title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: A court of inquiry (a judicial enquiry under Section 7 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1871 "into the causes of, and circumstances attending" the accident) was immediately set up: Henry Cadogan Rothery, Commissioner of Wrecks, presided; supported by Inspector of Railways Colonel Yolland and William Henry Barlow, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. By 3 January 1880, they were taking evidence in Dundee; they then appointed Henry Law, a qualified civil engineer, to undertake detailed investigations. Whilst awaiting his report they held further hearings in Dundee (26 February – 3 March); having got it they sat at Westminster (19 April – 8 May) to consider the engineering aspects of the collapse.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: By then the railway, the bridge's contractor and Bouch had separate legal representation, and the NBR had sought independent advice from James Brunlees and John Cochrane, both engineers with extensive experience of major cast iron structures. The terms of reference did not specify the underlying purpose of the inquiry – to prevent a repetition, to allocate blame, to apportion liability or culpability, or to establish what precisely had happened. This led to difficulties (culminating in clashes) during the Westminster sessions. When the court reported their findings at the end of June, there was both an Inquiry Report signed by Barlow and Yolland and a minority report by Rothery.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Two witnesses, viewing the high girders from the north almost end-on, had seen the lights of the train as far as the 3rd–4th high girder, when they disappeared; this was followed by three flashes from the high girders north of the train. One witness said these advanced to the north end of the high girders with about fifteen seconds between first and last; the other that they were all at the north end, with less time between. A third witness had seen "a mass of fire fall from the bridge" at the north end of the high girders. A fourth said he had seen a girder fall into the river at the north end of the high girders, then a light had briefly appeared in the southern high girders, disappearing when another girder fell; he made no mention of fire or flashes.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: 'Ex-Provost' Robertson had a good view of most of the bridge from his house in Newport-on-Tay, but other buildings blocked his view of the southern high girders. He had seen the train move onto the bridge; then in the northern high girders, before the train could have reached them, he saw "two columns of spray illuminated with the light, first one flash and then another" and could no longer see the lights on the bridge; the only inference he could draw was that the lit columns of spray – slanting from north to south at about 75 degrees – were areas of spray lit up by the bridge lights as it turned over.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Ex-provost Robertson had bought a season ticket between Dundee and Newport at the start of November, and became concerned about the speed of north-bound local trains through the high girders, which had been causing perceptible vibration, both vertical and lateral. After complaining on three occasions to the stationmaster at Dundee, with no effect on train speed, after mid-December he had used his season ticket to travel south only, using the ferry for north-bound crossings.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Robertson had timed the train with his pocket watch, and to give the railway the benefit of the doubt he had rounded up to the nearest five seconds. The measured time through the girders () was normally 65 or 60 seconds, but twice it had been 50 seconds. When observing from the shore, he had measured 80 seconds for trains travelling through the girders, but not on any train he had travelled on. North-bound local trains were often held up to avoid delaying expresses, and then made up time while travelling over the bridge. The gradient onto the bridge at the northern end prevented similar high speeds on south-bound locals. Robertson said that the movement he observed was hard to quantify, although the lateral movement, which was probably , was definitely due to the bridge, not the train, and the effect was more marked at high speed.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Four other train passengers supported Robertson's timings but only one had noticed any movement of the bridge. The Dundee stationmaster had passed Robertson's complaint about speed (he had been unaware of any concern about oscillation) on to the drivers, and then checked times from cabin to cabin (at either end of the bridge the train was travelling slowly to pick up or hand over the baton). However he had never checked speed through the high girders.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Painters who had worked on the bridge in mid-1879 said that it shook when a train was on it. When a train entered the southern high girders the bridge had shaken at the north end, both east–west and, more strongly, up-and-down. The shaking was worse when trains were going faster, which they did: "when the Fife boat was nearly over and the train had only got to the south end of the bridge it was a hard drive". A joiner who had worked on the bridge from May to October 1879 also spoke of a lateral shaking, which was more alarming than the up-and-down motion, and greatest at the southern junction between the high girders and the low girders. He was unwilling to quantify the amplitude of motion, but when pressed he offered . When pressed further he would only say that it was distinct, large, and visible. One of the painters' foremen, however, said the only motion he had seen had been north–south, and that this had been less than .


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: The North British Railway maintained the tracks, but it retained Bouch to supervise maintenance of the bridge. He appointed Henry Noble as his bridge inspector. Noble, who was a bricklayer, not an engineer, had worked for Bouch on the construction of the bridge.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Whilst checking the pier foundations to see if the river bed was being scoured from around them, Noble had become aware that some diagonal tie bars were 'chattering', and in October 1878 had begun remedying this. Diagonal bracing was by flat bars running from one lug at a column section top to two sling plates bolted to a lug at the base of the equivalent section on an adjacent column. The bar and sling plates all had a matching longitudinal slot in them. The tie bar was placed between the sling plates with all three slots aligned and overlapping, and then a gib was driven through all three slots and secured. Two "cotters" (metal wedges) were then positioned to fill the rest of the slot overlap, and driven in hard to put the tie under tension.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Noble had assumed the cotters were too small and had not been driven up hard in the first place, but on the chattering ties the cotters were loose, and even if driven fully in would not fill the slot and put the bar under tension. By fitting an additional packing piece between loose cotters and driving the cotters in, Noble had re-tightened loose ties and stopped them chattering. There were over 4,000 gib and cotter joints on the bridge, but Noble said that only about 100 had had to be re-tensioned, most in October–November 1878. On his last check in December 1879, only two ties had needed attention, both on piers north of the high girders. Noble had found cracks in four column sections – one under the high girders, three to the north of them – which had then been bound with wrought iron hoops. Noble had consulted Bouch about the cracked columns, but not the chattering ties.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: The workers at the Wormit foundry complained that the columns had been cast using 'Cleveland iron', which always had scum on it—it was less easy to cast than 'good Scotch metal' and more likely to give defective castings. Moulds were damped with salt water, cores were inadequately fastened, and moved, giving uneven column wall thickness. The foundry foreman explained that where lugs had been imperfectly cast; the missing metal was added by 'burning on'. If a casting had blowholes or other casting defects considered to be minor faults, they were filled with 'Beaumont egg' (which the foreman kept a stock of for that purpose) and the casting was used.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Gilkes' site staff were inherited from the previous contractor. Under the resident engineer there were seven subordinates including a foundry manager. The original foundry manager left before most of the high girders pier column sections were cast. His replacement was also supervising erection of the bridge, and had no previous experience of supervising foundry work. He was aware of 'burning on', but the use of Beaumont egg had been hidden from him by the foreman. When shown defects in bridge castings, he said he would not have passed the affected columns for use, nor would he have passed columns with noticeably uneven wall thickness. According to his predecessor, burning-on had only been carried out on temporary 'lifting columns', which were used to allow the girders to be lifted into place and were not part of the permanent bridge structure. That was on the instructions of the resident engineer, who had little foundry experience either and relied upon the foreman.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Whilst the working practices were the responsibility of Gilkes, their contract with NBR provided that all work done by the contractor was subject to the approval of the workmanship by Bouch. Hence Bouch would share the blame for any resulting defective work in the finished bridge. The original foundry foreman, who had been dismissed for drunkenness, vouched for Gilkes personally testing for unevenness in the early castings: "Mr. Gilkes, sometimes once a fortnight and sometimes once a month, would tap a column with a hammer, first on one side and then on the other, and he used to go over most of them in that way sounding them." Bouch had spent over £9,000 on inspection (his total fee was £10,500) but did not produce any witness who had inspected castings on his behalf. Bouch himself had been up about once a week whilst the design was being changed, but "afterwards, when it was all going on, I did not go so often".


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Bouch kept his own 'resident engineer', William Paterson, who looked after the construction of the bridge, its approaches, the line to Leuchars, and the Newport branch. Paterson was also the engineer of the Perth General Station. Bouch told the court that Paterson's age was 'very much mine' but, in fact, Paterson was 12 years older and, by the time of the Inquiry, paralysed and unable to give evidence. Another inspector appointed later was by then in South Australia and also unable to give evidence. Gilkes' managers could not vouch for any inspection of castings by Bouch's inspectors. The completed bridge had been inspected on Bouch's behalf for quality of assembly, but that was after the bridge had been painted (though still before the bridge opened, and before the painter witnesses were on it in the summer of 1879), which hid any cracks or signs of burning-on (though the inspector said that, in any case, he would not know those signs on sight). Throughout construction, Noble had been looking after foundations and brickwork.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Henry Law had examined the remains of the bridge; he reported defects in workmanship and design detail. Cochrane and Brunlees, who gave evidence later, largely concurred.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Samples of the bridge materials, both cast and wrought iron, were tested by David Kirkaldy, as were a number of bolts, tiebars, and associated lugs. Both the wrought and cast iron had good strength, while the bolts "were of sufficient strength and proper iron". However, both ties and sound lugs failed at loadings of about 20 tons, well below what had been expected. Both ties and lugs were weakened by high local stresses where the bolt bore on them. Four of the fourteen lugs tested were unsound, having failed at lower than expected loadings. Some column top lugs outlasted the wrought iron, but the bottom lugs were significantly weaker.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Bouch had designed the bridge, assisted in his calculations by Allan Stewart. After the accident Stewart had assisted William Pole in calculating what the bridge should have withstood. On the authority of Stewart they had assumed that the bridge was designed against a wind loading of 'with the usual margin of safety'. Bouch said that whilst had been discussed, he had been "guided by the report on the Forth Bridge" to assume and therefore made no special allowance for wind loading.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: He was referring to advice given by the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Biddell Airy in 1873 when consulted about Bouch's design for a suspension bridge across the Firth of Forth; that wind pressures as high as might be encountered very locally, but averaged over a span would be a reasonable allowance. This advice had been endorsed by a number of eminent engineers. Bouch also mentioned advice given by Yolland in 1869 – that the Board of Trade did not require any special allowance for wind loading for spans less than , whilst noting this was for the design of girders not piers.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Evidence was taken from scientists on the current state of knowledge on wind loading and from engineers on the allowance they made for it. Airy said that the advice given was specific to suspension bridges and the Forth; could act over an entire span of the Tay Bridge and he would now advise designing to (i.e. with the usual margin of safety). The highest pressure measured at Greenwich was ; it would probably go higher in Scotland.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Sir George Stokes agreed with Airy that 'catspaws', ripples on the water produced by gusts, could have a width of several hundred yards. Standard wind pressure measurements were of hydrostatic pressure which had to be corrected by a factor of 1.4–2 to give total wind loading – with a wind this would be . Pole referred to Smeaton's work, where high winds were said to give , with higher values being quoted for winds of or above, with the caveat that these were less certain.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Brunlees had made no allowance for wind loading on the Solway viaduct because the spans were short and low – if he had had to, he would probably have designed against with a safety margin of 4–5 (by limiting strength of iron). Both Pole and Law had used a treatment from a book by Rankine. Law agreed with Rankine that the highest wind pressure seen in Britain was as the reason for designing to (i.e. with a safety factor of 4); " in important structures, I think that the greatest possible margin should be taken. It does not do to speculate upon whether it is a fair estimate or not". Pole had ignored it because no reference was given; he did not believe any engineer paid any attention to it when designing bridges; he thought a reasonable allowance; this was what Robert Stephenson had assumed for the Britannia Bridge. Benjamin Baker said he would design to with a safety margin, but in 15 years of looking he had yet to see wind overthrow a structure that would withstand . He doubted Rankine's pressures because he was not an experimentalist; told that the data were observations by the Regius Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University, he doubted that the Professor had the equipment to take the readings.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Baker argued that the wind pressure on the high girders had been no more than , from the absence of damage to vulnerable features on buildings in Dundee and the signal cabins at the south end of the bridge. The Inquiry felt that these locations were significantly more sheltered, and therefore rejected this argument. Baker's subsequent work on wind pressures at the Forth Rail Bridge site showed meteorologists "were" overestimating, but his might have over-interpreted the data.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Both Pole and Law had calculated the wind loading needed to overturn the bridge to be over (taking no credit for holding-down bolts fastening the windward columns to the pier masonry) and concluded that a high wind should have overturned the bridge, rather than cause it to break up (Pole calculated the tension in the ties at windloading to be more than the 'usual margin of safety' value of 5 tons per square inch but still only half the failure tension.) Pole calculated the wind loading required to overturn the lightest carriage in the train (the second-class carriage) to be less than that needed to overturn the bridge; whereas Law – taking credit for more passengers in the carriage than Pole and for the high girders partially shielding carriages from the wind – had reached the opposite conclusion.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Law concluded that the bridge as designed if perfect in execution would not have failed in the way seen (Cochrane went further; it 'would be standing now'). The calculations assumed the bridge to be largely as designed, with all components in their intended position, and the ties reasonably evenly loaded. If the bridge had failed at lower wind loadings, this was evidence that the defects in design and workmanship he had objected to had given uneven loadings, significantly reduced the bridge strength and invalidated the calculation. Hence


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Pole held that the calculation was valid; the defects were self-correcting or had little effect, and some other reason for the failure should be sought. It was the cast iron lugs which had failed; cast iron was vulnerable to shock loadings, and the obvious reason for a shock loading on the lugs was one of the carriages being blown over and into a bridge girder. Baker agreed, but held the wind pressure was not sufficient to blow over a carriage; derailment was either wind-assisted by a different mechanism or coincidental. (Bouch's own view that collision damage to the girder was the sole cause of bridge collapse found little support).


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Bouch's counsel called witnesses last; hence his first attempts to suggest derailment and collision were made piecemeal in cross-examination of universally unsympathetic expert witnesses. Law had 'not seen anything to indicate that the carriages left the line' (before the bridge collapse) nor had Cochrane nor Brunlees. The physical evidence put to them for derailment and subsequent impact of one or more carriage with the girders was limited. It was suggested that the last two vehicles (the second-class carriage and a brake van) which appeared more damaged were those derailed, but (said Law) they were of less robust construction and the other carriages were not unscathed. Cochrane and Brunlees added that both sides of the carriages were damaged "very much alike".


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Bouch pointed to the rails and their chairs being smashed up in the girder holding the last two carriages, to the axle-box of the second-class carriage having become detached and ending up in the bottom boom of the eastern girder, to the footboard on the east side of the carriage having been completely carried away, to the girders being broken up, and to marks on the girders showing contact with the carriage roof, and to a plank with wheel marks on it having been washed up at Newport but unfortunately then washed away. Bouch's assistant gave evidence of two sets of horizontal scrape marks (very slight scratches in the metal or paint on the girders) matching the heights of the roofs of the last two carriages, but did not know the heights he claimed to be matched. At the start of one of these abrasions, a rivet head had lifted and splinters of wood were lodged between a tie bar and a cover plate. Evidence was then given of flange marks on tie bars in the fifth girder (north of the two rearmost carriages), the 'collision with girders' theory being duly modified to everything behind the tender having derailed.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: However, (it was countered) the girders would have been damaged by their fall regardless of its cause. They had had to be broken up with dynamite before they could be recovered from the bed of the Tay (but only after an unsuccessful attempt to lift the crucial girder in one piece which had broken many girder ties). The tender coupling (which clearly could not have hit a girder) had also been found in the bottom boom of the eastern girder. Two marked fifth girder tie bars were produced; one indeed had 3 marks, but two of them were on the underside. Dugald Drummond, responsible for NBR rolling stock, had examined the wheel flanges and found no 'bruises' – expected if they had smashed up chairs. If the second-class carriage body had hit anything at speed, it would have been 'knocked all to spunks' without affecting the underframe. Had collision with the eastern girder slewed the frame, it would have presented the east side to the oncoming brake van, but it was the west side of the frame that was more damaged. Its eastern footboard had not been carried away; the carriage had never had one (on either side). The graze marks were at above the rail, and above the rail and did not match carriage roof height. Drummond did not think the carriages had left the rails until after the girders began to fall, nor had he ever known a carriage (light or heavy) to be blown over by the wind.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Rothery added that, given the importance to the bridge design of the test borings showing shallow bedrock, Bouch should have taken greater pains, and looked at the cores himself.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: According to Yolland and Barlow "the fall of the bridge was occasioned by the insufficiency of the cross-bracings and fastenings to sustain the force of the gale on the night of December 28th 1879 ... the bridge had been previously strained by other gales".


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Rothery agreed, asking "Can there be any doubt that what caused the overthrow of the bridge was the pressure of the wind acting upon a structure badly built and badly maintained?"


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Yolland and Barlow also noted the possibility that failure was by fracture of a leeward column. Rothery felt that previous straining was "partly by previous gales, partly by the great speed at which trains going north were permitted to run through the high girders": if the momentum of a train at hitting girders could cause the fall of the bridge, what must have been the cumulative effect of the repeated braking of trains from at the north end of the bridge? He therefore concluded – with (he claimed) the support of circumstantial evidence – that the bridge might well have failed at the north end first; he explicitly dismissed the claim that the train had hit the girders before the bridge fell.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Yolland and Barlow concluded that the bridge had failed at the south end first; and made no explicit finding as to whether the train had hit the girders. They noted instead that apart from Bouch himself, Bouch's witnesses claimed/conceded that the bridge failure was due to a shock loading on lugs heavily stressed by windloading. Their report is therefore consistent with either a view that the train had not hit the girder or one that a bridge with cross-bracing giving an adequate safety margin against windloading would have survived a train hitting the girder.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Yolland and Barlow noted "there is no requirement issued by the Board of Trade respecting wind pressure, and there does not appear to be any understood rule in the engineering profession regarding wind pressure in railway structures; and we therefore recommend the Board of Trade should take such steps as may be necessary for the establishment of rules for that purpose." Rothery dissented, feeling that it was for the engineers themselves to arrive at an 'understood rule', such as the French rule of or the US .


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Rothery's minority report is more detailed in its analysis, more willing to blame named individuals, and more quotable, but the official report of the court is a relatively short one signed by Yolland and Barlow. Rothery said that his colleagues had declined to join him in allocating blame, on the grounds that this was outside their terms of reference. However, previous Section 7 inquiries had clearly felt themselves free to blame (Thorpe rail accident) or exculpate (Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash) identifiable individuals as they saw fit, and when Bouch's solicitor checked with Yolland and Barlow, they denied that they agreed with Rothery that "For these defects both in the design, the construction, and the maintenance, Sir Thomas Bouch is, in our opinion, mainly to blame."


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: No further judicial enquiries under Section 7 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1871 were held until the Hixon rail crash in 1968 brought into question both the policy of the Railway Inspectorate towards automated level crossings and the management by the Ministry of Transport (the Inspectorate's parent government department) of the movement of abnormal loads. A Section 7 judicial enquiry was felt necessary to give the required degree of independence. The structure and terms of reference were better defined than for the Tay Bridge inquiry. Brian Gibbens, QC, was supported by two expert assessors, and made findings as to blame/responsibility but not as to liability/culpability.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: The Board of Trade set up a 5-man commission (Barlow, Yolland, Sir John Hawkshaw, Sir William Armstrong and Stokes) to consider what wind loading should be assumed when designing railway bridges.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Windspeeds were normally measured in 'miles run in hour' (i.e. windspeed averaged over one hour) so it was difficult to apply Smeaton's table<ref name="Phil. Trans. 1759 51:100-174; doi:10.1098/rstl.1759.0019"></ref> which linked wind pressure to current windspeed


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: By examination of recorded pressures and windspeeds at Bidston Observatory, the commission found that for high winds the highest wind pressure could be represented very fairly, by


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: However, they recommended that structures should be designed to withstand a wind loading of , with a safety factor of 4 (2 where only gravity was relied upon). They noted that higher wind pressures had been recorded at Bidston Observatory but these would still give loadings well within the recommended safety margins. The wind pressures reported at Bidston were probably anomalously high because of peculiarities of the site (one of the highest points on the Wirral.<ref name="The Wirral Hundred/The Wirral Peninsula"></ref>): a wind pressure of would overturn railway carriages and such events were a rarity. (To give a subsequent, well documented example, in 1903 a stationary train "was" overturned on the Levens viaduct but this was by a 'terrific gale' measured at Barrow in Furness to have an average velocity of , estimated to be gusting up to .)


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: A new double-track Tay Bridge was built by the NBR, designed by Barlow and built by William Arrol & Co. of Glasgow upstream of, and parallel to, the original bridge. Work started 6 July 1883 and the bridge opened on 13 July 1887. Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker designed the Forth Rail Bridge, built (also by Arrols) between 1883 and 1890. Baker and his colleague Allan Stewart received the major credit for design and overseeing building work. The Forth Bridge had a 40 mph speed limit, which was not well observed.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Bouch had also been engineer for the North British, Arbroath and Montrose Railway, which included an iron viaduct over the South Esk. Examined closely after the Tay bridge collapse, the viaduct as built did not match the design, and many of the piers were noticeably out of the perpendicular. It was suspected that the construction had not been adequately supervised: foundation piles had not been driven deeply or firmly enough. Tests in 1880 over a period of 36 hours using both dead and rolling loads led to the structure becoming seriously distorted and eight of the piers were declared unsafe. Condemning the structure, Colonel Yolland also stated his opinion that "piers constructed of cast-iron columns of the dimensions used in this viaduct should not in future be sanctioned by the Board of Trade." It had to be dismantled and rebuilt by Sir William Arrol to a design by W. R. Galbraith before the line could be opened to traffic in 1881. Bouch's Redheugh Bridge built 1871 was condemned in 1896, the structural engineer doing so saying later that the bridge would have blown over if it had ever seen windloadings of .


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: The locomotive, NBR no. 224, a 4-4-0 designed by Thomas Wheatley and built at Cowlairs Works in 1871, was salvaged and repaired, remaining in service until 1919, nicknamed "The Diver"; many superstitious drivers were reluctant to take it over the new bridge. The stumps of the original bridge piers are still visible above the surface of the Tay. Memorials have been placed at either end of the bridge in Dundee and Wormit.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: On 28 December 2019, Dundee Walterfronts Walks hosted a remembrance walk to mark the 140-year anniversary of the Tay Bridge disaster.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Some in the Sabbatarian movement, which advocated for restricting activities on Sundays, pointed to the disaster as a punishment from God for traveling on the Sabbath. James Begg, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, criticized the railway, stating that "The Sabbath of God has been dreadfully profaned by our great public companies", and also criticized the victims, posing the question, "Is it not awful to think that they must have been carried away when many of them must have known that they were transgressing the Law of God?". "Punch" magazine criticized Begg for "converting the awful catastrophe triumphantly to the account of his own black and bitter creed", and accused him of violating the biblical precept "Judge not that ye be not judged".


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: Various additional pieces of evidence have been advanced in the last 40 years, leading to "forensic engineering" reinterpretations of what actually happened.


title: Tay Bridge disaster

text: The disaster inspired several songs and poems, most famously William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster", widely considered to be of such a low quality as to be comical. The German poet Theodor Fontane, shocked by the news, wrote his poem "". It was published only ten days after the tragedy happened. C. Horne's ballad "In Memory of the Tay Bridge Disaster" was published as a broadside in May 1880. It describes the moment of the disaster as:


title: Hayflick limit

text: The Hayflick limit, or Hayflick phenomenon, is the number of times a normal somatic, differentiated human cell population will divide before cell division stops. However, this limit does not apply to stem cells.


title: Hayflick limit

text: The concept of the Hayflick limit was advanced by American anatomist Leonard Hayflick in 1961, at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hayflick demonstrated that a normal human fetal cell population will divide between 40 and 60 times in cell culture before entering a senescence phase. This finding refuted the contention by Alexis Carrel that normal cells are immortal.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Each time a cell undergoes mitosis, the telomeres on the ends of each chromosome shorten slightly. Cell division will cease once telomeres shorten to a critical length. Hayflick interpreted his discovery to be aging at the cellular level. The aging of cell populations appears to correlate with the overall physical aging of an organism.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Macfarlane Burnet coined the name "Hayflick limit" in his book "Intrinsic Mutagenesis: A Genetic Approach to Ageing", published in 1974.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Prior to Leonard Hayflick's discovery, it was believed that vertebrate cells had an unlimited potential to replicate. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel prize-winning surgeon, had stated "that all cells explanted in tissue culture are immortal, and that the lack of continuous cell replication was due to ignorance on how best to cultivate the cells". He claimed to have cultivated fibroblasts from the hearts of chickens (which typically live 5 to 10 years) and to have kept the culture growing for 34 years.


title: Hayflick limit

text: However, other scientists have been unable to replicate Carrel's results, and they are suspected to be due to an error in experimental procedure. To provide required nutrients, embryonic stem cells of chickens may have been re-added to the culture daily. This would have easily allowed the cultivation of new, fresh cells in the culture, so there was not an infinite reproduction of the original cells. It has been speculated that Carrel knew about this error, but he never admitted it.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Also, it has been theorized that the cells Carrel used were young enough to contain pluripotent stem cells, which, if supplied with a supporting telomerase-activation nutrient, would have been capable of staving off replicative senescence, or even possibly reversing it. Cultures not containing telomerase-active pluripotent stem cells would have been populated with telomerase-inactive cells, which would have been subject to the 50 ± 10 mitosis event limit until cellular senescence occurs as described in Hayflick's findings.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Hayflick first became suspicious of Carrel's claims while working in a lab at the Wistar Institute. Hayflick noticed that one of his cultures of embryonic human fibroblasts had developed an unusual appearance and that cell division had slowed. Initially, he brushed this aside as an anomaly caused by contamination or technical error. However, he later observed other cell cultures exhibiting similar manifestations. Hayflick checked his research notebook and was surprised to find that the atypical cell cultures had all been cultured to approximately their 40th doubling while younger cultures never exhibited the same problems. Furthermore, conditions were similar between the younger and older cultures he observed — same culture medium, culture containers, and technician. This led him to doubt that the manifestations were due to contamination or technical error.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Hayflick next set out to prove that the cessation of normal cell replicative capacity that he observed was not the result of viral contamination, poor culture conditions or some unknown artifact. Hayflick teamed with Paul Moorhead for the definitive experiment to eliminate these as causative factors. As a skilled cytogeneticist, Moorhead was able to distinguish between male and female cells in culture. The experiment proceeded as follows: Hayflick mixed equal numbers of normal human male fibroblasts that had divided many times (cells at the 40th population doubling) with female fibroblasts that had divided fewer times (cells at the 15th population doubling). Unmixed cell populations were kept as controls. After 20 doublings of the mixed culture, only female cells remained. Cell division ceased in the unmixed control cultures at the anticipated times; When the male control culture stopped dividing, only female cells remained in the mixed culture. This suggested that technical errors or contaminating viruses were unlikely explanations as to why cell division ceased in the older cells, and proved that unless the virus or artifact could distinguish between male and female cells (which it could not) then the cessation of normal cell replication was governed by an internal counting mechanism.


title: Hayflick limit

text: These results disproved Carrel's immortality claims and established the Hayflick limit as a credible biological theory. Unlike Carrel's experiment, Hayflick's have been successfully repeated by other scientists.


title: Hayflick limit

text: However, L. Franks and others (Loo et al. 1987; Nooden and Tompson 1995; Frolkis 1988a), have shown that the number of cell divisions can be considerably greater than that stipulated by the Hayflick limit, having practically no limit at all.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Hayflick describes three phases in the life of normal cultured cells. At the start of his experiment he named the primary culture "phase one". Phase two is defined as the period when cells are proliferating; Hayflick called this the time of "luxuriant growth". After months of doubling the cells eventually reach phase three, a phenomenon he named "senescence", where cell replication rate slows before halting altogether.


title: Hayflick limit

text: The Hayflick limit has been found to correlate with the length of the telomeric region at the end of chromosomes. During the process of DNA replication of a chromosome, small segments of DNA within each telomere are unable to be copied and are lost. This occurs due to the uneven nature of DNA replication, where leading and lagging strands are not replicated symmetrically. The telomeric region of DNA does not code for any protein; it is simply a repeated code on the end region of linear eukaryotic chromosomes. After many divisions, the telomeres reach a critical length and the cell becomes senescent. It is at this point that a cell has reached its Hayflick limit.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Hayflick was the first to report that only cancer cells are immortal. This could not have been demonstrated until he had demonstrated that normal cells are mortal. Cellular senescence does not occur in most cancer cells due to expression of an enzyme called telomerase. This enzyme extends telomeres, preventing the telomeres of cancer cells from shortening and giving them infinite replicative potential. A proposed treatment for cancer is the usage of telomerase inhibitors that would prevent the restoration of the telomere, allowing the cell to die like other body cells.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Hayflick suggested that his results in which normal cells have a limited replicative capacity may have significance for understanding human aging at the cellular level.


title: Hayflick limit

text: It has been reported that the limited replicative capability of human fibroblasts observed in cell culture is far greater than the number of replication events experienced by non-stem cells in vivo during a normal postnatal lifespan. In addition, it has been suggested that no inverse correlation exists between the replicative capacity of normal human cell strains and the age of the human donor from which the cells were derived, as previously argued. It is now clear that at least some of these variable results are attributable to the mosaicism of cell replication numbers at different body sites where cells were taken.


title: Hayflick limit

text: Comparisons of different species indicate that cellular replicative capacity may correlate primarily with species body mass, but more likely to species lifespan. Thus, the limited capacity of cells to replicate in culture may be directly relevant to organismal aging.


title: Aqidah

text: Aqidah ( (), plural "ʿaqāʾid", also rendered "ʿaqīda", "aqeeda", etc.) is an Islamic term of Arabic origin that literally means "creed". It is also called Islamic creed and Islamic theology.


title: Aqidah

text: "Aqidah" go beyond concise statements of faith and may not be part of an ordinary Muslim's religious instruction. It has been distinguished from "Iman" in "taking the aspects of Iman and extending it to a detail level" often using "human interpretation or sources". Many schools of Islamic theology expressing different "aqidah" exist. However, this term has taken a significant technical usage in the Islamic theology, and is a branch of Islamic studies describing the beliefs of Islam.


title: Aqidah

text: "Aqidah" comes from the Semitic root "ʿ-q-d", which means "to tie; knot". ("Aqidah" used not only as an expression of a school of Islamic theology or belief system, but as another word for "theology" in Islam, as in: "Theology (Aqidah) covers all beliefs and belief systems of Muslims, including sectarian differences and points of contention".)


title: Aqidah

text: According to Muslim scholar Cyril Glasse, "systematic statements of belief became necessary, from early [on in the history of] Islam, initially to refute heresies, and later to distinguish points of view and to present them, as the divergences of schools of theology or opinion increased."


title: Aqidah

text: The "first" creed written as "a short answer to the pressing heresies of the time" is known as "Fiqh Akbar" and ascribed to Abu Hanifa.


title: Aqidah

text: Two well known creeds were the "Fiqh Akbar II" "representative" of the Ash'ari, and "Fiqh Akbar III", "representative" of the Shafi'i. Al-Ghazali also had an "aqidah". These creeds were more detailed than those described below.


title: Aqidah

text: According to Malcolm Clark, while Islam "is not a creedal religion", it has produced some detailed creeds, "some containing 100 or more belief statements" that summarized "the theological position of a particular scholar or school."


title: Aqidah

text: The six articles of faith or belief (Arkan al-Iman) derived from the Quran and Sunnah, are accepted by all Muslims. While there are differences between Shia and Sunni Islam and other different schools or sects concerning issues such as the attributes of God or about the purpose of angels, the six articles are not disputed.


title: Aqidah

text: The sixth point made it into the creed because of the first theological controversy in Islam. Although not connected with the Sunni-Shiʿi controversy about the succession, the majority of Twelver Shiʿites do not stress God's limitless power (qadar), but rather His boundless justice (ʿadl) as the sixth point of belief – this does not mean that Sunnis deny His justice, or Shiʿites negate His power, just that the emphasis is different.


title: Aqidah

text: "Tawhid" ("doctrine of Oneness") is the concept of monotheism in Islam. It is the religion's most fundamental concept and holds that God (Allah) is one ("aḥad") and unique ("wāḥid"), and the only worthy of worship comparable to Jewish and Christian view on God, while worshipping something else is considered idolatry.


title: Aqidah

text: According to Islamic belief, "Allah" is the proper name of God, and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith. "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind." "He is unique (wāḥid) and inherently one (aḥad), all-merciful and omnipotent." The Qur'an declares the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His 99 descriptive names expressing a quality characteristic, and His actions on behalf of His creatures.


title: Aqidah

text: Iman, in Islamic theology denotes a believer's faith in the metaphysical aspects of Islam. Its most simple definition is the belief in the six articles of faith, known as "arkān al-īmān".


title: Aqidah

text: The Hadith of Gabriel includes the Five Pillars of Islam (Tawhid, Salat, Sawm, Zakat, Hajj) in answer to the question, "O messenger of God, what is Islam?" This hadith is sometimes called the "truly first and most fundamental creed."


title: Aqidah

text: Salat is an act of worship. Salat means to call to the Lord Who created and gives life to the worshipper in Islam. This call realizes one to surrender caller's will, obeying his God. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Islam gives concession conditionally if it is difficult to pray Salat in formal ways. People who find it physically difficult can perform Salat in a way suitable to them. To perform valid Salat, Muslims must be in a state of ritual purity, which is mainly achieved by ritual wash ups, (wuḍūʾ), as per prescribed procedures. Salat consists of "standing" (Qiyam) intending to call God, bow at knees (Ruku) meaning to ready to obey, prostrate (Sajda) willing to surrender worshipper's will to God's, then to sit (Tashhud) asserting evidence of the oneness of God and the finality of God's apostle (Nabi).


title: Aqidah

text: In the terminology of Islamic law, "sawm" means to abstain from eating, drinking (including water) and sexual intercourse from dawn until dusk. The observance of "sawm" during the holy month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, but is not confined to that month.


title: Aqidah

text: Zakat is the practice of charitable giving by Muslims based on accumulated wealth and is obligatory for all who are able to do so. It is considered to be a personal responsibility for Muslims to ease economic hardship for others and eliminate inequality.


title: Aqidah

text: The Hajj is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and the largest gathering of Muslims in the world every year. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, and a religious duty which must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so at least once in his or her lifetime.


title: Aqidah

text: Jihad (to struggle) and literally means to endeavor, strive, labor to apply oneself, to concentrate, to work hard, to accomplish. It could be used to refer to those who physically, mentally or economically serve in the way of God.


title: Aqidah

text: Da‘wah ("invitation") means the proselytizing or preaching of Islam. Da‘wah literally means "issuing a summon" or "making an invitation," being an active participle of a verb meaning variously "to summon" or "to invite." A Muslim who practices da‘wah, either as a religious worker or in a volunteer community effort, is called a dā‘ī (داعي plural du‘āh, gen: du‘āt دعاة).


title: Aqidah

text: A dā‘ī is thus a person who invites people to understand Islam through dialogue, not unlike the Islamic equivalent of a missionary inviting people to the faith, prayer and manner of Islamic life.


title: Aqidah

text: Eschatology is literally understood as the last things or ultimate things and in Muslim theology, eschatology refers to the end of this world and what will happen in the next world or hereafter. Eschatology covers the death of human beings, their souls after their bodily death, the total destruction of this world, the resurrection of humans, the Last Judgment of human deeds by God after the resurrection, and the rewards and punishments for the believers and non-believers respectively. The places for the believers in the hereafter are known as Paradise and for the non-believers as Hell.


title: Aqidah

text: Muslim theology is the theology and interpretation of creed ("aqidah") that derived from the Qur'an and Hadith. The contents of Muslim theology can be divided into theology proper such as theodicy, eschatology, anthropology, apophatic theology, and comparative religion. In the history of Muslim theology, there have been theological schools among Muslims displaying both similarities and differences with each other in regard to beliefs.


title: Aqidah

text: "Kalām" is an "Islamic scholastic theology" of seeking theological principles through dialectic. In Arabic, the word literally means "speech/words." A scholar of "kalām" is referred to as a "mutakallim" (Muslim theologian; plural "mutakallimūn"). There are many schools of Kalam, the main ones being the Mutazila, the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools in Sunni Islam. Traditionalist theology rejects the use of kalam, regarding humans reason as sinful in unseen matters.


title: Aqidah

text: Muʿtazilite is an Unorthodox Sunni School. In terms of the relationship between human beings and their creator, the Muʿtazila emphasize human free will over predestination. They also reduced the divine attributes to the divine essence. The Mu’tazilites are considered heretics by all the traditional Sunni Islamic schools of theology.


title: Aqidah

text: Asharism accepts reason in regard of exegetical matters and traditionalistic ideas. What God does or commands — as revealed in the Quran and ahadith — is by definition just. What He prohibits is by definition unjust. Right and wrong are objective realities. The Quran is the uncreated word of God in essence, however it is created then it takes on a form in letters or sound.


title: Aqidah

text: Maturidism holds, that humans are creatures endowed with reason, that differentiates them from animals. Further, The relationship between people and God differs from that of nature and God; humans are endowed with free will, but due to God's sovereignty, God creates the acts the humans choose, so humans can perform them. Ethics can be understood just by reason and do not need prophetic guidances. Maturidi also considered hadiths as unreliable, when they are in odd with reason. However, the human mind alone could not grasp the entire truth, thus it is in need of revelation in regard of mysterious affairs. Further, Maturidism opposes anthropomorphism and similtute, while simultaneously does not deny the divine attributes. They must be either interpreted in the light of Tawhid or be left out.


title: Aqidah

text: For the Athari theology, the literal meaning of the Qur'an and especially the prophetic traditions have sole authority in matters of belief, as well as law, and to engage in rational disputation, even if one arrives at the truth, is absolutely forbidden. Atharis engage in an amodal reading of the Qur'an, as opposed to one engaged in "Ta'wil" (metaphorical interpretation). They do not attempt to rationally conceptualize the meanings of the Qur'an and believe that the real meanings should be consigned to God alone ("tafwid"). This theology was taken from exegesis of the Qur'an and statements of the early Muslims and later codified by a number of scholars including Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Qudamah. There are different views whether Ath’ari creed should or should not be included as a Sunni school of aqidah.


title: Aqidah

text: Shiʿi Muslims hold that there are five articles of belief. Similar to the Sunnis, the Shiʿis do not believe in complete predestination, or complete free will. They believe that in human life there is both free will and predestination.


title: Aqidah

text: The branch of Islam known as Isma'ilism is the second largest Shiʿi community. They observe the following extra pillars:


title: Aqidah

text: Many Muslim scholars have written Islamic creeds, or specific aspects of a "aqidah". The following list contains some of the most well-known creeds.


title: Aqidah

text: Manzoor Elahi in his book "Samāja sanskārē saṭhika ākīdāra gurutba" (The Importance of Right Aqeedah in Social Reformation) says about the "necessity of reforming society and the role and importance of correct Islamic Aqeedah in that context",


title: Wittig reaction

text: The Wittig reaction or Wittig olefination is a chemical reaction of an aldehyde or ketone with a triphenyl phosphonium ylide called a Wittig reagent. Wittig reactions are most commonly used to convert aldehydes and ketones to alkenes. Most often, the Wittig reaction is used to introduce a methylene group using methylenetriphenylphosphorane (PhP=CH). Using this reagent, even a sterically hindered ketone such as camphor can be converted to its methylene derivative.


title: Wittig reaction

text: For the reaction with aldehydes, the double bond geometry is readily predicted based on the nature of the ylide. With unstabilised ylides (R = alkyl) this results in ("Z")-alkene product with moderate to high selectivity. With stabilized ylides (R = ester or ketone), the ("E")-alkene is formed with high selectivity. The ("E")/("Z") selectivity is often poor with semistabilized ylides (R = aryl).


title: Wittig reaction

text: To obtain the ("E")-alkene for unstabilized ylides, the Schlosser modification of the Wittig reaction can be used. Alternatively, the Julia olefination and its variants also provide the ("E")-alkene selectively. Ordinarily, the Horner–Wadsworth–Emmons reaction provides the ("E")-enoate (α,β-unsaturated ester), just as the Wittig reaction does. To obtain the ("Z")-enolate, the Still-Gennari modification of the Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons reaction can be used.


title: Wittig reaction

text: Mechanistic studies have focused on unstabilized ylides, because the intermediates can be followed by NMR spectroscopy. The existence and interconversion of the betaine (3a and 3b) is subject of ongoing research. For lithium-free Wittig reactions, studies support a concerted formation of the oxaphosphetane without intervention of a betaine. In particular, phosphonium ylides 1 react with carbonyl compounds 2 via a [2+2] cycloaddition that is sometimes described as having [2+2] topology to directly form the oxaphosphetanes 4a and 4b. Under lithium-free conditions, the stereochemistry of the product 5 is due to the kinetically controlled addition of the ylide 1 to the carbonyl 2. When lithium is present, there may be equilibration of the intermediates, possibly via betaine species 3a and 3b. Bruce E. Maryanoff and A. B. Reitz identified the issue about equilibration of Wittig intermediates and termed the process "stereochemical drift". For many years, the stereochemistry of the Wittig reaction, in terms of carbon-carbon bond formation, had been assumed to correspond directly with the Z/E stereochemistry of the alkene products. However, certain reactants do not follow this simple pattern. Lithium salts can also exert a profound effect on the stereochemical outcome.


title: Wittig reaction

text: Mechanisms differ for aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes and for aromatic and aliphatic phosphonium ylides. Evidence suggests that the Wittig reaction of unbranched aldehydes under lithium-salt-free conditions do not equilibrate and are therefore under kinetic reaction control. E. Vedejs has put forth a theory to explain the stereoselectivity of stabilized and unstabilized Wittig reactions.


title: Wittig reaction

text: Strong evidence indicated that under Li-free conditions, Wittig reactions involving unstabilized (R= alkyl, H), semistabilized (R = aryl), and stabilized (R = EWG) Wittig reagents all proceed via a [2+2]/retro-[2+2] mechanism under kinetic control, with oxaphosphetane as the one and only intermediate.


title: Wittig reaction

text: The Wittig reagents generally tolerate carbonyl compounds containing several kinds of functional groups such as OH, OR, aromatic nitro, epoxide, and ester groups. Even C=O and nitrile groups can be present if conjugated with the ylide- these are the stabilised ylides mentioned above. Bis-ylides (containing two P=C bonds) have also been made and used successfully. There can be a problem with sterically hindered ketones, where the reaction may be slow and give poor yields, particularly with stabilized ylides, and in such cases the Horner–Wadsworth–Emmons (HWE) reaction (using phosphonate esters) is preferred. Another reported limitation is the often labile nature of aldehydes, which can oxidize, polymerize or decompose. In a so-called tandem oxidation-Wittig process the aldehyde is formed in situ by oxidation of the corresponding alcohol.


title: Wittig reaction

text: One limitation relates to the stereochemistry of the product. With simple ylides, the product is usually mainly the Z-isomer, although a lesser amount of the E-isomer is often formed also – this is particularly true when ketones are used. If the reaction is performed in dimethylformamide in the presence of lithium iodide or sodium iodide, the product is almost exclusively the Z-isomer. If the E-isomer is the desired product, the Schlosser modification may be used. With stabilised ylides the product is mainly the E-isomer, and this same isomer is also usual with the HWE reaction.


title: Wittig reaction

text: The main limitation of the traditional Wittig reaction is that the reaction proceeds mainly via the erythro betaine intermediate, which leads to the Z-alkene. The erythro betaine can be converted to the threo betaine using phenyllithium at low temperature. This modification affords the E-alkene.


title: Wittig reaction

text: Allylic alcohols can be prepared by reaction of the betaine ylide with a second aldehyde. For example:


title: Wittig reaction

text: An example of its use is in the synthesis of leukotriene A methyl ester. The first step uses a stabilised ylide, where the carbonyl group is conjugated with the ylide preventing self condensation, although unexpectedly this gives mainly the "cis" product. The second Wittig reaction uses a non-stabilised Wittig reagent, and as expected this gives mainly the "cis" product.


title: Wittig reaction

text: The Wittig reaction was reported in 1954 by Georg Wittig and his coworker Ulrich Schöllkopf. In part for this contribution, Wittig was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979.


title: Existential therapy

text: Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation, and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation, existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in their life.


title: Existential therapy

text: The philosophers who are especially pertinent to the development of existential psychotherapy are those whose works were directly aimed at making sense of human existence. For example, the fields of phenomenology and existential philosophy are especially and directly responsible for the generation of existential therapy.


title: Existential therapy

text: The starting point of existential philosophy (see Warnock 1970; Macquarrie 1972; Mace 1999; Van Deurzen and Kenward 2005) can be traced back to the nineteenth century and the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their works conflicted with the predominant ideologies of their time and committed to the exploration of reality as it can be experienced in a passionate and personal manner.


title: Existential therapy

text: Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) protested vehemently against popular misunderstanding and abuse of Christian dogma and the so-called 'objectivity' of science (Kierkegaard, 1841, 1844). He thought that both were ways of avoiding the anxiety inherent in human existence. He had great contempt for the way life was lived by those around him and believed truth could only be discovered subjectively by the individual in action. He felt people lacked the courage to take a leap of faith and live with passion and commitment from the inward depth of existence. This involved a constant struggle between the finite and infinite aspects of our nature as part of the difficult task of creating a self and finding meaning.


title: Existential therapy

text: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) took this philosophy of life a step further. His starting point was the notion that God is dead, that is, the idea of God was outmoded and limiting (Nietzsche, 1861, 1874, 1886). Furthermore, the Enlightenment—with the newfound faith in reason and rationality—had killed or replaced God with a new Truth that was perhaps more pernicious than the one it replaced. Science and rationality were the new "God," but instead took the form of a deity that was colder and less comforting than before. Nietzsche exerted a significant impact on the development of psychology in general, but he specifically influenced an approach that emphasized an understanding of life from a personal perspective. In exploring the various needs of the individual about the ontological conditions of being, Nietzsche asserted that all things are in a state of "ontological privation," in which they long to become more than they are. This state of deprivation has major implications for the physiological and psychological needs of the individual.


title: Existential therapy

text: While Kierkegaard and Nietzsche drew attention to the human issues that needed to be addressed, Edmund Husserl's phenomenology (Husserl, 1960, 1962; Moran, 2000) provided the method to address them rigorously. He contended that natural sciences assume the separateness of subject and object and that this kind of dualism can only lead to error. He proposed a whole new mode of investigation and understanding of the world and our experience of it. He said that prejudice has to be put aside or 'bracketed,' for us to meet the world afresh and discover what is absolutely fundamental, and only directly available to us through intuition. If people want to grasp the essence of things, instead of explaining and analyzing them, they have to learn to describe and understand them.


title: Existential therapy

text: Max Scheler (1874–1928) developed philosophical anthropology from a material ethic of values ("Materielle Wertethik") that opposed Immanuel Kant's ethics of duty ("Pflichtethik"). He described a hierarchical system of values that further developed phenomenological philosophy. Scheler described the human psyche as being composed of four layers analogous to the layers of organic nature. However, in his description, the human psyche is opposed by the principle of the human spirit. Scheler's philosophy forms the basis of Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and existential analysis.


title: Existential therapy

text: Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) applied the phenomenological method to understanding the meaning of being (Heidegger, 1962, 1968). He argued that poetry and deep philosophical thinking could bring greater insight into what it means to be in the world than what can be achieved through scientific knowledge. He explored human beings in the world in a manner that revolutionized classical ideas about the self and psychology. He recognized the importance of time, space, death, and human relatedness. He also favored hermeneutics, an old philosophical method of investigation, which is the art of interpretation.


title: Existential therapy

text: Unlike interpretation as practiced in psychoanalysis (which consists of referring a person's experience to a pre-established theoretical framework), this kind of interpretation seeks to understand how the person himself/herself subjectively experiences something.


title: Existential therapy

text: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) contributed many other strands of existential exploration, particularly regarding emotions, imagination, and the person's insertion into a social and political world.


title: Existential therapy

text: The philosophy of existence, on the contrary, is carried by a wide-ranging literature, which includes many authors, such as Karl Jaspers (1951, 1963), Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and Hans-Georg Gadamer within the Germanic tradition and Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir and Emmanuel Lévinas within the French tradition (see for instance Spiegelberg, 1972, Kearney, 1986 or van Deurzen-Smith, 1997).


title: Existential therapy

text: From the start of the 20th century, some psychotherapists were, however, inspired by phenomenology and its possibilities for working with people.


title: Existential therapy

text: The European School of existential therapy is dominated by three forms of therapy: Logotherapy, Daseinsanalysis and Existential Phenomenological Therapy. Logotherapy was developed by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl was heavily influenced by existential philosophy, as well as his own experience in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. The three main components to Logotherapy are Freedom of Will, which is the ability to change one's life to the degree that such change is possible, Will to Meaning, which places meaning at the center of well-being, and Meaning in Life, which asserts the objectivity of meaning. The primary techniques of Logotherapy involve helping the clients to identify and remove any barriers to the pursuit of meaning in their own lives, to determine what is personally meaningful, and to then help patients effectively pursue related goals.


title: Existential therapy

text: Daseinsanalysis is a psychotherapeutic system developed upon the ideas of Martin Heidegger, as well as the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, that seeks to help the individual find autonomy and meaning in their "being in the world" (a rough translation of "Dasein").


title: Existential therapy

text: Existential Phenomenological Therapy was inspired by the work of R.D. Laing and significantly developed by Emmy van Deurzen, whose work as a philosopher inspired her work as a psychotherapist. All three strands of existential therapy are documented in the recent Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, together with the North and South American, Australian and other developments.


title: Existential therapy

text: Britain became a fertile ground for further development of the existential approach when R. D. Laing and David Cooper, often associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, took Sartre's existential ideas as the basis for their work (Laing, 1960, 1961; Cooper, 1967; Laing and Cooper, 1964). Without developing a concrete method of therapy, they critically reconsidered the notion of mental illness and its treatment. In the late 1960s, they established an experimental therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall in the East End of London, where people could come to live through their 'madness' without the usual medical treatment. They also founded the Philadelphia Association, an organization providing an alternative living, therapy, and therapeutic training from this perspective. The Philadelphia Association is still in existence today and is now committed to the exploration of the works of philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, Levinas, and Michel Foucault as well as the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. It also runs some small therapeutic households along these lines. The Arbours Association is another group that grew out of the Kingsley Hall experiment. Founded by Joseph Berke and Schatzman in the 1970s, it now runs a training program in psychotherapy, a crisis center, and several therapeutic communities. The existential input in the Arbours has gradually been replaced with a more neo-Kleinian emphasis.


title: Existential therapy

text: The impetus for further development of the existential approach in Britain has primarily come from the development of some existentially based courses in academic institutions. This started with the programs created by Emmy van Deurzen, initially at Antioch University in London and subsequently at Regent's College, London , and since then at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counseling, also located in London. The latter is a purely existentially based training institute, which offers postgraduate degrees validated by the University of Sheffield and Middlesex University. In the past few decades, the existential approach has spread rapidly and has become a welcome alternative to established methods. There are now many other, mostly academic, centers in Britain that provide training in existential counseling and psychotherapy and a rapidly growing interest in the approach in the voluntary sector and the National Health Service.


title: Existential therapy

text: British publications dealing with existential therapy include contributions by these authors: Jenner (de Koning and Jenner, 1982), Heaton (1988, 1994), Cohn (1994, 1997), Spinelli (1997), Cooper (1989, 2002), Eleftheriadou (1994), Lemma-Wright (1994), Du Plock (1997), Strasser and Strasser (1997), van Deurzen (1997, 1998, 2002), van Deurzen and Arnold-Baker (2005), and van Deurzen and Kenward (2005). Other writers such as Lomas (1981) and Smail (1978, 1987, 1993) have published work relevant to the approach, although not explicitly 'existential' in orientation. The journal of the British Society for Phenomenology regularly publishes work on existential and phenomenological psychotherapy. The Society for Existential Analysis was founded in 1988, initiated by van Deurzen. This society brings together psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and philosophers working from an existential perspective. It offers regular fora for discussion and debate as well as significant annual conferences. It publishes the "Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis" twice a year. It is also a member of the International Federation of Daseinsanalysis, which stimulates international exchange between representatives of the approach from around the world. An International Society for Existential Therapists also exists. It was founded in 2006 by Emmy van Deurzen and Digby Tantam and is called the International Community of Existential Counsellors and Therapists (ICECAP).


title: Existential therapy

text: New developments in existential therapy in the last 20 years include existential positive psychology (EPP) and meaning therapy (MT). Different from the traditional approach to existential therapy, these new developments incorporate research findings from contemporary positive psychology.


title: Existential therapy

text: EPP can reframe the traditional issues of existential concerns into positive psychology questions that can be subjected to empirical research. It also focuses on personal growth and transformation as much as on existential anxiety. Later, EPP was incorporated into the second wave of positive psychology (PP 2.0).


title: Existential therapy

text: Meaning Therapy (MT) is an extension of Frankl's logotherapy and America's humanistic-existential tradition; it is also pluralistic because it incorporates elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, and positive psychotherapy, with meaning as its central organizing construct. MT not only appeals to people's natural desires for happiness and significance but also makes skillful use of their innate capacity for meaning-seeking and meaning-making. MT strikes a balance between a person-centered approach and a psycho-educational approach. At the outset of therapy, clients are informed of the use of meaning-centered interventions appropriate for their predicaments because of the empirical evidence for the vital role of meaning in healing and thriving. MT is a comprehensive and pluralistic way to address all aspects of clients' existential concerns. Clients can benefit from MT in two ways: (1) a custom-tailored treatment to solve their presenting problems, and (2) a collaborative journey to create a preferred better future.


title: Existential therapy

text: Existential therapy (of the American, existential-humanistic tradition) starts with the belief that although humans are essentially alone in the world, they long to be connected to others. People want to have meaning in one another's lives, but ultimately they must come to realize that they cannot depend on others for validation, and with that realization, they finally acknowledge and understand that they are fundamentally alone. The result of this revelation is anxiety in the knowledge that our validation must come from within and not from others.


title: Existential therapy

text: Existential therapy is based on a theory of mind, and of psychology. In existentialism, personality is based on choosing to be, authentically, the real you, given an understanding based on a philosophical idea of what a person is. Therefore, practical therapeutic applications can be derived given a theory of personality, emotion, and “the good life.”


title: Existential therapy

text: This leads to practical therapeutic applications like dealing with personal choices in life that lead to personal happiness. Personal happiness based on a concept of yourself as having the freedom of directing your life and making necessary changes (so to speak, a radical freedom). So, a full philosophical understanding of existentialism is basic to methods implemented for emotional and life changes. That is, a background in philosophy is basic to existential therapy.


title: Existential therapy

text: Philosophical issues of the self, personality, philosophy of mind, meaning of life, personal development are all fundamentally relevant to any practical therapeutic expectations. Existentialism


title: Existential therapy

text: For theorists aligned with Yalom, psychological dysfunction results from the individual's refusal or inability to deal with the normal existential anxiety that comes from confronting life's "givens": mortality, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom.


title: Existential therapy

text: For other theorists, there is no such thing as psychological dysfunction or mental illness. Every way of being is merely an expression of how one chooses to live one's life. However, one may feel unable to come to terms with the anxiety of being alone in the world. If so, an existential psychotherapist can assist one in accepting these feelings rather than trying to change them as if there is something wrong. Everyone has the freedom to choose how they are going to exist in life; however, this freedom may go unpracticed. It may appear easier and safer not to make decisions that one will be responsible for. Many people will remain unaware of alternative choices in life for various societal reasons.


title: Existential therapy

text: Existentialism suggests that it is possible for individuals to face the anxieties of life head on, embrace the human condition of aloneness and to revel in the freedom to choose and take full responsibility for their choices. They can aim to take control of their lives and steer themselves in any direction they choose. There is no need to halt feelings of meaninglessness but instead to choose and focus on new meanings for the living. By building, loving and creating, life can be lived as one's own adventure. One can accept one's own mortality and overcome the fear of death. Although the French author Albert Camus denied the specific label of existentialist in his novel, "L'Étranger", the novel's main character, Meursault, ends the novel by doing just this. He accepts his mortality and rejects the constrictions of society he previously placed on himself, leaving him unencumbered and free to live his life with an unclouded mind. Also, Gerd B. Achenbach has refreshed the Socratic tradition with his own blend of philosophical counseling, as has Michel Weber with his Chromatiques Center in Belgium.


title: Existential therapy

text: The strictly Sartrean perspective of existential psychotherapy is generally unconcerned with the client's past, but instead, the emphasis is on the choices to be made in the present and future. The counselor and the client may reflect upon how the client has answered life's questions in the past, but attention ultimately shifts to searching for a new and increased awareness in the present and enabling a new freedom and responsibility to act. The patient can then accept that they are not special and that their existence is simply coincidental, or without destiny or fate. By accepting this, they can overcome their anxieties and instead view life as moments in which they are fundamentally free.


title: Existential therapy

text: Existential thinkers seek to avoid restrictive models that categorize or label people. Instead, they look for the universals that can be observed cross-culturally. There is no existential personality theory which divides humanity into types or reduces people to part components. Instead, there is a description of the different levels of experience and existence with which people are inevitably confronted. The way in which a person is in the world at a particular stage can be charted on this general map of human existence (Binswanger, 1963; Yalom, 1980; van Deurzen, 1984).


title: Existential therapy

text: In line with the view taken by van Deurzen, one can distinguish four basic dimensions of human existence: the physical, the social, the psychological, and the spiritual.


title: Existential therapy

text: On each of these dimensions, people encounter the world and shape their attitude out of their particular take on their experience. Their orientation towards the world defines their reality. The four dimensions are interwoven and provide a complex four-dimensional force field for their existence. Individuals are stretched between a positive pole of what they aspire to on each dimension and a negative pole of what they fear. Binswanger proposed the first three of these dimensions from Heidegger's description of "Umwelt" and "Mitwelt" and his further notion of "Eigenwelt". The fourth dimension was added by van Deurzen from Heidegger's description of a spiritual world ("Überwelt") in Heidegger's later work.


title: Existential therapy

text: On the physical dimension ("Umwelt"), individuals relate to their environment and the givens of the natural world around them. This includes their attitude to the body they have, to the concrete surroundings they find themselves in, to the climate and the weather, to objects and material possessions, to the bodies of other people, their own bodily needs, to health and illness and their mortality. The struggle on this dimension is, in general terms, between the search for domination over the elements and natural law (as in technology, or in sports) and the need to accept the limitations of natural boundaries (as in ecology or old age). While people generally aim for security on this dimension (through health and wealth), much of life brings a gradual disillusionment and realization that such security can only be temporary. Recognizing limitations can deliver a significant release of tension.


title: Existential therapy

text: On the social dimension ("Mitwelt"), individuals relate to others as they interact with the public world around them. This dimension includes their response to the culture they live in, as well as to the class and race they belong to (and also those they do not belong to). Attitudes here range from love to hate and from cooperation to competition. The dynamic contradictions can be understood concerning acceptance versus rejection or belonging versus isolation. Some people prefer to withdraw from the world of others as much as possible. Others blindly chase public acceptance by going along with the rules and fashions of the moment. Otherwise, they try to rise above these by becoming trendsetters themselves. By acquiring fame or other forms of power, individuals can attain dominance over others temporarily. Sooner or later, however, everyone is confronted with both failure and aloneness.


title: Existential therapy

text: On the psychological dimension ("Eigenwelt"), individuals relate to themselves and in this way create a personal world. This dimension includes views about their character, their past experience and their future possibilities. Contradictions here are often experienced regarding personal strengths and weaknesses. People search for a sense of identity, a feeling of being substantial and having a self.


title: Existential therapy

text: But inevitably many events will confront them with evidence to the contrary and plunge them into a state of confusion or disintegration. Activity and passivity are an important polarity here. Self-affirmation and resolution go with the former and surrender and yielding with the latter. Facing the final dissolution of self that comes with personal loss and the facing of death might bring anxiety and confusion to many who have not yet given up their sense of self-importance.


title: Existential therapy

text: On the spiritual dimension ("Überwelt") (van Deurzen, 1984), individuals relate to the unknown and thus create a sense of an ideal world, an ideology, and a philosophical outlook. It is there that they find meaning by putting all the pieces of the puzzle together for themselves. For some people, this is done by adhering to a religion or other prescriptive worldview; for others, it is about discovering or attributing meaning in a more secular or personal way. The contradictions that must be faced on this dimension are often related to the tension between purpose and absurdity, hope and despair. People create their values in search of something that matters enough to live or die for, something that may even have ultimate and universal validity. Usually, the aim is the conquest of a soul or something that will substantially surpass mortality (as in having contributed something valuable to humankind). Facing the void and the possibility of nothingness are the indispensable counterparts of this quest for the eternal.


title: Existential therapy

text: There has not been a tremendous amount of research on existential therapy. Much of the research focuses on people receiving therapy who also have medical concerns such as cancer. Despite this, some studies have indicated positive efficacy for existential therapies with certain populations. Qualitative research has shown there is a positive learning outcome of Existential Therapy. Overall, however, more research is needed before definitive scientific claims can be made.


title: Existential therapy

text: An overview of research in Existential and Phenomenological Therapy was provided in the magnum opus on the approach, The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, edited by Emmy van Deurzen with Erik Craig, Alfried Laengle, Kirk Schneider, Digby Tantam and Simon du Plock. Joel Vos wrote this chapter in which he remarked that Dilthey, and many other phenomenological philosophers and therapists, have tried to turn the scientific paradigm more towards an inside understanding the subjectively lived experiences from clients, therapists and what happens in their relationship and in the therapeutic processes. Phenomenological research is now standard in most doctoral trainings in counselling psychology, providing a rich array of existential findings and demonstrating the importance of qualitative understanding alongside quantitative understanding of human existence. Clinical trials on meaning based therapies have shown them to be helpful in enabling clients to live meaningful lives despite their setbacks, limitations and difficulties.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Michael the Brave ( or ; 1558 – 9 August 1601), born as Mihai Pătrașcu, was the Prince of Wallachia (as Michael II, 1593 – 1601), Prince of Moldavia (1600) and "de facto" ruler of Transylvania (1599 – 1600). He is considered one of Romania's greatest national heroes. Since the 19th century, Michael the Brave has been regarded by Romanian nationalists as a symbol of Romanian unity, as his reign marked the first time all principalities inhabited by Romanians were under the same ruler.


title: Michael the Brave

text: His rule over Wallachia began in the autumn of 1593. Two years later, war with the Ottomans began, a conflict in which the Prince fought the Battle of Călugăreni, resulting in a victory against an army nearly three times the size of the army of Michael the Brave, considered one of the most important battles of his reign. Although the Wallachians emerged victorious from the battle, Michael was forced to retreat with his troops and wait for aid from his allies, Prince Sigismund Báthory of Transylvania and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The war continued until a peace finally emerged in January 1597, but this lasted for only a year and a half. Peace was again reached in late 1599, when Michael was unable to continue the war due to lack of support from his allies. In 1599, Michael won the Battle of Șelimbăr against Andrew Báthory and soon entered Alba Iulia, becoming the imperial governor (i.e. "de facto" ruler) of Transylvania, under Habsburg suzerainty. A few months later, Michael's troops invaded Moldavia and reached its capital, Iași. The Moldavian leader Ieremia Movilă fled to Poland and Michael was declared Prince of Moldavia. During this period, Michael the Brave changed his seal to represent his personal union of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania.


title: Michael the Brave

text: The interests of the three neighbouring great powers — the Habsburg monarchy, the Ottoman Empire, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth — were damaged by Michael the Brave's achievements. Although he acknowledged the suzerainty of Rudolf II, Michael the Brave continued to negotiate his official position in Transylvania, pleading for direct rule instead of being imperial governor. Michael kept the control of all three provinces for less than a year before the Hungarian nobility of Transylvania rose against him in a series of revolts with the support of the Austrian army commanded by the Italian General Giorgio Basta, defeating Michael the Brave at the Battle of Mirăslău, forcing the prince to leave Transylvania and retreat to Wallachia with his remaining troops, while the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth entered Moldavia and defeated the forces loyal to Michael the Brave, restoring Ieremia Movilă on the throne. The Polish army led by Jan Zamoyski also advanced in eastern Wallachia and established Simion Movilă as ruler. Forces loyal to Michael remained only in Oltenia.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Michael the Brave then left for Prague, seekeing audience with Emperor Rudolf II; however, the emperor refused to allow him audience. But General Giorgio Basta's governance of Transylvania faced significant opposition from the Hungarian nobility, leading to the reinstallation of Sigismund Báthory, who turned his back on Emperor Rudolf II and declared suzerainty to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after receiving substantial military support. This led to Emperor Rudolf II accepting Michael the Brave's audience and providing him with 100,000 florins to rebuild his army. Meanwhile, forces loyal to Michael in Wallachia led by his son, Nicolae Pătrașcu, drove Simion Movilă out of Moldavia and prepared to reenter Transylvania. Michael the Brave, allied with Giorgio Basta, defeated the Hungarian army at the Battle of Guruslău. A few days later Basta, who sought to control Transylvania himself, executed the assassination of Michael by order of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Michael was born under the family name of "Pătrașcu". In 1601, during a stay in Prague, he was portrayed by the painter Aegidius Sadeler, who mentioned on the portrait the words "aetatis XLIII" ("in the 43rd year of life"), which indicates 1558 as the year of Michael's birth. Very little is known about his childhood and early years as an adult. He is argued by most historians to have been the illegitimate son of Wallachian Prince Pătrașcu cel Bun (Pătrașcu the Good), of the Drăculești branch of the House of Basarab, while others believe he merely invented his descent in order to justify his rule. His mother was , a member of the Kantakouzenoi, a noble family present in Wallachia and Moldavia, and allegedly descended from the Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Michael's political rise was quite spectacular, as he became the Ban of Mehedinți in 1588, "stolnic" at the court of Mihnea Turcitul by the end of 1588, and Ban of Craiova in 1593 – during the rule of Alexandru cel Rău. The latter had him swear before 12 boyars that he was not of princely descent. Still, in May 1593 conflict did break out between Alexandru and Michael, who was forced to flee to Transylvania. He was accompanied by his half-brother Radu Florescu, Radu Buzescu and several other supporters. After spending two weeks at the court of Sigismund Báthory, he left for Constantinople, where with help from his cousin Andronikos Kantakouzenos (the eldest son of Michael "Şeytanoğlu" Kantakouzenos) and Patriarch Jeremiah II he negotiated Ottoman support for his accession to the Wallachian throne. He was supported by the English ambassador in the Ottoman capital, Edward Barton, and aided by a loan of 200,000 florins. Michael was invested Prince by Sultan Murad III in September 1593 and started his effective rule on 11 October.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Not long after Michael became Prince of Wallachia, he turned against the Ottoman Empire. The next year he joined the Christian alliance of European powers formed by Pope Clement VIII against the Turks, and signed treaties with his neighbours: Sigismund Báthory of Transylvania, Aaron the Tyrant of Moldavia and the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (see Holy League of Pope Clement VIII). He started a campaign against the Turks in the autumn of 1594, conquering several citadels near the Danube, including Giurgiu, Brăila, Hârșova, and Silistra, while his Moldavian allies defeated the Turks in Iași and other parts of Moldavia. Mihai continued his attacks deep within the Ottoman Empire, taking the forts of Nicopolis, Ribnic, and Chilia and even reaching as far as Adrianople.


title: Michael the Brave

text: In 1595, Sigismund Báthory staged an elaborate plot and had Aaron the Tyrant, voivode of Moldavia, removed from power. István Jósika (Báthory's chancellor and an ethnic Romanian) masterminded the operation. Ștefan Răzvan arrested Aron on charges of treason on the night of 24 April (5 May) and sent him to the Transylvanian capital at Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) with his family and treasure. Aron would die poisoned by the end of May in the castle of Vinc. Sigismund was forced to justify his actions before the European powers, since Aron had played an active role in the anti-Ottoman coalition. Later on, in the same city of Alba Iulia, Wallachian boyars signed a treaty with Sigismund on Michael's behalf. From the point of view of Wallachian internal politics, the Treaty of Alba Iulia officialized what could be called a "boyar regime", reinforcing the already important political power of the noble elite. According to the treaty, a council of 12 great boyars was to take part alongside the voivode in the executive rule of the country.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Boyars could no longer be executed without the knowledge and approval of the Transylvanian Prince and, if convicted for treason, their fortunes could no longer be confiscated. Apparently Michael was displeased with the final form of the treaty negotiated by his envoys, but was forced to comply. Prince Michael said in a conversation with the Polish envoy Lubieniecki: "... they did not proceed as stated in their instructions but as their own good required and obtained privileges for themselves." He would try to avoid the obligations imposed on him for the rest of his reign.


title: Michael the Brave

text: During his reign, Michael relied heavily on the loyalty and support of a group of Oltenian lords, the most important of whom were Buzescu Brothers (Romanian: "Frații Buzești") and his own relatives on his mother's side, the Cantacuzinos. He consequently protected their interests throughout his reign; for example, he passed a law binding serfs to lands owned by aristocrats. From the standpoint of religious jurisdiction, the Treaty of Alba Iulia had another important consequence: it placed all the Eastern Orthodox bishops in Transylvania under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Seat of Târgoviște.


title: Michael the Brave

text: During this period, the Ottoman army, based in Ruse, was preparing to cross the Danube and undertake a major attack. Michael was quickly forced to retreat and the Ottoman forces started to cross the Danube on 4 August 1595. As his army was outnumbered, Michael avoided carrying the battle in open field, and decided to give battle on a marshy field located near the village of Călugăreni on the Neajlov river. The Battle of Călugăreni started on 13 August and Michael defeated the Ottoman army led by Sinan Pasha. Despite the victory, he retreated to his winter camp in Stoienești because he had too few troops to mount a full-scale war against the remaining Ottoman forces. He subsequently joined forces with Sigismund Báthory's 40,000-man army (led by Stephen Bocskai) and counterattacked the Ottomans, freeing the towns of Târgoviște (8 October), Bucharest (12 October) and Brăila, temporarily removing Wallachia from Ottoman suzerainty.


title: Michael the Brave

text: The fight against the Ottomans continued in 1596 when Michael made several incursions south of the Danube at Vidin, Pleven, Nicopolis, and Babadag, where he was assisted by the local Bulgarians during the First Tarnovo Uprising.


title: Michael the Brave

text: During late 1596, Michael was faced with an unexpected attack from the Tatars, who had destroyed the towns of Bucharest and Buzău. By the time Michael gathered his army to counterattack, the Tatars had speedily retreated and so no battle was fought. Michael was determined to continue the war against the Ottomans, but he was prevented because he lacked support from Sigismund Báthory and Rudolf II. On 7 January 1597 Hasan Pasha declared the independence of Wallachia under Michael's rule, but Michael knew that this was only an attempt to divert him from preparing for another future attack. Michael again requested Rudolf II's support and Rudolf finally agreed to send financial assistance to the Wallachian ruler. On 9 June 1598 a formal treaty was reached between Michael and Rudolf II. According to the treaty, the Austrian ruler would give Wallachia sufficient money to maintain a 5,000-man army, as well as armaments and supplies. Shortly after the treaty was signed, the war with the Ottomans resumed and Michael besieged Nicopolis on 10 September 1598 and took control of Vidin. The war with the Ottomans continued until 26 June 1599, when Michael, lacking the resources and support to continue prosecuting the war, signed a peace treaty.


title: Michael the Brave

text: In April 1598, Sigismund resigned as Prince of Transylvania in favor of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (who was also the King of Hungary); reversed his decision in October 1598; and then resigned again in favor of Cardinal Andrew Báthory, his cousin. Báthory had strong ties to the Polish chancellor and hetman Jan Zamoyski and placed Transylvania under the influence of the King of Poland, Sigismund III Vasa. He was also a trusted ally of the new Moldavian Prince Ieremia Movilă, one of Michael's greatest enemies. Movilă had deposed Ștefan Răzvan with the help of Polish hetman Jan Zamoyski in August 1595.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Having to face this new threat, Michael asked Emperor Rudolf to become the sovereign of Wallachia. On 25 September (5 October) Báthory issued an ultimatum demanding that Michael abandon his throne. Michael decided to attack Andrew Cardinal Báthory immediately to prevent invasion. He would later describe the events: He left Târgoviște on 2 October, and 9 by October he had reached Prejmer in southern Transylvania, where he met envoys from the city of Brașov. Sparing the city, he moved on to Cârța where he joined forces with the Székelys.


title: Michael the Brave

text: On 18 October Michael won a decisive victory against the army of prince-cardinal Andrew Báthory at the Battle of Șelimbăr, giving him control of Transylvania. As he retreated from the battle, Andrew Báthory was killed by anti-Báthory Székely on 3 November near Sândominic and Michael gave him a princely burial in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Alba Iulia. With his enemy dead, Michael entered the Transylvanian capital at Alba Iulia and received the keys to the fortress from Bishop Demeter Naprágyi, later depicted as a seminal event in Romanian historiography. Historian István Szamosközy, keeper of the Archives at the time, recorded the event in great detail. He also wrote that two days before the Diet met on 10 October, Transylvanian nobles "elected Michael the voivode as Prince of Transylvania". As the Diet was assembled, Michael demanded that the estates swear loyalty to Emperor Rudolf, then to himself and thirdly to his son. Even if he was recognized by the Transylvanian diet as only imperial governor subject to the Holy Roman Emperor, he was nonetheless ruler of Transylvania.


title: Michael the Brave

text: In Transylvania Michael used the following signature on official documents: "Michael Valachiae Transalpinae Woivoda, Sacrae Caesareae Regiae Majestatis Consiliarius per Transylvaniam Locumtenens, cis transylvaniam partium eius super exercitu Generalis Capitaneus"." ("Michael, voivode of Wallachia, the councillor of His Majesty the Emperor and the King, his deputy in Transylvania and General Captain of his troops from Transylvania.")


title: Michael the Brave

text: When Michael entered Transylvania, he did not immediately free or grant rights to the Romanian inhabitants, who were primarily peasants but, nevertheless, constituted a significant proportion of the population. Michael demonstrated his support by upholding the Union of the Three Nations, which recognized only the traditional rights and privileges of the Hungarians, Székelys and Saxons, but he didn't recognize the rights of the Romanians. Indeed, while he brought some of his Wallachian aides to Transylvania, he also invited some Székelys and other Transylvanian Hungarians to assist in the administration of Wallachia, where he wished to transplant Transylvania's far more advanced feudal system.


title: Michael the Brave

text: Michael began negotiating with the Emperor over his official position in Transylvania. The latter wanted the principality under direct Imperial rule with Michael acting as governor. The Wallachian voivode, on the other hand, wanted the title of Prince of Transylvania for himself and equally claimed the Partium region. Michael was, nevertheless, willing to acknowledge Habsburg overlordship.


title: Michael the Brave

text: The Moldavian Prince Ieremia Movilă had been an old enemy of Michael, having incited Andrew Báthory to send Michael the ultimatum demanding his abdication. His brother, Simion Movilă, claimed the Wallachian throne for himself and had used the title of Voivode since 1595. Aware of the threat the Movilăs represented, Michael had created the "Banate" of Buzău and Brăila in July 1598 and the new "ban" was charged of keeping an alert eye on Moldavian, Tatar, and Cossack moves, although Michael had been planning a Moldavian campaign for several years.