title: The Twelve Caesars

text: We learn from Suetonius that Claudius was the first Roman commander to invade Britain since Julius Caesar a century earlier. Cassius Dio gives a more detailed account of this. He also went farther than Caesar, and made Britain subject to Roman rule. Caesar had "conquered" Britain, but left the Britons alone to rule themselves. Claudius was not as kind. The invasion of Britain was the major military campaign under his reign.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: According to Suetonius, Claudius suffered from ill health all of his life until he became emperor, when his health suddenly became excellent. Nonetheless, Claudius suffered from a variety of maladies, including fits and epileptic seizures, a funny limp, as well as several personal habits like a bad stutter and excessive drooling when overexcited. Suetonius found much delectation in recounting how the pitiable Claudius was ridiculed in his imperial home due to these ailments. In his account of Caligula, Suetonius also includes several letters written by Augustus to his wife, Livia, expressing concern for the imperial family's reputation should Claudius be seen with them in public. Suetonius goes on to accuse Claudius of cruelty and stupidity, assigning some of the blame to his wives and freedmen.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius discusses several omens that foretold the assassination of Claudius. He mentions a comet that several Romans had seen shortly before the assassination. As mentioned earlier, comets were believed to foretell the deaths of significant people. Per Suetonius, Claudius, under suggestions from his wife Messalina, tried to shift this deadly fate from himself to others by various fictions, resulting in the execution of several Roman citizens, including some senators and aristocrats.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius paints Claudius as a ridiculous figure, belittling many of his acts and attributing his good works to the influence of others. Thus the portrait of Claudius as the weak fool, controlled by those he supposedly ruled, was preserved for the ages. Claudius’ dining habits figure in the biography, notably his immoderate love of food and drink, and his affection for the city taverns.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: His personal and moral failings aside however, most modern historians agree that Claudius generally ruled well. They cite his military success in Britannia as well as his extensive public works. His reign came to an end when he was murdered by eating from a dish of poisoned mushrooms, probably supplied by his last wife Agrippina in an attempt to have her own son from a previous marriage, the future emperor Nero, ascend the throne.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius portrays the life of Nero in a similar fashion to that of Caligula—it begins with a recounting of how Nero assumed the throne ahead of Claudius' son Britannicus and then descends into a recounting of various atrocities the young emperor allegedly performed.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: One characteristic of Nero that Suetonius describes was Nero's enjoyment of music. Suetonius describes Nero as being a gifted musician. Nero would often give great concerts with attendance compelled for upper-class Romans. These concerts would last for hours on end, and some women were rumored to give birth during them, or men faking death to escape (Nero forbade anyone from leaving the performance until it was completed).


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Nero's eccentricities continued in the tradition of his predecessors in mental and personal perversions. According to Suetonius, Nero had one boy named Sporus castrated, and then had sex with him as though he were a woman. Suetonius quotes one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had married someone more like the castrated boy.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: It is in Suetonius we find the beginnings of the legend that Nero "fiddled as Rome burned." Suetonius recounts how Nero, while watching Rome burn, exclaimed how beautiful it was, and sang an epic poem about the sack of Troy while playing the lyre.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius describes Nero's suicide, and remarks that his death meant the end of the reign of the Julio-Claudians (because Nero had no heir). According to Suetonius, Nero was condemned to die by the Senate. When Nero knew that soldiers had been dispatched by the Senate to kill him, he committed suicide.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius includes a brief description of Galba's family history. Suetonius describes Galba as being of noble birth, and born into a noble patrician family. Suetonius also includes a brief list of omens regarding Galba and his assassination.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Most of this book describes Galba's ascension to the throne and his assassination, along with the usual side notes regarding his appearance and related omens. Suetonius does not spend much time describing either any accomplishments nor any failures of his reign.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: His full name was Marcus Salvius Otho. Otho's reign was only a few months. Therefore, the book on Otho is short, much as the book on Galba had been.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius used a similar method to describe the life of Otho as he had used to describe the life of Galba. Suetonius describes Otho's family, and their history and nobility. And just as Suetonius had done with prior caesars, he includes a list of omens regarding Otho's reign and suicide.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius spends most of the book describing the ascension of Otho, his suicide, and the other usual topics. Suetonius suggests that as soon as Otho ascended the throne, he started defending himself against competing claims to the throne.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: According to Suetonius, Otho suffered a fate similar to the fate Galba had suffered. It was the loyalists of another aspiring emperor (in this case, the next emperor Vitellius) who wanted to kill him. Suetonius claims that one night Otho realized that he would soon be murdered. He contemplated suicide, but decided to sleep one more night before carrying out a suicide. That night he went to bed with a dagger under his pillow. The next morning he woke up and stabbed himself to death.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: In the book of the last of the short-lived emperors, Suetonius briefly describes the reign of Vitellius.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: This book gives an unfavorable picture of Vitellius; however it should be remembered that Suetonius' father was an army officer who had fought for Otho and against Vitellius at the first Battle of Bedriacum, and that Vespasian basically controlled history when he ascended to the throne. Anything written about Vitellius during the Flavian dynasty would have to paint him in a bad light.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius finally describes the assassination of Vitellius. According to Suetonius, Vitellius was dragged naked by Roman subjects, tied to a post, and had animal waste thrown at him before he was killed. However, unlike the prior two emperors, it was not the next emperor who killed Vitellius. The next emperor and his followers had been waging a war against the Jews in Judaea at the time. The death of Vitellius and subsequent ascendance of his successor ended the worst year of the early principate.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius begins by describing the humble antecedents of the founder of the Flavian dynasty and follows with a brief summary of his military and political career under Aulus Plautius, Claudius and Nero and his suppression of the uprising in Judaea. Suetonius documents an early reputation for honesty but also a tendency toward avariciousness.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: A detailed recounting of the omens and consultations with oracles follows which Suetonius suggests furthered Vespasian's imperial pretensions. Suetonius then briefly recounts the escalating military support for Vespasian and even more briefly the events in Italy and Egypt that culminated in his accession.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius presents Vespasian's early imperial actions, the reimposition of discipline on Rome and her provinces and the rebuilding and repair of Roman infrastructure damaged in the civil war, in a favourable light, describing him as 'modest and lenient' and drawing clear parallels with Augustus. Vespasian is further presented as being extraordinarily just and with a preference for clemency over revenge.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius describes avarice as Vespasian's only serious failing, documenting his tendency for inventive taxation and extortion. However, he mitigates this failing by suggesting that the emptiness of state coffers left Vespasian little choice. Moreover, intermixed with accounts of greed and 'stinginess' are accounts of generosity and lavish rewards. Finally Suetonius gives a brief account of Vespasian's physical appearance and penchant for comedy. This section of the work is the basis for the famous expression "Money has no odor" (); according to Suetonius, Vespasian's son (and the next emperor), Titus, criticized Vespasian for levying a fee for the use of public toilets in the streets of Rome. Vespasian then produced some coins and asked Titus to sniff them, and then asked Titus whether they smelled bad. When Titus said that the coins did not smell bad, Vespasian replied: "And yet they come from urine".


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Having contracted a 'bowel complaint,' Vespasian tried to continue his duties as emperor from what would be his deathbed, but on a sudden attack of diarrhea he said "An emperor ought to die standing," and died while struggling to do so.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Titus was the elder son of Vespasian, and second emperor of the Flavian dynasty. As Suetonius writes: "The delight and darling of the human race." Titus was raised in the imperial court, having grown up with Britannicus. The two of them were told a prophecy pertaining to their future where Britannicus was told that he would never succeed his father and that Titus would. The two were so close that when Britannicus was poisoned, Titus – who was present – tasted it and was nearly killed. "When Titus came of age, the beauty and talents that had distinguished him as a child grew even more remarkable." Titus was extremely adept at the arts of "war and peace." He made a name for himself as a colonel in Germany and Britain; however, he really flourished as a commander under his father in Judea and when he took over the siege of Jerusalem. Titus' near six-month siege of Jerusalem ended with the destruction of the Herod's Temple and the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem. The resulting period is known as the Jewish diaspora (roughly from 70 till 1948). Titus had a love affair with the Jewish queen Berenice, whom he brought briefly to Rome.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: As emperor, he tried to be magnanimous and always heard petitions with an open mind. And after going through a day having not granted any favors, he commented that "I have wasted a day." During his reign he finished what would be the most enduring reminder of his family: the Flavian Amphitheater. His reign was tainted by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a great fire in Rome, and one of the worst plagues "that had ever been known." These catastrophes did not destroy him. Rather, as Suetonius remarks, he rose up like a father caring for his children. And although he was deified, his reign was short. He died from poison (possibly by his brother, Domitian), having only reigned for "two years, two months and twenty days." At the time of his death, he "[drew] back the curtains, gazed up at the sky, and complained bitterly that life was being undeservedly taken from him – since only a single sin lay on his conscience."


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Younger brother of Titus, second son of Vespasian, and third emperor of the Flavian dynasty. Recorded as having gained the throne through deliberately letting his brother die of a fever. During Titus' rule he had caused dissent and had sought the throne through rebellion. From the beginning of his reign Domitian ruled as a complete autocrat, partly because of his lack of political skills, but also because of his own nature. Having led a solitary early life, Domitian was suspicious of those around him, a difficult situation which gradually got worse.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Domitian's provincial government was so carefully supervised that Suetonius admits that the empire enjoyed a period of unusually good government and security. Domitian's policy of employing members of the equestrian class rather than his own freedmen for some important posts was also an innovation. The empire’s finances, which the recklessness of Titus had thrown into confusion, were restored despite building projects and foreign wars. Deeply religious, Domitian built temples and established ceremonies and even tried to enforce public morality by law.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Domitian personally took part in battles in Germany. The latter part of his reign saw increasing trouble on the lower Danube from the Dacians, a tribe occupying roughly what is today Romania. Led by their king Decebalus, the Dacians invaded the empire in 85 AD. The war ended in 88 in a compromise peace which left Decebalus as king and gave him Roman "foreign aid" in return for his promise to help defend the frontier.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: One of the reasons Domitian failed to crush the Dacians was a revolt in Germany by the governor Antonius Saturninus. The revolt was quickly suppressed, but from then on, Suetonius informs us, Domitian's already suspicious temper grew steadily worse. Those closest to him suffered the most, and after a reign of terror at the imperial court Domitian was murdered in 96 AD; the group that killed him, according to Suetonius, included his wife, Domitia Longina, and possibly his successor, Nerva. The Senate, which had always hated him, quickly condemned his memory and repealed his acts, and Domitian joined the ranks of the tyrants of considerable accomplishments but evil memory. He was the last of the Flavian emperors, and his murder marked the beginning of the period of the so-called Five Good Emperors.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: The oldest surviving copy of "The Twelve Caesars" was made in Tours in the late 8th or early 9th century AD, and is currently held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is missing the prologue and the first part of the life of Julius Caesar, as are all other surviving copies of the book. Including the Tours manuscript, there are nineteen surviving copies of "The Twelve Caesars" from the 13th century or earlier. The presence of certain errors in some copies but not others suggests that the nineteen books can be split into two branches of transmission of roughly equal size.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: References to the book appear in older works. John Lydus, in his 6th-century book "De magistratibus populi Romani", quotes the dedication (from the now-lost prologue) to Septicius Clarus, then prefect of the Praetorian cohort. This allows the book to be dated to 119–121 AD, when Septicius was Praetorian prefect.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: "In." indicates that the manuscript is believed to originate around the beginning of that century. "Med." indicates towards the middle and "Ex." indicates towards the end. Otherwise the number indicates first (1/2) or second half (2/2) of the century or one of the quarters of the century (1-4/4).


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: "The Twelve Caesars" served as a model for the biographies of 2nd- and early 3rd-century emperors compiled by Marius Maximus. This collection, apparently entitled "Caesares", does not survive, but it was a source for a later biographical collection, known as "Historia Augusta", which now forms a kind of sequel to Suetonius' work. The "Historia Augusta" is a collective biography, partly fictionalized, of Roman emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: In the ninth century, Einhard modelled himself on Suetonius in writing the "Life of Charlemagne", even borrowing phrases from Suetonius' physical description of Augustus in his own description of the character and appearance of Charlemagne.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Robert Graves, famous for his historical novels "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God" (later dramatized by the BBC), made a widely read translation of "The Twelve Caesars", first published in Penguin Classics in 1957.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Suetonius' work has had a significant impact on coin collecting. For centuries, collecting a coin of each of the twelve caesars has been a challenge for collectors of Roman coins.


title: The Twelve Caesars

text: Many artists created series of paintings or sculptures based on the lives of the Twelve Caesars, including Titian's "Eleven Caesars", and the Aldobrandini Tazze, a collection of twelve 16th-century silver standing cups.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: Adam Levy (born 5 December 1970) is a British actor best known for his role as Peter in "A.D. The Bible Continues".


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: Levy trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and spent a great deal of his early career working in theatre where he was a member of the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) acting companies over a period of years and performed in a wide variety of Shakespeare productions. This included the part of Paris in Peter Stein’s Royal Shakespeare production of Troilus and Cressida, Dauphin in Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production of Henry V, and Paulina in Ed Hall's all-male Propeller production of The Winter's Tale.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: His stage debut happened aged 21, when Levy was cast by Alan Ayckbourn as Judd Hirsch’s son in the Herb Gardner stage comedy Conversations With My Father.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: In 2007, Levy played Louis in the revival of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' and in 2008, Adam was cast as the lead villain in the West End Musical 'Zorro' where he played Zorro's arch-nemesis Ramon.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: In 2012, Levy was cast in a major role alongside Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths in the comedy "The Sunshine Boys" at the Savoy Theatre as DeVito's nephew.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: On television, Levy has played a number of supporting roles including the part of Bentivolio in "Borjia" for Atlantic Productions and in 2015 was cast in the lead role of disciple Peter in all 12 episodes of NBC show "A.D. The Bible Continues" filmed in Morocco.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: Levy was cast in Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" as one of his earliest film roles though his scenes were eventually cut and in 2014 appeared in "Before I Go To Sleep" with Nicole Kidman.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: In 2015, Levy worked in the feature "Music, War and Love" directed by Martha Coolidge due for release in summer 2016.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: In 2018, he starred in some Season 4 episodes of "Supergirl" in the recurring role of Amadei Derros, an alien guru with healing powers.


title: Adam Levy (actor)

text: In 2019, Levy was featured in the first (and second) season of the Netflix original series "The Witcher" as the druid "Mousesack".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás (9 January 1902 – 26 June 1975) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest. He founded Opus Dei, an organization of laypeople and priests dedicated to the teaching that everyone is called to holiness by God and that ordinary life can result in sanctity. He was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who declared Josemaría should be "counted among the great witnesses of Christianity."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá gained a doctorate in civil law at the Complutense University of Madrid and a doctorate in theology at the Lateran University in Rome. His principal work was the initiation, government and expansion of Opus Dei. Escrivá's best-known publication is "The Way", which has been translated into 43 languages and has sold several million copies.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá and Opus Dei have been accused of secrecy, elitism, cult-like practices, and involvement with right-wing causes, such as the rule of Francisco Franco in Spain (1939–1975). After his death, his canonization attracted considerable attention and controversy among some Catholics and the worldwide press. Several journalists who have investigated the history of Opus Dei, among them Vatican analyst John L. Allen Jr., have argued that many of these accusations are unproven or have grown from allegations by enemies of Escrivá and his organization. Cardinal Albino Luciani (later Pope John Paul I), John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, Óscar Romero, and many other Catholic leaders have endorsed Escrivá's teaching concerning the universal call to holiness, the role of the laity, and the sanctifying effect of ordinary work. According to Allen, among Catholics, Escrivá is "reviled by some and venerated by millions more".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: José María Mariano Escriva y Albás was born to José Escriva y Corzán and his wife, María de los Dolores Albás y Blanc on 9 January 1902, in the small town of Barbastro, in Huesca, Spain, the second of six children and the first of two sons. José Escrivá was a merchant and a partner in a textile company that eventually went bankrupt, forcing the family to relocate in 1915 to the city of Logroño, in the northern province of La Rioja, where he worked as a clerk in a clothing store. Young Josemaría first felt that "he had been chosen for something", it is reported, when he saw footprints left in the snow by a monk walking barefoot.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: With his father's blessing, Escrivá prepared to become a priest of the Catholic Church. He studied first in Logroño and then in Zaragoza, where he was ordained as deacon on Saturday, 20 December 1924. He was ordained a priest, also in Zaragoza, on Saturday, 28 March 1925. After a brief appointment to a rural parish in Perdiguera, he went to Madrid, the Spanish capital, in 1927 to study law at the Central University. In Madrid, Escrivá was employed as a private tutor and as a chaplain to the Foundation of Santa Isabel, which comprised the royal Convent of Santa Isabel and a school managed by the Little Sisters of the Assumption.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: A prayerful retreat helped him to discern more definitely what he considered to be God's will for him, and, on 2 October 1928, he "saw" Opus Dei (), a way by which Catholics might learn to sanctify themselves by their secular work. He founded it in 1928, and Pius XII gave it final approval in 1950. According to the decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which contains a condensed biography of Escrivá, "[t]o this mission he gave himself totally. From the beginning his was a very wide-ranging apostolate in social environments of all kinds. He worked especially among the poor and the sick languishing in the slums and hospitals of Madrid."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: During the Spanish Civil War, Escrivá fled from Madrid, which was controlled by the anti-clerical Republicans, via Andorra and France, to the city of Burgos, which was the headquarters of General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces. After the war ended in 1939 with Franco's victory, Escrivá was able to resume his studies in Madrid and complete a doctorate in law, for which he submitted a thesis on the historical jurisdiction of the Abbess of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, affiliated with Opus Dei, was founded on Sunday, 14 February 1943. Escrivá relocated to Rome in 1946. The decree declaring Escrivá "Venerable" states that "in 1947 and on Monday, 16 June 1950, he obtained approval of Opus Dei as an institution of pontifical right. With tireless charity and operative hope he guided the development of Opus Dei throughout the world, activating a vast mobilization of lay people ... He gave life to numerous initiatives in the work of evangelization and human welfare; he fostered vocations to the priesthood and the religious life everywhere... Above all, he devoted himself tirelessly to the task of forming the members of Opus Dei."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: According to some accounts, at the age of two he suffered from a disease (perhaps epilepsy) so severe that the doctors expected him to die soon, but his mother had taken him to Torreciudad, where the Aragonese locals venerated a statue of the Virgin Mary (as "Our Lady of the Angels"), thought to date from the 11th century. Escrivá recovered and, as the director of Opus Dei during the 1960s and 1970s, promoted and oversaw the design and construction of a major shrine at Torreciudad. The new shrine was inaugurated on 7 July 1975, soon after Escrivá's death, and to this day remains the spiritual center of Opus Dei, as well as an important destination for pilgrimage. By the time of Escrivá's death in 1975, the members of Opus Dei numbered some 60,000 in 80 countries. As an adult, Escrivá suffered from type 1 diabetes and, according to some sources, also epilepsy.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In 1950, Escrivá was appointed an Honorary Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XII, which allowed him to use the title of Monsignor. In 1955, he received a doctorate of theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He was a consultor to two Vatican congregations (the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities and the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of the Code of Canon Law) and an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) confirmed the importance of the universal call to holiness, the role of the laity, and the Mass as the basis of Christian life.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In 1948 Escrivá founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Crucis (Roman College of the Holy Cross), Opus Dei's educational center for men, in Rome. In 1953 he founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Mariae (Roman College of Saint Mary) to serve the women's section (these institutions are now joined into the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.) Escrivá also established the University of Navarre, in Pamplona, and the University of Piura (in Peru), as secular institutions affiliated with Opus Dei. Escrivá died of cardiac arrest on 26 June 1975, aged 73.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Three years after Escrivá died, the then Cardinal Albino Luciani (later Pope John Paul I) celebrated the originality of his contribution to Christian spirituality.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: One of the persons who knew Escrivá best was the Bishop of Madrid, where Opus Dei was initiated, Bishop Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, for Escrivá would visit and report to him quite frequently and the two established a very strong friendship. In a 1943 report to Rome, the bishop stated: "The distinctive notes of his character are his energy and his capacity for organization and government; with an ability to pass unnoticed. He has shown himself most obedient to the Church hierarchy -- one very special hallmark of his priestly work is the way he fosters, in speech and in writing, in public and in private, love for Holy Mother Church and for the Roman Pontiff." Bishop Eijo y Garay wrote to the Jesuit Provincial of Toledo, Carlos Gomez Martinho, S.J. in 1941: "Fr. Escrivá is an exemplary priest, chosen by God for apostolic enterprises; humble, prudent, self-sacrificing in work, docile to his bishop, of outstanding intelligence and with a very solid spiritual and doctrinal formation." Eijo y Garay told an officer of the Falange that "[T]o think that Fr. Josemaría Escrivá is capable of creating anything secret is absurd. He is as frank and open as a child!"


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, founder of "logotherapy", and a Nazi concentration camp survivor, met Escrivá in Rome in 1970 and later wrote of "the refreshing serenity which emanated from him and warmed the whole conversation", and "the unbelievable rhythm" with which his thought flowed, and finally "his amazing capacity" for getting into "immediate contact" with those with whom he was speaking. Frankl went on: "Escrivá evidently lived totally in the present moment, he opened out to it completely, and gave himself entirely to it."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: According to Álvaro del Portillo, who was Escrivá's closest collaborator for many years, there was one basic quality of Escrivá "that pervaded everything else: his dedication to God, and to all souls for God's sake; his constant readiness to correspond generously to the will of God." Pope Paul VI summarized his opinion of what he termed the "extraordinariness" of Escrivá's sanctity in this way: "He is one of those men who has received the most charisms (supernatural gifts) and have corresponded most generously to them."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: "The first impression one gets from watching Escrivá 'live'", John L. Allen Jr. writes after watching some movies on the founder of Opus Dei in 2005, "is his effervescence, his keen sense of humor. He cracks jokes, makes faces, roams the stage, and generally leaves his audience in stitches in off-the-cuff responses to questions from people in the crowd."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Critics, such as Spanish architect Miguel Fisac, who was one of the earliest members of Opus Dei and who associated with Escrivá for nearly twenty years before ending his relation with Escrivá and Opus Dei, have given a very different description of Escrivá as a pious but vain, secretive, and ambitious man, given to private displays of violent temper, and who demonstrated little charity towards others or genuine concern for the poor. According to British journalist Giles Tremlett, "biographies of Escrivá have produced conflicting visions of the saint as either a loving, caring charismatic person or a mean-spirited, manipulative egoist". French historian Édouard de Blaye has referred to Escrivá as a "mixture of mysticism and ambition".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: On the centennial of Escrivá's birthday, Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) commented: "I have always been impressed by Josemaría Escrivá's explanation of the name 'Opus Dei': an explanation ... gives us an idea of the founder's spiritual profile. Escrivá knew he had to found something, but he was also conscious that what he was founding was not his own work, that he himself did not invent anything and that the Lord was merely making use of him. So it was not his work, but Opus Dei (God's Work). [This] gives us to understand that he was in a permanent dialogue, a real contact with the One who created us and works for us and with us... If therefore St Josemaría speaks of the common vocation to holiness, it seems to me that he is basically drawing on his own personal experience, not of having done incredible things himself, but of having let God work. Therefore a renewal, a force for good was born in the world even if human weaknesses will always remain."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In his canonization homily, Pope John Paul II described Escrivá as "a master in the practice of prayer, which he considered to be an extraordinary 'weapon' to redeem the world...It is not a paradox but a perennial truth; the fruitfulness of the apostolate lies above all in prayer and in intense and constant sacramental life." In John Paul II's "Decree of Canonization", he refers to the five brief prayers or aspirations of Escrivá through which "one can trace the entire life story of Blessed Josemaría Escrivá. He was barely sixteen when he began to recite the first two aspirations ["Domine, ut videam!", Lord, that I might see! and "Domina, ut sit!", Lady, that it might be!], as soon as he had the first inklings of God's call. They expressed the burning desire of his heart: to see what God was asking of him, so that he might do it without delay, lovingly fulfilling the Lord's will. The third aspiration ["Omnes cum Petro ad Iesum per Mariam!", All together with Peter to Jesus through Mary!] appears frequently in his writings as a young priest and shows how his zeal to win souls for God went hand in hand with both a firm determination to be faithful to the Church and an ardent devotion to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. "Regnare Christum volumus!" We want Christ to reign!: these words aptly express his constant pastoral concern to spread among all men and women the call to share, through Christ, in the dignity of God's children. God's sons and daughters should live for the purpose, to serve Him alone: "Deo omnis gloria!" All the glory to God!"


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: During the thanksgiving Mass for the canonization of St. Josemaría, John Paul II, said: "In the Founder of Opus Dei, there is an extraordinary love for the will of God. There exists a sure criterion of holiness: fidelity in accomplishing the divine will down to the last consequences. For each one of us the Lord has a plan, to each he entrusts a mission on earth. The saint could not even conceive of himself outside of God's plan. He lived only to achieve it. St Josemaría was chosen by the Lord to announce the universal call to holiness and to point out that daily life and ordinary activities are a path to holiness. One could say that he was the saint of ordinary life."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Not all Catholic commentators, however, were impressed equally by Escrivá's spirituality. For instance, the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote in an article of 1963 that Escrivá's "The Way" provided an "insufficient spirituality" to sustain a religious organization and that the book was hardly more than "a little Spanish manual for advanced Boy Scouts". Von Balthasar also questioned the attitudes towards prayer described by "The Way", declaring that Escrivá's use of prayer


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Similar criticism of Escrivá's spirituality has been stated by other commentators: for instance, according to Kenneth L. Woodward, a journalist who specializes in articles about the Catholic Church, "to judge by his writings alone, Escrivá's was an unexceptional spirit, derivative and often banal in his thoughts, personally inspiring, perhaps, but devoid of original insights", whose book "The Way" reveals "a remarkable narrowness of mind, weariness of human sexuality, and artlessness of expression."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá conceived the Mass as the "Source and summit of the Christian's interior life," a terminology which was later used by the Second Vatican Council. Escrivá strove to obey whatever was indicated by the competent authority regarding the celebration of Mass and "[h]e took all necessary steps to ensure that the prescriptions of Vatican II, notably in the area of the liturgy, were applied within Opus Dei." As his prayer was much integrated with traditional liturgy, Escrivá found the transition difficult and asked Echevarría to help him with respect to the new rites. Although he missed the practices of the old rites, especially some gestures such as the kissing of the paten (a small plate, usually made of silver or gold, used to hold Eucharistic bread), he prohibited his devotees to ask for any dispensation for him "out of a spirit of obedience to ecclesiastical norms... He has decided to show his love for the liturgy through the new rite", commented Echevarría. However, when Annibale Bugnini, Secretary of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, learned of Escrivá's difficulties, he granted Escrivá the possibility of celebrating the Mass using the old rite. Whenever Escrivá celebrated this rite, he did so only in the presence of one Mass server.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Vladimir Felzmann, a priest who worked as Escrivá's personal assistant before quitting Opus Dei in 1981, claimed in an interview for "Newsweek" that Escrivá was so distraught by the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council that he and his deputy, Álvaro del Portillo, "went to Greece in 1967 to see if [they] could bring Opus Dei into the Greek Orthodox Church. Escrivá thought the [Catholic] church was a shambles and that the Orthodox might be the salvation of himself and of Opus Dei as the faithful remnant." Felzmann claims that Escrivá soon abandoned those plans as impracticable. Flavio Capucci, a member of Opus Dei and the postulator of the cause for Escrivá's canonization, denies that Escrivá ever contemplated quitting the Catholic Church. This was also denied by the information office of Opus Dei, which stated that Escrivá's visit to Greece in 1966 was done in order to analyze the convenience of organizing Opus Dei in that country, and that Escrivá even brought back icons as presents for Pope Paul VI and Angelo Dell'Acqua (then the substitute to the Vatican Secretary of State), whom he had informed of the visit beforehand.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá taught that "joy has its roots in the form of a cross", and that "suffering is the touchstone of love", convictions which were represented in his own life. He practiced corporal mortification personally and recommended it to others in Opus Dei. In particular, his enthusiasm for the practice of self-flagellation has attracted controversy, with critics quoting testimonies about Escrivá whipping himself furiously until the walls of his cubicle were speckled with blood. Both the practice of self-mortification as a form of penance, and the conviction that suffering can help a person to acquire sanctity, have ample precedent in Catholic teaching and practice. Referring to Escrivá, John Paul II stated in "Christifideles omnes":


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Pope John Paul II stated on Sunday, 6 October 2002, after the Angelus greetings: "Love for our Lady is a constant characteristic of the life of Josemaría Escrivá and is an eminent part of the legacy that he left to his spiritual sons and daughters." The Pope also said that "St. Josemaría wrote a beautiful small book called "The Holy Rosary" which presents spiritual childhood, a real disposition of spirit of those who wish to attain total abandonment to the divine will".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: When Escrivá was 10 or 11 years old, he already had the habit of carrying the rosary in his pocket. As a priest, he would ordinarily end his homilies and his personal prayer with a conversation with the Blessed Virgin. He instructed that all rooms in the offices of Opus Dei should have an image of the Virgin. He encouraged his spiritual children to greet these images when they entered a room. He encouraged a Marian apostolate, preaching that ""To Jesus we go and to Him we return through Mary"". While looking at a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe giving a rose to San Juan Diego, he commented: "I would like to die that way." On 26 June 1975, after entering his work room, which had a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, he slumped on the floor and died.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: "Escrivá de Balaguer was a very human saint", preached John Paul II. "All those who met him, whatever their culture or social status, felt he was a father, totally devoted to serving others, for he was convinced that every soul is a marvellous treasure; indeed, every person is worth all of Christ's Blood. This attitude of service is obvious in his dedication to his priestly ministry and in the magnanimity with which he started so many works of evangelization and human advancement for the poorest persons."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Former numerary María del Carmen Tapia (born 1925), who worked with Escrivá for 18 years inside the organization, seven as his secretary, wrote in her book, "Beyond the Threshold: A Life in Opus Dei", that Escrivá often became angry, and that as secretary in charge of recording his words and actions, she was not allowed to record anything negative that she witnessed. She claims she was subjected to abusive words from Escrivá, who called her filthy names, and then screamed during this meeting with both men and women present, upbraiding a member who helped Tapia send letters. She was kept prisoner in the headquarters of Opus Dei in Rome from November 1965 until March 1966. "I was held completely deprived of any outside contact with the absolute prohibition to go out for any reason or receive or make telephone calls or to write or receive letters. Nor could I go out for the so-called weekly walk or the monthly excursion. I was a prisoner."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: However, some of his devotees claim that, through him, Opus Dei has been able to better the quality of life of many women, and refer to his respect for women and his interest in improving their lives. Historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a Catholic convert, asserted that "Opus Dei has an enviable record of educating the poor and supporting women, whether single or married, in any occupation they choose."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Opus Dei's founder modified his name in several ways over the course of his life. In the church records of the cathedral at Barbastro, he appears as having been baptized four days after birth with the name José María Julián Mariano, and his surname was spelled Escriba. As early as his school days, José Escrivá had "adopted the rather more distinguished version spelled with a "v" rather than a "b." His name is spelled Escrivá in the memento of his first Mass. According to critics like Luis Carandell and Michael Walsh a former Jesuit priest, he also adopted the use of the conjunction "y" ("and") joining his father's and mother's surnames ("Escrivá y Albás"), a usage which he claims is associated with aristocratic families, even though that has been the legal naming format in Spain since 1870.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: On 16 June 1940, the Spanish "Boletín Oficial del Estado" ("Official State Bulletin") records that Escrivá requested of the government that he be permitted to change his "first surname so that it will be written Escrivá de Balaguer". He justified the petition on the grounds that "the name Escrivá is common in the east coast and in Catalonia, leading to harmful and annoying confusion". On 20 June 1943, when he was 41 years old, the registry book of the Barbastro cathedral and the baptismal certificate of José María were annotated to represent "that the surname Escriba was changed to Escrivá de Balaguer". Balaguer is the name of the town in Catalonia from which Escrivá's paternal family derived.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: One of the earliest members of Opus Dei, and a friend for many years, the architect Miguel Fisac, who later quit Opus Dei, said that Escrivá found it embarrassing to have his father's family name since his father's company became bankrupt, that he had a "great affection for the aristocracy", and that, when Escrivá was a chaplain at the Foundation of Santa Isabel in Madrid, he would often meet aristocratic visitors who would ask, upon learning that his name was Escrivá, whether he belonged to the noble Escrivá de Romaní family, only to ignore him when they learned that he did not. According to Vásquez de Prada, a writer, Opus Dei member, and official biographer who produced a three-volume biography of Escrivá, the act had nothing to do with ambition but was motivated rather by fairness and loyalty to his family. The main problem is that in Spanish the letters "b" and "v" are pronounced in the same way and therefore bureaucrats and clerics had made mistakes in transcribing the Escrivá family name in some official documents throughout the generations. Defenders of Escrivá have also argued that the addition of "de Balaguer" corresponded to a practice adopted by many Spanish families that felt a need to distinguish themselves from others with the same surname but proceeding from different regions and consequently having different histories.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá's younger brother Santiago stated that his brother "loved the members of his family" and took good care of them. When their father died, he says, Escrivá told their mother that "she should stay calm, because he will always take care of us. And he fulfilled this promise." Escrivá would find time in his busy schedule to chat and take a walk with his younger brother, acting like a father towards him. When the family transferred to Madrid, he obeyed the instructions of their father that he obtain a doctorate in Law. "Thanks to his docility to this advice", says Santiago, "he was able to support the family by giving classes in Law, and with this he acquired a juridical mentality ... which would later be so necessary to do Opus Dei." Escrivá also modified his first name. From José María, he changed it to the original Josemaría. Biographers state, that around 1935 [age 33], "he joined his first two names because his single love for the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph were equally inseparable".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Many of his contemporaries recount the tendency of Escrivá to preach about patriotism as opposed to nationalism.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Critics have alleged that Escrivá personally, as well as the organization of Opus Dei, were associated originally with the ideology of "National Catholicism", particularly during the Spanish Civil War and the years immediately after it, and that they were therefore also closely associated with the authoritarian regime of General Franco. According to Catalan sociologist Joan Estruch:


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Estruch cites, for instance, the fact that the first edition of Escrivá's "The Way", finished in Burgos and published in Valencia in 1939, had the dateline "Año de la Victoria" ("Year of the Victory"), referring to Franco's military triumph over the Republican forces in the civil war, as well as a prologue by a pro-Franco bishop, Xavier Lauzurica, which ended with the admonition to the reader to "always stay vigilant and alert, because the enemy does not sleep. If you make these maxims your life, you will be a perfect imitator of Jesus Christ and a gentleman without blemish. And with Christs like you Spain will return to the old grandeur of its saints, wise men, and heroes." Escrivá preached personally to General Franco and his family during a week-long spiritual retreat at the Pardo Palace (Franco's official residence) in April 1946.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Vittorio Messori claims that the ties between Escrivá and Francoism are part of a black legend propagated against Escrivá and Opus Dei. Allen states that based on his research Escrivá could not be said to be "pro-Franco" (for which he was criticized for not joining other Catholics in openly praising Franco) nor "anti-Franco" (for which he was criticized for not being "pro-democracy"). According to Allen, there is no statement from Escrivá for or against Franco. Escrivá's devotees and some historians have emphasized his personal effort to avoid partiality in politics. Professor Peter Berglar, a German historian, asserts that Franco's falangists suspected Escrivá of "internationalism, anti-Spainism and Freemasonry" and that during "the first decade of Franco's regime, Opus Dei and Escrivá were attacked with perseverance bordering on fanaticism, not by enemies, but by supporters of the new Spanish State. Escrivá was even reported to the "Tribunal for the Fight against Freemasonry"".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Some biographers have said that Escrivá did not seek these awards, that they were nevertheless granted to him, that he accepted them due to charity to those who were granting these, and that he did not give the slightest importance to these awards. Journalist Luis Carandell, however, recounts testimonies about how members of Opus Dei paid for the insignia of the Grand Cross of Charles III to be made from gold, only to have Escrivá angrily reject it and demand instead one encrusted with diamonds. Carandell holds that this episode was part of a larger pattern in Escrivá's life of ambition for social prestige and the trappings of wealth. Sympathetic biographers, however, insist that Escrivá taught that material things are good, but that people should not get attached to them and should serve only God. It is reported that he declared that "he has most who needs least" and that it took only 10 minutes to gather his possessions after his death.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In addition to the questions raised about the depth of Escrivá's spirituality and theological thinking, his purported habits of secretiveness and elitism (although for the most part, Opus Dei faithful belong to the middle-to-low levels of society, in terms of education, income and social status), his alleged bad temper and ambition for social status and worldly luxuries, several other specific aspects of Escrivá's life and work have generated some criticism, particularly regarding his canonization by the Catholic Church. The sources of criticism include his alleged private statements in defence of Adolf Hitler, collaboration by members of Opus Dei with right-wing political causes (especially during General Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain), Escrivá's request for the rehabilitation in his favour of an aristocratic title and allegations that he maintained bad relations with other Catholic officials, of whom he could be very critical in private.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: During Escrivá's beatification process, Vladimir Felzmann, who had been Escrivá's personal assistant before Felzmann quit Opus Dei and became a priest of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster and an aide to Cardinal Basil Hume, sent several letters to Flavio Capucci, the postulator (i.e., chief promoter) of Escrivá's cause. In his letters, Felzmann claimed that in 1967 or 1968, during the intermission to a World War II movie, Escrivá had said to him, "Vlad, Hitler couldn't have been such a bad person. He couldn't have killed six million. It couldn't have been more than four million". Felzmann later explained that those remarks should be regarded in the context of Catholic anticommunism in Spain, emphasizing that in 1941 all of the male members of Opus Dei, who then numbered about fifty, offered to join the "Blue Division", a group of Spaniard volunteers who joined the German forces in their fight against the Soviet Army, along the Eastern Front. Another phrase that has been attributed to Escrivá by some of his critics is "Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs, means Hitler against Communism".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Álvaro del Portillo, who succeeded Escrivá as the director of Opus Dei, declared that any claims that Escrivá endorsed Hitler were "a patent falsehood" and part of "a slanderous campaign". He and others have stated that Escrivá regarded Hitler as a "pagan", a "racist" and a "tyrant" (see Opus Dei and politics).


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: One of the most controversial accusations against Escrivá is that he and Opus Dei were active in bolstering far-right regimes, especially the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco in Spain. After 1957, several members of Opus Dei served as ministers in Franco's government. In particular, the "technocrats" most associated with the "Spanish miracle" of the 1960s were members of Opus Dei: Alberto Ullastres, Mariano Navarro Rubio, Gregorio López-Bravo, Laureano López Rodó, Juan José Espinosa, and Faustino García-Moncó. Most of these "technocrats" entered the government under the patronage of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco who, though not a member of Opus Dei himself, was reportedly sympathetic to the organization and its values and who, as Franco grew older and more frail, increasingly came to exercise the day-to-day control of the Spanish government.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: According to journalist Luis Carandell, when Ullastres and Navarro Rubio were first appointed to the government in 1957, Escrivá gleefully exclaimed "They have made us ministers!" something which Opus Dei has officially denied. On 23 May 1958, Escrivá sent a letter to Franco, which said, in part:


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In 1963, Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a scathing critique of Escrivá's spirituality, characterizing Escrivá's approach religion as a form of "integrism", stating "despite the affirmations of the members of Opus Dei that they are free in their political options, it is undeniable that its foundation is marked by Francoism, that that is the 'law within which it has been formed'". In another essay, published the following year, von Balthasar characterized Opus Dei as "an integrist concentration of power within the Church", explaining that the main objective of integrism is "imposing the spiritual with worldly means".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In 1979, von Balthasar distanced himself from a newspaper attack on Opus Dei which had cited his earlier accusations of integrism. He wrote in a personal letter to the Prelature, sent also to the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", that "because of my lack of concrete information, I am not able to give an informed opinion about Opus Dei today. On the other hand, one thing strikes me as obvious: many of the criticisms levelled against the movement, including those of your own journal concerning the religious instruction given by Opus Dei members, seem to me to be false and anti-clerical." Von Balthasar maintained his unfavourable judgment of Escrivá's spirituality and repeated it in a television interview in 1984, but he did not renew his criticism of Opus Dei as an organization. In 1988, von Balthasar was named as a cardinal by Pope John Paul II, but he died before he could be elevated to that position at the next consistory.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: In response to the accusations of "integrism", Escrivá declared that, "Opus Dei is neither on the left nor on the right nor in the centre" and that "as regards religious liberty, from its foundation Opus Dei has never practised discrimination of any kind." Opus Dei officials state that individual members are free to choose any political affiliation, emphasizing that among its members were also two important figures in the monarchist political opposition of the 1970s in Spain: the writer Rafael Calvo Serer, who was forced into exile by Franco's regime, and the journalist Antonio Fontán, who became the first president of the Senate after the transition to democracy.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: John Allen has written that Escrivá was neither anti-Franco nor pro-Franco. Some critics of Opus Dei, such as Miguel Fisac and Damian Thompson, have argued that the group has always sought "advancement not only of its message but also of its interests", and that it has consistently courted those with power and influence, without maintaining a coherent political ideology.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: The alleged involvement of Opus Dei in Latin American politics has also been a topic of controversy. According to US journalist Penny Lernoux, the 1966 military coup in Argentina happened soon after its leader, General Juan Carlos Onganía, attended a spiritual retreat sponsored by Opus Dei. During his 1974 visit to Latin America, Escrivá visited Chile, only nine months after the coup d'état in Chile that deposed the elected Marxist president Salvador Allende and installed a right-wing military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. Escrivá declined an invitation to visit personally with the Chilean government junta, alleging that he was ill with influenza, but in his letter to the members of the junta he added that he wished "to let you know how much I pray, have prayed, and have gotten others to pray, for this great nation, especially when it found itself menaced by the scourge of the Marxist heresy."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Critics have charged that Opus Dei members supported Pinochet's coup and then had a role in the "Miracle of Chile" of the 1980s similar to that of the "technocrats" during the Spanish Miracle of the 1960s. However, among the major right-wing politicians, only Joaquín Lavín (who did not occupy public office under Pinochet) has been unequivocally identified as a member of Opus Dei. Another member of Opus Dei, Jorge Sabag Villalobos, belongs to a centre-left party that opposed Pinochet's regime. Peter Berglar, a German historian and member of Opus Dei, has written that connecting Opus Dei with fascist regimes is a "gross slander". Journalist Noam Friedlander states that allegations about Opus Dei involvement with the Pinochet regime are "unproven tales." Several of Escrivá's collaborators stated that he actually despised dictatorships.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Another source of controversy about Escrivá was the fact that, in 1968, he requested and received from the Spanish Ministry of Justice the rehabilitation in his favor of the aristocratic title of Marquess of Peralta. According to the official "Guía de grandezas y títulos del reino" ("Guide to the grandeeships and titles of the realm"), the title of Marquess had originally been granted in 1718 to Tomás de Peralta, minister of state, justice and war for the Kingdom of Naples, by Archduke Charles of Austria. Until 1715, Archduke Charles had been, as "Charles III", a pretender to the Spanish throne ("see" War of Spanish Succession), and from 1711 until 1740 he ruled as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Naples.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá's successful petition of a title of nobility has aroused controversy not only because it might seem at odds with the humility befitting a Catholic priest, but also because the same title of Marquess of Peralta had been rehabilitated in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII and King Alfonso XII in favor of a man to whom Escrivá had no male-line family association: the Costa Rican diplomat Manuel María de Peralta y Alfaro (1847–1930). On that occasion, the documents ordering the rehabilitation claimed that the original title had been granted in 1738 (not 1718) to Juan Tomás de Peralta y Franco de Medina, by Charles of Austria in his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor, not as pretender to the Spanish throne. Ambassador Peralta, who in 1884 had married a Belgian countess, Jehanne de Clérembault, died without children in 1930. None of his kinsmen in Costa Rica requested the transmission of the marquessate, but one of them has published an extensive genealogical study that would seem to contradict any claim by Escrivá to the title.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá did not use the title of Marquess of Peralta publicly and, in 1972, he ceded it to his brother Santiago. The argument by endorsers of Escrivá that he requested the rehabilitation of the title as a favor to his family, and that it was his intention from the beginning to cede it to his brother, seems belied by the fact that, in 1968, Santiago had requested for himself the rehabilitation of a different title of nobility, the barony of San Felipe, which was not granted. According to historian Ricardo de la Cierva (a former Minister of Culture in the Spanish government) and to architect Miguel Fisac (who knew Escrivá personally at the time), Escrivá's original request for the title might have been part of an unsuccessful attempt to join the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), a Catholic religious order which required its members to be of noble birth and of which his deputy in Opus Dei, Álvaro del Portillo, was already a member.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Several biographers say Escrivá prohibited his devotees from asking for the title of Marquess of Peralta. They state that Escrivá accepted it due to the advice of some cardinals who told him that he had the obligation to do so for the sake of his brother, Santiago, and so as to practice what he preached about fulfilling civil duties and exercising rights. His brother Santiago said: "The decision was heroic because he knew that he will be vilified as a result... Josemaría did what is best for me. After the right amount of time has passed, without making use of the title (in fact he never had the intention of using it), he passed the title on to me." On the other hand, according to de la Cierva, "Monsignor Escrivá's desire for a marquisate is not to my liking but seems to me, given his idiosyncrasies, comprehensible and even forgivable. That the title should have been based on a falsification seems to me extremely sad and even extremely grave."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Pauline priest Giancarlo Rocca, a church historian and a professor at the "Claretianum" in Rome, claims that Escrivá actively sought the rank of bishop but was twice refused by the Vatican curia, first in 1945, and later in 1950 (when he and his followers had lobbied for his appointment as bishop of Vitoria). According to Rocca, in both instances the curial officials expressed concerns about the organization of Opus Dei and about the psychological profile of Escrivá.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Sociologist Alberto Moncada, a former member of Opus Dei, has collected and published various oral testimonies about Escrivá's strained relations with other officials of the Catholic Church. In particular, Moncada quotes Antonio Pérez-Tenessa, who at the time was secretary general of Opus Dei in Rome, as witnessing Escrivá's intense displeasure over the election of Pope Paul VI in 1963, and later expressing doubts in private about the salvation of the Pope's soul. According to María del Carmen Tapia, who worked with Escrivá in Rome, the founder of Opus Dei had "no respect" for Popes John XXIII or Paul VI and believed that his own organization of Opus Dei was "above the Church in holiness."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Luigi de Magistris, at the time the regent of the Vatican's Apostolic Penitentiary, wrote in a 1989 confidential vote asking for the suspension of the proceedings for Escrivá's beatification, that "it is not a mystery that there were serious tensions" between Escrivá and the Jesuits. De Magistris then alluded to Escrivá distancing himself from the Jesuit priest Valentino Sánchez, who had previously been Escrivá's confessor, over the Jesuits' opposition to the proposed constitutions of Opus Dei. Journalist Luis Carandell claims that, during his years in Rome, Escrivá kept his distance from the Jesuit Superior General, the Spaniard Pedro Arrupe, to the extent that Arrupe once joked with Antonio Riberi, the apostolic nuncio to Spain, about doubting whether Escrivá really existed.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: According to Alberto Moncada, Escrivá's years in Rome were dedicated in large part to his campaign to make Opus Dei independent from the authority of diocesan bishops and of the Vatican curia, something which was finally achieved, after Escrivá's death, with the establishment in 1982, by Pope John Paul II, of Opus Dei as a personal prelature, subject only to its own prelate and to the Pope. As such, Opus Dei is currently the only personal prelature in the Catholic Church, although this juridical figure ―similar in nature to other kinds of hierarchical organization in the church's history, such as military and personal ordinariates― is fruit of the Second Vatican Council's aim to provide pastoral attention in ways more suited to the actual situation of many of its faithful. In this way, its work complements that of the dioceses, and in some cases even takes the form of a more direct collaboration: for example, when priests of Opus Dei assume pastoral care of parishes at the request of the local bishops. Escrivá may have had this in mind when he wrote, "The only ambition, the only desire of Opus Dei and each of its members is to serve the Church as the Church wants to be served, within the specific vocation God has given us." Membership in the prelature does not exempt a Catholic from the authority of the local diocesan bishop.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: After the death of Escrivá de Balaguer on 26 June 1975, the Postulation for the Cause of his beatification and canonization received many testimonies and postulatory letters from people all over the world. On the fifth anniversary of Escrivá's death, the Postulation solicited the initiation of the cause of beatification from the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints. One-third of the world's bishops (an unprecedented number) petitioned for Escrivá's beatification.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: His cause for beatification was introduced in Rome on 19 February 1981 on the strength of the apparently miraculous cure in 1976 of a rare disease, lipomatosis, suffered by Sister Concepción Boullón Rubio, whose family had prayed to Escrivá to help her. On 9 April 1990, Pope John Paul II declared that Escrivá possessed Christian virtues to a "heroic degree", and on 6 July 1991 the Board of Physicians for the Congregation of the Causes of Saints unanimously accepted the cure of Sister Rubio. He was beatified on 17 May 1992.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: By way of a letter dated 15 March 1993, the Postulation for the Cause received news about the miraculous cure of Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey from cancerous chronic radiodermatitis, an incurable disease, which took place in November 1992. The reported miracle, apparently brought about by Escrivá's intervention, was ruled valid by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and approved by Pope John Paul II in December 2001, enabling the canonization of Escrivá. John Paul II, who frequently expressed public endorsement of Opus Dei and its work, canonized Escrivá on 6 October 2002. The canonization Mass was attended by 42 cardinals and 470 bishops from around the world, general superiors of many orders and religious congregations, and representatives of various Catholic groups. During the days of the canonization event, church officials commented on the validity of the message of the founder, repeating John Paul II's decree "Christifideles Omnes" on Escrivá's virtues, which said that "by inviting Christians to be united to God through their daily work, which is something men will have to do and find their dignity in as long as the world lasts, the timeliness of this message is destined to endure as an inexhaustible source of spiritual light, regardless of changing epochs and situations."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Various critics questioned the rapidity of . On the eve of Escrivá's beatification in 1992, journalist William D. Montalbano, writing for the "Los Angeles Times", described it as "perhaps the most contentious beatification in modern times." Critics have argued that the process was plagued by irregularities. However, endorsers refer to Rafael Pérez, an Augustinian priest who presided over the tribunal in Madrid for Escrivá's cause, as "one of the best experts" on canonization. Pérez stated that the process was fast because Escrivá's figure is "of the universal importance," the Postulators "knew what they were doing", and, in 1983, the procedures were simplified in order to present "models who lived in a world like ours." Flavio Capucci, the postulator, also reported that the 6,000 postulatory letters to the Vatican showed "earnestness".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá's canonization was one of the first to be processed after the 1983 Code of Canon Law streamlined the procedures for canonization, and so it was processed more quickly than was typical before. Mother Teresa was canonized even more quickly, having been beatified just 6 years after her death (Escrivá was beatified in 17 years). According to journalist Kenneth L. Woodward, the 6,000-page long "positio" (the official document about the life and work of the candidate for sainthood prepared by the postulators) was declared confidential, but leaked to the press in 1992, after Escrivá's beatification. Woodward declared that, of 2,000 pages of testimonies, about 40% are by either Álvaro del Portillo or Javier Echevarría Rodríguez who, as successors of Escrivá at the head of Opus Dei, would have the most to gain from the Catholic Church recognizing that organization's founder as a saint. The only critical testimony quoted in the "positio" was by Alberto Moncada, a Spanish sociologist who had been a member of Opus Dei and whose testimony might have been easier for the church authorities to dismiss because he had had little personal contact with Escrivá and had left the Catholic Church altogether. This critical testimony covered a mere two pages.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Critics of the process also questioned the fact that some of the physicians involved in the authentication of the two "scientifically inexplicable cures" achieved through the posthumous intercession of Escrivá, such as Dr. Raffaello Cortesini (a heart surgeon), were themselves members of Opus Dei. The Vatican has stated that the Medical Consultants for the Congregation affirmed unanimously that the miraculous cure of a cancerous state of chronic radiodermatitis in its third and irreversible stage in Dr. Manuel Nevado Rey (a country doctor in the village of Almendralejo) was "very quick, complete, lasting and scientifically inexplicable." After six months, the theological consultants, according to the Vatican, also unanimously attributed this cure to Escrivá. On the year of his canonization, the Opus Dei prelate reported that the Postulation has gathered 48 reports of unexplained medical favors attributed to Escriva's intercession, as well as 100,000 ordinary favours.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Former Opus Dei members critical of Escrivá's character who claim that they were refused a hearing during the beatification and canonization processes include Miguel Fisac (a well-known Spanish architect who was one of the earliest members of Opus Dei and remained an associate of Escrivá for nearly twenty years), Vladimir Felzmann (a Czech-born engineer and Catholic priest from the UK, who was Escrivá's personal assistant), María del Carmen Tapia (who worked with Escrivá in Opus Dei's central offices in Rome and directed its printing press), Carlos Albás (a Spanish lawyer who was also Escrivá's first cousin once removed), María Angustias Moreno (who was an official of the women's part of Opus Dei, during Escrivá's lifetime), and Dr. John Roche (an Irish physicist and historian of science who was a member of Opus Dei from 1959 to 1973, and managed one of its schools in Kenya). Several groups critical of Escrivá and of Opus Dei emerged both before and after the canonization of Escrivá, including the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), and "OpusLibros", both collaborations of former members who now oppose Opus Dei and its practices.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Catholic theologian Richard McBrien termed Escrivá's sainthood "the most blatant example of a politicized [canonization] in modern times." According to Catholic writer and biographer John Allen such views are countered by many other ex-members, the present members, and the estimated 900,000 people who attend activities of Opus Dei. He says that the interpretation of the facts "seems to depend upon one's basic approach to spirituality, family life, and the implications of a religious vocation." Allen's account of Opus Dei and its founder, however, was not accepted by all reviewers as impartial.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá's canonization attracted an unusual amount of attention and criticism, both within the Catholic Church and by the press. Flavio Capucci, the postulator of Escrivá's cause for sainthood, summarized the main accusations against Escrivá: that "he had a bad temper, that he was cruel, that he was vain, that he was close to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, that he was pro-Nazi and that he was so dismayed by the Second Vatican Council that he even travelled to Greece with the idea that he might convert to the Orthodox religion".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: A "Newsweek" article by Woodward claimed that, of the nine judges of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints presiding over Escrivá's cause for beatification, two had requested a suspension of the proceedings. The dissenters were identified as Luigi De Magistris, a prelate working in the Vatican's tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, and Justo Fernández Alonso, rector of the Spanish National Church in Rome. According to Woodward, one of the dissenters wrote that the beatification of Escrivá could cause the church "grave public scandal." The same article quoted Cardinal Silvio Oddi as declaring that many bishops were "very displeased" with the rush to canonize Escrivá so soon after his death. In interviews, José Saraiva Martins, Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, has denied being aware of that dissent.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: The journal "Il Regno", published in Bologna by the congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (the Dehonians), reproduced, in May 1992, the confidential vote of one of the judges in Escrivá's cause of beatification, in which the judge asked that the process be suspended. The document questioned the haste of the proceedings, the near absence of testimony from critics in the documentation gathered by the postulators, the failure of the documentation to properly address issues about Escrivá's relations with the Franco regime and with other Catholic organizations, and suggestions from the official testimonies themselves that Escrivá lacked proper spiritual humility. This document does not identify the judge by name, but its author indicates that he met Escrivá only once, briefly, in 1966, while serving as a notary for the Holy Office, which implies that the judge in question was De Magistris.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: As regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, at the time of the vote De Magistris's work was largely concerned with issues arising from confession and penance. According to church law, a confessor has an absolute duty not to disclose anything that he might have learned from a penitent in the course of a confession (see Seal of the Confessional in the Catholic Church). In his vote, which its own contents date to August 1989, De Magistris argued that the testimony from the main witness, Álvaro del Portillo, should have been entirely excluded from the proceedings, since Portillo had been Escrivá's confessor for 31 years.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: John Allen Jr. comments that, according to some observers within the Catholic Church, De Magistris was punished for his opposition to Escrivá's canonization. De Magistris was promoted in 2001 to the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, an important position in the Vatican bureaucracy usually occupied by a cardinal. However, Pope John Paul II did not make De Magistris a cardinal and replaced him as head of the Apostolic Penitentiary after less than two years, effectively forcing him into retirement. The decision by Pope Francis to make De Magistris a cardinal at the consistory of 14 February 2015, when De Magistris was about to turn 89 and therefore could no longer participate in papal conclaves, was interpreted by some commentators as consolation for how De Magistris had been treated under John Paul II.


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: The significance of Escrivá's message and teachings has been a topic of debate, by Catholics and others. The Protestant French historian Pierre Chaunu, a professor at the Sorbonne and president of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, said that "the work of Escrivá de Balaguer will undoubtedly mark the 21st century. This is a prudent and reasonable wager. Do not pass close to this contemporary without paying him close attention". The Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was appointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II (but died in 1988 before his investiture), dismissed Escrivá's principal work, "The Way", as "a little Spanish manual for advanced Boy Scouts" and argued that it was quite insufficient to sustain a major religious organization. However, the monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton declared that Escrivá's book "will certainly do a great deal of good by its simplicity, which is the true medium for the Gospel message".


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Critics of Opus Dei have often argued that the importance and originality of Escrivá's intellectual contributions to theology, history, and law, at least as measured by his published writings, has been grossly exaggerated by his devotees. However, various officials of the Catholic Church have spoken well of Escrivá's influence and of the relevance of his teachings. In the decree introducing the cause of beatification and canonization of Escrivá, Cardinal Ugo Poletti wrote in 1981: "For having proclaimed the universal call to holiness since he founded Opus Dei during 1928, Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, has been unanimously recognized as the precursor of precisely what constitutes the fundamental nucleus of the Church's magisterium, a message of such fruitfulness in the life of the Church." Sebastiano Baggio, Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, wrote a month after Escrivá's death: "It is evident even today that the life, works, and message of the founder of Opus Dei constitutes a turning point, or more exactly a new original chapter in the history of Christian spirituality." A Vatican "peritus" or consultor for the process of beatification said that "he is like a figure from the deepest spiritual sources". Franz König, Archbishop of Vienna, wrote in 1975:


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: "The magnetic force of Opus Dei probably comes from its profoundly lay spirituality. At the very beginning, in 1928, Msgr. Escrivá anticipated the return to the Patrimony of the Church brought by the Second Vatican Council ... [H]e was able to anticipate the great themes of the Church's pastoral action in the dawn of the third millennium of her history."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: The "absolutely central" part of Escrivá's teaching, says American theologian William May, is that "sanctification is possible only because of the grace of God, freely given to his children through his only-begotten Son, and it consists essentially in an intimate, loving union with Jesus, our Redeemer and Savior."


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: Escrivá's books, including "Furrow", "The Way", "Christ is Passing By", and "The Forge", continue to be read widely, and emphasize the laity's calling to daily sanctification (a message also to be found in the documents of Vatican II). Pope John Paul II made the following observation in his homily at the beatification of Escrivá:


title: Josemaría Escrivá

text: John Paul II's decree "Christifideles omnes" states: "By inviting Christians to seek union with God through their daily work — which confers dignity on human beings and is their lot as long as they exist on earth — his message is destined to endure as an inexhaustible source of spiritual light regardless of changing epochs and situations".


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Multnomah County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 815,428. Multnomah County is part of the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Though smallest in area, Multnomah County is the state's most populous county. Its county seat, Portland, is the state's largest city.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The area of the lower Willamette River has been inhabited for thousands of years, including by the Multnomah band of Chinookan peoples long before European contact, as evidenced by the nearby Cathlapotle village, just downstream.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Multnomah County (the thirteenth in Oregon Territory) was created on December 22, 1854, formed out of two other Oregon counties – the eastern part of Washington County and the northern part of Clackamas County. Its creation was a result of a petition earlier that year by businessmen in Portland complaining of the inconvenient location of the Washington County seat in Hillsboro and of the share of Portland tax revenues leaving the city to support Washington County farmers. County commissioners met for the first time on January 17, 1855.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The county is named after the Chinookan word for the "lower river", Multnomah, Matlnomaq, máɬnumax̣ being interpretive English spellings of the same word. In Chinook Jargon, "Ne-matlnomaq", means the "place of matlnomaq" or the (singular) "Ne-matlnomag", "the lower river", from the Oregon City Falls toward the Columbia river. Alternatively, Chinookan máɬnumax̣ (also nímaɬnumax̣) ‘those toward water’ (or ‘toward the Columbia River’, known in Chinookan as ímaɬ or wímaɬ ‘the great water’). The explorer William Clark wrote in his Journal: "I entered this river...called Multnomah...from a nation who reside on Wappato Island, a little below the enterence" (quoted from "Willamette Landings" by H.M. Corning).(see:Portland Basin Chinookan Villages in the early 1800s, Boyd and Zenk,) Although Clark refers to the Willamette River as Multnomah, he may not have understood the meaning. Simply put, "Multnomah" ("down river" or "toward the great water") is the shortened form of "nematlnomaq/nímaɬnumax̣".


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: In 1924, the county's three commissioners were indicted and recalled by voters "in response to 'gross irregularities' in the award of contracts for construction of the Burnside and Ross Island bridges"; since all three had been supported by the Ku Klux Klan, their recall also helped reduce that organization's influence in the city.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Vanport, built north of Portland in 1943 to house workers for Kaiser Shipyards, was destroyed by a flood five years later.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: In 1968, the Oregon Legislative Assembly referred a bill, Ballot Measure 5, to voters that would amend the state constitution to allow for consolidated city-county governments when the population is over 300,000. The 1968 voters' pamphlet noted that Multnomah County would be the only county in Oregon affected by the measure and voters approved the referendum in the 1968 general election. Since the approval of Measure 5 in 1968, an initiative to merge the county with Portland has been considered and placed on the county ballot several times.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: In the 2000 presidential election, Multnomah played a decisive role in determining the winner of the state's electoral votes. Al Gore carried the county by more than 104,000 votes, enough to offset the nearly 100,000-vote advantage that George W. Bush had earned among Oregon's 35 other counties. The Democratic tilt was repeated in 2004, when John Kerry won by 181,000 votes, and in 2008 when Barack Obama won by 204,000 votes.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: In February 2001, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners unanimously accepted the recommendation of the Library Advisory Board and authorized the library to enter into a lawsuit to stop the Children's Internet Protection Act. The US Supreme Court ultimately decided in 2003 that the law was constitutional in US v. ALA. However, the library chose to turn down $104,000 per year of federal funding under CIPA to be able to continue to offer unfiltered Internet access.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Faced with decreasing government revenues due to a recession in the local economy, voters approved a three-year local income tax (Measure 26-48) on May 20, 2003 to prevent further cuts in schools, police protection, and social services. Multnomah County was one of the few local governments in Oregon to approve such a tax increase.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: On March 2, 2004, Multnomah County Chair Diane Linn announced the county would begin granting licenses for same-sex marriages, pursuant to a legal opinion issued by its attorney deeming such marriages lawful under Oregon law. Her announcement was supported by three other commissioners (Serena Cruz, Lisa Naito, Maria Rojo de Steffey), but criticized by Lonnie Roberts, who represents the eastern part of Multnomah county and was left out of the decision. Within a few days, several groups joined to file a lawsuit to halt the county's action.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: But after that, Linn and the three commissioners developed a public feud, with the latter becoming known as the "mean girls". The county government has also faced significant budget issues, including not being able to open the Wapato Corrections Facility since it was built in 2003.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (7.4%) is water. It is the smallest county in Oregon by area. It is located along the south side of the Columbia River.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The county includes a number of extinct volcanoes in the Boring Lava Field. The Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge forms the eastern portion of the county's northern border.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: As of the 2000 census, there were 660,486 people in the county, organized into 272,098 households and 152,102 families. The population density was 1,518 people per square mile (586/km). There were 288,561 housing units at an average density of 663 per square mile (256/km). The racial makeup of the county was 79.16% White, 5.70% Asian, 5.67% Black or African American, 1.03% Native American, 0.35% Pacific Islander, 4.03% from other races, and 4.07% from two or more races. 7.51% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 16.0% were of German, 9.0% English, 8.8% Irish, and 5.1% American ancestry. 83.5% spoke English, 6.3% Spanish, 1.7% Vietnamese and 1.3% Russian as their first language.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: There were 272,098 households, out of which 26.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.9% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 44.1% were non-families. 32.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 3.03.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: In the county, the population was spread out, with 22.30% under the age of 18, 10.30% from 18 to 24, 33.80% from 25 to 44, 22.50% from 45 to 64, and 11.10% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.00 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.10 males.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The median income for a household in the county was $41,278, and the median income for a family was $51,118. Males had a median income of $36,036 versus $29,337 for females. The per capita income for the county was $22,606. 12.70% of the population and 8.20% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 15.40% of those under the age of 18 and 9.80% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: As of the 2010 census, there were 735,334 people, 304,540 households, and 163,539 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 324,832 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 76.5% white, 6.5% Asian, 5.6% black or African American, 1.1% American Indian, 0.5% Pacific islander, 5.1% from other races, and 4.6% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 10.9% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 19.4% were German, 12.2% were Irish, 11.4% were English, and 4.2% were American.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Of the 304,540 households, 27.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.6% were married couples living together, 10.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 46.3% were non-families, and 32.6% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 3.03. The median age was 35.7 years.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The median income for a household in the county was $49,618 and the median income for a family was $62,956. Males had a median income of $45,152 versus $38,211 for females. The per capita income for the county was $28,883. About 11.3% of families and 16.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 21.1% of those under age 18 and 12.1% of those age 65 or over.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Multnomah County was a strongly Republican county for much of the first half of the 20th century. However, since 1964, it has been the strongest Democratic bastion in Oregon. The Democrats have failed to win a majority in the county only two times since then, in 1972 and 1980.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: As Multnomah County is by far the most populous county in Oregon, Democratic majorities in the county are often enough to swing the results in statewide elections. In 2008, Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley unseated incumbent two-term Senator Gordon Smith even though Smith carried 28 of Oregon's 36 counties. However, Merkley carried Multnomah County by over 142,000 votes, enough to allow him to defeat Smith by 59,100 votes.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The county courthouse is located in downtown Portland. The Multnomah County Central Courthouse opened in 2020, replacing a century-old building nearby that was in need of seismic retrofitting.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The principal industries of Multnomah County are manufacturing, transportation, wholesale and retail trade, and tourism. Since Oregon does not have a sales tax, it attracts shoppers from southwest Washington.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The Port of Portland, established in 1891 and combined with the City of Portland's Commission of Public Docks in 1971, ranks third in total waterborne commerce on the West Coast, and 31st in the nation for total tonnage according to the 2009 American Association of Port Authorities' "Port Industries Statistics". Portland is one of the five largest auto import ports in the nation and is the West Coast's leading exporter of grain and lumber. The Port of Portland is also responsible for Portland International Airport (PDX) in the northeast section of Portland, the Troutdale Airport a few miles east of PDX in Multnomah County, the Hillsboro Airport to the west in Washington County, and Mulino State Airport to the south in Clackamas County.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: The county is home to a number of Portland-area attractions and venues, including Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Portland Art Museum, Memorial Coliseum, Oregon Convention Center, Moda Center, Providence Park, Washington Park, Oregon Zoo, International Rose Test Garden, Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland Japanese Garden, Hoyt Arboretum and Pittock Mansion.


title: Multnomah County, Oregon

text: Portland Community College serves western portions of the county and Mt. Hood Community College serves eastern portions.


title: Topiary

text: Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, "topiarius", a creator of "topia" or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.


title: Topiary

text: The plants used in topiary are evergreen, mostly woody, have small leaves or needles, produce dense foliage, and have compact and/or columnar (e.g., fastigiate) growth habits. Common species chosen for topiary include cultivars of European box ("Buxus sempervirens"), arborvitae ("Thuja" species), bay laurel ("Laurus nobilis"), holly ("Ilex" species), myrtle ("Eugenia" or "Myrtus" species), yew ("Taxus" species), and privet ("Ligustrum" species). Shaped wire cages are sometimes employed in modern topiary to guide untutored shears, but traditional topiary depends on patience and a steady hand; small-leaved ivy can be used to cover a cage and give the look of topiary in a few months. The hedge is a simple form of topiary used to create boundaries, walls or screens.


title: Topiary

text: European topiary dates from Roman times. Pliny's "Natural History" and the epigram writer Martial both credit Gaius Matius Calvinus, in the circle of Julius Caesar, with introducing the first topiary to Roman gardens, and Pliny the Younger describes in a letter the elaborate figures of animals, inscriptions, cyphers and obelisks in clipped greens at his Tuscan villa (Epistle v.6, to Apollinaris). Within the atrium of a Roman house or villa, a place that had formerly been quite plain, the art of the "topiarius" produced a miniature landscape ("topos") which might employ the art of stunting trees, also mentioned, disapprovingly, by Pliny ("Historia Naturalis" xii.6).


title: Topiary

text: The clipping and shaping of shrubs and trees in China and Japan have been practised with equal rigor, but for different reasons. The goal is to achieve an artful expression of the "natural" form of venerably aged pines, given character by the forces of wind and weather. Their most concentrated expressions are in the related arts of Chinese penjing and Japanese bonsai.


title: Topiary

text: Japanese cloud-pruning is closest to the European art: the cloud-like forms of clipped growth are designed to be best appreciated after a fall of snow. Japanese Zen gardens ("karesansui", dry rock gardens) make extensive use of "Karikomi" (a topiary technique of clipping shrubs and trees into large curved shapes or sculptures) and "Hako-zukuri" (shrubs clipped into boxes and straight lines).


title: Topiary

text: Since its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has been seen on the parterres and terraces of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simple cottage gardens; Barnabe Googe, about 1578, found that "women" (a signifier of a less than gentle class) were clipping rosemary "as in the fashion of a cart, a peacock, or such things as they fancy." In 1618 William Lawson suggested


title: Topiary

text: Traditional topiary forms use foliage pruned and/or trained into geometric shapes such as balls or cubes, obelisks, pyramids, cones, or tiered plates and tapering spirals. Representational forms depicting people, animals, and man-made objects have also been popular. The royal botanist John Parkinson found privet "so apt that no other can be like unto it, to be cut, lead, and drawn into what forme one will, either of beasts, birds, or men armed or otherwise." Evergreens have usually been the first choice for Early Modern topiary, however, with yew and boxwood leading other plants.


title: Topiary

text: Topiary at Versailles and its imitators was never complicated: low hedges punctuated by potted trees trimmed as balls on standards, interrupted by obelisks at corners, provided the vertical features of flat-patterned parterre gardens. Sculptural forms were provided by stone and lead sculptures. In Holland, however, the fashion was established for more complicated topiary designs; this Franco-Dutch garden style spread to England after 1660, but by 1708-09 one searches in vain for fanciful topiary among the clipped hedges and edgings, and the standing cones and obelisks of the aristocratic and gentry English parterre gardens in Kip and Knyff's "Britannia Illustrata".


title: Topiary

text: In England topiary was all but killed as a fashion by the famous satiric essay on "Verdant Sculpture" that Alexander Pope published in the short-lived newspaper "The Guardian", 29 September 1713, with its mock catalogue descriptions of


title: Topiary

text: In the 1720s and 1730s, the generation of Charles Bridgeman and William Kent swept the English garden clean of its hedges, mazes, and topiary. Although topiary fell from grace in aristocratic gardens, it continued to be featured in cottagers' gardens, where a single example of traditional forms, a ball, a tree trimmed to a cone in several cleanly separated tiers, meticulously clipped and perhaps topped with a topiary peacock, might be passed on as an heirloom. Such an heirloom, but on heroic scale, was the ancient churchward yew of Harlington, west of London, immortalized in an engraved broadsheet of 1729 bearing an illustration with an enthusiastic verse encomium by its dedicated parish clerk and topiarist. formerly shaped as an obelisk on square plinth topped with a ten-foot ball surmounted by a cockerel, the Harlington Yew survives today, untonsured for the last two centuries.


title: Topiary

text: The revival of topiary in English gardening parallels the revived "Jacobethan" taste in architecture; John Loudon in the 1840s was the first garden writer to express a sense of loss due to the topiary that had been removed from English gardens. The art of topiary, with enclosed garden "rooms", burst upon the English gardening public with the mature examples at Elvaston Castle, Derbyshire, which opened to public viewing in the 1850s and created a sensation: "within a few years architectural topiary was springing up all over the country (it took another 25 years before sculptural topiary began to become popular as well)". The following generation, represented by James Shirley Hibberd, rediscovered the charm of topiary specimens as part of the mystique of the "English cottage garden", which was as much invented as revived from the 1870s:


title: Topiary

text: The classic statement of the British Arts and Crafts revival of topiary among roses and mixed herbaceous borders, characterised generally as "the old-fashioned garden" or the "Dutch garden" was to be found in "Topiary: Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box" by Nathaniel Lloyd (1867–1933), who had retired in middle age and taken up architectural design with the encouragement of Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lloyd's own timber-framed manor house, Great Dixter, Sussex, remains an epitome of this stylised mix of topiary with "cottagey" plantings that was practised by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens in a fruitful partnership. The new gardening vocabulary incorporating topiary required little expensive restructuring: "At Lyme Park, Cheshire, the garden went from being an Italian garden to being a Dutch garden without any change actually taking place on the ground," Brent Elliot noted in 2000.