Byzantine Malta
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Byzantine Malta
Malta was ruled by the Byzantine Empire, from the time of the Byzantine conquest of Sicily in 535-6 to 869-870, when the islands were occupied by Arabs. Evidence for the three centuries of Byzantine rule in Malta is very limited, and at times ambiguous. Historians theorise that Byzantine Malta was exposed to the same phenomena affecting the Central Mediterranean, namely a considerable influx of Greek settlers and Hellenic culture, administrative changes brought about by the reorganisation of Sicily along the lines of a Byzantine theme, and significant naval activity in the Mediterranean following the rise of Islam. Byzantine sources are scant on the Maltese islands, although a handful of records group them together as the nominal Gaudomelete, ( grc, Γαυδομελέτη), a term that first appears in the pseudoepigraphical Acts of Peter and Paul. The islands were a place of relegation and exile. With Muslim expansion in North Africa, Malta shifted from a military base a ...
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Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese and English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an area of , Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country in area and fourth most densely populated sovereign cou ...
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Greek Language
Greek ( el, label=Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting impo ...
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Sigillography
Sigillography, also known by its Greek-derived name, sphragistics, is the scholarly discipline that studies the wax, lead, clay, and other seals used to authenticate archival documents. It investigates not only aspects of the artistic design and production of seals (both matrices and impressions), but also considers the legal, administrative and social contexts in which they were used. It has links to diplomatics, heraldry, social history, and the history of art, and is regarded as one of the auxiliary sciences of history. A student of seals is known as a ''sigillographer''. Etymology The word ''sigillography'' derives from the Latin word , meaning 'seal', and the Greek suffix , meaning 'description'. It was effectively coined in Italian (as ) by Anton Stefano Cartari in 1682. It entered English at a much later date: the earliest instances recorded by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' date from 1879 (''sigillography'') and 1882 (''sigillographer''). The alternative term, ''sphrag ...
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Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands ( es, Islas Baleares ; or ca, Illes Balears ) are an archipelago in the Balearic Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago is an autonomous community and a province of Spain; its capital is Palma. The 2007 Statute of Autonomy designates the Balearic Islands as one of the ''nationalities'' of Spain. The official languages of the Balearic Islands are Catalan and Spanish. Its four largest islands are Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. Many of its minor islands and islets are close to the larger islands, including Cabrera, Dragonera, and S'Espalmador. The islands have a Mediterranean climate, and the four major islands are all popular tourist destinations. Ibiza, in particular, is known as an international party destination, attracting many of the world's most popular DJs to its nightclubs. The islands' culture and cuisine are similar to those of the rest of Spain but have their own distinctive features. Etymology ...
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Archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archipelago, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Lakshadweep Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Philippine Archipelago, the Maldives, the Balearic Islands, The Bahamas, the Aegean Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, the Canary Islands, Malta, the Azores, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the British Isles, the islands of the Archipelago Sea, and Shetland. They are sometimes defined by political boundaries. For example, the Gulf archipelago off the northeastern Pacific coast forms part of a larger archipelago that geographically includes Washington state's San Juan Islands; while the Gulf archipelago and San Juan Islands are geographically related, they are not technically included in the same archipelago due to manmad ...
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Roman Catholic Archdiocese Of Malta
The Archdiocese of Malta (Malti: ''Arċidjoċesi ta' Malta'') is a metropolitan archdiocese of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in Malta. History Tradition claims that St. Paul the Apostle established the diocese of Malta in the year 60 A.D when he ordained the Roman governor, Saint Publius, as the first bishop of Malta. The Diocese of Malta was made a suffragan diocese to the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Palermohttp://maltahistory.eu5.net/mh/19586.html by a Papal Bull of Pope Adrian IV on 10 July 1156 and confirmed by Pope Alexander III on 26 April 1160. The former Diocese of Malta, which is one of the oldest dioceses in the world, was elevated to archdiocese on January 1, 1944. The Diocese of Malta included the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino. On September 22, 1864, the diocese lost the territories of Gozo and Comino when Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Gozo which became a suffragan diocese to Malta. Cathedrals There are two cathedrals in the diocese: Th ...
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Mljet
Mljet (; la, Melita, it, Meleda) is the southernmost and easternmost of the larger Adriatic islands of the Dalmatia region of Croatia. The National Park includes the western part of the island, Veliko jezero, Malo jezero, Soline Bay and a sea belt 500 m wide from the most prominent cape of Mljet covering an area of 54 km2. The central parts of the park are Veliko jezero with the Isle of St. Mary, Malo jezero and the villages of Goveđari, Polače and Pomena.Naklad Naprijet, ''The Croatian Adriatic Tourist Guide'', pg. 338, Zagreb (1999), Population According to the 2011 census, Mljet has population of 1,088. Ethnic Croats make up 97.33% of the population. History Mljet was discovered by ancient Greco-Roman geographers, who wrote the first records and descriptions. The island was first described by Scylax of Caryanda in the 6th century BC; others prefer the text, Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax. In both texts, it is named Melite and supported by Apollonius of Rhodes.Bryant, Jacob ...
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Dalmatian Islands
There are more than 1200 islands in the Adriatic Sea, 69 of which are inhabited. A recent study by the Institute of Oceanography in Split (2000) shows that there are 1246 islands: 79 large islands, 525 islets, and 642 ridges and rocks. The Italian ''Scuola di Geografia'' of Genoa states that the number is greater if one includes the small islands in the Italian lagoons of Venice and Grado, and the so-called "islands of the Po delta". Croatia Adriatic islands in Croatia include: Northern seacoast: * the Brijuni islands * Krk (one of two islands with the largest area: 405.78 km²) * Cres (one of two islands with the largest area: 405.78 km²) * Lošinj * Ilovik * Unije * Susak * Goli Otok * Rab * Pag (the island with the longest coastline: 302.47 km) * Olib * Silba * Ist * Molat Northern Dalmatia: * Vir * Dugi Otok * Ugljan * Iž * Pašman * the Kornati archipelago * Murter * Prvić * Zlarin * Krapanj Central and southern Dalmatia: * Čiovo * Drvenik * Šol ...
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Theodoric The Great
Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy between 493 and 526, regent of the Visigoths (511–526), and a patrician of the Eastern Roman Empire. As ruler of the combined Gothic realms, Theodoric controlled an empire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Adriatic Sea. Though Theodoric himself only used the title 'king' (''rex''), some scholars characterize him as a Western Roman Emperor in all but name, since he ruled large parts of the former Western Roman Empire, had received the former Western imperial regalia from Constantinople in 497, and was referred to by the title ''augustus'' by some of his subjects. As a young child of an Ostrogothic nobleman, Theodoric was taken as a hostage to Constantinople, where he spent his formative years and received an East Roman education (' ...
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Ostrogothic Kingdom
The Ostrogothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of Italy (), existed under the control of the Germanic peoples, Germanic Ostrogoths in Italian peninsula, Italy and neighbouring areas from 493 to 553. In Italy, the Ostrogoths led by Theodoric the Great killed and replaced Odoacer, a Germanic soldier, erstwhile-leader of the ''foederati'' in Northern Italy, and the ''de facto'' Kingdom of Odoacer, ruler of Italy, who had deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. Under Theodoric, its first king, the Ostrogothic kingdom reached its zenith, stretching from modern southern France in the west to the modern western Serbia in the southeast. Most of the social institutions of the late Western Roman Empire were preserved during his rule. Theodoric called himself ''Gothorum Romanorumque rex'' ("King of the Goths and Romans"), demonstrating his desire to be a leader for both peoples. Starting in 535, the Byzantine Empire invaded Italy under Justinian I. ...
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Odoacer
Odoacer ( ; – 15 March 493 AD), also spelled Odovacer or Odovacar, was a soldier and statesman of barbarian background, who deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus and became Rex/Dux (476–493). Odoacer's overthrow of Romulus Augustulus is traditionally seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as well as Ancient Rome. Though the real power in Italy was in his hands, he represented himself as the client of the emperor in Constantinople, Zeno. Odoacer often used the Roman honorific patrician, granted by Zeno, but was referred to as a king ( la, rex) or duke ( la, dux) in many documents, so is not clear which was his actual charge. He himself used the title of king in the only surviving official document that emanated from his chancery, and it was also used by the consul Basilius. Odoacer introduced few important changes into the administrative system of Italy. He had the support of the Roman Senate and was able to distribute land to his followers without muc ...
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