing reporters on April 26, 2017, Mnuchin said President Trump "has no intention" to release his tax returns, asserting that Trump "has released plenty of information".[102]

In the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, opposing the removal of Confederate statues, protesters included neo-Nazis and Klansmen, leading to violent conflicts. President Trump said there was "blame on both sides". Several hundred of Mnuchin's Yale classmates drafted a letter urging him to resign from the administration in protest.[103] Mnuchin responded by saying: "While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape, or form, believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways."[11]

On September 24, Mnuchin appeared on This Week and State of the Union to defend Trump's call to "get that son of a bitch off the field right now", referring to the protests by professional athletes starting in 2016, most notably marked by Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the pregame singing of the national anthem. Mnuchin said: "... it's not about race, it's not about free speech. They can do free speech on their own time. ... [T]his is about respect for the military and first responders in the country."[104]

Comments on Lego Batman movie

In March 2017, Mnuchin drew ethics concerns as regarding a statement he had made urging parents to "send all your kids to LEGO Batman" during an interview with Axios, apparently endorsing The Lego Batman Movie, of which he was an executive producer. Earlier in the interview, Mnuchin acknowledged: "I'm not allowed to promote anything that I'm involved in."[105] In response, Mnuchin wrote in a letter to Walter Shaub at the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) that he "should not have made that statement", and assured the OGE that "it was not my intention to make a product endorsement".[106]

Divestment from prior businesses

In May 2017, it was reported that Mnuchin's fiancée, Louise Linton, had succeeded him as the interim CEO of Dune Entertainment effective February 2017. Mnuchin had stepped down from the role as part of his ethics agreement to divest his business roles in preparation for his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury.[107][108] Linton's announcement of her role at Dune Entertainment drew the attention of Senator Ron Wyden [D-Oregon], a member of the Senate Finance Committee, who questioned whether the appointment of Linton meant Mnuchin had fully divested from the company. Although the Department of the Treasury replied that she was serving in an uncompensated capacity, Linton resigned as interim CEO later in May.[109]

Use of government aircraft

Gulfstream Aerospace C-37A (Gulfstream V), photographed in 2005

Following criticism of his use of a United States Air Force jet on a trip to Kentucky that involved viewing the solar eclipse, the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) opened up an inquiry into Mnuchin's use of government aircraft.[110] The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding Mnuchin's use of government aircraft. After the government failed to respond to the FOIA request, CREW sued the Department of the Treasury to release the documents.[111] Mnuchin denied the trip was related to viewing the solar eclipse, saying: "People in Kentucky took [the solar eclipse] very seriously. Being a New Yorker, I don't have any interest in watching the eclipse."[112] Mnuchin, who was accompanied by his wife Louise Linton on the trip, reimbursed the government for Linton's travel to Kentucky, which amounted to $595 out of a total cost of $26,900.[113][114]

During the OIG's investigation into Mnuchin's use of government aircraft, it was revealed that Mnuchin had requested a military jet for his honeymoon travel to Europe in June 2017. Mnuchin stated that, as a member of the United States National Security Council, he needed access to secure communications during his honeymoon, but withdrew his request for the military jet after an alternative was identified.[115] Mnuchin stated: "I'm very sensitive to the use of government funds. I've never asked the government to pay for my personal travel ... The story [regarding the honeymoon travel request] was quite misreported."[112] The OIG investigation also showed Mnuchin had taken a United States Air Force C-37A, the military designation of the Gulfstream V, to return from New York to Washington on August 15 after flying to New York commercially. Although the request for travel on the military jet was initiated by Mnuchin's office, the aircraft had previously been used to fly Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao from Joint Base Andrews to Teterboro Airport. Mnuchin's return flight lasted less than an hour and had an operating cost of at least $25,000.[116]

The OIG released its report on October 4, 2017, concluding that there was "no violation of law in these requests and uses" of government aircraft by Mnuchin, but also expressing concern regarding "a disconnect between the standard of proof called for in the Daley memo and the actual amount of proof provided by Treasury and accepted by the White House in justifying these trip requests".[117] The referenced Daley Memo was issued by then-White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley on April 4, 2011, and it stated the standards for use of government aircraft by senior executive branch officials were given in OMB Circular A-126, dated February 10, 1993. The Daley Memo also states that travel using military aircraft must be considered a White House Support Mission, taken at the specific direction of the President under one of a set of limited circumstances that "make commercial transportation unacceptable".[117] The typical reimbursement paid by requesting federal executive agencies covers only the cost of an equivalent coach ticket on a commercial flight.[116]

In the report, the OIG reviewed nine travel requests by Mnuchin for military air transportation since March 2017, of which seven were approved and taken, one was withdrawn, and one was approved with travel pending in late October 2017.[117] The total cost of the seven trips taken was $811,800, calculated from per-hour cost and operating hours for the specific aircraft, or Air Force-provided direct costs of operations. Two of the flights, taken to Europe in March and May 2017, each cost more than $300,000. On one flight, to Ottawa in June, Mnuchin was accompanied by his then-fiancée Linton. The total cost of the Ottawa trip was $16,350, and the reimbursement repaid for Linton's cost of travel was $744.[114][118] Due to an inconsistency in the records provided for the trip to New York on August 15, the OIG opened a second inquiry in October 2017, "to assure that [the OIG] have in fact received all relevant records".[119]

Student heckling incident

Mnuchin spoke at the University of California, Los Angeles on February 26, 2018, where he was heckled and initially blocked the video from being released.[120] The university said in a statement that Mnuchin, who at first "subsequently withdrew" his approval for the video to be posted online, later gave consent for the video to be published.[121]

Effort to invoke the 25th amendment

Mnuchin was one of several cabinet officials who discussed invoking the 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump from office following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, according to Politico.[122]

“I was aware of all these discussions,” Mnuchin said regarding the 25th Amendment, per Politico, citing a forthcoming book by Jonathan Karl. “It would not be an unreasonable assumption to think that people were calling me, okay, and talking about it, whether they were pushing it or not pushing it.”

Personal life

Mnuchin's mother was a long-time investor with Bernie Madoff. After his mother died in early 2005, Mnuchin and his brother liquidated her investments, making $3.2 million. A Madoff trustee sued to retrieve the money from the Mnuchins, but a court ruled that the Madoff trust could recoup money only from those who had cashed out less than two years before the December 2008 collapse of Madoff's company.[123]

Marriages

From 1992 to 1999, Mnuchin was married to Kathryn Leigh McCarver.[citation needed]

In 1999, Mnuchin married Heather deForest Crosby,[12][20] and they had three children together.[124] Heather Mnuchin was active in philanthropy and AZIAM yoga.[125][126] After he bought IndyMac, Mnuchin moved to a 21,000-square-foot (2,000 m2), $26.5 million house in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, because the company's headquarters was in Pasadena.[8][124] They divorced in 2014.

Mnuchin married actress Louise Linton on June 24, 2017.[127] Vice President Mike Pence presided over the ceremony.[128] A 2017 photo of Mnuchin and Linton holding up the sheet of new $1 bills, as they toured the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, drew wide mockery on the Internet and became a meme.[129]

Non-profit work

Mnuchin served as a member of the development board of Yale University, as a board member of the Riverdale Country School, as a member of the national board and senior member of the non-profit youth organization Junior Achievement, to which he had donated money, and as a board member of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.[26][130]

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

John Sarris

2020-07-16 at 2:57 pm

Thanks to you both. According to you, my suspicion is correct. The 69th week ended when Jesus was anointed and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. He preached for 3 1/2 years and was cut off in the middle of the week as Daniel clearly states. The Word continued to go forth to Israel for the next 3 1/2 years ending with the stoning of Stephen – enter the Great Tribulation, Jacob’s Trouble, which has now lasted for roughly 2000 years.

It does puzzle me as to why the vast majority of Bible students/teachers don’t see what seems to me to be so clearly evident. The points you both made are so obvious.

Thanks

The 490 years and Israel’s covenant ended at Stephen’s stoning.

https://revelationbyjesuschrist.com/stoning-of-stephen/

Cut-offs

Also called "cutoffs". A generic term for trousers where the legs have been cut off mid-way. The concept has been around since the 1930s when shorts began to be acceptable wear outside the sports field.[17] During the 1960s and 1970s the concept of deliberately cutting off the legs of jeans, allowing the raw edge to fray, along with other means of customising them, took hold as part of Western youth culture.[36] Whilst cut-offs can be home-made from existing jeans, ready-made cut-offs are also commercially retailed.[37] Extremely short denim cut-offs are known as "Daisy Dukes" (see below).[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorts#Cut-offs

Michael Stephen Manna (born October 9, 1971), better known by his ring name Stevie Richards, is an American retired professional wrestler and media personality. Since June 2024, Richards has hosted The Stevie Richards Show, presented by co-host James Romero on the WSI Network.[12][13][14]

Over the course of his career, Richards has performed for major professional wrestling promotions including Eastern/Extreme Championship Wrestling, World Championship Wrestling, World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor. Championships held by Richards include the ECW World Tag Team Championship, the WWE Hardcore Championship (21 times),[15] the NWA National Heavyweight Championship and the Extreme Rising World Championship.

Professional wrestling career

Early career (1992–1994)

Michael Manna trained as a professional wrestler under Jimmy Jannetty at Mike Sharpe's wrestling school in Brick Township, New Jersey. He wrestled his first match on February 25, 1992, for the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance as "Stevie Richards", facing Jannetty. He wrestled a handful of matches for Eastern Championship Wrestling before spending two years working on the independent circuit for seasoning.[10]

NWA Eastern / Extreme Championship Wrestling (1994–1997)

Raven's Nest (1994–1996)

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Journal of Jesuit Studies

Volume 10, Issue 2023, 9 January 2023, Pages 45-62

Journal of Jesuit Studies

Articles

The Deceivers Deceived: How a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Anti-Jesuit Circle Duped a Jesuit Rector

Author links open overlay panel

Sabina Pavone

Cite

https://doi.org/10.1163/22141332-10010005

Under a Creative Commons license

open access

Abstract

In 1608, Antonio Barisone (1557/8–1623), rector of the Jesuit college at Ferrara, became ensnared in an elaborate deception designed to expose the unscrupulous methods by which Jesuits exploited vulnerable wealthy widows and enlarged the material wealth of their Society. Entering into a correspondence with a Venetian noblewoman who lamented the loss of her Jesuit confessor following the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Venice (1606), it took several months before Barisone realized that the letters he was receiving actually had their origins in the anti-Jesuit circles linked to Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623). In addition to throwing light on Venice as a hotbed of espionage, political rumors, and conspiratorial activity in the early sixteenth century, this episode foregrounds several themes and leitmotifs that would go on to dominate anti-Jesuit polemic over the subsequent centuries.

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Keywords

forgeryanti-JesuitismVeniceInterdictGiovan Francesco Sagredo (1571–1620)Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623)espionagefake newsearly modern religious history

1. A Well-Honed Hoax

On March 12, 1608, the rector of the Jesuit college at Ferrara, Antonio Barisone (1557/8–1623), received a letter addressed to Antonio Possevino (1533–1611). The latter was not in the city at the time and in his absence, he decided to open it himself. The Venetian noblewoman Cecilia Contarini was writing to Possevino to tell him she had lost her confessor, Antonio Giugno (b. c.1548), as a consequence of the Interdict and the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Venice (1606); she was therefore turning to one of the undisputed leading lights of the print war in which Rome and the Serenissima were then engaged.1 Contarini painted herself as a woman beset by her own relations whose greed was restricting her contact with the outside world for fear of her alienating their inheritance, and she asked if the Jesuit would therefore take on her spiritual guidance “by letter.”2

We cannot know what Possevino would have made of this communication, but we might guess that such an acute politician and diplomat as that veteran of the pamphlet wars could have scented a trap. But Barisone, who actually opened the letter, was also no cipher: he had run the college at Macerata and the Greek College in Rome, and, in 1606, was stationed in Ferrara, where he received notice of the bull of excommunication that Paul V (r.1605–1621) had issued against Venice, forwarded to him by the Society’s superior general Claudio Acquaviva (in office 1581–1615) with instructions that it be promulgated immediately.3 He was, besides, brother to Girolamo Barisone—a confidant of Acquaviva’s—who had also occupied positions of responsibility within the Society over the same period.4 We are dealing, then, with a figure who ought to have been sufficiently on the ball to be wary of such an unusual request, although it is also true that the Jesuits in Venice had so polarized opinion in the city that while there certainly existed a considerable public hostile to the Society, there were equally many who resented the Jesuits’ banishment. Furthermore, the practice of providing spiritual guidance to women of rank was beginning to be standard practice in the early years of the seventeenth century. These considerations, then, were enough to persuade Barisone to agree to enter into correspondence with Contarini and to find nothing untoward in her suggestion that they write under assumed names so that any letter falling into the wrong hands could not be traced back to themselves.

The names they fixed on were Rocco Berlinzone5 and Anzola Colomba, the two exchanging forty-eight letters in all, and it seems that almost until the last moment the Jesuit failed to realize that the Contarini/ Colomba alias concealed one Giovan Francesco Sagredo (1571–1620), an influential figure in the Venetian world of the time, friend of Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623), correspondent of Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1642), and a prominent member of the anti-Jesuit party.6 Sagredo was doubtless not acting alone in this scheme: he was one of the so-called giovani, a group that included Antonio Querini (1554–1608), Leonardo Donà (1536–1612),7 and Niccolò Contarini (1553–1631)—and it may well be that the correspondence, once concluded, remained in the possession of the last named.8 Sagredo had planned his hoax to be at the expense of a figure he reckoned to be one of the staunchest upholders of the Roman line (i.e., Possevino), but decided to proceed regardless of the fortuitous change of target. He began drawing in the rector by describing the difficulty of finding a good confessor in Venice as all those remaining in the city were linked to the Republic’s cause. Anzola Colomba described to her Jesuit correspondent the real threat of heresy represented by the available Venetian options: having to make her confession to such priests made her feel, she wrote, like “a Lutheran Jew” (“zudia luterana”), uniting in this phrase two bogeymen, namely the Protestant Reformation and the ever malign influence of the Jewish community. She had sought, she claimed, absolution from her Venetian confessor for having disobeyed the Interdict, but he had refused to absolve her from what he did not believe to be a sin. Barisone agreed that it would be better in that case not to confess at all; and the two of them returned on several occasions to the Interdict theme.9

But the final aim, it seems clear, was another: to demonstrate that the Jesuits were only interested in getting their hands on the worldly possessions of the female faithful. Contarini/ Colomba succeeded, in fact, in shifting their conversation in this direction, saying that she was keen to leave part of her estate to “pious places” and insisting that Barisone help her draw up a draft will (“schizeto di testamento”).10 The Jesuit initially replied cautiously that she should herself choose what “places” should receive her legacies, but in subsequent letters allowed himself to be drawn into making suggestions. In the first instance Barisone, with a certain canniness, made no mention of Jesuits (listing the Theatines, the Capuchins, the odd hospice),11 but as their exchanges proceeded—and encouraged by the noble lady who wanted to leave something specifically to her Jesuit confessor—he eventually confirmed Sagredo’s dark suspicions by allowing that some part of her landholdings might be conceded to the usufruct of the Society and indeed named her former Venetian confessor, Father Antonio Giugno (whom he had failed to consult with a view to verifying the information supplied by the noblewoman), as an appropriate beneficiary of her largesse.12 That Barisone was aware the operation could stoke accusations of impropriety against the Society is clear from his enjoining Cecilia Contarini to proceed with utter secrecy and before Giugno was able to return to Venice, since

if you were to do it after his return, all the world and your children in particular would think that you had been influenced by him, and therefore it would be best that you draw up your will before his arrival so that he could not be accused of having had you do so under his guidance.13

The hoax was therefore moving in the direction Sagredo hoped, and confirming the Jesuits’ avarice. But then a month later “Cecilia Contarini” received a letter from a certain Maddalena Boschi informing her of the sudden departure of Barisone for Naples and forwarding a request from the father to have back the sheet outlining the legacy in favor of Antonio Giugno. The motive given was a scruple regarding the beneficiary who had not been informed of the ongoing discussion, and “if God wills it that Master Antonio should receive this, then He will find a way to make it so; and if He does not wish it, we should not go against His will.”14 Barisone had at last smelt a rat.15 To be sure, the good father had not behaved with scrupulous rectitude, contravening all the guidelines issued over the years by the superior general to Jesuits in every part of the globe that they should not enter into worldly transactions with women to whom they were giving spiritual guidance.16 There was even a direct Venetian precedent from a decade or so earlier when Father Giulio Viscandi (dates unknown) had been reprimanded by Acquaviva himself for having accepted cash donations from certain widows.17

The Jesuit sources pertinent to our inquiry are unfortunately exiguous, but Nick Wilding has succeeded in tracking down a draft letter from the superior general to Barisone dated July 5, 1608, from which we gather that the Ferrara rector had solicited the help of a cardinal to intervene with the Venetian authorities, but that the more circumspect Acquaviva turned away the suggestion, no doubt aware of Barisone’s error of judgment and of the necessity of not drawing attention to a correspondence potentially embarrassing to the Society.18 Evidence of the culprit’s own embarrassment is the fact that in one of his last letters Barisone enjoined “Cecilia Contarini” to burn the draft will he had drawn up together with “all my letters to you […] so that they not be discovered.”19 The Society’s strategy was evidently to keep knowledge of the correspondence within its own walls, not least because, the ongoing Interdict notwithstanding, the Jesuits were currently negotiating to be allowed back into Venice, and any circulation of the letters between Rocco Berlinzone and Anzola Colomba would hardly have been helpful to their efforts.

Of the opposite inclination to the Roman party, needless to say, was the Venetian side, which was only too happy to make the hoax at Barisone’s expense known, first and foremost to Sarpi,20 a key figure in Venetian anti-Jesuitism, and, beyond Venice, to Galileo himself.21 The now openly burlesque nature of the correspondence was apparent in the final letter to the Jesuit, recounting the death and the testamentary provisions of Cecilia Contarini:

This is to inform Your Reverence of the passing of that most devout Countess Signora Cecilia who has left to Your Reverence’s Society the sum of five thousand ducats to be counted in good currency, immediately on receiving the news of her safe arrival in heaven in accordance with the contract she stipulated while alive with Master Rocco Berlinzone, your appointed agent. Be assured that as soon as Your Reverence be satisfied by the first messenger arriving from on high with the aforementioned confirmation in authenticated form, and can see that it arrives here, he will receive due satisfaction, and I meanwhile kiss his hands trusting in his holy prayers.22

The farcical tone of this communication represented, however, only one level of the exchange: that the aim was something more than mere leg-pulling emerges in fact from a note that Sagredo appended to the correspondence. The Venetian, addressing Barisone directly in a sort of summarizing indictment, rehearsed the whole history of the hoax and strongly condemned the Jesuit’s behavior in the course of it: “How wretched and unfortunate are those that put their trust in you, those who stumble into the coils of the deceptions you live by and end up the unhappy prey of your greed and rapacity.”23 And what is more, the rector had not, in Sagredo’s opinion acted as a loose cannon: his behavior was entirely consistent with that of the Society generally:

Everyone knows that you seek what is convenient to yourselves without regard to others […], your plans always aimed at other, no doubt higher ends. […] If the Jesuits are ready with such miserable means and with letters without scruple and addressed to persons they do not know, what will they get up to in the confessionals where they keep devoted ladies for whole days on end!24

The second and more important level of Sagredo’s concern was, then, to demonstrate, once and for all, that the anti-Jesuit sentiment widespread in the Venetian Republic was profoundly justified, and the devices employed by the Society of Jesus to conspire against the state were legion. Its strategy did not necessarily involve violent political action as in the Gunpowder Plot against James I (r.1603–25) recently foiled in England (1605), or the assassination of Henri iii of France (r.1574–89) perpetrated by the Catholic fanatic Jacques Clément (c.1567– 1589) in 1589, who, it was suspected, may have been incited and even armed by the Jesuits.25 A more subtle game plan was to subvert the womenfolk, who represented a weak link in the social chain but a key point of entry into powerful families. Thus, the Jesuits were alleged to deploy confession as a full-blown political tool, not only in the case of confessors to kings, but as a weapon for working on consciences more broadly.26

In his closing remarks, Sagredo returned to the issue of the Interdict, introducing a new theme: the pope—as a human being—could err in human fashion like another, and it was just such an error that had induced him to impose an excommunication on Venice. It is worth noting in passing that the same line of argument would mutatis mutandis be often redeployed in late eighteenth-century pro-Jesuit propaganda: it was surely a human error that had induced Clement xiv (r.1769–74) to suppress the Society of Jesus in 1773, and for that reason, the papal brief Dominus ac redemptor (1773) was a pronouncement that could be considered null and void.27

We cannot know for sure whether Sagredo intended to publish the Rocco Berlinzone–Anzola Colomba correspondence. The addition to the exchange of a letter from Barisone to Sagredo, solicited by the latter on a trivial pretext apparently to prove that the Jesuit’s handwriting was indeed that of the letters sent to the “Contarini,” would tend to support such a conjecture. Nor can we know what motives, if this was indeed his intention, caused the Venetian nobleman to hold back. The manuscript survival of the text, which exists in a single copy first spotted by Gaetano Cozzi in Venice’s Marciana Library,28 strongly suggests that if such a plan had existed it was never realized since no trace of it is to be found in the great mass of Venetian anti-Jesuit publications. The choice of an epistolary format nonetheless corresponds to a well-worn tradition typical of literary anti-Jesuitism, which would enjoy considerable success over the following centuries. The most famous example is, of course, Blaise Pascal’s (1623–62) Lettres provinciales, but there are many other occasions when the epistolary genre was preferred on account of its attractiveness to a wider public. It is also the case that many of the polemical pamphlets issued around the Venetian Interdict were arranged in letter form.29 But it is clear that, even in the manuscript, the correspondence must have circulated widely enough in Venice and is indeed mentioned in Sarpi’s letters. Sarpi, as already indicated, was a key figure in the construction of the myth of the power-hungry Jesuit set on manipulating every aspect of social relations, be it religious, economic or political.

2. The Venetian Background

We should at this point take a step backwards and have a look at the context in which the sting at the expense of the Jesuit father Barisone was perpetrated. And Venice does in fact represent an interesting case study of how the stereotype of a Society of Jesus maneuvering deviously within a society and plotting to seize power could be constructed. In the years preceding the hoax, the Venetian Republic had become an important crossroads for European politics and, thanks in part to its position as a leading port for trade with the Levant, it was considered by contemporaries as a hotbed of espionage, political rumors, and conspiratorial activity. Another contributor to this reputation was the fact that the republic had tried to play a mediating role in the ascent of the Protestant Henri iv (r.1589–1610) to the French throne and had thereby acquired the credit in Reformation circles of being an “open city,” which the presence of long-term English residents might seem to confirm.30 The lagoon city was also busy with spies and informers in the pay of one or more Italian or European powers who stoked a flourishing market in fake news.31 Among such spies were inevitably numbered the Jesuits who were reputed to keep black books of information on every sort of person, be they friend or foe.32 The true, the false, and the plausible intertwined inextricably, fueling a publishing boom that was particularly vigorous in the years we are dealing with. These elements sometimes made it hard even for governments to distinguish reliable from specious information. And then, as Marc Bloch put it in a famous essay: “error propagates itself, grows, and ultimately survives only on one condition—that it finds a favorable cultural broth in the society where it is spreading. Through it, people unconsciously express all their prejudices, hatreds, fears, all their strong emotions.”33 There can be no doubt, besides, that an anti-Jesuit mindset had become quite firmly rooted in Venice, feeding off the anti-Roman and anti-Spanish prejudices already flourishing in the city.

Since the fifteenth-century Venice had shown a distinct assertiveness towards the papacy, to the point where in 1411 it took a series of measures to exclude from office those nobles with relations in the curia or shared interests with Rome. In 1551, disturbed by their increasing influence among the patriciate, the Council of Ten actually banished the Barnabites (Clerics Regular of St. Paul) from the Republic, already identifying the confessional as a potential tool for extracting state secrets.34 At that point, the Jesuits had not yet fallen under suspicion, perhaps because they were only then beginning to penetrate Serenissima territory, but the rapid expansion of the Society’s colleges by 1591 did then provoke a clash with the University of Padua, initially sparked by the philosopher Cesare Cremonini (1550–1631), who objected to the local Jesuit college awarding academic qualifications. Cremonini accused the Jesuits—if only on the academic level—of electing themselves as “monarchs of knowledge” in Padua.35 The Paduan squabble was the forerunner of further quarrels between universities and Jesuit colleges, which would embroil other centers of learning such as the Sorbonne in Paris36 or Prague University,37 and feed into another leitmotif of anti-Jesuit propaganda—using the schools as a recruiting ground for the order. It was a theme that would be revisited by nineteenth-century (particularly French) propaganda, contributing to the conspiracy theories of those who feared—more than the Jesuits themselves—the so-called jésuites de robe courte, fellow travelers who assumed positions of power in society without actually taking the cloth, acting as the Society’s fifth columnists, and tailoring the policies of states to suit the order’s interests.38

3. The Interdict, Sarpi, and the Jesuits

1606 was the crucial year in the Society’s clash of wills with the Republic. In the face of the senate’s refusal to allow two priests accused of serious crimes to be dealt with by a church tribunal, Paul V, already angered by a series of measures aimed at restricting ecclesiastical privileges within the Republic, placed Venice under an Interdict, and pressured the Jesuits to do their utmost to obtain the city’s obedience.39 In the ensuing “pamphlet war” the already mentioned Possevino, the undisputed leading player, active under a number of pseudonyms, was joined by such figures as the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) who, despite his role as recognized papal champion, adopted a less intransigent stance than, say, Father Paolo Comitoli (c.1545–1626), whose fulminations against Venice were thought even by his confrères over-violent and liable to imperil his order’s survival in the city.40 The Society was certainly not the only religious order opposed to Venetian policy, but it suffered from already existing prejudices nurtured in particular by the circles around Sarpi, whose members were convinced that vanquishing the Jesuits would mean a round defeat of the Holy See. It was hoped that such a defeat might in turn trigger a new reform movement in the Catholic Church.41 This is not the place to examine the supposed Protestant leanings of Sarpi, on which much ink has already been spilled.42 To be sure, however, the Servite had seen in the maneuvers of the Jesuits in contemporary society a confirmation of accusations leveled at them of conspiring against states. One immediate example was the appearance in 1606 in Poland of an imposter who had got himself recognized by the order and by the pope himself as a son of Ivan the Terrible (1530–84). This false Dmitrij (d.1606) had converted to Catholicism and managed to reach Russia and have himself crowned tsar. His rise (and fall) had been meteoric but none other than Possevino had talked up his cause to Paul V, writing “if it pleases God to preserve Dmitrij for us, many doors might open for a right and proper propagation of the Catholic faith.”43 The episode did not pass unobserved in Venice, home to counterfeiters, where the production of forged letters was a daily amusement, and which now saw the publication of Condoglianza di Stanislao Przovski Lublinense Studente in Padova col Padre Antonio Possevino Giesuita. This was a letter supposedly written by a Polish student in Padua, not by accident addressed to none other than Possevino, in which the Jesuits were not only framed as the principal architects of the False Dmitrij imposture but also accused of having spurred Sebastian I of Portugal (r.1557–78) to the disastrous Moroccan crusade in which he lost his life and of having plotted against Elizabeth I (r.1558–1603) in England.44

On May 10, 1605, the Society of Jesus was forced to quit Venice and transfer to the Republic’s neighboring territories. It would not be allowed back until 1656, but as we have said a minority pro-Jesuit party persisted in the city of the doges so that it was not implausible that the pseudo-Cecilia Contarini might wish to continue with a Jesuit spiritual director.45 Nonetheless, the hostile party was certainly the busier, as the abundant anti-Jesuit documentation amassed by the Republic and now preserved in the Venice State Archive testifies.46 One of the more enthusiastic collectors of material against the Society was Paolo Sarpi himself, whose name keeps recurring in these pages, and who was at the center of another episode that lent substance to the Jesuit conspiracy myth.

On October 5, 1607, the Servite was returning to his monastery late in the evening when he was set upon in the Campo Santa Fosca by

five assassins, […] the innocent Father being wounded by three dagger thrusts, two in the neck and a third in his face, which entered by the right ear and emerged in the slight depression between his nose and right cheek, the assassin not managing to extract his weapon which had passed through the bone where it remained much twisted and lodged fast.47

Head of the band sent to kill the Republic’s theologian was a certain Rodolfo Poma (dates unknown). Having initially fled with his companions to the papal nuncio’s house, the would-be assassin succeeded in reaching Rome, which in itself confirmed, had there been any doubt in Sarpi’s mind, that the Roman Curia was behind the botched attempt on his life. From an Inquisition condemnation of his Trattato sull’Interdetto (1606) the curia had progressed to excommunicating him (January 5, 1607) and now—it appeared—attempting to murder him.48 For Sarpi, in any case, the true instigators of the papal tactics could only be the Jesuits, well-known theorists of regicide and, as we have already noted, widely believed to have been behind important assassinations.49 “A Jesuit is ever ready to compose a work that will show that it is permissible, even meritorious, to kill someone by any means possible who has been excommunicated by the pope,” wrote Sarpi to Monsieur Jérôme Groslot de l’Isle (d.1622), and the reference to the attack on himself was hardly a veiled one.50

The hoax perpetrated by Sagredo at Barisone’s expense fits snugly, then, in a context that seemed more than ready to approve the launch of true or speculative accusations against the Society of Jesus. And that Venice was a keen collector of similar matter from further afield is shown by the fact that a few years down the line a libelous little tract out of Poland—the Monita privata Societatis Jesu—that purported to be the true, and secret, Jesuit playbook, sparked considerable interest throughout Europe.51 Sarpi himself was intrigued, determined as he was to lay his hands on the actual Constitutions of the Society. The sixth “Instruction” was entitled How our Society should keep widows to their widowhood and gain control of their income.52 Thus, a common thematic thread clearly linked this very successful libel and the exchange of letters between Contarini and Barisone.

4. Conclusions

Research into anti-Jesuitism and presumed conspiracies fomented by Jesuits has enjoyed a strong revival, particularly in the early years of the twenty-first century. If for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many studies on these themes were marred by prejudice, especially in an anticlerical direction, over the last twenty years inquiries have largely freed themselves of ideological preconceptions, thanks in good part to a revision of the conspiracy paradigm in response to the proliferation of “fake news” propaganda in our own day. The present has cast its shadow back onto the past, encouraging a plethora of research into plots, conspiracies, and the manufacture of forgeries.53 The analysis of a few classic topoi of anti-Semitism has allowed us, for example, to identify elements in common with the anti-Jesuitism of the early modern age, finding similarities between that notorious conspiratorial imposture—The Protocols of the Elders of Zion54—and the best known of the anti-Jesuit fakes, the Monita privata [secreta] Societatis Jesu: both texts that played on the fears and prejudices of the societies that produced them.

It is worth noting here how, from the first years of the current century until now, studies of anti-Jesuitism and the conspiracies attributed to the Society have also felt the effect of novel historiographical departures that have concentrated on new issues, from the importance of iconography, to the long persistence of certain prejudices (this obviously connected to the increased attention scholars have recently devoted to the revived, post-1814 Society), and the global aspects of anti-Jesuitism, in which we find traces once again of the tireless Giovan Francesco Sagredo.55 The latter, arriving in Aleppo in 1609, tried to involve the Jesuit missionaries in India in another counterfeit correspondence, once again with a view to demonstrating the avarice of the Society’s members, “Since I hope,” he wrote to Sarpi, “that the trust they have in me will reveal more of what we witnessed between Berlinzone and Colomba.”56 Two elements strike us in the letters to Sarpi in which Sagredo spoke of his new project: the first is that according to unconfirmed testimonies the governors of Portuguese India had conceded to the Jesuits alone the right to communicate in cipher, and this had once again favored their secret machinations. (The theme of writing in code was one that would resurface in much anti-Jesuit propaganda.) A second had to do with the belief that the Jesuits were second only to the king in the share of European riches they held in the Estado de India. He goes on at some length about Jesuit assets without adducing any solid evidence, but he is emphasizing an aspect that would be among the determining factors in the Society’s eventual expulsion from the Bourbon monarchies around the middle of the eighteenth century. In closing, Sagredo, dwelling on the quarrels between the various religious orders active in the foreign missions and the authoritarianism over the Jesuits in relation to their converts, hints at another strand of anti-Jesuitism, that was fomented by rival orders, which would have a considerable influence on the Malabar and Chinese rites controversies beginning in the mid-seventeenth century.57

The proliferation of scenarios through which it is possible to examine the phenomenon of supposed global conspiracies promoted by the Jesuits need not surprise us: the desire for a universal monarchy may well have appeared an obvious fit with a religious order which had put Christian universalism at the heart of its evangelization strategy.58 In such a variegated landscape to focus on the Venetian situation might seem to limit ourselves to a “traditional” anti-Jesuitism. Yet alongside some of the classic stereotypes of anti-Jesuit propaganda, the correspondence between Barisone and Sagredo/ Contarini does, I believe, highlight certain elements that would play an important role in the centuries to come, down to our own day, chief among them the construction of a targetable system of disinformation that flourished in the fertile terrain of early seventeenth-century Venice, where such strategies and the interweaving of truth, falsity, and something in-between were, as we have seen, the city’s daily bread. The diffusion of “fake news” was abetted not only by an unusually lively intellectual climate but by a deliberate program pursued by the Venetian Republic, which was the first to test a jurisdictional confrontation with the Holy See, deploying tactics that would become much more widespread in late eighteenth-century Europe and would indeed result in the suppression of the Society of Jesus, fueled by a range of expedients that had first been trialed and tested in early seventeenth-century Venice.

Cited by (1)

THE "TRATTATO DI GIOVANNI FATÒ SOPRA L'HIPOCRISIA DE' GIESUITI". AN ANTI-JESUIT TREATISE IN VENICE AT THE TIMES OF THE INTERDICT (1606-1607)

2023, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia

See Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 160–99.

Cecilia Contarini to Antonio Possevino, Venice, March 12, 1608, in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Cod. It. X, 188 (=7216): Lettere promiscue di Rocco Berlinzone sotto il falso nome di Cecilia Contarini e del Gesuita Antonio Barisoni sotto quello di Angiola Colomba dell’anno 1608, 11r.

Antonio Barisone, scion of a noble Paduan family, entered the Society on March 25, 1576. From 1594 to 1597, we find him in Macerata and from 1599 to 1600, at the Greek College (see arsi, Hist. Soc. 86 (Cat. trienn. 1594–1600), fols. 3r, 22r. He was appointed rector of the Ferrara college on February 25, 1606 (see arsi, Ven. 5, fol. 446v). In 1613, he was in Perugia, as we gather from a March 12 letter regarding Father Joan Bautista (see arsi, Hist. Soc. 177, vol. 2: Vocationes illustres, fol. 47r). From his obituary (arsi, Rom. 185, fol. 130r–v) it appears that in addition to the above-mentioned positions he had also administered the college at Fermo.

Girolamo Barisone (1559–1614) was rector of the Naples college (1600), provincial in Milan from 1603 to 1606 and subsequently in Naples from 1609 to 1612.

The name Rocco Berlinzone resurfaces in the correspondence between Galileo Galilei and Gian Francesco Sagredo to indicate the Jesuits, but Berlinzone is also an appellation that the 1612 Vocabolario della Crusca notes as among those used by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) in the Decameron to indicate “an empty, made-up name, for fun.” The name “Cecilia Contarini” may have been suggested by the fact that Sagredo had a sister married to a Contarini and a sister-in-law called Cecilia.

Giovan Francesco Sagredo (1571–1620) is chiefly known for being one of the three characters in Galileo’s Dialogo sui massimi sistemi, which takes place in the Sagredo palace on the Grand Canal. He also served as an intermediary with Markus Welser (1558–1614) for Galileo’s letters on sunspots and circulated them in Venice. See, on him, Antonio Favaro, Amici e corrispondenti di Galileo Galilei, viii, Giovan Francesco Sagredo (Venice: n.p., 1903): 1–132; Gaetano Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l’Europa (Turin: Einaudi, 1979): 135–234 (“Galileo Galilei, Paolo Sarpi e la società veneziana”); and the recent biography by Nick Wilding, Galileo’s Idol. Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

Leonardo Donà was elected doge of the Republic in 1606 and found himself having to manage the Republic’s stand-off with the Holy See during the Interdict. See his entry—by Gaetano Cozzi—in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 40 (1991) <https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/leonardo-dona_(Dizionario-Biografico)/>, as well as, with reference to the Interdict, Giovanni Florio, “Un contributo involontario alla ‘guerra delle scritture’: Nicolò Manzuoli e la sua orazione al doge Leonardo Donà (1606),” Acta bullearum 3 (2017): 225–36.

The manuscript is marked as being bound for the nobleman Girolamo Contarini, 1843. On the Venetian context for the letters’ production see Wilding, Galileo’s Idol, 61–62.

Antonio Barisone to Cecilia Contarini, Ferrara, April 16, 1608, in Lettere promiscue di Rocco Berlinzone, 13r.

Cecilia Contarini to Antonio Barisone, Venice, April 26, 1608, Lettere promiscue, 14v–15r.

Antonio Barisone to Cecilia Contarini, Ferrara, May 2 [?], 1608, Lettere promiscue, 23v.

Cecilia Contarini to Antonio Barisone, Venice, May 25, 1608, Lettere promiscue, 26r.

Antonio Barisone to Cecilia Contarini, Ferrara, June 4, 1608, Lettere promiscue, 47r.

Maddalena Boschi to Cecilia Contarini, Ferrara, July 1, 1608, Lettere promiscue, 64v.

A letter from Antonio Barisone to a certain Bernardo, in the Venice parish of San Giovanni in Oleo, dated July 5, 1608, seems to confirm that he had uncovered the plot, without however identifying Sagredo as the concocter of the “diabolical fabrication” (see Wilding, Galileo’s Idol, 63–64).

See Claudio Acquaviva, Monita generalia quæ ad religiosam nostrorum directionem spectant, et ab omnibus observanda sunt, cap. 3, in Institutum Societatis Iesu, 3 vols. (Florence: Typographia a Ss. Conceptione, 1892), 3:267–68.

See Claudio Acquaviva al p. preposito di Venezia, July 8, 1595, arsi, Ital. 71, fols. 30v–31r.

The letter is in arsi, Ven. 6, fol. 68v, cited in Wilding, Galileo’s Idol, 64 and n. 53.

Antonio Barisone to Cecilia Contarini, Ferrara, May 2 [?], 1608, arsi, Ven., 22v. Barisone returns to the importance of secrecy regarding the will in a letter of June 11, 1608 (arsi, Ven., 53v) and again on June 25 (arsi, Ven., 58v).

Paolo Sarpi, Lettere ai protestanti, ed. Manlio Duilio Busnelli, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1931), 2:130 (Colloquio con Christoph von Dohna, August 23, 1608).

See Galileo Galilei, Opere, 12:458.

Al Barisone per dare avviso alla morte di Cecilia Contarini, Venice, July 12, 1608, Lettere promiscue, 66r.

Lettere promiscue, 71r. And further on: “he [Barisone], does not hold back, indeed he runs, rushes in to suborn one he believes to be an important gentlewoman, advises her […], tutors her, and more: induces her, provokes her, entreats her to divert her possessions from her own grandchildren” (71v).

Lettere promiscue, 77v–78r. The title Sagredo gives to his manuscript is also of interest and leaves his stance in no doubt “a collection of several letters written to Father Antonio Barisone of the Society of Jesus under an assumed name by the illustrious Countess Lady Cecilia Contessa, together with his replies […] so that every man of judgement can deduce from his endeavours what can be expected from the return of the Society of Jesus to the city of Venice.”

Sagredo speaks of the “villainies” (Lettere promiscue, 83r) committed by the Jesuits in France and England. See Andrew McKenzie-McHarg’s article in this issue on the emergence of the defamatory link between the Jesuits and regicide.

For the use of confession in the French Wars of Religion, cf. Paolo Sarpi, Del confutar scritture malediche, in Sarpi, Opere, ed. Gaetano and Luisa Cozzi (Milan: Ricciardi, n.d.), 1170–71.

See Sabina Pavone, “Il paradosso dei gesuiti: Contro il papa per fedeltà al papa,” in Philippe Koeppel, ed., Papes et Papauté au xviiie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), 219–38; Antonio Trampus, “La ritrattazione del breve di soppressione della Compagnia di Gesù: Comunicazione politica e strategia del falso,” in Congiure e complotti, ed. Marina Caffiero and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, a monographic issue of Roma moderna e contemporanea 11, no. 1–2 (January–August 2003): 253–80; Marina Caffiero, “La rhétorique symétrique, discours et stratégies d’autolégitimation des jésuites,” in Les Antijésuites: Discours, figures et lieux de l’antijésuitisme à l’époque moderne, ed. Pierre-Antoine Fabre and Catherine Maire (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 197–220.

Gaetano Cozzi, Galileo Galilei, Paolo Sarpi e la società veneziana (Florence: Barbera, 1965), reprinted in Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l’Europa (Torino: Einaudi, 1979), 135–234; see also Cozzi, “Fortuna, e sfortuna della Compagnia di Gesù a Venezia,” in I Gesuiti e Venezia: Momenti e problemi di storia veneziana della Compagnia di Gesù: Atti del convegno di studi, Venezia, 2–5 ottobre 1990, ed. Mario Zanardi (Padua: Giunta Regionale del Veneto-Gregoriana Libreria 1994), 59–88, in particular 80–82.

On the pamphlet war, see Prosperi, Altro coltello; Vittorio Frajese, Sarpi scettico: Stato e Chiesa a Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento (Bologna: Mulino, 1994); Ivone Cacciavillani, Paolo Sarpi: La guerra delle scritture del 1606 e la nascita della nuova Europa (Venice: Corbo e Fiore, 2005); Marie Viallon, ed., Paolo Sarpi: Politique et religion en Europe (Paris: Garnier, 2010). This is not the place to provide a detailed listing of the pamphlets held in the Rari veneti section of the Marciana Library in Venice, but to give an idea of the breadth of the holding it is worth mentioning that Possevino’s short Lettera del p. Antonio Posseuino giesuita Al padre maestro Marc’Antonio Capello minor conuentuale, con la risposta di detto padre: Et il suo parere delle controuersie trà il sommo pontefice Paolo quinto, et la serenissima Republica di Venetia (Venice: Cavalcaluppo, 1606), is present in no less than five copies.

On the Protestant presence in Venice during the years of the Interdict, see Micaela Valente, “Le campane della propaganda: Rapporti di reciprocità e conflitto giurisdizionale a Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento,” Laboratoire italien 3 (2002), <http://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/369> (accessed February 28, 2022). See also W. B. Patterson, King James vi and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1997]); Stefano Villani, “Uno scisma mancato: Paolo Sarpi, William Bedell e la prima traduzione in italiano del Book of Common Prayer,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 53 (2017): 63–112.

See Peter Burke, “Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 389–419; Paolo Preto, I servizi segreti di Venezia: Spionaggio e controspionaggio ai tempi della Serenissima (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2010); Stefano Dall’Aglio, “Cosimo’s Self Made Spy,” Renaissance Studies (2022): 1–19.

This too is an enduring topos. We find it again in Philippe Canaye, Lettres et ambassade de Messire P. Canaye, sieur de Fresne, 3 vols. (Paris: Robert Regnault, 1635–36), 3:85–86, where he reproduces a report for Henri iv on the motives for Venice’s expulsion of the Jesuits, among which is the discovery of such dossiers in the Bergamo and Padua colleges; and, looking ahead, again in Guillaume Libri, “Lettres sur le clergé français,” Revue des Deux Monde, 2° s., 2 (1843): 329–56, 968–81. In the literary sphere, we should also mention Eugène Sue, Le Juif errant (Paris: Paulin, 1845), on which see Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986), 25–62.

Marc Bloch, “Réflexions d’un historien sur les fausses nouvelles de la guerre,” Revue de synthèse historique 33 (1921): 13–35.

See Preto, Servizi segreti, 114. The Barnabite episode has been reconstructed by Elena Bonora, I conflitti della Controriforma: Santità e obbedienza nell’esperienza dei primi barnabiti (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998), 475–503.

Oratione dell’Ecc.ts. S. Dottore Cesare Cremonino da Cento recitata nell’Ecc.mo Collegio di Venezia a favore delle università dello Studio di Padova contra li Rev. Padri Gesuiti, l’anno 1591, l’Antivigilia di Natale. I quote from the copy preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Coll. Dupuy 728, fol. 160v. I have also glossed this episode in my own Le astuzie dei gesuiti, 226–30. See also Maurizio Sangalli, Cultura, politica e religione nella repubblica di Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 1999), 187–276 and more recently Silvia Ferretto, “Il dibattito sulle ‘scole’ dei gesuiti a Padova nel xvi secolo,” Studi storici 4 (2016): 879–900, which she bases largely on her research on the Fondo Studio Patavino in the Archivio di Stato at Padua.

See on this point another pillar of anti-Jesuitism, Étienne Pasquier, Le catéchisme des Jésuites (Paris, 1602) (ed. Claude Sutto [Scheerbrooke: Centre d’Études de la Renaissance de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1982), particularly ch. 3. (eng. trans.: Étienne Pasquier, The Jesuits’ Catechism or Their Doctrine Examined (1602), ed. Robert A. Maryks and Jotham Parsons (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

See Alessandro Catalano, “Un’altra guerra durata Trent’anni: La Compagnia di Gesù e l’Università di Praga (1622–1654),” in José Martínez Millan, Henar Pizarro Llorente, and Esther Jiménez Pablo, eds., Los jesuitas: Religión, política y educación (siglos xvi–xviii), 2 vols. (Madrid: Comillas, 2012), 1:231–54.

See Geoffrey Cubitt, “Jesuits in Plain Clothes,” ch. 7 in The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 216–34. Cubitt argues that at least three elements must be present to speak of a “conspiracy theory”: intention (attribution of events to conscious human action), dualism (a clear divide between human forces for good and for evil), and an occult input (the presumed existence of a layer of reality profoundly other than social and political appearances). All three elements are frequently found in conspiracy myths associated with the Society of Jesus. See also Christine Vogel, “Des stéréotypes religieux à la pensée conspirationniste: L’exemple des jésuites,” in O poder e a persistência dos estereótipos, ed. Antony David Barker (Aveiro: Univiversidade de Aveiro, Dep. de Línguas e Culturas, 2004), 51–69; Ignazio Veca, “L’ombra dei reverendi padri,” ch. 5 in La congura immaginata: Opinione pubblica e accuse di complotto nella Roma dell’Ottocento (Rome: Carocci, 2019), 133–62. On the belief in conspiracies in the early modern age and on its influence on the public opinion, see Barry Coward, Julian Swann, eds., Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

A 1603 law forbade the construction of churches, monasteries, and other sacred buildings without permission from the senate while a further measure two years later disallowed the transfer of property to ecclesiastics.

[Roberte Bellarmine], Risposta del card. Bellarmino al Trattato dei sette Theologi di Venezia sopra l’interdetto della Santità del nostro Signore Papa Paolo V e all’opposizioni di F. Paolo servita, contra la prima scrittura dell’istesso cardinale (Rome: G. Facciotto, 1606); Paolo Comitoli, Trattato apologetico del monitorio della Santità di N. Sig. Papa Paolo Quinto, et delle censure in quello contenute, & publicate in Roma alli 17. d’Aprile 1606 contra il Doge, et Senato Veneto (Bologna: Appresso Gio. Battista Bellagamba, 1606).

Sarpi wrote: “The Spanish and Roman monarchies rest on nothing more than religious superstition and Jesuit operations” or again: “There is no more worthy endeavour than discrediting the Jesuits; with them beaten, Rome is lost, and religion will reform itself” (Sarpi, Lettere ai protestanti, 2:129; 1:182–83).

Federico Chabod, La politica di Paolo Sarpi (1952), in Chabod,. Scritti sul Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1981 [1967]), denies his conversion, while Gaetano Cozzi, in “Fra Paolo Sarpi e l’anglicanesimo,” Rivista storica italiana 68 (1956): 593 opines that it was “no longer possible to doubt his substantial acceptance of Calvinism.” Cf. Frajese, Sarpi scettico.

Antonio Possevino, Per aiutare la Moscovia, quoted in Paul Pierling, La Russie et le Saint Siège, 5 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1901–12), 3:447 (Appendix 2).

Condoglianza di Stanislao Przovski Lublinense Studente in Padova col Padre Antonio Possevino Giesuita (n.d., n.p.). Cf. Sabina Pavone, The Wily Jesuits and the Monita secreta (St. Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005), 204 [ed. orig.: Le astuzie dei gesuiti (Rome: Salerno, 2000)]. See also Luigi Lazzerini, “Falsificazioni: Sarpi, la Polonia e i gesuiti,” in Atti dell’Accademia Polacca delle Scienze, 8 vols. (Rome: Accademia Polacca delle Scienze, 2017), 5:64–84, who argues less than convincingly that the Monita privata Societatis Iesu were also from Sarpi’s production line (cf. Luigi Lazzerini, “Officina sarpiana: Scritture del Sarpi in materia di Gesuiti,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 58 [2004]: 29–80). Despite his interest in “collective elaborations,” Nick Wilding seems in agreement on the implausibility of Lazzerini’s Sarpian attributions: see his Galileo’s Idol, 65n55, where he writes that “despite the methodological looseness in some of these attributions, we would do well to start thinking about collective authorship for some early modern texts.”

Throughout the period of its absence however, the Society continued to test the mood of the Venetians: see, for example, L’inchiesta sugli umori del patriziato veneziano (1619–1620), in arsi, Ven. 109.

See Archivio di Stato, Venice, Consultori in iure 451, 453, 454. Volume 454 (Scritture et avisi havuti da diverse persone concernenti le insidiose machinazioni et male actioni de Padri Gesuiti verso questa Serenissima Republica) is published in its entirety in Giuseppe Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica di Venezia (Venice: Grimaldo, 1873), 287–357.

Fulgenzio Micanzio, Vita del padre Paolo dell’Ordine de’ Servi e Theologo della Serenissima Republica di Venetia (1646); modern printing in Paolo Sarpi, Istoria del Concilio tridentino, ed. Corrado Vivanti, 2 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), 2:1345.

The Holy Office’s condemnation dates to September 1606; the work is described as “reckless, calumnious, scandalous, seditious, schismatic, erroneous, and heretical,” not to mince words. For a contextual overview of the attempt on Sarpi, see Sabina Pavone, “Venezia, 5 ottobre 1607: Assassinare il letterato,” in Atlante della letteratura italiana, ed. Gabriele Pedullà and Sergio Luzzatto (Turin: Einaudi, 2011), 323–30.

See particularly the works by Manuel Sá, Aphorismi confessariorum ex doctorum sententiis collecti (Venice: n.p., 1595) and Juan de Mariana, De rege et regis institutione: Libri iii ad Philippum iii (Toledo, P. Rodericum, 1599). The latter was condemned by the Paris parliament in 1610.

Paolo Sarpi to Monsieur Groslot de l’Isle, April 1, 1608, in Sarpi, Lettere ai protestanti, 1:7.

On the anti-Jesuit literature circulating in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years leading up to the appearance of the Monita privata Societatis Jesu, see Robert Maryks’s contribution to this special issue.

1617 also saw the appearance of L’istruzione ai prencipi della maniera con la quale si governano li Padri Giesuiti, fatta da persona religiosa e totalmente spassionata (Poschiavo: Peter Landolfo et Bonatto Minghino) attributed to Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570–1654), Venetian Servite and biographer of Paolo Sarpi, which incidentally includes the Monita as an appendix and numbers among the Jesuits de robe courte “those women popularly known as ‘Chietine,’ whom the Jesuits have persuaded to despise the things of this world while relieving them of their pearls, their fine clothes and furnishings, and eventually their excellent incomes” (8). On the attribution, see Pavone, Astuzie dei gesuiti, 168n57.

See Yves-Marie Bercé and Elena Fasano Guarini, eds., Complots et conjurations dans l’Europe moderne (Rome: École française de Rome, 1996); Caffiero and Visceglia, eds., Congiure e complotti.

See Léon Poliakov, La causalité diabolique: Essai sur l’origine des persecutions (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1980); Les ‘Protocoles des Sages de Sion’: Faux et usages d’un faux; Études et documents, ed. Pierre-André Taguieff (Paris: Berg International, 1992); James Bernauer and Robert Aleksander Maryks, eds., “The Tragic Couple”: Encounters between Jews and Jesuits (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Julien Giry, “Conspiracism: Archaeology and Morphology of a Political Myth,” Diogenes 62 (2015): 30–37.

For iconography, see Pierre Wachenheim, “De la physiognomonie à la tératologie: Les jésuites portaiturées ou les visages de l’antijésuitisme,” in Antijésuites, 13–54. Cf. also Michael Niemetz, Antijesuitische Bildpublizistik in der Frühen Neuzeit: Geschicte, Ikonographie und Ikonologie (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 208); Michela Catto, “Images of ‘Jesuitical’ China in the Enlightenment: Irreligion, Anticlericalism and Anti-Jesuitism,” in New Perspectives in the Studies on Matteo Ricci, ed. Filippo Mignini (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2019), 215–32. For the global dimension, see my own studies: Sabina Pavone, “Antijesuitism in a Global Perspective,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits, ed. Ines G. Županov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 833–54; Pavone, “The History of Anti-Jesuitism: National and Global Dimensions,” in Jesuits and Globalization: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Tom Banchoff and José Casanova (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016), 111–30. For the long haul and the Latin American context, cf. Susana Monreal, Sabina Pavone, and Guillermo Zermeño, eds., Antijesuitismo y filiojesuitismo: Dos identidades ante la restauración (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2014).

Quoted in Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi tra Venezia e l’Europa, 177. Two of the three letters from Sagredo to Sarpi, both dated April 30, 1609, are published in their entirety in Wilding, Galileo’s Idol, 72–77.

From a now extremely ample bibliography I will limit myself to recommending only Pierre-Antoine Fabre and Ines Županov’s survey, The Rites Controversy in the Early Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2018). On the Malabar rites in particular, see Sabina Pavone, “Jesuits and Oriental Rites in the Documents of the Roman Inquisition,” in Rites Controversy in the Early Modern World, 165–88.

See Girolamo Imbruglia, “A Peculiar Idea of Empire: Missions and Missionaries of the Society of Jesus in Early Modern History,” in Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas: Intercultural Transfers Intellectual Disputes, and Textualities, ed. Marc André Bernier, Clorinda Donato, and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 21–49.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S2214132423000651

What does it mean that the Pharisees devour widows’ houses (Matthew 23:14)?

translate

devour widows’ houses

Answer

In Matthew 23:13–15, Jesus pronounced a series of stern warnings against Pharisaism, a danger to today’s spiritual leaders just as it was in ancient times. Jesus condemned the Jewish religious teachers of His day, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation” (Matthew 23:13–14, NKJV).

The Pharisees and scribes were religious hypocrites who did not practice what they preached. They were proud show-offs who enjoyed the praise and recognition of people more than honoring, obeying, and pleasing the Lord. Rather than managing their spiritual responsibilities with integrity, they abused, oppressed, and neglected God’s people.

The scribes and Pharisees were well-versed in Old Testament Scripture and Jewish law. They knew that caring for widows was of extreme importance to God and the duty of His people, especially spiritual leaders (Exodus 22:22–23; Psalm 68:5; 82:3–4; Proverbs 15:25; Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 22:3). The Lord warned in Deuteronomy 27:19, “Cursed is anyone who denies justice to foreigners, orphans, or widows” (NLT).

The scribes and Pharisees should have been protecting widows and showing them compassion. Instead, they were men “who devour widows’ houses” (Matthew 23:14; Mark 12:40). Jesus told His disciples, “Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be severely punished” (Luke 20:46–47, NLT).

The phrase devour widows’ houses means “greedily cheat widows out of their property.” In ancient times widows held little or no power in the courts. It was not uncommon for a husband to appoint in his will a Jewish legal expert—a scribe or Pharisee—to be the executor of his widow’s estate. Essentially, this gave the executor authority to oversee the widow’s finances and assets. It would not be hard for a corrupt lawyer to find legal ways to trick a widow out of her house and other property—and this is precisely what the religious leaders were doing. It could be that’s why the poor widow Jesus noticed in Mark 12:42 only had “two very small copper coins” to give.

Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees for exploiting the needy so that they could grow fatter and richer. These religious hypocrites were so spiritually callous that, after greedily pilfering from the needy, they would put on a public show of prayerful piety.

In the parable of the faithful steward, Jesus said, “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required” (Luke 12:48, NLT). Many of Israel’s leaders—those who had been entrusted with much—used their positions to gain personal power and wealth. They did this by oppressing and taking advantage of the people they were supposed to guard and protect.

The scribes and the Pharisees who devoured widows’ houses were like the wicked servant in Matthew 24:48–51 who had access to all the master’s household and used it to indulge his greedy appetite and abuse his fellow servants. Jesus said, “The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:50–51; see also Luke 12:45–48).

As Christians, we need to pay careful attention to Christ’s warning not to devour widows’ houses. This charge goes out to anyone guilty of exploiting the most vulnerable people in society. Such a crime should not exist among God’s people, especially those who hold leadership positions in the church.

God calls us to be servant leaders who protect others and even lay down our lives for those He entrusts to our care (John 10:11). A true Christian leader will look after widows in their distress (James 1:27), honoring and caring for “any widow who has no one else to care for her” (1 Timothy 5:3).

https://www.gotquestions.org/devour-widows-houses.html

Beauty Of Planet Earth

February 7 at 3:31 AM ·

Birds blocking out the sun in Rome.

https://www.facebook.com/BeautyOfPlanetEarth1/posts/pfbid0sFTGCPmQLWrEf5gq1sv7p8SdyugXAZkg2MGhnpaMBfm6foyHavaBKAGuRiGfrb5Tl

The Birds is a 1963 American natural horror-thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, released by Universal Pictures and starring Jessica Tandy, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, and introducing Tippi Hedren in her film debut. Loosely based on the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, it focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California, over the course of a few days. The screenplay is by Evan Hunter, who was told by Hitchcock to develop new characters and a more elaborate plot while keeping du Maurier's title and concept of unexplained bird attacks.

While it initially received mixed reviews when originally released, its reputation improved over time and it has since been considered to be one of the greatest horror films of all time.[3][4][5][6] At the 36th Academy Awards, Ub Iwerks was nominated for Best Special Effects for his work on the film. The award, however, went to the only other nominee, Emil Kosa Jr., for Cleopatra. Hedren won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress for her role in the film.

In 2016, The Birds was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.[7][8]

Plot

At a San Francisco pet store, socialite Melanie Daniels meets lawyer Mitch Brenner, who wants to buy lovebirds for his sister Cathy's 11th birthday. Recognizing Melanie from her court appearance regarding a practical joke gone awry, Mitch pretends to mistake her for a shop employee. Mitch tests Melanie's knowledge of birds, which she fails. He discloses his prior knowledge of her and leaves without buying anything. Intrigued, Melanie buys the lovebirds and drives to Bodega Bay after learning Mitch has gone to his family's farm for the weekend. Melanie is directed to a teacher at Bodega, Annie Hayworth, to learn Cathy's name. Annie is Mitch’s ex-lover, but their relationship ended due to his overbearing mother, Lydia, who dislikes any woman in Mitch's life.

Melanie rents a boat and crosses the bay to discreetly leave the lovebirds at the Brenner farm. Mitch spots Melanie as she leaves and drives to meet her at the dock. As Melanie approaches the wharf, a gull attacks her. Mitch tends to her head wound inside a diner. Lydia arrives and meets Melanie, whom Mitch invites to dinner. At the farm, Lydia's hens are refusing to eat. Lydia dislikes Melanie due to her exaggerated reputation, as reported in gossip columns. Mitch invites Melanie, who is staying with Annie, to Cathy's birthday party being held the next day. Later, there is a thud at Annie's front door. A dead gull is found at the threshold.

At Cathy's party, Melanie tells Mitch about her troubled past and her mother running off with another man when she was Cathy's age. During a game, the children are attacked by gulls. Later that evening, as Melanie dines with the Brenners, sparrows swarm the house through the chimney. Mitch insists she delay driving back to San Francisco and stay the night. The next morning, Lydia visits her neighbor to discuss why their chickens will not eat. She discovers broken windows in his bedroom and his eyeless corpse, pecked by birds, and flees in horror. While recovering at home, Lydia fears for Cathy's safety, and Melanie offers to pick her up at school. As Melanie waits outside the schoolhouse, a flock of crows engulfs the jungle gym behind her. Anticipating an attack, she warns Annie. Rather than leaving the students in the building with its large windows, they evacuate them, and the crows attack. Mitch finds Melanie at the diner. When gulls attack a gas station attendant, Mitch and other men assist him outside. The spilled gasoline is ignited by an unaware bystander's match, causing an explosion. During the escalating fire, Melanie and others rush out, but more gulls attack. Melanie takes refuge in a glass telephone booth and watches in horror as mayhem erupts around the town. The blaze quickly spreads, and the fire marshals are unable to put it out because of the birds attacking them. Cars crash, and terrified townspeople and animals are brutally assaulted by the birds. Mitch saves Melanie, and they return to the diner. A distraught woman blames Melanie for the attacks, claiming (from what others told her) they began with her arrival. Mrs. Bundy, an ornithologist who scoffed at the reports of birds attacking, sits in stunned silence.

Mitch and Melanie go to Annie's house to fetch Cathy. They find Annie's body outside; she was killed by the crows while protecting Cathy. They take a traumatized Cathy home. That night, Melanie and the Brenners barricade themselves in the family home, which is attacked by birds that nearly breach the boarded-up doors and windows. During a lull, Melanie investigates a fluttering sound in the attic bedroom. After discovering that the birds have pecked their way in through the roof, Melanie is attacked, trapping her until Mitch pulls her out. Mitch insists they all drive to San Francisco to take Melanie, now injured, traumatized and catatonic, to a hospital.

As Mitch readies Melanie's car for their escape, a sea of birds has gathered around the Brenner house. Mitch quietly moves the car out. The car radio reports bird attacks on nearby communities including Santa Rosa and Sebastopol and that the military may intervene. Cathy retrieves her lovebirds (the only birds who do not attack) from the house and joins Mitch and Lydia as they escort Melanie past a mass of birds and into the car. The car slowly drives away as the birds watch.

Cast

Trailer for The Birds

Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner

Jessica Tandy as Lydia Brenner

Suzanne Pleshette as Annie Hayworth

Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels

Veronica Cartwright as Cathy Brenner

Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Bundy, ornithologist

Charles McGraw as Sebastian Sholes, fisherman

Ruth McDevitt as Mrs. MacGruder, owner of the bird shop

Lonny Chapman as Deke Carter, restaurateur

Joe Mantell as cynical businessman

Doodles Weaver as fisherman helping with rental boat

Malcolm Atterbury as Deputy Al Malone

John McGovern as postal clerk

Karl Swenson as drunken doomsayer in diner

Richard Deacon as Mitch's neighbor in San Francisco

Elizabeth Wilson as Helen Carter, Deke's wife

William Quinn as Sam

Alfred Hitchcock makes his signature cameo as a man walking dogs out of the pet shop at the beginning of the film. They were two of his own Sealyham Terriers Geoffrey and Stanley.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film)

In Batesian mimicry the mimic shares signals similar to the model, but does not have the attribute that makes it unprofitable to predators (e.g., unpalatability). In other words, a Batesian mimic is a sheep in wolf's clothing. It is named after Henry Walter Bates, an English naturalist whose work on butterflies in the Amazon rainforest (described in The Naturalist on the River Amazons) was pioneering in this field of study.[26][27] Mimics are less likely to be found out (for example by predators) when in low proportion to their model. This phenomenon is called negative frequency-dependent selection, and it applies in most forms of mimicry. Batesian mimicry can only be maintained if the harm caused to the predator by eating a model outweighs the benefit of eating a mimic. The nature of learning is weighted in favor of the mimics, for a predator that has a bad first experience with a model tends to avoid anything that looks like it for a long time, and does not re-sample soon to see whether the initial experience was a false negative. However, if mimics become more abundant than models, then the probability of a young predator having a first experience with a mimic increases. Such systems are therefore most likely to be stable where both the model and the mimic occur, and where the model is more abundant than the mimic.[28] This is not the case in Müllerian mimicry, which is described next.

There are many Batesian mimics in the order Lepidoptera. Consul fabius and Eresia eunice imitate unpalatable Heliconius butterflies such as H. ismenius.[29] Limenitis arthemis imitate the poisonous pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor). Several palatable moths produce ultrasonic click calls to mimic unpalatable tiger moths.[30][31][32][33] Octopuses of the genus Thaumoctopus (the mimic octopus) are able to intentionally alter their body shape and coloration to resemble dangerous sea snakes or lionfish.[34] In the Amazon, the helmeted woodpecker (Dryocopus galeatus), a rare species which lives in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, has a similar red crest, black back, and barred underside to two larger woodpeckers: Dryocopus lineatus and Campephilus robustus. This mimicry reduces attacks on Dryocopus galeatus from other animals. Scientists had falsely believed that D. galeatus was a close cousin of the other two species, because of the visual similarity, and because the three species live in the same habitat and eat similar food.[35] Batesian mimicry also occurs in the plant kingdom, such as the chameleon vine, which adapts its leaf shape and colour to match that of the plant it is climbing, such that its edible leaves appear to be the less desirable leaves of its host.[36]

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

13Moreover, if two are to go, it seems that a preacher or lecturer could well be accompanied by someone who through confessions and spiritual exercises could gather in the harvest which the other prepares for him, and could assist him by conversations and the other means used in dealing with our neighbors.

14Likewise, when a person is sent who is less experienced in the Society s manner of proceeding and of dealing with the neighbor, it seems that he ought to be accompanied by another who has more experience therein, whom he can IMITATE, consult, and get advice from in matters where he is uncertain.

15With a person who is very ardent and daring it seems that there could well go another who is more circumspect and cautious. The like holds for other combinations of this kind,

16in such a way that their difference, united by the bond of charity, may be helpful to both and not be able to engender contradiction or discord between the two of them or with their neighbors.

17To send more than two when the importance of the work intended in the service of God our Lord is greater and requires a larger number, and when the Society can provide more laborers without prejudice to other things conducive to the greater divine glory and universal good, 18is something which the superior will have authority to do, accordingly as the unction of the Holy Spirit inspires him or as he judges in the sight of his Divine Majesty to be better and more expedient.

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

Norman Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch as the main antagonist in his 1959 horror novel Psycho. He has an alter, Mother, who takes from the form of his abusive mother, and later victim, Norma, who in his daily life runs the Bates Motel.

He was portrayed by Anthony Perkins in the 1960 version of Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock and in the Psycho franchise. He was also portrayed by Vince Vaughn in the 1998 version of Psycho, and by Freddie Highmore in the television series Bates Motel (2013–2017).[1]

Unlike the franchise produced by Universal Studios, Norman is not the principal antagonist in Bloch's subsequent novels and is succeeded by copycat killers who assume Norman's identity after his death in Psycho II (1982), although he does return and in the licensed continuation novel Psycho: Sanitarium (2016) by Chet Williamson. There is a wide-ranging assumption that the character was directly inspired by the Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein. With Psycho being optioned for film adaptation as a direct result of media attention on Gein, Bloch later revealed he was inspired more by the circumstances surrounding Gein's case—the idea that "the man next door may be a monster unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life." Years later, when the full details of Gein's crimes were revealed, he was struck by "how closely the imaginary character I'd created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motivation."[2]

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

Conversely, many believe that the family claim Norman descent as in "Paganus was a Norman personal name, whence the modern Payne and Paine, as well as the more ancient Paganel and Paynel. William the Conqueror was assisted in his invasion, by several persons so designated, and in [the] Domesday Book we find among his tenants in capite, or chief holders of land, the names of Ralph Paganel and Edmund filius Pagani, i.e., Fitz-Payne. Indeed during the NORMAN dynasty, Paganus was one of the most common names in England." [1]

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

62 The Constitutions and NORMS

§2. All candidates are now first admitted as novices, so that after probations and studies and the time required by law have been completed, they may be definitively received into the Society.[26]

SECTION 3 THE INSTITUTE OF THE SOCIETY

CHAPTER 1: THE INSTITUTE OF THE SOCIETY AND ITS PARTS

11 §1. The Constitutions, General Examen, and their respective Declarations are of equal authority among themselves[35] and retain their full authority[36] unless, in the case of individual determinations when these have been legitimately changed or abrogated by prescriptions of the universal law or by decrees of general congregations, or if the circumstances have so changed that they can no longer be applied; in this case the matter should be declared by a general congregation, or, for the exercise of good governance, by the superior general. [31]

64 The Constitutions and Norms

§2. The Latin version of these documents approved by the Fourth General Congregation is to be considered authoritative and can be changed only by a general congregation.[ 37]

§3. The Spanish autograph version, approved by the First and the Fifth General Congregations, is to be preserved with veneration and can serve as an aid to a congregation and to the superior general in explaining that version.[38]

12 §1. Whatever is decreed by a general congregation is presumed to be a law established by it, unless something else is evidently the case according to the nature of the question or because of a positive declaration. Such laws are:

1° The canons and decrees of congregations that contain norms and determinations,

2° The formulas of congregations, that is, of a general congregation, of a province congregation, of a congregation of procurators, of a congregation to elect a temporary vicar,

3° Rules that have been approved by the authority of a general congregation, that is, the Rules of Modesty, composed by St. Ignatius, [rules for] the office of the Vicar General, the rules for assistants, and the rules for the admonitor of the general.

§2. Unless a general congregation declares otherwise, the following do not have the force of law:

1° Decrees passed prior to the election of a general but not subsequently confirmed.

2° Decrees passed subsequent to the election but, by the desire of the congregation, not promulgated.

§3. For the promulgation of decrees, unless a congregation itself has determined otherwise, it is both necessary and sufficient that they are sent to the provinces by the superior general in the name of the congregation, with

Preambles 65

the purpose of making known in all the houses.[39]

13 §1. All rules and ordinances established by the superiors general, unless some other provision is explicitly made, are presumed to be in force as long as they are not revoked by them or by a general congregation.

§2. Whatever additions or changes a superior general, acting on a mandate from a general congregation, makes in rules established by his own authority, in ordinances, or in instructions have the same authority as if they had been made by the superior general acting purely on his own initiative.[40]

§3. Instructions, as understood in our law and practice,[ 41] even those issued for the worldwide Society, have only advisory force, unless the contrary is indicated.[42]

14 What the universal law determines should be inserted in the fundamental code of institutes of consecrated life[43] are contained in the Formula of the Institute and are declared in the respective places of the Constitutions and the decrees of general congregations that declare or modify them on the topics mentioned above.[44]

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

How to Speak Ignatian: Common words and phrases of the Society of Jesus

Adapted from “How to Speak Loyola,” a glossary developed by the Office of Mission &

Identity, Loyola University, Chicago.

Microsoft Word - How to Speak Ignatian.doc (jesuithighschool.org)

https://www.jesuithighschool.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/how_to_speak_ignatian_0.pdf

Fulcanelli’s main strategy, the key to unraveling the mystery, lies in an understanding of what he calls the “phonetic law” of the “spoken cabala,” or the “language of the birds.” This punning, multilingual wordplay can be used to reveal unusual and, according to Fulcanelli, meaningful associations between ideas. “What unsuspected marvels we should find, if we knew how to dissect words, to strip them of their bark and liberate the spirit, the divine light which is within,” Fulcanelli writes. He claims that in our day this is the natural language of the outsiders, the outlaws and heretics at the fringes of society. (See appendix A, “Fulcanelli on the Green Language,” for the complete text of this chapter.) 6 This spoken cabala was also the “green language” of the Freemasons (“All the Initiates expressed themselves in cant,” Fulcanelli reminds us) who built the art gothique of the cathedrals. “Gothic art is in fact the art got or art cot —χοτ—the art of light or of the spirit,” Fulcanelli informs us. Ultimately the “art got,” or the “art of light,” is derived from the language of the birds, which seems to be a sort of Ur-language taught by both Jesus and the ancients." The Mysteries of the Great Cross by Jay Weidner

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vrxcBcn4h7RRM2SA3X1SS1DsooSxfitI/view?usp=sharing

Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA.[1] In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.

In 1973, a document referred to as the "Family Jewels"[2] was published by the CIA containing a reference to "Project Mockingbird", which was the name of an operation in 1963 which wiretapped two journalists who had published articles based on classified material.[3] The document does not contain references to "Operation Mockingbird".[4]

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

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created under the National Security Act of 1947, which President Truman signed on July 26, 1947. The CIA officially came into existence on September 18th that same year, which is when we celebrate our birthday.

With the passage of the 1947 Act, Truman achieved his goals of modernizing and unifying America’s armed services, and, by creating a centralized intelligence agency, reformed our intelligence capabilities. To protect American’s civil liberties, he made sure to clearly divide intelligence roles between domestic and foreign: FBI would handle anything domestic, while CIA was limited to foreign intelligence only. Furthermore, the Act specified that CIA would have no police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers.

President Truman appointed Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter as the first CIA director, known as the Director of Central Intelligence. He had been the Director of one of our immediate “ancestors,” called the Central Intelligence Group. The CIG was a bureaucratic anomaly with no independent budget, no statutory mandate, and staffers assigned from other departments of the government. America needed a peacetime, centralized intelligence agency with its own budget and mandate. That’s why Truman replaced the CIG and created the CIA.

The 1947 Act loosely defined CIA’s mission into four broad tasks:

The 1947 Act was relatively unchanged until 2004. President Bush, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, made major updates to the 1947 act, including the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

If you’re interested, you can find out more about what is called “the National Security Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of December 2004” on the DNI’s website.

The importance of the 1947 National Security Act cannot be overstated. It created our Nation’s first peacetime intelligence agency, reflected America’s acceptance of its position as a world leader, and it remained a cornerstone of our national security policy for 75 years… and counting.

~ Molly

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/ask-molly-the-national-security-act-of-1947/

Molly

fem. proper name, a diminutive of Moll, which is a familiar form of Mary.

molly (n.1)

a common 18c. colloquial term for "homosexual man" or "man who is deemed effeminate, a sissy," by 1707, perhaps 1690s. The fem. proper name Molly or Moll served as a type-name of a low-class girl or prostitute in old songs and ballads (perhaps in part for the sake of the easy rhymes).

But the colloquial word also resembles Latin mollis "soft," which also had been used classically in a specific pejorative sense in reference to men, "soft, effeminate, unmanly, weak," in Cicero, Livy, etc. A 1629 publication from the Catholic-Protestant theological disputes, "Truth's triumph ouer Trent," written in English with swerves into Latin, at one point describes the denizens of Hell as fideles fornicarios, adulteros, molles, and so forth, and molles is translated parenthetically in the text as "effeminate." Molly House as a term for a brothel frequented by gay men is attested in a court case from 1726.

also from 18c.

molly (n.2)

seabird, 1857, short for mollymawk, mallemuck, from Dutch mallemok, from mal "foolish" + mok "gull."

also from 1857

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

Happy National Bird Day - Koko B. Ware sings "Bird Bird Bird": Prime Time Wrestling, Sept. 11, 1989

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IF WE LOOK AGAIN TO THE BOOK OF DANIEL, this time to chapter 8, verse 25, the prophet foretold that Anti-Christ would cause "craft" to prosper: "And through his policy also he shall cause 'craft" to prosper in his hand: and he shall magnify himself..." What is "kraft"? Strong's Concordance defines the word craft (#4820) as meaning "fraud, deceit, and treachery." Thus, Anti-Christ "through" craft, deceit and treachery (viz., deception) would advance its position, influence and agenda.

But how do we know that this entity (referred to by Daniel) is indeed the dreaded Anti-Christ? We know this entity is Anti-Christ because it opposes and magnifies itself against Jesus Christ: "he shall magnify in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes" (latter part of Dan. 8: 25).

Earlier in verse 23 of Daniel 8 it says "he" shall also understand dark sentences." Strong's Concordance tells us that the word for dark is the same word for sentences (#2420). Both words mean "a puzzle," or "trick" saying. The expression "dark sentences" comes from the root word meaning "to put forth (#2330)." Thus, Antichrist would put forth, or utter dark sentences-language not readily understood by the unintiated, which language will have a double meaning designed to trick or mislead the hearer. The "puzzle, or trick" in these "dark sentence" will be the issuing of double meaning in the same statements. In other words, reader, Anti-Christ would have a double rule-"one for its private and particular use, and another to flaunt with before the world."

The agents, or spokesmen of Anti-Christ will speak with mental reservation and amphibologies. That is to say, with double sensed or ambigous words, or to use the words of Constantine Labarum "justification of the means by the end, and many other maxims,

+I say agents of Anti-Christ, because no sensible individual could really believe that Anti-Christ is a single man, for Paul says Anti-Christ (its early manifestation) was already in existence in his day and would continue till the end of time.+

subversive of honesty and morality." In short, Anti-Christ would be a system of unscrupulous duplicity, of impostors, of wolves in sheep's clothing!

Have we any example in the long anals of history of such a duplicitous system using "craft" "deceit" "fraud" and "treachery" as it crept into power over the world? William Tyndale, the great English Reformer, in his Practice of Prelates, speaks of the rise of this phenomenon by the following graphic parable:-

"To see how the holy father came up, mark the ensample of the ivy. First it springeth up out of the earth, and then awhile CREEPETH ALONG BY THE GROUND, till it finds a great tree, and creepeth up a little and a little, fair, and softly. At the begininning, while it is yet thin and small, the burden is not perceived; it seemeth glorious to garnish the tree in the winter. BUT IT HOLDETH FAST WITHAL, AND CEASETH NOT TO CLIMB UP TILL IT BE AT THE TOP, AND EVEN ABOVE ALL. And then it sendeth its branches along by the branches of the tree, and overgroweth all, and waxeth great, heavy, and thich : and sucketh the moisture so sore out of the tree and his branches that choaketh and stifleth them. And then THE FOUL, STINKING IVY waxeth MIGHTY in the stump of the tree, and becometh a seat and a nest for all unclean birds, and for blind owls, which hawk in the dark, and dare not come to the light. EVEN SO THE BISHOP OF ROME, NOW CALLED THE POPE, AT THE BEGINNING CROPE ALONG UPON THE EARTH...."

How accurate is William Tyndale's description of the rise of the pope and the popedome as predicted by prophet Daniel: "in the latter time... a king.. understanding dark sentences, shall stan up... and shall he cause craft to prosper" "and shall prosper, practice, and shall destroy..." (Dan. 8:23,24,25).

Yeah, with what clearness and boldness, and considerable amount of historical learning, does Tyndale trace the way by which the supremacy of the pope arose. It has been said of this passage by one learned author that there is "probably nowhere in the English language any passage superior in force and graphic skill o the well-known description of the rise of the Pope." And we may add here that like the stinking ivy-which plant is almost impossible to entirely kill-it is also very difficult to rid our world of popery: this requires a lot of hard work, courage and persistence, and still the dead stump may yet shoot up again.

Said historian Henry Grattan Guinness, "In the fourth century, with the the fall of paganism, began a worldly, imperial Christianity, wholly unlike primitive apostolic Christianity, a sort of Christianized heathenism: and in the fifth and sixth centuries sprang up the Papacy, in those career the apostasy culminated later on. The mighty Caesars had fallen; Augustus, Domitian, Hadrian, Diocletian were gone; even the Constantines and Julians had passed away. The seat of sovereignty had been removed from Rome to Constantinople. Goths and Vandals' had overthrown the western empire; the once mighty political structure lay delivered into broken fragments. The imperial government was slain by the Gothic sword. The Czesars were no more, and Rome was an actual desolation Then slowly on the ruins of old imperial Rome an actual desolation. Then slowly on the ruins of an old imperial Rome rose another power and another monarchy-a monarchy of loftier aspirations and more resistless might, claiming dominion, not only within the omits of the fallen empire, but throughout the entire world. Higher and higher [like the stinking ivy] rose the Papacy, till in the dark ages all Christendom was subject to its sway...."

The 'craft' of Rome, both in medieval times and today, is the art of fabrication and daring falsehoods: "Like the successive strata of the earth covering one another, SO LAYER AFTER LAYER OF FORGERIES AND FABRICATIONS HAS BEEN PILED UP IN THE CHURCH |OF ROME|," bolstered by a Jesuitical "literaryand academic flexibility and elastic versatality of pen hitherto confined to journalism." "Anti-Christ Would Use "Craft" And Deceit To Prosper" Codeword Barbelon book Two by P.D. Stuart

Billy Dunn - "Anti-Christ Would Use "Craft" And Deceit To Prosper"... | Facebook

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Kodashim (Hebrew: קׇדָשִׁים‎, romanized: Qoḏāšim, lit. 'holy things') is the fifth of the six orders, or major divisions, of the Mishnah, Tosefta and the Talmud, and deals largely with the services within the Temple in Jerusalem, its maintenance and design, the korbanot, or sacrificial offerings that were offered there, and other subjects related to these topics, as well as, notably, the topic of kosher slaughter.

Topics

This Seder (order, or division) of the Mishnah is known as Kodashim (“sacred things” or “sanctities”), because it deals with subjects connected with Temple service and ritual slaughter of animals (shehitah). The term kodashim, in the Biblical context, applies to the sacrifices, the Temple and its furnishings, as well as the priests who carried out the duties and ceremonies of its service; and it is with these holy things, places and people that Kodashim is mainly concerned. The title Kodashim is apparently an abbreviation of Shehitat Kodashim ("the slaughter of sacred animals") since the main, although not the only subject of this order is sacrifices.[1][2][3]

The topics of this Seder are primarily the sacrifices of animals, birds, and meal offerings, the laws of bringing a sacrifice, such as the sin offering and the guilt offering, and the laws of misappropriation of sacred property. In addition, the order contains a description of the Second Temple (tractate Middot), and a description and rules about the daily sacrifice service in the Temple (tractate Tamid). The order also includes tractate Hullin, which concerns the slaughter of animals for non-sacrificial use, as well as other dietary laws applying to meat and animal products. Although Hullin is about the slaughter of animals for non-sacrificial, and therefore unsanctified purposes, because the rules about the proper slaughter of animals and birds, and their ritual fitness for use were considered to be an integral part of the concept of holiness in Judaism, they were also included in the order regarding “holy things”.[2][3]

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

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

Revelation 18:2

Zevachim (“Sacrifices”), with FOURTEEN chapters, and originally called Shehitat Kodashim ("slaughtering of the holy animals") deals with the sacrificial system of the Temple period, namely the laws for animal and bird offerings, and the conditions which make them acceptable or not, as specified in the Torah, primarily in the book of Leviticus (Lev 1:2 and on).[1][2][4]

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

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

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

Revelation 18

1599 Geneva Bible

18 2 The horrible destruction of Babylon set out. 11, 16, 18 The merchants of the earth, who were enriched with the pomp and luxuriousness of it, weep and wail: 20 but all the elect rejoice for that just vengeance of God.

1 [a]And after these things, I saw another [b]Angel come down from heaven, having great power, so that the earth was lightened with his glory,

2 And he cried out mightily with a loud voice, [c]saying, It is fallen, it is fallen, Babylon that great city, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of all foul spirits, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

3 For all nations have drunken of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich of the abundance of her pleasures.

4 [d]And I heard another voice from heaven say, [e]Go out of her, my people, that ye be not [f]partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues:

5 For her sins are [g]come up into heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

6 [h]Reward her, even as she hath rewarded you, and give her double according to her works: and in the cup that she hath filled to you, fill her the double.

7 Inasmuch as she glorified herself, and lived in pleasure, so much give ye to her torment and sorrow: for she saith [i]in her heart, I sit being a queen, and am [j]no widow, and shall [k]see no mourning.

8 Therefore shall her plagues come at [l]one day, death, and sorrow, and famine, and she shall be burnt with fire: for that God which condemneth her, is a strong Lord,

9 And the [m]kings of the earth shall bewail her, and lament for her, which have committed fornication, and lived in pleasure with her, when they shall see that smoke of that her burning,

10 And shall stand afar off for fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city: for in one hour is thy judgment come.

11 [n]And the merchants of the earth shall weep and wail over her: for no man buyeth their ware anymore.

12 The ware of gold, and silver, and of precious stone, and of pearls, and of fine linen, and of purple, and of silk, and of scarlet, and of all manner of Thynewood, and of all vessels of ivory, and of all vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble,

13 And of cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and servants, and souls of men.

14 ([o]And the [p]apples that thy soul lusted after, are departed from thee, and all things which were fat and excellent, are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more.)

15 The merchants of these things which were waxed rich, shall stand afar off from her, for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing.

16 And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen and purple, and scarlet, and gilded with gold, and precious stones, and pearls.

17 [q]For in one hour so great riches are come to desolation. And every shipmaster, and all the people that occupy ships and shipmen, and whosoever traffic on the sea, shall stand afar off.

18 And cry, when they see that smoke of that her burning, saying, What city was like unto this great city?

19 And they shall cast dust on their heads, and cry, weeping, and wailing, and say, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships on the sea by her coastlines: for in one hour she is made desolate.

20 [r]O heaven, rejoice of her, and ye holy Apostles and Prophets: for God hath punished her, to be revenged on her for your sakes.

21 [s]Then a mighty Angel took up a stone, like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, With such violence shall that great city Babylon be cast and shall be found no more.

22 [t]And the voice of harpers, and musicians and of pipers, and trumpeters shall be heard no more in thee, and no craftsman, of whosoever craft he be, shall be found anymore in thee: and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more in thee.

23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more in thee: and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth: and with thine enchantment were deceived all nations.

24 And in her was found the [u]blood of the Prophets [v]and of the Saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.

Footnotes

Revelation 18:1 The second place (as I said before, 17:1) of the history of Babylon, is of the woeful fall and ruin of that whore of Babylon. This historical prediction concerning her, is threefold. The first a plain and simple foretelling of her ruin in three verses, the second a figurative prediction by the circumstances, thence, unto verse 20. The third, a confirmation of the same by sign or wonder, unto the end of the Chapter.

Revelation 18:1 Either Christ the eternal word of God the Father (as often elsewhere) or a created Angel, and one deputed unto this service: but thoroughly furnished with greatness of power, and with light of glory, as the ensign of power.

Revelation 18:2 The prediction or foretelling of her ruin, containing both the fall of Babylon, in this verse, and the cause thereof uttered by way of allegory concerning her spiritual and carnal wickedness, that is, her most great impiety and injustice, in the next verse: her fall is first simply declared of the Angel: and then the greatness thereof is showed here by the events, when he saith it shall be the seat and habitation of devils, of wild beasts and of cursed souls, as of old, Isa. 13:21, and often elsewhere.

Revelation 18:4 The second prediction, which is of the circumstances of the ruin of Babylon: of these there are two kinds: one going before it: as that beforehand the godly are delivered unto the ninth verse: the other following upon her ruin, namely the lamentation of the wicked and rejoicing of the godly, unto the twentieth verse.

Revelation 18:4 Two circumstances going before the ruin, are commanded in this place: one is, that the godly depart out of Babylon: as I mentioned, chapter 12, to have been done in time past, before the destruction of Jerusalem: this charge is given here, and in the next verse. The other is, that every one of them occupy themselves in their own place, in executing the judgment of God, as it was commanded the Levites of old, Exod. 32:27, and that they sanctify their hands unto the Lord, verses 6, 7, 8.

Revelation 18:4 Of his commandment there are two causes to avoid the contagion of sin, and to shun the participation of those punishments that belong thereunto.

Revelation 18:5 He useth a word which signifieth the following of sins one after another, and rising one another in such sort, that they grew at length to such an heap that they came up even to heaven.

Revelation 18:6 The provocation of the godly, and the commandment of executing the judgments of God, stand upon three causes which are here expressed: the unjust wickedness of the whore of Babylon, in this verse her cursed pride opposing itself against God, which is the fountain of all evil actions, verse 7, and her most just damnation by the sentence of God, verse 8.

Revelation 18:7 With herself.

Revelation 18:7 I am full of people and mighty.

Revelation 18:7 I shall taste of none.

Revelation 18:8 Shortly and at one instant.

Revelation 18:9 The circumstances following the fall of Babylon, or the consequences thereof (as I distinguished them, verse 4) are two. Namely the lamentation of the wicked unto verse 19: and the rejoicing of the godly, verse 20. This most sorrowful lamentation, according to the person of them that lament, hath three members, the first whereof is the mourning of the kings and mighty men of the earth, in two verses. The second is the lamentation of the merchants that traffic by land thence unto verse 16. The third is the wailing of those that merchandise by sea, verses 16, 17, 18. In every [one] of these the cause and manner of their mourning is described in order, according to the condition of those [that] mourn, with observation of that which best agreeth unto them.

Revelation 18:11 The lamentation of those that trade by land, as I distinguished immediately before.

Revelation 18:14 An apostrophe, or turning of the speech by imitation, used for more vehemence, as if those merchants, after the manner of mourners should in passionate speech speak unto Babylon, though now utterly fallen and overthrown. So Isa. 12:9, and in many other places.

Revelation 18:14 By this is meant that season which is next before the fall of the leaf, at what season fruits ripen, and the word signifieth such fruits as are longed for.

Revelation 18:17 The manner of mourning used by them that trade by sea.

Revelation 18:20 The other consequent unto the other ruin of Babylon, is the exultation or rejoicing of the godly in heaven and in earth, as was noted, verse 9.

Revelation 18:21 The third prediction, as I said verse 1, standing of a sign, and the interpretation thereof: the interpretation thereof is in 2 sorts, first by a simple propounding of the thing itself, in this verse, and then by declaration of the events in the verses following.

Revelation 18:22 The events are two, the one of them opposite unto the other for amplification sake. There shall be, saith he, in Babylon no mirth nor joy at all, in this and the next verse, but all heavy and lamentable things from the bloody slaughters of the righteous and the vengeance of God coming upon it for the same.

Revelation 18:24 That is shed by bloody massacres, and calling for vengeance.

Revelation 18:24 That is, proved and found out, as if God had appointed a just inquiry, concerning the impiety, unnaturalness and injustice of those men.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2018&version=GNV

Molten gold was poured down his throat until his bowels burst

F R W van de Goot 1, R L ten Berge 1, R Vos 1

Author information

Article notes

PMCID: PMC1769869 PMID: 12560401

In 1599, a Spanish governor in early colonial Ecuador suffered this fate. Native Indians of the Jivaro tribe, unscrupulously taxed in their gold trade, attacked the settlement of Logrono and executed the gold hungry governor by pouring molten gold down his throat.1 Pouring hot liquids or metals, such as lead or gold, into the mouth of a victim was a practice used on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, by the Romans and the Spanish Inquisition among others.2

Several sources mention the bursting of internal organs.1–3 The question remains whether this is actually the case and, also, what the cause of death would be. To investigate this, we obtained a bovine larynx from a local slaughter house (no animal was harmed or killed specifically for this purpose). After fixing the larynx in a horizontal position to a piece of wood and closing the distal end using tissue paper, 750 g of pure lead (around 450°C) was heated until melting and then poured into the larynx. Immediately, large amounts of steam appeared at both ends of the specimen, and the clot of tissue paper was expelled with force by the steam. Within 10 seconds, the lead had congealed again, completely filling the larynx (fig 1).

Figure 1.

Figure 1

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Bovine larynx after being filled by melted lead.

After cooling, cross sections of the larynx were made, and formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded slides of the laryngeal wall were observed under the light microscope. The laryngeal mucosa was found to be totally absent, and coagulation necrosis of the underlying chondroid and striated muscle was seen at a maximum depth of 1 cm (fig 2).

Figure 2.

Figure 2

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The laryngeal mucosa was totally absent and coagulation necrosis of the underlying chondroid and striated muscle can be seen.

Based on these findings, we suggest that the development of steam with increasing pressure might result in both heat induced and mechanical damage to distal organs, possibly leading to over inflation and rupture of these organs. Direct thermal injury to the lungs may lead to instantaneous death, as a result of acute pulmonary dysfunction and shock, as shown by Brinkmann and Puschel.4 Even if this is not the case, the development of a “cast” (once the metal congeals again) would completely block the airways, thus suffocating the victim.

In conclusion, we have shown that in the execution method of pouring hot liquefied metals into the throat of a victim, death is probably mediated by the development of steam and consequent thermal injury to the airways.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1769869/

Fire as the agent of Truth

Asha Vahishta is closely associated with fire. Fire is "grandly conceived as a force informing all the other Amesha Spentas, giving them warmth and the spark of life."[27] In Yasht 17.20, Angra Mainyu clamours that Zoroaster burns him with Asha Vahishta. In Vendidad 4.54-55, speaking against the truth and violating the sanctity of promise is detected by the consumption of "water, blazing, of golden color, having the power to detect guilt."

This analogy of truth that burns and detecting truth through fire is already attested in the very earliest texts, that is, in the Gathas and in the Yasna Haptanghaiti. In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda dispenses justice through radiance of His fire and the strength of aṣ̌a. Fire "detects" sinners "by hand-grasping" (Yasna 34.4). An individual who has passed the fiery test (garmo-varah, ordeal by heat), has attained physical and spiritual strength, wisdom, truth and love with serenity (Yasna 30.7). Altogether, "there are said to have been some 30 kinds of fiery tests in all."[28] According to the post-Sassanid Dadestan i denig (I.31.10), at the final judgement a river of molten metal will cover the earth. The righteous, as they wade through this river, will perceive the molten metal as a bath of warm milk. The wicked will be scorched. For details on aṣ̌a's role in personal and final judgement, see aṣ̌a in eschatology, below.

Fire is moreover the "auxiliary of the truth," "and not only, as in the ordeal, of justice and of truth at the same time."[11] In Yasna 31.19, "the man who thinks of aṣ̌a, [...] who uses his tongue in order to speak correctly, [does so] with the aid of brilliant fire". In Yasna 34-44 devotees "ardently desire [Mazda's] mighty fire, through aṣ̌a." In Yasna 43–44, Ahura Mazda "shall come to [Zoroaster] through the splendour of [Mazda's] fire, possessing the strength of (through) aṣ̌a and good mind (=Vohu Manah)." That fire "possesses strength through aṣ̌a" is repeated again in Yasna 43.4. In Yasna 43.9, Zoroaster, wishing to serve fire, gives his attention to aṣ̌a. In Yasna 37.1, in a list of what are otherwise all physical creations, aṣ̌a takes the place of fire.

Asha Vahishta's association with atar is carried forward in the post-Gathic texts, and they are often mentioned together. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, each of the Amesha Spentas represents one aspect of creation and one of seven primordial elements that in Zoroastrian tradition are the basis of that creation. In this matrix, aṣ̌a/arta is the origin of fire, Avestan atar, which permeates through all Creation. The correspondence then is that aṣ̌a/arta "penetrates all ethical life, as fire penetrates all physical being."[12]

In the liturgy Asha Vahishta is frequently invoked together with fire. (Yasna l.4, 2.4, 3.6, 4.9, 6.3, 7.6, 17.3, 22.6, 59.3, 62.3 etc.). In one passage, fire is a protector of aṣ̌a: "when the Evil Spirit assailed the creation of Good Truth, Good Thought and Fire intervened" (Yasht 13.77)

In later Zoroastrian tradition, Asha Vahishta is still at times identified with the fire of the household hearth.

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

The Sphere (officially Große Kugelkaryatide N.Y., also known as Sphere at Plaza Fountain, WTC Sphere or Koenig Sphere) is a monumental cast bronze sculpture by German artist Fritz Koenig (1924–2017).[2]

The world's largest bronze sculpture of modern times stood between the Twin Towers on the Austin J. Tobin Plaza of the World Trade Center in New York City from 1972 until the September 11 attacks. The work, weighing more than 20 tons, was the only remaining work of art to be recovered largely intact from the ruins of the collapsed Twin Towers. After being dismantled and stored near a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the sculpture was the subject of the 2001 documentary Koenig's Sphere. Since then, the bronze sphere has become a memorial for the attacks.

The sculpture was installed in Battery Park between 2002 and 2017, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey moved it to Liberty Park, overlooking the September 11 Memorial and its original location.[2] The sculpture, rededicated at its permanent location on August 16, 2017, has been kept in the badly damaged condition it was found in after the September 11 attacks.

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

Social Park USA

November 15 at 9:11 AM

The Sphere and the North Tower 🇺🇸

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02Ggy86MmsLCbJAubHGqxADhb5N4Au3hWPsHkTKjXqKuZbsb2wuZGWHHutJUST59r3l&id=61555655113607

Wicked Wins Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award at 2025 Golden Globes

“This is for you, the fans out there who came to the movie theaters, who bring their friends and family and stay in the dark," director Jon M. Chu said

By Liza Esquibias

Updated on January 6, 2025 12:03AM EST

Wicked won its first award at the 2025 Golden Globes.

The film took home the cinematic and box office achievement award at the 82nd annual ceremony on Sunday, Jan. 5. In his acceptance speech, director Jon M. Chu, who was joined on stage by Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum and Marc E. Platt, honored everyone who helped make the adaptation so successful.

“We love you, thank you and we stand on your shoulders,” Chu said, speaking of the original play, which debuted in 2003. “My parents came to this country and loved Wizard of Oz. They'd tell us about the yellow brick road and the place over the rainbow, where all dreams come true if you dare to dream it. So I'm up here looking at you, living the dream and looking at this beautiful, beautiful cast. It's more beautiful than I ever thought it could be.”

He went on to recognize all the behind-the-scenes crew members and lovers of film who contributed to the creation of the film.

“We all fell in love with movies at some point. We were all in the dark when we saw something that changed our brains and made us see a perspective we've never thought before, or opened a culture that we never believed existed before and made us drop everything and risk everything to be here in this town right now. I think about that and I think about how beautiful that is,” Chu said.

“This is for you, the fans out there who came to the movie theaters, who bring their friends and family and stay in the dark. We saw your videos, we saw your singalongs, we saw your makeup, your hair products, your bakery items. And it shows us how important making this stuff is,” he concluded. “In a time when pessimism and cynicism rule the planet right now, we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism, that is empowerment and that is joy. So when we discover that maybe the world isn't exactly the way we thought it was, and maybe [we all have] a little bit of Elphaba inside of us ... that maybe we have that courage and that strength to not give up but to rise up. Take the road off the yellow brick road and maybe discover we can fly.”

https://people.com/golden-globes-2025-wicked-wins-cinematic-and-box-office-achievement-award-8769536

Anne Heche

House Destroyed in Fiery Wreck Restored ...

And Back on the Market

4/23/2024 2:44 PM PT

The Southern California home Anne Heche destroyed in the car accident that claimed her life has been fully restored -- and it's on the market too ... going for a bundle.

The 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom Los Angeles residence looks strikingly different from the last time we saw it -- as it was previously a scorched wreck from the fiery collision that led to Anne's untimely passing in 2022.

These days, the house boasts a fresh coat of white paint with a black trim along the side. A small, but sunny front porch juts out into a modest front yard. The front of the structure is completely rebuilt too ... and looks nothing like it did a couple years ago.

Due to the home's desirable location -- Venice is a famous beachside neighborhood -- the current owners are looking to sell the residence for $1.35 million.

The house reportedly first hit the market in February at $1.499 million ... but has dropped twice in price now.

Remember, a couple months after Anne's death, her estate was sued for $2 million in damages by the home's tenant, Lynne Mishele, who claimed she was left traumatized and without most of her possessions because of the car accident.

Lynne also said she and her pets nearly died when Anne's Mini Cooper came barreling into her home without warning.

The owners of the home, Jennifer and John Durand, followed suit with a complaint of their own ... seeking compensatory damages of at least $2 million.

Anne's son Homer Laffoon is the executor of her estate after battling it out in court against his late mother's ex, James Tupper. Anne and James shared one child together, son Atlas.

You'll recall ... Anne died after being taken off life support. She had sustained an anoxic brain injury in the crash ... which, according to her rep at the time, she would never recover from.

As tragic as her death was, it looks like the owners of the place are trying to turn the page from that saga ... and unload this place once and for all.

https://www.tmz.com/2024/04/23/anne-heche-house-car-wreck-crash-fully-restored-sale-death/

Volcano is a 1997 American disaster film directed by Mick Jackson, written by Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray, and produced by Neal H. Moritz and Andrew Z. Davis. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Don Cheadle and Keith David. It tells the story of an effort to divert the path of a dangerous lava flow through the streets of Los Angeles following the formation of a volcano at the La Brea Tar Pits. The story was inspired by the 1943 formation of the Parícutin volcano in Mexico.

Volcano was released by 20th Century Fox in the United States on April 25, 1997. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $122.8 million worldwide on a $90 million budget.

Plot

In downtown Los Angeles, an earthquake strikes. Mike Roark, the new director of the city's Office of Emergency Management, insists on coming to work to help out with the crisis even though he has been on vacation with his daughter Kelly. His associate Emmit Reese notes that the quake caused no major damage, but seven utility workers are later burned to death in a storm drain at MacArthur Park. As a precaution, Mike tries to halt the subway lines near the location of the earthquake. MTA Chairman Stan Olber opposes, believing that there is no threat to the trains. Seismologist Dr. Amy Barnes believes that a volcano may be forming beneath the city due to the earthquake opening a fissure in the fault line; however, she has insufficient evidence to make Mike take action.

Early the next morning, Amy and her assistant Rachel venture in the storm sewer to investigate. While they take samples, another (more powerful) earthquake strikes the city. Rachel falls into a crack and is killed by a rush of hot gases. A subway train derails from falling debris, and a power outage occurs across the entire city. Later, in the La Brea Tar Pits, the volcano begins to erupt. As Mike helps injured firefighters out of the area, lava begins to flow down Wilshire Boulevard. The lava incinerates everything in its path and kills two firefighters in an overturned fire truck. The Roarks become separated, as Kelly is injured when a lava bomb burns her leg and is taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital along with other patients. Meanwhile, Stan leads his team through the tunnel to the derailed train to search for survivors. While his team save everyone aboard, Stan rescues the driver just as lava reaches the train, causing it to disintegrate. Stan sacrifices his life by jumping into the lava flow to throw the driver to safety.

Mike, Amy, and LAPD lieutenant Ed Fox devise a plan to use concrete barriers to create a blockade, which obstructs the lava in its path. A fleet of helicopters dump water collected from the ocean to subdue the lava and volcano, forming a crust and making the plan a success. However, Amy thinks that the magma is still flowing underground through the subway because of the amount of ash still falling. When Mike helps her confirm her suspicions, she calculates that another eruption will occur at the end of the Red Line at Cedars-Sinai and, after calculating the speed of the flowing lava, determines the lava will reach the end of the tunnel in thirty minutes.

Mike devises another plan to demolish a 22-story condominium building to block the lava's path from flowing towards the hospital and the rest of the West Side of Los Angeles, redirecting it into a nearby storm drain. As the lava arrives, Mike's co-worker Gator and an LAPD Bomb Squad officer (trapped under debris) sacrifice their lives to detonate the final explosive charge. Mike then spots Kelly nearby, trying to retrieve a little boy she was watching who wandered off; the two are in the direct path of the collapsing building. Mike barely manages to save them from being crushed as the building collapses. The plan succeeds, and the lava flows directly into the ocean. As it begins raining, the trio emerge from the rubble unscathed and reunite with Amy before heading home.

The film ends with a view of the volcano, named Mount Wilshire. Status: A.C.T.I.V.E.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_(1997_film)

Arthur's Seat (Scottish Gaelic: Suidhe Artair, pronounced [ˈs̪ɯi.əˈaɾt̪ʰəɾʲ]) is an ancient extinct volcano that is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland, which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design".[1] It is situated just to the east of the city centre, about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the east of Edinburgh Castle. The hill rises above the city to a height of 250.5 m (822 ft), provides excellent panoramic views of the city and beyond, is relatively easy to climb, and is popular for hillwalking. Though it can be climbed from almost any direction, the easiest ascent is from the east, where a grassy slope rises above Dunsapie Loch. At a spur of the hill, Salisbury Crags has historically been a rock climbing venue with routes of various degrees of difficulty. Rock climbing was restricted to the South Quarry, but access was banned altogether in 2019 by Historic Environment Scotland.[2]

Name

It is sometimes said that its name is derived from legends pertaining to King Arthur, such as the reference in Y Gododdin. Some support for this may be provided by several other hilltop and mountaintop features in Britain which bear the same or similar names, such as the peak of Ben Arthur (The Cobbler) in the western highlands, sometimes known as Arthur's Seat,[3] and Arthur's Chair on the ridge called Stone Arthur in the English Lake District.

Geology

Arthur's Seat is the largest of the three parts of the Arthur's Seat Volcano site of special scientific interest (the other parts being Calton Hill and the Castle Rock) which is designated to protect its important geology (see below), grassland habitats and uncommon plant and animal species.

Like the rock on which Edinburgh Castle is built, it was formed by a volcanic system of early Carboniferous age (lava samples have been dated at 341 to 335 million years old),[4] which was eroded by a glacier moving from west to east during the Quaternary (approximately the last two million years), exposing rocky crags to the west and leaving a tail of material swept to the east.[5] This is how the Salisbury Crags formed and became basalt cliffs between Arthur's Seat and the city centre. From some angles, Arthur's Seat resembles a lion couchant.[6][7] Two of the several extinct vents make up the 'Lion's Head' and the 'Lion's Haunch'.

Duration: 2 minutes and 19 seconds.2:19

Aerial footage of Arthur's Seat and the George Square area of Edinburgh

Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags adjoining it helped form the ideas of modern geology as it is currently understood. It was in these areas that James Hutton observed that the deposition of the sedimentary and formation of the igneous rocks must have occurred at different ages and in different ways than the thinking of that time said they did. It is possible to see a particular area known as Hutton's Section in the Salisbury Crags where the magma forced its way through the sedimentary rocks above it to form the dolerite sills that can be seen in the Section.

The hill bears a strong resemblance to the Cavehill in Belfast in terms of its geology and proximity to a major urban site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%27s_Seat

Holyrood or

Hollywood?

Myself and my mother entered the new parliament building through a revolving door. Before leaving our concrete seat opposite the Queen’s Gallery, we took one last glance at the immense broad and thick rock that reached for the sky called Arthur’s Seat. Adjacent the parliament are a few triangular and oddly shaped pools. They call them ‘ponds’ but there is no life in them, no greenery, and not a frog in sight. Architect, Enric Miralles, wrote that ‘the building should originate from the sloping base of Arthur’s Seat and arrive into the city almost out of the rock.’

However, reflecting back and looking across glittering pools up towards the immeasurable beauty of that mountain it was apparent that somehow Miralles intention had not worked. Surely, if the intention of Miralles’ design was modern ‘out of the rock’, then why was the mountain more modern and monumental than the £414m crusade beside me?

There is, I must agree, a certain element of calmness on a hot day in the design of his external landscape. But this is Scotland, not Spain. There is no serious connection between the natural landscape and the so-called modern parliament building. Wildflowers instead of spreading across the earth look suffocated waving about unnaturally. Everything is out of place. Tourists are everywhere but nowhere.

At the revolving doors, we are not greeted but welcomed with security. Bags, belts and coats all must go into a single tray. We pass security. Disturbingly, I felt as though we were taken hostage. Think about it: like prisoners before we entered. We were now at the centre of not the universe but the building itself. Your eyes don’t know where to look. Glass, metal and wood is criss-crossing you everywhere. You immediately yearn to find a different space than the one you’re stepping into.

We felt insecure and caved in. Are we in the rock that has rolled away from Arthur’s seat? Or, are we in the mountain itself? I don’t know. I felt less of the desire to explore rather escape. At reception there is a long line of ushers. Popcorn, anyone?

Beside me, a photograph exhibition by Harry Benson called ‘Seeing America’. The photos reveal everything about the horror of American tyranny. Yet we are inside a building that is almost like a bunker – a bomb proof one – and a building that is difficult to get in and out of. I ask a security guard where the debating chamber is. Everywhere are slabs of concrete. Was our environment seriously considered?

Finally, we entered the chamber. It wasn’t what I expected, being a lot smaller. On TV, the chamber appeared larger with more space in-between the politicians. Our perspective, when seated of secular props (chairs, speakers and tables) became miniature. There is a long distance between you and politics.

There are lights everywhere and cameras, being equipped rather than prepared for the modern world. Like a movie-set maybe. It was finally time to watch. The Presiding Officer commenced with FMQs; a hammer was hit and immediately politicians stood up and sat down in their seats. It was a case of ‘Lights. Camera. Action!’ I noticed immediately that you can’t really see the MSPs’ facial or body expressions. The politics of politics, it appears, is being played down. Politics is now action-packed. Nothing from the ‘visitors’ perspective felt live or real.scot-parl

A question is asked, the First Minister stands up abruptly, shouting at the opposition, whilst their party leader quickly leans back on her chair, holding up a look of terror. It is a pathetic and sad sight. Was I watching a rehearsal? If I was directing, I would be shouting: ‘Cut, cut cut!’

Politics is not in the space we are sitting. We are projected out and separated. Men, women and teenagers arch their bodies over the rails, shockingly, I realised, being treated as animals. And so we behave like one. Monkey, not the man, was obedient and sat back in his seat. Everywhere there are now security guards, Press with their ridiculously long cameras lenses, taking a hundred shots. An awful lot of hysteria for just a thirty minute rehearsal!

Honestly, the whole experience and the space itself was – and still – is in my memory a surreal one. When we consider the importance of politics, such an element of surrealism is not essential to life or humanity. We must think harder about the principle of not just politics but parliament itself – we must approach democracy with serious intelligence and more attention to human essence than architectural drawings.

Today, we are forced to accept the extreme distance between humanity and politics. The appearance of progress has become more important than the actual progress. Democracy which is a power in itself has been removed from us, owned instead by capitalists shelved and packaged through branded parties. Words ‘my party’ must be excluded one day if we are to climb any mountain. I turned to the film director – sorry the security guard – and asked for the way out.

Patrick Phillips is a revolutionary writer, lyricist, humanist and artist based in Perthshire. He successfully wrote in 2015 the lyrics for the song, ‘Man of the Mountains’, for a new musical, ‘Out Of Place’, at the York New Musical Festival. His first non-fiction is about a lawyer, who started his own circus more than thirty years ago, it will be published in 2018. On Twitter @PatrickWriter

https://scottishleftreview.scot/holyrood-or-hollywood/

The Round Table of King Arthur is a Grand Mythological Synthesis.

It is a whole Mythology in itself. It is perennial. It is Christian.

By tradition, the Round Table of King Arthur devolves from the very earliest period. The illustration opposite page 340 was copied from the original with great care and attention. King Arthur, in the principal seat, is idealised in the person of King Henry the Eighth, in whose time the Round Table is supposed to have been repaired and refaced. In the Revolution, Cromwell's soldiery, after the capture of Winchester, and in the fury at the imputed idea of idolatry (the Round Table is the English “Palladium “), made a target of it. The marks of many balls are still conspicuous. The five-leaved Roses (Red and White Roses; Rhodion, Rhodes—Knights of Rhodes or of Malta, the successors of the Templars) typify the Ten Original Signs of the Zodiac Red-Rose, Five Signs (Aspiration or Ascension); White-Rose, Five.

Signs (or Leaves), Descension (or “Con”-descension, or S.S., or Holy Ghost (the key of the whole apotheosis, according to the mystical Jacob Boehmen). The whole is radiant (notwithstanding that the rays are green; otherwise expressive of the “Linea Viridis” seu “Benedicta Viriditas:”—Rosicrucian). (See pages 162-164) from the “seed-spot,” or “Golden Sun” (Grand Astronomical Central Flame), in the centre).

This double-rose, “barbed” or “thorned,” Sol, is (in this form) the

Tudor Rose (the Rose-en-Soleil, be it remembered, was another of the Tudor badges); denoting the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster in the person of Harry the Eighth. It will be observed that each Knight of the Round Table is seated as at the base of an obelisk. The architectural “obeliscar” form (rayed, or spread, or bladed) is universal, all the world over, both in old times and modern times. The Egyptian Obelisks are sacred to the Sun. The Paladins of Charlemagne were Twelve in number. The Marshals of France should be twelve in number. The Judges of England, according to old constitutional rationale, should be twelve; as the number of a Jury are twelve. All these are mythical of the Twelve Signs, or Divisions, of the Zodiac, the Twelve Jewish Tribes, the twelve oracular stones in the breastplate of the High Priest of the Jews, and, in the Christian aspect of the mysticism, the Twelve Apostles; with the “Reprobate Condemned Central Sign” as Judas, the Traitor. The whole is Cabalistic in the highest degree ; and therefore ordinarily unintelligible.

It signifies the Second Dispensation, or the astrological reproduction and re-arrangement of the Zodiac, when the original Ten Signs of the Ecliptic (mythically the gladius of the Archangel Michael) became Twelve ; and when the mystic system underwent the GREATEST CHANGE—presenting a new traditionary and reproductive face. (Refer to Chapter on the origin of the Order of the Garter, page 282, and thenceforward."

The Rosicrucians Their Rites and Mysteries by Hargrave Jennings

https://ia800501.us.archive.org/7/items/rosicruciansthei00jenn_0/rosicruciansthei00jenn_0.pdf

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

FIRE-THEOSOPHY OF THE PERSIANS

THE Fire-Philosophers, or Philosophi per ignem, were a fanatical sect of philosophers, who appeared towards the close of the sixteenth century. They made a figure in almost all the countries of Europe. They delcared that the intimate essences of natural things were only to be known by the trying efforts of fire, directed in a chemical process. The Theosophists also insisted that human reason was a dangerous and deceitful guide; that no real progress could be made in knowledge or in religion by it; and that to all vital—that is, supernatural—purpose it was a vain thing. They taught that divine and supernatural illumination was the only means of arriving at truth. Their name of Paracelsists was derived from Paracelsus, the eminent physician and chemist, who was the chief ornament of this extraordinary sect. In England, Robert Flood, or Fludd, was their great advocate and exponent. Rivier, who wrong in France; Severinus, an author of Denmark; Kunrath, an eminent phyisican of Dresden; and Daniel Hoffmann, professor of divinity in the University of Helmstadt,—have also treated largely on Paracelsus and on his system.

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus was born in 1493, at Einsiedeln, a small town of the canton of Schwitz, distant some leagues from Zurich. Having passed a troubled, migratory, and changeful life, this great chemist, and very original thinker, died on the 24th of September 1541, in the Hospital of St. Stephen, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His works may be enumerated as follow:

The German editions: Basil, 1575, in 8vo; Ib. i, 1589-90, in 10 vols. 4to; and Strasbourg, 1603-18, in 4 vols. folio.

2. The Latin editions : Opera omnia Medico-chymico-chirurgica, Frankfort, 1603, in 10 vols. 4to; and Geneva, 1658, in 3 vols. folio. 3.

The French editions : La Grand Chirurgerie de Paracelse, Lyons, 1593 and 1603, in 4to; and Montbeliard, 1608, in 8vo. See Adelung, Histoire de la Folie Humaine, tom. vii.; Biographie Universelle, article “Paracelse;” and Sprengel, Histoire Pragmatique de la Médecine, tom. iii.

“Akin to the school of the ancient Fire-Believers, and of the magnetists of a later period,” says the learned Dr. Ennemoser, in his History of Magic (most ably rendered into English by William Howitt), “of the same cast as these speculators and searchers into the mysteries of nature, drawing from the same well, are the Theosophists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These practised chemistry, by which they asserted that they could explore the profoundest secrets of nature. As they strove, above all earthly knowledge, after the divine, and sought the divine light and fire, through which all men can acquire the true wisdom, they were called the Fire-Philosophers (philosophi per ignem). The most distinguished of these are Theophrastus Paracelsus, Adam von Boden, Oswald Croll; and, later, Valentine Weigel, Robert Flood, or Fludd, Jacob Bohmen, Peter Poiret, &c.” Under this head we may also refer to the Medico-surgical Essays of Hemmann, published at Berlin in 1778; and Pfaff’s Astrology.

As a great general principle, the Theosophists called the soul a fire, taken from the eternal ocean of light.

In regard to the supernatural—using the word in its widest sense it may be said that “all the difficulty in admitting the strange things told us lies in the non-admission of an internal causal world as absolutely real: it is said, in intellectually admitting, because the influence of the arts proves that men’s feelings always have admitted, and do still admit, this reality.”

The Platonic philosophy of vision is, that it is the view of objects really existing in interior light, which assume form, not according to arbitrary laws, but according to the state of mind. This interior light, if we understand Plato, unites with exterior light in the eye, and is thus drawn into a sensual or imaginative activity; but when the outward light is separated, it reposes in its own serene atmosphere. It is, then, in this state of interior repose, that the usual class of religious, or what are called inspired, visions occur. It is the same light of eternity so frequently alluded to in books that treat of mysterious subjects; the light revealed to Pimander, Zoroaster, and all the sages of the East, as the emanation of the spiritual sun. Bohmen writes of it in his Divine Vision or Contemplation, and Molinos in his Spiritual Guide,—whose work is the ground of Quietism: Quietism being the foundation of the religion of the people called Friends or Quakers, as also of the other mystic or meditative sects. We enlarge from a very learned, candid, and instructive book upon the Occult Sciences.

Regard Fire, then, with other eyes than with those soulless, incurious ones, with which thou hast looked upon it as the most ordinary thing. Thou hast forgotten what it is— or rather thou hast never known. Chemists are silent about it; or, may we not say that it is too loud for them?

Therefore shall they speak fearfully of it in whispers. Philosophers talk of it as anatomists discourse of the constituents (or the parts) of the human body—as a piece of mechanism, wondrous though it be. Such the wheels of the clock, say they in their ingenious expounding of the “whys” and the “wherefores” (and the mechanics and the mathematics) of this mysterious thing, with a supernatural soul in it, called world. Such is the chain, such are the balances, such the larger and the smaller mechanical forces; such the “Time-blood,” as it were, that is sent circulating through it; such is the striking, with an infinity of bells.

It is made for man, this world, and it is greatly like him that is mean, they would add. And they do think it, if they dare add their thinkings. But is this all? Is this the sum of that casketed lamp of the human body?—thine own body, thou unthinking world's machin —thou Man! Or, in the fabric of this clay lamp (lacquered in thy man’s Imperial splendours), burneth there not a Light? Describe that, ye Doctors of Physics! Unwind the starry limbs of that phenomenon, ye heavy-browed, doctorial wielders of the scalpel!—useful, however, as ye be, in that “upholstery warehouse” of nature to which bodies and their make be referred by the materialists as the godless origin of everything.

Touch at its heart, ye dissectors of fibres and of valves; of sinews and of leaves (hands, perchance); of the vein-work, of the muscles, as bark-integument; of the trunk!

Split and pare, as with steel tools and wedge, this portent —this “Tree” (human though it be),—round which ye cluster to examine, about which ye gather, with your “persuasions,” to wind into the innermost secret of. Cyclops— one-eyed and savage-break into meaning this portent, Man, on your science-wheels!

Note the goings of the Fire, as he creepeth, serpentineth, riseth, slinketh, broadeneth. Note him reddening, glowing, whitening. Tremble at his face, dilating; at the meaning that is growing into it, to you. See that spark from the blacksmith's anvil!—struck, as an insect, out of a sky containing a whole cloud of such. Rare locusts, of which Pharaoh and the Cities of the Plain read of old the secret!

One, two, three sparks;—dozens come:—faster and faster the fiery squadrons follow, until, in a short while, a whole possible army of that hungry thing for battle, for food for it —Fire—glances up; but is soon warned in again!—lest acres should glow in the growing advance. Think that this thing is bound as in matter-chains. Think that He is outside of all things, and deep in the inside of all things ; and that thou and thy world are only the thing between: and that outside and inside are both identical, couldst thou understand the supernatural truths! Reverence Fire (for its meaning), and tremble at it; though in the Earth it be chained, and the foot of the Archangel Michael—like upon the Dragon—be upon it! Avert the face from it, as the Magi turned, dreading, and (as the Symbol) before it bowed askance. So much for this great thing—Fire !

Observe the multiform shapes of fire; the name-wreaths, the spires, the stars, the spots, the cascades, and the mighty falls of it; where the roar, when it grows high in Imperial masterdom, is as that of Niagara. Think what it can do, what it is. Watch the trail of sparks, struck, as in that spouting arch, from the metal shoes of the trampling horse.

It is as a letter of the great alphabet. The familiar London streets, even, can give thee the Persian’s God: though in thy pleasures, and in thy commerce-operations, thou so oft forgettest thine own God.

Whence liberated are those sparks?—as stars, afar off, of a whole sky of flame;—sparks, deep down in possibility, though close to us —great in their meaning, though, small in their show;—as distant single ships of whole fiery fleets;—animate children of, in thy human conception, a dreadful, but, in reality, a great world, of which thou knowest nothing. They fall, foodless, on the rejecting, barren, and (on the outside) the coldest stone.

But in each stone, flinty and chilly as the outside is, is a heart of fire, to strike at which is to bid gush forth the waters, as it were, of very Fire, like waters of the rock!

Truly, out of sparks can be displayed a whole acreage of fireworks. Forests can be conceived of flame-palaces of the fire; grandest things—soul-things—last things—all things!

Wonder no longer, then, if, rejected so long as an idolatry, the ancient Persians, and their masters the Magi,—concluding that they saw “All” in this supernaturally magnificent element,—fell down and worshipped it; making of it the visible representation of the very truest; but yet, in man’s speculation, and in his philosophies,—nay, in his commonest reason,—impossible God: God being everywhere, and in us, and, indeed, us, in the God-lighted man; and impossible to be contemplated or known outside,—being All!

Lights and flames, and the torches, as it were, of fire (all fire in this world, the last background on which all things are painted), may be considered as “lancets” of another world—the last world: circles, enclosed by the thick walls (which, however, by the fire are kept from closing) of this world. As fire waves and brandishes, will the walls of this world wave, and, as it were, undulate from about it. In smoke and disruption, or combustion of matter, we witness a phenomenon of the burning as of the edges of the matterrings of this world, in which world is fire, like a spot: that dense and hard thing, matter, holding it in. Oxygen, which is the finest of air, and is the means of the quickest burning out, or the supernatural (in this world) exhilaration of animal life, or extenuation of the Solid; and, above all, the heightening of the capacity of the Human, as being the quintessence of matter: this oxygen is the thing which feeds fire the most overwhelming. Nor would the specks and spots and stars of fire stop in this dense world-medium,—in this tissue or sea of things,—could it farther and farther fasten upon and devour the solids: eating, as it were, through them. But as this thick world is a thing the thickest, it presses out, thrusts, or gravitates upon, and stifles, in its too great weight; and conquers not only that liveliest, subtlest, thinnest element of the solids, the finest air, by whatever chemical name—oxygen, azote, azone, or what not—it may be called; which, in fact, is merely the nomenclature of its composition, the naming of the ingredients which make the thing (but not the thing). The denseness of the world not only conquers this, we repeat; but, so to figure it, matter stamps upon, effaces, and treads out fire: which, else, would burn on, back, as in the beginning of things, or into itself, —consuming, as in its great revenge of any thing being created other than it, all the mighty worlds which, in Creation, were permitted out of it. This is the teaching of the ancient Fire-Philosophers (reestablished and restored, to the days of comprehension of them, in the conclusions of the Rosicrucians, or llluminati, of later times), who claimed to have discovered the Eternal Fire, or to have found out “God” in the “Immortal Light.”

There are all grades or gradations of the density of matter; but it all coheres by the one law of gravitation.

Now, this gravitation is mistaken for a force of itself, when it is nothing but the sympathy, or the taking, away of the supposed thing between two other things. It is sympathy (or appetite) seeking its food, or as the closing together of two like things. It is not because one mass of matter is more ponderable or attracting than another (out of our senses, and in reality), but that they are the same, with different amounts of affection, and that like seeks like, not recognising or knowing that between. Now, this thing which is, as it were, slipped between, and which we strike into show of itself, or into fire-surprised and driven out of its ambush—is Fire. It is as the letter by which matter spells itself out—so to speak.

Now, matter is only to be finally forced asunder by heat; flame being the bright, subtle something which comes last, and is the expansion, fruit, crown, or glory of heat: it is the vivid and visible soul, essence, and spirit of heat—the last evolvement before rending, and before the forcible closing again of all the centre speeding weights, or desires, of matter. Flame is as the expanding out (or even exploding) flower to this growing thing, heat: it is as the bubble of it—the fruit (to which before we have likened it), or seed, in the outside Hand upon it. Given the supernatural Flora, heat is as the gorgeous plant, and flame the glorying flower; and as growth is greater out of the greater matrix, or matter of growing, so the thicker the material of fire (as we may roughly figure it, though we hope we shall be understood), so the stronger shall the fire be, and of necessity the fiercer will it be perceived to be—result being according to power.

Thus we get more of fire—that is, heat—out of the hard things: there being more of the thing Fire in them.

Trituration, mechanical division, multiplication, cutting up, precipitating, or compounding, are states into which the forces outside can place matter, without searching into and securing its bond, and gathering up (into hand off it) its chains, and mastering it. These changes can be wrought in matter, and, as it were, it can be taken in pieces; and all this dissolution of it may be effected without our getting as at the fire-blood of our subject.

But Fire disjoints, as it were, all the hinges of the house —laps out the coherence of it—sets ablaze the dense thing, matter—makes the dark metals run like waters of light— conjures the black devils out of the minerals, and, to our astonishment, shows them much libelled, blinding, angel white!

By Fire we can lay our hand upon the solids, part them, powder them, melt them, fine them, drive them out to more and more delicate and impalpable texture—firing their invisible molecules, or imponderables, into cloud, into mist, into gas: out of touch, into hearing; out of hearing, into seeing; out of seeing, into smelling; out of smelling, into nothing—into real NOTHING—not even into the last blue sky. These are the potent operations of Fire—the crucible into which we can cast all the worlds, and find them, in their last evolution, not even smoke. These are physical and scientific facts which there can be no gainsaying— which were seen and found out long ago, ages ago, in the reveries first, and then in the practice, of the great Magnetists, and those who were called the Fire-Philosophers, of whom we have spoken before.

What is that mysterious and inscrutable operation, the striking fire from flint? Familiar as it is, who remarks it?

Where, in that hardest, closest pressing together of matter —where the granulation compresses, shining even in its hardness, into the solidest lamince. of cold, darkest blue, and streaky, core-like, agate resembling white—lie the seeds of fire, spiritual flame-seeds to the so stony fruit? In what folds of the flint, in the block of it-in what invisible recess —speckled and spotted in what tissue—crouch the fire sparks?— to issue, in showers, on the stroke of iron—on the so sudden clattering (as of the crowbars of man) on its stony doors: Stone caving the thing Fire, unseen, as its sepulchre; Stroke warning the magical thing forth. Whence comes that trail of fire from the cold bosom of the hard, secret, unexploding flint?—children as from what hard, rocky breast; yet hiding its so sacred, sudden fire birth!

Who —and what science-philosopher —can explain this wondrous darting forth of the hidden something, which he shall try in vain to arrest, but which, like a spirit, escapes him? If we ask what fire is, of the men of science, they are at fault. They will tell us that it is a phenomenon, that their vocabularies can give no further account of it. They will explain to us that all that can be said of it is, that it is a last affection of matter, to the results of which (in the world of man) they can only testify, but of whose coming and of whose going—of the place from which it comes, and the whereabout to which it goeth—they are entirely ignorant, —and would give a world to know!

The foregoing—however feebly expressed—are the views of the famous Rosicrucians* respecting the nature of this supposed familiar, but yet puzzling, thing—Fire.

We will proceed to some of their further mystic reveries.

They are very singular.

But the consideration of these is exceedingly abstract and difficult. The whole subject is abstruse in the highest

degree.

* In regard to the singular name of the Rosicrucians, it may be here

stated that the Chemists, according to their arcana, derive the Dew

from the Latin Ros, and in the figure of a cross (+) they trace the

three letters which compose the word Lux, Light. Mosheim is positive as to the accuracy of his information."

The Rosicrucians Their Rites and Mysteries

by Hargrave Jennings

https://dn790005.ca.archive.org/0/items/rosicruciansthei00jenn/rosicruciansthei00jenn.pdf

Jamestown - Molten Lead Punishment Scene (S2E2) | Rotten Tomatoes TV

Rotten Tomatoes

Nov 26, 2021

Jamestown - Drinking Molten Lead Scene: Farlow (Burn Gorman) punishes a smuggler.

BUY THE SERIES: https://www.vudu.com/content/movies/d...

Watch the best Jamestown scenes:

• Jamestown (2017) | TV Scenes | Rotten...

US Air Date: 2018

Network: PBS

Starring: Claire Cox, Jason Flemyng, Luke Roskell, Max Beesley, Naomi Battrick, Niamh Walsh, Sophie Rundle, Stuart Martin

Director: David Moore

► Learn more about this show on Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/jame...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=h_1C0GlxZ9s

Hey! Mr. Book Man, find a book for me in ‘Ricochet’

“When you start reading the right things, go down the right road.”

It’s always interesting for me to view early Denzel Washington films, like this decidedly minor action thriller, Ricochet (1991). Denzel plays hotshot detective-turned-district-attorney Nick Styles, while John Lithgow plays his badass, butt-kicking nemesis, Earl Talbot Blake (?!). I know, I just typed that sentence and I had to do a mental double-take. Although spectacularly miscast, Lithgow nonetheless enjoys chewing the scenery with crazy-eyed relish. (For a believably badass Lithgow villain, see his Emmy-winning turn in the 4th season of Dexter).

*SPOILERS BELOW*

About a quarter hour into the film, Lithgow gets to flex his teeth-gnashing skills opposite a reel librarian billed as the “Book Man” (Don Perry). While Earl is seething revenge in a prison hospital bed — he had just gotten shot in the kneecaps by Nick the Cop — an older white male pushing a cart of books shuffles into view.

Decked out in so-nerdy-it’s-almost-stylish-again duds such as a newsboy cap, plaid shirt and cardigan (but alas, no bow tie!), he bends over Earl to say:

Young fella? Look at you! Lying there like a lump on a log. So what if you’ve made a few mistakes? You can change your life for the better. Don’t you have anything to live for?

Mr. Book Man's bedside manner in Ricochet

Mr. Book Man’s bedside manner

Earl has no reaction to this inspirational message. Or maybe he was pissed at being called “young fella” (being over 45 in real life by this point). Either way, he seems unmoved. But after viewing a TV news bit about the stylin’ Nick Styles, he calls out, “Hey you! Book Man!”

Pleased as punch, this Information Provider and Comic Relief reel librarian pushes the cart of books back over. Here is the oddest, and darkly comedic, bit of cinematic reader’s advisory you’ll ever witness:

Earl: You know what? I just thought of something I could change. A whole life. A whole future. It’s all in my hands.

Book Man: Wonderful. Would you like something uplifting to read? Maybe motivational?

Earl: Something heavy.

Book Man: How about Tolstoy? Anna Karenina.

Earl: It’s not heavy enough.

Book Man: Well, it was his first book. Ok. War and Peace.

Earl: Yeah, that’s perfect. [Book Man puts his hands on his hips, looking mighty proud of himself, see above.] I’ll take that big Bible there, too.

Book Man: God bless you. Fine young man. When you start reading the right things, go down the right road.

Earl’s ulterior motive: binding the heavy books with tape to use as a splint for his messed-up leg! And he continues to honor the true value of books by using them in prison as body armor. (Not kidding.) And later, the ex-cons use a bookstore that poses as an Aryan front for fake passports. Sigh.

So even though I was thinking that was it for the Book Man — I totally thought he was going to die with War and Peace literally imprinted on the side of his head at the end of that hospital scene — but no, wrong again! Earl meets up with Book Man again on his breakout escape from prison. See, for years, Earl has been planning this escape and plotting revenge on Nick, and he’s none too pleased to meet up with Mr. Book Man in the prison parking lot. Although the Book Man sure seems happy (see below).

Reel librarian closeup in Ricochet

Hey there, young fella

Outside his bookmobile, the Book Man calls out to Earl (in disguise as a fancy pants lawyer), “Hey there, young fella. Do you remember me? The books in the hospital?”

Reel librarian offers a book in Ricochet

Is the pen mightier than the sword in this scenario?

Not impressed with the old guy’s memory — or the lack of aging process on ANYONE in this film — Earl shoots him in the chest and steals his bookmobile to use as the getaway vehicle. Worst. Library. Patron. EVER.

And the poor bookmobile meets a grisly end, as well. Sigh. A cart bites the dust on the highway, splattering books everywhere, and Earl and his sidekick conspirator light up the bookmobile and push it off a cliff. To add insult to injury (and murder), we even get a closeup of it as the bookmobile blows up!

Bookmobile goes up in flames in Ricochet

Bookmobile or bust

“I always wanted a Viking funeral.”

Go in peace, Correctional Facilities Bookmobile and Mr. Book Man, go in peace.

Sources used:

Ricochet. Dir. Russell Mulcahy. Perf. Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak. HBO/Warner Bros., 1991.

https://reel-librarians.com/2012/03/12/hey-mr-book-man-find-a-book-for-me/

Books: 1. In general: the extent to which they are to be allowed for the private use of Ours [372, 373]; specifically, in the colleges of Ours [372]. See also Library; Publishing books and other scholarly works 2. Administrative: in which are to be recorded: possessions brought by novices and certain of their declarations [57, 200]; the names of those who pronounce vows [530, 545] 3. To be read in the schools: see Authors 4. The writing thereof: see Writing of books;Writers 5. Publication thereof: see Publishing books and other scholarly works

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

When the Reformation began to penetrate into Spain, the relatively few Spanish Protestants were eliminated by the Inquisition. Foreigners suspected of promoting Protestant faiths within Spain met similarly violent ends. Having largely purged the country of Jews and Muslims—as well as many former members of those faiths who had converted to Christianity—the Spanish Inquisition turned its attention to prominent Roman Catholics. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was twice arrested on suspicion of heresy, and the archbishop of Toledo, the Dominican Bartolomé de Carranza, was imprisoned for almost 17 years. Nominally Christian groups that diverged from the Inquisition’s orthodoxy, such as the followers of the mystical Alumbrado movement and adherents of Erasmianism (a spiritualized Christian belief system influenced by the teachings of humanist Desiderius Erasmus), were subjected to intense persecution throughout the 16th and into the 17th century.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spanish-Inquisition

Blake's Prison Escape Scene | Ricochet (1991)

Ultimate Action Movie Club

Jul 23, 2022

Remembering the feverish delirium of violence and madness that was 'Ricochet' (1991).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Ne_L9DMcg

Resistance and the decline of the Inquisition

Under the supreme council of the Spanish Inquisition were 14 local tribunals in Spain and several in the colonies; the tribunals in Mexico and Peru were particularly harsh. The Spanish Inquisition spread into Sicily in 1517, but efforts to set it up in Naples and Milan failed. In 1522 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V introduced it into the Low Countries, but its efforts to wipe out Protestantism were unsuccessful. John III of Portugal, with the permission of Pope Paul III, introduced a tribunal like the Spanish Inquisition against Portuguese Jews in 1536. Though John III’s methods led the pope to revoke the grant, the Inquisition was definitely established in Portugal in 1547, at which time its scope was also widened.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spanish-Inquisition

page 221

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

Superman (real name William "Bill" Dunn) was a titular character that appeared in the short story The Reign of the Superman in 1933. Despite acting as the initial version of the DC Comics hero that's well known, this Superman, was in fact intended to be a villainous protagonist.

Biography

Bill Dunn was initially merely a vagrant who was waiting in a bread-line each and every day for food. However, he was singled out by a strange and misanthropic scientist named Professor Smalley, and took him for a hot meal which is a large toasted sandwich and some coffee.

He then recruited Dunn to be part of an experiment regarding a strange meteorite. The exposure resulted in him gaining cerebrally and genetically enhanced psychic powers. However, it came at the cost of corrupting the man, turning him into a supervillain and renaming himself the Superman.

He then aimed to conquer the entire world with his new powers upon experimenting with them. As preparations for the conquering of the entire world, he then proceeded to sow discord in the world via his mind manipulation abilities.

Professor Smalley, however, desired to gain those powers, causing them to have a final battle. Superman proceeded to kill his "creator".

Unfortunately, the victory was Pyrrhic at best, since it resulted in his powers being drained and the formula for retaining said powers being gone for good, he desperately tried to bring them back by looking at the formula on the blueprints but to no avail because his genius-level intellect is also gone.

Now back to Bill Dunn, he is forced to go back to the bread-line.

Appearance

Bill Dunn is a Caucasian male vagrant who looks raggedy-dressed, unshaven, and has stubble on his scalp (as seen on the official artwork). Given to him by Professor Smalley, Dunn was later clean-shaven and given a suit.

Legacy

Although Dunn's reign as Superman was short-lived, he is remembered as being the first to use the name Superman. The name was later adopted by The Superman, and finally by Kal-El.

Creation

The Superman was the first version of Superman ever to appear in print. His story was told in Jerry Siegel's sci-fi short story, 'Reign of the Superman'.

This early version of Superman was depicted almost entirely different than the modern version. First and foremost, he was poor, he was bald, and he was a villain.

Also, he was originally human, while the modern version was an alien raised on Earth.

Ironically, his physical appearance by the time he gains his powers strongly resembles that of the modern Superman rogues Ultra-Humanite and Lex Luthor.

There were two primary sources for the creation of this character. The first was the advent of the Great Depression, occurring in 1932 when Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster were being affected by it in terms of not being able to find a job. The second was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, more specifically his concept of the Ubermensch (which was German for "Superman", or more accurately "Overman") from his philosophical tract Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which both Siegel and Schuster criticized.

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Superman_(The_Reign_of_the_Superman)

Superman: The Man Of Steel # 20 Funeral For A Friend SIGNED by President Bill Clinton

$1,499.99

Signed by President Bill Clinton (who appears in the comic book)

Funeral For A Friend Part 3

Condition: Mid-High Grade Condition with cover wear SEE PICS

About: Superman: The Man of Steel # 20 features the funeral of Superman after his death at the hands of Doomsday. The comic book is filled with guest appearances by many characters of the DC Universe and includes a full page special guest appearance by President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

This copy of Superman: The Man of Steel # 20 was hand signed by President Bill Clinton at a rally in Michigan. The book comes with supplemental photographs and original ticket from the event.

It is truly a RARE collectible and a welcomed addition to any Superman or comic collection.

Comes with a signed Certificate of Authenticity (C.O.A).

https://www.brooklyncomicshop.com/shop/superman-man-steel-20-funeral-friend-signed-president-bill-clinton/

William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe; born August 19, 1946) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.

Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1968, and later from Yale Law School, where he met his future wife, Hillary Rodham. After graduating from law school, Clinton returned to Arkansas and won election as state attorney general, followed by two non-consecutive tenures as Arkansas governor. As governor, he overhauled the state's education system and served as chairman of the National Governors Association. Clinton was elected president in the 1992 election, defeating the incumbent Republican Party president George H. W. Bush and the independent businessman Ross Perot. He became the first president to be born in the Baby Boomer generation.

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

Bayeux (French pronunciation: [bajø]) is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy in northwestern France.

Bayeux is the home of the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England. It is also known as the first major town secured by the Allies during Operation Overlord. Charles de Gaulle made two famous speeches in this town.

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

In usage in the Southern United States, a bayou (/ˈbaɪ.uː, ˈbaɪ.oʊ/)[1] is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area. It may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream, river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), marshy lake, wetland, or creek. They typically contain brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton. Bayous are commonly found in the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States, especially in the Mississippi River Delta, though they also exist elsewhere.

A bayou is often an anabranch or minor braid of a braided channel that is slower than the mainstem, often becoming boggy and stagnant. Though fauna varies by region, many bayous are home to crawfish, certain species of shrimp, other shellfish, catfish, frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, American alligators, American crocodiles, herons, lizards, turtles, tortoises, spoonbills, snakes, and leeches, as well as many other species.

Etymology

The word entered American English via Louisiana French in Louisiana and is thought to originate from the Choctaw word bayuk, which means "small stream".[2] After first appearing in the 17th century, the term is found in 18th century accounts and maps, often as bayouc or bayouque, where it was eventually shortened to its current form.[3] The first settlements of the Bayou Têche and other bayous were founded by the Louisiana Creoles, and the bayous are commonly associated with Creole and Cajun culture.

An alternative spelling, "buyou", is also known to have been in use, as in "Pine Buyou", used in a description by Congress in 1833 of Arkansas Territory. As of 2016 "bye-you" US: /ˈbaɪ.uː/ is the most common pronunciation, while a few use "bye-oh" US: /ˈbaɪ.oʊ/, although that pronunciation is declining.[4]

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

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is an action game released by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1989 and in the PAL region in 1991. It is a revised version of the 1988 Family Computer game Mad City (マッド・シティ), which has been modified with many graphical changes and an increase in the game's difficulty level. The game employs three play styles that were popular at the time: beat 'em up, light gun shooting and racing.

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

The Great Expedition: Exploring the Louisiana Purchase & its Impact on Arkansas

February 3, 2018 - March 4, 2018

Clinton Presidential Center | Little Rock, Arkansas

https://www.clintonfoundation.org/events/clinton-presidential-center/great-expedition-exploring-louisiana-purchase-its-impact/

"It was while investigating the Little Rock integration incident in 1957 that I first learned of Pike’s rapid advance in Freemasonry, and knowing that Weishaupt, using Thomas Jefferson and Moses Holbrook, had infiltrated Illuminists into the Masonic Lodges of America, I decided I would find out if the fact that Pike’s mansion in Little Rock had thirteen rooms had any significance. “Thirteen’ figures prominently in Satanic, Luciferian and Cabalistic rituals, codes, and writings, etc. My investigations produced documentary evidence to show that, because of Pike’s exceptional mental ability, he came under the notice of professors in Harvard who were members of the Illuminati, who developed in his mind the ‘idea that a One World Government, a One World Religion and a One World financial and economic system was the ONLY solution to the world’s many and varied problems. I next discovered that his departure from Harvard was not due to lack of finances, or because of a misunderstanding with the faculty over tuition fees, but because of his ‘radical’ ideas and teachings. When he returned home determined that he would ‘fight’ his way to the top despite all opposition, he was in a suitable frame of mind to be recruited as a ‘Minerval’ or ‘apprentice’ into the lower degrees of the Illuminati."

Satan Prince of This World by William Guy Carr

Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, also known as Adams Field, is a joint civil-military airport on the east side of Little Rock, Arkansas. It is operated by the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission.

The largest commercial airport in Arkansas, it served more than 2.1 million passengers in the year spanning from March 2009 through to February 2010.[6] While Clinton National Airport does not have direct international passenger flights, more than 50 flights arrive or depart at Little Rock each day, with nonstop service to 14 cities.[7] The airport is included in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2019–2023, in which it is categorized as a small-hub primary commercial service facility.[8]

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

The President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site is located in HOPE, Arkansas.[2] Built in 1917 by Dr. H. S. Garrett, in this house the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, spent the first four years of his life, having been born on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in HOPE, Arkansas.[3][4] The house was owned by Clinton's maternal grandparents, Edith Grisham and James Eldridge Cassidy, and they cared for him when his mother, Virginia, was away working as an anesthetist in New Orleans.[5]"

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

"Tragedy and HOPE: A History of the World in Our Time is a work of history written by former Georgetown University professor and historian Carroll Quigley. The book covers the period of roughly 1880 to 1963 and is multidisciplinary in nature though perhaps focusing on the economic problems brought about by the First World War and the impact these had on subsequent events. While global in scope, the book focuses on Western civilization."

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

"In his first year (1965) in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, Bill Clinton took Quigley's course, receiving a 'B' as his final grade in both semesters (an excellent grade in a course where nearly half the students received D or lower).[1]: 94, 96 In 1991, Clinton named Quigley as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy, when Clinton launched his presidential campaign in a speech at Georgetown.[1]: 96 He said he learned from Quigley that “The future can be better than the past, and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.” Bill Clinton told his audiences, “that is what the new choice is all about....We are not here to save the Democratic party. We are here to save the United States of America.” It was Clinton's most effective speech, and he repeated variations time and time again as the blueprint for his campaign message in winning the Democratic nomination and the general election for President of the United States in 1992.[21][22]"

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

"Theorists also cite the inclusion of Bill Clinton at the meetings in 1991 before he was president and Tony Blair’s presence in 1993 before he became the British prime minister as examples of the group’s power. Past attendees have included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who will also be attending this year), former Chase Manhattan chief executive David Rockefeller, and British Prime Minister David Cameron."

Bilderberg Group: What To Know About the Secretive Meetings

https://time.com/4362872/bilderberg-group-meetings-2016-conspiracy-theories/

"Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner October 20, 2016 Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Henry Kissinger Gayle King Cardinal Dolan Katie Couric Chuck Schumer Mayor Bill de Blasio"

https://www.facebook.com/MariaBartiromo/posts/alfred-e-smith-memorial-foundation-dinner-october-20-2016-donald-trump-hillary-c/1353937201283479/

"HOPE: all hope is to be placed in God, and with what degree of perfection [67]; eternal life alone is to be hoped for as a reward [82]; the extent to which this hope should be of assistance [288]; how hope should be shown by the dying | 595]; hope in the preservation and growth of the Society [812]. See also Faithfulness" The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complimentary Norms pg. 464

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

Bill Clinton ‘Encouraged’ Trump to Run

SLICK WILLY

Updated Apr. 14, 2017 10:12AM EDT /

Published Aug. 05, 2015 3:33PM EDT

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/08/05/bill-clinton-encouraged-trump

Trump and Harris neck-and-neck as she prepares to announce VP pick after meeting candidates Sunday: Live

Harris met with top running mate contenders Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro at her Washington DC residence

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kamala-harris-vp-pick-trump-polls-news-b2591106.html

San Francisco's 555 California St., co-owned by Trump, on lender watchlist

The beautiful, very great, big league skyscraper, still allegedly 30% owned by Donald Trump, is on a lender watchlist, according to Bloomberg

By Alex Shultz,

Politics editor, SFGATE

Updated Feb 23, 2023 3:40 p.m.

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/san-francisco-building-trump-stake-on-watchlist-17801816.php

Kamala Devi Harris[a] was born in Oakland, California,[15] on October 20, 1964.[16] Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan was a biologist who moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958, and whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research.[17] Kamala Harris's father, DONALD J. Harris,[18] is a Stanford University professor of economics (emeritus) who arrived in the United States from Jamaica in 1961.[19]

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

Just before the War of 1812, the British clandestinely organized several Scottish Rite Lodges in the northeast with headquarters at Boston. After the War they were discovered by Charleston, and following some negotiations, were permitted to operate under the English Masonic obedience (obedience meaning "constitution"). The Boston headquarters became known as the Northern Jurisdiction of Scottish Rite Freemasonry and has since been nicknamed the "Eastern Establishment." The Charleston headquarters became known as the Southern Jurisdiction of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. As stated earlier, the Southern Jurisdiction followed the French Masonic obedience.

The Southern Jurisdiction Supreme Council operates its "Grand East" or spiritual headquarters from Charleston. In 1870 it moved its "Secretariat" (political office) to Washington, D.C.68 An indication of Masonry's influence is the fact that of the two parades permitted to march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., one is the Inaugural Parade and the other the Shriner's Parade.

Shriners are sometimes referred to as thirty-second and a half degree Masons. The Shriners operate children's hospitals. (See Appendix 7 for their history).

All Masons in America must travel through the first three "Blue Lodge" degrees before choosing York or Scottish Rites, both of which are Templar Rites. The 13th degree York Mason and 32 degree Scottish Mason unite in the Shrine. (See Appendix 2, Fig. 3.)

We can make some general observations regarding the Northern and Southern Jurisdictions of American Freemasonry. The Northern Jurisdiction, which we can identify in American politics with the Eastern Establishment, is right-wing or moderate. It is the headquarters of America's aristocracy and is primarily Republican. The Southern Jurisdiction is left-wing or liberal, more or less comprised of the working middle class and common laborer, and usually Democrat. There are crossovers in both Jurisdictions, and when voters in America take sides on issues, we are caught up in this Masonic struggle of conservative versus liberal, right-wing versus left-wing, big business versus labor, free enterprise versus socialism, etc.

Scarlet and the Beast

by John Daniel

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

The Collège de Clermont was one of the earliest schools established by the Jesuits, who were incredibly influential in shaping education in Europe. The Jesuits were a rigid and hierarchical Catholic sect that followed the teachings of Ignatius Loyola.

https://earlymoderneurope.hist.sites.carleton.edu/exhibits/show/development-of-education-in-ea/item/249#:~:text=The%20Coll%C3%A8ge%20de%20Clermont%20was,the%20teachings%20of%20Ignatius%20Loyola.

PART VI 1THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THOSE ALREADY ADMITTED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE BODY OF THE SOCIETY

SECTION 1: THE APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF OUR VOWS IN GENERAL

143 §1. Our consecration by profession of the evangelical counsels, by which we respond to a divine vocation, is at one and the same time the following of Christ poor, virginal, and obedient and a rejection of those idols that the world is always prepared to adore, especially wealth, pleasure, prestige, and power. Hence, our poverty, chastity, and obedience ought visibly and efficaciously to bear witness to this attitude, whereby we proclaim the evangelical possibility of a certain communion among men and women that is a foretaste of the future kingdom of God.[1]

§2. Our religious vows, while binding us, also set us free:

free, by our vow of poverty, to share the life of the poor and to use whatever resources we may have, not for our own security and comfort, but for service;

free, by our vow of chastity, to be men for others, in friendship and communion with all, but especially with those who share our mission of service;

free, by our vow of obedience, to respond to the call of Christ as made known to us by him whom the Spirit has placed over the Church, and to follow the lead of all our superiors.[2] [1] See GC 32, d. 4, no. 16; see GC 31, d. 16, no. 4; d. 17, no. 2; d. 18, no. 3. [2] GC 32, d. 2, no. 20. 215

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

Valley of Traverse City

ANCIENT ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

The History and Legend of Scottish Rite Origins

The Story Unfolds…

Like much of early Masonic history, the origins of the Scottish Rite are uncertain. This is primarily due to the lack of historic documentation prior to the early 1700’s and not to any great veiled mystery. The few records kept were subject to loss, fire, weather and aging. So we can at best only speculate on many of our origins by looking at the few documents, historical references and legends that remain.

What We Know

n 1754, near Paris, Chevalier de Bonneville established the Chapter of Clermont. The Chapter resided in the College of Jesuits of Clermont, hence the name. It is said to have been created to honor the Duc de Clermont, then Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge of France.

The Chapter of Clermont was a “Chapter of the Advanced Degrees” and initially entailed six degrees and was later extended to 25 known degrees. The six initial degrees were 1˚, 2˚ and 3˚ St John’s Masonry, 4˚ Knight of the Eagle, 5˚ Illustrious Knight or Templar, 6˚ Sublime Illustrious Knight.

Interestingly enough historically, prior to the time of the Rite’s creation, James II had been in residence at Clermont in exile from Britain from 1688 to his death in 1701. As noted by German Masonic historian, Lenning… “whilst in exile, James II residing at the Jesuit College of Clermont in France, allowed his closest associates to fabricate certain degrees in order to extend their political views.” Lenning believed this to have been an attempt on the part of James and his associates to regain control of the British throne for the House of Stuart. If Lenning is right, this places the origins of the “Rite of Perfection” in the hands of James II and the Jacobite (Stuart) Freemasons who at the time were in exile from Great Britain throughout France and Italy. Lenning also contends that these degrees were introduced into French Freemasonry under the name of the Clermont System.

James II died in exile in 1701. His son James III is said to have continued his father’s Masonic legacy and later created further higher degrees.

Perhaps James II saw in the Jesuit morality plays of the College of Clermont a vessel for passing on a set of moral lessons. Some of the world’s greatest playwrights had emerged from Clermont. Jesuit tutelage had previously produced great writers such as Lope de Vega, Moliere, Racine, and the Corneille brothers. Ensconced in exile, I believe James II did find the inspiration and the training to help produce what would later become the first six degrees. From out of the darkness… comes light.

To be continued… (Author’s note… An in depth look at the Templar influence in Scottish Rite masonry’s origins can be found by visiting the Rosslyn Templars’ website.)"

https://web.archive.org/.../scottish-rite-history.html

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

The Carolingian dynasty (/ˌkærəˈlɪndʒiən/ KARR-ə-LIN-jee-ən;[1] known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne, descendants of the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD.[2] The dynasty consolidated its power in the 8th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary, and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne. In 751 the Merovingian dynasty which had ruled the Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy, and Pepin the Short, son of Martel, was crowned King of the Franks. The Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of the Romans in the West in over three centuries. Nearly every monarch of France from Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious till the penultimate monarch of France Louis Philippe have been his descendants. His death in 814 began an extended period of fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and decline that would eventually lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.

Name

The Carolingian dynasty takes its name from Carolus, the Latinised name of multiple Frankish kings including Charlemagne and Charles Martel.[3] The name originates from a common Germanic word, rendered in Old High German as Karl or Kerl,[4] meaning 'man', 'husband', or 'freeman'.[5]

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

Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II; Polish: Jan Paweł II; Italian: Giovanni Paolo II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła, Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛv vɔjˈtɨwa];[b] 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005.

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

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 Rancho of Don Guillermo: History of San Lorenzo, Hayward, and Castro Valley, Alameda County, California, Volume One: The Early Years 1843-1890

With b/w illustrations. Hayward, Calif.: Mt. Eden Historical Publishers, (1991). 8vo. Green cloth, stamped in gilt. xix, 362 p. 1st edition. One of 400 copies. Fine. [100894]

Price: $50.00

https://www.bibliomania.ws/pages/books/100894/john-s-sandoval/the-rancho-of-don-guillermo-history-of-san-lorenzo-hayward-and-castro-valley-alameda-county

Don Quixote: Saintly Knight

By Brittany Guzman|January 15th, 2022|Categories: Books, Heroism, Imagination, Literature, Sainthood, Timeless Essays

By viewing Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” as a type of saintly hagiography, and Quixote’s actions and motives as following the example of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Don Quixote turns into San Quixote, a knight who fights not on the plains of Spain but on a spiritual plane, by means of his illuminating imagination.

Gallivanting through the rolling Spanish landscape, sallying forth without hesitation on another courageous mission, Don Quixote rides into the mind of the reader upon his aged nag and in his tattered and crudely-fashioned armor. His shocking appearance and eccentricities may prompt the reader to attempt to brush him off as ridiculous, but Don Quixote’s passion and personality cling closely to the reader’s mind. We can easily call Don Quixote a “madman,” but his intelligence and kind spirit are reasons for a reevaluation. As we look at the world through Don Quixote’s eyes, his actions and motives bear a similarity to the protagonist of an unexpected genre.

In his perceived insanity, Don Quixote takes on not only the identity of a knight but also the identity of a saint. Thus, Don Quixote’s tale falls under the genre of a hagiography, a text about the life of a saint. One saint that stands out as an analogue to Don Quixote is Ignatius of Loyola, a famous Spanish saint who founded the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—and whose death and subsequent beatification and canonization occurred during roughly the same time period as Don Quixote’s writing. The book Don Quixote evokes a hagiographic form thanks to Don Quixote’s mission, and the idea of a “San” Quixote arises because of his actions and their connections to Jesuit practices.

In the story, Don Quixote meticulously imitates various legendary knights; similarly, St. Ignatius of Loyola acts as a pattern of sainthood. Saints’ lives tend to overlap in certain situations and reflect similar themes because they are all ultimately following the path of holiness. One might argue, therefore, that Don Quixote resembles not just one but various other saints. Nonetheless, St. Ignatius appears to have a strong claim as a foundational model for Cervantes’ hero. Since St. Ignatius is never explicitly mentioned, we cannot be sure that Cervantes purposely intended this connection. However, Cervantes definitely had Jesuit influences in his life that likely translated to his writing. In his youth, Cervantes visited Rome during a time of great growth in Jesuit membership and had a close relationship with clergymen who were Jesuits or who followed Jesuit practices. In his book on Ignatius of Loyola, Frédéric Conrod argues that Cervantes’s deep familiarity with St. Ignatius’s principles is sufficient to suggest that they manifested themselves in Cervantes’s writing.[1]

Critics and fellow characters see Don Quixote as insane, but Don Quixote’s “madness” actually follows Jesuit practices, which support the idea of his possessing saint-like attributes. As Don Quixote begins his transformation into a knight, the historian-narrator tells us that Don Quixote’s avid reading and resultant lack of sleep cause him “to lose his mind.” Don Quixote clearly leaves the world of reality that the other characters inhabit, so he is easily identified as insane both by the book’s characters and by many literary scholars. Henry W. Sullivan, for instance, subjects Don Quixote to modern psychoanalysis by using Lacanian diagnostics and determines that Don Quixote suffered a “psychotic break” due to a predisposed psychic structure.[2]

However, readers must not forget that Don Quixote is not actually a patient but a complex literary character. The previously described characterization and diagnosis are not wholly accurate because they ignore a hagiographic reading. If the world were simply material, then Don Quixote would simply be insane. But, as a saint, Don Quixote would be aware of a spiritual realm to which others may not be attuned. St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a book that teaches his method of meditation and prayer, where imagination is used as a place to train the mind and soul in order to “see the face of evil and… recognize it in the outside world.”[3] If the reader views Don Quixote’s “madness” in the context of St. Ignatius’s teachings, then it could be argued that Don Quixote’s alternative world is really a spiritual training ground. Just as he educates himself in the ways of knight-errantry, Don Quixote prepares himself spiritually with St. Ignatius’s practices. In this training, the Jesuit exercises give Don Quixote a new type of vision that allows him to see the world at a spiritual level. As a saint, Don Quixote ignores others’ ridicule, and his “madness” allows him to recognize evil and see a deeper truth about sin that the other characters cannot.

For instance, Don Quixote is able to recognize evil where others cannot when he sees corruption within the Church. In one of his adventures, the knight comes across a “procession of penitents” who are carrying “the holy image of the Blessed Virgin,” but he perceives the group as a band of villains who have kidnapped “a noble lady” and accordingly ambushes them. At first, this appears to contradict the idea of Don Quixote as a saint because he is attacking a religious group. A saint follows Christ and the Church; he does not harm them. However, Don Quixote’s attack does make sense if the reader views it as a criticism or an attack on a corrupt body of the Church. Once again, Frédéric Conrod provides insight; here he sheds light on the religious and political situation during Cervantes’s life, especially during the period when Don Quixote was written. Cervantes held the reformist Jesuits in high regard during the Counter-Reformation, in contrast to the “obviously corrupted hierarchies of the Roman institution.” [4] Don Quixote thus aligns himself with St. Ignatius of Loyola by exposing corrupt religious orders through insights gleaned through Jesuit spiritual exercises. Don Quixote’s actions are justified in the scene described by the understanding that the penitents may actually represent incorrect Church teachings or corruption.

Further supporting this theory, Don Quixote commands the penitents to “release that beauteous lady [the image of Mary] whose tears and melancholy countenance are clear signs that [they] take her against her will, and have done her some notable wrong.” In Don Quixote’s mind, the penitents have offended the Virgin Mary to the point that she weeps profusely, and yet they continue to abuse her. By appropriating Mary, they could actually be seen as kidnapping Mary in order to use her for their own unholy purposes. Don Quixote does his duty as a saint by rescuing the Blessed Virgin from this corrupted procession. Through his “madness,” or rather imaginative spiritual ability, Don Quixote recognizes the evil being committed and sets out to right it when no one else can see it.

Additionally, Don Quixote acts almost as a redeemer because he sees the inner good and potential in people who live sinfully. On his first adventure, Don Quixote meets two noble maidens waiting leisurely in front of a castle; they are actually two women of “easy virtue”—prostitutes—standing by an inn. Even though these women have a perverse occupation that leads others to sin, Don Quixote sees them as washed clean of their trespasses. Don Quixote treats them with respect, and through his actions, he attempts to remind the women of who they can be. With Christ, their sins can be forgiven, and they can find themselves once again clean. Despite their current state, the women could become, by faith, like maidens again. Despite their low-born status—they are daughters “of a cobbler” and of a miller—Don Quixote’s beautiful imagination allows them to transcend the barriers of reality and to achieve a status higher than what they actually could in this world.

Despite their social situation, the two women are still daughters of God, the King of Heaven and Earth. In this sense, they truly are noblewomen. They are ladies in the highest court imaginable, and that court is more real than any earthly one because it will last forever. Don Quixote sees a Christian future and potential for the two women that they had most likely forgotten. Don Quixote reminds the women of Christ’s promise, and through his actions towards them, redeems them.

When reflecting on Don Quixote’s role as a redeemer, one may note that such a role seems more befitting a literary Christ figure than a saint. In fact, Rebekah Marzhan touches upon this idea in her essay, “Don Quixote and Jesus Christ: The Suffering ‘Idealists’ of Modern Religion.”[5] Though Don Quixote may be Christ-like, such an interpretation does not contradict the notion of Quixote as a saint. A saint strives to imitate Christ in character and action, so when Don Quixote appears Christ-like, he actually becomes more saint-like. Also, it is not Don Quixote himself who redeems; he is only afforded a window into a vision of salvation. He then shares this vision with those he meets, such as the two women of “easy virtue,” so they too can enjoy this wonderful gift of “madness” that Don Quixote possesses.

Don Quixote also shows his saint-like qualities by helping the oppressed. Usually, Don Quixote is unable to see things as they are in reality, yet when he meets a chain of galley slaves, all of whom are criminals, he does not mistake them for anything fantastical. He speaks kindly and listens to them because he wants to understand their personal lives and how they reached their present situation. In listening to the men’s stories, Don Quixote recognizes their humanity, and this act is one of comfort to a person in a situation that may seem hopeless. An act of kindness can alleviate the pain of even terrible circumstances. Even though this scene may not seem directly to relate to St. Ignatius’s imaginative exercises, it actually demonstrates the exercises’ practical outcome. Don Quixote does not need imagination in this scene because he can see the situation clearly as a result of his spiritual training. Don Quixote fulfills the duty of a saint by serving the prisoners simply through his kind understanding.

Don Quixote goes even further than merely offering emotional support by giving the prisoners a controversial second chance. Striking as quickly as an unexpected lightning bolt in the middle of a calm sky, Don Quixote attacks the guards and frees the prisoners from bondage. While this seems heroic, in his essay, “Don Quijote and Moral Theology: What a Knight and his Squire Can Teach Us about Christian Living,” Michael J. McGrath points out this scene’s troubling implications. Though Don Quixote has good intentions, his actions “are not in accord with the standards of good and right conduct” because he has broken the law by freeing the criminals.[6] But Don Quixote justifies his actions by appealing to God’s law and claims that slavery is too cruel a punishment and that God shall punish criminals instead. Though Don Quixote does break the law, it is the law of man. In his apparent misconduct, Don Quixote upholds the higher law of God, which makes his actions good. By freeing these men, Don Quixote gives them a second chance to live uprightly, and he himself acts as an example for them to follow. A saint should always help guide people back to God, and Don Quixote does so by living as an example of compassion and mercy. One can even interpret this scene as the prisoners being slaves to sin, and men having condemned them. Yet, Don Quixote provides hope and attempts to set these men once again back on the right path by affording them a second chance through mercy. Don Quixote cannot actually save the prisoners, but he can free them, so they may do better in the future. Thus, he ministers to the oppressed, and his mission as a knight allows him to live as a saint.

Though Don Quixote may have charged in unexpectedly, he is a welcome character in one’s mind. By viewing Cervantes’ Don Quixote as a type of saintly hagiography, and Quixote’s actions and motives as following the example of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Don Quixote turns into San Quixote, a knight who fights not on the plains of Spain but on a spiritual plane, by means of his illuminating imagination. His perceived “madness” allows him to traverse the most winding and treacherous terrain because he sees the mountains of truth and potential that others cannot see.

Don Quixote teaches the reader how to live as a better Christian. He teaches us to look deeper to find the good in those whom society has cast aside, to be critical of corrupt religious practices, and to help our fellow-man in distress. In studying Don Quixote, we remind ourselves to discern the truth because appearances are often deceiving. Imitating Don Quixote, we can then carry our own type of lance that will slash through the veil of assumptions that blinds us. Our faith requires that we rely on God to guide us to see another, more truthful, level of existence, even if others may think we are mad to do so.

This essay first appeared here in August 2017.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Notes:

[1] Conrod, Frédéric. Loyola’s Greater Narrative. [Electronic Resource] : The Architecture Of The Spiritual Exercises In Golden Age And Enlightenment Literature, 98-99.

[2] Sullivan, Henry W., Grotesque Purgatory: A Study of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Part II, 114.

[3] Conrod, Frédéric, 96.

[4] Conrod, Frédéric, 94, 99.

[5] Marzhan, Rebekah. “Don Quixote And Jesus Christ: The Suffering “Idealists” Of Modern Religion,” 2.

[6] McGrath, Michael J. “Don Quijote And Moral Theology: What A Knight And His Squire Can Teach Us About Christian Living,” 4.

The featured image is “Illustration réalisée par Armand-Louis-Henri Telory pour l’adaptation pour enfant de Don Quichotte parue au XIXe siècle et rééditée au XXe siècle par Mango – collection Au Temps Jadis, Date 1 January 1850, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2022/01/don-quixote-saintly-knight-cervantes-brittany-guzman.html

Guillermo (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡiˈʎeɾmo]) is the Spanish form of the male given name William. The name is also commonly shortened to 'Joe' or, in Latin America, to nickname 'Memo'.

People

Guillermo Amador (born 1974), American musician

Guillermo Amor (born 1967), Spanish football manager and former player

Guillermo Arévalo (born 1952), a Shipibo shaman and curandero (healer) of the Peruvian Amazon; among the Shipibo he is known as Kestenbetsa

Guillermo Barros Schelotto (born 1973), Argentine former football player

Guillermo Bermejo (born 1975), Peruvian politician

Guillermo C. Blest (1800–1884), Anglo-Irish physician settled in Chile

Guillermo Cañas, Argentine tennis player

Guillermo Chong, Chilean geologist

Guillermo Coria, another Argentine tennis player

Guillermo Dávila, Venezuelan actor and singer

Guillermo Díaz (actor) (born 1975), American actor of Cuban descent

Guillermo Diaz (basketball), Puerto Rican basketball player for the Los Angeles Clippers

Guillermo del Toro, Mexican filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, author, actor, former special effects artist

Guillermo Díaz (footballer, born 1979), football player

Guillermo Díaz (footballer, born 1930) (1930-1997)

Guillermo Endara (1936–2009), Panamanian President, 1989–1994

Guillermo Eleazar, Filipino police officer

Guillermo Galván Galván, Mexican Army General

Guillermo García López, Spaniard tennis player

Guillermo Rodríguez González, Spanish archer

Guillermo Lasso (born 1955), Ecuadorian businessman and President of Ecuador

Guillermo Mac Millan (born 1940/1941), retired Chilean urologist

Guillermo Marquez, one of the two baby twins of Dora in Dora the Explorer

Guillermo Morphy, Spanish aristocrat and musicologist

Guillermo Muñoz, Mexican football (soccer) player

Guillermo Ochoa, Mexican National Goalkeeper

Guillermo Rawson (1821–1890), Argentine doctor and politician

Guillermo Rigondeaux, Cuban boxer

Guillermo Rodríguez (baseball), Venezuelan baseball catcher

Guillermo Rodríguez (footballer), Uruguayan footballer

Guillermo Rodríguez (politician), also known as Guillermo Rodríguez Lara, Ecuadorian politician

Guillermo Rodriguez (comedian), talk show sidekick for Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Guillermo Solá, Chilean distance runner

Guillermo Torrez, Bolivian politician

Guillermo Vilas, Argentine former tennis player

Guillermo Viviani (1893–1964), Chilean Roman Catholic priest and trade unionist

Luis Madrigal, a former athlete whose full name is Luis Guillermo Madrigal Gutiérrez

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

Domesday Book (/ˈduːmzdeɪ/ DOOMZ-day; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of King William the Conqueror.[1] The manuscript was originally known by the Latin name Liber de Wintonia, meaning "Book of Winchester", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury.[2] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him.[3]

Written in Medieval Latin, it was highly abbreviated[a] and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, labour force, and livestock from which the value derived.

The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century.[4] Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario (c. 1179) that the book was so called because its decisions were unalterable, like those of the Last Judgment, and its sentence could not be quashed.[5]

The manuscript is held at the National Archives at Kew, London. Domesday was first printed in full in 1783, and in 2011 the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online.[6]

The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday")[7] which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the United Kingdom.[8]

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

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

British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is a pseudo-historical[1][2] belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel.[3] With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th century English writings such as John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin.[4] From the 1870s onward, numerous independent British Israelite organizations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in the United States; as of the early 21st century, a number of these organizations are still active. In the United States, the idea gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.

The central tenets of British Israelism have been refuted by archaeological,[5] ethnological,[6] genetic,[7]: 181 and linguistic research.[8][9]: 33–34

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

It is alleged that George Washington requested the stars on the Great Seal to be put in the shape of a hexagram because that's also the shape of the Star of David – supposedly as a way of thanking the Jewish patriot Haym Salomon for his service to the country, particularly his financial help during the Revolution.

Haym Solomon (or Salomon) (April 7, 1740 – January 6, 1785) was a Spanish and Portuguese Jew who immigrated to New York from Poland during the period of the American Revolution, and who became a prime financier of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain.

Descended from Jewish refugees from Portugal, Solomon was born in Leszno, Poland. He studied Hebrew and had basic education, but he did not know how to write in Yiddish.[2] In the 18th century, he journeyed throughout western Europe, during which time he acquired a knowledge of finance as well as fluency in several languages. He returned to Poland in 1770 but left two years later during the Partitions of Poland. After traveling to England, Solomon immigrated to New York City in 1775, where he established himself as a financial broker for merchants engaged in overseas trade.

Sympathizing with the Patriot cause, Solomon joined the New York branch of the Sons of Liberty. In September 1776, he was arrested as a spy but the British pardoned him, only after serving 18 months of his sentence and claims of torture on a British boat, in order to use his abilities as an interpreter for their Hessian mercenaries. Solomon used his position to help prisoners of the British escape and encouraged the Hessians to desert the war effort. In 1778 Solomon was arrested again and sentenced to death, but he managed to escape, whereupon he made his way with his family to the rebel capital in Philadelphia.

Once resettled, Solomon resumed his activities as a broker. He became the agent to the French consul, as well as the paymaster for the French forces in North America. In 1781, he began working extensively with Robert Morris, the newly appointed Superintendent for Finance for the Thirteen Colonies. Often working out of the "London Coffee House" in Philadelphia, Solomon sold about $600,000 in Bills of Exchange to his clients, netting about 2.5% per sale. During this period he had to turn to Morris for help when one sale of over $50,000 nearly sent him to prison. Morris used his position and influence to sue the defrauder and saved Solomon from default and disaster.

In August of 1781, the Continental Army had trapped Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis in the little Virginia coastal town of Yorktown. George Washington and the main army and the Count de Rochambeau with his French army decided to march from the Hudson Highlands to Yorktown and deliver the final blow. But Washington's war chest was completely empty, as was that of Congress. Washington determined that he needed at least $20,000 to finance the campaign. When Morris told him there were no funds and no credit available, Washington gave him a simple but eloquent order: "Send for Haym Solomon". Haym again came through, and the $20,000 was raised. Washington conducted the Yorktown campaign, which proved to be the final battle of the Revolution, thanks to Haym Solomon.

Solomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and Holland, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Solomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. Acting as the patriot he was, he requested below market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ended the Revolutionary War but not the financial problems of the newly established nation. It was Haym Solomon who managed, time-after-time, to raise the money to bailout the debt-ridden government.

Solomon was involved in Jewish community affairs, being a member of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, and in 1782, made the largest individual contribution towards the construction of its main building. In 1783, Solomon was among the prominent Jews involved in the successful effort to have the Pennsylvania Council of Censors remove the religious test oath required for office-holding under the State Constitution. In 1784, he answered anti-Semitic slander in the press by stating: "I am a Jew; it is my own nation; I do not despair that we shall obtain every other privilege that we aspire to enjoy along with our fellow-citizens."

https://www.dcmessageboards.com/topic/21364-star-of-david-found-on-capitol-hill/

The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Crusader Kingdom, was one of the Crusader states established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the fall of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after the siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192.

The original Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187 before being almost entirely overrun by the Ayyubid Sultanate under Saladin. Following the Third Crusade, it was re-established in Acre in 1192. The re-established state is commonly known as the "Second Kingdom of Jerusalem" or, alternatively, as the "Kingdom of Acre" after its new capital city. Acre remained the capital for the rest of its existence, even during the two decades that followed the Crusaders' establishment of partial control over Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade, through the diplomacy of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen vis-à-vis the Ayyubids.

The vast majority of the Crusaders who established and settled the Kingdom of Jerusalem were from the Kingdom of France, as were the knights and soldiers who made up the bulk of the steady flow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year span of its existence; its rulers and elite were therefore predominantly French.[4] French Crusaders also brought their language to the Levant, thus establishing Old French as the lingua franca of the Crusader states, in which Latin served as the official language. While the majority of the population in the countryside comprised Christians and Muslims from local Levantine ethnicities, many Europeans (primarily French and Italian) also arrived to settle in villages across the region.

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

Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291)

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The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded as a result of the First Crusade, in 1099. Destroyed a first time by Saladin in 1187, it was re-established around Saint-Jean d'Acre and maintained until the capture of that city in 1291. During these two centuries it was for Western Europe a genuine centre of colonization. As the common property of Christendom it retained its international character to the end, although the French element predominated among the feudal lords and the government officials, and the Italians acquired the economic preponderance in the cities.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08361a.htm

Towards the middle of the twelfth century, when the Kingdom of Jerusalem had attained its greatest dimensions, it comprised the entire coast of Syria from Beirut on the north to Raphia on the south. On the northeast its territory, bounded by the Lebanon district, which separated it from the Moslem principality of Damascus, was hardly more than a few leagues in breadth; on the southeast it extended beyond the Dead Sea and the Jordan as far as the Arabian Desert and even included the port of Aïla on the Red Sea. In the north the Countship of Tripoli was under the suzerainty of the King of Jerusalem. But in the very interior of the kingdom the power of the king was checked by numerous obstacles, and the sovereignty belonged less to the king than to the body of feudatories whose power was centered in the High Court, composed of vassals and rear-vassals. Its authority governed even the succession to the throne, in event of dispute between two members of the royal family; it alone was empowered to make laws or "assizes", and to its initiative was due the compilation of the "Assizes of Jerusalem", erroneously ascribed to Godfrey of Bouillon. The king took an oath in presence of this court and had no right to confiscate a fief unless in accordance with the regular judgment of that assembly. Moreover, if the king were to violate his oaths, the assizes formally proclaimed the right of the lieges to resist. The High Court, presided over by the constable or marshal, assembled only when convoked by the king; in judicial matters it constituted the supreme tribunal and its judgments were without appeal: "Nulle chose faite par court n'en doit estre desfaite" (Assizes, I, clxxvii). A "Court of the Burgesses", organized in the twelfth century, had analogous jurisdiction over the burgesses and could sentence to exile or even condemn to death. In the great fiefs mixed courts of knights and burgesses had similar control independently of the liege. Even within these limits the king was incapable of compelling vassals to fulfill their feudal obligations. Domiciled in impregnable castles, the architecture of which had been perfected after Moslem models, the nobles led an almost independent life. A fief like that of Montréal with its four castles of Crac, Crac de Montréal, Ahamant, and Vau de Moïse, situated between the Dead and Red Seas, formed a really independent state. Renaud de Châtillon, who became Lord of Montréal in 1174, himself waged war against the Moslems, whom he terrified by his cruise in the Red Sea, and his individual policy was counter to that of King Baldwin VI, who was powerless to prevent him from waging war against Saladin.

The Church, at this period, was also a power independent of the kings, and, with the exception of the king, the Patriarch of Jerusalem was the most important personage in the realm. After the First Crusade a very powerful Latin Church was established in Palestine; numerous monasteries were founded and received large donations of landed property in Palestine as well as in Europe. Some patriarchs, especially Daimbert, who was at enmity with Baldwin I, even endeavoured to found a power thoroughly independent of royalty; nevertheless, both of these powers generally lived in harmony. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was elected by the clergy and acclaimed by the people, had his powers confirmed by the pope, who continued to exercise great authority in Palestine. Moreover, the orders of religious knighthood, the Hospitallers of St. John, organized in 1313, the Templars founded by Hugh of Payens in 1128, and the Teutonic Knights created in 1143, formed regular powers, equally independent of Church and State. Most lavishly endowed, they soon owned an incalculable number of fiefs and castles in Palestine and in Europe. In spiritual matters they were directly subject to the pope; but the king could not interfere in their temporal affairs, and each of the three orders had its own army and exercised the right of concluding treaties with the Moslems.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08361a.htm

The Avignon Papacy (Occitan: Papat d'Avinhon; French: Papauté d'Avignon) was the period from 1309 to 1376 during which seven successive popes resided in Avignon (at the time within the Kingdom of Arles, part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of France) rather than in Rome (now the capital of Italy).[1] The situation arose from the conflict between the papacy and the French crown, culminating in the death of Pope Boniface VIII after his arrest and maltreatment by Philip IV of France. Following the subsequent death of Pope Benedict XI, Philip pressured a deadlocked conclave to elect the Archbishop of Bordeaux as pope Clement V in 1305. Clement refused to move to Rome, and in 1309 he moved his court to the papal enclave at Avignon, where it remained for the next 67 years. This absence from Rome is sometimes referred to as the "Babylonian captivity" of the Papacy[2][3] (cf. Italian cattività avignonese, i.e. "Avignonese captivity").

A total of seven popes reigned at Avignon, all French,[4][5] and all under the influence of the French Crown. In 1376, Gregory XI abandoned Avignon and moved his court to Rome, arriving in January 1377. After Gregory's death in 1378, deteriorating relations between his successor Urban VI and a faction of cardinals gave rise to the Western Schism. This started a second line of Avignon popes, subsequently regarded as illegitimate. The last Avignon antipope, Benedict XIII, lost most of his support in 1398, including that of France. After five years besieged by the French, he fled to Perpignan in 1403. The schism ended in 1417 at the Council of Constance.[6]

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