title: Foxcatcher

text: In 1987, Olympic wrestling champion Mark Schultz speaks at an elementary school in place of his older brother, Dave. Both are Olympic gold medal winners in 1984, but Mark feels overshadowed by Dave. Mark is contacted by philanthropist and wrestling enthusiast John E. du Pont, an heir to the E.I. du Pont family fortune, who arranges to fly Mark to his estate in Pennsylvania where du Pont has built a private wrestling training facility. Du Pont invites Mark to join his wrestling team, Team Foxcatcher, to be paid to train for the World Championship. Mark accepts the offer, with du Pont urging him to enlist Dave as well. Dave declines for the sake of his wife and two children, who are settled where they live, so Mark moves to Pennsylvania alone.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Mark stays in a homey guest house ("The Chalet") and is greeted there later in the night by du Pont. Through training with his new teammates and du Pont's financial support, Mark excels with Foxcatcher, winning a Gold Medal at the 1987 World Wrestling Championships. Du Pont praises him, and they develop a friendship. Du Pont introduces Mark to cocaine, which he starts to use regularly. He confides in Mark, whom he now calls a true friend, telling him how his mother, Jean du Pont, paid a boy to act as his friend. John organizes and funds an over-50 masters wrestling tournament, which he wins after his opponent is paid to lose the final match. However, Jean tells her son that she believes wrestling is a "low sport" and does not like seeing him "being low". One day, Mark and his teammates in Foxcatcher take the morning off from training to watch mixed martial arts (MMA) on TV. Angered by this (as well as Mark's bitter refusal to be in his brother's presence in Team Foxcatcher), John slaps Mark and berates him, saying that he will enlist Dave by any means necessary while also demanding that Mark work out his differences with his brother as soon as possible.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Dave decides to move with his family to Pennsylvania so he can join Foxcatcher. His self-esteem damaged by du Pont, Mark decides to work and train alone, pushing away both John and Dave. As Team Foxcatcher prepares to enter the preliminaries for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, John’s mother is escorted into his gym to watch him coach his team. He awkwardly demonstrates basic maneuvers for her and the other wrestlers. Jean leaves in disgust after seeing him give his back to his student.


title: Foxcatcher

text: At the 1988 Olympic Trials in Pensacola, Florida, Mark performs poorly, losing his first match. Angered by his failure, Mark destroys his room and goes on an eating binge, before Dave manages to break into his room and is alarmed at his brother's condition. They work feverishly so Mark can make his weight class. As Mark exercises, John arrives and attempts to speak with him, but Dave turns him away. Mark competes well enough to win his match and make the Olympic team. Dave notices that du Pont is absent, learning that he left for Pennsylvania after being told his mother died.


title: Foxcatcher

text: After returning to the estate, Mark tells Dave that "you and I both know that I can't stay" at Foxcatcher once the Olympics are over and asks Dave to leave with him. A documentary funded by John about his exploits with Team Foxcatcher is made, during which Dave is asked to praise him as coach and mentor; he reluctantly does so. Mark loses his matches in Seoul, after which he leaves Team Foxcatcher. While Dave continues to live at John’s estate and train with Foxcatcher, as a condition for his remaining, he negotiates an arrangement with du Pont to continue to support Mark financially.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Later, John is sitting alone in his mansion's trophy room watching the documentary about Team Foxcatcher, which ends with Mark complimenting him at a ceremony depicted earlier. John calls his bodyguard and drives to Dave's home, where he finds him in the driveway working on his car radio. As Dave approaches John's car to greet him, John pulls a gun on him and asks him if he has a problem with him before shooting him three times and driving away. Dave's wife, Nancy runs out to her husband, who dies in her arms. Setting a trap for John at his home, the police ambush and arrest him, and the film ends with Mark competing in a cage fighting match with the crowd's cheers ringing in his head.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Bennett Miller began developing the project in 2010 after acquiring the rights to the story from Michael Coleman and Tom Heller. Megan Ellison financed the film through her Annapurna Pictures, also producing alongside Miller, Jon Kilik, and Anthony Bregman. Sony Pictures Classics became the distributor, taking over from Sony's Columbia Pictures, which had co-financed the film. Miller said "it's always been my hope and expectation that they (SPC) would distribute the film." Gary Oldman was first choice for the role of John E. du Pont, but he turned down the role due to his commitment to "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes".


title: Foxcatcher

text: Shooting began in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area on October 15, 2012, in and near the suburbs of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Sewickley Heights, and Edgeworth. With du Pont's mansion, Liseter Hall, having been demolished in January 2013, the filmmakers used Morven Park, a historic estate in Leesburg, Virginia with a similar facade, for exterior filming. An 1899 mansion, Wilpen Hall, in the wealthy Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley Heights, Pennsylvania, served as Foxcatcher's stand-in for the interior filming location for du Pont's Philadelphia-area estate.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Filming also took place in the Pittsburgh area communities of Rector (Ligonier Township), McKeesport, White Oak, and Connoquenessing. The production sought permission to film in West Mifflin Middle School in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. In December 2012, filming took place in Washington, Pennsylvania, Trinity High School, the Petersen Events Center in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland, and the California University of Pennsylvania Convocation Center. Filming was scheduled to last through January 2013.


title: Foxcatcher

text: The scene where the Foxcatcher team watches mixed martial arts on television in 1988 uses footage from Gary Goodridge's win over Paul Herrera at UFC 8, from February 1996. At UFC 9 that March, Mark Schultz made his MMA debut, defeating Goodridge. In the film, he is depicted facing a fictional opponent. Channing Tatum stated that the role was "the hardest acting challenge I've had to date."


title: Foxcatcher

text: A release date for "Foxcatcher" was originally set for December 20, 2013. The date was postponed to allow for more time to complete the film, according to Sony Pictures Classics. The film debuted at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in May 2014, in competition for the Palme d'Or, the festival's highest prize, where director Bennett Miller won the Award for Best Director.


title: Foxcatcher

text: The film made its way through the late-2014 festival circuit, appearing at the Telluride, Toronto, New York, Vancouver and London film festivals. "Foxcatcher" received a limited release on November 14, 2014.


title: Foxcatcher

text: The film opened across U.S. theaters through December 2014 and January 2015. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD March 3, 2015.


title: Foxcatcher

text: The film was given a limited release in North America on November 14, 2014, grossing $270,877 from 6 theaters, an average of $45,146 per theater. The film had its wide release on January 16, 2015, opening in 759 theaters and grossing $9,080 finishing 20th at the box office. Overall, "Foxcatcher" grossed $12.1 million in North America and $7.1 million in other territories for a total gross of $19.2 million, against its $24 million budget.


title: Foxcatcher

text: "Foxcatcher" received critical acclaim, with many praising the performances of Carell, Tatum, and Ruffalo. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 253 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus states, "A chilling true crime drama, "Foxcatcher" offers Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum a chance to shine—and all three rise to the challenge." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Foxcatcher

text: Justin Chang of "Variety" praised the film, writing: "Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum give superb performances in Bennett Miller's powerfully disturbing true-crime saga." Eric Kohn of "Indiewire" also reacted positively, with most of his praise going towards Carell's and Tatum's performances.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Donald Clarke of "The Irish Times" praised Miller's direction, saying that "he [Miller] hits his stride with a stunning portrayal of psychopathy and moral decadence in the unlikely environment of Olympic wrestling." Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised Carell's performance, calling it "career changing."


title: Foxcatcher

text: Budd Wilkins of "Slant Magazine", however, gave the film a negative review, writing that it "offers us next to nothing of utility or complexity about du Pont's pathology."


title: Foxcatcher

text: Mark Schultz's reaction to the movie has been varied due to the intensely personal subject matter. He supported the film in general throughout its creation and served as a consultant. At one point he became angry and criticized Bennett Miller after critics pointed out "homosexual undertones" in the portrayal of the relationship between Mark Schultz and du Pont. Schultz then demanded Miller address the issue "or I will." Schultz said that ""Foxcatcher"s scenes are mostly straight out of my book (except a few). But the relationships and personalities are complete fiction." Several weeks after these statements, Schultz recanted criticisms of the movie, saying ""Foxcatcher" is a miracle. I'm sorry I said I hated it. I love it," and apologized to Miller.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Following Dave Schultz's death, his widow, Nancy, and their two children moved to Northern California, where they still reside. In June 1997, Schultz was posthumously inducted into the U.S. National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Mark Schultz stopped wrestling competitively after the 1988 Summer Olympic games and now lives in Oregon where he coaches wrestling and works for Keppler Speakers.


title: Foxcatcher

text: In November 1999, John du Pont agreed in an out-of-court settlement of the civil suit filed against him by Nancy Schultz to pay Dave's three surviving heirs "at least $35 million," the largest amount resulting from a U.S. wrongful-death suit ever paid directly by one person.


title: Foxcatcher

text: A year after the shooting, du Pont, who had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, went on trial at the Delaware County Courthouse in Media, Pennsylvania. After three weeks of testimony followed by seven days of deliberation by the six-man, six-woman jury to consider eight distinct possible verdicts, on February 25, 1997 du Pont was found guilty but mentally ill of murder in the third degree. He was subsequently sentenced by Common Pleas Judge Patricia Jenkins to 13 to 30 years in prison.


title: Foxcatcher

text: According to then-Delaware County District Attorney (and future U.S. Representative) Pat Meehan, du Pont was the richest American ever tried for murder in the United States.


title: Foxcatcher

text: After a period of further psychiatric treatment at the Norristown State Hospital, du Pont was eventually transferred first to Cresson State Correctional Institution near Altoona, Pennsylvania and later to Laurel Highlands State Prison in Somerset, where he died on December 9, 2010 at age 72. Both facilities were formerly state-run mental hospitals. At the time of his death from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, John du Pont had been incarcerated for murder for almost 15 years.


title: Foxcatcher

text: Foxcatcher Farm was eventually sold and the estate broken up for development. A segment is now occupied by the campus of The Episcopal Academy, a private independent K–12 school founded in 1785, which moved there in 2008 from split campuses located in the nearby Philadelphia Main Line communities of Merion and Devon.


title: Foxcatcher

text: The 90-year-old du Pont mansion, Liseter Hall, in which du Pont was raised and had lived for 57 years, was demolished in January 2013. The mansion stood on a portion of the property that has now been developed by Toll Brothers into a "master planned community of 449 luxury homes" called "Liseter Estate."


title: Organism

text: In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and fungi; or unicellular microorganisms such as protists, bacteria, and archaea. All types of organisms are capable of reproduction, growth and development, maintenance, and some degree of response to stimuli. Beetles, squids, tetrapods, mushrooms, and vascular plants are examples of multicellular organisms that differentiate specialized tissues and organs during development.


title: Organism

text: A unicellular organism may be either a prokaryote or a eukaryote. Prokaryotes are represented by two separate domains – bacteria and archaea. Eukaryotic organisms are characterized by the presence of a membrane-bound cell nucleus and contain additional membrane-bound compartments called organelles (such as mitochondria in animals and plants and plastids in plants and algae, all generally considered to be derived from endosymbiotic bacteria). Fungi, animals and plants are examples of kingdoms of organisms within the eukaryotes.


title: Organism

text: Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 2 million to 1 trillion, of which over 1.7 million have been documented. More than 99% of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived are estimated to be extinct.


title: Organism

text: In 2016, a set of 355 genes from the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms from Earth was identified.


title: Organism

text: The term "organism" (from Greek ὀργανισμός, "organismos", from ὄργανον, "organon", i.e. "instrument, implement, tool, organ of sense or apprehension") first appeared in the English language in 1703 and took on its current definition by 1834 (Oxford English Dictionary). It is directly related to the term "organization". There is a long tradition of defining organisms as self-organizing beings, going back at least to Immanuel Kant's 1790 "Critique of Judgment".


title: Organism

text: An organism may be defined as an assembly of molecules functioning as a more or less stable whole that exhibits the properties of life. Dictionary definitions can be broad, using phrases such as "any living structure, such as a plant, animal, fungus or bacterium, capable of growth and reproduction". Many definitions exclude viruses and possible man-made non-organic life forms, as viruses are dependent on the biochemical machinery of a host cell for reproduction. A superorganism is an organism consisting of many individuals working together as a single functional or social unit.


title: Organism

text: There has been controversy about the best way to define the organism and indeed about whether or not such a definition is necessary. Several contributions are responses to the suggestion that the category of "organism" may well not be adequate in biology.


title: Organism

text: Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction, growth or metabolism. Although some organisms are also incapable of independent survival and live as obligatory intracellular parasites, they are capable of independent metabolism and procreation. Although viruses have a few enzymes and molecules characteristic of living organisms, they have no metabolism of their own; they cannot synthesize and organize the organic compounds from which they are formed. Naturally, this rules out autonomous reproduction: they can only be passively replicated by the machinery of the host cell. In this sense, they are similar to inanimate matter.


title: Organism

text: While viruses sustain no independent metabolism and thus are usually not classified as organisms, they do have their own genes, and they do evolve by mechanisms similar to the evolutionary mechanisms of organisms. Thus, an argument that viruses should be classed as living organisms is their ability to undergo evolution and replicate through self-assembly. However, some scientists argue that viruses neither evolve nor self-reproduce. Instead, viruses are evolved by their host cells, meaning that there was co-evolution of viruses and host cells. If host cells did not exist, viral evolution would be impossible. This is not true for cells. If viruses did not exist, the direction of cellular evolution could be different, but cells would nevertheless be able to evolve. As for reproduction, viruses rely on hosts' machinery to replicate. The discovery of viruses with genes coding for energy metabolism and protein synthesis fuelled the debate about whether viruses are living organisms. The presence of these genes suggested that viruses were once able to metabolize. However, it was found later that the genes coding for energy and protein metabolism have a cellular origin. Most likely, these genes were acquired through horizontal gene transfer from viral hosts.


title: Organism

text: Organisms are complex chemical systems, organized in ways that promote reproduction and some measure of sustainability or survival. The same laws that govern non-living chemistry govern the chemical processes of life. It is generally the phenomena of entire organisms that determine their fitness to an environment and therefore the survival of their DNA-based genes.


title: Organism

text: Organisms clearly owe their origin, metabolism, and many other internal functions to chemical phenomena, especially the chemistry of large organic molecules. Organisms are complex systems of chemical compounds that, through interaction and environment, play a wide variety of roles.


title: Organism

text: Organisms are semi-closed chemical systems. Although they are individual units of life (as the definition requires), they are not closed to the environment around them. To operate they constantly take in and release energy. Autotrophs produce usable energy (in the form of organic compounds) using light from the sun or inorganic compounds while heterotrophs take in organic compounds from the environment.


title: Organism

text: The primary chemical element in these compounds is carbon. The chemical properties of this element such as its great affinity for bonding with other small atoms, including other carbon atoms, and its small size making it capable of forming multiple bonds, make it ideal as the basis of organic life. It is able to form small three-atom compounds (such as carbon dioxide), as well as large chains of many thousands of atoms that can store data (nucleic acids), hold cells together, and transmit information (protein).


title: Organism

text: Compounds that make up organisms may be divided into macromolecules and other, smaller molecules. The four groups of macromolecule are nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates and lipids. Nucleic acids (specifically deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA) store genetic data as a sequence of nucleotides. The particular sequence of the four different types of nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine) dictate many characteristics that constitute the organism. The sequence is divided up into codons, each of which is a particular sequence of three nucleotides and corresponds to a particular amino acid. Thus a sequence of DNA codes for a particular protein that, due to the chemical properties of the amino acids it is made from, folds in a particular manner and so performs a particular function.


title: Organism

text: A bilayer of phospholipids makes up the membrane of cells that constitutes a barrier, containing everything within a cell and preventing compounds from freely passing into, and out of, the cell. Due to the selective permeability of the phospholipid membrane, only specific compounds can pass through it.


title: Organism

text: All organisms consist of structural units called cells; some contain a single cell (unicellular) and others contain many units (multicellular). Multicellular organisms are able to specialize cells to perform specific functions. A group of such cells is a tissue, and in animals these occur as four basic types, namely epithelium, nervous tissue, muscle tissue, and connective tissue. Several types of tissue work together in the form of an organ to produce a particular function (such as the pumping of the blood by the heart, or as a barrier to the environment as the skin). This pattern continues to a higher level with several organs functioning as an organ system such as the reproductive system, and digestive system. Many multicellular organisms consist of several organ systems, which coordinate to allow for life.


title: Organism

text: The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Schleiden and Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells; all cells come from preexisting cells, and cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.


title: Organism

text: There are two types of cells, eukaryotic and prokaryotic. Prokaryotic cells are usually singletons, while eukaryotic cells are usually found in multicellular organisms. Prokaryotic cells lack a nuclear membrane so DNA is unbound within the cell; eukaryotic cells have nuclear membranes.


title: Organism

text: All cells, whether prokaryotic or eukaryotic, have a membrane, which envelops the cell, separates its interior from its environment, regulates what moves in and out, and maintains the electric potential of the cell. Inside the membrane, a salty cytoplasm takes up most of the cell volume. All cells possess DNA, the hereditary material of genes, and RNA, containing the information necessary to build various proteins such as enzymes, the cell's primary machinery. There are also other kinds of biomolecules in cells.


title: Organism

text: The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent organism from which all organisms now living on Earth descend. Thus it is the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth. The LUCA is estimated to have lived some 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago (sometime in the Paleoarchean era). The earliest evidence for life on Earth is graphite found to be biogenic in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Although more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on the planet are estimated to be extinct, it is likely that more than a billion species of life exist on Earth currently, with the highest estimates and projections reaching one trillion species.


title: Organism

text: Information about the early development of life includes input from many different fields, including geology and planetary science. These sciences provide information about the history of the Earth and the changes produced by life. However, a great deal of information about the early Earth has been destroyed by geological processes over the course of time.


title: Organism

text: All organisms are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool. Evidence for common descent may be found in traits shared between all living organisms. In Darwin's day, the evidence of shared traits was based solely on visible observation of morphologic similarities, such as the fact that all birds have wings, even those that do not fly.


title: Organism

text: There is strong evidence from genetics that all organisms have a common ancestor. For example, every living cell makes use of nucleic acids as its genetic material, and uses the same twenty amino acids as the building blocks for proteins. All organisms use the same genetic code (with some extremely rare and minor deviations) to translate nucleic acid sequences into proteins. The universality of these traits strongly suggests common ancestry, because the selection of many of these traits seems arbitrary. Horizontal gene transfer makes it more difficult to study the last universal ancestor. However, the universal use of the same genetic code, same nucleotides, and same amino acids makes the existence of such an ancestor overwhelmingly likely. The first organisms were possibly anaerobic and thermophilic chemolithoautotrophis that evolved within inorganic compartments at geothermal environments.


title: Organism

text: The most commonly accepted location of the root of the tree of life is between a monophyletic domain Bacteria and a clade formed by Archaea and Eukaryota of what is referred to as the "traditional tree of life" based on several molecular studies. A very small minority of studies have concluded differently, namely that the root is in the domain Bacteria, either in the phylum Bacillota or that the phylum Chloroflexota is basal to a clade with Archaea and Eukaryotes and the rest of Bacteria as proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith.


title: Organism

text: Research published in 2016, by William F. Martin, by genetically analyzing 6.1 million protein-coding genes from sequenced prokaryotic genomes of various phylogenetic trees, identified 355 protein clusters from amongst 286,514 protein clusters that were probably common to the LUCA. The results "depict LUCA as anaerobic, CO-fixing, H-dependent with a Wood–Ljungdahl pathway (the reductive acetyl-coenzyme A pathway), N-fixing and thermophilic. LUCA's biochemistry was replete with FeS clusters and radical reaction mechanisms. Its cofactors reveal dependence upon transition metals, flavins, S-adenosyl methionine, coenzyme A, ferredoxin, molybdopterin, corrins and selenium. Its genetic code required nucleoside modifications and S-adenosylmethionine-dependent methylations." The results depict methanogenic clostria as a basal clade in the 355 lineages examined, and suggest that the LUCA inhabited an anaerobic hydrothermal vent setting in a geochemically active environment rich in H, CO, and iron. However, the identification of these genes as being present in LUCA was criticized, suggesting that many of the proteins assumed to be present in LUCA represent later horizontal gene transfers between archaea and bacteria.


title: Organism

text: Sexual reproduction is widespread among current eukaryotes, and was likely present in the last common ancestor. This is suggested by the finding of a core set of genes for meiosis in the descendants of lineages that diverged early from the eukaryotic evolutionary tree. and Malik et al. It is further supported by evidence that eukaryotes previously regarded as "ancient asexuals", such as "Amoeba", were likely sexual in the past, and that most present day asexual amoeboid lineages likely arose recently and independently.


title: Organism

text: In prokaryotes, natural bacterial transformation involves the transfer of DNA from one bacterium to another and integration of the donor DNA into the recipient chromosome by recombination. Natural bacterial transformation is considered to be a primitive sexual process and occurs in both bacteria and archaea, although it has been studied mainly in bacteria. Transformation is clearly a bacterial adaptation and not an accidental occurrence, because it depends on numerous gene products that specifically interact with each other to enter a state of natural competence to perform this complex process. Transformation is a common mode of DNA transfer among prokaryotes.


title: Organism

text: The ancestry of living organisms has traditionally been reconstructed from morphology, but is increasingly supplemented with phylogenetics – the reconstruction of phylogenies by the comparison of genetic (DNA) sequence.


title: Organism

text: Sequence comparisons suggest recent horizontal transfer of many genes among diverse species including across the boundaries of phylogenetic "domains". Thus determining the phylogenetic history of a species can not be done conclusively by determining evolutionary trees for single genes.


title: Organism

text: Biologist Peter Gogarten suggests "the original metaphor of a tree no longer fits the data from recent genome research", therefore "biologists (should) use the metaphor of a mosaic to describe the different histories combined in individual genomes and use (the) metaphor of a net to visualize the rich exchange and cooperative effects of HGT among microbes."


title: Organism

text: Modern biotechnology is challenging traditional concepts of organisms and species. Cloning is the process of creating a new multicellular organism, genetically identical to another, with the potential of creating entirely new species of organisms. Cloning is the subject of much ethical debate.


title: Organism

text: In 2008, the J. Craig Venter Institute assembled a synthetic bacterial genome, "Mycoplasma genitalium", by using recombination in yeast of 25 overlapping DNA fragments in a single step. The use of yeast recombination greatly simplifies the assembly of large DNA molecules from both synthetic and natural fragments. Other companies, such as Synthetic Genomics, have already been formed to take advantage of the many commercial uses of custom designed genomes.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard of Bingen (; ; 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's convent elected her as "magistra" (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, "Scivias". There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the "Ordo Virtutum", is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as "Lingua Ignota".


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, regional calendars of the Roman Catholic church have listed her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard was born around 1098. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her "Vita", Hildegard states that from a very young age she experienced visions.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: From early childhood, long before she undertook her public mission or even her monastic vows, Hildegard's spiritual awareness was grounded in what she called the "umbra viventis lucis", the reflection of the living Light. Her letter to Guibert of Gembloux, which she wrote at the age of 77, describes her experience of this light:


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night. And I am constantly fettered by sickness, and often in the grip of pain so intense that it threatens to kill me, but God has sustained me until now. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it "the reflection of the living Light." And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Perhaps because of Hildegard's visions, as a method of political positioning, or both, Hildegard's parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, which had been recently reformed in the Palatinate Forest. The date of Hildegard's enclosure at the monastery is the subject of debate. Her "Vita" says she was eight years old when she was professed with Jutta, who was the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim and about six years older than Hildegard. However, Jutta's date of enclosure is known to have been in 1112, when Hildegard would have been 14. Their vows were received by Bishop Otto of Bamberg on All Saints Day 1112. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta at the age of eight, and that the two of them were then enclosed together six years later.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed together at Disibodenberg and formed the core of a growing community of women attached to the monastery of monks. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the monastery. Hildegard tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned and therefore, incapable of teaching Hildegard sound biblical interpretation. The written record of the "Life of Jutta" indicates that Hildegard probably assisted her in reciting the psalms, working in the garden, other handiwork, and tending to the sick. This might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra" of the community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. This was to be a move toward poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that rendered her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery. Hildegard and approximately 20 nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Before Hildegard's death in 1179, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz: A man buried in Rupertsberg had died after excommunication from the Catholic Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the church at the time of his death.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard said that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at the age of three, and by the age of five, she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. She used the term 'visio' (the Latin for "vision") to describe this feature of her experience and she recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of "Scivias" were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In her first theological text, "Scivias" ("Know the Ways"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. […] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out, therefore, and write thus!'


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: It was between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier that Pope Eugenius heard about Hildegard's writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credence.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's hagiography, "Vita Sanctae Hildegardis", was compiled by the monk Theoderic of Echternach after Hildegard's death. He included the hagiographical work "Libellus" or "Little Book" begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg. Godfrey had died before he was able to complete his work. Guibert of Gembloux was invited to finish the work; however, he had to return to his monastery with the project unfinished. Theoderic utilized sources Guibert had left behind to complete the "Vita".


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's works include three great volumes of visionary theology; a variety of musical compositions for use in the liturgy, as well as the musical morality play "Ordo Virtutum"; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from popes to emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170s; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the "Lingua ignota" ("unknown language"); and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, "Scivias" (lost since 1945); the Dendermonde Codex, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the "Liber Divinorum Operum". At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's most significant works were her three volumes of visionary theology: "Scivias" ("Know the Ways", composed 1142–1151), "Liber Vitae Meritorum" ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life", composed 1158–1163); and "Liber Divinorum Operum" ("Book of Divine Works", also known as "De operatione Dei", "On God's Activity", begun around 1163 or 1164 and completed around 1172 or 1174). In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic, and then interprets their theological contents in the words of the "voice of the Living Light."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: With permission from Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg, she began journaling visions she had (which is the basis for "Scivias"). "Scivias" is a contraction of "Sci vias Domini" ("Know the Ways of the Lord"), and it was Hildegard's first major visionary work, and one of the biggest milestones in her life. Perceiving a divine command to "write down what you see and hear," Hildegard began to record and interpret her visionary experiences. In total, 26 visionary experiences were captured in this compilation.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: "Scivias" is structured into three parts of unequal length. The first part (six visions) chronicles the order of God's creation: the Creation and Fall of Adam and Eve, the structure of the universe (described as the shape of an "egg"), the relationship between body and soul, God's relationship to his people through the Synagogue, and the choirs of angels. The second part (seven visions) describes the order of redemption: the coming of Christ the Redeemer, the Trinity, the church as the Bride of Christ and the Mother of the Faithful in baptism and confirmation, the orders of the church, Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the Eucharist, and the fight against the devil. Finally, the third part (thirteen visions) recapitulates the history of salvation told in the first two parts, symbolized as a building adorned with various allegorical figures and virtues. It concludes with the Symphony of Heaven, an early version of Hildegard's musical compositions.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In early 1148, a commission was sent by the Pope to Disibodenberg to find out more about Hildegard and her writings. The commission found that the visions were authentic and returned to the Pope, with a portion of the "Scivias". Portions of the uncompleted work were read aloud to Pope Eugenius III at the Synod of Trier in 1148, after which he sent Hildegard a letter with his blessing. This blessing was later construed as papal approval for all of Hildegard's wide-ranging theological activities. Towards the end of her life, Hildegard commissioned a richly decorated manuscript of "Scivias" (the Rupertsberg Codex); although the original has been lost since its evacuation to Dresden for safekeeping in 1945, its images are preserved in a hand-painted facsimile from the 1920s.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In her second volume of visionary theology, composed between 1158 and 1163, after she had moved her community of nuns into independence at the Rupertsberg in Bingen, Hildegard tackled the moral life in the form of dramatic confrontations between the virtues and the vices. She had already explored this area in her musical morality play, "Ordo Virtutum", and the "Book of the Rewards of Life" takes up that play's characteristic themes. Each vice, although ultimately depicted as ugly and grotesque, nevertheless offers alluring, seductive speeches that attempt to entice the unwary soul into their clutches. Standing in our defence, however, are the sober voices of the Virtues, powerfully confronting every vicious deception.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Amongst the work's innovations is one of the earliest descriptions of purgatory as the place where each soul would have to work off its debts after death before entering heaven. Hildegard's descriptions of the possible punishments there are often gruesome and grotesque, which emphasize the work's moral and pastoral purpose as a practical guide to the life of true penance and proper virtue.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's last and grandest visionary work had its genesis in one of the few times she experienced something like an ecstatic loss of consciousness. As she described it in an autobiographical passage included in her Vita, sometime in about 1163, she received "an extraordinary mystical vision" in which was revealed the "sprinkling drops of sweet rain" that John the Evangelist experienced when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). Hildegard perceived that this Word was the key to the "Work of God", of which humankind is the pinnacle. The "Book of Divine Works", therefore, became in many ways an extended explication of the Prologue to John's Gospel.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: The ten visions of this work's three parts are cosmic in scale, to illustrate various ways of understanding the relationship between God and his creation. Often, that relationship is established by grand allegorical female figures representing Divine Love ("Caritas") or Wisdom ("Sapientia"). The first vision opens the work with a salvo of poetic and visionary images, swirling about to characterize God's dynamic activity within the scope of his work within the history of salvation. The remaining three visions of the first part introduce the image of a human being standing astride the spheres that make up the universe and detail the intricate relationships between the human as microcosm and the universe as macrocosm. This culminates in the final chapter of Part One, Vision Four with Hildegard's commentary on the Prologue to John's Gospel (John 1:1–14), a direct rumination on the meaning of "In the beginning was the Word" The single vision that constitutes the whole of Part Two stretches that rumination back to the opening of Genesis, and forms an extended commentary on the seven days of the creation of the world told in Genesis 1–2:3. This commentary interprets each day of creation in three ways: literal or cosmological; allegorical or ecclesiological (i.e. related to the church's history); and moral or tropological (i.e. related to the soul's growth in virtue). Finally, the five visions of the third part take up again the building imagery of "Scivias" to describe the course of salvation history. The final vision (3.5) contains Hildegard's longest and most detailed prophetic program of the life of the church from her own days of "womanish weakness" through to the coming and ultimate downfall of the Antichrist.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard's music. In addition to the "Ordo Virtutum," sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: One of her better-known works, "Ordo Virtutum" ("Play of the Virtues"), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard's compositions were composed, though the "Ordo Virtutum" is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: The "Ordo virtutum" would have been performed within Hildegard's monastery by and for her select community of noblewomen and nuns. It was probably performed as a manifestation of the theology Hildegard delineated in the "Scivias". The play serves as an allegory of the Christian story of sin, confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Notably, it is the female Virtues who restore the fallen to the community of the faithful, not the male Patriarchs or Prophets. This would have been a significant message to the nuns in Hildegard's convent. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima (the human souls) and the Virtues. The devil's part is entirely spoken or shouted, with no musical setting. All other characters sing in monophonic plainchant. This includes patriarchs, prophets, a happy soul, an unhappy soul, and a penitent soul along with 16 virtues (including mercy, innocence, chastity, obedience, hope, and faith).


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In addition to the "Ordo Virtutum", Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the "Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum". The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard's own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories. Her music is monophonic, that is, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Researchers are also exploring ways in which it may be viewed in comparison with her contemporaries, such as Hermannus Contractus. Another feature of Hildegard's music that both reflects the twelfth-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units. Scholars such as Margot Fassler, Marianne Richert Pfau, and Beverly Lomer also note the intimate relationship between music and text in Hildegard's compositions, whose rhetorical features are often more distinct than is common in twelfth-century chant. As with most medieval chant notation, Hildegard's music lacks any indication of tempo or rhythm; the surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation, which uses very ornamental neumes. The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's medicinal and scientific writings, although thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery's library. As she gained practical skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, she combined physical treatment of physical diseases with holistic methods centered on "spiritual healing". She became well known for her healing powers involving the practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones. She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans. In addition to her hands-on experience, she also gained medical knowledge, including elements of her humoral theory, from traditional Latin texts.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard catalogued both her theory and practice in two works. The first, "Physica," contains nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals. This document is also thought to contain the first recorded reference of the use of hops in beer as a preservative. The second, "Causae et Curae", is an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases. Hildegard documented various medical practices in these books, including the use of bleeding and home remedies for many common ailments. She also explains remedies for common agricultural injuries such as burns, fractures, dislocations, and cuts. Hildegard may have used the books to teach assistants at the monastery. These books are historically significant because they show areas of medieval medicine that were not well documented because their practitioners, mainly women, rarely wrote in Latin. Her writings were commentated on by Mélanie Lipinska, a Polish scientist.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In addition to its wealth of practical evidence, "Causae et Curae" is also noteworthy for its organizational scheme. Its first part sets the work within the context of the creation of the cosmos and then humanity as its summit, and the constant interplay of the human person as microcosm both physically and spiritually with the macrocosm of the universe informs all of Hildegard's approach. Her hallmark is to emphasize the vital connection between the "green" health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. "Viriditas", or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person. Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Rather, Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Thus, the nearly three hundred chapters of the second book of "Causae et Curae" "explore the etiology, or causes, of disease as well as human sexuality, psychology, and physiology." In this section, she gives specific instructions for bleeding based on various factors, including gender, the phase of the moon (bleeding is best done when the moon is waning), the place of disease (use veins near diseased organ or body part) or prevention (big veins in arms), and how much blood to take (described in imprecise measurements, like "the amount that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp"). She even includes bleeding instructions for animals to keep them healthy. In the third and fourth sections, Hildegard describes treatments for malignant and minor problems and diseases according to the humoral theory, again including information on animal health. The fifth section is about diagnosis and prognosis, which includes instructions to check the patient's blood, pulse, urine, and stool. Finally, the sixth section documents a lunar horoscope to provide an additional means of prognosis for both disease and other medical conditions, such as conception and the outcome of pregnancy. For example, she indicates that a waxing moon is good for human conception and is also good for sowing seeds for plants (sowing seeds is the plant equivalent of conception). Elsewhere, Hildegard is even said to have stressed the value of boiling drinking water in an attempt to prevent infection.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: As Hildegard elaborates the medical and scientific relationship between the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the universe, she often focuses on interrelated patterns of four: "the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), the four seasons, the four humors, the four zones of the earth, and the four major winds." Although she inherited the basic framework of humoral theory from ancient medicine, Hildegard's conception of the hierarchical inter-balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) was unique, based on their correspondence to "superior" and "inferior" elements – blood and phlegm corresponding to the "celestial" elements of fire and air, and the two biles corresponding to the "terrestrial" elements of water and earth. Hildegard understood the disease-causing imbalance of these humors to result from the improper dominance of the subordinate humors. This disharmony reflects that introduced by Adam and Eve in the Fall, which for Hildegard marked the indelible entrance of disease and humoral imbalance into humankind. As she writes in "Causae et Curae" c. 42:


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: It happens that certain men suffer diverse illnesses. This comes from the phlegm which is superabundant within them. For if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the "flegmata" within his body, from which many evils proceed, but his flesh would have been whole and without dark humor ["livor"]. However, because he consented to evil and relinquished good, he was made into a likeness of the earth, which produces good and useful herbs, as well as bad and useless ones, and which has in itself both good and evil moistures. From tasting evil, the blood of the sons of Adam was turned into the poison of semen, out of which the sons of man are begotten. And therefore their flesh is ulcerated and permeable [to disease]. These sores and openings create a certain storm and smoky moisture in men, from which the "flegmata" arise and coagulate, which then introduce diverse infirmities to the human body. All this arose from the first evil, which man began at the start, because if Adam had remained in paradise, he would have had the sweetest health, and the best dwelling-place, just as the strongest balsam emits the best odor; but on the contrary, man now has within himself poison and phlegm and diverse illnesses.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard also invented an alternative alphabet. "Litterae ignotae" ("Alternate Alphabet") was another work and was more or less a secret code, or even an intellectual code – much like a modern crossword puzzle today.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard's "Lingua ignota" ("Unknown Language") consisted of a series of invented words that corresponded to an eclectic list of nouns. The list is approximately 1000 nouns; there are no other parts of speech. The two most important sources for the "Lingua ignota" are the Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek 2 (nicknamed the Riesenkodex) and the Berlin MS. In both manuscripts, medieval German and Latin glosses are written above Hildegard's invented words. The Berlin MS contains additional Latin and German glosses not found in the Riesenkodex. The first two words of the "Lingua" as copied in the Berlin MS are: Aigonz (German, "goth"; Latin, "deus;" [English "God"]) and Aleganz (German "engel"; Latin "angelus"; [English "angel"])."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Barbara Newman believes that Hildegard used her "Lingua Ignota" to increase solidarity among her nuns. Sarah Higley disagrees and notes that there is no evidence of Hildegard teaching the language to her nuns. She suggests that the language was not intended to remain a secret; rather, the presence of words for mundane things may indicate that the language was for the whole abbey and perhaps the larger monastic world. Higley believes that "the Lingua is a linguistic distillation of the philosophy expressed in her three prophetic books: it represents the cosmos of divine and human creation and the sins that flesh is heir to."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated, and abridged words. Because of her inventions of words for her lyrics and use of a constructed script, many conlangers look upon her as a medieval precursor.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Maddocks claims that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the "Trivium" of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric plus the "Quadrivium" of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transcended the cloister as a space of spiritual confinement and served to document Hildegard's grand style and strict formatting of medieval letter writing.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard "authorized herself as a theologian" through alternative rhetorical arts. Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should exclude novices who were not from the nobility because she did not want her community to be divided on the basis of social status. She also stated that "woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Because of church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the medieval rhetorical arts included preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition. Hildegard's participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women's social participation and interpretation of scripture. The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected abbess and acknowledged prophet, does not fit the stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the monasteries; she preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. (New York: Routledge, 2001, 9). She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely during her four preaching tours. She had several devoted followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote to her frequently and became her secretary after Volmar's death in 1173. Hildegard also influenced several monastic women, exchanging letters with Elisabeth of Schönau, a nearby visionary.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard corresponded with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148. Hildegard of Bingen's correspondence is an important component of her literary output.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization were not completed and she remained at the level of her beatification. Her name was nonetheless taken up in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the 16th century. Her feast is 17 September. Numerous popes have referred to Hildegard as a saint, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Hildegard's parish and pilgrimage church in Eibingen near Rüdesheim houses her relics.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the veneration of Saint Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization," thus laying the groundwork for naming her a Doctor of the Church. On 7 October 2012, the feast of the Holy Rosary, the pope named her a Doctor of the Church. He called Hildegard "perennially relevant" and "an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music."


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. They note her reference to herself as a member of the weaker sex and her rather constant belittling of women. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. Such a statement on her part, however, worked slyly to her advantage because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to amplify the church's condemnation of institutional corruption, in particular simony.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly because of her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. Although her medical writings were long neglected and then, studied without reference to their context, she was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing center that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing. Her reputation as a medicinal writer and healer was also used by early feminists to argue for women's rights to attend medical schools.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Reincarnation of Hildegard has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner lectured that a nun of her description was the past life of Russian poet-philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, whose visions of Holy Wisdom are often compared to Hildegard's. Sophiologist Robert Powell writes that hermetic astrology proves the match, while mystical communities in Hildegard's lineage include that of artist Carl Schroeder as studied by Columbia sociologist Courtney Bender and supported by reincarnation researchers Walter Semkiw and Kevin Ryerson.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Recordings and performances of Hildegard's music have gained critical praise and popularity since 1979. There is an extensive discography of her musical works.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In film, Hildegard has been portrayed by Patricia Routledge in a BBC documentary called "Hildegard of Bingen" (1994), by Ángela Molina in "Barbarossa" (2009) and by Barbara Sukowa in the film "Vision", directed by Margarethe von Trotta.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: Hildegard makes an appearance in "The Baby-Sitters Club #101: Claudia Kishi, Middle School Drop-Out" by Ann M. Martin, when Anna Stevenson dresses as Hildegard for Halloween.


title: Hildegard of Bingen

text: In his book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", neurologist Oliver Sacks devotes a chapter to Hildegard and concludes that in his opinion her visions were migrainous.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Jack Andrew Garry Wilshere (born 1 January 1992) is an English football coach and former professional player who played as a midfielder. He is the current head coach of the Arsenal U18s.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere came up through Arsenal's youth academy and impressed from an early age. He made his first-team debut in 2008, becoming Arsenal's youngest ever league debutant at the age of 16 years, 256 days. Wilshere has earned a number of accolades including the PFA Young Player of the Year award, selection to the 2010–11 PFA Team of the Year, and Arsenal's Player of the Season award, as voted for by fans for his performances in his first full campaign for Arsenal during the 2010–11 season. After leaving Arsenal in 2018, Wilshere joined West Ham United where he remained for two years before departing by mutual consent. He then had short spells at AFC Bournemouth and AGF, before announcing his retirement from playing in July 2022.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere appeared 34 times for England, having previously represented his country at under-age levels. He made his debut for the senior team against Hungary at the age of 18 years and 222 days, the 12th-youngest debutant for England. He represented his country at the 2014 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2016.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and lived in nearby Hitchin, where he grew up and captained his school team. He captained The Priory School football team to County Cup and District Cup glory from Year 7 through to Year 10, and also added the Under 15s National Cup to his list in Year 8. He was a boyhood fan of West Ham United, his idol being Paolo Di Canio.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere joined the Arsenal Academy in October 2001 at the age of nine, after a short spell in the Luton Town youth programme. He rose through the ranks, and at the age of 15 was named the captain of the Under-16s; he also made a few appearances for the Under-18s. In the summer of 2007, Wilshere featured in the Champions Youth Cup in Malaysia and upon his return to England, Arsenal Academy coach Steve Bould gave him a start for the Under-18s first match against the Chelsea Under-18 team. He scored his first goal against Aston Villa Under-18s in a 4–1 win. He then scored a hat-trick against Watford Under-18s, helping his side to an Academy Group A title. He finished his first full season with the Under-18s with 13 goals in 18 appearances, most of which came when he was 15.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: In February 2008, he made his debut for Arsenal Reserves aged 16 against Reading, and scored Arsenal's only goal of the match, which ended in a draw. He scored a memorable goal against West Ham reserves in March, picking the ball up and curling a shot into the top left corner under the watching eye of first-team manager Arsène Wenger. He managed to record two goals and two assists in just three appearances for the reserves at the end of the 2007–08 season. He played in the Under-16s' victory in the Ferroli Cup, being named as player of the tournament. He played an important role in Arsenal's 2009 FA Youth Cup win, scoring goals in the semi-final and producing a man-of-the-match display in the first leg of the final against Liverpool, assisting two goals and scoring himself.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wenger gave Wilshere a place in Arsenal's first-team squad for the 2008–09 season, and he was given the number 19 shirt. He made his competitive debut in a Premier League match against Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park in September 2008, as an 84th-minute substitute for Robin van Persie. At the age of 16 years and 256 days he was Arsenal's youngest-ever league debutant, a record previously held by Cesc Fàbregas. Ten days later, on 23 September, Wilshere scored his first competitive Arsenal goal in a 6–0 victory against Sheffield United in the League Cup. On 25 November 2008, Wilshere came on as a substitute in a UEFA Champions League match against Dynamo Kyiv, becoming the fifth sixteen-year-old to ever play in the competition. In January 2009 he signed his first professional contract, extending it in July the same year.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: In the preparation for the 2009–10 season, Wilshere scored twice and was twice awarded man of the match as Arsenal regained the friendly tournament, the Emirates Cup. On 22 September 2009, he started for Arsenal in their 2–0 League Cup win over West Bromwich Albion. In the 37th minute of the match he was involved in a controversial incident with Jerome Thomas; Thomas pushed Wilshere's face and was shown a red card.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 29 January 2010, Wilshere joined Premier League side Bolton Wanderers on loan until the end of the 2009–10 season. He made his first league start in the away match at Manchester City on 9 February, and scored his first Bolton goal, his first in the Premier League, on 6 March 2010 in the 2–1 victory at West Ham United. He impressed at Bolton, and that club attempted, unsuccessfully, to sign him on loan for another season.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere started the 2010–11 season by making his senior England debut in August, becoming the Three Lions' 10th youngest ever player. He also featured in all three of Arsenal's Premier League matches, starting in the 1–1 draw against Liverpool, the 6–0 win over Blackpool before coming on as a substitute against Blackburn Rovers, comprehensively displaying fine form. Wilshere continued his fine form through to October, however, his month was cut short with a red card in a 2–1 win against Birmingham City on 16 October. He was given his marching orders deep into injury time for a tackle on Nikola Žigić and missed the rest of the domestic month. However, Wilshere participated in European competition against Shakhtar Donetsk scored the Gunners' fourth goal on the night in a 5–1 win.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere was again a regular feature alongside Alex Song at the heart of the Arsenal midfield during the following months. The role meant he had the responsibility of protecting the Arsenal back four against Chelsea. Against the likes of Michael Essien and Mikel John Obi, the 18-year-old was praised for showing great physical strength during the match which Arsenal won 3–1. He made seven appearances during the month of January as he continued his partnership with Alex Song at the centre of Arsenal's midfield. This connection was as such displayed in that of the crunch match against Manchester United which was won 1–0. Then-England manager Fabio Capello described him as "the future" and declared his intention to give him the 'holding role' for England after he watched the 19-year-old hold down a midfield place for Arsenal during the course of the season. Wilshere finished the season competing in all of Arsenal's final fixtures during May, making 49 appearances in all competitions for Arsenal.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: During the summer leading into the 2011–12 season, Wilshere suffered a stress fracture ankle injury during an Emirates Cup pre-season friendly against New York Red Bulls, and during the first few months of the injury, Arsène Wenger said: "The news we have for Jack is very positive", he had said. "No [he will not be back sooner], we will respect the delays. I count maybe mid-February for Jack." Upon having successful ankle surgery, Wilshere's participation for Arsenal was minimum. Wenger further commented on his injury saying: "The first news we have had is better than expected", said Wenger. "He is not in a boot, but I don't know more. His morale looks quite good and I hope it will only be a short setback."


title: Jack Wilshere

text: During further rehabilitation, it looked as if Wilshere would heal, with Wenger saying: "It is difficult to set a deadline on Jack", he said. "We go week by week with him. But his last scan was very good so we don't have worry anymore. It is about progress and fitness, however, I can't set a date." However, Wilshere was ruled out of the remainder of the 2011–12 season. The injury meant that he did not participate in a single club match all season, as well as the 2012 Summer Olympics and England's UEFA Euro 2012 campaign, with Wenger ruling him out further saying: "His ankle is fine and he makes progress, but it is slow progress, [and] we had a chat about that. His progress is not quick enough to go to the Euros."


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere continued his recovery from his ankle injury, which had ruled him out for the whole of the previous season. "We still have to assess them [him and Bacary Sagna] again after the international break", said Arsène Wenger. "After that they should not be too far away from normal training." He made his return to the first team, making his first Premier League start in 17 months (524 days), playing in the win over Queens Park Rangers. The 20-year-old made an immediate impact, producing a typically combative performance that saw him name man of the match. "It felt amazing to be back", Wilshere said. "All the hard work and long days at the training ground have paid off."


title: Jack Wilshere

text: He continued to feature for Arsenal, and made six appearances in December, producing another man of the match performance against that of West Bromwich Albion. The young midfielder committed his long-term future to the club after signing a new contract, to the delight of Arsène Wenger, who said: "Jack is certainly the best known, the leader of this group [of young British players]. We're very happy that we could conclude their new deals at the same time."


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere continued to produce excellent displays in the opening month of 2013, playing a part in all eight of Arsenal's matches and scoring the winner against Swansea City in the FA Cup. His all-action performance against the Welsh side saw him win another man of the match award in that match. Meanwhile, Wilshere was given the captain's armband when regular skipper Thomas Vermaelen went off injured against West Ham. "[Wilshere] is naturally a guy who is not scared of anything on the football pitch and that is usually the sign of a leader", Wenger said. "He wants to win and shows you that. Of course he will be one of the leaders of this club – in fact he already is. A leader is somebody who does everything on the pitch to help his team to win. And he does that." He played the entirety of the North London derby against Tottenham Hotspur before picking up an injury that ruled him out of the month's remaining matches.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: He was used as a substitute in all three of Arsenal's matches in May, making late appearances against QPR, Wigan Athletic and Newcastle United. "Jack will have a small, mild surgery [at the end of the season]", explained Arsène Wenger before the Wigan game. "It is a very small, small, small one. It is to remove a small pin. It will not be a problem. He will need very minor surgery, but we manage that as far as we can until the end of the season. At the moment, we use him only in games when I feel he is really needed."


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere started the season playing on the left wing due to injuries keeping out Arsenal's first-team wingers such as Lukas Podolski, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott. He scored his first goal of the season on 6 October in a 1–1 draw away to West Bromwich Albion. He scored his second goal of the season on 19 October in a 4–1 win against Norwich City at the Emirates. And, on 26 November, he scored his first career brace in a 2–0 win against Olympique de Marseille in the UEFA Champions League, the first being the fastest European goal scored by an English player in Europe's top-tier competition, which was timed at 29 seconds.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: During a match against Manchester City on 14 December, Wilshere gave an abusive hand gesture and was given a two-match ban.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 13 January, Wilshere played a part in both of Arsenal's goals against Aston Villa in a match which Arsenal won 2–1. Having scored in the 34th minute, Wilshere won the ball back from the kick-off and set up Olivier Giroud, who scored Arsenal's second. Wilshere picked up his fourth assist of the season in Arsenal's 2–0 win over Fulham, on 18 January, setting up Santi Cazorla close to the hour mark. Wilshere featured for England's friendly against Denmark on 6 March. However, following a tackle from Daniel Agger, Wilshere was ruled out for just over six weeks after suffering a hairline fracture on his left foot, subsequently missing key Arsenal fixtures against Chelsea and Manchester City, along with missing a FA Cup semi-final against Wigan on 12 April. On 17 May, Wilshere came on as an extra-time substitute in the 2014 FA Cup Final as Arsenal beat Hull City 3–2 at Wembley Stadium for their first silverware since 2005.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 28 May, Wilshere's goal against Norwich was voted BBC Goal of the Season with his goal accumulating 42% of the votes.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 10 August, Wilshere started as Arsenal won the 2014 FA Community Shield by beating Manchester City 3–0. He scored and assisted in Arsenal's 2–2 home draw against the same team on 13 September.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 27 November, Wilshere was ruled out for three months following surgery on his left ankle after injuring the ligaments in a 1–2 home defeat to Manchester United.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 24 May 2015, Wilshere struck from outside the area as Arsenal defeated West Brom 4–1 to clinch a spot in the group stages of next season's UEFA Champions League. The goal would later be voted the BBC Goal of the Season, making Wilshere the first player to win that award in consecutive seasons since the start of the Premier League.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 30 May, Wilshere came on as a substitute in the 2015 FA Cup Final, a 4–0 win over Aston Villa at Wembley Stadium. On Arsenal's victory parade after winning the final, he led fans in a chant calling local rivals Tottenham "shit". Having previously been warned by the FA after a similar chant in the previous season's campaign, he was charged with misconduct.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere broke his fibula during pre-season training in August, and was initially expected to be out for up to a few weeks. However, in September, he underwent surgery on his leg and was ruled out of action for a further 3 months. In February 2016, Wilshere stated that he was working to regain fitness, albeit slowly. He admitted to being frustrated by his injuries, but that he was still motivated to return to the pitch. On 8 April 2016, Wilshere returned to the pitch after about 10 months as he started for the U-21 side against Newcastle United and scored his first goal after coming back from injury against West Brom U-21 about two weeks later. On 24 April Wilshere returned to the Arsenal line up against Sunderland and returned to pitch on the 84th minute replacing Mesut Özil.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 31 August 2016, Wilshere completed a season-long loan move to AFC Bournemouth for the 2016–17 season and was given the number 32, previously worn by midfielder Eunan O'Kane. On 10 September 2016, Wilshere played his first match for Bournemouth, as a 63rd-minute substitute against West Bromwich Albion; his team won 1–0. Wilshere then won consecutive Player of the Month awards for Bournemouth for November and December 2016. On 15 April 2017, Wilshere suffered a hairline fracture to his left fibula after his clash with Harry Kane in a match against Tottenham at White Hart Lane. On 19 April 2017, it was confirmed that Wilshere would miss the rest of the season after making 29 Premier League appearances for Bournemouth and would be treated back at Arsenal. Bournemouth finished the season in ninth place in the Premier League, their highest ever league finish.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: During the summer leading into the 2017–18 season, various clubs showed interest in signing the midfielder, but by mid-August, Wenger confirmed that he had plans for him that season. On 15 September, he made his first appearance for Arsenal since August 2016 as a substitute in the second half against FC Köln in the Europa League. On 20 September, Wilshere made his first start in over 16 months against Doncaster Rovers and played for the full 90 minutes.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 22 October, he played his first Premier League match of the season as a substitute in a 5–2 win over Everton at Goodison Park, assisting a goal for Aaron Ramsey. On 7 December, Wilshere scored his first Arsenal goal in 928 days as the Gunners defeated BATE Borisov 6–0 in the Europa League.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere's performances in the Europa League group stage and an injury to Ramsey saw him start in the Premier League for Arsenal for the first time since May 2016 in the team's 0–0 draw with West Ham United on 13 December 2017. It was also the first time he had completed the full 90 minutes in the Premier League for the club since September 2014. On 3 January 2018, in his sixth consecutive Premier League start, Wilshere scored his first Premier League goal for two and a half years in a 2–2 home draw with London rivals Chelsea.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 19 June 2018, Wilshere announced that he would be leaving Arsenal, with his contract due to expire at the end of the month.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere signed for Premier League club West Ham United on 9 July 2018 on a three-year contract. He made his debut on 12 August in a 4–0 defeat to Liverpool. On 27 August 2019 Wilshere scored his first and only goal for the club in a 2–0 win over Newport County in the EFL Cup. His contract was mutually terminated on 5 October 2020 with one year remaining, after spending two years at the club. In just over two years Wilshere made only 19 appearances for West Ham, including 16 in the Premier League. For much of his time with the club he was injured but, according to the player himself, often he was fit but was not picked to play. On his release, Wilshere said he believed he could still play at the top level of English football.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 18 January 2021, Wilshere returned to AFC Bournemouth on a short-term deal. The move came as a result of him training with the then Championship side since December 2020. On 26 January, he scored in a 2–1 win over Crawley Town in the FA Cup, his first goal in any competition since 27 August 2019. On 6 February, he scored his first league goal for AFC Bournemouth in a 3–2 victory over Birmingham City. He was released by Bournemouth at the end of the season, having made 17 appearances and scored two goals in all competitions during his short-lived return to the club.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 20 February 2022, Wilshere signed for Danish Superliga club AGF on an initial short-term contract until the end of the 2021–22 season. Having been without a club since his departure from Bournemouth, Wilshere had been training with former club Arsenal since October 2021 having also trained with Serie B club Como 1907 previously.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 6 July 2022, AGF announced that the club would not renew Wilshere's contract for the 2022–23 season. On 8 July, Wilshere announced his retirement from football, aged 30.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Since 2006, the England national youth teams played Wilshere in an age group above his age. Wilshere was just 14 when he played for the England national Under-16 team at the Victory Shield in 2006. At the age of 15, he began playing for the England national Under-17 team. He was then named in the squad for the 2009 UEFA European Under-17 Championship in May, starting the first two matches, particularly impressing in the second match against Germany before going off with an injury which kept him out of the final match. After the tournament, he was named among the 10 future stars from the tournament.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 11 September 2009, he also came on as substitute for his England Under-21 debut against the Netherlands in a 0–0 draw.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 7 August 2010, Wilshere was called up to the England senior team for the first time for their friendly against Hungary. He made his England debut in the match played on 11 August 2010, coming on as an 83rd-minute substitute for Steven Gerrard. This made him the 10th-youngest player ever to play for England, at the age of 18 years and 222 days.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 9 February 2011, Wilshere made his full England debut when he started in a friendly against Denmark. He impressed despite playing in an unfamiliar role just in front of the defence, and was praised by manager Fabio Capello. On 25 March 2011, Wilshere made his competitive debut for England in a UEFA Euro 2012 qualifier against Wales at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. He made one further appearance in the qualifying phase but missed the tournament finals due to injury.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 6 February 2013, Wilshere made his first start for England since 2011, having recovered from injury, and was named man-of-the-match as England beat Brazil 2–1 at Wembley Stadium. Wilshere's performance was widely praised, including by manager Roy Hodgson, captain Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard. He was part of England's squad for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, coming on as a 73rd-minute substitute in England's opening Group D match against Italy. He started the final group match against Costa Rica, with England already eliminated from the competition.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere was awarded man of the match in six out of seven UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying matches. His first England goals came on his 28th appearance on 14 June 2015, in a UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying match away to Slovenia, netting two long-range strikes as they came from behind to win 3–2 at the Stožice Stadium in Ljubljana.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere was selected for the 2018 friendlies in preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. On 16 May 2018, he was left out Gareth Southgate's 23-man England squad for the tournament.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 11 July 2022, four days after announcing his retirement from professional football, Wilshere was announced as the head coach of the Arsenal U18s.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: As a player, Wilshere was known for his movement, vision, passing and combination play, as well as his leadership on the pitch. He was described by Arsène Wenger as having "Spanish technique, but an English heart." Owen Coyle, the manager of Bolton during Wilshere's loan spell at the club, praised his ability to "tackle and take a knock", despite his lack of height. However, Arsenal head of youth development Liam Brady noted that Wilshere had problems with his temper early on in his career.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere played in many different positions, including as an attacking midfielder, a winger, and most regularly, as a deep-lying central midfielder. Wenger has said that Wilshere was "a box-to-box player, more than just a holding midfielder". Wilshere's style of play was frequently compared to that of former Arsenal midfielder Liam Brady, while Brady himself identified Wilshere as the latest in a line of technically gifted English players from Glenn Hoddle to Wayne Rooney.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Following his return from injury in the 2012–13 season, Wilshere received praise for his performances and potential from a number of respected players: Barcelona and Brazil defender Dani Alves referred to Wilshere as "a great player", and compared his potential to that of Barcelona legends Andrés Iniesta and Xavi; Former Manchester United and Germany midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger called Wilshere "one of the best players there are" at his position; and Borussia Dortmund and Germany forward Marco Reus hailed him as "a perfect player".


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Former Italy international Gennaro Gattuso said of Wilshere: "He might be not super fast but he's got great skills, he's very technical. When he gets the ball he knows exactly where to send it... he has the mentality of an English player but plays like a Spanish player".


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere was arrested in the early hours of the morning on 29 August 2010 in connection with a "fracas". However, it appeared Wilshere played the role of peacemaker, and so did not face charges but received a caution.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: On 26 September 2013, Wilshere's partner, Lauren Neal, gave birth to their second child, Delilah Grace Wilshere. Wilshere and Neal separated in 2014 and in 2017 he married Andriani Michael. In May 2018, Andriani gave birth to Wilshere's third child, a daughter, Siena.


title: Jack Wilshere

text: Wilshere appeared on the UK and Irish cover of "FIFA 12" alongside Wayne Rooney. On 16 December 2014, Wilshere announced his support for the UNHCR in their fundraising drive to aid inhabitants of the Philippines affected by the Hainan Typhoon.


title: Paul Robeson

text: Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.


title: Paul Robeson

text: In 1915, Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutgers College. While at Rutgers, he was twice named a consensus All-American in football and was the class valedictorian. He received his LL.B. from Columbia Law School while playing in the National Football League (NFL). After graduation, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance with performances in "The Emperor Jones" and "All God's Chillun Got Wings".


title: Paul Robeson

text: Robeson performed in Britain in a touring melodrama, "Voodoo", in 1922, and in "Emperor Jones" in 1925. In 1928, he scored a major success in the London premiere of "Show Boat". Living in London for several years with his wife Eslanda, Robeson continued to establish himself as a concert artist and starred in a London production of "Othello", the first of three productions of the play over the course of his career. He also gained attention in "Sanders of the River" (1935) and in the film production of "Show Boat" (1936). Robeson's political activities began with his involvement with unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students in Britain, and it continued with his support for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War and his involvement in the Council on African Affairs (CAA).


title: Paul Robeson

text: After returning to the United States in 1939, Robeson supported the American and Allied war efforts during World War II. However, his history of supporting civil rights causes and Soviet policies brought scrutiny from the FBI. After the war ended, the CAA was placed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. Robeson was investigated during the McCarthy era. Due to his decision not to recant his public advocacy, he was denied a passport by the U.S. State Department; his income, consequently, plummeted. He moved to Harlem and published a periodical called "Freedom", which was critical of United States policies, from 1950 to 1955. Robeson's right to travel was eventually restored as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision "Kent v. Dulles".


title: Paul Robeson

text: Between 1925 and 1961, Robeson recorded and released some 276 songs. The first of these were the spirituals "Steal Away" (backed with "Were You There") in 1925. Robeson's recorded repertoire spanned many styles, including Americana, popular standards, classical music, European folk songs, political songs, poetry and spoken excerpts from plays.


title: Paul Robeson

text: Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, to Reverend William Drew Robeson and Maria Louisa Bustill. His mother, Maria, was a member of the Bustills, a prominent Quaker family of mixed ancestry. His father, William, was of Igbo origin and was born into slavery. William escaped from a plantation in his teens and eventually became the minister of Princeton's Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in 1881. Robeson had three brothers: William Drew Jr. (born 1881), Reeve (born c. 1887), and Ben (born c. 1893); and one sister, Marian (born c. 1895).


title: Paul Robeson

text: In 1900, a disagreement between William and white financial supporters of the Witherspoon church arose with apparent racial undertones, which were prevalent in Princeton. William, who had the support of his entirely black congregation, resigned in 1901. The loss of his position forced him to work menial jobs. Three years later when Robeson was six, his mother, who was nearly blind, died in a house fire. Eventually, William became financially incapable of providing a house for himself and his children still living at home, Ben and Paul, so they moved into the attic of a store in Westfield, New Jersey.


title: Paul Robeson

text: William found a stable parsonage at the St. Thomas A.M.E. Zion in 1910, where Robeson filled in for his father during sermons when he was called away. In 1912, Robeson began attending Somerville High School in New Jersey, where he performed in "Julius Caesar" and "Othello", sang in the chorus, and excelled in football, basketball, baseball and track. His athletic dominance elicited racial taunts which he ignored. Prior to his graduation, he won a statewide academic contest for a scholarship to Rutgers and was named class valedictorian. He took a summer job as a waiter in Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, where he befriended Fritz Pollard, later to be the first African-American coach in the National Football League.


title: Paul Robeson

text: In late 1915, Robeson became the third African-American student ever enrolled at Rutgers, and the only one at the time. He tried out for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team, and his resolve to make the squad was tested as his teammates engaged in excessive play, during which his nose was broken and his shoulder dislocated. The coach, Foster Sanford, decided he had overcome the provocation and announced that he had made the team.


title: Paul Robeson

text: Robeson joined the debating team and sang off-campus for spending money, and on-campus with the Glee Club informally, as membership required attending all-white mixers. He also joined the other collegiate athletic teams. As a sophomore, amidst Rutgers' sesquicentennial celebration, he was benched when a Southern football team refused to take the field because the Scarlet Knights had fielded a Negro, Robeson.


title: Paul Robeson

text: After a standout junior year of football, he was recognized in "The Crisis" for his athletic, academic, and singing talents. At this time his father fell grievously ill. Robeson took the sole responsibility in caring for him, shuttling between Rutgers and Somerville. His father, who was the "glory of his boyhood years" soon died, and at Rutgers, Robeson expounded on the incongruity of African Americans fighting to protect America in World War I but not having the same opportunities in the United States as whites.