title: Black church

text: Free blacks in both northern and southern cities formed their own congregations and churches before the end of the 18th century. They organized independent black congregations and churches to practice religion apart from white oversight. Along with white churches opposed to slavery, free blacks in Philadelphia provided aid and comfort to slaves who escaped and helped all new arrivals adjust to city life.


title: Black church

text: In 1787 in Philadelphia, the black church was born out of protest and revolutionary reaction to racism. Resenting being relegated to a segregated gallery at St. George's Methodist Church, Methodist preachers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and other black members, left the church and formed the Free African Society. It was at first non-denominational and provided mutual aid to the free black community. Over time, Jones began to lead Episcopal services there. He led most of its members to create the African Church, in the Episcopal tradition. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866).


title: Black church

text: In the fall of 1792, several black leaders attending services at St. George's Methodist Church and had recently helped to expand the church. The black churchgoers were told to sit upstairs in the new gallery. When they mistakenly sat in an area not designated for blacks, they were forcibly removed from the seats they had helped build. According to Allen, "...we all went out of the church in one body, and they were no longer plagued by us". While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia... It was accepted as a parish and on July 17, 1794 became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. In 1804 Jones was the first black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866).


title: Black church

text: Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). By July 29, 1794, they also had a building ready for their worship. The church adopted the slogan: "To Seek for Ourselves." In recognition of his leadership and preaching, in 1799 Bishop Francis Asbury ordained Allen as a Methodist minister. Allen and the AME Church were active in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in the North, and promoted education, starting schools for black children.


title: Black church

text: Finding that other black congregations in the region were also seeking independence from white control, in 1816 Allen organized a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black denomination. He was elected its first bishop in 1816. While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, Allen. Jones, and others began soliciting funds, again with the help of Rush. Their appeals met with resistance from white church leaders, many of whom had been supportive of the black community, but disapproved of a separate black church.


title: Black church

text: Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest black congregations in the country, both organized before 1800 as a result of the Great Awakening: First Baptist Church (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797). Each congregation moved from rural areas into Petersburg into their own buildings in the early 19th century. Their two black Baptist congregations were the first of that denomination in the city and they grew rapidly.


title: Black church

text: In Savannah, Georgia, a black Baptist congregation was organized by 1777, by George Liele. A former slave, he had been converted by ordained Baptist minister Matthew Moore. His early preaching was encouraged by his master, Henry Sharp. Sharp, a Baptist deacon and Loyalist, freed Liele before the American Revolutionary War began. Liele had been preaching to slaves on plantations, but made his way to Savannah, where he organized a congregation. After 1782, when Liele left the city with the British, Andrew Bryan led what became known as the First African Baptist Church. By 1800 the church had 700 members, and by 1830 it had grown to more than 2400 members. Soon it generated two new black congregations in the city.


title: Black church

text: Before 1850, First African Baptist in Lexington, Kentucky grew to 1,820 members, making it the largest congregation in that state. This was under its second pastor, Rev. London Ferrill, a free black, and occurred as Lexington was expanding rapidly as a city. First African Baptist was admitted to the Elkhorn Baptist Association in 1824, where it came somewhat under oversight of white congregations. In 1841, Saint Augustine Catholic Church was established by the Creole community of New Orleans. This church is the oldest black Catholic parish in the United States. In 1856, First African Baptist built a large Italianate church, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. By 1861 the congregation numbered 2,223 members.


title: Black church

text: After emancipation, Northern churches founded by free blacks, as well as those of predominantly white denominations, sent missions to the South to minister to newly freed slaves, including to teach them to read and write. For instance, Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned to Charleston, South Carolina in April 1865 with nine missionaries. He organized committees, associations and teachers to reach freedmen throughout the countryside. In the first year after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church gained 50,000 congregants.


title: Black church

text: By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners and preachers had brought more than 250,000 new adherents into the church. While it had a northern base, the church was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many members who had different practices and traditions. Similarly, within the first decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded in New York, also gained tens of thousands of Southern members. These two independent black denominations attracted the most new members in the South.


title: Black church

text: In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adopted the Methodist Doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of South Carolina. Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than ten times that many in 50 years.


title: Black church

text: The Church of God, with its beginnings in 1881, held that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church", with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there. Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed." When Church of God ministers, such as Lena Shoffner, visited the camp meetings of other denominations, the rope in the congregation that separated whites and blacks was untied "and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray". Though outsiders would sometimes attack Church of God services and camp meetings for their stand for racial equality, Church of God members were "undeterred even by violence" and "maintained their strong interracial position as the core of their message of the unity of all believers".


title: Black church

text: At the same time, black Baptist churches, well-established before the Civil War, continued to grow and add new congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1895 church officials organized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention. This was the unification of three national black conventions, organized in 1880 and the 1890s. It brought together the areas of mission, education and overall cooperation. Despite founding of new black conventions in the early and later 20th century, this is still the largest black religious organization in the United States. These churches blended elements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.


title: Black church

text: The postwar years were marked by a separatist impulse as blacks exercised the right to move and gather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternal orders and fire companies. In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities, and their members' quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their own affairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hidden from white eyes.


title: Black church

text: Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the black and white communities. The black church established and/or maintained the first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public services. For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing the race. There grew to be a tension between black leaders from the North and people in the South who wanted to run their churches and worship in their own way.


title: Black church

text: Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black church asserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. These societies provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.


title: Black church

text: Black churches held a leadership role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Their history as a centers of strength for the black community made them natural leaders in this moral struggle. In addition they had often served as links between the black and white worlds. Notable minister-activists of the 1950s and 1960s included Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker and C. T. Vivian.


title: Black church

text: After the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, Black Catholics began organizing en masse, beginning with the clergy that April. A Black Catholic revolution soon broke out, fostering the integration of the traditions of the larger (Protestant) Black Church into Black Catholic parishes. Soon there were organizations formed for Black religious sisters (1968), permanent deacons, seminarians, and a brand-new National Black Catholic Congress organization in 1987, reviving the late 19th-century iteration of the same. This era saw a massive increase in Black priests, and the first crop of Black bishops and archbishops.


title: Black church

text: One formalization of theology based on themes of black liberation is the black theology movement. Its origins can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an "ad hoc" group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full-page ad in "The New York Times" to publish their "Black Power Statement", which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.


title: Black church

text: Black liberation theology was first systematized by James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. They are considered the leading theologians of this system of belief, although now there are many scholars who have contributed a great deal to the field. In 1969, Cone published the seminal work that laid the basis for black liberation theology, "Black Theology and Black Power". In the book, Cone asserted that not only was black power not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact, the Gospel message for all of 20th century America.


title: Black church

text: In 2008, approximately one quarter of African-American churches followed a liberation theology. The theology was thrust into the national spotlight after a controversy arose related to preaching by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Wright had built Trinity into a successful megachurch following the theology developed by Cone, who has said that he would "point to [Trinity] first" as an example of a church's embodying his message.


title: Black church

text: Scholars have seen parallels between the Black church and the 21st Century Black Girl Magic movement, with social media interactions involving the Black Girl Magic hashtag seen as a modern extension of "[t]he Black church traditions of testimony, exhortation, improvisation, call and response, and song," which Black women can use to form a "cyber congregation."


title: Black church

text: From the Black theology movement also came a more feminine form, in reaction to both the male-dominated nature of the field and the White-dominated nature of Feminist theology. Major figures in this reaction included Afro-Latino thinkers as well as Black women. Black Catholic womanists also played a major role, including Sr Jamie Phelps, OP, M. Shawn Copeland, and Diana L. Hayes.


title: Black church

text: The black church continues to be a source of support for members of the African-American community. When compared to American churches as a whole, black churches tend to focus more on social issues such as poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries and racism. A study in 1996 found that black Christians were more likely to have heard about health care reform from their pastors than were white Christians.


title: Black church

text: Most surveys indicate that while blacks tend to vote Democratic in elections, members of traditionally African-American churches are generally more socially conservative than white Protestants as a whole. Same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues have been among the leading causes for activism in some black churches, though a majority of black Protestants remain opposed to this stance. Nevertheless, some denominations have been discussing this issue. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church prohibits its ministers from officiating same-sex weddings, but it does not have a clear policy on ordination.


title: Black church

text: Some members of the black clergy have not accepted same-sex marriage. A group known as the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), maintains their disdain for gay marriage. The CAAP president, Reverend William Owens, claims that the marriage equality act will cause corruption within the United States. The organization insists that a real union is between a man and a woman. They also believe that the law prohibiting gay marriage should have been upheld. The CAAP members agree that the Supreme Court had no right to overturn the constitutional ruling.


title: Black church

text: Although black urban neighborhoods in cities that have deindustrialized may have suffered from civic disinvestment, with lower quality schools, less effective policing and fire protection, there are institutions that help to improve the physical and social capital of black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. For some African Americans the kind of spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of poverty and racism.


title: Black church

text: Churches may also do work to improve the physical infrastructure of the neighborhood. Churches in Harlem have undertaken real estate ventures and renovated burnt-out and abandoned brownstones to create new housing for residents. Churches have fought for the right to operate their own schools in place of the often inadequate public schools found in many black neighborhoods.


title: Black church

text: Like many Christians, African-American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. "Black Nativity" by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Productions can be found at black theaters and churches all over the country. The Three Wise Men are typically played by prominent members of the black community.


title: Black church

text: The watchnight service held on New Year's Eve in many Christian denominations, especially those of the Methodist and Moravian traditions, is widely attended by African American Christians.


title: Black church

text: Throughout U.S. history, religious preferences and racial segregation have fostered development of separate black church denominations, as well as black churches within white denominations.


title: Black church

text: African Americans were drawn to Methodism due to the father of Methodism, John Wesley's "opposition to the whole system of slavery, his commitment to Jesus Christ, and the evangelical appeal to the suffering and the oppressed."


title: Black church

text: The first of these churches was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In the late 18th century, former slave Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, was an influential deacon and elder at the integrated and affluent St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. The charismatic Allen had attracted numerous new black members to St. George's. White members had become so uncomfortable that they relegated black worshipers to a segregated gallery. After white members of St. George's started to treat his people as second-class citizens, in 1787 Allen, Absalom Jones, also a preacher; and other black members left St. George's.


title: Black church

text: They first established the non-denominational Free African Society, which acted as a mutual aid society. Religious differences caused Jones to take numerous followers to create an Episcopal congregation. They established the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which opened its doors in 1794. Absalom Jones was later ordained by the bishop of the Philadelphia diocese as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church.


title: Black church

text: Allen continued for some years within the Methodist denomination but organized a black congregation. By 1794 he and his followers opened the doors of the all-black Mother Bethel AME Church.


title: Black church

text: Over time, Allen and others sought more independence from white supervision within the Methodist Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic region to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop.


title: Black church

text: The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the Methodist Episcopal Church. black members of the John Street Methodist Church of New York City left to form their own church after several acts of overt discrimination by white members. In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently, though still to be part of the ME Church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church.


title: Black church

text: In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the ME Church. By seeking to install black preachers and elders, they created a debate over whether blacks could be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent (bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church.


title: Black church

text: The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention.


title: Black church

text: The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. reported to have 8,415,100 members around the globe from 21,145 congregations by 2020, thus making it the largest black religious organization in the United States.


title: Black church

text: In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) after his Baptist church and the Mississippi Convention of the NBC USA expelled him. Mason was a member of the Holiness movement of the late 19th century. In 1906, he attended the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Upon his return to Tennessee, he began teaching the Holiness Pentecostal message. However, Charles Price Jones and J. A. Jeter of the Wesleyan Holiness movement disagreed with Mason's teachings on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.


title: Black church

text: At a conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Mason reorganized the Church of God in Christ as a Holiness Pentecostal body. The headquarters of COGIC is Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the site of Martin Luther King's final sermon, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered the day before he was assassinated.


title: Black church

text: Birthed from the pre-US communities in New Orleans, the DC area, Florida, and California, the presence of African-American Catholics in the United States territories constitute some of the earliest Black communities on the entire continent. Beginning in the early 19th century, Black Catholic religious sisters began forming congregations to serve their communities, beginning with Mary Elizabeth Lange and Henriette DeLille, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence and Sisters of the Holy Family, respectively. They were soon followed by the emergence of openly Black priests, the first being Fr Augustus Tolton in 1886.


title: Black church

text: The Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (aka the Josephites), a group of priests tasked with serving African-Americans specifically, were formed in 1893 and began ordaining Black men immediately—though in small numbers. They staffed and formed Black parishes throughout the country, and today continue to serve in the same way (as do the two aforementioned sisterhoods, as well as the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary).


title: Black church

text: After the Civil Rights Movement, various new Black Catholic organizations were founded for Black priests, sisters, deacons, and seminarians, and the National Black Catholic Congress arrived in 1987. African-American Catholic priests greatly increased in number and African-American bishops began being appointed, including archbishops. The first African-American cardinal was named in 2020.


title: Dear David

text: Dear David is an upcoming American supernatural thriller film directed by John McPhail, based on Adam Ellis' Twitter thread of the same name. It stars Augustus Prew as Ellis with Justin Long and Andrea Bang in supporting roles. The film is the third co-production between BuzzFeed Studios and Lionsgate Films.


title: Dear David

text: Former BuzzFeed employee Adam Ellis becomes haunted by the ghost of a boy possessed by a demonic entity.


title: Dear David

text: "Dear David" was a Twitter thread created by BuzzFeed writer Adam Ellis in which he describes his encounter with a ghost. The story was updated between August 7 and December 12, 2017, and went viral online, gaining Ellis over 1 million followers on Twitter. On June 6, 2018, BuzzFeed Studios announced its plan to adapt the story into a feature film, with Mike Van Waes writing the screenplay. In an interview, Ellis said his story was based on actual events and that he had "never been interested in convincing anyone that ghosts are real – I just wanted to tell my story." In November 2018, New Line Cinema acquired the rights to the story.


title: Dear David

text: In July 2020, BuzzFeed Studios and Lionsgate Films announced a partnership to produce and distribute a number of feature films. In November 2021, BuzzFeed and Lionsgate acquired the rights to the story from New Line Cinema and hired John McPhail to direct. Production took place in Toronto, Canada, and wrapped in December 2021. In January 2022, Justin Long, Augustus Prew, and Andrea Bang were confirmed to star.


title: Dolly Parton albums discography

text: The albums discography of American country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton includes 52 studio albums (consisting of 48 solo studio albums, two studio albums with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, one studio album with Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette and one studio album with Kenny Rogers), nine live albums, six soundtrack albums, one extended play and approximately 222 compilation albums globally. Popularly referred as the ""Queen of Country"" by the media, she is also widely recognized as the most honored woman in country music history. She has charted 25 Number One songs (a record for a female country artist), 41 Top 10 country albums (a record for any artist) and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best selling female country artist in history. As of January 2022, Parton's catalog has amassed more than 3 billion global streams.


title: Dolly Parton albums discography

text: Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967 (she had previously achieved success as a songwriter for others), with her album "Hello, I'm Dolly". With steady success during the remainder of the 1960s (both as a solo artist and with a series of duet albums with Porter Wagoner), her sales and chart peak came during the 1970s and continued into the 1980s; Parton's subsequent albums in the later part of the 1990s were lower in sales. At this time, country pop ruled the country albums and singles chart. However, in the new millennium, Parton achieved commercial success again. She has released albums on independent labels since 2000, including albums on her own label, Dolly Records.


title: Dolly Parton albums discography

text: There have been over 200 compilation albums of Parton's material released over the years. The table below presents notable compilation albums. To be considered notable the album must contain some previously unreleased material, have appeared on a music chart, or have received a certification.


title: Dolly Parton albums discography

text: Parton has contributed to over 100 other albums throughout her career. These contributions range from solo recordings and duets to providing backing and harmony vocals for other artists. This additional work spans Parton's entire career, beginning in 1966 when she provided uncredited harmony vocals on Bill Phillips' recording of her composition "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" through her most recent collaboration with Positive Vibrations in 2022, a reggae version of her 1978 hit "Two Doors Down".


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" () is a Norwegian fairy tale. It was included by Andrew Lang in "The Blue Fairy Book" (1890).


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. It is Aarne–Thompson type 425A, the search for the lost husband; other tales of this type include "Black Bull of Norroway", "The Brown Bear of Norway", "The Daughter of the Skies", "The Enchanted Pig", "The Tale of the Hoodie", "Master Semolina", "The Sprig of Rosemary", "The Enchanted Snake", and "White-Bear-King-Valemon". The Swedish version is called "Prince Hat under the Ground". It was likely an offspring from the tale of "Cupid and Psyche" in The Golden Ass, which gave rise to similar animal bridegroom cycles such as "Beauty and the Beast".


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: The White Bear approaches a poor peasant and asks if he will give him his prettiest and youngest daughter; in return, the bear will make the man rich. The girl is reluctant, so the peasant asks the bear to return, and in the meantime, persuades her to marry the bear. The White Bear takes her off to a magnificent enchanted castle. At night, he discards his bear form, and comes to her bed as a man. She never sees him, however, because he enters her bedroom after she extinguishes the light, and leaves before daybreak.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: When she grows homesick, the bear agrees that she might go home as long as she agrees that she will never speak with her mother alone, but only when other people are around. At home, her family welcomes her, and her mother makes persistent attempts to speak with her alone. She finally persuades her daughter to disclose the entire account about the stranger man who sleeps beside her in the dark each night, and leaves before daybreak. In response to the girl's story, she insists that the White Bear must really be a troll, gives her a candle, and tells her to light it at night, to see who is sharing her bed, warning her not to spill any tallow.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: The girl obeys, and discovers that the bear is actually an attractive prince. Falling in love with him at first sight, she kisses him, and spills three drops of tallow on him. Waking him, thus, she is told that if she had waited for a year, he would have been free, but now he must go to his wicked stepmother, a witch-queen who turned him into his form and lives in a castle that lies "east of the Sun and west of the Moon", and marry her daughter, a witch-princess.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: In the morning, the girl finds that the palace has vanished. She sets out in search of the prince. Coming to a great mountain, she finds an old woman playing with a golden apple. She asks the old woman if she knows the way to the castle that lies east of the Sun and west of the Moon. The old woman cannot tell her the way, but lends her a horse to ride to a neighbor who might be able to, and gives her the apple. The neighbor is sitting outside another mountain, with a golden carding comb. She, also, does not know the way to the castle, but lends the girl another horse to ride to another neighbor who might know, and gives her the carding comb. That third old woman does not know the way to the castle either, but lends the girl another horse to ride to the East Wind, and gives her the golden spinning wheel with which she had been working.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: The East Wind has never been to the castle that lies east of the Sun and west of the Moon, but believes his stronger brother, the West Wind might have been there. He takes her to the West Wind, who brings her to the South Wind for the same reason. The South Wind brings her to the North Wind, again, for the same reason. The North Wind says he once exhausted himself blowing an aspen leaf to her desired destination, but would take her there if she was absolutely determined to go there. The girl says she is determined to go there, and so, he takes her there.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: The morning after her arrival at the queen's castle, the girl starts to play with the golden apple. The queen's daughter, who is betrothed to the prince, sees the golden plaything, and says to the girl that she would like to buy it. The girl agrees to part with it in exchange for a night with the prince. The princess agrees to the exchange, but gives the prince a sleeping drink, so that he cannot be woken up. These events recur the next night, after the girl gives the princess the gold carding comb. This time, the girl's weeping and plaintive utterances, as she attempts to awaken the prince, are overheard by imprisoned townspeople within the castle. They report to him what they had overheard. On the third day, the princess agrees to another night in the prince's bedchamber in exchange for the girl's golden spinning wheel. That night, the prince does not drink the potion that the princess brings him, and so, he is awake for the girl's visit.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: The prince tells her how she can save him: He will declare that he will marry anyone who can wash out the tallow stains from his shirt, since his stepmother and her daughter cannot do it. He would call on the girl for this purpose. When she succeeds, he would claim her for his bride. The plan works out, and rage causes the two witches to explode. The spell is broken, and the prince no longer needs to assume his bear form during the day. He and his bride free the prisoners within the castle, and leave it far behind them with all the gold and silver that had been housed within it.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: Finnish folklorist Oskar Hackman summarized a Finnish-Swedish tale from Vörå. In this tale, a large-nosed woman wants to marry a handsome man, but he rebuffs her. The woman, then, curses him to become a bear. The bear wanders to the forest and finds a hut, where a man lives with his daughter. The animal asks for the man's daughter, in exchange for getting some financial benefits. The bear and the girl live like husband and wife, but he becomes a man at night, and disappears during the day, and she cannot light any candle at home. Eventually, the girl goes back to her father's home and returns with some candles. She lights a candle and sees her bear husband is, in fact, a handsome man. A drop of tallow falls in his shirt, he wakes up and says they must depart. The girl is given a gold spinning wheel and is sent back to her father's hut. The girl decides to go after him and finds him at the house of the large-nosed woman. She tries to sell the spinning wheel for a night with the bear (in human form), but cannot wake him up. On the third night, the girl sells it to the large-nosed woman and wakes him up. The girl and the man decide to play a trick on the large-nosed woman: he will set a challenge for his future bride to wash the tallow spot on his shirt. The large-nosed woman and her maidservants fail, but the girl washes the shirt. For her failure, the large-nosed woman bursts, and the man marries the girl.


title: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

text: In folktales classified as tale type ATU 425A, "The Search for the Lost Husband" or "The Animal as Bridegroom", the maiden breaks a taboo or burns the husband's animal skin and, to atone, she must wear down a numbered pair of metal shoes. On her way to her husband, she asks for the help of the Sun, the Moon and the Wind. According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". "Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne" is also the name given to tale type ATU 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband") in 's "The Types of the Norwegian Folktale".


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael VIII Palaiologos or Palaeologus (; 1224 – 11 December 1282) reigned as the co-emperor of the Empire of Nicaea from 1259 to 1261, and as Byzantine emperor from 1261 until his death in 1282. Michael VIII was the founder of the Palaiologan dynasty that would rule the Byzantine Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. He recovered Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261 and transformed the Empire of Nicaea into a restored Byzantine Empire. His reign saw considerable recovery of Byzantine power, including the enlargement of the Byzantine army and navy. It would also include the reconstruction of the city of Constantinople, and the increase of its population. Additionally, he re-established the University of Constantinople, which led to what is regarded as the Palaiologan Renaissance between the 13th and 15th centuries.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: It was also at this time that the focus of the Byzantine military shifted to the Balkans, against the Bulgarians, leaving the Anatolian frontier neglected. His successors could not compensate for this change of focus, and both the Arsenite schism and two civil wars which occurred from 1321–1328 and 1341–1347 undermined further efforts toward territorial consolidation and recovery, draining the empire's strength, economy, and resources. Regular conflict between Byzantine successor states such as the Empire of Thessalonica, Trebizond, Epirus and Serbia resulted in permanent fragmentation of former Byzantine territory and opportunity for increasingly successful conquests of expansive territories by post-Seljuk Anatolian beyliks, most notably that of Osman, later called the Ottoman Empire.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael VIII Palaiologos was the son of the "megas domestikos" Andronikos Palaiologos by Theodora Angelina Palaiologina, the granddaughter of Emperor Alexios III Angelos and Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamaterina. According to Deno John Geanakoplos, Michael's ancestry could be traced back to all three imperial houses that ruled the empire in the centuries before the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade. His mother does not appear to have played a significant role in his early life; at least for a time he was brought up by his elder sister Martha, the wife of "megas domestikos" Nikephoros Tarchaneiotes, although she was only ten years older than him.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael rose to distinction at an early age, serving as the governor of the Thracian towns of Melnik and Serres under the command of his father Andronikos. However, in the autumn of 1253 Michael was accused before the Emperor John III Vatatzes of plotting against the throne. The only way Michael was allowed to prove his innocence was through trial by ordeal, holding a red-hot iron. When the Emperor ordered him to take hold of the red-hot metal, the young Michael answered (to use Geanakoplos' words) "with the astuteness that was to characterize his later career as Emperor": if the Metropolitan Phokas of Philadelphia, who evidently supported this proposal, could take the iron from the altar with his own hands and place it in Michael's, he would gladly receive it in faith that the truth would be revealed.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Although Michael avoided punishment, and afterwards was married to the Emperor's grandniece and appointed "megas konostaulos" of the Latin mercenaries in the employment of the emperors of Nicaea, he was still mistrusted. Following the death of John Vatatzes, Michael crossed the Sangarios River with a few close friends and took service with the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. From late 1256 to 1258 he served as commander of the Christian mercenaries fighting for Sultan Kaykaus II; in that later year the Emperor Theodore II Doukas Laskaris recalled Michael, and after both exchanged oaths of loyalty and guarantees of safety, Michael returned to the service of the Emperor.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: A few days after the death of Emperor Theodore Laskaris in 1258, Michael Palaiologos instigated a coup against the influential bureaucrat George Mouzalon, seizing from him the guardianship of the eight-year-old Emperor John IV Doukas Laskaris. Michael was invested with the titles of "megas doux" and, on 13 November 1258, of "despotes". On 1 January 1259, Michael was formally proclaimed emperor (basileus), most likely without John IV, in Nymphaion.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: In 1259 Michael VIII defeated the alliance of William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, and Michael II Komnenos Doukas of Epirus at the Battle of Pelagonia. According to Geanakoplos, "[i]n the period immediately preceding the Nicene reconquest of Constantinople in 1261 no event was of greater importance than Michael Palaeologus' victory at Pelagonia." This not only neutralized, for the immediate time, the possibility of an attack from enemies on his Western borders, but also improved Michael's legitimacy by showing him as a competent leader.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Despite this brilliant victory, only one event could remove the stigma of usurper completely from the eyes of his subjects — recovery of Constantinople itself. In 1260 Michael personally led an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city. Rumors of reinforcements for the beleaguered city forced Michael to sign a one-year truce with the Latin Emperor Baldwin II that August. Realizing that he needed a navy to effectively besiege Constantinople, Michael concluded the Treaty of Nymphaeum with Genoa in March of the following year. Genoese help proved to be unneeded when Michael VIII's general Alexios Strategopoulos captured Constantinople from Baldwin II through treachery on 25 July 1261.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: News of the captured city first reached Michael's sister Eulogia Palaiologina, who awoke her brother at dawn. He was not convinced until a messenger arrived from Strategopoulos bearing the crown and sword Baldwin had abandoned in his flight from his palace. Michael VIII entered the city on 15 August and had himself crowned emperor. Once in control of Constantinople, Michael abolished all Latin customs and reinstated most Byzantine ceremonies and institutions as they had existed before the Fourth Crusade. He repopulated the capital, building its population from when he took power to by the end of his reign, and restored damaged churches, monasteries, and public buildings. He was acutely aware of the danger posed by the possibility that the Latin West, particularly his neighbors in Italy, would unite against him and attempt the restoration of Latin rule in Constantinople.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: John IV had remained at Nicaea, largely eclipsed by Michael. According to Akropolites, the public had never really viewed John as emperor - his name was virtually stricken from government business after the death of his father Theodore II, and he had not featured in Michael’s coronation ceremony as co-ruler. In December 1261 Michael VIII took the final step of having John blinded and relegated to a monastery, rendering him permanently ineligible for the throne. Michael quickly married off John's sisters to two Italians and a Bulgarian noble, so their descendants could not threaten his own children's claim to the imperial succession. Michael tried to keep the blinding of John a secret, keeping up a pretense that the boy’s formal coronation had merely been postponed. Eventually the news leaked out, and Patriarch Arsenios Autoreianos excommunicated Michael VIII. This ban was not lifted until six years later (1268) on the appointment of patriarch Joseph I.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: In the words of Geanaklopos, "With the fall of Constantinople, the papacy suffered not only a loss of political prestige but severe damage to its spiritual authority as well. For the Greeks had now effectively reasserted their right to a church divorced from Rome. Thus it became the task of each of the six successive popes of Michael's reign to accomplish the return of the schismatics to the Roman fold." Michael was aware of the immense influence the Curia had in the West, so he immediately dispatched an embassy to Pope Urban IV consisting of two envoys; upon reaching Italy, the men were seized and one was flayed alive, while the other succeeded in escaping back to friendlier territories.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael also approached Manfred of Sicily to achieve some kind of accord. In the summer of 1262, Michael offered to divorce his wife Theodora and marry Manfred's sister Anna. This offer failed spectacularly: not only did Anna reject his proposal, Theodora turned to Patriarch Arsenios for help. The Patriarch confronted the emperor and pressured him to abandon his plans. Michael yielded and sent Anna back to her brother with gifts. This gesture helped to secure the release of his general Alexios Strategopoulos.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: It was around this time that Michael was presented with a dangerous distraction: ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kaykāwūs, who had been deposed as Sultan of the Seljuk Turks by a coalition led by the Pervane Mu‘in al-Din Suleyman, arrived seeking help from his old friend. But as Claude Cahen notes, he "was to be cruelly disappointed." Michael favored the Mongols of Iran, who supported ʿIzz ad-Dīn's enemy the Pervane, against those of Russia. Further, he could not risk a war on his Asian frontier while Western Europe, infinitely more dangerous, was opposed to him. Cahen believes that either ʿIzz ad-Dīn became an embarrassment, or perhaps the former Sultan "indulged in too open of criticism"; in either case, ʿIzz ad-Dīn was imprisoned. Mongol troops from Russia eventually freed him, and carried him off to the Crimea where he lived out his life.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: A series of military setbacks followed. In 1263 Michael sent men, including Seljuk mercenaries, to Morea with the goal of conquering the Principality of Achaea, but this expedition failed in a surprise rout at Prinitza. Later that year a mixed fleet of 48 imperial and Genoese ships was defeated by a smaller Venetian force at the Battle of Settepozzi. The following year, the imperial forces in Morea were again defeated at Makryplagi after the Seljuk mercenaries, who had not been paid, changed sides. The nadir of Michael's disasters came in the Spring of 1265, when an army of Tatars and Bulgars under Nogai Khan ravaging Thrace ambushed Michael Palaeologos when he was returning to Constantinople accompanied by only a few troops. Deserted by even his own officers, who fled to save their own lives, Michael was able to escape by crossing the Ganos Mountains and reaching the Marmora coast, where he happened upon two Latin ships. He quickly boarded the vessels, and two days later safely arrived at Constantinople. "Thus did Michael survive one of the narrowest escapes of his career," notes Geanakoplos.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: The military advantages Michael enjoyed after capturing Constantinople had evaporated, but he would demonstrate his diplomatic skills to successfully recover from these drawbacks. After Settepozzi, Michael VIII dismissed the 60 Genoese galleys that he had hired earlier and began a rapprochement with Venice. Michael secretly negotiated a treaty with the Venetians to grant terms similar to those in the case of Nymphaeum, but Doge Raniero Zeno failed to ratify the agreement. He also signed a treaty in 1263 with the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Baibars and Berke, the Mongol Khan of Kipchak Khanate.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: The Battle of Benevento on 26 February 1266 brought forth a new challenger to Michael, one with whom he would struggle for the rest of his life: Charles of Anjou. Michael, as Geanaklopos emphasizes, "from 1266 until shortly before his death in 1282 ... was constrained to devote almost complete attention to the defeat of Charles, the fulfillment of whose ambition would have brought about the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and reimposition of Latin rule in Constantinople." Charles strengthened his hold on the kingdom of Sicily by defeating Conradin at the Battle of Tagliacozzo on 23 August 1268. And looking for help to restore the Latin Empire, on May 1267, Charles concluded the Treaty of Viterbo with the exiled Emperor Baldwin II and William II Villehardouin under the guidance of Pope Clement IV.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: In many ways Michael and Charles were alike. Geanakoplos quotes Nicephorus Gregoras's comparison of the two men at length:


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael was also faced with a challenge on his Asian frontier. Although the peace treaty with the Seljuk Turks continued to be honored by both parties, nomadic Turkmen had begun to infiltrate the Byzantine territories, and because of Michael's preoccupation with his Western foes, there was no organized response to this threat. Speros Vryonis also points out that due to his treatment of John IV Laskaris, "there resulted an outright alienation from Constantinople of large segments of Greek society in Bithynia and elsewhere." In 1269 Michael sent his brother the "despotes" John Palaiologos into the southern part of Byzantine Anatolia to clear the Maeander and Cayster valleys of Turkmen; their response was to fall back before the Byzantine army, and when John was eventually recalled to face foes in Europe, the Turkmen pushed back and resumed their conquests and settlement. Thus by 1269, the cities of Trachia Studia and Strobilos on the Carian coast were firmly Turkish possessions.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael's response to the Treaty of Viterbo was to attempt to weaken papal support for it; if the Pope was convinced Charles of Anjou's invasion was a just and holy war, then the forces Michael could call on could not prevent its success. Michael returned to negotiating a union of the churches with Pope Clement IV, which he had agreed to, but the latter's death in November 1268 put an end to this approach. According to Geanakoplos, only a lack of resources prevented Charles from immediately launching an attack against Michael. Looking for some restraint on Charles, Michael made a shrewd appeal to King Louis IX of France, the leading ruler of the West and the elder brother of Charles. Louis was more interested in a crusade against Muslims controlling the Holy Land than attacking a schismatic Christian. So he had Charles join his Tunisian crusade in 1270. When Louis died in Tunisia, Charles took command, negotiated a truce, and sailed to Sicily, planning to attack Byzantium. At this point a miracle saved Michael: a violent storm destroyed Charles' fleet. "To the Greeks of Byzantium," writes Geanakoplos, "it must have seemed as if the Virgin, their protector, had saved them from disaster."


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: After a three year interregnum, during which Charles of Anjou attempted to sway the election, a new pope was elected, Gregory X. When Michael restarted talks of union, Gregory proved to be less accommodating and negotiated from a position of strength. Michael attempted to reason with Patriarch Joseph and the synod of the importance of agreeing to this union, and that the principle of "oikonomia" (which Geanakoplos suggests is best translated here as "considerations of self-interest") required them to accede to papal demands. But despite a propaganda campaign over the winter of 1274–1275, Michael was forced to depose Patriarch Joseph and replace him with his own supporter John Bekkos in order to obtain a grudging consent to the union.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Byzantine envoys presented themselves at the Second Council of Lyons 24 June 1274, where they presented a letter from the Emperor, sealed with the imperial golden bull, and two others from his son Andronikos and the Byzantine clergy. On the fourth session of the Council the formal act of union was performed. The letters were read, and for the first time in two centuries representatives of the major Eastern and Western branches of Christianity were again in communion.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael VIII achieved an important advantage by this union, for now he gained legitimacy both for possessing Constantinople and for his claims to the lands occupied by Western invaders. Further, his antagonist Charles could not rely on the power of the pope calling for a crusade against his realm. Lastly, Pope Gregory was very favorable to Michael's proposal for a crusade against the Turks to restore the ancient Christian cities of Anatolia; however with Gregory's death (January 1276), these plans remained nothing more than talk.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: More disappointments followed as news of the Council filtered through the former Byzantine territories. While the union was opposed at all levels of society, it was especially opposed by the greater populace, led by the monks and the adherents of the deposed Patriarch Arsenios, known as the Arsenites. One of the chief anti-unionist leaders was Michael's own sister Eulogia, who fled to the court of her daughter Maria Palaiologina Kantakouzene, Tsarina of the Bulgars, from where she intrigued unsuccessfully against Michael. More serious was the opposition of the sons of Michael of Epirus, Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas and his half-brother John the Bastard: they posed as the defenders of Orthodoxy and gave support to the anti-unionists fleeing Constantinople. Michael at first responded with comparative leniency, hoping to win the anti-unionists through persuasion, but eventually the virulence of the protests led him to resort to force. Many anti-unionists were blinded or exiled. Two prominent monks, Meletios and Ignatios, were punished: the first had his tongue cut out, the second was blinded. Even imperial officials were harshly treated, and the death penalty was decreed even for simply reading or possessing pamphlets directed against the Emperor. "From the intensity of these disorders, tantamount almost to civil wars," concludes Geanakoplos, "it might appear that too great a price had been paid for the sake of union."


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: The religious situation only worsened for Michael. The Arsenite party found widespread support amongst the discontented in the Anatolian provinces, and Michael responded there with similar viciousness: according to Vryonis, "These elements were either removed from the armies or else, alienated, they deserted to the Turks". Another attempt to clear the encroaching Turkmen from the Meaender valley in 1278 found limited success, but Antioch on the Maeander was irretrievably lost as were Tralles and Nyssa four years later.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: On 1 May 1277, John the Bastard convoked a synod at Neopatras that anathematized the Emperor, Patriarch, and Pope as heretics. In response, a synod was convoked at the Hagia Sophia on 16 July where both Nikephoros and John were anathematized in return. John called a final synod at Neopatras in December 1277, where an anti-unionist council of eight bishops, a few abbots, and one hundred monks, again anathematized the Emperor, Patriarch, and Pope.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael's achievements on the battlefield were more positive, although still mixed. He tried to take advantage of a civil war in Bulgaria in the late 1270s, but the Byzantine armies suffered several major defeats at the hands of the peasant Emperor Ivaylo. The Emperor managed to temporarily impose his son-in-law Ivan Asen III on the Bulgarian throne, but after the Byzantine defeat at Devina he had to flee. However, Michael VIII later managed to conquer the Bulgarian portion of Thrace, while the internal situation of the Bulgarian Empire remained unstable. In 1275, Michael VIII sent an army against Thessaly and fleet of 73 ships to harass the Latin states in Greece. The army was crushingly defeated at the Battle of Neopatras, but the fleet won a similarly comprehensive victory at the Battle of Demetrias.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Last was his victory over Charles of Anjou in western Greece. Charles' general Hugh of Sully with 8,000 men (including 2,000 cavalry) captured Butrinto in 1280 and besieged Berat. A Byzantine army of relief under Michael Tarchaneiotes arrived in March 1281: Hugh of Sully was ambushed and captured, and his army put to flight. Geanaklopos considers that most scholars do not appreciate fully the importance of this victory: "this victory marked the complete failure of the attempt to launch a land expedition against the capital. Thus ... Charles had to shift his strategy to a sea attack against Constantinople".


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: On 22 February 1281 a new Pope was selected, Pope Martin IV, a Frenchman Geanaklopos describes as "blindly subservient" to Charles of Anjou. Once again, Charles had no clear brake on his ambitions to conquer Constantinople, and he moved swiftly to prepare for this new offensive. One early move was taken by Pope Martin, who on 18 October 1281 excommunicated Michael without any warning or provocation, thus disrupting the union of Lyons.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Charles had prepared a military force far larger than Michael could muster. According to Marino Sanudo, Charles had 100 ships in Sicily, and 300 more in Naples, Provence, and his Greek territories, which were to carry no fewer than 8,000 cavalrymen. Geanakoplos cites surviving documents that attest to the supplies Charles had accumulated. One Angevin rescript, dated 28 October 1281, lists a collection of tools to be gathered for the expedition, which includes "two thousand iron mattocks, three thousand iron stakes, sledges for smashing rocks, ropes, iron shovels, axes, and kettles for boiling pitch." Another orders the delivery of "four thousand iron stakes that are under construction in Venice." A third consists of instructions to a Pisan merchant for 2,500 shields of various sizes, all to be emblazoned with his royal emblem of lilies. Allied with Charles were a long list of powers. Besides having ties of kinship with the Kings of France and Hungary, the rulers of the Serbs and Bulgars were his allies, as well as the rulers of Epirus and dissidents of the Byzantine Empire, and the leading naval power of Europe, Venice.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Obviously Michael sought allies against Charles of Anjou, but they were few. Donald Nicol lists the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, who would "loan him ships", and the Tatars of the Golden Horde in South Russia who "could keep an eye on the Bulgarians". His ambassadors visited the court of Roman-German King Rudolph of Habsburg, but he was aloof. King Peter III of Aragon proved more welcoming, for he had his own reasons to hate Charles. According to Geanakoplos, Peter's wife Constance was the daughter of Manfred, and for this reason Peter considered Charles a usurper and Sicily the rightful property of Constance. Peter welcomed refugees from Sicily, most notably John of Procida, whom he made secretary of the royal chancery. Yet Aragon was at the other end of the Mediterranean, far from Michael.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Before Charles of Anjou could start for Constantinople, however, the Sicilian Vespers rebellion struck, on 30 March 1282. Charles sent four ships to handle the revolt, but when the rebels took control of Messina, he ordered the men and materiel assembled for use against Michael to besiege that city; meanwhile seventy Angevin ships at the arsenal of Messina were destroyed. Eventually Charles lifted the siege, and Peter of Aragon landed in Sicily to reclaim the island for his wife. Beginning with Pope Martin's bull dated 18 November 1282, wherein he again excommunicated Michael—as well as Peter of Aragon, John of Procida, and Michael's emissary Benedetto Zaccaria—as the author of the conspiracy that led to the Sicilian Vespers, Michael has been seen as the instigator. Geanakoplos, while admitting that Michael was in contact with the leaders of the revolt beforehand, asserts "that Michael Palaeologus, on his part, had nothing to do with the incident at the church of Santo Spirito is beyond question."


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Furthermore, Michael VIII was instrumental in instigating revolts in Crete against the Venetians, the most famous of which was led by the Hortatzoi brothers Georgios and Theodore of Mesi in Rethymnon, with a duration of six years, causing most significant harm to the Venetian occupants and economic interests of Venice. Michael VIII had aimed to eventually bring Venice, an ally of Charles of Anjou, to the table of negotiations, as he did, at his court in Constantinople.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: Michael VIII died in Pachomios village, Thrace on 11 December 1282. He was denied burial in Constantinople due to his persecution of the Church in support of union with Rome, so was instead laid to rest in a monastery called Nea Mone in the region of Rhaidestos (modern Tekirdağ). Three years later, in 1285, his remains were moved to the monastery of Christ in Selymbria, where in 1260 he had reburied the body of Basil II.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: In reconstituting the Byzantine Empire Michael VIII restored the old administration without endeavouring to correct its failures. In recovering Constantinople and investing in the defence of his European provinces, Michael VIII began to denude the Anatolian frontier of its troops and was forced to lower their pay or cancel their tax exemptions. This policy led to the gradual collapse of the frontier, which was infiltrated by Turkish bands even before his death. The Palaiologan dynasty he established ruled the Byzantine Empire for almost two centuries, longer than any other in Roman history. Also, during his reign there was a temporary naval revival in which the Byzantine navy consisted of 80 ships.


title: Michael VIII Palaiologos

text: In 1253, Michael VIII Palaiologos married Theodora Palaiologina, a grandniece of John III Doukas Vatatzes, Emperor of Nicaea. Orphaned in childhood, she was raised by her great-uncle John III, who was said to have "loved her like a daughter", and who arranged for her marriage to Michael. Their children were:


title: René Duprée

text: René Emile Goguen (born December 15, 1983), better known by his ring name René Duprée (; ) is a Canadian professional wrestler currently signed to Pro Wrestling Noah where he is a former two-time GHC Tag Team Champion.


title: René Duprée

text: Goguen is best known for his tenure in World Wrestling Entertainment, where he is a one-time World Tag Team Champion with Sylvain Grenier as the tag team La Résistance and a one-time WWE Tag Team Champion with Kenzo Suzuki. He has also worked for Japanese promotions All Japan Pro Wrestling, Wrestle-1 and Hustle.


title: René Duprée

text: He is the first wrestler in WWE to win a title as a teenager. Goguen is the son of Canadian Maritimes wrestling promoter Emile Duprée.


title: René Duprée

text: In April 2002 Goguen signed with the World Wrestling Federation making him the youngest wrestler to sign with the WWF at the age of 18. On October 9, 2002, Goguen debuted under the ring name, René Duprée, after his father, defeating Johnny Jeter. Duprée would team up with various wrestlers in dark matches on "SmackDown!" and "Raw", while also competing in Ohio Valley Wrestling until April 2003.


title: René Duprée

text: After weeks of vignettes airing, Sylvain Grenier and Duprée made their first appearance on the April 28, 2003 episode of "Raw" as La Résistance by attacking Scott Steiner. Steiner had made remarks two weeks earlier comparing France to hell and Grenier and Duprée were offended. La Résistance went on to feud with Scott Steiner and Test, who was forced to be Steiner's tag team partner by Stacy Keibler. La Résistance ended up defeating Steiner and Test at Judgment Day on May 18, 2003 in the team's pay-per-view debut.


title: René Duprée

text: On June 15, 2003, La Résistance won the World Tag Team Championship from Kane and Rob Van Dam at Bad Blood, making Duprée the youngest wrestler in WWE history to not only win the World Tag Team Championship, but any championship in the company's history at 19 years old. Also, as a result of winning the title, he was the first teenager in the history of the WWE that has won a championship. Duprée held on to this distinction until April 2018, when Nicholas won the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania 34 at the age of 10.


title: René Duprée

text: The third member of La Résistance, Rob Conway, was originally introduced as an unnamed American serviceman being abused by Grenier and Duprée. On the August 18 episode of "Raw", when The Dudley Boyz came out to attack La Résistance, they brought Conway into the ring with an American flag. Once the Dudley Boyz had their backs turned, Conway attacked the Dudley Boyz with the American flag and then tore it off the pole and laid it on top of them. Conway, now renamed to Robért Conway, joined Duprée and Grenier and the trio began carrying the French flag to ringside and singing the French national anthem before their matches. La Résistance lost the World Tag Team Championship to the Dudley Boyz at Unforgiven in a three-on-two handicapped tables match. The trio went on to feud with several tag teams, including the Dudley Boyz, Rosey and The Hurricane, and Garrison Cade and Mark Jindrak.


title: René Duprée

text: In October 2003, Grenier suffered a back injury, resulting in Duprée and Conway holding the tag team together. At Armageddon, La Résistance competed in a Tag Team Turmoil match for the World Tag Team Championship which was won by Ric Flair and Batista. At the Royal Rumble, Duprée competed in the 30-man Royal Rumble match where he eliminated Matt Hardy before getting eliminated by Rikishi. At WrestleMania XX, La Résistance (Duprée and Conway) competed in a Fatal four-way tag team match for the World Tag Team Championship but failed to win the titles. Grenier returned in March 2004, thus reuniting the trio. The reunion did not last long, as Duprée was drafted to the SmackDown! brand in the 2004 WWE Draft Lottery on the March 22 episode of "Raw".


title: René Duprée

text: Duprée made his SmackDown! debut on the March 25, 2004 episode of "SmackDown!", defeating Billy Kidman. He briefly had a talk show on "SmackDown!", called "Cafe de René", but his only guest was Torrie Wilson as the segment was cancelled after only one night. Duprée wrestled Wilson to a draw on the April 29 edition of "SmackDown!". For several months, pursued the United States Championship, held by John Cena. After an incident that happened during his "Cafe de René" (the same incident involving Torrie Wilson), Duprée challenged Cena to a championship match. The match was granted by SmackDown! general manager Kurt Angle and it took place at Judgment Day. Cena retained the championship at Judgment Day when he pinned Duprée after executing an "F-U". At The Great American Bash, Duprée competed in a Four-way elimination match for the United States Championship which saw Cena retain once again.


title: René Duprée

text: After losing to Cena, he focused on the WWE Tag Team Championship and eventually won the title with Kenzo Suzuki by defeating Billy Kidman and Paul London on the September 9 episode of "SmackDown!" (making him the youngest man to win the WWE Tag Team Championship at age 20). At No Mercy, Duprée and Suzuki defeated Rob Van Dam and Rey Mysterio to retain the WWE Tag Team Championship. They lost the WWE Tag Team Championship on the December 9 episode of "SmackDown!" to Van Dam and Mysterio. This match happened just days before Van Dam and Mysterio were to challenge Duprée and Suzuki at Armageddon. At Armageddon, Duprée and Suzuki lost to Van Dam and Mysterio in a rematch. At the 2005 Royal Rumble, Duprée competed in the 30-man Royal Rumble match where he was eliminated by Chris Jericho.


title: René Duprée

text: On the March 24, 2005 airing of "SmackDown!", he was "sacrificed" by The Undertaker as a message to Randy Orton (regarding their match at WrestleMania 21), when The Undertaker interrupted a match between Duprée and Booker T. The result of the "sacrifice" saw Duprée receiving a "Tombstone Piledriver" on the steel steps which lead up to the ring. Duprée was taken off television after this, working dark matches until the April 28 edition of "SmackDown!", where he was defeated by John Cena. Duprée went back to dark matches and a few "Velocity" matches until the June 18 episode of "Velocity", where Duprée came out calling himself "The French Phenom", defeating Mark Jindrak via submission. The following week on "Velocity", Duprée came out with a new look, sporting black trunks with his initials as well as jet black hair and a Dalí-styled goatee.


title: René Duprée

text: On June 30, Duprée became one of the last minute trades in the 2005 WWE Draft Lottery, which saw him jump from SmackDown! back to Raw. On the July 4 edition of "Raw", Duprée redebuted with his French Phenom gimmick and defeated Val Venis on the same night. Duprée began cutting promos using a new quote referring to himself as "Simply Phenomenal". Duprée also began a winning streak against superstars such as The Hurricane, Matt Striker and Tajiri before suffering a near career-ending hernia in mid-September.


title: René Duprée

text: Once Duprée was cleared to wrestle, WWE sent him back to Ohio Valley Wrestling for training before returning to WWE. On October 19, 2005 Duprée returned to OVW facing Robert Fury in a no-contest. On February 21, 2007 La Resistance defeated Kofi Kingston and David Hart Smith in what would be Duprée's final appearance in OVW.


title: René Duprée

text: On the August 8, 2006, episode of "ECW on Sci Fi", a promo aired with Duprée, sporting a clean shave and long hair, announcing that he would be debuting for the ECW brand soon. Promos aired throughout the rest of August showing Duprée taking pictures, posing in mirrors, and working out, while claiming he is "the most extreme athlete in ECW history". Duprée made his ECW debut on September 12, 2006, defeating Balls Mahoney. On the February 20, 2007 episode of "ECW on Sci Fi", Duprée reformed La Résistance with Sylvain Grenier, but the team's reunion was short-lived after Duprée was suspended at the start of March and sent to rehab after violating the Health and Wellness policy.


title: René Duprée

text: Duprée returned to the ring at WWE's new developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling on June 26, 2007 and defeated Steve Madison. However, he was released from his WWE contract a month later on July 26, 2007 by his own request. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet in 2021, Duprée revealed the Chris Benoit double-murder and suicide was his main reason for leaving the company.


title: René Duprée

text: After leaving WWE, Gougen wrestled primarily on the European independent circuit and Japan. He made his debut for All Star Wrestling on January 25, 2008 defeating Mikey Whiplash. During his tenure at ASW, he formed a partnership with fellow French Canadian, Pierre Carl Ouellet. In March 2008, Duprée wrestled for Irish Whip Wrestling where he fought Mandrake for the IWW International Heavyweight Championship. In July 2008, he represented Europe in the Grand Prix Tournament. In September 2008, Duprée returned to Europe for several months where he won European Wrestling Promotion Royal Rumble and wrestled regularly for American Wrestling Rampage. In March 2009, Duprée defeated Rob Van Dam for the AWR No Limits Championship and would vacate it after two days when he was awarded the AWR Heavyweight Championship. On November 24, Duprée lost the AWR Heavyweight Championship to RVD in a best of two falls match but would regain the title on December 9. Duprée re-united La Resistance with Sylvain Grenier for AWR France 2010 Tour. After leaving AJPW, Duprée wrestled on the European independent circuit only and won the Southside Heavyweight Championship in a triple threat match. However his time in Europe came to an end when he returned to Canada.


title: René Duprée

text: On November 11, 2012, made his debut on the American independent circuit when Duprée lost to the Dynamic Sensation in a four corners match which also included Dan Maff and Devon Moore for Pro Wrestling Syndicate in Rahway, New Jersey. In May, Rene and his father restarted Grand Prix Wrestling and featured talent from All Japan Pro Wrestling and other assorted talent.


title: René Duprée

text: Gougen debuted for the Japanese promotion Hustle on August 15, 2007 under the name "René Bonaparte", defeating fellow WWE alumnus Tajiri. After debuting, René became a member of President Nobuhiko Takada's Takada Monster Army thus continuing his winning streak. Bonaparte and Wataru wrestled their grudge match was on September 22, with the stipulation being that Wataru's wife, Eiko, was to become the wife of the winner of the match. Bonaparte defeated his tag team partner Sakata via disqualification, thus winning Eiko.


title: René Duprée

text: After a brief hiatus, Bonaparte made his return to the promotion in January 2008 and defeated Tajiri. His undefeated streak came to an end on January 17, when he and Giant Vabo lost to Tajiri and Kushida. In July 2008, he lost the first round of the Hustle GP to Toshiaki Kawada. Goguen debuted a new masked gimmick, Dina Sharp, and teamed with Mighty Sharp, this gimmick didn't last long with them dropping the gimmick after only two shows. In April to May 2009, Bonaparte teamed with Lance Cade and stayed undefeated in tag team matches until they lost twice to Tajiri and Magnum Tokyo. In June, Bonaparte teamed with Travis Tomko as Armageddon, where Tomko was named Arma and Bonaparte was named Geddon. In July, Geddon turned on Arma and reverted to his René Bonaparte name before defeating Arma. Goguen wrestled his final match for Hustle on October 10, where his team lost a five-on-five tag team match.


title: René Duprée

text: On June 22, 2008, Goguen debuted for All Japan Pro Wrestling under his René Duprée ring name and defeated Manabu Soya. During his short stint in 2008 he aligned himself with the Voodoo Murders stable where he teamed up with TARU mostly.


title: René Duprée

text: On January 2, 2010, Duprée returned to AJPW and rejoined Voodoo Murders by filling in the final spot for a Voodoo Murders vs Gurentai tag team match which he lost, later on in the night he lost a seventeen-man battle royal. In April, he participated in 2010's Champion Carnival, where he won only one match upon defeating Taiyō Kea. On September 20, 2010, Duprée and former tag team partner Kenso were defeated by Akebono and Taiyō Kea in a match for the World Tag Team Championship. From November 20 to December 7, Duprée teamed with TARU in the 2010 World's Strongest Tag Determination League, where they finished seventh in their bracket. On June 3, 2011, AJPW disbanded Voodoo Murders, suspended all of its Japanese members, including Duprée, and vacated all championships following the aftermath of a backstage fight between Yoshikazu Taru and Nobukazu Hirai, which resulted in Hirai suffering a stroke. In the aftermath of this, Duprée and former Voodoo Murders member Joe Doering stayed together as a tag team until the end of Duprée's run with AJPW. At the joint pay-per-view All Together, which featured wrestlers from AJPW, Pro Wrestling Noah and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Duprée participated in the Destroyer Cup battle royal, which was ultimately won by Kentaro Shiga.


title: René Duprée

text: During an AJPW international tour in Cocagne, New Brunswick, Canada on May 27, 2013, Duprée defeated Seiya Sanada to win the Gaora TV Championship. However, he returned the title to AJPW on September 11 after leaving the promotion to begin performing for Wrestle-1.


title: René Duprée

text: While still officially the Gaora TV Champion, Duprée made a surprise appearance at the AJPW splinter promotion Wrestle-1's inaugural event on September 8, 2013, teaming with Zodiac in a main event tag team match, where the two were defeated by Bob Sapp and Keiji Mutoh. Three days later, after Duprée had been announced for all future Wrestle-1 events, he returned the Gaora TV Championship to AJPW. During the October tour, Duprée joined Masayuki Kono's Desperado stable. On March 2, 2014, Duprée took part in the big event, teaming with Desperado member Masayuki Kono and Samoa Joe losing to Rob Terry, Keiji Mutoh and Taiyō Kea in a six-man tag team match. On March 15, Duprée competed in a battle royal to determine the number one contender for the TNA X Division Championship, which was won by Seiki Yoshioka.


title: René Duprée

text: Duprée was due to return to Wrestle-1 on September 1, 2019, as part of the Pro Wrestling Love in Yokohama event but was unable to attend due to flight trouble. Enfants Terribles leader Shotaro Ashino announced that Duprée had joined the faction. On September 15, 2019, Duprée teamed with Ashino, Kuma Arashi and Yusuke Kodama in a losing effort. He teamed with Arashi in the 2019 Wrestle-1 Tag League, going undefeated in the round robin portion of the tournament before losing to T-Hawk and Shigehiro Irie in the final. Wrestle-1 financial issues meant Duprée would not return to the promotion and would eventually close on April 1, 2020.


title: René Duprée

text: On January 24, 2015, Duprée made his first post Wrestle-1 appearance for the Canadian Wrestling Federation (CWF) defeating Tyson Dux.


title: René Duprée

text: On May 20, 2015, Duprée began touring with his father promotion Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling from May 2015 through August 2015. On April 29, 2017, Duprée defeated Hannibal to become the new GNW Canadian Champion as part of the 2017 AGPW tour in O'Leary, Prince Edward Island.


title: René Duprée

text: On May 26, 2017, Duprée competed for What Culture Pro Wrestling as part of their World Cup tournament where he was defeated by Michael Elgin due to disqualification in the first round of the Canadian qualifier.


title: René Duprée

text: On June 30, 2017, Duprée unsuccessfully defended his GNW Canadian Championship in a three-way elimination match against Wes Brisco and Hannibal, Brisco went on to win the championship.


title: René Duprée

text: On August 12, 2017, Duprée and Sylvain Grenier defeated Kryss Thorn and Scotty O'Shea to win the Canadian Wrestling Federation Tag Team Championship.


title: René Duprée

text: On February 9, 2018, Duprée debuted in Singapore Pro Wrestling (SPW) at SPW Repentless, but was defeated by "The Statement" Andruew Tang.


title: René Duprée

text: Duprée signed with Pro Wrestling Noah as a member of Takashi Sugiura's Sugiura-gun stable. He made his in-ring debut teaming with fellow Sugiura-gun member, El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. to defeat Kenoh and Masa Kitamiya. Duprée and Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. would enter in the Global Tag League, where they won by defeating AXIZ in the finals. On April 19, 2020, they defeated Naomichi Marufuji and Masaaki Mochizuki to win the GHC Tag Team Championship.


title: René Duprée

text: On July 26, 2020, it was announced that Duprée and Wagner Jr. vacated the GHC Tag Team Championships. On April 30, 2022, Duprée made his return after a near two year absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic teaming with Wagner Jr. defeating the team of Daiki Inaba and Masato Tanaka. On May 4, 2022, Duprée and Wagner Jr. defeated Takashi Sugiura and Hideki Suzuki to reclaim the GHC Tag Team Championships they previously were forced to vacate. On May 21, 2022, Duprée and Wagner Jr. lost the GHC Tag Team Championships to the team of Michael Elgin and Masa Kitamiya.


title: René Duprée

text: After leaving WWE, Goguen adopted several tattoos, including flame patterns on his forearms and lower legs, the kanji characters for Japan (日本) on his left deltoid and pectoral, and a large crucifix spanning across his back.


title: India's Got Talent

text: India's Got Talent is a televised Indian Hindi language talent show series and is part of the "Got Talent franchise". The program is produced and distributed by Fremantle. The show aired on Colors TV till season 8; since season 9 the show is airing on Sony Entertainment Television.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Since season 9, the general selection process begun with Sony Liv online auditions, those that make it through the initial stage, become participants in the "judges' auditions," which are held in select cities across the country. At the end of a performance, the judges give constructive criticism and feedback about what they saw, whereupon they each give a vote - a participant who receives a majority vote approving their performance, moves on to the next stage, otherwise they are eliminated from the show. Also the show's presenter(s) stands in the wings of stage to interview and give personal commentary on a participant's performance.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Each judge has a buzzer, and may use it during a performance if they are unimpressed, hate what is being performed, or feel the act is a waste of their time; if a participant is buzzed by all judges, their performance is automatically over and they are eliminated. A "golden buzzer" was introduced in season 5; in season 9 it is used by judges to select and send the act directly to the "top 14," escaping judges' cuts.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Many acts that move on may be cut by in judge's cuts and may forfeit due to the limited slots available.


title: India's Got Talent

text: According to season 9, after the judge's cuts, the selected acts along with golden buzzer acts and wild cards compete against each other in a weekly competition for viewers' and judges' votes. Acts which do not secure a sufficient number of votes by the public and/or the judges, are eliminated from the competition.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Selected acts moves to the semi-final round, when they compete against each other to get the spot in finale via viewers votes and to win the trophy.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 1 was hosted by Nikhil Chinapa and Ayushmann Khurrana and the special segment called "India's Got More Talent" was hosted by Roshni Chopra. The show was judged by Sonali Bendre, Kirron Kher and Shekhar Kapur.


title: India's Got Talent

text: The winning act of the first season was the Prince Dance Group from Berhampur, Orissa. The group of 56 people performed a dance inspired by the Lord Vishnu's Dashavatara.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 2 was hosted by the same duo, Nikhil Chinapa and Ayushmann Khurrana, as they were selected through voting by the judges and the viewers. Sonali Bendre and Kirron Kher continued their roles as judges, however Shekher Kapur was replaced by Sajid Khan.


title: India's Got Talent

text: The winners of season 2 were the Shillong Chamber Choir, led by Neil Nongkynrih from Shillong, Meghalaya.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 3 was hosted by singer Meiyang Chang and actor-model Gautam Rode. The judges of this season were Sonali Bendre, Kirron Kher and veteran Bollywood-actor-turned-politician Dharmendra.


title: India's Got Talent

text: The second runner-up of season 2, SNV Group (named after members Suresh Mukund and Vernon Monteiro), emerged as the winner of the season.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 4 was hosted by Manish Paul and Cyrus Sahukar. Kirron Kher, Malaika Arora Khan, and Karan Johar were judges. Farah Khan later replaced Malaika Arora Khan.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Dancers Sonali Majumdar and Maraju Sumanth, who formed the duo Bad Salsa from Kolkata's Bivash Dance Academy, were crowned winners of the fourth season.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 5 was hosted by Mantra and Bharti Singh. Later, Mantra was replaced by VJ Andy. Malaika Arora Khan, Kirron Kher and Karan Johar reprised their roles as judges. Ragini Makkhar's Naadyog Academy won the season. Indore, Madhya Pradesh-based Ragini Makkhar's Naadyog Academy is a 25-year-old dance institution which consists of 360 students.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 6 was hosted by Bharti Singh, Nakuul Mehta and Sidharth Shukla. Malaika Arora Khan, Kirron Kher and Karan Johar reprised their roles as judges. Aerial dancer Manik Pauk won the season winning a cash prize of ₹50,00,000.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Malaika Arora Khan, Kirron Kher and Karan Johar reprised their roles as judges. Flautist Suleiman, a 13-year-old flute player from Amritsar, Punjab won the season, and Papai and antara bagged the runner-up positions.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 8 was hosted by Bharti Singh and Rithvik Dhanjani. Malaika Arora Khan, Kirron Kher and Karan Johar reprised their roles as judges. 27-year-old close-up magician Javed Khan had a tie with Live 100 Experience Band in the final stage, but with more votes coming his way, he was awarded the trophy and prize money of Rs 25 lakh.


title: India's Got Talent

text: Season 9 is hosted by Arjun Bijlani. Kirron Kher continue serving as judge for the ninth season along with Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Baadshah and Manoj Muntashir. The format of the show changed was changed. Flute & beat box duo Divyansh & Manuraj won the season, whereas Ishita Vishwakarma and Bomb Fire Crew finished as runner-up and 2nd runner-up, respectively.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: Dominic Thiem defeated Alexander Zverev in the final, 2–6, 4–6, 6–4, 6–3, 7–6 to win the men's singles tennis title at the 2020 US Open. It was his first major title, following three previous runner-up finishes. Thiem became the first man to come back from two sets down in a US Open final in the Open Era, the first to do so overall since 1949, and the first to do so in any major final since Gastón Gaudio at the 2004 French Open. Both players served for the championship in the final set (Zverev at 5–3 and Thiem at 6–5), but both were broken at 30. This was the first time in history that the US Open title was decided by a fifth set tie-break, 50 years after the rule was introduced in 1970.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: Thiem's victory made him the first Austrian to win a singles major since Thomas Muster at the 1995 French Open, the first man born in the 1990s to win a singles major, and the first new male major singles champion since Marin Čilić won the 2014 US Open. The gap between Čilić and Thiem's titles was the longest between two new major singles champions in the history of men's tennis, surpassing the previous longest gap between Juan Martín del Potro and Andy Murray respectively at the 2009 and 2012 editions of the US Open.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: Zverev became the youngest male finalist at a major championship since Novak Djokovic at the 2010 US Open.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: Rafael Nadal was the reigning champion, but chose not to participate due to both safety concerns related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the short amount of time between the US Open and the rescheduled European clay season. This marked the first time since the 1999 US Open that both Nadal and Roger Federer (who was recovering from a knee surgery) were absent from a major.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: There were no qualifiers this year. The ATP rankings valid on August 3 (being the rankings from March 16) were used to determine the main-draw entry list.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: World No. 1 Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the tournament during his fourth-round match against Pablo Carreño Busta. After being broken to trail 6–5 in the first set, Djokovic frustratedly hit a ball towards the baseline. This ball accidentally hit a lineswoman in the throat. Djokovic's unbeaten 26–0 2020 season, as well as his 29-match winning streak (extending back to the 2019 Davis Cup Finals), ended as a result. Djokovic became the first player to be defaulted from a major since Stefan Koubek at the 2000 French Open.


title: 2020 US Open – Men's singles

text: Djokovic's ejection from the tournament guaranteed a maiden major finalist in the top half of the draw. His disqualification also meant this would be the first major since the 2004 French Open not to feature either Djokovic, Federer or Nadal in the semifinals, the first major since the 2003 Wimbledon Championships in which none of the quarterfinalists had previously won a major, and the first major men's singles tournament not to have been won by Djokovic, Federer or Nadal since Stan Wawrinka in the 2016 US Open final. This also guaranteed a maiden major champion in men's singles for the first time since the 2014 tournament, when Čilić defeated fellow first-time finalist Kei Nishikori in straight sets. Additionally, it meant this would be the first major won by someone under the age of 30 since the 2016 Wimbledon Championships. For the first time in major history, all of the male quarterfinalists were born in the 1990s.


Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (often shortened to Batman: Arkham Asylum) is a "Batman" graphic novel written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean. The story follows the vigilante Batman, who is called upon to quell a maddening riot taking place in the infamous Arkham Asylum, a psychiatric hospital housing the most dangerous supervillains in Gotham City. Inside, Batman confronts many of his enduring rogues gallery, such as the Joker, Two-Face, and Killer Croc. As Batman ventures deeper, he discovers the origin of how the asylum was established, the history of its founder Amadeus Arkham, and the supernatural and psychological mystery that has been haunting the mansion.


title: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

text: Upon its release, the graphic novel garnered commercial and wide critical acclaim and is considered by many to be one of the greatest Batman stories of all time, and one of the best works in Grant Morrison's career. Morrison's narrative and Dave McKean's artistic style were described as more mature, unique, psychologically-driven and horror-oriented take on the Batman mythos and the distinctiveness from other conventional superhero works. The graphic novel would later become the definitive story of Arkham Asylum, a critical part of the Batman mythos. The critically acclaimed, similarly titled video game "", the first game in the "" series, was partially influenced by the graphic novel.


text: On April 1st, Commissioner Gordon informs Batman that the patients of Arkham Asylum, led by the Joker, have taken over the facility, threatening to murder the staff unless Batman agrees to meet with them. Among the hostages are Dr. Charles Cavendish, Arkham's administrator, and Dr. Ruth Adams, a therapist. At the asylum, Batman discovers that Two-Face's mental condition has deteriorated as a result of Adams' therapy; she replaced Two-Face's trademark coin with a six-sided die, then a tarot deck, increasing the number of choices he has in the hope that he will eventually not leave any of his choices up to chance. Instead, the treatment renders him incapable of making even the simplest decisions, such as going to the bathroom.


text: The Joker forces Batman into a game of hide and seek, giving him one hour to escape Arkham before his adversaries are sent to hunt him down. Through the asylum, Batman encounters Clayface, Doctor Destiny, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Maxie Zeus, and Killer Croc. He reaches a secret room in the towers, where he finds Cavendish holding Adams hostage. It is revealed that Cavendish orchestrated the riots, and has Batman read the diary of the asylum's founder, Amadeus Arkham, when questioned why.


text: In flashbacks, it is shown that Arkham's mentally ill mother, Elizabeth, suffered delusions of being tormented by a supernatural entity. After believing to have seen the creature himself (a bat), Arkham killed her to end her suffering. He blocked out the memory, only to have it return after an inmate, Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, raped and murdered Arkham's wife and daughter. Traumatized, Arkham vowed to bind the evil spirit of "The Bat" with sorcery. He killed Hawkins during a shock therapy session and continued his mission even after he was incarcerated in his own asylum, up until his death.


text: Cavendish came to believe that he was destined to continue Arkham's work. On April Fools' Day (the date Arkham's family was murdered), Cavendish released the patients and lured Batman to the asylum, believing him to be the bat Arkham spoke of. He accuses Batman of feeding the evil of the asylum by bringing it more insane souls and they fight, which ends when Adams slashes Cavendish's throat to save Batman.


text: Batman breaks down the front door of the asylum, proclaiming that the inmates are now free. He returns Two-Face's coin to him, stating that it should be up to him to decide his fate at the hands of the inmates. Two-Face declares that they will kill Batman if the coin lands scratched side up and let him go if the unscarred side lands. He flips the coin and declares Batman free. As the Joker bids Batman goodbye and the police arrives to retake the asylum, Two-Face looks at the coin and it is revealed that it actually landed scratched side up, implying he decided to ignore it. He turns to the stack of tarot cards and knocks them over, reciting a passage from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland": "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards".


text: The graphic novel was Grant Morrison's first work on Batman, and they would later note that the story was intended to be the start of their own version in the Batman saga. The subtitle "A Serious House on Serious Earth" is taken from the last stanza of Philip Larkin's poem Line 55, "Church Going", which reads:


text: The annotated script is a bonus material printed on every Arkham Asylum graphic novel ever since the 15th anniversary edition (2004), containing Morrison's full script that breaks down and explains much of the symbolic references in the story. The introduction page details the genesis behind Morrison's work coming to fruition:


text: Morrison and their fellow friend, Jim Clements, were fascinated by Len Wein's short and evocative paragraphs written on the history of Arkham Asylum in the "Who's Who" series during the development of the story. After the research, Morrison decided to use the tragedy of Amadeus Arkham as part of the story they wanted to tell. The thrill of the Arkham Asylum narrative was influenced by Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and Alan Moore's "Watchmen", inspiring Morrison, who wanted to make their own take on Batman in comics since they liked the authors' storytelling abilities and freedom to push the boundaries of comics to a greater degree.


text: The setting of Arkham Asylum plays a large role in how the inmates perceive their own insanity. As said by the Mad Hatter in the story: "Sometimes I think the asylum is the head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being". He also described the asylum as being a "looking glass" that shows the subject their own twisted psyche.


text: Morrison conceived the graphic novel's storytelling technique to stay away from the original hardboiled pulp influence of Batman and those seen in American cinema adaptations. Style from European cinema, symbolism, and psychological horror themes were used to depict how insanity works within the setting of the asylum, referencing Lewis Carroll, Carl Jung, and Aleister Crowley. Hypostasis was used to push the story forward with psychoanalytic theory and Jungian archetypes were influences.


text: The psychological themes of the Batman villains were deconstructed from their usual style seen in other comics. Examples include Maxie Zeus, an electrified, emaciated figure with messianic delusions, and obsessed with electric shocks and coprophagia; Clayface is rapidly wasted from lack of feeding and is described as a "AIDS with two legs"; the Mad Hatter, whose obsession with "Alice in Wonderland" has pedophilic overtones and is a child molester; Killer Croc was originally drawn as suffering deformities similar to those of Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man", although his final incarnation is that of a humanoid crocodile; both Amadeus Arkham and Charles Cavendish are seen cross dressing. The Joker's mental condition is described as "super sanity"; he re-invents himself every day to suit his circumstances. He may be a harmless prankster one moment and a homicidal maniac the next. Joker is portrayed with a somewhat homosexual element, described as being indirectly "in love" with Batman. In the annotated script, Morrison initially wanted the Joker to "wear make-up and black lingerie in parody of Madonna". DC's editors, however, removed this, believing that readers might assume that Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the character in the "Batman" film would be portrayed as a transvestite.


text: Batman in this graphic novel is described as '80s interpretation of the character's violent, driven, and borderline psychopathic when he is driven close to the breaking point as he ventures the entire asylum in the story. Despite the horror-oriented themes, Morrison clarified that the symbolic concept is only for this book alone, and that their future Batman projects would not have the same form of tone.


text: Dave McKean drew the principal art and the cover art of the Arkham Asylum graphic novel with Morrison supplying their own thumbnail layouts to the artist as guide of how the author wanted the panels in each page to function coherently. In illustrating the story, McKean chose to blend paintings, drawings, photography, and mixed-media collage to come up with striking page designs, and dense symbols. The artist used symbolism, imagery, and surrealism, and many scenes involve the use of symbols to denote a particular psychological device. For example, a Greek inscription can be seen scratched on the doorway of Maxie Zeus's electroshock chamber, which translates into "Discover thyself"; much of the symbolism was later explained and expanded in the annotated script.


text: Gaspar Saladino utilized distinctive lettering to give characters their own fonts and respective speech bubbles: Batman's is black with white lettering, Maxie gets blue with a Greek font, while Joker's speech is without a bubble at all; the red, ink-spattered script used for his dialogue is as ungovernable as the character himself. The practice of giving characters customized lettering treatments has since become widespread, especially in DC's Vertigo line and many Marvel comics.


text: Morrison estimated the final product's total page numbers would have been 64 pages. With McKean on board as the artist, the script was subsequently revised and the total page numbers were expanded to 120 pages.


text: Arkham Asylum was published in hardcover () and trade paperback () in 1989, the same year of Tim Burton's "Batman" film being released. Both Warner Books () and Titan Books () also published trade paperbacks in 1990.


text: The 15th anniversary edition was published in hardcover () and trade paperback () in 2004. This edition contains a brief biography of both Morrison and McKean, credits to those who involved in producing the first edition of the graphic novel, the annotated script, Morrison's personal thumbnail layouts, and an afterword by editor Karen Berger as bonus materials.