title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian's opposition to Guido of Biandrate's appointment had so incensed the Emperor that he no longer placed the Pope's name before his own in their correspondence, as had been a traditional sign of honour. Furthermore, he began aggressively asserting his claims over Lombardy, and in 1159 the Diet of Roncaglia issued a series of decrees claiming extensive lands in north Italy. This caused sufficient concern that the cities of Milan—which Barbarossa had already "half-destroyed", says Ullmann—Brescia, Piacenza and Crema (which had also suffered a "brutal siege", notes Duggan) approached Adrian for aid. Since the lands concerned were part of the Papal fiefdom, Adrian, in Bologna, rejected Barbarossa's claim and gave him 40 days in which to withdraw them, on pain of excommunication. However, Adrian's intervention in a quarrel between the Emperor and the Lombard towns may, suggests the classicist Peter Partner, "may have been inevitable, but it was to be one of the most explosive issues of its age".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Duggan has emphasised the severity of the situation facing Adrian: accepting Frederick's claims, she says, would have entailed Adrian effectively "abandoning the whole Italian church". Adrian also had counter-demands. Frederick was to desist from sending envoys to Rome without papal permission, that he should only be paid the Imperial tax from his Italian lands while in Italy and that those papal lands in north Italy be returned to the church. Adrian, says Duggan, "received short thrift". In the event Adrian died before his 40-day term expired. As relations between Emperor and Pope worsened, Barbarossa took to placing his own name before that of Adrian in their correspondence, as well as addressing the Pope in the singular. By now, suggests Duggan, Adrian was viewed with contempt by the Emperor.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Pope Adrian, comments Sayers, "was not unmindful of the interests and well-being of his English homeland", and Robinson identifies his pontificate as "the period in which


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: English influence was strongest in the papal curia". Adrian remained faithful to the cult of St Alban and often promoted King Henry's political ambitions when he could. For example, suggests Brooke, following his lengthy stay with Adrian, John of Salisbury seems to have acquired the belief that he would at some point receive a cardinalate. However, John fell out with King Henry for a now-unknown reason, and Adrian—probably wishing to promote his friend but essentially a diplomat and a realist—could not afford to alienate his only major supporter in northern Europe. Adrian also favourably received at least two curial embassies from St Albans in 1156 and 1157. In 1156 Adrian ordered King Henry II to appoint an otherwise unknown Hugh to a London prebend. He wrote to Roger, Archbishop of York two months after Adrian's election confirming the Papal Legates in their offices.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian had been absent from England since 1120, and it should not be assumed that he bore an automatic affection for the country which, in Richard Southern's words, had given him "no reasons to cherish warm feelings" about it. However, in 1156, when John of Salisbury—"in circumstances which otherwise remain obscure"—had fallen into disgrace with the English King, Adrian regularly petitioned Henry for his friend's reinstatement. This was eventually won, but had taken a year to achieve. Anne Duggan, of King's College, London, describes Anglo-Papal relations at this time as "not so much to a policy, perhaps, but to persistent intervention...and to a degree of acceptance, willing or not, on the part of Church authorities". However, Adrian was willing to intervene in English church affairs when it suited, as in February 1156 when he threatened Nigel, Bishop of Ely with suspension from office over what the art historian C. R. Dodwell has called Nigel's having "stripped-down, sold, or used as security, a quite astounding number of Ely's monastic treasures".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Among other patronages, he confirmed the nuns of St Mary's Priory, Neasham in possession of their church. and granted St Albans Abbey "a large dossier of privileges and directives" exempting it from the jurisdiction of its episcopal master, Robert de Chesney, Bishop of Lincoln. He also confirmed the primacy of the Archbishop of York over Scottish bishops and his independence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also granted papal protection—"free and immune from all subjection except to the Roman pontiff"—to Scottish towns, such as that of Kelso in 1155. He also, on occasion, sent his young protégés to the court of King Henry to learn the aristocratic arts of hunting, falconry and the martial arts.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian, suggests the papal scholar Brenda M. Bolton, had a particularly "special relationship" with his "home abbey" of St Albans, demonstrated in his generous and wide-ranging privilege "Incomprehensibilis", published in Benevento on 5 February 1156. With this grant, Adrian allowed the abbot the right to wear pontificals, thereby effectively removing the abbot from the jurisdiction of Robert de Chesney, his bishop. The monks were also allowed to elect the abbot of their choosing without deference to the bishop. Neither could they be forced by him to allow him or his agents entry to the abbey, or to attend episcopal synods. In two follow up letters, Adrian gave the Abbot of St Albans authority to replace the clerks in churches under his jurisdiction with his preferred candidates. Brooke describes Adrian as "rain[ing] privilege after privilege upon the abbey.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Probably Adrian's "most striking" donation to England, however, was the Papal Bull "Laudabiliter" of 1155. This was supposedly made either while Adrian was in Benevento or had moved on to Florento. John of Salisbury later claimed credit, writing how "at my request [Adrian] conceded and gave Ireland as a hereditary possession to the illustrious king of the English, Henry II". This granted the island of Ireland to Henry II in fee simple. Adrian's justification was that, since the Donation of Constantine, countries within Christendom were the Pope's to distribute as he would. The claim of "Vicarius Christi" which Adrian inherited allowed him, he believed, to wield the temporal power of his subjects through them. Sayers suggests that "while some kind of Irish mission" was clearly intended by Adrian, the precise nature of the grant remains unclear. Duggan, also notes that neither Henry or Adrian ever seems to have referred to it in their own letters again: "whatever Adrian granted, and he did grant something, there is no reliable evidence" as to its nature or what it comprised.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: King Henry claimed to be motivated by a wish to civilise the supposedly unruly Irish. The Victorian historian Kate Norgate, however, has noted that the spiritual community in 12th-century Ireland "flourished", and that the Pope must have known this, as it was only a few years earlier that the Irish church had been reorganised into Archdioceses, thus making it a national church in its own right. Norgate argues that Adrian's grant was made, not because the church in Ireland needed protecting, but because the Irish lacked a single king and for Christian society to have no single head was an anathema. She also notes that it has misleadingly been called a Bull, when it is, in fact, sufficiently informal in its style to be "nothing more than a commendatory letter". Simple in its approach, the Pope exhorts Henry—if he is to invade Ireland—to do so in the name of the church. Other scholars have argued that, whether or not it was an out and out forgery by Gerald of Wales, Adrian was more likely to have been lukewarm at the idea of invasion at best, as he was equally unenthusiastic at the notion of a Franco-English crusade to the East at the same time.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The Bull "granted and gave Ireland to King Henry II to hold by hereditary right, as his letters witness unto this day", and was accompanied by a gold Papal ring "as a token of investiture". In the early 14th century it was claimed ("by the ordinary [i.e. English] people of Ireland") that Pope had been persuaded—"improperly"—to grant "Laudabiliter", not on the persuasion of Henry II, but on that from the Irish themselves. If he did issue the bull, Adrian may have been influenced by the fact that the Irish church did not pay Peter's Pence, which was a major source of the Papacy's income. He would almost certainly, too, have been aware of Bernard of Clairvaux's letter of 1149, in which he wrote that


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Notes Summerson, "the consequences of the bull were still invisible when Adrian died". As early as 1317, Adrian's grant to Henry was linked in Ireland to his nationality, and Domnall, King of Tír Eoghain complained that Adrian should be known as "Anti-Christ rather than true Pope". The Irish called him "a man not only of English descent but also of English inclinations", who "backed his compatriots in what they regarded as the first major confrontation between the two nations", whereas the Bishop of Thessaloniki praised Adrian as a pastor ("which is how", comments the scholar Averil Cameron, "the Byzantines liked to see the Popes").


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: In 1155 the city state of Genoa approached Adrian and sought him to help them defend their trading rights in the East. The same year Adrian issued the decretal "Dignum est" which allowed serfs to marry without having to obtain their lord's permission as had traditionally been the case. Adrian's reasoning was that a sacrament outweighed a feudal due and that no Christian had the right to stand in the way of another's receiving of a sacrament. This was to become the definitive statement of marriage as a sacrament, and remained such until the recodification of Canon Law in 1917. The same year, Adrian consecrated the Bishop of Grado, Enrico Dandolo as Primate of Dalmatia. Two years later, Adrian granted him primacy over all the Venetian churches in the Eastern Empire. This has been described as "a remarkable move": The historian Thomas F. Madden notes that not only was this the first occasion on which one metropolitan had been given jurisdiction over another, but in doing so Adrian had created the equivalent of an Eastern Patriarch in the west. He also confirmed the degradation of Baume Abbey imposed by Eugenius for its failure to obey a Papal legate.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian confirmed the prerogatives of the Knights Templar and documented in the "Liber Censuum". He also enforced the rules against unfree ecclesiastical elections and condemned ecclesiastics who used physical force against the church. Perhaps reflecting his earlier career, he also promulgated several bulls in favour of the Austin canons. Again, he particularly focussed on houses of his personal association; St Ruf, for example, received at least 10 bulls of privilege. In one of these, he expressed a "special bond of affection" for his old abbey, which he said had been like a mother to him.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian argued that, in the troubled succession to Alfonso I of Aragon, even though Alfonso had legally nominated an heir—his brother—because he had not had a son, his brother was not a direct heir to the Kingdom. This was the context for the projected crusade into Spain as suggested by the Kings of England and France, which Adrian rejected. He did, however, welcome their new friendship.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: It was probably Adrian who canonised Sigfrid of Sweden around 1158, thus making Sigfrid Sweden's apostle. Robinson notes that Adrian's fascination with Scandinavia continued into his pontificate, particularly in his efforts to create a Swedish metropolis. He was also keen to defend its church against lay encroachment. In January 1157 Archbishop Eskil personally presented a petition to Adrian in Rome, requesting protection from King Swein of Denmark. Adrian both appointed the Bishop of Lund his Legate in the region and recognised him as primate over both Sweden and Denmark.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Other cardinalate appointments of Adrian's included that of Alberto di Morra in 1156. Di Mora, also a canon regular like Adrian, later reigned briefly as Pope Gregory VIII in 1187. Boso, already papal chamberlain since 1154, was appointed the same year. Adrian also elevated one Walter to the Pope's own Cardinal Bishopric of Albano; Walter is thought to have been an Englishman—possible also from St Ruf—but very little record of his career has survived. In contrast, his appointment of Raymond des Arénes in 1158 was of a well-known lawyer with an established career under Adrian's predecessors. These were all worthy additions to the Curial office, argues Duggan, being all men of "experience, academic learning and administrative and diplomatic skill", which in turn reflects the wisdom of the appointer. He may have received the hermit and later saint Silvester of Troina, whose only recorded journey was from Siciliy to Rome during Adrian's pontificate.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian continued the reform of the Papacy's finances that had begun under his predecessor in an attempt at boosting revenue, although he regularly had to resort to requesting large loans from major noble families such as the Corsi and Frangipane. His appointment of Boso as Chamberlain—or camerarius—of the Papal patrimony did much to improve the Papacy's finances by way of streamlining its financial bureaucracy. However, he also recognised the expense that the Papay was put to defending its own, commenting "nemo potest sine stipendiis militare", or "no-one can make war without pay". Adrian also consolidated the Papacy's position as the feudal lord of the regional baronage; indeed, his success in doing so has been described as "never less than impressive". In 1157, for example, Adrian made Oddone Frangipane donate his castle to him, which Adrian then granted back to Oddone in fee. occasionally Adrian simply purchased castles and lordships for the papacy, as he did Corchiano. Adrian received the personal oaths of fealty of a number of north-Roman nobles, thus making them vassals of St Peter. In 1158, for example, for fighting in the "Reconquista"—"subduing the barbarous peoples and the savage nations, that is, the fury of the Saracens"—Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona was accepted "under St Peter's and our protection". In 1159 Adrian ratified an agreement with the civic leadership of Ostia—an otherwise semi-independent town—agreed to pay the Pope an annual feudal rent for his lordship. Adrian's vassals, and their family and vassals, took oaths of fealty to the Pope, and in doing so the vassal absolved his own vassals of their oaths to him. All now became direct vassals of the Papacy. One of Adrian's greatest achievements, believed Boso, was acquiring Orvieto as a Papal fief, because this city had "for a very long time withdrawn itself from the jurisdiction of St Peter" Adrian, in 1156, was the first Pope to enter Orvieto, emphasised Boso, and to "have any temporal power there".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian appears to have been an advocate of the crusade since his abbacy of St Ruf, and was equally keen to rekindle the crusading spirit among Christian rulers as Pope. The most recent crusade had ended, poorly, in 1150, but Adrian made what has been called a "novel approach" to launching a new one. In 1157 he announced that, whereas previously indulgences were available to those who fought in the East, from now on they would be also available to those who supported the war effort without necessarily campaigning abroad. This opened the benefits of crusading up to those who supplied money, men or materiel. However, his proposal, novel or otherwise, appears to have met with little interest, and no further crusading was to take place until 1189. He did not, however, approve of Crusading within Christendom itself, as when the French and English kings both proposed a crusade into Muslim Spain, he urged caution upon them. In his January 1159 letter "Satis laudabiliter", while flattering both kings diplomatically, he advised that "it would seem to be neither wise nor safe to enter a foreign land without first seeking the advice of the princes and people of the area". Indeed, Adrian reminded Henry and Louis of the consequences of badly planned and mismanaged crusades by reference to the Second Crusade—of which Louis had been a leader—reminding him that, there too, Louis had invaded "without consulting the people of the area".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian also undertook a building program throughout Rome and the patrimony, although Duggan notes that the shortness of his pontificate reduced the amount of his work that remains visible in the 21st century. The work ranged from the restoration of public buildings and spaces to the city's physical defence. Boso reported how, for example, "in the church of St Peter [Adrian] richly restored the roof of St. Processo which he found collapsed", while in the Lateran, he "caused to be made a very necessary and extremely large cistern". Due to the peripatetic nature of his pontificate he also built a large number of summer palaces across the patrimony, including at Segni, Ferentino, Alatri, Anagni and Rieti. Much of this fortification and building work—particularly in the vicinity of Rome—was for the protection of pilgrims, the safety of whom Adrian was both spiritually and physically reliable for.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Although his pontificate was a relatively short one—four years, six months and 28 days—he spent nearly half that time outside of Rome, either in the enclave of Benevento or journeying around the Papal States and patrimony. Particularly in the early years of the reign, his travels reflected the political context, consisting of "short bursts" as he sought to either meet or avoid the Emperor or William of Sicily as the situation required.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The Pope was conscious, comments Sayers, "of the crushing responsibilities" of his office, telling John of Salisbury that he felt his Papal tiara to be "splendid because it burned with fire". He was also highly conscious of the historicity of the Petrine tradition; as much as any of his predecessors, says Duggan, Adrian upheld the "unifying and an co-ordinating role of the Papal office", and regularly expressed himself on how he viewed his position as that akin to being a steward: He also recognised his own smallness within that tradition, telling John of Salisbury that "the Lord has long since placed me between the hammer and the anvil, and now he must support the burden he has placed upon me, for I cannot carry it". This explains his use of the epithet "Servus servorum Dei", comments Duggan: more than purely rhetorical, it amalgamated his concept of "stewardship, duty and usefulness" in three words.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian was keen to emphasise the superiority of the Western Church over that of the East, and lost no opportunity to tell members of that body so.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian described his approach to relations with his political rivals in a letter to the Archbishop of Thessaloniki. St Peter's authority was indivisible and could not be shared with temporal rulers, he argued. As such—as the descendant of St Peter—neither should he. Central to Adrian's view of his Papacy, says Sayers, was the conviction that his court was the highest court in Christendom and, so, the final court of appeal, and he encouraged appeals from many countries. In an early letter, defending the principle of Papal Monarchy, he compares Christendom to the human body: all the parts can only function as they should if they have an overarching guide and facilitator. To Adrian, Christian Europe was the body, and the Pope the head. The historian Neil Hegarty has suggested that, on the assumption that "Laudabiliter" as is extant can be believed, Adrian firmly believed in "enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion". Adrian was keen to know what people thought of the Roman Church, and often asked the question of John of Salisbury. John also recorded Adrian's view's on the Papacy accepting gifts from Christians, which some viewed as simonaical and evidence of corruption. Adrian, reported John, replied with reference to the fable of the belly. The European analyst Andreas Musolff explains the Pope's position as "deducing from it the church's right to receive, and allocate, the nourishment to the Christian body according to merit and utility".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian, argues Ullmann, was a man of action with little "inclination towards lengthy theoretical discussions", although Norwich argues that he could still be hesitant. For instance, following his radical change of Papal policy at Benevento, he may still not have grasped the significance of what he had done, and certainly not to the extent of radically exploiting the new policy. Partner suggests that Adrian was "an able administrator who used able agents". He was also a traditionalist; a firm follower of Pope Gregory VII, Adrian believed it his duty to not just believe in those ideals, but to enforce them. He also believed in the necessity of reform, as his clarification of the marriage sacrament and enforcement of free episcopal elections demonstrates. He was also, like Eugenius had been before him, a firm believer in the supremacy of the Bishops of Rome over both the Empire and other churches, writing how the Papacy,


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The 16th century jesuit commentator Augustino Oldoini, in his re-edition of Alphonsus Ciacconius' "Papal History", that Adrian had authored a number of works prior to his election. These included a treatise "De Conceptione Beatissimae Virginis", a monograph, "De Legationae sua" and a catechism for the Scandinavian church. Some of his correspondence survives. One such letter, from Hildegarde, exhorts him to crush the Roman commune. Joseph Baird and Radd Ehrman, editors of a collection of Hildegard's letters, note that it was "perhaps unneeded", as Adrian placed the city under Interdict almost immediately. Much of Adrian's correspondence with both Archbishop Theobald and John of Salisbury has also been published in collections of the latter's letters.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian's episcopal registry is now lost, although some decretals—formal rulings—survive. These covered such questions as to whether it was possible to restore a priest to his office when he had been responsible for the death of an apprentice, the payment of tithes, and the marriage of the unfree. Adrian's thoughts on tithe payment also made their way into the body of Canon Law, and were, according to Duggan, "recognised by contemporaries as having special significance, and so included in the collections of canon law being assembled at the time".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The historian Colin Morris notes that Adrian's character appears contradictory: "Some historians have seen him as tough and inflexible, but others as a relatively mild man" who could be manipulated by those around him. Duggan disputes that he was either a cypher to be manipulated by the cardinals or a "prima donna". Rather, she suggests, he was "a man of discipline, who fitted in with the norms and routines already in place...a man of affairs who had no fixed program, but who responded judiciously to the problems brought before his court.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian's chamberlain, Boso—who later wrote Adrian's "Vita"—described the Pope as "mild and kindly in bearing, of high character and learning, famous as a preacher, and renowned for his fine voice". Julius Norwich describes Adrian as being eloquent, able and with "outstanding good looks". The German antiquarian Ferdinand Gregorovius believed that by nature Adrian was "as firm and as unyielding as the granite of his tomb", while Norwich tempers this suggestion, believing that, at least after Benevento, he must have been far more open to the possibilities of change. Duggan wonders whether he deliberately utilised these traits to forward his career. Boso's characterisation, she suggests, "could imply that he was ready to ingratiate himself with the powerful, to make friends and influence people by accommodation and charm". Sayers also suggests that something similar is detectable in the accounts from John of Salisbury, a close friend to the Pope since the days of Adrian's curial visits.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Adrian's own view of his office, suggests Sayers, is summed up in his own words: his "pallium was full of thorns and the burnished mitre seared his head", would have supposedly preferred the simple life of a canon at St Ruf. However, he also respected those who worked beneath him in the curia's officialdom; on one occasion he instructed that "we ought to reward such persons with ecclesiastical benefices when we conveniently can". This approach is reflected in the elevation of fellow Englishmen—Walter, and potentially John of Salisbury—to high office. Brooke suggests that, ultimately, Adrian "had not forgot his origins; he liked to have Englishmen about him".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: His increasing control over Rome and the Patrimony demonstrate that he was an effective organiser and administrator, argues the scholar Edward Whalen. Duggan argues that Adrian's strength of personality can be seen in his very election: in spite of being an outsider, a newcomer and lacking the support or patronage of an Italian noble house he attained the apotheosis of his church. And, she says, these were the qualities that made him independent.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: His biographer, Cardinal Boso, was a close friend who visited Adrian at Rome between November 1155 and June the following year. John's feelings for Adrian were strong enough, indeed, for them to have been compared with, for example, that of Richard the Lionheart for Philip of France. Boswell notes that in John's "Metalogicon", he used terms reminiscent of those used by chroniclers to describe relations between the Kings.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Modern historiography has not always been complimentary to Adrian. Freed argues that Adrian was capable of both shameful and specious arguments in his dispute with Barbarossa. Likewise, David Abulafia has called Adrian "petulant", and Latowsky has criticised his "sarcastic" manner towards Barbarossa.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: By autumn 1159 it may have been clear to Adrian's household and companions that he had not long to live. This may have been at least in part caused by the stresses of his pontificate, suggests Norwich, which although short, was difficult. Pope Adrian died in Anagni—to where he had retired for security against the Emperor—from quinsy on 1 September 1159. He died, says Norwich, "as many Popes had died before him, an embittered exile; and when death came to him, he welcomed it as a friend". He was buried three days later in an "undistinguished third-century sarcophagus" porphyry tomb of his own choosing. In 1607, the Italian archaeologist Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi excavated the crypt and in the process opened Adrian's tomb. He described the body, still well preserved, as that of an "undersized man, wearing Turkish slippers on his feet and, on his hand, a ring with a large emerald", and dressed in a dark Chasuble.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: At the time of Adrian's death, argues Partner, "imperial pressure on the papacy was stronger than it had been since the time of Henry V, and it is not surprising that the cardinals were unable to agree about his successor". It is likely that in the months presaging his death the cardinals were aware of the likelihood of a schism occurring soon afterwards; Freed suggests that thanks to Adrian's own policies, "a split in the College of Cardinals was thus almost preordained", regardless of the Emperor's input. Ullmann suggests that it was the ideological positions of individual cardinals which was shaping—and introducing faction to—the Curia in the last months of Adrian's pontificate. However, Norwich states that Frederick Barbarossa orchestrated the schism himself.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: In September 1159—now leading the Emperor's opponents—Adrian had agreed ("but did not swear") to excommunicate Barbarossa. He also did not have time to judge the request of Scottish Legates who had been in Rome since that summer, who were requesting the Diocese of St Andrews be made a metropolitan, and the beatification of Waltheof of Melrose. One of his final acts was the blessing of his preferred successor, Bernard, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, testified Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg to the Conclave. This, suggests Sayers, could have been Adrian's "masterstroke". The election of Bernard—as a candidate acceptable to the Emperor—may have avoided the future schism. That the Cardinals ended up agreeing with Adrian's choice indicates he had chosen wisely, argues Baumgartner.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Pope Adrian was buried in St Peter's on 4 September 1159. Present were three Imperial ambassadors who had been in attendance on the Pope when he died. They were Otto of Wittelsbach—who had tried to beat up Cardinal Roland at Besançon—Guido of Biandrate and Heribert of Aachen. However, as soon as the Emperor heard of the Pope's death, says Madden, he "sent a group of agents and a great deal of money to Rome" in an attempt to secure the election of a successor with pro-Imperial sympathies.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The meeting between Hadrian and the city envoys of June 1159 may have discussed the next Papal election, as Adrian was known to have been accompanied by 13 cardinals who supported his pro-Sicilian policy. Cardinal Roland's election to succeed Adrian saw both the conflict with the Empire intensify and the alliance with William of Sicily solidify. The schism had a knock-on effect with regard to Papal policy in Italy, making it little more than a passive observer to events on its own doorstep. Papal scholar Frederic Baumgartner argues that a disputed election was the inevitable consequence whenever pope and emperor had a falling out. Relations between Barbarossa and Manuel, already poor—Manuel saw his western counterpart as an "embarrassment", suggests Magdalino, after his falling out with Adrian—ended completely following the death of Manuel's German wife, Bertha of Sulzbach, earlier in 1159.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Following Adrian's death, comments Barber, "the consequence for the church was another long and bitter schism". Tensions between different parties led to a double election, with "mutually unacceptable candidates". This led to what Frank Barlow has called "disgraceful scenes" taking place in Rome, but, with neither side powerful enough to overcome the other, each appealed to the European powers.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Although the Papal forces were insufficient to defeat Barbarossa outright, the war in Lombardy gradually turned against the Emperor, and following the recognition of the Kings of France and England, the military situation became more evenly balanced. However, peace was not established between the Papacy, the Empire, Sicily and the Byzantine Emperor until Barbarossa was defeated at the Battle of Legnano in 1176 and the following year's Treaty of Venice. The schism continued until the election of Pope Alexander III in 1180. During this time the Emperor's chancery distributed a series of fake letters—some of which purported to have been written by Adrian—in defence of the Imperial candidate. One such letter, supposedly to Archbishop Hillin of Trier, comments Latowsky, "is of particular interest since it contains a deliberately erroneous rewriting of Charlemagne's assumption of the imperial title".In it, Adrian launches into a diatribe, condemning the German kings who owe everything to the Papacy yet refuse to understand that. This letter, argues Latowsky, was clearly intended to enrage its Imperial audience. Another letter, from the Emperor to Archbishop, called Adrian's church as "a sea of snakes", a "den of thieves and a house of demons" and Adrian himself as "he who claims to be the Vicar of Peter, but is not". Adrian, in turn, says the Emperor is "out of his mind". Containing as they did summaries of each sides' arguments at Besançon, they are most interesting, argues Freed, for indicating what Barbarossa to have believed to have been the most important of his and Adrian's arguments.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Further afield, war was threatening between England and France. Lands lost by Adrian to Sicily at the Treaty of Benevento were eventually regained by Pope Innocent III early in the next century, by which time the Kingdom of Sicily had merged with the Empire. Innocent saw Adrian's original grant as detracting from the privilege of the Apostolic See, and made concerted and eventually successful efforts to evict the Empire from southern Italy.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The 1159 papal election was disputed, and the College of Cardinals split along sectarian lines, between the "Sicilian"—so-called as its members wished to continue the pro-William policy of Adrian—and "Imperial" sympathisers. The former supported the candidacy of Cardinal Roland; the latter that of Ottaviano de Monticelli. Roland was elected Pope Alexander III. The result was not accepted by his opponents, who elected an Antipope, Victor IV, whom John of Salisbury had previously mocked. The Imperial party disagreed with the new policy of "rapprochement" with Sicily and favoured the traditional alliance with the Empire. A missive of the Imperial party of electors claimed that Adrian was a "dupe" of the Sicilian faction within the cardinals. Indicative of Barbarossa's attitude towards his candidate was his willingness to serve Victor as he had objected to serving Adrian, for example by holding the Antipope's horse and kissing his feet.The conclave to elect Adrian's successor, says Ullmann, was a "riotous and undignified spectacle". Alexander was elected by two-thirds of the college, while Victor's support declined from nine to five cardinals. Two further antipopes were elected before Alexander's death in 1181 and a unity candidate was found. Alexander was left a problematic legacy by Adrian, who had guaranteed a powerful enemy for the Papacy in the Emperor. Alexander managed to negotiate successive crises, however, and held its own. Within a year, Emperor Manuel had recognised Alexander, as had the English King Henry, although the latter waited nine months to do so. Although Octavian received less curial support in the conclave, he had the support of the Roman commune. As a result, Alexander and his supporters were forced into the sanctuary of the Leonine Borgho.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: In the 14th century Adrian was recorded in St Albans' "Book of Benefactors", which, suggests Bolton, "ensured that the memory of the English Pope would remain forever". The 19th-century antiquarian Bishop Stubbs described Adrian IV as, in his view, "a great pope; that is a great constructive pope, not a controversial one, like those who preceded and followed". Walter Ullmann argues that Adrian's pontificate "left an imprint upon contemporary Europe which is not yet fully recognised". One reviewer has described Adrian's pontificate as, traditionally, "largely remembered as the answer to a trivia question (who was the only English pope?) or as a footnote in Anglo-Irish history". On the other hand, the Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Christopher N. L. Brooke argues that, on account of the number of different countries he dwelt in over the years, he illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of 12th-century religion.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The timing of Adrian's pontificate, suggests Ullmann, was significant because it made him the first pope on which what Ullmann calls "newly released forces"—the recently crowned King Henry and Emperor Frederick. On the other hand, argues Egger, Adrian—by rejecting the request of Kings Louis and Henry to crusade in Spain—undoubtedly prevented the secular power from embarrassing themselves: "one can only speculate about what might have happened, but it is not improbable that Adrian spared the Iberian peninsula a disaster on the scale of the second crusade to the East".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Morris argues that while "in a short pontificate, Hadrian did more than any of his predecessors to secure the papal position in central Italy...he was much less successful in his conduct of relations with the empire". Norwich too strikes a cautionary note. While agreeing that Adrian was "the greatest pope since Urban II", he argues that it would be difficult not to "tower...above the string of mediocrities who occupied the throne of St Peter during the first half of the century, just as he himself is overshadowed by his magnificent successor". Duggan argues that, although "the future of the papacy was to be determined by other men and other events, but he had played his part in guiding it securely through an extremely critical phase of its long history".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Ullmann has called Adrian "diplomatically very well versed and experienced, dispassionate and purposeful in his government". Adrian—"the pope of action", says Ullmann—was Papal theory "become eminently practical". He was not, however, a dictator. Likewise, suggests the historian Christopher Tyerman, Adrian's new approach to drumming up support for a crusade in 1157 became "a pivotal feature of crusading from the reign of Innocent III onwards". Innocent himself recognised the debt which he owed to Adrian's pontificate, argues Ullmann. Innocent codified Adrian's changes to the Imperial coronation as official procedure. Even the Besançon affair, suggests Ullmann, casts him in a positive light, and "by his dignified stand against Staufen attacks appears like a rock in comparison with the clamorous Germans".


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: The period immediately preceding Adrian's pontificate, argues Malcolm Barber, was one where "even without a direct imperial threat, Roman feuds, Norman ambitions and incompetently led crusades could reduce grandiose papal plans to ashes". The Papacy itself was one of permanent struggle and conflict, although scholars disagree as to the degree of culpability the papacy had for this. Duggan suggests that "no fair judgment should be reached without recognising the vulnerability" of the papacy itself. His policy, if he can be said to have one, she says, was shaped by events rather than shaping them. Ullmann argues that there was "a perfect concordance between Adrian's symbolic actions and his acts of government". Adrian and his pro-Scicillian cardinals, suggests Duggan, became scapegoats in 1159 for the subsequent conflict.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Sayers describes Adrian IV as "a true son of the reforming papacy". However, the Papal reform movement does not appear to have had faith that Adrian would carry out its program, as leading reformers of the day—such as Gerhoh of Reichersberg and Hildegard of Bingen, for example—sought the church's renewal other ways. Chris Wickham credits Adrian with beginning the process by which the popes expanded their Patrimony. Adrian brought Rome brought back under firm Papal control—with considerable success, argues Wickham, and also expanded the Papal estate around the city, particularly in the northern Lazio region.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Although his Papacy was shorter than either Eugenius III or Alexander III he bought more castles and lordships within papal jurisdiction than either of them, and in a more onerous political context. He was also a tougher pope than his two immediate predecessors, says Wickham and his was an "extremely formative" Papacy, says Sayers, and his policy of reform was a legacy taken up again by reforming popes of the 13th century. His Papacy though, suggests Eden, was "fraught with political intrigue and conflict". Adrian has been described as having "theocratic pretensions", although it was also during his pontificate that the term "Vicar of Christ" became a common synonym for the Pope.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Henry Summerson suggests that on his death, Adrian "left a high reputation", and quotes the "Dictionary of National Biography" in saying that he also became "something of a role model for later popes". The scholar Michael Frassetto suggests that blame for the poor relations between Adrian and Frederick can be placed as much upon their advisors—Roland and Reinald specifically—who both "stressed principle over compromise". Summerson also notes that although England provided no subsequent popes, relations between that country and the Papacy remained strong after Adrian's death and into the 13th century. Adrian's generous treatment of St Albans also had repercussions. He had granted it privileges of such breadth and grandeur—which were confirmed by his successors—that they caused rancour and jealousy in the English church.


title: Pope Adrian IV

text: Ullman suggests that it was Adrian who began the restoration of the Papal monarchy that would reach its apotheosis under Innocent III, while Bolton argues that "only Innocent, the great Roman, realised the value to the papacy of following where Adrian, the unique Englishman, had led".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Roman Dmitriyevich Protasevich (; born 5 May 1995), or Raman Dzmitryyevich Pratasyevich (), is a Belarusian blogger and political activist. He was the editor-in-chief of the Telegram channel Nexta and chief editor of the Telegram channel "Belarus of the Brain" (). Protasevich was arrested by Belarusian authorities after his flight, Ryanair Flight 4978, was diverted to Minsk on the orders of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko on 23 May 2021, because of a false bomb threat passed on by Belarusian air traffic control.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Protasevich's father Dmitry is a Belarusian army reserve officer and a lecturer at a Belarusian military academy. He was stripped of his military rank and awards by a personal decree of President Alexander Lukashenko on 6 May 2021. Protasevich's parents moved to join their son in Poland in August 2020.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Protasevich was in a relationship with Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen, who was also detained by Belarusian authorities on 23 May 2021. According to Sapega's mother, she and Protasevich had known each other for about six months prior to his arrest in May 2021. Sapega was born in Vladivostok, Russia, but has spent most of her life in Belarus. At the time of her arrest, she was an international law student at the European Humanities University in Vilnius.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Protasevich has been an opposition activist and participated in protests since the early 2010s, when he was detained several times.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Since 2011, he has been a member of the Young Front opposition organization. He co-administered a major group in VKontakte, a social network, in opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko until 2012, when it was hacked by the authorities. For a month he took part in the Euromaidan protests.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Protasevich studied journalism at Belarusian State University until he was expelled in 2018. In 2017, he was accused of participating in an unauthorized event in Kurapaty, but he proved in court that he had an alibi for that day. In an interview, he said he was a reporter for several major Belarusian media for several years. He also worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Belarus channel from 2017 to 2018. He had been a Václav Havel Fellow in Journalism in Prague, co-sponsored by the broadcaster.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: In March 2019, Protasevich was a photographer for Euroradio.fm at the meeting of prime ministers of Austria (Sebastian Kurz) and Belarus (Sergey Rumas) in Minsk. In addition to taking photos, he made at least one video report for Euroradio about Chechen refugees trying to move to the EU through Belarus.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: In 2019, Protasevich moved to Poland and on 22 January 2020, announced that he had asked for political asylum there.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: In 2020, Protasevich ran the Nexta Telegram channel together with its creator Stsiapan Putsila. In August 2020, after Belarusian authorities tried to disable internet access during the 2020 presidential election, Nexta became one of the main sources of information about the protests against alleged rigged elections and started to coordinate the protests. The channel had gotten nearly 800,000 new subscribers within a week. In September 2020 Protasevich left Nexta.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 5 November 2020, Protasevich and Putsila were accused of organizing mass riots (article 293 of the Belarusian criminal code), actions that grossly violate public order (article 342) and incitement of social enmity based on professional affiliation (article 130, part 3). On 19 November, the Belarusian KGB put them on the "list of organizations and individuals involved in terrorist activities" for "mass unrest".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 2 March 2021, Protasevich announced that he had begun working for the "Belarus of the Brain" Telegram channel formerly edited by a detained blogger, Ihar Losik.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 23 May 2021, Ryanair Flight 4978 (Athens–Vilnius), with Protasevich on board, received a false bomb threat and was diverted by Belarusian air traffic control to Minsk National Airport. While in Athens, Protasevich sent messages through Telegram saying he had seen a bald man at the airport following him and taking photographs of him. Minsk airport staff said they landed the plane due to a report of a bomb aboard. Lithuanian airport authorities stated that they had not been informed of a bomb threat. The plane changed course just before it would have entered Lithuanian airspace. According to a witness cited by Reuters, upon hearing of the diversion to Minsk, Protasevich immediately gave some of his luggage to his girlfriend. In Minsk, Protasevich and his girlfriend were arrested at the passport control. No bomb was found aboard. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's press service announced that he personally ordered the plane redirected to Minsk and sent a Belarusian Air Force MiG-29 fighter aircraft to escort it, however subsequently the International Civil Aviation Organization fact-finding task force determined the MiG-29 was just tasked for communications back-up and did not contact, approach or escort the flight.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Shortly after the landing in Minsk, Protasevich was taken away by Belarusian police. A fellow passenger was reported to have heard Protasevich speak of the possibility of facing the death penalty, which exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya warned about the same day. The mass unrest charges against Protasevich could carry a prison sentence of up to 15years. He had traveled to Athens to cover a visit by Tsikhanouskaya to the Delphi Economic Forum, an international forum in Greece.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 19 July 2022, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) said that the grounding of the flight was illegal and blamed senior Belarusian officials, also condemning Protasevich's arrest, calling the bomb threat "deliberately false".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: The day after the arrest, Belarusian state television released a video of Protasevich, with dark markings on his forehead, in which he stated that he would confess to organizing "mass unrest" and that he did not have health problems, after unconfirmed reports of a heart condition. Protasevich's father said the video appeared forced and his nose seemed to have been broken, while allies of Protasevich, including exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said the video "is how Roman looks under physical and moral pressure". The Viasna Human Rights Centre and other Belarusian human rights organizations named Protasevich a political prisoner in a joint statement and demanded his immediate release. Amnesty International called for the release of Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, saying "their arrest is arbitrary and unlawful, and its circumstances are nothing short of horrifying".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: The authorities prevented Protasevich's parents and a hired lawyer Inessa Olenskaya from visiting him and obtaining information about his location and medical condition until 27 May. On 25 May, Olenskaya was not allowed to enter SIZO No.1 prison in Minsk and did not get a call back from the Investigative Committee officers. The Minsk branch of the Investigative Committee delayed the process of signing the charging documents, and the SIZO staff later claimed that they did not have Protasevich. On 27 May 2021, his mother held a press conference, calling for medical help to Protasevich. She said she had no information about his location and complained that she could not send him any things or messages via his lawyer.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Olenskaya made a formal complaint to the office of Belarusian Prosecutor-General for being denied access to her client and made a motion for a medical examination of Protasevich. According to Protasevich's grandparents, on 23 May a man visited them, introducing himself as a "Roman's first lawyer" and unsuccessfully asking them to sign a document making him a legal representative of Protasevich. On the evening of 27 May, Olenskaya was allowed to meet with Protasevich, but due to a non-disclosure agreement with authorities, she was not allowed to tell journalists his location or legal status.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 3 June 2021, another video of Protasevich was aired by Belarus state media in which he, apparently under duress, repeated his "confessions". On 14 June 2021, he appeared again in public at a news conference in Minsk to repeat that he felt fine and had not been beaten.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 25 June 2021, Protasevich and his partner Sapega were transferred to house arrest. Investigators stated the pair had agreed to a plea deal in which they will "expose their accomplices and do their best to compensate for the damage they caused".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Allegedly, Protasevich was provided an internet connection on 7 July 2021 and he created a Twitter account, stating he was staying with Sapega in a private house with a courtyard outside the city and that no one had beaten him. According to Reuters, journalists were "unable to verify whether the account belonged to Protasevich or whether he was drafting his comments unassisted".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 18 August 2021, his Twitter posts stopped. The last contact his parents had with him was via Sapega by phone in October 2021.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Protasevich's girlfriend Sofia Sapega was also arrested on Ryanair Flight 4978. She was remanded in custody for two months. According to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sapega was accused of breaking Belarusian law in August and September 2020; the ministry did not specify which laws she allegedly broke. In a video released by Belarusian authorities, Sapega claimed that she was an editor of "Black Book of Belarus", a Telegram channel which had published personal information of security officials that Belarus has classified as an extremist group.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Sapega's mother and several of her classmates told BBC News that she was not involved in the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, and had been living in Vilnius since August 2020. Sapega's mother was not allowed to visit her daughter in prison.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: In a 26 May 2021 speech in the Belarusian parliament, President Alexander Lukashenko labelled Protasevich and Sapega "agents of Western intelligence". On 4 June 2021, the chairman of Investigative Committee of the Belarusian KGB said that Sofia Sapega was charged of "inciting hatred" and "mass disorder".


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 3 December 2021, Sapega was finally charged with "inciting hatred", facing up to 6–12 years of imprisonment.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: On 6 May 2022, Sapega was sentenced to six years in prison for "inciting social hatred". Her lawyer said that he would appeal directly to Russian president Vladimir Putin because of Sapega being a Russian citizen.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: The day after the forced Ryanair landing, Belarusian authorities issued a video in which Protasevich claimed he had been treated correctly and not been harmed, though he looked visibly stressed. On 3 June, Belarusian state TV broadcast an interview with Protasevich in which he confessed to organizing mass unrest in the country and named his associates. His family believed the confession was made under duress. Independent experts noticed numerous marks apparently caused by physical force on his hands and a state of mental breakdown.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Belarusian media accused Protasevich of fighting alongside the Ukrainian Azov Battalion. According to the BBC, the "pro-Lukashenko press in Belarus has portrayed the dissident journalist as an extremist with right-wing sympathies". Protasevich said in 2020 that he had spent a year in Ukraine covering the war in Donbas as a freelance photojournalist. Azov Battalion founder Andriy Biletsky wrote about Protasevich, "Roman was indeed together with Azov and other military units that fought against the occupation of Ukraine, though his weapon as a journalist wasn't an automatic rifle but the written word", and that he was wounded at the 2015 Shyrokyne standoff.


title: Roman Protasevich

text: Luhansk People's Republic, an unrecognized breakaway polity and participant in the war in Donbas, accused Protasevich of having been a member of the Azov Battalion and having "committed a number of particularly serious crimes, which manifested themselves in the shelling of Donetsk People's Republic settlements, which caused the death and injury of civilians, destruction and damage to civilian infrastructure." The Luhansk People's Republic opened a criminal case against Protasevich and asked for his extradition from Belarus. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he was not opposed to Protasevich being interrogated by investigators from the rebel republics involved in the Donbas war against Ukraine, as long as it happened on Belarusian soil. On 16 June 2021, representatives of the Luhansk People's Republic declared that Roman Protasevich had been "interrogated". The Ukrainian embassy in Minsk asked Belarusian authorities for an official explanation.


title: Tart

text: A tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with custard. Tartlet refers to a miniature tart; an example would be egg tarts. The categories of "tart", "flan", "quiche", and "pie" overlap, with no sharp distinctions.


title: Tart

text: The French word "tarte" can be translated to mean either pie or tart, as both are mainly the same with the exception of a pie usually covering the filling in pastry, while flans and tarts leave it open.


title: Tart

text: Tarts are thought to have either come from a tradition of layering food, or to be a product of Medieval pie making. Enriched dough (i.e. short crust) is thought to have been first commonly used in 1550, approximately 200 years after pies. In this period, they were viewed as high-cuisine, popular with nobility, in contrast to the view of a commoners pie. While originally savoury, with meat fillings, culinary tastes led to sweet tarts to prevail, filling tarts instead with fruit and custard. Early medieval tarts generally had meat fillings, but later ones were often based on fruit and custard.


title: Tart

text: An early tart was the Italian crostata, dating to at least the mid-15th century. It has been described as a "rustic free-form version of an open fruit tart".


title: Tart

text: Tarts are typically free-standing with firm pastry base consisting of dough, itself made of flour, thick filling, and perpendicular sides while pies may have softer pastry, looser filling, and sloped sides, necessitating service from the pie plate.


title: Tart

text: There are many types of tarts, with popular varieties including Treacle tart, meringue tart, tarte tatin and Bakewell tart. A "jam tart" uses jam in place of fresh fruit.


title: Tart

text: Savoury tarts include quiche, a family of savoury tarts with a mostly custard filling; German Zwiebelkuchen 'onion tart', and Swiss cheese tart made from Gruyère.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The chain is a unit of length equal to 66 feet (22 yards). It is subdivided into 100 links or 4 rods. There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. In metric terms, it is 20.1168 m long. By extension, chainage (running distance) is the distance along a curved or straight survey line from a fixed commencing point, as given by an odometer.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The chain has been used for several centuries in England and in some other countries influenced by English practice. In the United Kingdom, there were 80 chains to the mile, but until the early nineteenth century the Scottish and Irish customary miles were longer than the statute mile; consequently a Scots chain was about 74 (imperial) feet, an Irish chain 84 feet. These longer chains became obsolete following the adoption of the imperial system of units in 1824.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The UK statute chain is 22 yards, which is . This unit is a statute measure in the United Kingdom, defined in the Weights and Measures Act 1985. One link is a hundredth part of a chain, which is .


title: Chain (unit)

text: The surveyor's chain was first mentioned 1579 and appears in an illustration in 1607. In 1593 the English mile was redefined by a statute of Queen Elizabeth I as 5,280 feet, to tie in with agricultural practice. In 1620, the polymath Edmund Gunter developed a method of accurately surveying land using a surveyor's chain 66 feet long with 100 links. The 66 feet unit, which was four perches or rods, took on the name the chain. By 1675 it was accepted, and Ogilby wrote:


title: Chain (unit)

text: From Gunter's system, the chain and the link became standard surveyors' units of length and crossed to the colonies. The thirteen states of America were expanding westward and the public land had to be surveyed for a cadastral. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson wrote a report for the Continental Congress proposing the rectangular survey system; it was adopted with some changes as the Land Ordinance of 1785 on 20 May the following year. In the report, the use of the chain as a unit of measurement was mandated, and the chain was defined.


title: Chain (unit)

text: In Britain, the chain is no longer used for practical survey work. However, it survives on the railways of the United Kingdom as a location identifier. When railways were designed, the location of features such as bridges and stations was indicated by a cumulative longitudinal "mileage", using miles and chains, from a zero point at the origin or headquarters of the railway, or the originating junction of a new branch line. Since railways are entirely linear in topology, the "mileage" or "chainage" is sufficient to identify a place uniquely on any given route. Thus a certain bridge location may be indicated as 112 miles and 63 chains (181.51 km) from the origin. In the case of the photograph the bridge is near Keynsham, that distance from London Paddington station. The indication "MLN" after the mileage is the engineers' line reference describing the route as the Great Western Main Line, so that visiting engineers can uniquely describe the bridge they are inspecting, as there may be bridges at 112 miles 63 chains on other routes.


title: Chain (unit)

text: On new railway lines built in the United Kingdom such as High Speed 1, the position along the alignment is still called "chainage" although the value is now defined in metres.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The use of the chain was mandatory in laying out US townships. A federal law was passed in 1785 (the Public Land Survey Ordinance) that all official government surveys must be done with a Gunter's (surveyor's) chain. Chains and links are commonly encountered in older metes and bounds legal descriptions. Distances on township plat maps made by the US General Land Office are shown in chains.


title: Chain (unit)

text: Under the US Public Land Survey System, parcels of land are often described in terms of the section (), quarter-section (), and quarter-quarter-section (). Respectively, these square divisions of land are approximately 80 chains (one mile or 1.6 km), 40 chains (half a mile or 800 m), and 20 chains (a quarter mile or 400 m) on a side.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The chain is still used in agriculture: measuring wheels with a circumference of 0.1 chain (diameter ≈ 2.1 ft or 64 cm) are still readily available in Canada and the United States. For a rectangular tract, multiplying the number of turns of a chain wheel for each of two adjacent sides and dividing by 1,000 gives the area in acres.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The unit was also used in mapping the United States along train routes in the 19th century. Railroads in the United States have long since used decimal fractions of a mile. Some subways such as the New York City Subway and the Washington Metro were designed with and continue with a chaining system using the 100-foot engineer's chain.


title: Chain (unit)

text: In the United States, the chain is also used as the measure of the rate of spread of wildfires (chains per hour), both in the predictive National Fire Danger Rating System as well as in after-action reports. The term "chain" is used by wildland firefighters in day-to-day operations as a unit of distance.


title: Chain (unit)

text: In Australia and New Zealand, most building lots in the past were a quarter of an acre, measuring one chain by two and a half chains, and other lots would be multiples or fractions of a chain. The street frontages of many houses in these countries are one chain wide—roads were almost always wide in urban areas, sometimes or . Laneways would be half a chain (10.1 m). In rural areas the roads were wider, up to where a stock route was required. roads were surveyed as major roads or highways between larger towns, roads between smaller localities, and roads were local roads in farming communities. Roads named Three Chain Road etc. persist today.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The "Queen's Chain" is a concept that has long existed in New Zealand, of a strip of public land, usually 20 metres (or one chain in pre-metric measure) wide from the high water mark, that has been set aside for public use along the coast, around many lakes, and along all or part of many rivers. These strips exist in various forms (including road reserves, esplanade reserves, esplanade strips, marginal strips and reserves of various types) but not as extensively and consistently as is often assumed.


title: Chain (unit)

text: Civil engineers and surveyors use various instruments (chains) for measuring distance. Other instruments used for measuring distance include tapes and bands. A steel band is also known as a "band chain".


title: Chain (unit)

text: In 1620, the polymath Edmund Gunter developed a method of accurately surveying land using a 100 link chain, 66 feet long called the Gunter's Chain. Other surveyors chains have been used historically.


title: Chain (unit)

text: A longer chain of , with a hundred links, was devised in the UK in the late 18th century by Jesse Ramsden, though it never supplanted Gunter's chain. Surveyors also sometimes used such a device, and called it the "engineer's chain".


title: Chain (unit)

text: In the Southwestern United States, the " chain" also called the "Texas chain", of 20 (16.9164 m , or  ft) was used in surveying Spanish and later Mexican land grants, such as the major Fisher–Miller and Paisano Grants in Texas, several similarly large ones in New Mexico, and over 200 smaller in California.


title: Chain (unit)

text: Metric chains, of lengths 5 m, 10 m, 20 m and 30 m, are widely used in India. Tolerances are +/- 3 mm for 5 m and 10 m chains, +/- 5 mm for a 20 m chain, and +/- 8 mm for a 30 m chain.


title: Chain (unit)

text: Also in North America, a variant of the chain is used in forestry for traverse surveys. This modern chain is a static cord (thin rope) 50 metres long, marked with a small tag at each metre, and also marked in the first metre every decimetre. When working in dense bush, a short axe or hatchet is commonly tied to the end of the chain, and thrown through the bush in the direction of the traverse.


title: Chain (unit)

text: Another version used extensively in forestry and surveying is the "hip-chain": a small box containing a string counter, worn on the hip. The user ties off the spooled string to a stake or tree and the counter tallies distance as the user walks away in a straight line. These instruments are available in both feet and metres.


title: Chain (unit)

text: The lyrics of Three Chain Road, by Lee Kernaghan, include the line "He lived out on the three chain road" which is the name of many Australian roads; referring to the width of the road reserve.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: , is a Japanese former adult video performer and a multi-media personality. Her role as a media counselor expressing outspoken views on sex and society have drawn comparisons to Cicciolina, sex therapist Dr. Ruth, and actress Linda Lovelace.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kaoru Kuroki (whose stage name translates to "Fragrant Blacktree") was born to a conservative, comfortably middle-class family. The daughter of an engineer, Kuroki was a naturally gifted child and showed artistic talent from an early age. She left public school at the age of 15 to attend art college, and later studied Renaissance art history at Yokohama National University.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: While still attending Yokohama National University, Kuroki began appearing in adult videos (AVs), at first considering this to be another form of art. "I wanted to approach it purely as a performance art form, but it turned out to be a lot crazier than that. In fact, if I'd continued to see porno video as art without also acknowledging it as just a fuck film, I wouldn't have gone this far."


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: She expresses admiration for the films of Nagisa Oshima, Ingmar Bergman, and Bernardo Bertolucci, but, while she continues to view her AV performances as a social mission, she contrasts the AV with film. She says the AV "has a different atmosphere. It's not very sophisticated, in fact it's primitive. It's a bit like eating and menus in restaurants: you're hungry and you have a sudden craving for noodles, so you go and eat noodles. Your appetite is towards a porno video, so you go and rent whatever turns you on. And as with food, viewers can use basic ingredients to 'cook' the desired stimulation from the video themselves."


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kuroki's adult video debut was , released in October 1986 by the major AV company Crystal-Eizou, under the innovative AV director and former porn actor, Toru Muranishi. Muranishi is credited as one of the creators of the documentary style often emulated in Japanese AVs. Kuroki, sharing Muranishi's opinion that the AV should have a documentary quality, continued to work with him when he left Crystal-Eizou to found his own company, Diamond Visual. Her videos for Muranishi usually began with her seated, sharply dressed, and addressing the camera in an improvised talk on a subject like sexual liberation. This would typically be followed by a modeling segment, either nude or in a swimsuit. The remaining video footage would be taken up with various sexual performances, often involving S&M.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Regarding the sex scenes, Bornoff states, "the peripherals in a Kuroki video are fairly violent stuff. She oscillates between abused sexual slave and the epitome of self-assertion with schizophrenic rapidity. To some, the documentary makes for a jarring experience; the feedback she gets from viewers can be surprising. Some say they almost find her frightening; that they can't get a hard-on."


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kuroki responds, "The men who find my videos frightening often recognize the wilder, more uninhibited side of their own girlfriends. In order to liberate themselves, they must first take off their armour. If a man recognizes Kuroki in his wife or girlfriend, he is forced to strip it off in order to deal with her. That's how I liberate both sexes."


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kuroki was engaged in video and magazine appearances typical to being an AV model when she caught the attention of the mainstream media in 1988. Her decision to stop shaving her under-arm hair, as a symbolic protest against Japan's long-standing censorship of the depiction of pubic hair in print or film, gained Kuroki interviews with the mainstream media. Kuroki concedes that her decision to stop shaving her under-arms worked as a gimmick to help set her apart from the mass of AV girls, but considers it also an expression of femininity and identity. Impressed by her ability to speak intelligently and matter-of-factly about subjects normally considered unmentionable, late-night talk shows began inviting Kuroki as a guest. Soon she had become a popular daytime TV panellist, was appearing in commercials, and served as a large department store's campaign girl. While she was popular with her male audience for her AV appearances, she also appealed to a female audience by expressing feminist view on daytime television. In addition to TV talk shows, Kuroki also had a role in the TV Asahi costume drama which was broadcast on March 3, 1989.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Reflecting on her popularity, unprecedented for an AV model up to that time, Kuroki points out that there was a social need for someone like her. "I talk about life as a woman, but with my background, obviously the focus is on sex. I seem to have become a spokeswoman for the too many women who are embarrassed to talk about it."


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: In 1988 Kuroki visited Italy where she met Cicciolina, whom she regards as "sensei". She was pleased to find that many of their opinions coincided, but was surprised by Cicciolina's discomfort with Kuroki's masochistic tendencies and preference for the S&M genre. Kuroki attributes this to cultural and personal differences, and does not feel that S&M equates to submissiveness. Indeed, Fornander points out that Kuroki made AVs in general, and S&M in particular a feminist issue in Japan.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: In March 1989, Kuroki teamed with Diamond Visual's new AV star, Kimiko Matsuzaka in the adult video . Later in 1989, in two entries of Diamond Visual's "How to Sex - Sexual Information" series of instructional sex videos, Kuroki served as the instructor/lecturer with Matsuzaka performing the physical demonstrations. Kuroki and Matsuzaka were brought together again in Toru Muranishi's December 1990 pink film, , for Xces.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: After Matsuzaka's retirement from AV appearances in 1990, Kuroki also appeared with Matsuzaka at the Akasaka club, "Mirukuhooru" ("Milk Hall").


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kuroki retired from public life in 1994. In a 1994 interview, Kuroki said that she suffered physical violence from Muranishi shortly before her retirement. In the January 2002 issue of the magazine "Josei Seven", and the January 2004 issue of "Shukan Post", stories and pictures on Kuroki's private life were printed. Kuroki claimed that as an ordinary citizen no longer in the public eye, the magazines needed her permission to print these stories. Kuroki sued the publisher, Shogakukan, for 22 million yen for invasion of privacy. In April, 2007, the presiding judge ruled the articles illegal and awarded Kuroki 1.7 million yen (about $14,000). Shogakukan was reportedly considering appealing the decision.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: At the height of her popularity, Kuroki's AVs were averaging 17,000 sales a piece, a huge amount by industry standards, exceeding a million dollars. According to Rosemary Iwamura, "Kaoru changed the image of AV girls; she didn't seem to be making videos because of a lack of options but rather as an informed choice." For bringing the AV industry to the attention of mainstream media in Japan, as well as her polite but frank outspokenness on subjects like sex and censorship, Kjell Fornander calls her "the first high-profile AV actress." She permanently changed the way that the AV industry and AV actresses were viewed by the general public in Japan.


title: Kaoru Kuroki

text: Kuroki's life is portrayed in Netflix's show "The Naked Director", where she is portrayed by actress Misato Morita.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) are anti-racist skinheads who oppose white power skinheads, neo-fascists and other political racists, particularly if they identify themselves as skinheads. SHARPs aim to reclaim the original multicultural identity of the original skinheads, hijacked by white power skinheads, who they sometimes deride as "boneheads".


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: SHARP professes no political ideology or affiliation, beyond the common opposition to racism. The group stresses the importance of the black Jamaican influence in the original late-1960s skinhead movement much akin to Trojan Skinheads.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: The original skinhead subculture started in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, and had heavy British mod and Jamaican rude boy influences, including a love for ska and soul music. Although some skinheads (including black skinheads) had engaged in "Paki bashing" (random violence against Pakistanis and other South Asian immigrants), skinheads were not associated with an organized racist political movement in the 1960s. However, in the late 1970s, a skinhead revival in the UK included a sizable white nationalist faction, involving organizations such as the National Front, British Movement, Rock Against Communism and in the late eighties Blood and Honour. Because of this, the mainstream media began to label the whole skinhead identity as neo-fascist. This new white power skinhead movement then spread to other countries, including the United States.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice was founded in 1987 by Marcus, a skinhead from New York City. It emerged as a response by suburban adolescents to the bigotry of the growing White Power Movement in 1982. Traditional skinheads (Trads) formed as a way to show that the skinhead subculture was not based on racism and political extremism. NYC Oi! band The Press and Jason O'Toole (vocalist of the hardcore punk group Life's Blood) were among SHARP's early supporters. In 1989, Roddy Moreno of the Welsh Oi! band The Oppressed visited New York City and met a few SHARP members. On his return to the United Kingdom, he designed a new SHARP logo based on the Trojan Reggae labels design and started promoting SHARP ideals to British skinheads.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: SHARP then spread throughout Europe and in other continents. In the UK and other European countries, the SHARP attitude was more based on the individual than on organized groups. In the 2000s, SHARP is thought to have become more of an individual designation than an official organization.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: But still Skinheads, especially in the United States and Indonesia align themselves with groups and organizations to this day. Most of which Designate themselves as "Crews". Many strive for an individualist presentation with collectivist goals. As well are generally imposed into community service, protesting, activism both Violent and Peaceful. You may find SHARP's apart of local Mutual Aid or Activist groups such as Black Lives Matter or Anti-Racist Action, in which the latter was even in part founded by Skinheads, most well known of which being Mic Crenshaw.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: The United States scene has been entirely agitated by the racist overture and have resorted to all forms of anti-racism and anti-fascism to redeem their style and culture.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: Violence has been rampant within either of the Skinhead factions for decades now. Between fighting in Clubs and Venues as well as the streets. From Mosh pit shuffles to murder. The American scene has been alive and vibrant since the 80's. Some of the most well known Anti-Racist Skinhead crews being that of The Baldies Syndicate, American S.H.A.R.P (Colloquially known as A.M.S). S.H.A.R.P still remains quite active to this day, Besides the aforementioned groups many exist globally and have active membership.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: Many people may confuse SHARP members with racists, since their appearance is superficially similar: shaved heads, denim, lace up boots, button-down shirts and suspenders (called "braces"). One glib differentiation that might be imagined to separate the two would be music interests. SHARPs may listen to culturally influenced music such as: soul, reggae, and ska; but also punk, hardcore and Oi!. Racist skinheads would disagree with some or all of these musical choices; but may listen to punk, hardcore, Oi!, as well as Nazi punk and National Socialist black metal.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: In a deliberate attempt to reject the growing racist subculture, since the early eighties SHARPs promulgated an anti-racist identity through small amateur fanzine publications like "Hard As Nails". During the pre-Internet era, these publication established a network of likeminded individuals with similar musical and stylistic attitudes, who considered anti-racism an indispensable part of a living skinhead scene.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: Another strand of the same Trad revival sought to affirm explicit links with the foundation of Mod subculture and its apolitical, black-positive standards of fashion. The scooter scene, with its runs and Northern Soul dances, had never gone entirely away; and in the post-punk rediscovery of the past, under the influence of The Jam and Quadrophenia, it seemed a fresh and self-renewing direction for skinhead itself to go in.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: By 1989, this Trad scene was ripe for the injection of a cultural influence like SHARP, much as its own appearance had been symptomatic of an American internal revolution in US skinheads' attitudes to race and their own subculture.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: An outgrowth of SHARP, Red and Anarchist Skinheads (RASH), formed in the United States in 1993 against anti-gay sentiment in the nonracist skinhead community.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: The original logo was an American flag surrounded by the SHARP lettering. The second SHARP logo is based on the logo of Trojan Records, which originally mainly released black Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae artists. Some variants of this design also incorporate the checkerboard motif of 2 Tone Records, known for its multiracial roster of ska- and reggae-influenced bands.


title: Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice

text: The way in which SHARPs dress is to project an image that looks hard and smart, in an evolving continuity with style ideals established in the middle-to-late 1960s. This style and demeanour originated from the UK, growing out of the pre-existent Mod movement, taking cues and influences from Jamaican Ska and Rude Boy culture. They remain true to the style's original purpose of enjoying life, clothes, attitude and music.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: The Lair of the White Worm is a 1988 British horror comedy film loosely based on the 1911 Bram Stoker novel of the same name and drawing upon the English legend of the Lambton Worm. The film was written and directed by Ken Russell and stars Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi) is a Scottish archaeology student excavating the site of a convent at the Derbyshire bed and breakfast run by the Trent sisters, Mary (Sammi Davis) and Eve (Catherine Oxenberg). He unearths an unusual skull which appears to be that of a large snake. Angus believes it may be connected to the local legend of the d'Ampton 'worm', a mythical snake-like creature from ages past said to have been slain in Stonerich Cavern by John d'Ampton, the ancestor of current Lord of the Manor, James d'Ampton (Hugh Grant).


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: When a pocket watch is discovered in Stonerich Cavern, James comes to believe that the d'Ampton worm may be more than a legend. The watch belonged to the Trent sisters' father, who disappeared a year earlier near Temple House, the stately home of the beautiful and seductive Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe).


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: The enigmatic Lady Sylvia is in fact an immortal priestess to the ancient snake god, Dionin. As James correctly predicted, the giant snake roams the caves which connect Temple House with Stonerich Cavern. Lady Sylvia steals the skull and abducts Eve Trent, intending to offer her as the latest in a long line of sacrifices to her snake-god.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Before Lady Sylvia can execute her evil plan, Angus and James rescue Eve and destroy both Lady Sylvia and the giant snake. However, Lady Sylvia bites Angus before she dies, and Angus finds himself cursed to carry on the vampiric, snake-like condition, after he finds, to his shock, that the snake anti-venom he used was actually a new form of arthritis medication he got by mistake. When Lord D'Ampton invites him for a dinner celebration, Angus sinisterly smiles and accepts his offer.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: The movie was made as part of a three-picture deal Russell had with Vestron Pictures following the success of Russell's "Gothic" (1986). Vestron told their executive Dan Ireland, who was an admirer of Russell, that if the director could come up with a horror movie, they would finance his planned prequel to "Women in Love", "The Rainbow" (eventually filmed in 1989).


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell was an admirer of Bram Stoker and had written an adaptation of "Dracula" that had never been filmed. Someone suggested the director read "Lair of the White Worm" which Stoker wrote shortly before his death.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell was "disappointed" by the novel. "There are touches of the master there. "Dracula" is a masterful novel: the psychological game the book plays is very interesting, and the Freudian elements are very deep, but those aspects are not present in "Worm". What I did find was something else that took its place, in a sense, and that was for once you didn't have to go to Transylvania for the terror, it happened up the road in Derbyshire."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: He added that "Stoker tried to write something beyond what he'd already written in "Dracula". Unfortunately, his faculties had given way, and he couldn’t realize his imagination. It seems potentially more imaginative than "Dracula", yet falls far short of itself in terms of credibility.”


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell said "It's very similar to "Dracula", but instead of being gothic, it's a very English story . . . Instead of bats, it has a snake, and instead of a man, a woman."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: The director thought "the term 'horror movie' covered a whole strata of possibilities" and he thought "Lair", "while it certainly has plenty of horror elements to it... I consider it to be more of a whodunnit thriller in one respect— or more precisely, a what-dunnit."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell says he took "the spine of the novel and used that as the film's backbone, and that is the snake-worshipping cult. Stoker created a rather ineffectual villain; it’s the villainess who interested me more, the priestess who caters to the dietary needs of the worm. The worm really is the character that steals the show. And as with the Loch Ness monster... there is the assumption that a land-based creature of this sort could still exist under the right conditions— which


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: in the story is this huge cavern called Thor’s Cave in Derbyshire, located next to a snake-like river."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell said he thought the story would have "more credibility if set in modern times" and based the characters on "interesting people I know in the wilds where I live in the Lake District."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Ireland says that Russell originally wanted to cast Tilda Swinton, but she turned down the role after reading the script. Amanda Donohoe was cast instead. Ireland also claims that Russell made the film partly as a tribute to Oscar Wilde.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Donohoe says Russell sent her a script with a note saying "I don't know if you'll be interested in this little bit of nonsense but please read it anyway." She read it and agreed to play Lady Sylvia because, she said, it gave her "the opportunity to play a woman who is basically a fantasy woman. There are no boundaries. Therefore, I could do exactly as I chose with that lady... I didn't want her to be some sort of vampire bimbo. I really wanted her to be a sort of incredibly sophisticated and ageless woman."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: "I always admire someone who really dares to be bad," said Donohoe of Russell. "Even his actors - people like Oliver Reed - have always impressed me that way. They can be brilliant or perfectly dreadful, but they're never boring. I'm fairly serious about acting and integrity, that films should have some real vrumph to them and say something about life. And I'd just been on this string of films and television films in the last two years, all pretty heavy stuff, and I thought 'Well, why not do a film that doesn't mean anything at all?'"


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell said Vestron wanted an American name and suggested Catherine Oxenberg, who had been in "Dynasty". Russell agreed although he said Oxenberg refused to be naked in the final sacrifice sequence, insisting on doing it in her underwear. Russell later wrote "being of royal lineage, she opted for Harrods' silk but as we were a low budget movie she had to be content with Marks and Spencer's cotton - and very fetching she was too."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: It was one of Hugh Grant's first movies and Ireland says Grant was "embarrassed by it" in later years. "I'm not sure if it was meant to be horrific or funny," Grant said shortly after the film was made. "When I saw it, I roared with laughter. As ever, I get to play a sort of upper-class young man. I have some exciting things to do: I get to slay a giant worm with a big sword, cutting it in half. Very, very symbolic stuff."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: The film was shot on location and at Shepperton Film Studios in England over a seven-week period from mid-February to mid-April, 1988.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell said it was a difficult shoot because “Special effects take forever to do. and we had to schedule things in such a way so that we didn't lose any time. Sometimes we’d have two crews shooting simultaneously on different soundstages: One was shooting on the shrine set with Catherine Oxenberg about to be sacrificed to the worm, while other, we were filming a convent of nuns about to be raped by a legion of centurions. Never a dull moment.”


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Referring to aspects of the movie's visual style, Slant wrote: "Russell layers visual elements—faces, bodies, flames—into the video footage using chroma-key compositing, achieving a disorienting surrealist-collage effect".


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: "Ken loves danger," said Donohoe. "One day he came in and played a tape for me and Hugh Grant of a drawing room comedy with Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Afterwards, we just looked at him with blank faces and he said `That's the way I want you to play your scenes.' It was mad but inspired."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell insisted the film was a comedy. "“Audiences don’t realize my films are comedies until the last line has been delivered, and even then, most people don’t appear to get the joke," he said. "I would like to state that I actively encourage the audience to laugh along with "White Worm"."


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: On movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, as of November 2022, the film had an approval rating of 69%, based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10.


title: The Lair of the White Worm (film)

text: Russell said the movie "became a cult film, appropriately enough, down under. It did well in other countries, but not in Merrie England, where our dour-faced critics insisted on taking it seriously. How on earth can you take seriously the vision of Catherine Oxenberg, dressed in Marks & Spencer’s underwear, being sacrificed to a fake, phallic worm two hundred feet long?"


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: "Kingdom Hearts" is a series of action role-playing games developed and published by Square Enix (formerly Square). It is the result of a collaboration between Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios. "Kingdom Hearts" is a crossover of various Disney settings based in a universe made specifically for the series. The series features a mixture of familiar Disney, "Final Fantasy", "The World Ends with You" and Pixar characters, as well as several new characters designed by Tetsuya Nomura. In addition, it has an all-star voice cast which includes many of the Disney characters' official voice actors.


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: The series centers on Sora's search for his friends and his encounters with various Disney and "Final Fantasy" characters along the way. Players primarily control Sora, though there are numerous characters that join Sora's party as computer controlled members. The majority of the characters were introduced in the original game "Kingdom Hearts". Subsequent installments have featured several new original, Disney, and "Final Fantasy" characters, "" introduces characters from Square Enix's "The World Ends with You", while "Kingdom Hearts III" introduces characters from Pixar's "Toy Story" series and "Monsters, Inc.".


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: Various types of merchandise modeled after the characters' likeness have been produced, including figurines and jewelry. The characters have garnered praise from several video game websites and magazines for the quality of their voice acting and visual style. Comments have focused on the accurate presentation of Disney characters, the unique visual style of Square Enix characters, how well all the characters blend together, and the consistent quality performances from voice actors.


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: The "Kingdom Hearts" series is directed by Tetsuya Nomura, the character designer of the games. Nomura has stated that unlike working with "Final Fantasy" characters, keeping the main character Sora alive and interesting over multiple games is a challenge. He also stated that though many of the Disney characters are not normally dark and serious, there were not many challenges making them so for the story, and despite this, their personalities shine because they maintain their own characteristics. Though Disney gave Nomura freedom in the characters and worlds used for the games, he and his staff tried to stay within the established roles of characters and boundaries of the worlds. When deciding which worlds to include in the game, the development staff tried to take into account worlds with Disney characters that would be interesting.


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: The inclusion of specific "Final Fantasy" characters was based on the opinions of fans and the development staff. Another criterion for inclusion was whether the staff felt the characters would fit into the storyline and in the "Kingdom Hearts" universe. Nomura was hesitant to use characters he did not design because he was unfamiliar with the background work of such characters. For "Kingdom Hearts II", he changed his mind after receiving pressure from his staff. Throughout the development of the games, Nomura has often left certain events and connections between characters unexplained until the release of future games. Nomura did this because he feels that games should have room for fans to speculate and use their imagination. He stated that with speculation, even though a game may get old, people can still be happy with it.


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: is the main protagonist of the "Kingdom Hearts" series, and the sole playable character of the original game. He is portrayed as a cheerful 14-year-old boy who lives on the Destiny Islands with his two childhood friends, Riku and Kairi. When his world is beset by creatures of darkness known as the Heartless, Sora comes into possession of a weapon of light called the Keyblade, and he embarks on a journey alongside Donald Duck and Goofy to protect other worlds from the Heartless and nobodies and other forces of evil. Nomura has stated that Sora's name can be interpreted as "sky", as the Japanese word for sky is .


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: is a childhood friend and rival of Sora who resides with him and Kairi on the world of Destiny Islands. Originally appearing as a non-playable character in the original game, where he is introduced as a 15- year-old boy, he has a playable role in the "Reverse/Rebirth" story mode of "Chain of Memories", the multiplayer mode of "358/2 Days", and the core story of "Dream Drop Distance". He is also a computer-controlled party member exclusive to the final level of "Kingdom Hearts II", and is temporarily playable during a sequence where Sora is incapacitated in the game's final boss battle. Riku is also briefly playable at several points in the "Dark World" in "Kingdom Hearts III" and is playable a few times in the "Re Mind" expansion of "Kingdom Hearts III". His signature weapon is the "Soul Eater" sword, a manifestation of the darkness in his heart. During the first game, Riku is revealed to be the rightful owner of Sora's Keyblade, which is bequeathed onto the five-year-old Riku by Terra during the events of "Birth by Sleep"; however, his reliance on the power of darkness causes the Keyblade to reject Riku in favor of Sora. In "Kingdom Hearts II", the 16-year-old Riku acquires another Keyblade of his own, the "Way to the Dawn"; this Keyblade is later broken in "Kingdom Hearts III", leading him to obtain a new Keyblade, "Braveheart".


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: is the main female protagonist of "Kingdom Hearts", and the best friend of Sora and Riku. She is a non-playable character in most games of the series, but debuts as a playable character in the "Re Mind" scenario of "Kingdom Hearts III". As one of the seven Princesses of Heart, she is cast adrift from her homeworld of Radiant Garden at a young age as part of Xehanort's experiment to locate the key bearer, which eventually brings her to the Destiny Islands, piquing Sora and Riku's interest in other worlds. In "Birth by Sleep", it is revealed that her arrival on the islands is the result of an encounter with Aqua, who gives the four-year-old Kairi a protective charm to shield her from the darkness; Kairi gains the ability to wield a Keyblade after touching the one belonging to Aqua.


title: Characters of Kingdom Hearts

text: During "Kingdom Hearts", the 14-year-old Kairi's heart is stolen by the darkness bugs commanded by "Ansem", sending her body into a coma while her heart takes refuge within Sora's. Upon learning her identity as a Princess of Heart and the location of her heart, Sora sacrifices his own heart in order to release hers and return to her body. While Sora disappears, Kairi escapes from a revived Ansem along with Donald Duck and Goofy. Soon after, Kairi finds Sora's Heartless and restores to human form. Kairi later remains behind on the restored Destiny Islands to await Sora's return from this journey. In "Kingdom Hearts II", Kairi is approached by Axel to come with her, but she runs away with the help of Pluto and a dark corrider made by Riku. She is soon kidnapped by Saïx to motivate Sora towards acting in the Organization's wishes. She escapes with the help of Naminé and Riku, receiving her Keyblade "Destiny Embrace" from the latter to fight alongside Sora while the former merges with her to become a whole being once again. After Sora and Riku defeat the Organization's leader Xemnas, Kairi reunites with them at the Destiny Islands. In "Dream Drop Distance", she is summoned by Yen Sid to train as a Keyblade wielder in order to combat Xehanort's reconfigured Organization XIII. In "Kingdom Hearts III", Kairi trains with a reformed Axel in a secret place created by Merlin's magic. After completing her training, she reunites with her friends and shares with Sora a paopu, a legendary fruit that binds the destinies of those who eat it together. Afterwards, she participates in the final battle against Xehanort and Organization XIII, but Xehanort destroys her body to motivate Sora into helping recreate the χ-blade. Following Xehanort's defeat, Sora departs to restore Kairi by using the power of waking; in the final scene of the game, Kairi is shown to have been revived by Sora before he fades away as a consequence. In the "Limitcut" episode of "Re Mind", Kairi is revealed to be in a deep sleep in Ansem's lab, as Ansem The Wise and his apprentices analyze her heart for clues on Sora's whereabouts. In "", she awakens and is able to deduce with Riku that Sora is in a location outside of their own reality called "Quadratum". As Riku departs to save Sora, Kairi stays behind in order to train with Aqua to improve her skills.