A-Z Browse

  • Saint-Remy, Church of (church, Troyes, France)
    ...the base of the tower records that Joan of Arc, escorting Charles VII to his crowning at Reims, was feted there in solemn dignity in 1429, after receiving the surrender of Troyes. The cathedral of Saint-Remy (14th–16th century) is notable for its 197-ft- (60-m-) tall spire. Troyes’s notable secular buildings include the 16th-century Hôtel de Vauluisant, which houses a hosie...
  • Saint-Saëns, Camille (French composer)
    composer chiefly remembered for his symphonic poems—the first of that genre to be written by a Frenchman—and for his opera Samson et Dalila. Saint-Saëns was notable for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music, and he was also a gifted pianist and organist, as well as a writer of criticism, poetry, essays, and plays. Of his concerti and sympho...
  • Saint-Saëns, Charles-Camille (French composer)
    composer chiefly remembered for his symphonic poems—the first of that genre to be written by a Frenchman—and for his opera Samson et Dalila. Saint-Saëns was notable for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music, and he was also a gifted pianist and organist, as well as a writer of criticism, poetry, essays, and plays. Of his concerti and sympho...
  • Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Church of (church, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, France)
    The most complete surviving set of early Romanesque wall paintings in France is in the church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, where the compositions show great narrative vigour and inventiveness. Quite startling formal mannerisms sometimes occur in provincial French painting of the first half of the 11th century. Two examples are the wonderfully highlighted and emphatically banded and pleated......
  • Saint-Sernin (church, Toulouse, France)
    St. Sernin, at Toulouse, has no fewer than 17 pentagonal chapels, linked by narrow passages. The multiplication of chapels in the later Middle Ages stemmed from two innovations: the inclusion of the chantry, a special place of worship established by a donor for the singing of masses after his death, and the formation of numerous guilds or confraternities......
  • Saint-Severin (church, Paris, France)
    ...of these is the medieval rue de la Huchette, from which the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche (“Street of the Fishing Cat”) leads to the Quai Saint-Michel. Two churches in this area—Saint-Séverin (1489–94), Gothic and humble, and Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre (1165–1220), which belongs to the transitional period between the Romanesque and the Gothic—are......
  • Saint-Simon, Henri de (French social reformer)
    French social theorist and one of the chief founders of Christian socialism. In his major work, Nouveau Christianisme (1825), he proclaimed a brotherhood of man that must accompany the scientific organization of industry and society....
  • Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de (French author)
    soldier and writer, known as one of the great memoirists of France. His Mémoires are an important historic document of his time....
  • Saint-Simonianism (political philosophy)
    ...was some reason to doubt that Louis-Napoléon really welcomed this trend toward conservatism. His writings of the 1840s had been marked by a kind of technocratic outlook, in the tradition of Saint-Simonian socialism. His effort to please the assembly probably derived from his hope that the assembly would reciprocate: he wanted funds from the treasury to pay his personal debts and run his....
  • Saint-Sorlin, Henri I de Savoie, marquis de (French duke)
    brother and successor of the former duke, Charles-Emmanuel....
  • Saint-Sorlin, Jacques de Savoie, marquis de (French duke)
    noted soldier and courtier during the French wars of religion....
  • Saint-Sorlin, Jean Desmarets de (French author)
    French prose writer, poet, dramatist, Christian polemicist, and political figure. One of the original members and the first chancellor of the French Academy, Desmarets opened the long literary battle, since called the querelle des anciens et des modernes (see ancients and moderns), by arguing that the true models for modern French literature were Romance legends an...
  • Saint-Sulpice (church, Paris, France)
    ...of missionaries known as Lazarists. In 1641 Olier established at Vaugirard, Fr., a seminary for the training of priests, which he moved to Paris the following year when he was made pastor of Saint-Sulpice. The school became known as Saint-Sulpice Seminary, and the French government approved the Society of Saint-Sulpice (Sulpicians) in 1645. Olier’s writings, edited in 1856 by J.P. Migne,...
  • Saint-Sulpice, Society of (Roman Catholic order)
    founder of the Sulpicians, a group of secular priests dedicated to training candidates for the priesthood....
  • Saint-Tropez, Pierre André de Suffren de (French admiral)
    French admiral, noted for his daring tactics, who fought the British in Indian waters during the American Revolutionary War....
  • Saint-Trophime, Church of (church, Arles, France)
    ...than 20,000 spectators is still used for bullfights and plays. Excavations at a Roman theatre have retrieved many art objects, including the “Vénus d’Arles” now in the Louvre. The Church of Saint-Trophime was founded in the 7th century and was rebuilt several times. The city of Arles was also home to the painter Vincent van Gogh during one of his most productive peri...
  • Saint-Urbain, Church of (church, Troyes, France)
    Of the many smaller Rayonnant monuments that exist in France, one of the most complete is Saint-Urbain, Troyes (founded 1262). There, one can see the virtuosity practiced by the architects in playing with layers of tracery, setting off one “skin” of tracery against another....
  • Saint-Venant, Adhémar-Jean-Claude Barré de (French engineer)
    The middle and late 1800s were a period in which many basic elastic solutions were derived and applied to technology and to the explanation of natural phenomena. The French mathematician Adhémar-Jean-Claude Barré de Saint-Venant derived in the 1850s solutions for the torsion of noncircular cylinders, which explained the necessity of warping displacement of the cross section in the......
  • Saint-Victor (building, Marseille, France)
    On the opposite side of the port stands the crenellated, square-towered basilica of Saint-Victor, dating from the 11th to the 14th century; it once was attached to an abbey founded about 413 by St. John Cassian to commemorate a 3rd-century martyr and patron saint of sailors and millers. When Saint-Victor was built, the abbey was a temporal power of considerable extent, ruling properties in......
  • Saint-Victor, Abbey of (abbey, Paris, France)
    ...interest in allegory, literal interpretation was cultivated in many centres in the West, often with the aid of Hebrew, knowledge of which was obtainable from Jewish rabbis. One such centre was the Abbey of Saint-Victor at Paris, where Hugh (died 1141) compiled biblical commentaries that fill three volumes of J.-P. Migne’s (1800–75) Patrologiae Cursus Completus (Series Latin...
  • Saint-Vincent de Besançon (abbey, Besançon, France)
    ...Basel, concerned that the fine cabinet of Basilius Amerbach might be exported, purchased it in 1662 and nine years later arranged for its display in the university library. In 1694 the head abbot of Saint-Vincent-de-Besançon in France bequeathed his collection of paintings and medallions to the abbey to form a public collection. To some extent the emerging learned societies also were......
  • Saint-Vincent-de-Paul (church, Paris, France)
    ...showed brilliantly how a language ultimately inspired by the triumphal arches of ancient Rome could lend an appropriate monumental emphasis to a major metropolitan railway terminus. In Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris (1830–46), a church with a giant portico leading to an aisled basilican interior, Hittorff incorporated polychromatic decoration inspired by his discoveries that......
  • saint-wheel (Jainism)
    In the Digambara sect the saint-wheel is called navapada (“nine dignities,” or “nine virtues”) and consists of the pañca-parameṣṭhin plus the Jina (saviour) image, temple, scriptures, and dharma-cakra (sacred wheel of the law). ...
  • Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche (France)
    The factory at Sèvres prosecuted the search for the ingredients of hard porcelain with vigour. They were eventually found, after a prolonged search, at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, near Limoges, in 1769. The new body was first manufactured soon after 1770, although for a number of years it was only used for biscuit figures. Later, it was employed for dishes and vases decorated in a severe but......
  • sainte ampoule, la (vase)
    ...in the coronation service; the ampulla of the regalia of the United Kingdom takes the form of a golden eagle with outspread wings. Perhaps the most celebrated ampulla in history was that known as la sainte ampoule (“the holy ampulla”), at Reims, from which the kings of France were anointed (legend said that it was brought from heaven by a dove for the coronation of Clovis);...
  • Sainte Genevieve (Missouri, United States)
    city, seat (1812) of Sainte Genevieve county, eastern Missouri, U.S. It lies along the Mississippi River, opposite Kellogg, Ill., approximately 60 miles (100 km) south of St. Louis. The first permanent European settlement in Missouri, it was founded by French Canadians possibly as early as 1735 in what was then the Territory of Louisiana. The original settlement, called LeVieux (“the Old...
  • Sainte Ligue, La (French history)
    association of Roman Catholics during the French Wars of Religion of the late 16th century; it was first organized in 1576 under the leadership of Henri I de Lorraine, 3e duc de Guise, to oppose concessions granted to the Protestants (Huguenots) by King Henry III. Although the basic reason behind the League...
  • Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré (basilica, Quebec, Canada)
    ...rheumatism, was reported in the same year. Numerous miraculous cures have been reported since, and the shrine has been visited by pilgrims from throughout Canada and the United States. The present basilica was completed in 1963; constructed in the 12th-century Romanesque-Gothic style, it can accommodate 9,000 worshippers. Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is the headquarters of the French......
  • Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré (Quebec, Canada)
    town, Québec region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies along the St. Lawrence River near the mouth of the Sainte-Anne. Settled about 1650, the town, about 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the city of Quebec, has been a noted Roman Catholic pilgrimage centre since 1658, when its first chapel was built, according to tradition, by shipwrecked French s...
  • Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (French critic)
    French literary historian and critic, noted for applying historical frames of reference to contemporary writing. His studies of French literature from the Renaissance to the 19th century made him one of the most respected and most powerful literary critics in 19th-century France....
  • Sainte-Catherine, Church of (church, Honfleur, France)
    ...writers, a number of whom were born there. The Vieux-Honfleur Museum, housed in the 14th–15th-century Church of Saint-Étienne, contains local maritime and folklore exhibits. The timber Church of Sainte-Catherine, which looks like a ship upside down, was constructed in the 15th century by shipbuilders. It is separated from its wooden belfry, which is in the Place du Marché....
  • Sainte-Cécile Cathedral (cathedral, Albi, France)
    The town’s most important architectural glory is the Gothic Sainte-Cécile Cathedral (1277–1512), which was constructed in brick, without flying buttresses. Between the cathedral and the river is situated the red brick Berbie Palace, a 13th-century archbishop’s palace that is now a museum where the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a native of Albi, are displayed. Belo...
  • Sainte-Chapelle (church, Paris, France)
    ...case in the Church of San Ambrogio in Milan. Few baldachins of the Gothic period remain, and their use outside Italy seems to have been intermittent; there is, however, a rich Gothic example in the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris (1247–50), reconstructed by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century. In the Renaissance the use of the baldachin became more common, and during the.....
  • Sainte-Claire Deville, Henri-Étienne (French chemist)
    French chemical researcher who invented the first economical process for producing aluminum....
  • Sainte-Clotilde (church, Paris, France)
    ...restoration of Saint-Denis. Under threat of this inquiry, which was powerfully supported by the prefect of the Seine district, Barthelot Rambuteau, the council was forced to approve the plans for Sainte-Clotilde in Paris by Franz Christian Gau, plans that they had held up for more than four years. It became a cause célèbre. A furious pamphlet war followed, from which the Gothic......
  • Sainte-Croix Cathedral (cathedral, Orléans, France)
    The Sainte-Croix Cathedral, begun in the 13th century, was largely destroyed by the Protestants in 1568. Henry IV, king of France from 1589–1610, gave funds for its reconstruction, and it was faithfully rebuilt (17th–19th century) in Gothic style. The 18th-century towers were damaged in World War II but were later restored. The cathedral is about the same size as Notre-Dame of......
  • Sainte-Foy (Quebec, Canada)
    former city, Québec region, southern Quebec province, Canada. In 2002 it was incorporated into Quebec city, becoming a borough of the enlarged city. Sainte-Foy borough is situated on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, opposite the mouth of the Saint-Charles River, in the southwestern part of Quebec city. Originally named for a ...
  • Sainte-Foy-la-Grande (France)
    former city, Québec region, southern Quebec province, Canada. In 2002 it was incorporated into Quebec city, becoming a borough of the enlarged city. Sainte-Foy borough is situated on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, opposite the mouth of the Saint-Charles River, in the southwestern part of Quebec city. Originally named for a ...
  • Sainte-Geneviève (building, Paris, France)
    building in Paris that was begun about 1757 by the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève to replace a much older church of that name on the same site. It was secularized during the French Revolution and dedicated to the memory of great Frenchmen, receiving the name Panthéon. Its design exemplified the Neoclassical return to a strictly logical use of cl...
  • Sainte-Geneviève, Library of (library, Paris, France)
    ...Fine Arts to whom he submitted them in 1828. Ten years later he had the opportunity of designing a great public building in which he could express his ideals of modernized classicism. This was the Library of Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, designed in 1838–39 and built from 1843 to 1850; it is one of the masterpieces of 19th-century architecture. The austere arcuated (arched) facade,......
  • Sainte-Hélène, Île (island, Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
    By 1900 Montreal’s population reached 270,000, and it began to annex several cities, towns, and villages on its outskirts. It purchased Île Sainte-Hélène (St. Helen’s Island) in 1908, the site, with two neighbouring man-made islands, of Expo 67. Montreal’s famous ice-hockey team, the Canadiens, was founded in 1909 (and has since won more National Hockey Le...
  • Sainte-Laguë method (political science)
    ...seat is awarded, the number of votes won by that party is divided by two (equal to the initial divisor plus one), and similarly for the party awarded the second seat, and so on. Under the so-called Sainte-Laguë method, developed by Andre Sainte-Laguë of France, only odd numbers are used. After a party has won its first seat, its vote total is divided by three; after it wins subseq...
  • Sainte-Madeleine, Église (church, Paris, France)
    Paris church designed by Pierre-Alexandre Vignon in 1806. The Madeleine, in the form of a Roman temple surrounded by a Corinthian colonnade, reflects the taste for classical art and architecture that predominated in France during the Empire phase of the Neoclassical movement....
  • Sainte-Marie, Buffy (Canadian singer and songwriter)
    ...or Adaptation Score: Leslie Bricusse, Henry Mancini for Victor/VictoriaOriginal Song: “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman; music by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, lyrics by Will JenningsHonorary Award: Mickey Rooney...
  • Sainte-Marie, Cathedral of (cathedral, Auch, France)
    ...very narrow streets called pousterles, is centred on the Place Salinis, from which the Monumental Steps (Escalier Monumental) lead down to the river. The town’s Cathedral of Sainte-Marie (1489–1662) is one of the finest Gothic buildings of southern France. Its chief features are 113 Renaissance choir stalls of carved oak and Renaissance staine...
  • Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette (convent, Eveux-sur-Arbresle, France)
    ...the wall has been built to a double thickness for visual effect and the roof, which appears to be suspended, actually rests on a forest of supports. More brutal and austere is the convent of Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette at Eveux-sur-Arbresle, near Lyon. The square building imposes a fortress of concrete in a natural setting. In the three-tiered facade of glass at la Tourette, Le Corbusier......
  • Sainte-Marthe (church, Tarascon, France)
    ...century and was completed in the 15th century by René I, Count of Provence and titular king of Sicily. An imposing stronghold, it has crenellated walls 157 feet (48 m) high. The Church of Sainte-Marthe (dating mainly from the 15th century) has a portal dating from an earlier, 12th-century Romanesque building. The church’s spire was destroyed during World War II but has been rebuil...
  • Sainte-Maxence, Pont (bridge, France)
    ...Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, builder of some of the finest bridges of his day, developed very flat arches supported on slender piers. His works included the Pont de Neuilly (1774), over the Seine, the Pont Sainte-Maxence (1785), over the Oise, and the beautiful Pont de la Concorde (1791), also over the Seine. In Great Britain, William Edwards built what many people consider the most beautiful arch.....
  • Sainte-Thérèse (Quebec, Canada)
    city, Laurentides region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies along the Montreal-Laurentian Autoroute. The parish of Sainte-Thérèse, dating from 1789, and the community were named for Thérèse de Blainville, daughter of the seignior who made the first land grants for it about 1730. In the workshop attached to the Sainte-Th...
  • Sainte-Thérèse Basilica (church, Lisieux, France)
    ...a frequent subject of dispute during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) and later. The pilgrimage sites in Lisieux include the Chapelle du Carmel, where St. Theresa is buried, and the imposing Sainte-Thérèse Basilica, built in Romano-Byzantine style, begun in 1929 and consecrated in 1954. Formerly a leather and wool centre, the town now has plants manufacturing elect...
  • Saintes (France)
    town, Charente-Maritime département, Poitou-Charentes région, western France. It lies along the Charente River, 47 miles (76 km) southeast of La Rochelle. Saintes was the administrative centre of the Charente Inférieure département (now Charente-Maritime) from 1791 until La Rochelle supplanted it in 1810. Its bishopric was suppressed during the Fre...
  • Saintes, Battle of the (West Indies [1782])
    (April 12, 1782), in the American Revolution, major British naval victory in the West Indies, ending the French threat to British possessions in that area. Setting out from Martinique on April 8, a French fleet of 35 warships and 150 merchantmen under the comte de Grasse intended to descend upon Jamaica with Spanish help. They were intercepted at the Saintes P...
  • Saintes Islands (islands, Guadeloupe)
    ...Grande-Terre to the east, the two being separated by a narrow channel, the Salée River; other islands in the group are Marie-Galante to the southeast, La Désirade to the east, and the Saintes Islands (Terre d’en Haut and Terre d’en Bas) to the south. Two French overseas collectivities—Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin, the French-administered part of th...
  • Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (France)
    village of the Camargue, Bouches-du-Rhône département, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur région, southern France. The village lies along the Mediterranean coast. Its name originates in the ancient Provençal tradition that the early Christian figures Mary, sister of the Virgin, and Mary, mother of St. James and St. John, together with their black ser...
  • sainthood
    a holy person believed to have a special relationship to the sacred as well as moral perfection or exceptional teaching abilities. The phenomenon is widespread in the religions of the world, both ancient and contemporary. Various types of religious personages have been recognized as saints, both by popular acclaim and official pronouncement, and their influence on the religious ...
  • Saintonge (historical region, France)
    former province of western France, covering most of the present département of Charente-Maritime. Its chief city was Saintes. Saintonge was originally the territory inhabited by the Santones, a Gallic tribe. Through the Middle Ages, Saintonge shared the political fortunes of neighbouring Guyenne and Poitou. It was definitively incorporated into France in 1375, and, during the last c...
  • Saintpaulia (plant)
    flowering plant of the genus Saintpaulia (family Gesneriaceae), especially S. ionantha. The genus consists of about 20 species native to higher elevations in tropical eastern Africa. The plants are small, hairy, usually stemless herbs with crowded, long-stalked leaves....
  • Saintpaulia ionantha (plant)
    flowering plant of the genus Saintpaulia (family Gesneriaceae), especially S. ionantha. The genus consists of about 20 species native to higher elevations in tropical eastern Africa. The plants are small, hairy, usually stemless herbs with crowded, long-stalked leaves....
  • Saints (British religious group)
    group of evangelical Christians, prominent in England from about 1790 to 1830, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and promoted missionary work at home and abroad. The group centred on the church of John Venn, rector of Clapham in south London. Its members included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, James Stephen, Zachary Macaulay, and others. Many were members of Par...
  • Saints, Assembly of (English history)
    ...Parliament” as a constituent body capable of establishing a Puritan republic. But just as he had considered the previous Parliament to be slow and self-seeking, he came to think that the Assembly of Saints, as it was called, was too hasty and too radical. He also resented the fact that it did not consult him. Later he described this experiment of choosing Saints to govern as an......
  • saints, communion of (Christian theology)
    in Christian theology, the fellowship of those united to Jesus Christ in Baptism; the phrase is first found in the 5th-century version of the Apostles’ Creed by Nicetas of Remesiana. The original Greek phrase has been translated both as a sharing of the benefits of membership in the church and as a communion with the saints (in the biblical sense of all...
  • saints, cult of the (Christianity)
    ...the 12th century, institutional structures for official acts of canonization were established, but the enthusiasm for the saints remained an important part of both popular devotion and the official cult of the saints (the system of religious belief and ritual surrounding the saints). The cult of the saints was celebrated by clergy and laity in the observance of feast days and processions, the.....
  • Saints Cyril and Methodius, Brotherhood of (Ukrainian literary organization)
    ...Society of United Slavs, believed in a federation of free Slav peoples, including some of those living under Austrian and Turkish rule. In 1845 this idea was put forward in a different form in the Brotherhood of SS. Cyril and Methodius, in Kiev. This group, among whose members was the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, believed that a federation of Slav peoples should include the Ukrainians,......
  • Saints Marcellinus and Peter (church, Seligenstadt, Germany)
    ...which are lower in height than the nave but higher than the aisles; like the nave, they end in semicircular apses. The church had a tripartite narthex no longer in existence. In the church of Saints Marcellinus and Peter at Seligenstadt (830–840) only the three-aisle nave on pillars is original. In the style of the great basilicas of Rome, this church had a hall-shaped, wide......
  • Saints Maria e Donato (basilica, Murano, Italy)
    The most important building in Murano is the basilica of Saints Maria e Donato. In its present state it dates from the 13th century, having been rebuilt several times since its founding in the 7th century. Notable for the beautiful external architecture of the apse, it contains a spring-beam roof and most of the original floor. The mosaic in the apse showing the Virgin Mary against a gold......
  • Saints Maurice and Catherine, cathedral of (cathedral, Magdeburg, Germany)
    ...German reunification, the city centre has uncharacteristically wide streets and mid-to-late 20th-century architecture throughout. The Romanesque and Gothic cathedral (1209–1520) dedicated to Saints Maurice and Catherine has survived, and the Monastery of Our Lady (begun c. 1070), the oldest church in the city, has been restored. The Magdeburg Rider, t...
  • Saints Peter and Paul, Cathedral of (cathedral, Worms, Germany)
    ...wine trade. Its industries include the manufacture of leather, machinery, chemicals, and synthetic fibre. Although Worms was severely damaged in World War II, it was subsequently rebuilt. The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul ranks with those of Speyer and Mainz as one of the finest Romanesque churches of the Rhine. The original building was consecrated in 1018 and was completed and......
  • Saints Peter and Paul, Cathedral of (cathedral, Naumburg, Germany)
    But of all this German work, by far the most interesting complex is in the west choir (c. 1250) of Naumburg cathedral. Here, the desire for dramatic tension is exploited to good effect, since the figures—a series of lay founders in contemporary costume—are given a realistic place in the architecture, alongside a triforium gallery. Naumburg also has a notable amount of......
  • Saints Peter and Paul, Church of (church, Weimar, Germany)
    ...the works of Schiller and William Shakespeare. Other notable landmarks include the Wittums Palace (1767), Weimar Castle (1790–1803), Belvedere Castle (1724–32), Tiefurt Castle, and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul (with an altarpiece by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son), sometimes called the Herder Church for its association with the critic and theologian Johann Gottfried vo...
  • Saints Peter and Paul, Feast of (religious festival)
    ...the festa to celebrate the patron saint of a village, marked by processions and fireworks. Good Friday also is celebrated with colourful processions in several villages. Imnarja, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, which takes place on June 29, is the principal folk festival; it is highlighted by folksinging (għana) contests and fried-rabbit picnics at Buskett. The....
  • saint’s play (dramatic genre)
    one of three principal kinds of vernacular drama of the European Middle Ages (along with the mystery play and the morality play). A miracle play presents a real or fictitious account of the life, miracles, or martyrdom of a saint. The genre evolved from liturgical offices developed during the 10th and 11th centuries to enhance calendar festi...
  • Saints, Proper of (Christianity)
    ...church year consists of two concurrent cycles: (1) the Proper of Time (Temporale), or seasons and Sundays that revolve around the movable date of Easter and the fixed date of Christmas, and (2) the Proper of Saints (Sanctorale), other commemorations on fixed dates of the year. Every season and holy day is a celebration, albeit with different emphases, of the total revelation and redemption of.....
  • Saints Sergius and Bacchus (church, Constantinople)
    ...where the ideas of longitudinal basilica and centralized building were combined in a wholly original manner. The distinctive feature of all these structures was the form of roof, the dome. In Saints Sergius and Bacchus it stood on an octagonal base, so that no great problems were involved in converting the angular ground plan to a circle on which the dome could rest. But in the others the......
  • saints, veneration of the (religion)
    The celebration of days in honour of the saints or “heroes of the faith” is an extension of the devotion paid to Christ, since they are commemorated for the virtues in life and death that derive from his grace and holiness. Originally each local church had its own calendar. Standardization came with the fixation of the rites of the great patriarchal sees, which began in the 4th......
  • Saintsbury, George (British critic and historian)
    the most influential English literary historian and critic of the early 20th century. His lively style and wide knowledge helped make his works both popular and authoritative....
  • Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman (British critic and historian)
    the most influential English literary historian and critic of the early 20th century. His lively style and wide knowledge helped make his works both popular and authoritative....
  • Sa’inu (ancient city, Egypt)
    ancient Egyptian city on the easternmost mouth of the Nile River (long silted up). The Egyptians likely called it Saʾinu and also Per-Amon (House of Amon), whence perhaps the site’s modern name, Tell Farama. It lies about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Port Said, in the Sinai Peninsula. In the Bible the city is called (Ezekiel 30:15) “the stronghold of Egypt” (the name b...
  • Saiokuken (Japanese poet)
    Japanese renga (“linked-verse”) poet and chronicler of the late Muromachi period (1338–1573) who, along with two other renga poets, wrote Minase sangin hyakuin (1488; Minase Sangin Hyakuin: A Poem of One Hundred Links Composed by Three Poets at Minase)....
  • Saionji Kimmochi (prime minister of Japan)
    the longest-surviving member of the oligarchy that governed Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868), which had overthrown the ruling Tokugawa family and formally reestablished the authority of the emperor. As prime minister and elder statesman (genro), he attempted to moderate his country’s increasing militarism....
  • Saipan (island, Northern Mariana Islands)
    island, one of the Mariana Islands, part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States, in the western Pacific Ocean. Saipan served as headquarters of the U.S.-administered United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from 1962 to 1986. The island is hilly, rising to an el...
  • Saiph (star)
    ...translations of the Greek descriptions. The stars of Orion illustrate the various derivations: Rigel, from rijl al-Jawzah, “Leg of Orion,” Mintaka, the “Belt,” and Saiph, the “Sword,” all follow the Ptolemaic figure; Betelgeuse, from yad al-Jawzah, is an alternative non-Ptolemaic description meaning “hand of Orion”; and Bella...
  • Ṣāʿiqah, al- (Syrian guerrilla organization)
    Syrian guerrilla force sponsored by the Syrian government with the purpose of promoting the interests of the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Baʿth Party. Al-Ṣāʿiqah was founded by the party in 1968 and has maintained a socialist ideology. Chosen from the Palestinians in the upper ranks of the Syrian army, members viewed al-Ṣāʿiqa...
  • Sais (ancient city, Egypt)
    ancient Egyptian city (Sai) in the Nile River delta on the Canopic (Rosetta) Branch of the Nile River, in Al-Gharbīyah muḥāfaẓah (governorate). From prehistoric times Sais was the location of the chief shrine of Neith, the goddess of war and of the loom. The city became politically important late in its history. In the late 8th cen...
  • SAIS (Peruvian organization)
    ...in the tropical Amazon environment. Peru has deviated by creating collective administrations of the nationalized feudal estates. The title resides in the nation, and the estates are run by the Agricultural Societies of Social Interest (SAIS), a mechanism devised to avoid breaking up economically efficient enterprises rather than to modify the tenure institutions....
  • saisei-itchi (Japanese religion)
    State Shintō was founded on the ancient precedent of saisei itchi, the unity of religion and government. Traditionally, the kami (gods, or sacred powers), the Japanese emperor, the citizens, and the nation were all considered descendants of common ancestors, and the prosperity of all was assured by coincidence between human politics and the will of the gods. But......
  • saishu (Japanese priestess)
    In the Grand Shrine of Ise, the supreme priestess, the saishu (“chief of the religious ceremonies”), ranks even above the supreme priest, the dai-gūji. Formerly the post of supreme priestess was always filled by an unmarried princess of the Imperial family. She devoted herself entirely to the religious ceremonies (matsuri, q.v.) of the Ise Shrine....
  • “Saison au Congo, Une” (work by Césaire)
    ...political: La Tragédie du Roi Christophe (1963; The Tragedy of King Christophe), a drama of decolonization in 19th-century Haiti, and Une Saison au Congo (1966; A Season in the Congo), the epic of the 1960 Congo rebellion and of the assassination of the Congolese political leader Patrice Lumumba. Both depict the fate of black power as forever doomed to......
  • “Saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel, Une” (work by Blais)
    ...Prochain épisode (1965; “Next Episode”; Eng. trans. Prochain Episode). Marie-Claire Blais’s Une Saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel), which won the Prix Médicis, presented a scathing denunciation of Quebec rural life, and Godbout’s Salut, Galarneau!...
  • “Saison en enfer, Une” (work by Rimbaud)
    ...April 1873 Rimbaud left him to return to his family, and it was at their farm at Roche, near Charleville, that he began to apply himself to another major work, Une Saison en enfer (1873; A Season in Hell). A month later Verlaine persuaded Rimbaud to accompany him to London. Rimbaud treated Verlaine with sadistic cruelty, and after more wanderings and quarrels, he rejoined......
  • Saison Group (Japanese conglomerate)
    ...Ltd., a large chain of discount department stores, and he diversified into a vast array of other retailing, financial, and leisure-time services. His more than 100 companies were unified in the Saison Group conglomerate, which in 1988 purchased the Inter-Continental Hotel chain of luxury hotels in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. An unconventional and artistically inclined......
  • Saisons, Société des (revolutionary organization, France)
    ...groups of conspirators. His taste for secret societies stemmed from this conviction; he organized first the Société des Familles (“Society of Families”) and then the Société des Saisons (“Society of the Seasons”). The latter society’s disastrous attempt at insurrection on May 12, 1839, was the classic prototype of the Blanquist surp...
  • Saisset, Bernard (French bishop)
    first bishop of Pamiers (in present-day Ariège département, southern France), an aggressive and outspoken prelate whose activities exacerbated the disputes between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV the Fair of France....
  • Śaiśunāga dynasty (Indian dynasty)
    ancient ruling family in the Indian kingdom of Magadha. The Śaiśunāga line of kings followed the reigns of Bimbasāra and Ajātaśatru (both contemporaries of the Buddha). The line is generally placed immediately before the Nandas and is dated roughly from the mid-5th to the mid-4th century bc....
  • Saitama (Japan)
    capital of Saitama ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan. Situated in the southeastern part of the prefecture, the city was created in 2001 through the merger of the former cities of Urawa, Yono, and Ōmiya. It lies near the northern limit of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area, about 20 miles (32 km) nort...
  • Saitama (prefecture, Japan)
    ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan. The eastern portion of the prefecture lies on the Kantō Plain, north of Tokyo metropolis. The land rises toward the west, culminating in the peaks of the Kantō Range along Saitama’s western border. Fruits, vegetables, and flowers are ...
  • Saite dynasty (ancient Egyptian history)
    The Saite dynasty generally pursued a foreign policy that avoided territorial expansion and tried to preserve the status quo. Assyria’s power was waning. In 655 bc Psamtik I marched into Philistia in pursuit of the Assyrians, and in 620 bc he apparently repulsed Scythians from the Egyptian frontier. During the reign of his son Necho II (610–595 b...
  • saithe (fish)
    (Pollachius, or Gadus, virens), North Atlantic fish of the cod family, Gadidae. It is known as saithe, or coalfish, in Europe. The pollock is an elongated fish, deep green with a pale lateral line and a pale belly. It has a small chin barbel and, like the cod, has three dorsal and two anal fins. A carnivorous, lively, usually schooling fish, it grows to about 1.1 m (3.5 feet)...
  • Saitō Jūrōbei (Japanese artist)
    one of the most original Japanese artists of the Ukiyo-e movement (paintings and prints of the “floating world”)....
  • Saitō Makoto, Shishaku (prime minister of Japan)
    Japanese naval officer and statesman who was prime minister of Japan (1932–34) and twice governor-general of Korea (1919–27, 1929–31)....
  • Saitō Mokichi (Japanese poet)
    ...on new life, thanks largely to the efforts of Masaoka Shiki, a distinguished late 19th-century poet in both forms but of even greater importance as a critic. Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku, and Saitō Mokichi were probably the most successful practitioners of the new tanka. Akiko’s collection Midaregami (1901; Tangled Hair) stirred...

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