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Jayne Mansfield


Jayne Mansfield

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Jayne Mansfield

At Jockeys’ Ball in Los Angeles, Calif., 1957
Born Vera Jayne Palmer
April 19, 1933(1933-04-19)
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States
Died June 29, 1967 (aged 34)
U.S. Highway 90 near Slidell, Louisiana, United States
Occupation Actress, singer, model
Years active 1954–1967
Spouse Paul Mansfield (1950–1958) «start: (1950)–end+1: (1959)»Marriage: Paul Mansfield to Jayne Mansfield Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield)
Miklós Hargitay (1958–1964) «start: (1958)–end+1: (1965)»Marriage: Miklós Hargitay to Jayne Mansfield Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield)
Matt Cimber (1964–1966) «start: (1964)–end+1: (1967)»Marriage: Matt Cimber to Jayne Mansfield Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield)

Jayne Mansfield (April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967) was an American actress working both on Broadway and in Hollywood.[1] One of the leading blonde sex symbols of the 1950s,[2] Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films that emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, hourglass figure and cleavage-revealing costumes.
While Mansfield’s film career was short-lived, she had several box office successes. She won the Theatre World Award, a Golden Globe and a Golden Laurel. As the demand for blonde bombshells declined in the 1960s, Mansfield was relegated to low-budget film melodramas and comedies, but remained a popular celebrity.
In her later career she continued to attract large crowds in foreign countries and in lucrative and successful nightclub tours. Mansfield had been a Playboy Playmate of the Month and appeared in the magazine several additional times. She died in an automobile accident at age 34.

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[edit] Early life

Jayne Mansfield
Playboy centerfold appearance
February 1955
Preceded by Bettie Page
Succeeded by Marilyn Waltz
Personal details
Measurements Bust: 40 in (100 cm)[3]
Waist: 21 in (53 cm)[3]
Hips: 32 in (81 cm)[3]
Height 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) (5ft 8in according to her autopsy)

Mansfield was the only child of Herbert William and Vera (née Jeffrey) Palmer. Her birthname was Vera Jayne Palmer. She was of English and German ancestry, with her paternal and maternal great-grandparents immigrating from England to Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania.[4] A natural brunette, she was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, but spent her early childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. When she was three years old, her father, a lawyer who was in practice with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner, died of a heart attack while driving a car with his wife and daughter. After his death, her mother worked as a school teacher. In 1939, when Vera Palmer remarried, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. Mansfield’s desire to become an actress developed at an early age. In 1950, Vera Jayne Palmer married Paul Mansfield, thus becoming Jayne Mansfield, and the couple moved to Austin, Texas.
She studied dramatics at the University of Dallas and the University of Texas at Austin. Her acting aspirations were temporarily put on hold with the birth of her first child, Jayne Marie Mansfield, on November 8, 1950, when Mansfield was 17. She juggled motherhood and classes at the University of Texas at Austin, then spent a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia, during her husband’s service in the United States Army. Mansfield’s husband at the time, Paul Mansfield, hoped the birth of their child would discourage her interest in acting. When it did not, he agreed to move to Los Angeles in late 1954 to help further her career.[5] In 1954, they moved to Los Angeles and she studied dramatics at UCLA. Between a variety of odd jobs, including a stint as a candy vendor at a movie theatre, she attended UCLA during the summer, and then went back to Texas for fall quarter at Southern Methodist University.
In Dallas she became a student of actor Baruch Lumet, father of director Sidney Lumet and founder of the Dallas Institute of the Performing Arts. On October 22, 1953, she first appeared on stage in a production of Arthur Miller‘s Death of a Salesman. Frequent references have been made to Mansfield’s very high IQ, which she advertised as 163. She spoke five languages, and was a classically trained pianist and violinist.[6] Mansfield admitted her public didn’t care about her brains. “They’re more interested in 40-21-35,” she said.[7] While attending the University of Texas, she won several beauty contests, with titles that included “Miss Photoflash,” “Miss Magnesium Lamp” and “Miss Fire Prevention Week.” The only title she ever turned down was “Miss Roquefort Cheese,” because she believed that it “just didn’t sound right.” Early in her career, the prominence of her breasts was considered problematic, leading her to be cut from her first professional assignment, an advertising campaign for General Electric, which depicted several young women in bathing suits relaxing around a pool.[8]

[edit] Film career

[edit] Mid 1950s

Mansfield’s movie career began with bit parts at Warner Brothers. She was signed by the studio after one of its talent scouts discovered her in a production at the Pasadena Playhouse. Mansfield had small roles in Female Jungle (1954), and in Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955) which starred Jack Webb. In 1955, Paul Wendkos offered her the dramatic role of Gladden in The Burglar, his film adaptation of David Goodis‘ novel. The film was done in film noir style, and Mansfield appeared alongside Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The Burglar was released two years later when Mansfield’s fame was at its peak. She was successful in this straight dramatic role, though most of her subsequent film appearances would be either comedic in nature or capitalize on her sex appeal. She made two more movies with Warner Brothers, one of which gave her a minor role as Angel O’Hara, opposite Edward G. Robinson, in Illegal (1955).

[edit] Late 1950s

In 1955, she enjoyed a successful Broadway run acting in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. Returning to Hollywood she starred in the film production of Frank Tashlin‘s The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). This was Mansfield’s first starring role and she portrayed an outrageously voluptuous but apparently tone-deaf girlfriend of a retired racketeer. The film features some early performances from Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, The Platters and Little Richard.[9]

On May 3, 1956, Mansfield signed a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. She then played a straight dramatic role in The Wayward Bus in 1957. With her role in this film she attempted to move away from her “dumb blonde” image and establish herself as a serious actress. This film was adapted from John Steinbeck‘s novel, and the cast included Dan Dailey and Joan Collins. The film enjoyed reasonable success at the box office. She won a Golden Globe in 1957 for New Star Of The Year – Actress, beating Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood, for her performance as a “wistful derelict” in The Wayward Bus. It was “generally conceded to have been her best acting,” according to The New York Times, in a fitful career hampered by her flamboyant image, distinctive voice (“a soft-voiced coo punctuated with squeals”),[10] voluptuous figure, and limited acting range. Mansfield reprised her role of Rita Marlowe in the 1957 movie version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, co-starring Tony Randall and Joan Blondell. The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? were popular successes in their day and are considered classics.

With Cary Grant and Suzy Parker in Kiss Them for Me (1957)

Mansfield’s fourth starring role in a Hollywood film was in Kiss Them for Me (1957) in which she received prominent billing alongside Cary Grant. However, in the film itself she is little more than comedy relief while Grant’s character shows a preference for a sleek, demure redhead portrayed by fashion model Suzy Parker. Kiss Them for Me was a box office disappointment and would prove to be her final starring role in a mainstream Hollywood studio film. The movie was described as “vapid” and “ill-advised”.[11] It was also one of the last attempts of 20th Century Fox to publicize her.[12] The continuing publicity around her physical presence failed to sustain her career.[13] Mansfield was offered a part opposite Jack Lemmon in Bell, Book and Candle, but had to turn it down due to pregnancy.

[edit] 1960s

In Promises! Promises!, the first Hollywood motion picture with sound to feature a mainstream star in the nude.[14]

Despite the publicity and her public popularity, good film roles dried up for Mansfield after 1958. She kept busy in a series of low-budget films, mostly made in Europe. Fox tried to cast Mansfield opposite Paul Newman in his ill-fated first attempt at comedy, Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!, but Mansfield’s Wayward Bus co-star Joan Collins was selected for the role. In 1960 Fox lent her to appear in two independent gangster thrillers in England. These were Too Hot to Handle, which was directed by Terence Young and co-starred Karlheinz Böhm, and It Takes A Thief, co-starring Anthony Quayle. In late 1961 Fox lined up It Happened in Athens. This Olympic-themed movie was filmed in Greece and would not be released until 1962. Despite receiving top billing in It Happened in Athens, Mansfield only appears in a supporting role.
In 1963, Tommy Noonan persuaded Mansfield to become the first mainstream American actress to appear nude with a starring role in the film Promises! Promises!. Photographs of a naked Mansfield on the set were published in Playboy. In one notorious set of images, Mansfield stares at one of her breasts, as does her male secretary and a hair stylist, then grasps it in one hand and lifts it high. The sold-out issue resulted in an obscenity charge for Hugh Hefner, which was later dropped. Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland, but it enjoyed box office success elsewhere. As a result of the film’s success, Mansfield landed on the Top 10 list of Box Office Attractions for that year.[15] The autobiographical book, Jayne Mansfield’s Wild, Wild World, she wrote together with Mickey Hargitay, was published right after Promises! Promises! and contains 32 pages of black-and-white photographs from the film printed on glossy paper.[16]
By 1962 Mansfield still commanded high prices as a live performer, though she openly yearned to establish a more sophisticated image. She announced that she wanted to study acting in New York, in apparent emulation of Marilyn Monroe’s stint with the Actors’ Studio. But her reliance on the racy publicity that had set her path to fame would also prove to be her downfall. Fox did not renew its contract with her in 1962.
In 1963 Mansfield appeared in the low-budget West German movie Homesick for St. Pauli with Austrian-born schlager singer Freddy Quinn. She played Evelyne, a sexy American singer who is traveling to Hamburg by ship. She is followed by an Elvis-like American pop star played by Quinn. Mansfield sang two German songs in the movie, though her speaking voice was dubbed. Despite her film career setbacks Mansfield remained a highly visible personality through the early 1960s through her publicity antics and stage performances. For her last film Single Room Furnished, Mansfield acted without make up and had worn a black wig to break out of the stereotype.[17]

[edit] Career outside film

[edit] Stage work

Mansfield acted on stage as well as in film. In 1955, she went to New York and appeared in a prominent role in the Broadway production of George Axelrod‘s comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. The New York Times described the “commendable abandon” of her scantily clad rendition of Rita Marlowe in the play, “a platinum-pated movie siren with the wavy contours of Marilyn Monroe.[18] In October 1957, Mansfield went on a 16-country tour of Europe for 20th Century Fox. She also appeared in stage productions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Bus Stop, which were well reviewed and co-starred Hargitay.
Dissatisfied with her film roles, Mansfield and Hargitay headlined at the Dunes in Las Vegas in an act called The House of Love, for which the actress earned $35,000 a week. It proved to be such a hit that she extended her stay, and 20th Century Fox Records subsequently recorded the show for an album called Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas, in 1962. With her film career floundering, she still commanded a salary of $8,000-$25,000 per week for her nightclub act. She traveled all over the world with it. In 1967, the year she died, Mansfield’s time was split between nightclub performances and the production of her last film, Single Room Furnished, a low-budget production directed by then-husband Matt Cimber.

[edit] Recordings

In addition to singing in English and German in a number of films, in 1964, Mansfield released a novelty album called Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, on which she recited Shakespeare‘s sonnets and poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth, and others against a background of Tchaikovsky‘s music. The album cover depicted a bouffant-coiffed Mansfield with lips pursed and breasts barely covered by a fur stole, posing between busts of the Russian composer and the Bard of Avon.[19] The New York Times described the album as the actress reading “30-odd poems in a husky, urban, baby voice”. The paper’s reviewer went on to state that “Miss Mansfield is a lady with apparent charms, but reading poetry is not one of them.”[20]
Jimi Hendrix played bass and lead guitar for Mansfield in 1965 on two songs, “As The Clouds Drift By” and “Suey”, released together on two sides. According to Hendrix historian Steven Roby (Black Gold: The Lost Archives Of Jimi Hendrix, Billboard Books) this collaboration happened because they shared the same manager.[21][22]
Mansfield starred in film The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw and her character sang three songs on the film – “In the valley of love”, “Strolling down the lane with Billy”, and “If the San Francisco Hills could only talk”. These were only lip-synced by Mansfield. The singing voice was provided by Connie Francis. Of these three, only “In the valley of love” was released on record, albeit only in the United Kingdom and Japan.

[edit] Television

Though her acting roles were becoming marginalized, in 1964 Mansfield turned down the role of Ginger Grant in Gilligan’s Island, claiming that the role, which eventually was given to Tina Louise, epitomized the stereotype she wished to rid herself of.[23]
Mansfield toured with Bob Hope for the USO and appeared on numerous television programs, including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jack Benny Program (where she played the violin), The Steve Allen Show, Down You Go, The Match Game (one rare episode exists with her as a team captain), and The Jackie Gleason Show. Mansfield’s television roles included appearances in Burke’s Law and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
On returning from New York to Hollywood, she made several television appearances, including several spots as a featured guest star on game shows. In 1962, Mansfield appeared with Brian Keith in ABC‘s Follow the Sun dramatic series in an acclaimed episode entitled “The Dumbest Blonde” in which her character “Scottie” is a beautiful blonde who feels insecure in the high society of her older boyfriend, played by Keith. The plot was based on the film of Born Yesterday.[24]

[edit] Recognition

[edit] Personal life

Mansfield was married three times, divorced twice, and had five children. Reportedly she also had affairs and sexual encounters with numerous individuals, including Claude Terrail (the owner of the Paris restaurant La Tour d’Argent), Robert F. Kennedy,[32] John F Kennedy[33] the Brazilian billionaire Jorge Guinle, and Anton LaVey. She had a brief affair with Jan Cremer, a young Dutch writer who dedicated his 1965 autobiographical novel, I, Jan Cremer, to her.[34] Jan Cremer wrote a large part of his book I, Jan Cremer – III about their relationship.[35] She also had a well-publicized relationship in 1963 with the singer Nelson Sardelli, whom she said she planned to marry once her divorce from Hargitay was finalized.[36] At the time of her death, Mansfield was accompanied by Sam Brody, her married divorce lawyer and lover at the time.

[edit] First marriage

She secretly married Paul Mansfield on January 28, 1950. The couple had a public wedding on May 10, 1950 and were divorced on January 8, 1958. During this marriage they had one child, Jayne Marie Mansfield. Two weeks before her mother’s death, Jayne Marie, then 16, accused her mother’s boyfriend, Sam Brody, of beating her.[37] The girl’s statement to officers of the West Los Angeles police department the following morning implicated her mother in encouraging the abuse, and days later, a juvenile-court judge awarded temporary custody of Jayne Marie to a great-uncle, W.W. Pigue.[38]

[edit] Second marriage

Gate and partial view of Mansfield’s former mansion, the Pink Palace (1997)

Mansfield married Miklós Hargitay, an actor and bodybuilder, (publicly known as Mickey Hargitay, who won the Mr. Universe title in 1955) on January 13, 1958 at The Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The unique glass chapel made public and press viewing of the wedding much easier. Jayne herself wore a transparent wedding gown, adding to the occasion’s publicity aspect. The couple divorced in Juarez, Mexico in May 1963. The Mexican divorce was initially declared invalid in California, and the two reconciled in October 1963. After the birth of their third child, Mansfield sued for the Juarez divorce to be declared legal and won. The divorce was recognized in the United States on August 26, 1964. She had previously filed for divorce on May 4, 1962, but told reporters, “I’m sure we will make it up.”[39] Their acrimonious divorce had the actress accusing Hargitay of kidnapping one of her children to force a more favorable financial settlement.[40] During this marriage she had three children — Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay (born December 21, 1958), Zoltán Anthony Hargitay (born August 1, 1960), and Mariska Magdolna Hargitay (born January 23, 1964), an actress best known for her role as Olivia Benson in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
In November 1957 (shortly before her marriage to Hargitay), Mansfield bought a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion formerly owned by Rudy Vallee at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Mansfield had the house painted pink, with cupids surrounded by pink fluorescent lights, pink furs in the bathrooms, a pink heart-shaped bathtub, and a fountain spurting pink champagne, and then dubbed it the Pink Palace. Hargitay, a plumber and carpenter before getting into bodybuilding, built a pink heart-shaped swimming pool. Mansfield decorated the Pink Palace by writing to furniture and building suppliers requesting free samples. She received over $150,000 worth of free merchandise while paying only $76,000 for the mansion itself[41] (a large sum nonetheless when the average house cost under $7,500 at the time[42]).

[edit] Third marriage

Mansfield married Matt Cimber (alias Matteo Ottaviano, né Thomas Vitale Ottaviano) an Italian-born film director on September 24, 1964. The couple separated on July 11, 1965, and filed for divorce on July 20, 1966.[43] Cimber was a director with whom the actress had become involved when he directed her in a widely praised stage production of Bus Stop in Yonkers, New York, which costarred Hargitay. Cimber took over managing her career during their marriage. With him she had one son, Antonio Raphael Ottaviano (alias Tony Cimber, born October 17, 1965). Work on her last film, Single Room Furnished, was suspended as her marriage to Cimber began to collapse in the wake of Mansfield’s alcohol abuse, open infidelities, and her claim to Cimber that she had only ever been happy with her former lover, Nelson Sardelli.[44]

[edit] Publicity stunts

Mansfield appeared in about 2,500 newspaper photographs between September 1956 and May 1957, and had about 122,000 lines of newspaper copy written about her during this time.[45] Because of the successful media blitz, Mansfield was a household name. Throughout her career, Mansfield was compared by the media to the reigning sex symbol of the period, Marilyn Monroe.[46] Of this comparison, she said, “I don’t know why you people [the press] like to compare me to Marilyn or that girl, what’s her name, Kim Novak. Cleavage, of course, helped me a lot to get where I am. I don’t know how they got there.”[47] Even with her film roles drying up she was widely considered to be Monroe’s primary rival in a crowded field of contenders that included Mamie Van Doren (whom Mansfield considered her professional nemesis), Diana Dors, Cleo Moore, Barbara Nichols, Joi Lansing, and Sheree North.

Sophia Loren (left) and Jayne Mansfield (right), at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills[48]

In April 1957, her bosom was the feature of a notorious publicity stunt intended to deflect attention from Sophia Loren during a dinner party in the Italian star’s honor. Photographs of the encounter were published around the world. The most famous image showed Loren raising an eyebrow at the American actress who, sitting between Loren and her dinner companion, Clifton Webb, had leaned over the table, allowing her breasts to spill over her low neckline and exposing one nipple.[49] A similar incident, resulting in the full exposure of both breasts, occurred during a film festival in West Berlin, when Mansfield was wearing a low-cut dress and her second husband, Mickey Hargitay, picked her up so she could bite a bunch of grapes hanging overhead at a party; the movement caused her breasts to erupt out of the dress. The photograph of that episode was a UPI sensation, appearing in newspapers and magazines with the word “censored” hiding the actress’s exposed bosom.
The world media was quick to condemn Mansfield’s stunts, and one editorial columnist wrote, “We are amused when Miss Mansfield strains to pull in her stomach to fill out her bikini better. But we get angry when career-seeking women, shady ladies, and certain starlets and actresses … use every opportunity to display their anatomy unasked.”[8] By the late 1950s, Mansfield began to generate a great deal of negative publicity due to her repeated successful attempts to expose her breasts in carefully staged public “accidents“.
Mansfield’s most celebrated physical attributes would fluctuate in size due to her pregnancies and breast feeding five children. Her smallest measurement was 40D (which she was throughout the 1950s), and largest at 46DD, when measured by the press in 1967. According to Playboy, her measurement was 40D-21-36 and her height was 5’6″. According to her autopsy report, she was 5’8″. Her bosom was so much a part of her public persona that talk-show host Jack Paar once welcomed the actress to The Tonight Show by saying, “Here they are, Jayne Mansfield”, a line that was written for Paar by Dick Cavett and became the title of her biography by Raymond Strait.[50]

[edit] Death

Gravestone, picture taken in 2007

While in Biloxi, Mississippi, for an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club, Mansfield stayed at the Cabana Courtyard Apartments, which were near the supper club. After a June 28, 1967 evening engagement, Mansfield, Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, along with the actress’ children Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska, set out in Stevens’ 1966 Buick Electra 225 for New Orleans, where Mansfield was to appear in an early morning television interview. Prior to leaving Biloxi, the party made a stop at the home of Rupert and Edna O’Neal, a family that lived nearby. After a late dinner with the O’Neals, during which the last photographs of Ms. Mansfield were taken, the party set out for New Orleans. On June 29 at approximately 2:25 a.m., on U.S. Highway 90, the car crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer that had slowed because of a truck spraying mosquito fogger. The automobile struck the rear of the semi tractor and went under it. Riding in the front seat, the adults were killed instantly. The children in the rear survived with minor injuries.[51]

The cenotaph at Hollywood Forever, with incorrect birth year

Rumors that Mansfield was decapitated are untrue, though she did suffer severe head trauma. This urban legend was spawned by the appearance in police photographs of a crashed automobile with its top virtually sheared off, and what resembles a blonde-haired head tangled in the car’s smashed windshield. It is believed that this was either a wig that Mansfield was wearing or was her actual hair and scalp.[52] The death certificate stated that the immediate cause of Mansfield’s death was a “crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain.”[53] Following her death, the NHTSA began requiring an underride guard, a strong bar made of steel tubing, to be installed on all tractor-trailers. This bar is also known as a Mansfield bar, and on occasions as a DOT bar.[54][55]
Mansfield’s funeral was held on July 3, in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania. The ceremony was officiated by a Methodist minister, though Mansfield, who long tried to convert to Catholicism, had become interested in Judaism at the end of her life through her relationship with Sam Brody.[56] She is interred in Fairview Cemetery, southeast of Pen Argyl. Her gravestone reads “We Live to Love You More Each Day”. A memorial cenotaph, showing an incorrect birth year, was erected in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California. The cenotaph was placed by The Jayne Mansfield Fan Club and has the incorrect birth year because Mansfield herself tended to provide incorrect information about her age.

[edit] Legacy

Shortly after Mansfield’s funeral, Mickey Hargitay sued his former wife’s estate for more than $275,000 to support the children, whom he and his third and last wife, Ellen Siano, would raise. Mansfield’s youngest child, Tony, was raised by his father, Matt Cimber, whose divorce from the actress was pending when she was killed. In 1968, wrongful-death lawsuits were filed on behalf of Jayne Marie Mansfield and Matt Cimber, the former for $4.8 million and the latter for $2.7 million.[57] The Pink Palace was sold and its subsequent owners have included Ringo Starr, Cass Elliot, and Engelbert Humperdinck.[58] In 2002, Humperdinck sold it to developers, and the house was demolished in November of that year. Much of her estate is managed by CMG Worldwide, an intellectual property management company.[59]
In 1980, The Jayne Mansfield Story aired on CBS starring Loni Anderson in the title role and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mickey Hargitay. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards.

Drug-induced lupus erythematosus


Drug-induced lupus erythematosus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Drug-induced lupus syndrome)
Jump to: navigation, search
Drug-induced lupus erythematosus
Classification and external resources
ICD10 M32.0.
ICD9 710.0
OMIM 152700
DiseasesDB 12782
MedlinePlus 000435
eMedicine med/2228 emerg/564
MeSH C17.300.480

Drug-induced lupus erythematosus (DIL or DILE) is an autoimmune disorder (similar to systemic lupus erythematosus [SLE]) caused by chronic use of certain drugs. These drugs cause an autoimmune response (the body attacks its own cells) producing symptoms similar to those of SLE. There are 38 known medications to cause DIL but there are three that report the highest number of cases: hydralazine, procainamide, and isoniazid.[1] While the criteria for diagnosing DIL has not been thoroughly established, symptoms of DIL typically present as myalgia and arthralgia. Generally, the symptoms recede after discontinuing use of the drugs.[2]

Contents

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[edit] Causes

The processes that lead to drug-induced lupus erythematosus are not entirely understood. The exact processes that occur are not known even after 50 years since its discovery, but many studies present theories on the mechanisms of DIL.
A predisposing factor to developing DIL is N-acetylation speed, or the rate at which the body can metabolize the drug. This is greatly decreased in patients with a genetic deficiency of the enzyme N-acetyltransferase. A study showed that 29 of 30 patients with DIL were slow acetylators. In addition, these patients had more hydralazine metabolites in their urine than fast acetylators.[3] These metabolites (byproducts of the interactions between the drug and constituents in the body) of hydralazine are said to have been created when leukocytes (white blood cells) have been activated, meaning they are stimulated to produce a respiratory burst.[4] Respiratory burst in white blood cells induces an increased production of free radicals and oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide.[5] These oxidants have been found to react with hydralazine to produce a reactive species that is able to bond to protein.[6] Monocytes, one type of leukocyte, detect the antigen and relay the recognition to T helper cells, creating antinuclear antibodies leading to an immune response.[7] Further studies on the interactions between oxidants and hydralazine are necessary to understand the processes involved in DIL.
Of the drugs that cause DIL, hydralazine has been found to cause a higher incidence. Hydralazine is a medication used to treat high blood pressure. Approximately 5% of the patients who have taken hydralazine over long periods of time and in high doses have shown DIL-like symptoms.[8] Many of the other drugs have a low to very low risk to develop DIL. The following table shows the risk of development of DIL of some of these drugs on a very to high scale.[1]

[edit] Symptoms

Signs and symptoms of drug-induced lupus erythematosus include:

These signs and symptoms are not side effects of the drugs taken which occur during short term use. DIL occurs over long-term and chronic use of the medications listed above. While these symptoms are similar to those of systemic lupus erythematosus, they are generally not as severe unless they are ignored which leads to more harsh symptoms, and in some reported cases, death.

[edit] Treatment

It is important to recognize early that these drugs are causing DIL like symptoms and discontinue use of the drug. Symptoms of drug-induced lupus erythematosus generally disappear days to weeks after medication use is discontinued. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) will quicken the healing process. Corticosteroids may be used if more severe symptoms of DIL are present.

[edit] Frequency

(Excerpt from eMedicine – Lupus Erythematosus http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic107.htm)

  • In the U.S.: As many as 10% of the approximately 500,000 cases of SLE may be DIL.
  • Mortality/morbidity: Death from DIL is extremely rare and may result from renal (kidney) involvement and other complications.
  • Race: More whites than blacks develop DIL; more blacks than whites present with SLE.
  • Sex: In DIL, no significant statistical difference is apparent in the prevalence for males versus females. In contrast, SLE affects women with considerably higher frequency than men (female-to-male ratio of 9:1).
  • Age: Patients with DILE tend to be older (50–70 years old) than those with SLE (average age 29 years at diagnosis). Elderly persons generally are more susceptible to DILE.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Rubin, Robert L. (2005-02-04). “Drug-Induced Lupus Erythematosus”. Lupus Foundation of America. http://www.lupus.org/education/brochures/drug.html. Retrieved 2006-11-03. 
  2. ^ Schur, Peter H. (ed.); et al. (July 1983). The Clinical Management of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. New York: Grune & Stratton. p. 221. ISBN 0-8089-1543-6. 
  3. ^ Lahita, Robert G. (1987). Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. New York: John Wiley & Sons. p. 859. ISBN 0-471-87388-8. 
  4. ^ Uetrecht J, Zahid N, Rubin R (1988). “Metabolism of procainamide to a hydroxylamine by human neutrophils and mononuclear leukocytes”. Chem Res Toxicol 1 (1): 74–8. doi:10.1021/tx00001a013. PMID 2979715. 
  5. ^ Stites, Daniel P.; Terr, Abba I., Parslow, Tristram G. (eds.) (1994). Basic & Clinical Immunology. Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange. p. 373. ISBN 0-8385-0561-9. 
  6. ^ Hofstra A, Matassa L, Uetrecht J (1991). “Metabolism of hydralazine by activated leukocytes: implications for hydralazine induced lupus”. J Rheumatol 18 (11): 1673–80. PMID 1664857. 
  7. ^ Hofstra A (1994). “Metabolism of hydralazine: relevance to drug-induced lupus”. Drug Metab Rev 26 (3): 485–505. doi:10.3109/03602539408998315. PMID 7924901. 
  8. ^ Schur, Peter H. et al. (1983), p. 223.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

The Devil and Daniel Webster


The Devil and Daniel Webster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Devil and daniel webster)
Jump to: navigation, search
The Devil and Daniel Webster  
Author Steven Vincent Benét
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Fantasy short story/ Legendary remake
Publisher Farrar & Rinehart
Publication date 1937
Media type Print (Hardback)
Pages xiii, 61 pp
ISBN NA

The Devil and Daniel Webster is a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. This retelling of the classic German Faust tale is based on the short story “The Devil and Tom Walker“, written by Washington Irving. Benet’s version of the story centers on a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil and is defended by Daniel Webster.
The story was published in 1937 by Farrar & Rinehart. In 1938, it appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and won an O. Henry award that same year. The author would adapt it in 1938 into a folk opera with music by Douglas Stuart Moore, a fellow alumnus of Yale University, member Wolf’s Head Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize. Benét also worked on the screenplay adaptation for the 1941 RKO Pictures film.

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[edit] Plot summary

Daniel argues while the Devil whispers in the judge’s ear.

The story is set in New Hampshire during the Antebellum era, some years after the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but before the Compromise of 1850.
A local farmer, Jabez Stone, is plagued with unending bad luck, causing him to finally swear that “it’s enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devil!” Stone is visited the next day by a stranger, who later identifies himself as “Mr. Scratch” and makes such an offer (in exchange for seven years of prosperity), to which Stone agrees.
After the seven years is up, Stone manages to bargain for an additional three years from Mr. Scratch. However, after the additional three years passes, Mr. Scratch refuses to grant Stone any further extension of time. Wanting out of the deal, Stone convinces famous lawyer and orator Daniel Webster to accept his case.
At midnight of the appointed date, Mr. Scratch arrives and is greeted by Webster, who presents himself as Stone’s attorney. Mr. Scratch tells Daniel, “I shall call upon you, as a law-abiding citizen, to assist me in taking possession of my property,” and so begins the argument. It goes poorly for Daniel since the signature and the contract are clear, and Mr. Scratch will not agree to a compromise.
In desperation Daniel thunders, “Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the service of a foreign prince. We fought England for that in ’12 and we’ll fight all hell for it again!” To this Mr. Scratch insists on his citizenship citing his presence at the worst events of America, concluding that “though I don’t like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours.”
A trial is then demanded by Daniel as the right of every American. Mr. Scratch agrees after Daniel says that he can pick the judge and jury, “so it is an American judge and an American jury.” A jury of the damned then enters, “with the fires of hell still upon them.” They had all done evil, and had all played a part in America:

After five other unnamed jurors enter (Benedict Arnold not among them, he being out “on other business”), the Judge enters last – John Hathorne, the infamous and unrepentant executor of the Salem witch trials.
The trial is rigged to go against Daniel. Finally he is on his feet ready to rage, without care for himself or Stone, but catches himself before he begins to speak: he sees in the jurors’ eyes that they want him to act thus. He calms himself, “for it was him they’d come for, not only Jabez Stone.”
Daniel starts to orate on all of simple and good things—”the freshness of a fine morning…the taste of food when you’re hungry…the new day that’s every day when you’re a child”—and how “without freedom, they sickened.” He speaks passionately of how wonderful it is to be a man, and to be an American. He admits the wrongs done in America, but argues that something new and good had grown from it, “and everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.” Mankind “got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey,” something “no demon that was ever foaled” could ever understand.
The jury announces its verdict: “We find for the defendant, Jabez Stone.” They admit that, “Perhaps ’tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence, but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster.” The judge and jury disappear with the break of dawn. Mr. Scratch congratulates Daniel and the contract is torn up.
Daniel then grabs the stranger and twists his arm behind his back, “for he knew that once you bested anybody like Mr. Scratch in fair fight, his power on you was gone.” Daniel makes him agree “never to bother Jabez Stone nor his heirs or assigns nor any other New Hampshire man till doomsday!”
Mr. Scratch offers to tell Webster’s fortune in his palm. He foretells Webster’s failure to ever become President, the death of Webster’s sons, and the backlash of his last speech, warning “Some will call you Ichabod,” as in John Greenleaf Whittier‘s poem in reaction to the speech. The devil was obviously referring to Webster’s controversial “Seventh of March Speech”, in which he supported the Compromise of 1850. Webster takes all these predictions in stride, and asks only if the Union will prevail. Scratch reluctantly admits that, though a war will be fought for it, the United States will remain united.
Webster then laughs and kicks him out of the house. It is said that the devil never did come back to New Hampshire afterward.

[edit] Major themes

[edit] Patriotism

Patriotism is a main theme in the story: Webster claims that the Devil cannot take the soul because he cannot claim American citizenship. “And who with better right?” the devil replies, going on to list several wrongs done in America, thereby demonstrating his presence in America. The Devil says “I am merely an honest American like yourself – and of the best descent – for, to tell the truth, Mr. Webster, though I don’t like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours.”
Webster insists on a jury trial as an American right, with Americans for the jury. The Devil then provides the worst examples of Americans for the judge and jury. In Daniel’s speech “He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man” rather than legal points of the case. For Webster, freedom and independence defines manhood: “Yes, even in hell, if a man was a man, you’d know it.”
This theme of American patriotism, freedom and independence is the explanation for Webster’s victory: The jury is damned to hell, but they are American and therefore so independent that they can resist the Devil. However most of the jury in reality would not have classed themselves as Americans as Governor Dale, Morton, Haththorne, and Blackbeard were English; Butler and Girty were loyalists and King Phillip was a Wampanoag.

[edit] Slavery

In his speech, Webster denounces slavery. “And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell.” Benét acknowledges the evil by having the devil say: “When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck.” As for Webster, “He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.”
The real Daniel Webster was willing to compromise on slavery in favor of keeping the Union together, disappointing many abolitionists.

[edit] Treatment of the Indians

The story may be seen as ambivalent on the treatment of the Indians/Native Americans. Webster states “If two New Hampshiremen aren’t a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.” However, the stranger/Satan remarks that “When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there”, which implies the author’s acknowledgement that the Indians were wronged. Yet “King Philip, wild and proud as he had been in life, with the great gash in his head that gave him his death wound” is included among notorious villains of American history – even though more modern historical sentiment holds that King Philip’s “villainies” were merely a just response to the wrongs done to his people.[citation needed]
(As an aside, the historical King Philip died from a gunshot to the heart and not a gash to the head.)
Yet later on, Daniel Webster’s appeal to the jury on “what it means to be American” specifically includes King Philip among “the Americans”. This is an anachronism as the historical Daniel Webster would have been unlikely to express such an opinion. The narrator also expresses sympathy for King Philip when he tells us that one juror “heard the cry of his lost nation” in Webster’s eloquent appeal.
These ambiguities probably reflect ambivalent perceptions of this aspect of American history at the time of writing rather than at the time when the story is supposed to take place.[citation needed]

[edit] The Devil

The devil is portrayed as polite and refined. When the devil arrives he is described as “a soft-spoken, dark-dressed stranger”, who “drove up in a handsome buggy”. The names in this story for the devil (Mr. Scratch, or the stranger) are both terms that were locally used around New England and other parts of pre-Civil-War America (ex:”… Perhaps Scratch will do for the evening. I’m often called that in these regions.“), and are taken primarily from the Washington Irving story published more than 100 years before, The Devil and Tom Walker.

[edit] Film adaptations

Two film adaptations have been made: an Academy Award-winning 1941 film first released under the title All That Money Can Buy, starring Edward Arnold as Daniel, Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch, and James Craig as Jabez Stone; and Shortcut to Happiness, a modernized version set in the publishing world, starring Anthony Hopkins as a publisher named Daniel Webster, Alec Baldwin as a bestselling but terrible author named Jabez Stone, and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a female Devil. This most recent version was made in 2001, but has never had a wide release in theatres

[edit] In popular culture

  • All the predictions the devil makes are based on actual events of Daniel Webster’s life: He did have ambitions to become President, his sons died in war, and as a result of a speech he gave denouncing abolitionists, many in the North considered him a traitor.
  • In “Star Trek: The Next Generation” both the premier and final episodes, “Encounter at Farpoint” and “All Good Things…“, had Captain Picard being placed on trial as mankind’s representative (and with no help from Webster), for the “crimes of Humanity”. Omnipotent, semi-devilish “Q” served as judge, with a jury of loudly derisive post-apocalyptic criminals. In a reversal of the original story’s wholly antagonistic relationship between Scratch and Webster/Stone, Q helped Picard to win the trial, which turned out to be a continuation of the original trial from the premier episode seven years before. Also “Devil’s Due” the people of Ventax II believed in a devil-woman named Ardra that a thousand years before the episode, Ardra promised to solve all the world’s problems. In return, the planet would become hers in a thousand years. Picard brings Ardra to court and wins.
  • This story was parodied in the first segment of The Simpsons special Halloween episode, “Treehouse of Horror IV“, titled “The Devil and Homer Simpson”. In their version, the Devil is played by Ned Flanders, and Homer sells his soul not for better luck, but for one doughnut. Lacking an oratorical heavyweight like Daniel Webster, it is up to incompetent attorney Lionel Hutz to win Homer’s freedom from Hell. Hutz abandons the trial early on after screwing up, and its up to Marge to save the day with the writing on a wedding photo, showing that Homer had already promised his soul to her. Defeated but spiteful, the Devil turns Homer’s head into a doughnut, and the next morning the Springfield Police Force are waiting for Homer to come out of his house. The Jury of the damned includes Blackbeard, Lizzie Borden, John Dillinger, the starting line up of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers and Richard Nixon (who was not dead at the time, but owed the Devil a favor).
  • A 2005 biopic about cult musician Daniel Johnston was entitled The Devil and Daniel Johnston in reference to the story.
  • The story is referenced in the Magnetic Fields song “Two Characters in Search of a Country Song”, from the 1994 album The Charm of the Highway Strip (“You were Jesse James, I was William Tell/ You were Daniel Webster, I was The Devil Himself”).
  • This story was also parodied in the Tiny Toons special, Night Ghoulery, with Plucky Duck in the role of Daniel Webster.
  • This story was parodied in an episode of “Tripping the Rift“. In this episode entitled “The Devil and a guy named Webster”, Chode McBlob sells his soul to save himself, and by extension his crew, from a black hole. His crew in an attempt to save his soul, decide to go back in time and bring Daniel Webster to the future to act as Chode’s attorney. Instead of returning with Daniel Webster, they come back with Emmanuel Lewis from the TV sitcom Webster. After seeing how good Lewis is with contracts, he is hired. The jury for the trial consisted of Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. Lewis is quick to get the Devil to admit he had created a fake black hole to force the deal. Chode is awarded with a “Get Out of Hell Free” card, which he uses immediately.
  • The Superman novel Miracle Monday mentions the events of this story without naming the characters, except for the Devil, who is revealed not to be the Devil himself, but rather Saturn, an agent of his.[2] The climax of the novel, where Saturn must grant Superman a wish after having been defeated by his nobility, is also likely inspired by this story.
  • The story was adaptated by Warner Bros. in A Pinky and the Brain Halloween, in which Pinky gives his soul to “Mister Itch” so that Brain’s dream of world domination is realized (with Snowball reduced to his court jester). But Brain soon misses Pinky and travels to Hell to get him back (leaving Snowball behind to seize his throne). In the end, however, the contract between Pinky and Mister Itch is declared null and void because Itch was never able to provide Pinky with a “radish-rose whatsamawhosits” he requested being given at the beginning of the episode.
  • The story and title were also adapted in an episode of the 1960s television series, The Monkees titled “The Devil and Peter Tork”. In the episode, Peter unwittingly signs a contract and sells his soul to the devil (“Mr. Zero” – played by Monte Landis) in order to own a harp he found at a pawn shop. Peter plays beautifully, and the Monkees automatically become an overnight success because of it. But when Mr. Zero finally comes and reveals himself to the Monkees, he convinces Peter that the only reason he could play was because of the power the devil had given him…and that since he sold his soul, he only had a few hours before he would be sent to hell. As a result, the Monkees sue, and bring the matter to court to prove the contract was null and void (Witnesses included Billy the Kid, Blackbeard the Pirate, and Atilla the Hun). However, when the Monkees are called up to the stand, Michael makes a speech on the importance of love, and because of Peter’s love for playing the harp, that he didn’t need the devil’s help to play it at all. In the end, Peter proved the devil wrong, and the Monkees win the case.
  • Nelvana created an animated made-for-television special called “The Devil and Daniel Mouse” based on the story. In the program, Daniel Mouse is a musician whose partner sells her soul to the Devil in exchange for fame.
  • John Fogerty wrote his famous hit, “Bad Moon Rising“, based on this book.[citation needed]
  • Two Chick Publications tracts, The Contract![3] and “It’s A Deal”,[4] borrow heavily from the story. “The Contract!” follows the original plot more closely (telling of a bankrupt farmer facing eviction), while “It’s a Deal” is a Chick tract rewritten for the African-American community and features a young basketball player.
  • Printer’s Devil“, an episode of the TV series The Twilight Zone, also borrows heavily from the story.
  • In his order rejecting plaintiff’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis in the lawsuit United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971), Judge Gerald J. Weber cited this story as the sole, though “unofficial”, precedent touching on the jurisdiction of United States courts over Satan.
  • In the 17th episode of television series Reaper the Devil tells the main character that he has debated with Daniel Webster and that (he) is no Daniel Webster.
  • David Macinnis Gill‘s young adult novel Soul Enchilada, about a high school dropout who must race Scratch for ownership of a classic Cadillas, makes several intertextual references to Benet’s story, including a remodel Judge Hathorne and a name variation on John Smeet.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ “In ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’ by Stephen Vincent Benét, there is a character named the Reverend John Smeet. Was this a real person?”
    “Mrs. Stephen Vincent Benét (1960), in a letter to the New York Times Book Review,” claimed that the good reverend was entirely imaginary. Mrs. Benet explained that her husband occasionally used to insert imaginary people into his writings. Benet even quoted from a made-up person named John Cleveland Cotton. He went so far as to write an apocryphal biographal note about Cotton that ended up in Marion King’s Books and People (King, 1954). In this Benet anticipated authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock, who created a poet named William Ashbless.”

    From: Puzzles and Essays from “The Exchange” – Trick Reference Questions, by Charles R. Anderson; page 122.

  2. ^ Maggin ES (1981). Miracle Monday, at ch.3
  3. ^ Chick JT (2004). The contract!
  4. ^ Chick JT (2009). It’s a deal.

[edit] References

  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 46–47. 

[edit] External links

Saint George and the Dragon [Legend and Folklure]


Saint George and the Dragon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Saint George and the Dragon by Gustave Moreau

St. George by Hans Acker 1440

The episode of Saint George and the Dragon appended to the hagiography of Saint George was Eastern in origin,[1] brought back with the Crusaders and retold with the courtly appurtenances belonging to the genre of Romance. The earliest known depictions of the motif are from tenth- or eleventh-century Cappadocia[2] and eleventh-century Georgia and Armenia;[3] previously, in the iconography of Eastern Orthodoxy, George had been depicted as a soldier since at least the seventh century. The earliest known surviving narrative of the dragon episode is an eleventh-century Georgian text.[4] William Shakespeare refers to St. George and the Dragon in Richard III; act v, also in King Lear; act I.
The dragon motif was first combined with the already standardised Passio Georgii in Vincent of Beauvais‘ encyclopedic Speculum Historiale, and then Jacobus de Voragine‘s Golden Legend (ca 1260) guaranteed its popularity in the later Middle Ages as a literary and pictorial subject.[5] The legend gradually became part of the Christian traditions relating to Saint George and was used in many festivals thereafter.[6]

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[edit] The legends

A 15th century Georgian plaque depicting Saint George rescuing the emperor’s daughter.

St. George and the Dragon, wood sculpture by Bernt Notke in Stockholm‘s Storkyrkan

St. George and the Dragon in Stockholm’s Gamla stan

Woodcut frontispiece of Alexander Barclay, Lyfe of Seynt George (Westminster, 1515)

Saint George defeating the dragon and saving the princess.

Advance our standards, set upon our foes Our ancient world of courage fair
St. George Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons
….. Richard III. act v, sc.3.
Come not between the Dragon and his wrath…..Shakespeare. King Lear. Act I, Sc 2

According to the Golden Legend the narrative episode of Saint George and the Dragon took place in a place he called “Silene,” in Libya; the Golden Legend is the first to place this legend in Libya as a sufficiently exotic locale, where a dragon might be imagined. In the tenth-century Georgian narrative, the place is the fictional city of Lasia, and it is the godless Emperor who is Selinus.[7]
The town had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it two sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery. It happened that the lot fell on the king’s daughter, who is in some versions of the story called Sabra.[8] The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.
Saint George
by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain. The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross,[9] charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon’s neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash.
She and Saint George led the dragon back to the city of Silene, where it terrified the people at its approach. But Saint George called out to them, saying that if they consented to become Christians and be baptised, he would slay the dragon before them. The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George slew the dragon, and the body was carted out of the city on four ox-carts. “Fifteen thousand men baptized, without women and children.” On the site where the dragon died, the king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Marycured all disease.[10]
and Saint George, and from its altar a spring arose whose waters
Traditionally, the sword[11] with which St. George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, a name recalling the city of Ashkelon, Israel. From this tradition, the name Ascalon was used by Winston Churchill for his personal aircraft during World War II (records at Bletchley Park), since St. George is the Patron Saint of England.

[edit] Origins

Saint George and the Dragon, by Rogier van der Weyden

The figure of the dragon slayer, older than Christianity, figures in the founding myth of Delphi, where Apollodrakon Pytho, and has ancient Near Eastern roots as old as Mesopotamian Labbu. A dragon is also the enemy figure in Revelation and in the saintly legend of Margaret the Virgin. slays the
The region had long venerated other religious figures. These historians deem it likely that certain elements of their ancient worship could have passed to their Christian successors. Notable among these ancient deitiesSabazios, the Sky Father of the Phrygians and known as Sabazius to the Romans. This god was traditionally depicted riding on horseback. was
The iconic image of St. George on horseback trampling the serpent-dragon beneath him is considered to be similar to these pre-Christian representations of Sabazios, the mounted god of Phrygia and Thrace.
According to Christopher Booker it is more likely, however, that the “George and the Dragon” story is a medieval adaptation of the ancient Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda—evidence for which can be seen in the similarity of events and locale in both stories.[12] In this connection, the Perseus and Andromeda myth was known throughout the Middle Ages from the influence of Ovid. In imagery, other Greek myths also played a role. “Medieval artists used the Greco-Roman image of Bellerophon and the Chimaera as the template for representations of Saint George and the Dragon.”[13]
These myths in turn may derive from an earlier Hittite myth concerning the battle between the Storm God Tarhun and the dragon Illuyankas. Such stories also have counterparts in other Indo-European mythologies: the slaying of the serpent Vritra by Indra in Vedic religion, the battle between Thor and Jörmungandr in the Norse story of Ragnarok, the Greek account of the defeat of the Titan Typhon by Zeus.[14]
Parallels also exist outside of Indo-European mythology, for example the Babylonian myths of Marduk slaying the dragon Tiamat[15]. The book of Job 41:21 speaks of a creature whose “breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.”[16]
In Italy, Saint Mercurialis, first bishop of the city of Forlì, is also depicted slaying a dragon.[17] Saint Julian of Le Mans, Saint Veran, Saint Bienheuré, Saint Crescentinus, Saint Margaret of Antioch, Saint Clement of Metz, Saint Martha, Saint Quirinus of Malmedy, Saint Donatus of Arezzo, and Saint Leonard of Noblac were also venerated as dragon-slayers.[18]

[edit] Treatment by artists

Paintings
Sculptures

A half sovereign with Benedetto Pistrucci’s engraving.

Engravings
Other

[edit] Contemporary retelling

St. George and the Dragon by Briton Reviere.

The Wedding of Saint George and the Princess Sabra by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

A church altar dedicated to Saint George and Saint Barbara at St. Verena’s Catholic Church in Roggenbeuren, Germany.

Children act out the tale of St. George and the Dragon in this 1875 photograph by Lewis Carroll.

[edit] Alternative legends

The village of Wormingford in Essex, England also lays claim to the George and the Dragon legend. A dragon, now believed to have been a crocodile that escaped from Richard I, was slain in the River Stour. There are differing accounts, including different dragon slayers, however one popular account tells how Sir George Marney (of Layer de la Haye) killed the dragon with his lance. The church in Wormingford (which is dedicated to St Andrew) has a stain glass window depicting this scene. [26] [27]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Robertson, The Medieval Saints’ Lives (pp 51-52) suggested that the dragon motif was transferred to the George legend from that of his father fellow soldier saint, Saint Theodore Tiro. The Roman Catholic writer Alban ButlerLives of the Saints) was at pains to credit the motif as a late addition: “It should be noted, however, that the story of the dragon, though given so much prominence, was a later accretion, of which we have no sure traces before the twelfth century. This puts out of court the attempts made by many folklorists to present St. George as no more than a christianized survival of pagan mythology.” (
  2. ^ Walter 2003:128, noted by British Museum Russian Icon “The Miracle of St George and the Dragon / Black George”.
  3. ^ Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition 2003:141, notes the earliest datable image, at Pavnisi, Georgia (1154-58), but earlier examples datable by style are at Adisi], Armenia (late eleventh century), and Bočorma (ca. 1100) and twelfth-century examples in Russia and Greece
  4. ^ Patriarchal Library, Jerusalem, codex 2, according to Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition 2003:140; Walter quotes the text at length, from a Russian translation.
  5. ^ Margaret Aston, Faith and Fire Continuum Publishing, 1993 ISBN 1-85285-073-6 page 272
  6. ^ Christian Roy, 2005, Traditional FestivalsISBN 978-1-57607-089-5 page 408; Dorothy Spicer, Festivals of Western Europe, (BiblioBazaar), 2008 ISBN 1-4375-2015-4, page 67
  7. ^ Quoted in Walter 2003:141.
  8. ^ http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=langm&book=saints&story=patron
  9. ^ In the earliest, Georgian version where the dragon is more clearly a representation of paganism, or at least of infernal power, the sign of the Cross itself was sufficient to defeat the dragon.
  10. ^ Thus Jacobus de Voragine, in William Caxton’s translation (On-line text).
  11. ^ Ascalon, Askalon (Seven Champions); Askelon (Percy’s ballads)
  12. ^ Booker, Christopher (2004). The Seven Basic Plots. Continuum. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-8264-5209-2. 
  13. ^ Theoi Greek Mythology.
  14. ^ Mallory, J. P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27616-1. 
  15. ^ Combat of Marduk and Tiamat in the Babylonian Creation Myths, Fourth Tablet at Sacred-texts.com The killing of Tiamat is featured from line 93
  16. ^ Job 41;21
  17. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia: Forli
  18. ^ Sauroctones
  19. ^ [1]
  20. ^ [2]
  21. ^ [3]
  22. ^ Nordisk familjebok. 1914. http://runeberg.org/nfbt/0053.html. 
  23. ^ No Land is an Urland- The Creation of the World of Dragonslayer by Danny Fingeroth from Dragonslayer- The Official Marvel Comics Adaptation of the Spectacular Paramount/Disney Motion Picture!, Marvel Super Special Vol.1, No. 20, published by Marvel Comics Group, 1981
  24. ^ The Historian
  25. ^ Vlad tepes
  26. ^ http://www.bures-online.co.uk/dragon/worm.htm
  27. ^ http://www.dedhamvalesociety.org.uk/Files/VillageWORMINGFORD.pdf

[edit] References

  • Loomis, C. Grant, 1949. White Magic, An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge: Medieval Society of America)
  • Whatley, E. Gordon, editor, with Anne B. Thompson and Robert K. Upchurch, 2004. St. George and the Dragon in the South English Legendary (East Midland Revision, c. 1400) Originally published in Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections (on-line text: Introduction).
  • Catholic Encyclopedia, “Saint George
  • (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications) (On-line Introduction)

[edit] External links

George (given name)


George (given name)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
George
Man in agriculture.jpg
A farmer.
Pronunciation English: /ˈdʒɔrdʒ/
Gender Male
Meaning Farmer / Earth-worker
Origin Greek: Γεώργιος (Georgios)
Related names Georgette (f),
Georgia (f),
Georgina (f),
Georgiana (f)

George, from the Ancient Greek γεωργός (geōrgos), “farmer” or “earth-worker”, which became a name in Greek: Γεώργιος (Geōrgios), and Latin: Georgius. The word Γεωργος is a compound word, formed by the words Ge (Γῆ), “earth”, “soil” and ergon (ἔργον), “work”.

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[edit] History

In the West, the name is known from the eleventh century as a result of the Crusades. The name was extended due to the popularity of St. George and the Golden Legend, widespread in the European courts of the thirteenth century.
This powerful name has remained surprisingly popular in the last 1500 years. Just look at the impressive number of translations and versions that has the name in different languages and dialects.
In Germany, the name has been popular since the Middle Ages, declining later use. In Britain, despite being St. George the patron of England since the fourteenth century, the name did not become popular until the eighteenth century following the accession of George I of England. In the U.S.A., statistics from mid-nineteenth century placed him among the five most popular baby names. The trend continued until the 1950’s, when the name began to lose popularity. The same trend occurred in France as one of the top ten in the early twentieth century, has come to be at position 20.

[edit] Others uses of the name

  • In Argentina, you can see Jorge (Spanish variation of George) as a surname.
  • In World War II, the codename for the Japanese fighter Kawanishi N1K-J was George.
  • There is also a rare condition called DiGeorge syndrome.
  • In the Middle Ages, knights Catalan and Occitan, used the war cry “Sant Jordi! Firam! Firam!”. Similarly, the English knights used to go into battle with the cry “by George”, which were entrusted to St. George and sought his support as patron saint of the knights.
  • In Mexico, there is a very popular phrase that says: Vamos a ponerle Jorge al niño ( Let’s name George the child), which in colloquial terms is indicative of invitation (to a woman) to sex (George, would be the name of the firstborn to procreate).
  • George (GEneral ORGanisational Environment) was an O.S developed in 1960 by the company International Computers Ltd.
  • Zeus was worshiped in many forms, of which one was a farmer or georgos.

[edit] People

[edit] Monarchs

Bulgaria
Georgia
Great Britain
Greece
Hanover

[edit] Princes

Albania
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Portugal
Serbia

[edit] Others

  • Saint George, George of Lydda (c.275/281–303) venerated Christian martyr

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

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[edit] Fictional people

[edit] Animals

  • George (tortoise) (c. 1920 – 2004), a long-serving pet on the British television series Blue Peter.
  • Lonesome George, the last known remnant of the tortoise subspecies Geochelone nigra abingdonil.
  • George (Jack Russell Terrier) (c. 1993-2007), New Zealand dog awarded the PDSA Gold Medal in 2009.
  • Giant George (Great Dane) (b. 2005), the tallest dog ever recorded.

[edit] Other language variants

The name of George has variants in scores of other languages:

Gregory


Gregory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Gregory
Gender Male
Meaning Watchful, Alert
Region of origin worldwide
Origin Greek via Latin
Related names Greg, Gregg, Gregor, Grigori, MacGregor, McGregor

Gregory is a common masculine first name and family name. It is derived from the Latin name “Gregorius,” which was from the late Greek name “Γρηγόριος” (Grēgorios) meaning “watchful” (derived from Greek “γρήγoρηῖν” “grēgorein” meaning “to watch”).[1]
Through folk etymology, the name also became associated with Latin grex (stem greg–) meaning ‘flock’ or ‘herd’. This association with a shepherd who diligently guides his flock contributed to the name’s popularity among monks and popes.
There have been 16 popes with the name, starting with Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great). It is the second-most popular name for pope, along with Benedict, after John. Because of this background, it is also a very common name for saints. Although the name was uncommon in the early 20th century, after the popularity of the actor Gregory Peck it became one of the ten most common male names in the 1950s and has remained popular since.

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[edit] Name days

The Roman Catholic Church traditionally held the feast of Saint Gregory (the Great) on 12 March, but changed it to 3 September in 1969. 12 March remains the name day for Gregory in most countries.
The Orthodox Church holds the feast of Saint Gregory of Cappadocia (third century) on 17 November (Julian calendar, equivalent to 30 November in the Gregorian calendar).

[edit] Translations

[edit] People

[edit] Religious leaders

[edit] Popes

[edit] Patriarchs

[edit] Indian (Malankara) Orthodox Church

H. G. Wells


H. G. Wells

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Herbert George Wells

Wells pictured some time before 1916
Born Herbert George Wells
21 September 1866(1866-09-21)
Bromley, United Kingdom
Died 13 August 1946 (aged 79)
London, United Kingdom
Occupation Novelist, teacher, historian, journalist
Nationality British
Genres Science fiction (notably social science fiction)
Notable work(s) The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, The Shape of Things to Come


Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946)[1] was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”.[2]
Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifist views, although he supported the First World War once it was under way, and his later works became increasingly political and didactic. His middle-period novels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle class life (The History of Mr Polly) and the “New Woman” and the Suffragettes (Ann Veronica).

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[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 47 High Street, Bromley, in the county of Kent, on 21 September 1866.[1] Called “Bertie” in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells (a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and amateur cricketer) and his wife Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant). The family was of the impoverished lower middle class. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. He managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop; Joseph received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team.[3] Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterward, or from small payments from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells’s life was an accident he had in 1874, which left him bedridden with a broken leg.[1] To pass the time he started reading books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy, a private school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morley’s earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley’s Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph’s career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income.
No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium, Hyde’s.[4] His experiences at Hyde’s were later used as inspiration for some of his novel material The Wheels of Chance and Kipps, which delve into the life of a draper’s apprentice as well as providing a critique of the world’s distribution of wealth.
Herbert’s parents’ marriage was a turbulent relationship: due primarily to his mother being a Protestant and his father a self-confessed freethinker. When his mother returned to work as a lady’s maid (at Uppark, a country house in Sussex), one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives: though they never divorced and neither ever developed extramarital liaisons. As a consequence, Herbert’s personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemist’s assistant. After each failure, he would arrive at Uppark – “the bad shilling back again!” as he said – and stay there until a fresh start could be arranged for him. Fortunately for Herbert, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato‘s Republic, and More‘s Utopia. This would be the beginning of Herbert George Wells’s venture into literature.

[edit] Teacher

H. G. Wells in 1907 at the door of his house at Sandgate

In October 1879 Wells’s mother arranged through a distant relative, Arthur Williams, for him to join the National School at Wookey in Somerset as a pupil-teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a teacher of younger children.[4] In December that year, however, Williams was dismissed for irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at a chemist in nearby Midhurst, and an even shorter stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School, he signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde’s. In 1883 Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a pupil-teacher; his proficiency in Latin and Science during his previous, short stay had been remembered.[4][3]
The years he spent in Southsea had been the most miserable of his life to that point, but his good fortune at securing a position at Midhurst Grammar School meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest.[3] The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, now part of Imperial College London) in London, studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887 with a weekly allowance of twenty-one shillings (a guinea) thanks to his scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable sum of money (at the time many working class families had “round about a pound a week” as their entire household income)[5] yet in his Experiment in Autobiography, Wells speaks of constantly being hungry, and indeed, photographs of him at the time show a youth so thin and malnourished.
He soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These years mark the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the subject through The Republic by Plato, he soon turned to contemporary ideas of socialism as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House, the home of William Morris. He was also among the founders of The Science School Journal, a school magazine which allowed him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction: the first version of his novel The Time Machine was published in the journal under the title, The Chronic Argonauts. The school year 1886–1887 was the last year of his studies. In spite of having previously successfully passed his exams in both Biology and Physics, his lack of interest in Geology resulted in his failure to pass and the subsequent loss of his scholarship.
It was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of London External Programme. In 1889–90 he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School where he taught and admired A. A. Milne.[6][7]
Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary—his father’s sister-in-law—invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt’s residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel. He would later, go on to court her.

[edit] Personal life

H. G. Wells’s home in the mid-1890s: 143 Maybury Road, Woking[8]

In 1891 Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, but left her in 1894 for one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (known as Jane), whom he married in 1895.[9] He had two sons with Amy Catherine: George Philip (known as “Gip”) in 1901 (d.1985) and Frank Richard in 1903.[10]
During his marriage to Amy Robbins, Wells had affairs with a number of women, including the American birth-control activist Margaret Sanger[11] and novelist Elizabeth von Arnim. In 1909 he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves,[10] whose parents, William and Maud Pember Reeves, he had met through the Fabian Society; and in 1914, a son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, twenty-six years his junior.[12] Despite Amy Catherine’s knowledge of some of these affairs, she remained married to Wells until her death in 1927.[10] Wells also had affairs with Odette Keun and Moura Budberg.
“I was never a great amorist”, Wells wrote in Experiment in Autobiography (1934), “though I have loved several people very deeply.”

[edit] Artist

As one method of self-expression, Wells tended to sketch a lot. One common location for these sketches was the endpapers and title pages of his own diaries, and they covered a wide variety of topics, from political commentary to his feelings toward his literary contemporaries and his current romantic interests. During his marriage to Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he sketched a considerable number of pictures, many of them being overt comments on their marriage. It was during this period, and this period only, that he called his sketches “picshuas.” These picshuas have been the topic of study by Wells scholars for many years, and recently a book was published on the subject.[13]

[edit] Games

Seeking a more structured way to play war games, Wells also wrote Floor Games (1911) followed by Little Wars (1913). Little Wars is recognised today as the first recreational wargame and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as “the Father of Miniature War Gaming”.[14]

[edit] Writer

Wells’s first non-fiction bestseller was Anticipations (1901).[15] When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, “An Experiment in Prophecy”, and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that “my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea”).

Statue of a The War of the Worlds tripod, erected as a tribute to H. G. Wells in Woking town centre, England

His early novels, called “scientific romances“, invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon. He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels that have received critical acclaim including Kipps and the satire on Edwardian advertising, Tono-Bungay.
Wells wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is “The Country of the Blind” (1904). His short story “The New Accelerator” was the inspiration for the Star Trek episode Wink of an Eye.[16]
Though Tono-Bungay was not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in The World Set Free (1914). This book contains what is surely his biggest prophetic “hit.” Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over thousands of years. The rate of release is too slow to have practical utility, but the total amount released is huge. Wells’s novel revolves around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary high explosive—but which “continue to explode” for days on end. “Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century,” he wrote, “than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible… [but] they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.” Leó Szilárd acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the nuclear chain reaction.[17]
Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling three-volume work, The Outline of History (1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians.[18] Many other authors followed with ‘Outlines’ of their own in other subjects. Wells reprised his Outline in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World,[19] and two long efforts, The Science of Life (1930) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). The ‘Outlines’ became sufficiently common for James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay, “An Outline of Scientists”—indeed, Wells’s Outline of History remains in print with a new 2005 edition, while A Short History of the World has been recently reedited (2006).
From quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organise society, and wrote a number of Utopian novels. The first of these was A Modern Utopia (1905), which shows a worldwide utopia with “no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all”;[20] two travellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usually begin with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behave rationally and abandoning a European war (In the Days of the Comet (1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come (1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda film, Things to Come). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascist dictators in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939), though in the former novel, the tale is revealed at the end to have been Mr Parham’s dream vision.

H. G. Wells in 1943

Wells contemplates the ideas of nature versus nurture and questions humanity in books such as The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, and in fact, Wells also wrote the first dystopia novel, When the Sleeper Wakes (1899, rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes, 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes have become more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against the rulers. The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to England; like Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting back to their animal natures.
Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of W. N. P. Barbellion‘s diaries, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since “Barbellion” was the real author’s pen name, many reviewers believed Wells to have been the true author of the Journal; Wells always denied this, despite being full of praise for the diaries, but the rumours persisted until Barbellion’s death later that year.
In 1927, Florence Deeks sued Wells for infringement of copyright, claiming that he had stolen much of the content of The Outline of History from a work, The Web, she had submitted to the Canadian Macmillan Company, but who held onto the manuscript for eight months before rejecting it. Despite numerous similarities in phrasing and factual errors, the court found the evidence inadequate and dismissed the case. A Privy Council report added that, as Deek’s work had not been printed, there were no legal grounds at all for the action.[21]
In 1934, Wells predicted that the world war he had described in The Shape of Things to Come would begin in 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true one year early.[22]
In 1936, before the Royal Institution, Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World Encyclopedia, to be reviewed by outstanding authorities and made accessible to every human being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organisation of knowledge and education, World Brain, including the essay, “The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia.”
Near the end of the Second World War, Allied forces discovered that the SS had compiled lists of intellectuals and politicians slated for immediate arrest upon the invasion of England in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion. The name “H. G. Wells” appeared high on the list for the crime of being a socialist in The Black Book.[23] Wells, as president of the International PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists), had already angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body in 1934 following the German PEN’s refusal to admit non-Aryan writers to its membership.

[edit] Politics

Wells called his political views socialist. He was for a time a member of the socialist Fabian Society, but broke with them as his intentions were far more radical than theirs. He later grew staunchly critical of them as having a poor understanding of economics and educational reform. He ran as a Labour Party candidate for London University in the 1922 and 1923 general elections after the death of his friend W. H. R. Rivers, but at that point his faith in the party was weak or uncertain.
Social class was a theme in Wells’s The Time Machine in which the Time Traveller speaks of the future world, with its two races, as having evolved from

the gradual widening of the present (19th century) merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer … Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth? Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people..is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion.[24]

Nevertheless, without irony, Wells has this very same Time Traveller speak in terms antithetical to much of socialist thought, referring approvingly and as “perfect” and with no social problem unsolved, to an imagined world of stark class division between the rich assured of their wealth and comfort, and the rest of humanity assigned to lifelong toil:

Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved.[24]

His most consistent political ideal was the World State. He stated in his autobiography that from 1900 onward he considered a World State inevitable. He envisioned the state to be a planned society that would advance science, end nationalism, and allow people to progress by merit rather than birth. In his book In the Fourth Year published in 1918 he suggested how each nation of the world would elect, “upon democratic lines” by proportional representation, an electoral college in the manner of the United States of America, in turn to select its delegate to the proposed League of Nations.[25] This international body he contrasted with imperialism, not only the imperialism of Germany, against which the war was being fought, but also the more benign imperialism of Britain and France.[26]
His values and political thinking came under increasing criticism from the 1920s and afterwards.[27]
The leadership of Joseph Stalin led to a change in his view of the Soviet Union even though his initial impression of Stalin himself was mixed. He disliked what he saw as a narrow orthodoxy and obdurance to the facts in Stalin. However, he did give him some praise saying in an article in the left-leaning New Statesman magazine, “I have never met a man more fair, candid, and honest” and making it clear that he felt the “sinister” image of Stalin was unfair or simply false. Nevertheless he judged Stalin’s rule to be far too rigid, restrictive of independent thought, and blinkered to lead toward the Cosmopolis he hoped for.[28] In the course of his visit to the Soviet Union in 1934, he debated the merits of reformist socialism over Marxism-Leninism with Stalin.[29]
Wells believed in the theory of eugenics. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics, saying “I believe … It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.” Some contemporary supporters even suggested connections between the “degenerate” man-creatures portrayed in The Time Machine and Wells’s eugenic beliefs. For example, the economist Irving Fisher said in a 1912 address to the Eugenics Research Association: “The Nordic race will … vanish or lose its dominance if, in fact, the whole human race does not sink so low as to become the prey, as H. G. Wells images, of some less degenerate animal!”[30]
Wells had given some moderate unenthusiastic support for Territorialism before the First World War, but later became a bitter opponent of the Zionist movement in general. He saw Zionism as an exclusive and separatist movement which challenged the collective solidarity he advocated in his vision of a world state. No supporter of Jewish identity in general, Wells had in his utopian writings predicted the ultimate assimilation of Jewry.[31][32][33]
Wells brought his interest in Art & Design and politics together when he and other notables signed a memorandum to the Permanent Secretaries of the Board of Trade, amongst others. The November 1914 memorandum expressed the signatories concerns about British industrial design in the face of foreign competition. The suggestions were accepted, leading to the foundation of the Design and Industries Association.[34]
In the end his contemporary political impact was limited. His efforts regarding the League of Nations became a disappointment as the organisation turned out to be a weak one unable to prevent World War II. The war itself increased the pessimistic side of his nature. In his last book Mind at the End of its Tether (1945) he considered the idea that humanity being replaced by another species might not be a bad idea. He also came to call the era “The age of frustration.”

[edit] Religion

Wells wrote in his book God The Invisible King that his idea of God did not draw upon the traditional religions of the world: “This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. [Which] is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God.”[35] Later in the work he aligns himself with a “renascent or modern religion … neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian … [that] he has found growing up in himself”.[36]
Of Christianity he has this to say: “… it is not now true for me … Every believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother … but if systemically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie.” Of other world religions he writes: “All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only they are not true for me to live in them … They do not work for me”.[37]

[edit] Final years

He spent his final years venting his frustration at various targets which included a neighbour who erected a large sign to a servicemen’s club. As he devoted his final decades toward causes which were largely rejected by contemporaries, his literary reputation declined. G. K. Chesterton quipped: “Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message”.[38]
Wells was a diabetic,[39] and a co-founder in 1934 of what is now Diabetes UK, the leading charity for people living with diabetes in the UK.
On 28 October 1940 Wells was interviewed by Orson Welles, who two years previous had performed an infamous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, on KTSA radio in San Antonio, Texas. In the interview, Wells admitted his surprise at the widespread panic that resulted from the broadcast, but acknowledged his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his “more obscure” titles.[40]
He died of unspecified causes on 13 August 1946 at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, London.[41] Some reports indicate the cause of death was diabetes or liver cancer.[42] In his preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air, Wells had stated that his epitaph should be: “I told you so. You damned fools.”.[43] He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 16 August 1946 and his ashes were scattered at sea.[44] A commemorative blue plaque in his honour was installed at his home in Regent’s Park.

[edit]

Timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact [complicity]


Timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact is a chronology of events, including Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Treaty of Non-Aggression between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was signed in the early hours of August 24, 1939, but was dated August 23.

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[edit] Prelude

[edit] Diplomacy in 1939

[edit] Aftermath

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Receuil des traités conclus par la Lithuanie avec les pays étrangés, Vol. I, Kaunas, 1930, pp. 429-435.
  2. ^ League of Nations Treaty Series, 1934, No. 3408, pp. 123-125 and 127
  3. ^ League of Nations Treaty Series, Vol. CXXXI, pp. 297-307.

The War of the Worlds (radio)


The War of the Worlds (radio)

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The War of the Worlds
Genre episode of a radio show
Running time 60 minutes
Country [unreliable source?]
Home station CBS (radio)
Starring Orson Welles
Frank Readick
Kenny Delmar
Ray Collins
Announcer Dan Seymour
Writers Howard W. Koch (adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel)
Directors Orson Welles
Producers John Houseman
Orson Welles
Exec. producers Davidson Taylor (for CBS)
Narrated by Orson Welles
Recording studio Columbia Broadcasting Building, 485 Madison Avenue, New York
Air dates since October 30, 1938
Opening theme Piano Concerto No. 1, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Ending theme same as opening theme

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells‘ novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated “news bulletins“, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show‘ (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program’s quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program’s news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles’ fame.
Welles’ adaptation was one of the Radio Project‘s first studies.

Contents

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[edit] Background

Monument erected October 1998 commemorating where the Martians in the story landed in Van Nest Park, Grover’s Mill, NJ.

H. G. Wells’ original novel relates the story of an alien invasion of Earth at the end of the 19th century. The radio play’s story was adapted by and written primarily by Howard Koch, with input from Orson Welles and the staff of CBS‘s Mercury Theatre On The Air. The action was transferred to contemporary Grover’s Mill, an unincorporated village in West Windsor Township, New Jersey in the United States. The program’s format was to simulate a live newscast of developing events. To this end, Welles played recordings of Herbert Morrison‘s radio reports of the Hindenburg disaster for actor Frank Readick and the rest of the cast, to demonstrate the mood he wanted.
The first two thirds of the 55½ minute play was a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins. This approach was not new. Fr. Ronald Knox‘s satirical newscast of a riot overtaking London over the British Broadcasting Company in 1926 had a similar approach (and created much the same effect on its audience). Welles had been influenced by the Archibald MacLeish dramas The Fall of The City and Air Raid, the former of which had used Welles himself in the role of a live radio news reporter. But the approach had never been done with as much continued verisimilitude and the innovative format has been cited as a key factor in the confusion that followed.

[edit] Plot summary

The program, broadcast from the 20th floor at 485 Madison Avenue in New York City, starts with an introduction from the novel, describing the intentions of the aliens and noting that the adaptation was set in 1939, a year ahead of the actual broadcast date. The program continues as a weather report, then as an ordinary dance band remote featuring “Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra” (actually the CBS orchestra under the direction of Bernard Herrmann) that is interrupted by news flashes about strange explosions on Mars. Welles makes his first appearance as (the fictional) famous astronomer and Princeton professor Richard Pierson, who refutes speculation about life on Mars.
The news grows more frequent and increasingly ominous as a cylindrical meteorite lands in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. A crowd gathers at the site and events are related by reporter Carl Phillips (portrayed by Frank Readick). The meteorite unscrews, revealing itself as a rocket machine, and onlookers catch a glimpse of a tentacled, pulsating, barely mobile Martian before it incinerates the crowd with Heat-Rays. Phillips’ shouts about incoming flames are cut off in mid-sentence. (Later surveys indicate that many listeners heard only this portion of the show before contacting neighbors or family to enquire about the broadcast. Many contacted others in turn, leading to rumors and confusion.)
Regular programming breaks down as the studio struggles to keep up with casualty updates, firefighting developments and the like. A shaken Pierson speculates about Martian technology. The New Jersey state militia declares martial law and attacks the cylinder; a message from their field headquarters goes on about the overwhelming force of properly equipped infantry and the helplessness of the Martians in Earth’s gravity until a tripod alien fighting machine rears up from the pit.
The studio returns to establish the Martians as an invading army with the obliteration of the militia force. Emergency response bulletins give way to damage reports and evacuation instructions while millions of refugees clog the roads. Three Martian tripods from the cylinder destroy power stations and uproot bridges and railroads, reinforced by three others from a second cylinder as gas explosions continue. An unnamed Secretary of the Interior advises the nation. (The secretary was originally intended to be a portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then President, but CBS insisted this detail, among others, be changed. The secretary did, however, sound like Roosevelt as the result of directions to actor Kenny Delmar by Welles.)
A live connection is established to a field artillery battery. Its gun crew reports damaging one machine and a release of black smoke/poison gas before fading in to the sound of coughing. The lead plane of a wing of bombers broadcasts its approach and remains on the air as their engines are burned by the Heat-Ray and the plane dives on the invaders. Radio operators go active and fall silent, most right after reporting the approach of the black smoke. The planes destroyed one machine, but cylinders are falling all across the country.
This section ends famously: a news reporter (played by Ray Collins), broadcasting from atop the CBS building, describes the Martian invasion of New York City — “five great machines” wading across the Hudson River, poison smoke drifting over the city, people running and diving into the East River “like rats”, others “falling like flies” — until he, too, succumbs to the poison gas. Finally, a despairing ham radio operator is heard calling, “2X2L calling CQ. Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there…. anyone?”
After an intermission for station identification, in which announcer Dan Seymour mentions the show’s fictionality, the last third is a monologue and dialogue, with Welles returning as Professor Pierson, describing the aftermath of the attacks. The story ends, as does the novel, with the Martians falling victim to earthly germs and bacteria.
After the play, Welles informally breaks character to remind listeners that the broadcast was a Halloween concoction (the equivalent, as he puts it, “of dressing up in a sheet and saying, ‘Boo!'”). Popular mythology holds this “disclaimer” was hastily added to the broadcast at the insistence of CBS executives as they became aware of panic inspired by the program; in fact, it had appeared in Koch’s working script for the play, as detailed in his 1970 book The Panic Broadcast.

[edit] Public reaction

New York Times headline from October 31, 1938

Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the atmosphere of tension and anxiety just prior to World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance.
Richard J. Hand cites studies by unnamed historians who “calculate[d] that some six million heard the CBS broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were ‘genuinely frightened'”.[1] While Welles and company were heard by a comparatively small audience (in the same period, NBC’s audience was an estimated 30 million), the uproar was anything but minute: within a month, there were 12,500 newspaper articles about the broadcast or its impact, while Adolf Hitler cited the panic, as Hand writes, as “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.”[1]
Later studies suggested this panic was less widespread than newspapers suggested. During this period, many newspapers were concerned that radio, a new medium, would render the press obsolete. In addition, this was a time of yellow journalism, and as a result, journalists took this opportunity to demonstrate the dangers of broadcast by embellishing the story, and the panic that ensued, greatly.[2]
Robert E. Bartholomew suggests that hundreds of thousands were frightened in some way, but notes that evidence of people taking action based on this fear is “scant” and “anecdotal”.[3] Indeed, contemporary news articles indicate that police were swamped with hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling the authorities typically involve groups of ones or tens and were often reported by people who were panicking themselves.
Later studies indicate that many missed the repeated notices that the broadcast was fictional, partly because the Mercury Theatre (an unsponsored cultural program with a relatively small audience) ran opposite the popular Chase and Sanborn Hour over the Red Network of NBC, hosted by Don Ameche and featuring comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, three of the most popular figures in broadcasting. About 15 minutes into the Chase and Sanborn program the first comic sketch ended and a musical number began, and many listeners began tuning around the dial at that point. According to the American Experience program The Battle Over Citizen Kane, Welles knew the schedule of the Chase and Sanborn show, and scheduled the first report from Grover’s Mill at the 12-minute mark to heighten the audience’s confusion. As a result, some listeners happened upon the CBS broadcast at the point the Martians emerge from their spacecraft.
Many listeners were apparently confused. It must be noted that the confusion cannot be credited entirely to naïveté. Though many of the actors’ voices should have been recognizable from other radio shows, nothing like The War of the Worlds broadcast had been attempted in the United States, so listeners were accustomed to accepting newsflashes as reliable.
The problem is that the working script had only three statements concerning the fictional nature of the program: at the beginning, at 40 minutes, and at the end. In fact, the warning at the 40-minute mark is the only one after the actors start speaking in character, and before Welles breaks character at the end. This structure is similar to earlier Mercury Theatre broadcasts: due to the lack of sponsorship (which often included a commercial message at the 30-minute mark during an hour-long show), Welles and company were able to schedule breaks at will, depending on the pacing of a narrative. Furthermore, the show’s technique of jumping between scenes and narratives made it hard for the audience to distinguish between fact and fiction, so it is understandable that they were no more likely to perceive the three statements of the fictional nature of the program as being ‘outside’ the narrative, than they were to perceive the introduction (and subsequent interruption) of the music as being ‘inside’ the narrative.
While War of the Worlds was in progress, some residents in northeastern cities went to ask neighbors what was happening (many homes still did not have telephones). As the story was repeated, rumors began and caused some panic.[citation needed]
Contemporary accounts spawned urban legends, many of which have come to be accepted through repetition. Several people reportedly rushed to the scene of the events in New Jersey to see the unfolding events, including a few geologists from Princeton University who went looking for the meteorite that was said to have fallen near their school. Some people, who had brought firearms, reportedly mistook a farmer’s water tower for a Martian Tripod and shot at it.[4]
Initially Grover’s Mill was deserted, but crowds developed. Eventually police were sent to control the crowds. To people arriving later in the evening, the scene really did look like the events being narrated, with panicked crowds and flashing police lights streaming across the masses.[citation needed]
Some people called CBS, newspapers or the police in confusion over the realism of the news bulletins. There were instances of panic throughout the US as a result of the broadcast, especially in New York and New Jersey.[5]
Future Tonight Show host Jack Paar did announcing duties that night for Cleveland CBS affiliate WGAR. When the phone lines to the studio started to light up with panicking listeners calling in, Paar attempted to calm them on the phone and on-air by saying, “The world is not coming to an end. Trust me. When have I ever lied to you?” When the frightened listeners started charging Paar with ‘covering up the truth’, he then called WGAR’s station manager for help. Oblivious to the situation, the manager advised Paar to calm down, saying it was “all a tempest in a teapot.”[6]
Seattle CBS affiliate stations KIRO and KVI broadcast Orson Welles’ radio drama. While this broadcast was heard around the country, it made a deep impact in Concrete, Washington. At the point where the Martian invaders were invading towns and the countryside with flashes of light and poison gases and the lights were going down, there was a loud explosion and a power failure plunged almost the entire town of 1,000 into darkness. Some listeners fainted while others grabbed their families to head into the mountains. Others headed for the hills to guard their moonshine stills. One was said to have jumped up out of his chair and, in bare feet, run two miles to the center of town. Some men grabbed their guns, and one Catholic businessman got his wife into the car, drove to the nearest service station and demanded gasoline. Without paying the attendant, he rushed to Bellingham, Washington (50 miles away) to see his priest for a last-minute absolution of sins. He reportedly told the gas-station attendant that paying for the gas “[wouldn’t] make any difference, everyone is going to die!”
Because phone lines as well as electricity were out, residents were unable to call neighbors, family or friends to calm their fears. Of course, the real story was not as fantastic as the radio drama: all that had occurred was that the Superior Portland cement company’s sub-station suffered a short-circuit with a flash of brilliant light, and the town’s lights went dark. The more conservative radio-listeners in Concrete (who had been listening to Edgar Bergen’s program on another station) calmed neighbors by assuring that they hadn’t heard about any disaster. Reporters heard soon after of the coincidental blackout of Concrete and sent the story over the newswire and soon the town of Concrete was known worldwide.[7]
Edgar Bergen and Don Ameche, who were continuing their Chase and Sanborn Hour broadcast on NBC, are often credited with “saving the world”. It is said many listeners were reassured by hearing their tones on a neighboring station.

[edit] Aftermath

In the aftermath of the reported panic, a public outcry arose, but CBS informed officials that listeners were reminded throughout the broadcast that it was a performance. Welles and the Mercury Theatre escaped punishment, but not censure, and CBS is believed to have had to promise never again to use “we interrupt this program” for dramatic purpose.[citation needed] However, many radio commercials to this day do start with the phrase “We interrupt this program”.
A study by the Radio Project discovered that some who panicked presumed that Germans — not Martians — had invaded. Other studies suggest that the extent of the panic was exaggerated by contemporary media[citation needed].
When a meeting between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles was broadcast on Radio KTSA San Antonio on October 28, 1940, Wells expressed a lack of understanding of the apparent panic and it was, perhaps, only pretense, like the American version of Halloween, for fun. The two men and their radio interviewer joked about the matter, though with embarrassment. KTSA, as a CBS affiliate, had carried the broadcast.
War of the Worlds and the panic have become examples of mass hysteria and the delusions of crowds.
In 1988, during the weekend nearest the 50th anniversary of the broadcast, West Windsor Township, in which Grovers Mills is located, held a Martian festival. Designed to attract tourist revenue, this included “Martians” firing “Heat Rays” and carnival rides and hucksters’ stalls. The New Yorker magazine review began “It’s not every day we get to see the Martian Women invade…”

Theodemocracy (Philosopies of world rule)


Theodemocracy

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Theodemocracy is a political system that combines elements of theocracy and democracy.
One concept of theodemocracy was theorized by Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (Mormonism). Acccording to Smith, theodemocracy was meant to be a fusion of traditional republican democratic rights under the United States Constitution with theocratic principles.
Smith described it as a system under which God and the people held the power to rule in righteousness.[1] Smith believed that this would be the form of government that would rule the world upon the Second Coming of Christ, which he believed was imminent. This polity would constitute the “Kingdom of God” which was foretold by the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. Theodemocracy was also an influence for the short lived State of Deseret in the American West.

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[edit] Smith’s political ideal

The early Mormons were typically Jacksonian Democrats and were highly involved in representative republican political processes.[2] According to historian Marvin S. Hill, “the Latter-day Saints saw the maelstrom of competing faiths and social institutions in the early nineteenth century as evidence of social upheaval and found confirmation in the rioting and violence that characterized Jacksonian America.”[3] Smith wrote in 1842 that earthly governments “have failed in all their attempts to promote eternal peace and happiness…[Even the United States] is rent, from center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigues, and sectional interest.”[4]
Smith’s belief was that only a government led by deity could banish the destructiveness of unlimited faction and bring order and happiness to the earth.[citation needed] As Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt explained in 1855, the government of God “is a government of union.”[5] Smith believed that a theodemocratic polity would be the literal fulfillment of Christ’s prayer in the Gospel of Matthew, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”[6]
Further, Smith taught that the Kingdom of God, which was the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, would hold dominion in the last days over all other kingdoms as foretold in the Book of Daniel.[7] Smith stated in May 1844, “I calculate to be one of the instruments of setting up the kingdom of Daniel by the word of the Lord, and I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the world…It will not be by sword or gun that this kingdom will roll on: the power of truth is such that all nations will be under the necessity of obeying the Gospel.”[8]
LDS President Brigham Young taught in 1859, “What do the world understand theocracy to be? A poor, rotten government of man, that would say, without the shadow of provocation or just cause, ‘Cut that man’s head off; put that one on the rack, arrest another, and retain him in unlawful and unjust duress while you plunder his property and pollute his wife and daughters; massacre here and there’…” “I believe in a true republican theocracy…”[9]
Evidence points out that a theodemocracy was to be based on the principles extant in the United States Constitution, and held sacred the will of the people and individual rights. Indeed, the United States and the Constitution in particular were revered by Smith and his followers.[10][11] However, in a theodemocratic system, God was to be the ultimate power and would give law to the people which they would be free to accept or reject, presumably based on republican principles. Therefore, somewhat analogous to a federal system, within a theodemocracy sovereignty would reside jointly with the people and with God. While Christ would be the “king of kings” and “lord of lords,” He would only intermittently reside on the earth and the government would largely be left in the hands of mortal men.[12]
Young explained that a theodemocracy would consist of “many officers and branches…as there are now to that of the United States.”[13] But it is known that the Council of Fifty, which Smith organized in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1844, was meant to be the central municipal body within such a system. The Council was led by Smith and included many (but not all) members of the LDS central leadership. However it also included several prominent non-Mormons. Full consensus was required for the Council to pass any measures, and each participant was encouraged and in fact commanded to fully speak their minds on all issues brought before the body. Debate would continue until consensus could be reached. However, if consensus could not be reached, then Smith would “seek the will of the Lord” and break the deadlock through divine revelation.

Daniel the Prophet. “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” Daniel 2:44

Although theodemocracy was envisioned to be a unifying force which would minimize faction, it should not be viewed as a repudiation of the individualistic principles underlying American Liberalism. According to James T. McHugh, Mormon theology was “comfortable…with [the] human-centric vision of both the Protestant Reformation and the liberal Enlightenment…”[14] Smith’s political ideal still held sacred Mormon beliefs in the immutability of individual moral agency. This required most importantly religious freedom and other basic liberties for all people.
Therefore, such a government was never meant to be imposed on the unwilling, nor to be monoreligious. Instead, Smith believed that theodemocracy would be freely chosen by all, whether or not they were Latter-day Saints.[15] This would be especially true when secular governments had dissolved and given way to universal anarchy and violence in the days preceding the Millennium. In fact, Smith and his successors believed that in the religiously pluralistic society which would continue even after Christ’s return, theodemocracy demanded the representation of non-Mormons by non-Mormons.[12]
Theodemocracy is a separate concept from the ideal Mormon community of Zion.[citation needed] Zion was not itself a political system, but rather an association of the righteous. Theodemocracy in turn was not a religious organization, but a governmental system which would potentially include people of many religious denominations and be institutionally separate from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even in a government led by God, Smith seemed to support separation of function between church and state. Nevertheless, while civil and ecclesiastical governments were meant to retain their individual and divided spheres of power in a theodemocratic system, leaders of the LDS Church would have important and even dominant secular roles within the political superstructure.

[edit] History

Joseph Smith, Jr. coined the term “theodemocracy” and organized the Council of Fifty in 1844

Smith first coined the term theodemocracy while running for President of the United States in 1844.[1] It is also clear that this concept lay behind his organization of the secretive Council of Fifty that same year. But it is uncertain whether Smith believed that he could or should form a functioning theodemocratic government before the advent of the Second Coming and the destruction of worldly political systems.
Once formed the Council of Fifty had little actual power, and was more symbolic of preparation for God’s future kingdom than a functioning political body.[16] The town of Nauvoo where Smith organized the Council was governed according to a corporate charter received from the state of Illinois in 1841. The Nauvoo Charter granted a wide measure of home rule, but the municipality it created was strictly republican in organization. Such an arrangement may reflect the Mormon history of persecution, with the form of the Nauvoo government developing as a practical self-defense mechanism rather than as an absolute theological preference.
Despite this, later critics labeled the town a “theocracy,” mostly due to the position of many church leaders, including Joseph Smith, as elected city officials. This was a serious charge, as in Jacksonian America, anything which smacked of theocratic rule was immediately suspect and deemed an anti-republican threat to the country.[17] Suspicions about Mormon rule in Nauvoo, combined with misunderstandings about the role of the Council of Fifty, resulted in hyperbolic rumors about Joseph Smith’s “theocratic kingdom.” This in turn added to the growing furor against the Latter-day Saints in Illinois which eventually led to Smith’s assassination in June 1844, and the Mormons’ expulsion from the state in early 1846.[18]

Liberty Jail, Missouri. Joseph Smith was jailed here during the winter of 1838-39 on charges of “treason.” These charges stemmed from the Mormon War of 1838, but were also due to Smith’s belief in a political Kingdom of God.

Even before coining the name ‘theodemocracy,’ Smith’s teachings about a political Kingdom of God had caused friction with non-Mormons even before the Nauvoo period. As early as 1831, Smith recorded a revelatory prayer which stated that “the keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth…Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come…”[19]
In other words, Smith believed that it was necessary for the Mormons to at least lay the foundations for the Kingdom of God before the Second Coming could occur. It remains unclear what he felt those foundations must entail. Unfortunately, a lack of precise definitions sometimes confused the issue. For instance, in another 1831 revelation, the “Kingdom” seems to be synonymous with the “Church.”[20] Yet many LDS leaders went to great lengths to distinguish between the “Church of God,” which was a spiritual organization which included both social and economic programs, and the “Kingdom of God,” which was fully political and had yet to be fully organized.
In an 1874 sermon, Brigham Young taught that what the Mormons commonly called the “Kingdom of God” actually implied two structures. The first was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which had been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith. The second was the political kingdom described by Daniel, a theodemocratic polity which would one day be fully organized, and once initiated would “protect every person, every sect, and all people upon the face of the whole earth, in their legal rights.”[21] But however defined, Smith certainly did not believe that the Saints would ever establish this kingdom by force or rebellion.
Nevertheless, the very concept of political power enforced by God through any human agency was rejected as obnoxious and highly dangerous by contemporary society. When Smith was arrested in connection with the 1838 Mormon War, he was closely questioned by the presiding judge about whether he believed in the kingdom which would subdue all others as described in the Book of Daniel. Smith’s attorney Alexander Doniphan announced that if belief in such teachings were treasonous, then the Bible must be considered a treasonable publication.
The development of theodemocracy was continued along with the development of Smith’s community. Nauvoo was governed by a combination of LDS church leaders and friendly non-Mormons who had been elected to serve in civil office might mark the city as a theodemocracy in embryo. Further, Smith had anticipated that the Mormons would move west long before his murder, and he may have believed that he could create a theodemocratic polity somewhere outside of the United States in anticipation of Christ’s return to earth. Smith’s “last charge” to the Council of Fifty before his death was to “bear[…] off the Kingdom of God to all the world.”[22]

Brigham Young governed Utah influenced by theodemocratic principles

After Smith’s death, the banner of theodemocracy was carried by his successor Brigham Young to Utah in 1847. While Young’s early conception of the State of Deseret was no doubt based on theodemocratic principles, its practical application was severely hampered after Utah was made a territory in 1850, and further eroded when Young was replaced as territorial governor after the Utah War of 1857-1858. But even at an early stage, the Utah government never fully implemented Smith’s theodemocratic vision. Like in Nauvoo, theodemocratic principles were mainly expressed through the election of church leadership to territorial office through republican processes. As before, the Council of Fifty remained essentially a “government in exile” with little real power. In 1855, one LDS Apostle explained that a “nucleus” of God’s political kingdom had been formed, although that in no way challenged their loyalty to the government of the United States.[23]
Mormon belief in an imminent Second Coming continued throughout the 19th century, and their expectation of the violent self-destruction of governments seemed to be confirmed by such events as the American Civil War. Orson Pratt taught, “not withstanding that it has been sanctioned by the Lord…the day will come when the United States government, and all others, will be uprooted, and the kingdoms of this world will be united in one, and the kingdom of our God will govern the whole earth…if the Bible be true, and we know it to be true.”[5] Thus, while the Saints sincerely proclaimed their loyalty to the United States throughout this period, they also expected its unavoidable collapse along with other worldly governments. This in turn would require the Latter-day Saints to bring order to the resultant chaos and “save the Constitution” by implementation of a true theodemocracy.
By the turn of the 20th century, Mormon expectations of an imminent Apocalypse had largely dissipated, and Utah’s admission to the Union in 1896 required the removal of the last vestiges of theodemocracy from the local government. The Council of Fifty had not met since the 1880s, and was technically extinguished when its last surviving member, Heber J. Grant, died in 1945. Thus, theodemocracy within the LDS church has slowly receded in importance. While Mormons still believe that the Kingdom of God maintains the bifurcated definition espoused by Brigham Young, both church and millennial government, its political implications are now rarely alluded to. Rather, the kingdom predicted by the Prophet Daniel is commonly identified simply with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[24] Theodemocracy has become a principle which, when discussed at all, is relegated to an indefinite future when secular governments have already fully collapsed in the turbulent times preceding the Second Coming. Until such time, injunctions within the LDS church to “build up the Kingdom of God” refer to purely spiritual matters such as missionary work, and Joseph Smith’s political ideal bears little weight in contemporary LDS political theory or objectives.
On the other hand, some point to Glenn Beck as a modern proponent of theodemocracy. [25]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Times and Seasons, 5:510.
  2. ^ Marvin S. Hill, Quest For Refuge, The Flight from American Pluralism, 56 (1989).
  3. ^ Marvin S. Hill, Quest For Refuge, The Flight from American Pluralism, xi (1989).
  4. ^ Andrew F. Ehat. “It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth”: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God, BYU Studies, 20, no. 3, 2 (1980).
  5. ^ a b Journal of Discourses 3:71.
  6. ^ Matthew 6:10.
  7. ^ Daniel 2:44-45.
  8. ^ Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6:365.
  9. ^ Journal of Discourses 6:336-7.
  10. ^ Doctrine and Covenants 98: 5-6 (5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me. 6 Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land;)
  11. ^ Historian D. Michael Quinn notes that the minutes of the Council of Fifty contains hundreds of pages of Joseph Smith’s teachings about the U.S. Constitution and its meaning for the Latter-day Saints. Quinn, D. Michael. The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844-1945, BYU Studies 20, no. 2, 1 (1980).
  12. ^ a b Andrew F. Ehat. “It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth”: Joseph Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God, 4.
  13. ^ Journal of Discourses 6:336.
  14. ^ James T. McHugh, A Liberal Theocracy: Philosophy, Theology, and Utah Constitutional Law, 60 ALB. L. REV. 1515, 1520 (1996-97).
  15. ^ Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900, 11. (University of Illinois Press 1988).
  16. ^ Quinn, D. Michael. The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844-1945, BYU Studies 20, no. 2 (1980).
  17. ^ Nauvoo was designed so as to give the Latter-day Saints a maximum of self-governance. For the nine years previous to their settlement in Nauvoo, the Mormons had been under the political control of non-Mormons. As a result, they had found little redress from the government on any level for mob violence and other injustices inflicted upon them. It was therefore believed that a government which they controlled (in tandem with friendly non-Mormons) could defend them from future persecution. Having relied upon their religious leaders to defend them when they were ignored by the secular government, these same ecclesiastical leaders became natural choices for positions of civic responsibility once the Mormons had gained control of their own municipality. These leaders were overwhelmingly supported in city elections, and were also given position of authority in the local militia, the Nauvoo Legion. However, this arrangement had emerged in Nauvoo years before Smith coined the term “theodemocracy” or organized the Council of Fifty. Indeed, Smith became mayor of the city only after the city’s first mayor, John C. Bennett, was forced to resign his office for various improprieties.
  18. ^ Hansen, Klaus J. The Political Kingdom of God as a Source of Mormon-Gentile Conflict, in Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited 62, 68 (Roger D. Launius and John E. Halwas, eds. 1996).
  19. ^ Doctrine and Covenants 65:2, 6.
  20. ^ Doctrine and Covenants 42:69.
  21. ^ Journal of Discourses 17:156-57.
  22. ^ Andrus (1973, p. 12).
  23. ^ Journal of Discourses 3:72
  24. ^ LDS Bible Dictionary, Kingdom of God. “Generally speaking, the kingdom of God on earth is the Church…The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God on the earth, but is at present limited to an ecclesiastical kingdom. During the millennial era, the kingdom of God will be both political and ecclesiastical (see Dan. 7:18, 22, 27; Rev. 11:15, JST Rev. 12:1-3, 7; D&C 65), and will have jurisdiction in political realms when the Lord has made “a full end to nations” (D&C 87:6).”
  25. ^ Danny Coleman, “American Apocalypse”

[edit] References

  • Andrus, Hyrum Leslie (1973), Doctrines of the Kingdom, Salt lake City, UT: Bookcraft , republished as Andrus, Hyrum L. (1999), Doctrines of the Kingdom: Volume III from the Series Foundations of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ, Salt lake City: Deseret Book, ISBN 1573454621 .
  • Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900. (University of Illinois Press 1988).

[edit]