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Bruges, Belgium
Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the country by population. The area of the whole city amounts to more than 13,840 hectares (138.4 km2; 53.44 sq miles), including 1,075 hectares off the coast, at Zeebrugge (from , meaning 'Bruges by the Sea'). The historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is oval in shape and about 430 hectares in size. The city's total population is 117,073 (1 January 2008),Statistics Belgium; ''Population de droit par commune au 1 janvier 2008'' (excel-file)
Population of all municipalities in Belgium, as of 1 ...
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Belfry Of Bruges
The Belfry of Bruges ( nl, Belfort van Brugge) is a medieval bell tower in the centre of Bruges, Belgium. One of the city's most prominent symbols, the belfry formerly housed a treasury and the municipal archives, and served as an observation post for spotting fires and other dangers. Building history The belfry was added to the market square around 1240, when Bruges was an important centre of the Flemish cloth industry. After a devastating fire in 1280, the tower was largely rebuilt. The city archives, however, were forever lost to the flames. The octagonal upper stage of the belfry was added between 1483 and 1487, and capped with a wooden spire bearing an image of Saint Michael, banner in hand and dragon underfoot. The spire did not last long: a lightning strike in 1493 reduced it to ashes, and destroyed the bells as well. A wooden spire crowned the summit again for some two-and-a-half centuries, before it, too, fell victim to flames in 1741. The spire was never replaced agai ...
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Venice Of The North
The following is an incomplete list of settlements nicknamed Venice of the North. The term ''Venice of the North'' refers to various cities in Northern Europe that contain canals, comparing them to Venice, Italy, which is renowned for its canals (see Grand Canal). Some of these nicknames (e.g. in the case of Amsterdam) date back centuries, while others like Birmingham are very recently given and invented by the cities' own. List See also * List of places called Venice of the East * Little Paris * Little Venice * Little Berlin * Monasterevin * Paris of the East * Paris of the West * Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ..., country whose name means "Little Venice" References {{Reflist Lists of cities by nickname Venice ...
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Pagus
In ancient Rome, the Latin word (plural ) was an administrative term designating a rural subdivision of a tribal territory, which included individual farms, villages (), and strongholds () serving as refuges, as well as an early medieval geographical term. From the reign of Diocletian (284–305 AD) onwards, the referred to the smallest administrative unit of a province. These geographical units were used to describe territories in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, without any political or administrative meaning. Etymology is a native Latin word from a root , a lengthened grade of Indo-European , a verbal root, "fasten" (''pango''); it may be translated in the word as "boundary staked out on the ground". In semantics, used in is a stative verb with an unmarked lexical aspect of state resulting from completed action: "it is having been staked out", converted into a noun by , a type recognizable in English adjectives such as surveyed, defined, noted, etc. English doe ...
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Gallo-Roman Culture
Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, language, morals and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context. The well-studied meld of cultures in Gaul gives historians a model against which to compare and contrast parallel developments of Romanization in other, less-studied Roman provinces. ''Interpretatio romana'' offered Roman names for Gaulish deities such as the smith-god Gobannus, but of Celtic deities only the horse-patroness Epona penetrated Romanized cultures beyond the confines of Gaul. The barbarian invasions beginning in the late third century forced upon Gallo-Roman culture fundamental changes in politics, in the economic underpinning, in military organization. The Gothic settlement of 418 offered a double loyalty, as Western Roman authority disintegrated at Rome. The plight of the highly Romanized governing class is examined by ...
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Franks
The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, Weapons and Ornaments: Germanic Material Culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400-750. BRILL, 2001, p.42. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples. Beginning with Charlemagne in 800, Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire. Although the Frankish name does not appear until the 3rd century, at least some of the original Frankish tribes had long been known to the Romans under their own names, both as allies providing soldiers, and as e ...
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Menapii
The Menapii were a Belgic tribe dwelling near the North Sea, around present-day Cassel, during the Iron Age and the Roman period. Name Attestations They are mentioned as ''Menapii'' by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC) and Orosius (early 5th c. AD), ''Menápioi'' (Μενάπιοι; var. Μονάπιοι, Μενάσπιοι) by Strabo (early 1st c. AD) and Ptolemy (2nd c. AD), as ''Menapi'' by Pliny (1st c. AD) and the '' Notitia Dignitatum'' (5th c. AD), and under the accusative forms ''Menapios'' by Tacitus (early 2nd c. AD) and ''Menapíous'' (Μεναπίους) by Cassius Dio (3rd c. AD)., s.v. ''Menapii'' and ''Castellum Menapiorum''. Etymology The Gaulish ethnonym ''Menapii'' has been phonetically compared with '' Manapii'', the name of a tribe from southeastern Ireland mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. These tribal names may ultimately derive from a Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as *''Menakwī'' or *''Manakwī'', whose meaning remains uncertain, perhaps the 'mou ...
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Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus and Pompey formed the First Triumvirate, an informal political alliance that dominated Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to amass power as were opposed by the within the Roman Senate, among them Cato the Younger with the frequent support of Cicero. Caesar rose to become one of the most powerful politicians in the Roman Republic through a string of military victories in the Gallic Wars, completed by 51 BC, which greatly extended Roman territory. During this time he both invaded Britain and built a b ...
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Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branches during the fifth century BC to fifth century AD: West Germanic, East Germanic and North Germanic, which however remained in contact over a considerable time, especially the Ingvaeonic languages (including English), which arose from West Germanic dialects and remained in continued contact with North Germanic. A defining feature of Proto-Germanic is the completion of the process described by Grimm's law, a set of sound changes that occurred between its status as a dialect of Proto-Indo-European and its gradual divergence into a separate language. As it is probable that the development of this sound shift spanned a considerable time (several centuries), Proto-Germanic cannot adequately be reconstructed as a simple node in a tree model but ...
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Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c. 1550, there was no overarching standard language, but all dialects were mutually intelligible. During that period, a rich Medieval Dutch literature developed, which had not yet existed during Old Dutch. The various literary works of the time are often very readable for speakers of Modern Dutch since Dutch is a rather conservative language. Phonology Differences with Old Dutch Several phonological changes occurred leading up to the Middle Dutch period. * Earlier Old Dutch , , merge into already in Old Dutch. * Voiceless fricatives become voiced syllable-initially: > , > (merging with from Proto-Germanic ), > . (10th or 11th century) * > * > or . The outcome is dialect-specific, with found in more western dialects and further east. This results in later ...
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Old Dutch
In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 5th to the 12th century. Page 27: "''...Aan het einde van de negende eeuw kan er zeker van Nederlands gesproken worden; hoe long daarvoor dat ook het geval was, kan niet met zekerheid worden uitgemaakt.''" t can be said with certainty that Dutch was being spoken at the end of the 9th century; how long that might have been the case before that cannot be determined with certainty./ref> Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French. Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands, northern Belgium, p ...
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Maurits Gysseling
Maurits Gysseling (Oudenburg, 7 September 1919 – Ghent, 24 November 1997) was an influential Belgian researcher into historical linguistics and paleography. He was especially well known for his editions and studies of old texts relevant to the history of the Dutch language, and also for his very detailed analyses of historical place-names and their probable origins. Based upon the results of his study of place-names, Gysseling became one of the proponents of the " Nordwestblok" idea that before the 2nd century BCE the language of Gallia Belgica was an Indo-European language that was neither Germanic nor Celtic. According to his conclusions, the northern Belgae then became Germanic-speaking, and never had been fully Celtic-speaking, in the centuries before Rome conquered them. Major published works include: * ''Diplomata Belgica ante annum millesimum centesimum scripta'' (2 volumes) (1950) * ''Toponymisch woordenboek van België, Nederland, Luxemburg, Noord-Frankrijk en West-Du ...
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were independently updated. In one case, the ''Chronicle'' was still being actively updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Almost all of the material in the ''Chronicle'' is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up t ...
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