text:
Theodoret

Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus (Θεοδώρητος Κύρρου; c. AD 393 – c.  458/466) was an influential theologian of the School of Antioch, biblical commentator, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus (423–457). He played a pivotal role in several 5th-century Byzantine Church controversies that led to various ecumenical acts and schisms. He wrote against Cyril of Alexandria's 12 Anathemas which were sent to Nestorius and did not personally condemn Nestorius until the Council of Chalcedon. His writings against Cyril were included in the Three Chapters Controversy and were condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople. Some Chalcedonian and East Syriac Christians regard him as blessed.

Biography
According to Tillemont, he was born at Antioch in 393, and died either at Cyrrhus ("about a two-days' journey east of Antioch" or eighty Roman miles), or at the monastery near Apamea (fifty-four miles south-east of Antioch) about 457.

The following facts about his life are gleaned mainly from his Epistles and his Religious History (Philotheos historia). He was the child of a prosperous Antiochene couple who had been childless for many years. Encouraged by the fact that his mother had been cured of a serious eye complaint and converted to a sober life by Peter the Galatian, an ascetic living in an unoccupied in the locality, Theodoret's parents sought further help from the local holy men, since she had been childless for twelve years. For years their hopes were fed but not fulfilled. Eventually, Theodoret's birth was promised by a hermit named Macedonius the Barley-Eater on the condition of his dedication to God, whence the name Theodoret ("gift of God").

Theodoret received an extensive religious and secular education. The actual evidence given to us by Theodoret suggests that his education was exclusively religious. He paid weekly visits to Peter the Galatian, was instructed by Macedonius and other ascetics, and at an early age became a lector among the clergy of Antioch. Though he speaks of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia as his teachers, this is improbable - though it was certainly their theological tradition in which he was brought up. He clearly, also, though, received an extensive classical education, unsurprisingly for the child of prosperous parents in a city which had long been a centre of secular learning and culture. His correspondents included the sophists Aerius and Isokasius. He understood Syriac as well as Greek, but was not acquainted with either Hebrew or Latin. In his letters he quotes from Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Thucydides. When he was twenty-three years old and both parents were dead, he divided his fortune among the poor (Epist. cxiii; P.G., LXXXIII, 1316) and became a monk in the monastery of Nicerte not far from Apamea. There he lived for about seven years.

In 423 he left as he had been appointed Bishop of Cyrrhus, over a diocese about forty miles square and embracing 800 parishes, but with an insignificant town as its see city. Theodoret, supported only by the appeals of the intimate hermits, himself in personal danger, zealously guarded purity of the doctrine. He converted more than 1,000 Marcionites in his diocese, besides many Arians and Macedonians; more than 200 copies of Tatian's Diatessaron he retired from the churches; and he erected churches and supplied them with relics.

His philanthropic and economic interests were extensive and varied: he endeavoured to secure relief for the people oppressed with taxation; he divided his inheritance among the poor; from his episcopal revenues he erected baths, bridges, halls, and aqueducts; he summoned rhetoricians and physicians, and reminded the officials of their duties. To the persecuted Christians of Persian Armenia he sent letters of encouragement, and to the Carthaginian Celestiacus, who had fled the rule of the Vandals, he gave refuge.

The Nestorian controversy
Theodoret stands out prominently in the Christological controversies aroused by Cyril of Alexandria. Theodoret shared in the petition of John I of Antioch to Nestorius to approve of the term theotokos ("mother of God"), and upon the request of John wrote against Cyril's anathemas.

He may have prepared the Antiochian symbol which was to secure the emperor's true understanding of the Nicene Creed, and he was a member and spokesman of the deputation of eight from Antioch called by the emperor to Chalcedon. To the condemnation of Nestorius he could not assent. John, reconciled to Cyril by the emperor's order, sought to bring Theodoret to submission by entrenching upon his eparchy.

Theodoret was determined to preserve the peace of the Church by seeking the adoption of a formula avoiding the unconditional condemnation of Nestorius, and toward the close of 434 strove earnestly for the reconciliation between the Eastern churches. But Cyril refused to compromise and when he opened his attack (437) upon Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore, John sided with them and Theodoret assumed the defence of the Antiochian party (c. 439). Domnus II, the successor of John, took him as his counsellor. After the death of Cyril, adherents of the Antiochian theology were appointed to bishoprics. Irenaeus the friend of Nestorius, with the cooperation of Theodoret, became bishop of Tyre, in spite of the protests of Dioscorus, Cyril's successor, who now turned specially against Theodoret; and secured the order from the court confining Theodoret to Cyrrhus.

Theodoret now composed the Eranistes (see below). In vain were his efforts at court at self-justification against the charges of Dioscurus, as well as the countercharge of Domnus against Eutyches of Apollinarism. The court excluded Theodoret from the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 because of his antagonism to Cyril. Here, because of his Epistle 151 against Cyril and his defence of Diodorus and Theodore, he was condemned without a hearing and excommunicated and his writings were directed to be burned. Even Domnus gave his assent.

Theodoret was compelled to leave Cyrrhus and retire to his monastery at Apamea. He made an appeal to Leo the Great, but not until after the death of Theodosius II in 450 was his appeal for a revocation of the judgments against him granted by imperial edict. He was ordered to participate in the Council of Chalcedon, which created violent opposition. He was first to take part only as accuser, yet among the bishops. Then he was constrained (October 26, 451) by the friends of Dioscurus to pronounce the anathema over Nestorius. His conduct shows (though hindered from a statement to that effect) that he performed this with his previous reservation; namely, without application beyond the teaching of two sons in Christ and the denial of the theotokos. Upon this he was declared orthodox and rehabilitated.

The only thing known concerning him following the Council of Chalcedon is the letter of Leo charging him to guard the Chalcedonian victory (PG, lxxxiii. 1319 sqq.). With Diodorus and Theodore he was no less hated by the Miaphysites than Nestorius himself, and held by them and their friends as a heretic. After Chalcedon, he lived in Cyrrhus until his death, which may have been in 460.

The Three-Chapter Controversy led to the condemnation of his writings against Cyril in the Second Council of Constantinople (553).

Exegetical
The most significant works of Theodoret are those of exegesis.

A chronology of the composition of these works can be developed by studying references in the latter works to the earlier works. The commentary on the Song of Songs, written while he was a young bishop, though not before 430, precedes Psalms; the commentaries on the prophets were begun with Daniel, followed by Ezekiel, and then the Minor Prophets. Next that on the Psalms was completed before 436; and those on Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews), before 448. Theodoret's last exegetical works were the interpretations of difficult passages in the Octateuch and Quaestiones dealing with the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, written about 452 to 453.

Excepting the commentary on Isaiah (fragments preserved in the catenae) and on Galatians ii.6-13, the exegetical writings of Theodoret are extant. Exegetical material on the Gospels under his name in the catenae may have come from his other works, and foreign interpolations occur in his comments on the Octateuch.

His representation of orthodox doctrine consists of a collocation of Scripture passages.

The biblical authors are, for Theodoret, merely the mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit, though they do not lose their individual peculiarities. By the unavoidable imperfection of the translations, he states, the understanding is encumbered. Not familiar with Hebrew, Theodoret uses the Syriac translation, the Greek versions, and the Septuagint.

In principle his exegesis is grammatical-historical; and he criticizes the intrusion of the author's own ideas. His aim is to avoid a one-sidedness of literalness as well as of allegory. Hence he protests against the attributing of The Song of Songs to Solomon and the like as degrading the Holy Spirit. Rather is it to be said that the Scripture speaks often "figuratively" and "in riddles." In the Old Testament everything has typological significance and prophetically it embodies already the Christian doctrine. The divine illumination affords the right understanding after the apostolic suggestion and the New Testament fulfilment. Valuable though not binding is the exegetical tradition of the ecclesiastical teachers. Theodoret likes to choose the best among various interpretations before him, preferably Theodore's, and supplements from his own. He is clear and simple in thought and statement; and his merit is to have rescued the exegetical heritage of the school of Antioch as a whole for the Christian Church.

Dogmatic
Many of Theodoret's dogmatic works have perished; five, however, have survived.

His chief Christological work is the Eranistes etoi polymorphos (Beggar or Multiform, or perhaps The Collector) in three dialogues, describing the Monophysites as beggars passing off their doctrines gathered by scraps from diverse heretical sources and himself as the orthodox. The work is interspersed with lengthy florilegia (anthologies of patristic citations), which may be the reason for its preservation. These florilegia provide evidence of Theodoret's considerable learning, with 238 texts drawn from 88 works, including pre-Nicene writers such as Ignatius, Irenaeus and Hippolytus, as well as theologians such as Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers. This use of florilegia heralds a new stage in doctrinal development, in that it creates a new authority for Christian theology: that of the 'Fathers'.

Two works, On the Holy and Life-giving Trinity and On the Incarnation of the Lord, have survived through ascription to his opponent Cyril of Alexandria.

Another surviving work by Theodoret is his Refutation of the Anathemas, his rejection of the twelve anathemas pronounced on him by Cyril of Alexandria, which has been preserved in Cyril's defence. He detects Apollinarianism in Cyril's teaching, and declines a "contracting into one" of two natures of the only begotten, as much as a separation into two sons (Epist. Cxliii). Instead of a "union according to hypostases," he would accept only one that "manifests the essential properties or modes of the natures." The man united to God was born of Mary; between God the Logos and the form of a servant a distinction must be drawn.

Another surviving work is the Expositio rectae fidei. This was preserved among the writings of Justin Martyr. However, both Lebon (1930) and Sellers (1945) independently recognised it as the work of Theodoret, probably pre-dating the outbreak of the Christological controversies.

Only minor fragments (cf. Epist. 16) of Theodoret's defence of Diodorus and Theodore (438-444) have been preserved.

There are many lost works. Theodoret mentions having written against Arius and Eunomius, probably one work, to which were joined the three treatises against the Macedonians. There were, besides, two works against the Apollinarians, and of the Opus adversus Marcionem nothing has been preserved.

God is immutable also in becoming man, the two natures are separate in Christ, and God the Logos is ever immortal and impassive. Each nature remained "pure" after the union, retaining its properties to the exclusion of all transmutation and intermixture. Of the twenty-seven orations in defence of various propositions, the first six agree in their given content with Theodoret. A few extracts from the five orations on Chrysostom were preserved by Photius (codex 273).

Apologetic, historical
Among apologetic writings was the Ad quaestiones magorum (429-436), now lost, in which Theodoret justified the Old Testament sacrifices as alternatives in opposition to the Egyptian idolatry, and exposed the fables of the Magi who worshipped the elements (Church History v. 38).

De providentia, or Ten Discourses on Providence, consists of apologetic discourses, proving the divine providence from the physical order (chapters i-iv), and from the moral and social order (chapters vi-x). They were most probably delivered to the cultured Greek congregation of Antioch, sometime between 431 and 435. Unlike most sermons, they are reasoned arguments, lectures rather than homilies on scriptural texts.

The Graecarum Affectionum Curatio or Cure of the Greek Maladies, subtitled The Truth of the Gospel proved from Greek Philosophy, arranged in twelve books, was an attempt to prove the truth of Christianity from Greek philosophy and in contrast with the pagan ideas and practises. As such, it forms one of the last Apologies written, since in an age when Christianity was dominant, the need for apologies gradually died out. The truth is self-consistent where it is not obscured with error and approves itself as the power of life; philosophy is only a presentiment of it. This work is distinguished for clearness of arrangement and style.

The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret, which begins with the rise of Arianism and closes with the death of Theodore in 429 (despite being completed in 449–450) is very different in style from those of Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen. It contains many sources otherwise lost, specially letters on the Arian controversy; however, the book is extremely partisan, the heretics being consistently blackened and described as afflicted with the 'Arian plague'. The narrative is more compressed than in the other historians, and Theodoret often strings documents together, with only brief comments between. Original material of Antiochian information appears chiefly in the latter books.

Theodoret's sources are in dispute. According to Valesius these were mainly Socrates and Sozomen; Albert Guldenpenning's thorough research placed Rufinus first, and next to him, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Sozomen, Sabinus, Philostorgius, Gregory Nazianzen, and, least of all, Socrates. N. Glubokovskij counts Eusebius, Rufinus, Philostorgius, and, perhaps, Sabinus.

Upon the request of a high official named Sporacius, Theodoret compiled a Compendium of Heretical Accounts (Haereticarum fabularum compendium), including a heresiology (books i-iv) and a "compendium of divine dogmas" (book v), which, apart from Origen's De principiis and the theological work of John of Damascus, is the only systematic representation of the theology of the Greek Fathers.

A History of the Monks of Syria
The Religious History, also known as A History of the Monks of Syria, with an appendix on divine love, contains the biographies of thirty (ten living) ascetics, held forth as religious models. It is a document of remarkable significance for understanding the complexities of the role of early monastics, both in society and in the church; it is also remarkable for presenting a model of ascetic authority which runs strongly against Athanasius's Life of Antony.

Of the 30 monks listed in A History of the Monks of Syria, the last 10 monks were living at the time that Theodoret was writing the book during the 5th century.

• James of Nisibis (d. 337-8)

• Julian Sabas (d. 367)

• Marcianus (d. 380s)

• Eusebius of Teleda (fl. 350s)

• Publius (fl. 350s)

• Symeon the Elder (fl. 370s)

• Palladius of Antioch (fl. 370s)

• Aphrahat (d. c. 410)

• Peter the Galatian (d. c. 403)

• Theodosius (d. c. 405)

• Romanus (d. c. 400)

• Zeno the Hermit (d. 410s)

• Macedonius of Syria (d. 420)

• Maesymas (fl. late 4th century)

• Acepsimas (fl. late 4th century)

• Maron (d. 410s)

• Abraham (d. 420s)

• Eusebius of Asikha (d. 430s)

• Salamanes

• Maris (d. c. 430)

• James of Cyrrhestica

• Thalassius, Limnaeus, John

• Zebinas, Polychronius, Asclepius

• Symeon Stylites

• Baradates

• Thalelaeus

• Marana and Cyra

• Domnina of Syria

Letters
Compared to the more than 500 letters known to Nicephorus Callistus in the fourteenth century, only about half that number had survived to the twentieth century. Three collections survive, though there is some overlap between them. 179 letters were edited by J Sirmond in the seventeenth century. To these, J. Sakkelion added another 47 letters he published from a manuscript he found at the Monastery of Patmos in 1855. 36 letters have been preserved in conciliar records. These letters provide glimpses of rural Christianity in northern Syria, as well as insight into episcopal relationships; hints of the development of Christological issues between the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon can be seen; there are letters of consolation and commendation; throughout there is revealed the generous and sensitive soul of a pastor.

An English translation of the surviving letters is part of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (2 ser., iii. 250–348).

Linguistic interest
In several works, Theodoret demonstrated an interest for linguistic issues related to translations of sacred texts and theological works, with emphasis on literary exchange between two languages, Greek and Syriac. Theodoret himself belonged to the highly Hellenized urban landscape of Roman Syria, but his Aramaic background, accompanied with knowledge of Aramaic language (called Syriac among Greeks), enabled him to note several features of his ancestral language. Aware of regional diversities of Aramaic dialects, he recorded that "the Osroënians, the Syrians, the people of the Euphrates, the Palestinians, and the Phoenicians all speak Syriac, but with many differences in pronunciation". Theodoret's regional (provincial) differentiation of Aramaic dialects included an explicit distinction between the "Syrians" (as Aramaic speakers of Syria proper, western of Euphrates), and the "Osroenians" as Aramaic speakers of Osroene (eastern region, centered in Edessa), thus showing that dialect of the "Syrians" (Aramaic speakers of proper Syria) was known to have somewhat different pronunciation from that of the "Osroenians" (speakers of Edessan Aramaic).

Translations

 * Translations of some of Theodoret's writings can be found in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.
 * A bilingual edition of the Eranistes was published by Oxford University Press in 1974.
 * Theodoret of Cyrus. On Divine Providence, translated and annotated by Thomas P. Halton, 1988 (Ancient Christian Writers, 49) ISBN 9780809104208
 * Theodoret of Cyrus. A Cure for Pagan Maladies, translation and introduction by Thomas P. Halton, 2013 (Ancient Christian Writers, 67) ISBN 9780809106066
 * Ettlinger, GH, 2003. Theodoret: Eranistes, FC, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
 * Petruccione, John F and RC Hill, 2007. Theodoret of Cyrus. The Questions on the Octateuch, Greek text and English translation, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press
 * RC Hill has published translations into English of the Commentary on the Psalms (2000, 2001), the Commentary on the Songs of Songs (2001), and the Commentary on the Letters of St Paul (2001)
 * István Pásztori-Kupán, Theodoret of Cyrus, (Routledge, 2006), includes full translations of On the Trinity, On the Incarnation, and excerpts from A Cure of Greek Maladies and A Compendium of Heretical Mythification.
 * Bilingual editions (Greek text with parallel French translation) of several of the texts mentioned above have been published in recent years in Sources Chrétiennes.

title: Theodoret


text:
Bank for International Settlements

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international financial institution which is owned by member central banks. Its primary goal is to foster international monetary and financial cooperation while serving as a bank for central banks. With its establishment in 1929, its initial purpose was to oversee the settlement of World War I war reparations.

The BIS carries out its work through its meetings, programmes and through the Basel Process, hosting international groups pursuing global financial stability and facilitating their interaction. It also provides banking services, but only to central banks and other international organizations.

The BIS is based in Basel, Switzerland, with representative offices in Hong Kong and Mexico City.

Background

International monetary cooperation started to develop tentatively in the course of the 19th century. An early case was a £400,000 loan in gold coins from the Bank of France to the Bank of England which was facing a bank run, made in 1825 and facilitated by the Rothschilds. The Bank of England again borrowed from its French counterpart (and from the Hamburger Bank) in 1836 and 1839, and lent to it in return in 1847. In 1860-1861, because of the disruption from the incipient American Civil War, the Bank of France entered a series of swap agreements on specie with the Bank of England as well as the State Bank of the Russian Empire and De Nederlandsche Bank. That episode was recorded as the "war of the banks", ostensibly because of frictions between the Bank of France and the Bank of England about the transaction.

A few years later, monetary cooperation took a novel form with a series of international monetary conferences devoted to better coordination of the coinage system, even though these initiatives, like the Latin Monetary Union started in 1865, did not extend to money other than coins, and therefore involved treasury and mint officials rather than bankers. At the Brussels Conference in 1892, German academic Julius Wolff submitted a blueprint for an international currency that would be used for emergency lending to national central banks and would be issued by an institution based in a neutral country. In 1893, French economist Raphaël-Georges Lévy suggested to establish an international central bank in Bern. In 1907, Italian statesman Luigi Luzzatti published an article in the Austrian Neue Freie Presse, referencing past examples of bilateral cooperation between central banks and emphasizing the need for more institutionalized cooperation at the international level.

The practice of formalized central bank cooperation made unprecedented advances among allies in the course of World War I. In 1916, the Bank of England and Bank of France made agreements on bilateral lending and established a direct telegraph line between their respective offices to facilitate communication. Similar formal agreements were made that year between the two banks and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and in 1917 the Bank of Italy opened an office in New York.

In the war's immediate aftermath, Dutch central banker Gerard Vissering advocated an international currency without reliance of a common gold pool. Similar ideas burgeoned at the Brussels Conference of 1920, the first major discussion of international financial challenges following the war, endorsed by luminaries such as Belgian prime minister Léon Delacroix and American banker Frank A. Vanderlip, who suggested reorganizing Europe's national central banks along similar lines as the U.S. Federal Reserve which he had helped establish in the previous decade. At the Genoa Conference of 1922, following advocacy by several experts that included Ralph Hawtrey, Robert Horne and John Maynard Keynes, a resolution was passed that recommended the creation of "an association or permanent understanding for cooperation amongst central banks, not necessarily limited to Europe, to coordinate credit policies, without detriment to the freedom of each individual central bank."

The decision to create the BIS took place in the context of negotiations over World War I reparations which plagued international relations in Europe throughout the 1920s. Following the Treaty of Versailles, a Reparation Commission was set up in January 1920 to determine the amount of German reparations. Conferences at Spa in July 1920 and London in March 1921 were followed by the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, and eventually the Dawes Plan approved at another London conference in July-August 1924. The latter allowed for a more constructive atmosphere, materialized in diplomacy by the Locarno Treaties in October 1925 and encouraging Montagu Norman, the influential governor of the Bank of England, to envisage the creation of what he described in September 1925 as "a private and eclectic Central Banks' 'Club', small at first, larger in the future." That vision had a first materialization at a meeting in early July 1927 which brought together Montagu, his friend Benjamin Strong, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, and Bank of France vice governor Charles Rist at a private home on Long Island (the Bank of Italy had hoped for an invitation but was not included). A second meeting was scheduled in Algeciras, but was not held because of the bad health of Strong, who eventually died in October 1928.

The Young Plan and the Hague Conference

A deadline for French repayment of its bilateral debt to the United States provided impetus for a new initiative, which took the form of a Committee of Experts appointed to work out a final settlement of the German reparations, known as the Young Committee for its chairman the American banker Owen D. Young. The committee first met at the Bank of France on 1929/02/09, then on 28 successive sessions ending on 1929/06/07 at the Hotel George V. The seven participating countries were Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The need for a jointly governed bank emerged in these discussions as a means to overcome information asymmetries and increase the likelihood that commitments would be effectively met, not least by helping the creditors to act collectively and facilitating the reinvestment of German payments into the German economy. The first draft concept for the new bank was presented by Belgian banker Émile Francqui on 1929/02/23, and amended with suggestions from Bank of France governor Émile Moreau. It was envisaged as a private institution with shareholders from all participating countries (including Germany) that would settle reparation payments, issue bonds to be serviced by the reparation transfers, and (as advocated by Schacht) provide international long-term credit for countries in need, including Germany. In a memo to Young a few days later, Schacht first used the name "International Settlements Bank" while referring to the projected new institution. Young asked his American peers Warren Randolph Burgess, Shepard Morgan and Walter W. Stewart to sail promptly to Paris, and on 1929/03/07 they presented a compromise text that formed the basis for subsequent developments.

Under the Young Committee's consensus concept, made public on 1929/03/10, the bank would serve a threefold purpose as a trustee, bank, and international organization of central bankers: (1) receiving, managing, and distributing German reparation annuities as a trustee; (2) facilitating German transfers by issuing counterpart bills, notes, and bonds; and (3) serving national central banks by taking their deposits, granting them credit, and carrying out currency and gold transactions on their behalf. It would rely on nonpolitical staff located in a country not directly involved in the reparations disputes. Subsequent fine-tuning discussions revolved around the scope for the bank's lending to foster economic growth and trade which would have given it a role similar to that of the later World bank. Such a role was advocated by Schacht but opposed by France and by commercial bankers, on the grounds that it could be inflationary and create unfair competition to private-sector lenders. An overall agreement on the future bank, with draft statutes prepared by the Bank of England's Charles Stewart Addis, was achieved by the Young Committee on 1929/03/25.

Political positions within the Herbert Hoover administration made it impossible for U.S. Federal Reserve System officials to be formally involved in the initiative, but the U.S. was still able to retain major influence in the proceedings because of a shared perception amongst negotiators that the project would fail without U.S. participation. Major figures of the U.S. financial world would participate in the joint bank, and act in close cooperation with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The leverage held by the U.S. allowed Young and J. P. Morgan Jr. to make sure that Americans would be in leadership position at the bank when it started operations, as indeed happened.

The BIS concept was agreed to in August 1929 at the first part of the Hague conference on reparations. The bank's Charter, Statutes, Trust Agreement, and Convention on its relations with the host country were subsequently drafted by a special Organisation Committee chaired by Jackson Reynolds, president of the First National Bank of New York, which met in the discreet location of Hôtel Stéphanie (part of which later became Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa) at Baden-Baden from 3 October to 1929/11/13; the intense work was marred by the death of Delacroix from a heart attack during the proceedings. Aside from Reynolds, American participants in Baden-baden also included Melvin Alvah Traylor, president of the First National Bank of Chicago, Warren Randolph Burgess, Shepard Morgan, and Leon Fraser (a legal expert with the Agent General for Reparation Payments), with J. P. Morgan Jr. monitoring the proceedings and advising from London.

As in the Paris discussions earlier in the year, the Baden-Baden committee had to reconcile the different visions for the future BIS, from purely a creation of central banks (as espoused by Italy's Alberto Beneduce and by Montagu Norman) to a supranational development bank with policy tasks such as developing world trade (as advocated by Schacht and UK Chancellor Philip Snowden). Other points of contention included the future institution's official language(s), for which the committee endorsed French, and location. For the latter, several delegates favored London, but that was vetoed by the French who proposed Brussels instead, which in turn was vetoed by the British; after Amsterdam failed to gain sufficient support, a consensus was eventually found on Basel, which combined neutral country status and good railway connections. The founding texts of the BIS were then approved at the second part of the Hague conference, on 1930/01/20, with only minor changes from the Baden-Baden drafts such as the addition of English to French as official language. These texts included the constituent Charter and Statutes for the bank, and a Convention (intergovernmental agreement) between Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Switzerland, establishing the bank's special status on Swiss soil and committing Switzerland to grant the Charter and approve the Statutes.

Creation

The Convention and Charter were approved by the Swiss Federal Council and thus obtained force of law on 1930/02/26. The governors met that day and the next to formally approve and sign the statutes in Rome, out of consideration for the Bank of Italy's governor Bonaldo Stringher who was both the most senior in the group, and in poor health (he would pass away in December of 1930). Aside from Stringher, who chaired the meeting, the other participants were: Vincenzo Azzolini and Alberto Beneduce, for Italy; Bank of England governor Montagu Norman and Harry Arthur Siepmann, for the UK; Bank of France governor Émile Moreau, Clément Moret and Pierre Quesnay, for France; Reichsbank governor Schacht, for Germany; National Bank of Belgium governor Louis Franck and Paul van Zeeland, for Belgium; and the Bank of Japan's London representative Tetsuzaburo Tanaka and diplomat Hiroshi Saito, for Japan. Thus the BIS was formally created in Rome on 1930/02/27. The BIS promptly opened its doors in Basel on 17 May 1930, ahead of the first German annuities under the Young Plan due in June.

The legal status of the bank combined features of a private-sector company and of a public international organization. It was a limited-liability company incorporated under Swiss law, whose shares could be held by individuals and non-governmental entities. However, the rights of voting and representation at the Bank's General Meeting were to be exercised exclusively by the central banks of the countries in which shares had been issued. At the same time, the BIS possessed de facto international legal personality, was exempted from Swiss taxation and banking supervision, and its senior management enjoyed diplomatic status. The Charter stipulated that "The Bank, its property and assets and all deposits and other funds entrusted to it shall be immune in time of peace and in time of war from any measure such as expropriation, requisition, seizure, confiscation, prohibition or restriction of gold or currency export or import, and any other similar measures." Under the Statutes, the governor of each of the founding central banks was a member of the BIS Board of Directors ex officio, and had the right to appoint a second Board member, plus additional right for France and Germany to appoint a third Board member each or the duration of the Young Plan. In principle the Board could appoint up to nine additional directors, in practice however only the Dutch, Swedish and Swiss central bank governors in the BIS's first decades. The inaugural BIS Board had 16 members: Franck and Francqui (Belgium); Moreau, Georges Brincard and Melchior de Vogüé (banker) (France); Hans Luther, Carl Melchior and Paul Reusch (Germany); Stringher and Beneduce (Italy); Tanaka and Daisuke Nohara (Japan); Norman and Addis (UK); and Gates McGarrah and Fraser (United States).

Early activity

The BIS had a quick start, even though its intended task of facilitating World War I reparation payments soon became obsolete. Even before the founding meeting in Rome, the Organisation Committee had secured a two-year lease of a convenient building in Basel, the former Grand Hôtel et Savoy Hôtel Univers across the street from Basel railway station. By mid-April, Fraser had arrived from the United States and was working on the BIS's behalf from the Paris office of the Agent General for Reparation Payments, joined by McGarrah in April. The Board members first met for an informal meeting in Basel on 22-23 April 1930, adopted the bank's Statutes. It unanimously elected McGarrah as President of the BIS and Chairman of its Board, Fraser as alternate President, and Addis, Melchior and Moreau as Vice-Chairmen "with equal rank". Quesnay was appointed General Manager, albeit with the three German Board members voting against "for serious reasons of principle" (i.e. objecting to the choice of a French national rather than to Quesnay as an individual). These foundational decisions were later ratified by the first formal Board meeting on 1930/05/17, as the April meeting had also agreed that the ordinary meetings of the Board would henceforth take place in Basel on the second Monday of each month. On 17 May the BIS opened for business and formally took over the funds, accounts, capital, and records of the Agent General for Reparation Payments. On 20 May, the bank's shares were publicly issued.

Reparation payments were first suspended for one year (Hoover moratorium, June 1931) and then stopped altogether after the Lausanne Agreement of July 1932 failed to be ratified. Instead, the BIS focused on its second statutory task, i.e. fostering the cooperation between its member central banks. It acted as a meeting forum for central banks and provided banking facilities to them. For instance, in the late 1930s, the BIS was instrumental in helping continental European central banks ship out part of their gold reserves to London.

As a purportedly apolitical organization, the BIS was unable to prevent transactions that reflected contemporaneous geopolitical realities, but were also widely regarded as unconscionable. As a result of the policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany by the UK and France, in March 1939, the BIS was obliged to transfer 23 tons of gold it held, on behalf of Czechoslovakia, to the German Reichsbank, following the German annexation of Czechoslovakia.

World War II
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the BIS Board of Directors – on which the main European central banks were represented – decided that the Bank should remain open, but that, for the duration of hostilities, no meetings of the Board of Directors were to take place and that the Bank should maintain a neutral stance in the conduct of its business. However, as the war dragged on evidence mounted that the BIS conducted operations that were helpful to the Germans. Also, throughout the war, the Allies accused the Nazis of looting and pleaded with the BIS not to accept gold from the Reichsbank in payment for prewar obligations linked to the Young Plan. This was to no avail as remelted gold was either confiscated from prisoners or seized in victory and thus unacceptable as payment to the BIS. Operations conducted by the BIS were viewed with increasing suspicion from London and Washington. The fact that top-level German industrialists and advisors sat on the BIS Board seemed to provide ample evidence of how the BIS might be used by Hitler throughout the war, with the help of American, British and French banks. Between 1933 and 1945 the BIS Board of directors included Walther Funk, a prominent Nazi official, and Emil Puhl responsible for processing dental gold looted from concentration camp victims, as well as Hermann Schmitz, the director of IG Farben, and Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the, all of whom were later convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference recommended the "liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment". This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the U.S. and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as Americans (including Harry Dexter White and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.). Abolition was opposed by John Maynard Keynes, head of the British delegation.

Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent or postpone the dissolution, but the next day it was approved; the liquidation of the bank was never actually undertaken. In April 1945, the new U.S. president Harry S. Truman ended U.S. involvement in the scheme. The British government suspended the dissolution and the decision to liquidate the BIS was officially reversed in 1948.

Postwar decades

After World War II, the BIS retained a distinct European focus. According to an announcement made by the Swiss Government on 1952/12/26, Japan renounced all rights, titles and interests in the BIS it had acquired under the Hague Convention of January 1930. The BIS acted as Agent for the European Payments Union (EPU, 1950–58), an intra-European clearing arrangement designed to help the European countries in restoring currency convertibility and free, multilateral trade. During the 1960s – the heyday of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system – the BIS once again became the locus for transatlantic monetary cooperation. It coordinated the central banks' Gold Pool and a number of currency support operations (e.g. Sterling Group Arrangements of 1966 and 1968. The Group of Ten (G10), including the main European economies, Canada, Japan, and the United States, became the most prominent grouping.

The BIS acquired land near the Basel SBB railway station between 1966 and 1972. Architect Martin Burckhardt made three design proposals in 1969, among which the Board of the BIS selected an 82-meter high round tower. This was opposed by locals and their representation in the Swiss Heritage Society, which led to a public referendum in 1971 in which 69% of voters endorsed a revised design with reduced height. The BIS moved into the new premises, sometimes dubbed the "Tower of Basel," in 1977.

With the end of the Bretton Woods system (1971–73) and the return to floating exchange rates, financial instability came to the fore. The collapse of some internationally active banks, such as Herstatt Bank (1974), highlighted the need for improved banking supervision at an international level. The G10 Governors created the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), which remains active. The BIS developed into a global meeting place for regulators and for developing international standards (Basel Concordat, Basel Capital Accord, Basel II and III). Through its member central banks, the BIS was actively involved in the resolution of the Latin American debt crisis (1982).

From 1964 until 1993, the BIS provided the secretariat for the Committee of Governors of the Central Banks of the Member States of the European Community (Committee of Governors). This Committee had been created by the European Council decision to improve monetary cooperation among the EC central banks. Likewise, the BIS in 1988–89 hosted most of the meetings of the Delors Committee (Committee for the Study of Economic and Monetary Union), which produced a blueprint for monetary unification subsequently adopted in the Maastricht Treaty (1992). In 1993, when the Committee of Governors was replaced by the European Monetary Institute (EMI – the precursor of the ECB), it moved from Basel to Frankfurt, cutting its ties with the BIS.

In 1998, the BIS acquired a second building on Aeschenplatz 1 in Basel, designed in 1986 by Mario Botta and previously owned and used by UBS. Since then, the BIS has used that building to host its banking operations on behalf of member central banks.

21st century

In the 1990s–2000s, the BIS successfully globalized, breaking out of its traditional European core. This was reflected in a gradual increase in its membership (from 33 shareholding central bank members in 1995 to 60 in 2013, which together represent roughly 95% of global GDP), and also in the much more global composition of the BIS Board of Directors. In 1998, the BIS opened a Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific in the Hong Kong SAR. A BIS Representative Office for the Americas was established in 2002 in Mexico City.

The BIS was originally owned by both central banks and private individuals, since the United States, Belgium and France had decided to sell all or some of the shares allocated to their central banks to private investors. BIS shares traded on stock markets, which made the bank an unusual organization: an international organization (in the technical sense of public international law), yet allowed for private shareholders. Many central banks had similarly started as such private institutions; for example, the Bank of England was privately owned until 1946. In more recent years the BIS has bought back its once publicly traded shares. It is now wholly owned by BIS members (central banks), but still operates in the private market as a counterparty, asset manager and lender for central banks and international financial institutions. Profits from its transactions are used, among other things, to fund the bank's other international activities.

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022 the BIS suspended the Bank of Russia's membership.

Project Nexus

The Bank for International Settlements signed an agreement with Central Bank of Malaysia, Bank of Thailand, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Reserve Bank of India on 30 June 2024 as founding member of Project Nexus, a multilateral international initiative to enable retail cross-border payments. Bank Indonesia involved as a special observer. The platform, which is expected to go live by 2026, will interlink domestic fast payment systems of the member countries.

Membership
The BIS members are central banks of 63 jurisdictions: 34 in Europe, 16 in Asia, 5 in South America, 3 in North America, 3 in Africa, and 2 in Oceania. The United States is represented by two members, the United States Federal Reserve System and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Central Bank of Russia is a member but its engagement with the BIS has been suspended since early March 2022 (see History section above). In the list below, (*) indicates members of the BIS Global Economy Meetings (see below) and (**) indicates observers to these meetings.

Basel Meetings

The activity of the BIS has always revolved around the regular meetings of its membership in Basel. In the 1930s, these meetings were held every month, with two interruptions resulting in ten meetings per year. Since 1998, these meetings have been held every other month, so six times a year. The meetings always start on Sundays, when the dinner is a key moment for informal exchange and coordination, and extend over the next day or two. The meeting on Monday morning is the Global Economy Meeting (GEM), preceded by a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee on Sunday. With the suspension of Russia since March 2022, 30 jurisdictions are members of the GEM and an additional 22 participate as observers.

As an organization of central banks, the BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among its 60-member central banks, except in the case of Eurozone countries which forfeited the right to conduct monetary policy in order to implement the euro. While monetary policy is determined by most sovereign nations, it is subject to central and private banking scrutiny and potentially to speculation that affects foreign exchange rates and especially the fate of export economies. BIS aims to keep monetary policy in line with reality and to help implement monetary reforms in time, preferably as a simultaneous policy among all 60 member banks and also involving the International Monetary Fund.

Central banks do not unilaterally "set" rates, rather they set goals and intervene using their massive financial resources and regulatory powers to achieve monetary targets they set. One reason to coordinate policy closely is to ensure that this does not become too expensive and that opportunities for private arbitrage exploiting shifts in policy or difference in policy, are rare and quickly removed.

The stated mission of the BIS is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks. The BIS pursues its mission by:
 * fostering discussion and facilitating collaboration among central banks;
 * supporting dialogue with other authorities that are responsible for promoting financial stability;
 * carrying out research and policy analysis on issues of relevance for monetary and financial stability;
 * acting as a prime counterparty for central banks in their financial transactions; and
 * serving as an agent or trustee in connection with international financial operations.

The role that the BIS plays today goes beyond its historical role. The original goal of the BIS was "to promote the co-operation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations; and to act as trustee or agent in regard to international financial settlements entrusted to it under agreements with the parties concerned", as stated in its Statutes of 1930.

Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
The BIS hosts the Secretariat of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), colloquially referred to simply as the "Basel Committee", and with it has played a central role in establishing the Basel Capital Accords (now commonly referred to as Basel I) of 1988, Basel II framework in 2004 and more recently Basel III framework in 2010-2017.

Capital adequacy policy applies to equity and capital assets. These can be overvalued in many circumstances because they do not always reflect current market conditions or adequately assess the risk of every trading position. Accordingly, the Basel standards require the capital adequacy ratio of internationally active commercial banks to be above a prescribed minimum international standard, to improve the resilience of the banking sector.

Committee on the Global Financial System
The Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS) was established in 1971 as the Euro-currency Standing Committee, and adopted its current name in 1999. It reports to the Global Economy Meeting.

As of 2023, it had 28 members: Central Bank of Argentina, Reserve Bank of Australia, National Bank of Belgium, Central Bank of Brazil, Bank of Canada, People's Bank of China, European Central Bank, Bank of France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Reserve Bank of India, Bank of Italy, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Central Bank of Luxembourg, Bank of Mexico, De Nederlandsche Bank, Central Bank of Russia, Saudi Central Bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore, South African Reserve Bank, Bank of Spain, Sveriges Riksbank, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Thailand, Bank of England, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Markets Committee
The Markets Committee is the oldest of the BIS-hosted committees, originally established in 1962 as the Committee on Gold and Foreign Exchange. It also reports to the Global Economy Meeting.

As of 2023, it had 27 members: Reserve Bank of Australia, National Bank of Belgium, Central Bank of Brazil, Bank of Canada, People's Bank of China, European Central Bank, Bank of France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Reserve Bank of India, Bank of Indonesia, Bank of Italy, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Central Bank of Malaysia, Bank of Mexico, De Nederlandsche Bank, Central Bank of Russia, Monetary Authority of Singapore, South African Reserve Bank, Bank of Spain, Sveriges Riksbank, Swiss National Bank, Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye, Bank of England, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure
Another of the committees hosted at the BIS is the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) was established in 1990 and extended the prior work of the Group of Experts on Payment Systems (1980) and Committee on Interbank Netting Schemes (1989), and was in turn renamed to CPMI in 2014. Its membership was extended in 1997-98, 2009, and 2018 to reach the following 28 members: Central Bank of Argentina, Reserve Bank of Australia, National Bank of Belgium, Central Bank of Brazil, Bank of Canada, People's Bank of China, European Central Bank, Bank of France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Reserve Bank of India, Bank Indonesia, Bank of Italy, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, De Nederlandsche Bank, Central Bank of Russia, Saudi Central Bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore, South African Reserve Bank, Bank of Spain, Sveriges Riksbank, Swiss National Bank, Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye, Bank of England, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

One of the Group's first projects, a detailed review of payment system developments in the G10 countries, was published by the BIS in 1985 in the first of a series that has become known as "Red Books". Currently, the red books cover countries participating in the CPMI. A sample of statistical data in the red books appears in the table below, where local currency is converted to US dollars using end-of-year rates.

Irving Fisher Committee
The Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics gathers 100 members, mostly national central banks as well as a few regional organizations such as the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA), Central American Monetary Council, and South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre (SEACEN). It is led by an 11-member executive elected by its members.

Reserve policy is also important, especially to consumers and the domestic economy. To ensure liquidity and limit liability to the larger economy, banks cannot create money in specific industries or regions without limit. To make bank depositing and borrowing safer for customers and reduce the risk of bank runs, banks are required to set aside or "reserve".

Reserve policy is harder to standardize, as it depends on local conditions and is often fine-tuned to make industry-specific or region-specific changes, especially within large developing nations. For instance, the People's Bank of China requires urban banks to hold 7% reserves while letting rural banks continue to hold only 6%, and simultaneously telling all banks that reserve requirements on certain overheated industries would rise sharply or penalties would be laid if investments in them did not stop completely. The PBoC is thus unusual in acting as a national bank focused on the country and not on the currency, but its desire to control asset inflation is increasingly shared among BIS members who fear "bubbles", and among exporting countries that find it difficult to manage the diverse requirements of the domestic economy, especially rural agriculture, and an export economy, especially in manufactured goods.

Effectively, the PBoC sets different reserve levels for domestic and export styles of development. Historically, the United States also did this, by dividing federal monetary management into nine regions, in which the less-developed western United States had looser policies.

For various reasons, it has become quite difficult to accurately assess reserves on more than simple loan instruments, and this plus the regional differences has tended to discourage standardizing any reserve rules at the global BIS scale. Historically, the BIS did set some standards which favoured lending money to private landowners (at about 5 to 1) and for-profit corporations (at about 2 to 1) over loans to individuals. These distinctions reflecting classical economics were superseded by policies relying on undifferentiated market values – more in line with neoclassical economics.

Financial Stability Institute
The Financial Stability Institute is dedicated to debates and exchanges of practices among supervisors and financial stability policymakers. It was established in 1999 in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It has been led by Josef Tošovský from December 2000 to December 2016, and by Fernando Restoy since January 2017.

BIS Innovation Hub
The BIS Innovation Hub, launched in 2019, extends the BIS mission of collaboration through digital innovation, developing technology-based public goods to support central banks and enhance the functioning of the financial system.

The BIS Innovation Hub has officies in Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, Switzerland, London, Stockholm and Toronto.

Other associations hosted by the BIS
The BIS hosts the secretariats of the Financial Stability Board, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, and International Association of Deposit Insurers. These entities, unlike the above listed committees, have no direct reporting links to the BIS.

Financial results
BIS denominates its reserve in IMF special drawing rights. The balance sheet total of the BIS on 31 March 2019 was SDR 291.1 billion (US$403.7 billion) and a net profit of SDR 461.1 million (US$639.5 million).

Leadership
The Chairmen concurrently held the role of President from April 1930 to May 1937. Johan Beyen of the Netherlands served as President from May 1937 to December 1939, succeeded by American national Thomas H. McKittrick from January 1940 to June 1946. The position of President remained vacant from June 1946 to June 1948, when the roles of President and Chair of the Board were again reunited until the former was abolished on 27 June 2005. Meanwhile, the Chair had been left vacant from May 1940 to December 1942.

Board of directors
As of May 2023:

 * Andrew Bailey (Bank of England)
 * Roberto Campos Neto (Central Bank of Brazil)
 * Shaktikanta Das (Reserve Bank of India)
 * Thomas Jordan (Swiss National Bank)
 * Klaas Knot (De Nederlandsche Bank)
 * Christine Lagarde (European Central Bank)
 * Tiff Macklem (Bank of Canada)
 * Joachim Nagel (Deutsche Bundesbank)
 * Jerome H. Powell (Federal Reserve Bank)
 * Rhee Chang-yong (Bank of Korea)
 * Victoria Rodríguez Ceja (Bank of Mexico)
 * Erik Thedéen (Sveriges Riksbank)
 * Kazuo Ueda (Bank of Japan)
 * François Villeroy de Galhau (Bank of France), Chairman
 * Ignazio Visco (Bank of Italy)
 * John C. Williams (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
 * Pierre Wunsch (National Bank of Belgium)
 * Yi Gang (People's Bank of China)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bank for International Settlements


text:
Shawn Fanning

Shawn Fanning (born November 22, 1980) is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

The site in its initial free P2P incarnation was shut down in 2001 after the company's unsuccessful appeal of court orders arising from its encouraging the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. A paid subscription version of the site followed, and was purchased by Rhapsody on December 1, 2011. Following his involvement with Napster, he joined, and invested in, a number of early-stage technology startup companies.

Napster
On June 1, 1999, Fanning released a preliminary beta program of Napster and soon, hundreds of college students at Northeastern were trading music. Sean Parker was the co-founder. They got the name from Shawn's Harwich High School nickname "Nappy", in reference to his hair texture. Shawn played on the Harwich tennis team.

Snocap
In 2002, Fanning was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. In 2003, he opened a new company, Snocap, along with Jordan Mendelson (Napster's chief architect), and Ron Conway. The company aspired to be a legitimate marketplace for digital media. However, their partners and the public did not respond well. Customer support was poor, and technical issues were numerous. One of their primary partners, CD Baby, wrote a scathing account of their relationship. In late 2007, Snocap laid off 60% of its workforce. ValleyWag wrote an article that Fanning had long left Snocap and began to work on another venture, Rupture. The ValleyWag article stated that the failure was largely due to Snocap's CEO Rusty Rueff and that of former VP Engineering Dave Rowley, who "made a mess of engineering before he was fired". Snocap was looking to sell itself and fast. In 2008, they found a buyer; imeem acquired Snocap in a fire sale.

Rupture
The Rupture project was announced in 2007 with seed funding.

In December 2006, Fanning, along with Co-founder Jon Baudanza, developed Rupture, a social networking tool designed to handle the task of publishing gamers' individual profiles to a communal space and facilitating communication between World of Warcraft players. Rupture was later acquired by Electronic Arts for $30 million. Fanning's career at Electronic Arts was short-lived as a round of layoffs in November 2009 included him and his team at Rupture.

Path
A few months after Fanning was laid off from Electronic Arts, he started a new company called Path.com. In January 2010, Dave Morin announced he was leaving Facebook, where he was a Senior Platform Manager, to join Fanning and become CEO at Path.

Airtime
In 2011 Fanning reunited with Napster cofounder Sean Parker to found Airtime.com. Some of the investors are Ron Conway, Michael Arrington, and Ashton Kutcher. Fanning is CEO and Parker as executive chairman.

Airtime launched in June 2012 at a disastrous public event where Parker and Fanning paid huge amounts of money to have celebrities present but the product repeatedly crashed and ultimately failed to work. Greg Sandoval of CNET commented, "To launch his new start-up, Sean Parker should have spent less of his billions on celebrity guests and more of it on fixing his technology."

Helium Systems
In 2013 Fanning founded Helium Systems together with Amir Haleem, and Sean Carey. In December 2014, the company announced that it had raised $16 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from FirstMark Capital, Digital Garage, Marc Benioff, SV Angel, and Slow Ventures among others.

In popular culture
In 2000, Fanning appeared as a presenter at the MTV Video Music Awards. He appeared wearing a Metallica T-shirt as the Metallica v. Napster, Inc. lawsuit had been filed a few months prior. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" played in the background. When asked where he got the shirt, Fanning stated, "a friend of mine shared it with me." Lars Ulrich was sitting in the audience, and his reaction was shown as feigned boredom.

In October 2000, Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Fanning had a cameo appearance as himself in the 2003 film The Italian Job. In the film, Seth Green's character Lyle accused Fanning of stealing Napster from him while he was taking a nap in their Northeastern University dorm room. Although other characters see this as mere bragging, a scene shows Fanning in fact creeping over Lyle's sleeping body and stealing a 3+1/2 in floppy disk.

In early 2008, Fanning appeared in a Volkswagen commercial directed by Roman Coppola, in which he poked fun at his file-sharing past.

Fanning and Napster were the subject of Alex Winter's documentary Downloaded in 2013.

title: Shawn Fanning


text:
Permanent Court of Arbitration

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) is a non-UN intergovernmental organization headquartered at the Peace Palace, in The Hague, Netherlands. Unlike a judicial court in the traditional sense, the PCA provides administrative support in international arbitrations involving various combinations of States, State entities, international organizations and private parties. The cases span a range of legal issues involving territorial and maritime boundaries, sovereignty, human rights, international investment, and international and regional trade. The PCA is constituted through two separate multilateral conventions with a combined membership of 122 Contracting Parties. The PCA is not a United Nations agency, but has been a United Nations observer since 1993.

The PCA was established by the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, concluded at The Hague in 1899 during the first Hague Peace Conference of 1899. The Conference had been convened at the initiative of Czar Nicolas II of Russia “with the object of seeking the most objective means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and lasting peace, and above all, of limiting the progressive development of existing armaments.”

The PCA's headquarters, the Peace Palace, was built from 1907 to 1913 to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Organization
The PCA is not a court in the conventional understanding of that term but an administrative organization with the object of having permanent and readily available means to serve as the registry for purposes of international arbitration and other related procedures, including commissions of enquiry and conciliation.

The Administrative Council (formally the Permanent Administrative Council) is a body composed of all the diplomatic representatives of the Contracting Parties accredited to the Netherlands. It is presided by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, who is also a Contracting Party. It is responsible for the "direction and control" of the International Bureau, directs the organisation's budget and reports on its activities.

The International Bureau is the Secretariat of the PCA and is headed by the Secretary-General. It provides linguistic, research, administrative and financial support to PCA arbitration tribunals.

The third organ of the PCA are the Members of the Court. Each Contracting Party may appoint up to four persons "of known competency in questions of international law, of the highest moral reputation and disposed to accept the duties of arbitrators" for a renewable 6-year term. In addition to forming a panel of potential arbitrators, the Members of the Court from each Contracting Party constitute a “national group,” which is entitled to nominate candidates for the election to the International Court of Justice. The Members of the Court (along with the judges of the International Court of Justice) are among a handful of groups entitled to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Parties to a dispute may, but are not obliged to, select arbitrators from the list of the Members of the Court.

The PCA sometimes gets confused with the International Court of Justice, which also has its seat in the Peace Palace. The PCA is not part of the UN system, holding observer status in the UN General Assembly since 1993.

Procedure
In the Articles 30–57 of the Hague Convention of 1899 the rules of arbitration procedure are outlined. These rules are an adapted version of pre-existing treaties among the states. They were amended in 1907, the creation of a summary procedure for simple cases being the most conspicuous change, and were relevant in the 1920s development of rules for the Court of International Justice.

The first act of parties before the PCA is the submission of the so-called "compromisis", stating the issue and the competence of the arbitrator(s). Proceedings are then conducted in two phases: written pleadings and oral discussion. The Court retires once the debate is over to deliberate and conclude the case by a simple majority of votes.

The decision is published as an award, along with any dissenting opinions. Early Court decisions were countersigned by the arbitrators themselves, but in 1907, that responsibility was passed to the president and secretary (of the PCA). The award is read in a public session in the presence of the agents and lawyers of the parties to the case. The decision is binding on the parties, and there is no mechanism for appeal.

Budget and fees
Between 2007 and 2008, the budget was €1.8 million.

The budget of PCA comes from the contributions of its Contracting Parties and income through arbitration cases. The distribution of the amounts to be paid by the individual Contracting Parties is based on the system in use by the Universal Postal Union.

Parties to arbitration have to pay the expenses of the arbitral tribunal set up to hear the case, including the salary of the arbitrators, registry and administrative functions, but not including overheads of the organization. The costs of arbitration vary from case to case and discussions may be held between the PCA and the parties over fee arrangements.

The fixed costs for action as an appointing authority are €3000.

Contracting Parties
Parties to the Convention on the Pacific Settlement of disputes of 1899 (71 Parties) and 1907 (101 Parties) are automatically parties to the PCA. As 51 are parties to both conventions, the PCA has 122 Contracting Parties: 120 members of the United Nations, as well as Kosovo and Palestine.

History
The PCA is the oldest institution for international dispute resolutions. It was established in 1899 by the first Hague Peace Conference under Articles 20 to 29 of the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. At the second Hague Peace Conference, the earlier Convention was revised by the 1907 Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. The Conference was convened at the initiative of Czar Nicholas II of Russia "with the object of seeking the most objective means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and lasting peace, and above all, of limiting the progressive development of existing armaments".

List of PCA Secretaries-General
The current Secretary-General of the PCA is Dr. Hab. Marcin Czepelak, who was elected on 14 February 2022 by the PCA Administrative Council for a term of 5 years (from 1 June 2022 until 31 May 2027).

The below table lists all the Secretaries-General who have served the PCA since its founding.

Functions
PCA tribunals have jurisdiction for disputes based on the PCA founding documents (the Conventions on Pacific Settlement of International Disputes), or based on bilateral and multilateral treaties. Its Secretary General furthermore acts as an appointing authority for arbitration.

Appointing authority
When problems arise in designating arbitrators for an arbitration under UNCITRAL arbitration rules (e.g. because one of the parties refuses to designate an arbitrator, or when the designated arbitrators are unable to agree on designation of a third arbitrator), the PCA Secretary-General may be requested to serve as an appointing authority. This option is also open for other arbitration agreements, in which the Secretary General is designated. Between 2011, and 2015, 257 of such requests were submitted.

Interstate arbitration based on the Hague Convention
Arbitration between two states takes place when two member states of the PCA decide to submit a dispute for arbitration to a PCA Tribunal. The Tribunal consists of five arbitrators: two (one of whom may be a national of the party concerned) are selected by each party to the arbitration;  these four arbitrators then choose the fifth and presiding arbitrator.

Interstate arbitration based on UNCLOS
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides for a dispute resolution mechanism regarding maritime boundaries in which member states can choose either the If two member states have elected different dispute resolution measures, the third option is to be used. As of August 2016, the PCA has administered twelve of the thirteen cases initiated by states under Annex VII to the UNCLOS.
 * 1) International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
 * 2) International Court of Justice,
 * 3) arbitral tribunal (constituted in accordance with Annex VII, UNCLOS)
 * 4) a special arbitral tribunal (constituted in accordance with Annex VIII).

Investorstate investment disputes
Many free trade agreements provide for a mechanism to resolve disputes between investors and states through arbitration through so-called ISDS clauses. The PCA may play a role in such proceedings as appointing authority for arbitrators, by use of its arbitration rules or by providing support to the arbitration case.

Cases
Examples of cases are shown below:

Interstate
 * United States of America v. Mexico (Pious Fund of the Californias) (1902)
 * United States of America v. United Kingdom (The North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Case) (1910)
 * France v. Great Britain (Savarkar Case) (1911)
 * United States of America v. The Netherlands (Island of Palmas Case) (1928)
 * Eritrea v. Yemen (Hanish Islands conflict) (1999)
 * Belgium v. The Netherlands (Iron Rhine case) (2005)
 * Croatia v. Slovenia (2017)

Interstate: Annex VII UNCLOS
 * Barbados v. Trinidad and Tobago (2006)
 * Bangladesh v. India (Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary) (2014)
 * Denmark in respect of the Faroe Islands v. European Union (Atlanto-Scandian Herring Arbitration) (2014)
 * Mauritius v. United Kingdom (Chagos Marine Protected Area) (2015)
 * Philippines v. China (2016)
 * Netherlands v. Russia (MV Arctic Sunrise) (2017)
 * Italy v. India (Enrica Lexie case) (2020)

Investor-state
 * Hulley Enterprises Limited (Cyprus), Yukos Universal Limited (Isle of Man) and Veteran Petroleum Limited (Cyprus) v. the Russian Federation (2015)
 * Cairn Energy PLC & Cairn UK Holdings Limited v. The Republic of India

Other
 * United States v. Iran (Iran-United States Claims Tribunal) in the early 1980s the PCA helped set up the claims tribunal
 * Eritrea v. Ethiopia (Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission) (2009) Claims Commission was organized through the PCA
 * Sudan v. Sudan People's Liberation Movement (Abyei Arbitration) (2009)

title: Permanent Court of Arbitration


text:
PCA

PCA may refer to:

Medicine and biology

 * Patient-controlled analgesia
 * Plate count agar in microbiology
 * Polymerase cycling assembly, for large DNA oligonucleotides
 * Posterior cerebral artery
 * Posterior cortical atrophy, a form of dementia
 * Prostate cancer
 * Protein-fragment complementation assay, to identify protein–protein interactions
 * Protocatechuic acid, a phenolic acid.
 * Personal Care Assistant, also known as unlicensed assistive personnel
 * Procainamide

Military and government

 * EU-Armenia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA agreement between Armenia and the EU)
 * Parks Canada Agency
 * Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EU)
 * Permanent change of assignment in US armed forces

Business

 * Packaging Corporation of America
 * Peanut Corporation of America, former company
 * Pennsylvania Central Airlines 1936-1948

Education

 * Pacific Coast Academy, fictional school in TV series Zoey 101
 * Parents and citizens associations for schools in Australia
 * Paris College of Art
 * Pensacola Christian Academy, Florida, US
 * Peoples Christian Academy, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 * Pineywoods Community Academy, a charter school district in Lufkin, Texas
 * Plano Christian Academy
 * Prestonwood Christian Academy, Plano, Texas
 * Providence Christian Academy (disambiguation), for multiple schools

Games

 * PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, European Poker Tour event
 * Professional Chess Association, from 1993 to 1996

Political parties

 * Parti Communiste Algérien (Algerian Communist Party)
 * Partido Comunista de Andalucía (Communist Party of Andalusia)
 * Partido Comunista de Aragón (Communist Party of Aragon)
 * Partido Comunista de la Argentina (Communist Party of Argentina)

Religion

 * Presbyterian Church of Africa
 * Presbyterian Church in America
 * Presbyterian Church of Australia

Sports

 * Peace Curling Association, the regional governing body for the sport of curling in the Peace River region of Northern Alberta prior to 2018
 * Positive Coaching Alliance, US, provides sports training workshops
 * Professional Cricketers' Association, England and Wales
 * Punjab Cricket Association
 * Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali, India

Other

 * Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands
 * Several Police complaints authorities
 * Porsche Club of America
 * POSC Caesar Association, a standardization organization
 * Production Code Administration, a division of the Motion Picture Association of America
 * Progressive Citizens of America
 * Progressive Cultural Association, a British political music group

Science and technology

 * para-Chloroamphetamine or 4-Chloroamphetamine
 * Principal component analysis, a statistical procedure
 * Printed circuit assembly or printed circuit board
 * Probabilistic cellular automaton (Math/Stochastic Processes)
 * Protocatechuic acid, a polyphenol antioxidant
 * Pyroglutamic acid, an amino acid derivative

Computers

 * Physical configuration audit, in configuration management
 * Polymorphous Computer Architectures, a DARPA project; see Josep Torrellas

Other uses

 * People's Choice Awards, awards show where winners are voted on by the general public
 * Personal carbon allowance, for carbon dioxide emissions
 * Pete Crow-Armstrong, American baseball player
 * Prompt Corrective Action, US banking law

title: PCA


text:
Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K. 384; The Abduction from the Seraglio; also known as Il Seraglio) is a singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Gottlieb Stephanie, based on Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The plot concerns the attempt of the hero Belmonte, assisted by his servant Pedrillo, to rescue his beloved Constanze from the seraglio of Pasha Selim. The work premiered on 16 July 1782 at the Vienna Burgtheater, with the composer conducting.

Origins
The company that first sponsored the opera was the Nationalsingspiel ("national Singspiel"), a pet project (1778–1783) of the Austrian emperor Joseph II. The Emperor had set up the company to perform works in the German language (as opposed to the Italian opera style widely popular in Vienna). This project was ultimately given up as a failure, but along the way it produced a number of successes, mostly a series of translated works. Mozart's opera emerged as its outstanding original success.

The inspector of the Nationalsingspiel was Gottlieb Stephanie. When the 25-year-old Mozart arrived in Vienna in 1781, seeking professional opportunity, one of the first tasks to which he addressed himself was to become acquainted with Stephanie and lobby him for an opera commission. To this end, he brought a copy of his earlier unfinished opera Zaide and showed it to Stephanie, who was duly impressed. Mozart also made a strong impression on the manager of the theater, Count Franz Xaver Orsini-Rosenberg, when in the home of Mozart's friend and patroness Maria Wilhelmine Thun the Count heard him play excerpts from his opera Idomeneo, premiered with great success the previous year in Munich. With this backing, it was agreed that Stephanie would find appropriate material and prepare a libretto for Mozart. Stephanie complied by preparing an altered version of an earlier work Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail without attributing or seeking permission from its original author Christoph Friedrich Bretzner. Bretzner later complained loudly and publicly about the theft.

Composition
Mozart received the libretto from Stephanie on 29 July 1781. He had few opportunities to compose professionally during the summer and he set to work on the libretto at a very rapid pace, finishing three major numbers in just two days. A letter to his father Leopold indicates he was excited about the prospect of having his opera performed in Vienna and worked enthusiastically on his project.

At first Mozart thought he needed to finish his opera in only two months, because tentative plans were made to perform it at the September visit of the Russian Grand Duke Paul (son of Catherine the Great and heir to the Russian throne). However, it was ultimately decided to perform operas by Gluck instead, giving Mozart more time.

It was around this time that Mozart articulated his views about the role of the composer and the librettist in the preparation of an opera. He wrote to his father (13 October 1781): "I would say that in an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music. Why are Italian comic operas popular everywhere – in spite of the miserable libretti? … Because the music reigns supreme, and when one listens to it all else is forgotten. An opera is sure of success when the plot is well worked out, the words written solely for the music and not shoved in here and there to suit some miserable rhyme ... The best thing of all is when a good composer, who understands the stage and is talented enough to make sound suggestions, meets an able poet, that true phoenix; in that case, no fears need be entertained as to the applause – even of the ignorant."

It would seem that something along these lines did happen—that is, Mozart decided to play a major role in the shaping of the libretto, insisting that Stephanie make changes for dramatic and musical effect. On 26 September Mozart wrote: "Now comes the rub! The first act was finished more than three weeks ago, as was also one aria in act 2 and the drunken duet ["Vivat Bacchus", act 2] ... But I cannot compose any more, because the whole story is being altered – and, to tell the truth, at my own request. At the beginning of act 3 there is a charming quintet or rather finale, but I would prefer to have it at the end of act 2. In order to make this practicable, great changes must be made, in fact an entirely new plot must be introduced – and Stephanie is up to his neck in other work. So we must have a little patience."

Mozart was evidently quite pleased to have in Stephanie a librettist who would listen to him. The September 26 letter also says: "Everyone abuses Stephanie. It may be the case he is only friendly to my face. But after all he is preparing the libretto for me – and, what is more, exactly as I want it – and by Heaven, I don't ask anything more of him."

With the delays for rewriting, the composition took several more months. The premiere took place on 16 July 1782, at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Character
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is in the genre of "Singspiel", thus the music lacks recitatives and consists entirely of set numbers. As Spike Hughes notes, the action is mostly carried forward by the spoken dialogue, so the libretto gave Mozart little opportunity to display an achievement for which his later operas are celebrated, namely the construction of scenes in which the plot is both reflected in and driven forward by the music.

Die Entführung is lighthearted and frequently comic, with little of the deep character exploration or darker feelings found in Mozart's later operas. The opera was inspired by a contemporary interest in the exotic culture of the Ottoman Empire, a nation which had only recently ceased to be a military threat to Austria. Mozart's opera includes a Westernized version of Turkish music, based very loosely on the Turkish Janissary band music.

Certain aspects of the opera conform to an eighteenth-century European view of orientalism. The Pasha's titular harem, for example, reprised themes of sexual libertinage. And the comically sinister overseer, Osmin, is a send-up of earlier stereotypes of Turkish despotism. However, the opera also defies the stereotype of despotic Turkish culture, since its climax entails a selfless act of forgiveness on the part of the Pasha.

The music includes some of the composer's most spectacular and difficult arias. Osmin's act 3 aria "O, wie will ich triumphieren" includes characteristic 18th century coloratura passage work, and twice goes down to a low D (D2), one of the lowest notes demanded of any voice in opera. Perhaps the most famous aria in the opera is the long and elaborate "Martern aller Arten" ("Tortures of all kinds") for Konstanze, an outstanding challenge for sopranos. Konstanze sings in a kind of sinfonia concertante with four solo players from the orchestra; the strikingly long orchestral introduction, without stage action, also poses problems for stage directors.

The virtuosity of these roles is perhaps attributable to the fact that when he took up the task of composing the opera, Mozart already knew the outstanding reputations of the singers for whom he was writing, and he tailored the arias to their strengths. The first Osmin was Ludwig Fischer, a bass noted for his wide range and skill in leaping over large intervals with ease. Similarly, Mozart wrote of the first Konstanze, Caterina Cavalieri, "I have sacrificed Konstanze's aria a little to the flexible throat of Mlle. Cavalieri."

Reception
The opera was a huge success. The first two performances brought in the large sum of 1200 florins. The work was repeatedly performed in Vienna during Mozart's lifetime, and throughout German-speaking Europe. In 1787, Goethe wrote (concerning his own efforts as a librettist): "All our endeavour ... to confine ourselves to what is simple and limited was lost when Mozart appeared. Die Entführung aus dem Serail conquered all, and our own carefully written piece has never been so much as mentioned in theater circles."

Although the opera greatly raised Mozart's standing with the public as a composer, it did not make him rich: he was paid a flat fee of 100 Imperial ducats (about 450 florins) for his work, and made no profits from the many subsequent performances.

The opera reached Paris in November 1801, when Frédéric Blasius conducted Ellmenreich's company in performances at the Théâtre de la Gaîté.

The American premiere in English was given by the Rochester Opera Company on November 1, 1926 under the direction of Vladimir Rosing. A second production with a new English libretto by Robert A. Simon was debuted by the American Opera Company at the Gallo Opera House in New York on January 31, 1928. and was then performed on tour in Boston and Chicago.

"Too many notes"
The complexity of Mozart's work noted by Goethe also plays a role in a well-known tale about the opera which appeared in the early (1798) biography of Mozart by Franz Xaver Niemetschek. In the version of the anecdote printed in Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes, a reference work, the story is told like this:

"The Emperor Joseph II commissioned the creation of The Abduction from the Seraglio, but when he heard it, he complained to Mozart, "That is too fine for my ears – there are too many notes." Mozart replied, "There are just as many notes as there should be.""

The authenticity of this story is not accepted by all scholars. Moreover, the version given by the Bartlett reference (and many other places) includes a translation of the original German that is dubious. The original reads: "Zu schön für unsere Ohren, und gewaltig viel Noten, lieber Mozart!"

"Too many notes" is not a plausible translation of the German phrase "gewaltig viel Noten". Mautner, translating Niemetschek, renders this as "an extraordinary number of notes", while Branscombe translates it simply as "very many notes". William Stafford translates the phrase as "Too beautiful for our ears, and an enormous number of notes, dear Mozart!" The anecdote, which is often repeated, is considered by some scholars to unfairly give the Emperor a bad reputation concerning both his musical abilities and his appreciation and support of Mozart.

This anecdote provides the basis for a scene in the 1984 movie Amadeus in which the Emperor is searching for a reason why Die Entführung aus dem Serail was flawed and an advisor proposes "too many notes," which the Emperor adopts.

Instrumentation
The singers perform with a Classical-era orchestra: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, a set of two timpani, and strings. They are augmented with the instruments needed for "Turkish" music: tamburo grande (tamburo turco), cymbals, triangles, and piccolo. The aria "Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose" is augmented by two basset horns.

The orchestra for the premiere included a number of eminent musicians of the day: first cellist Joseph Franz Weigl, first oboist Josef Triebensee, second horn Joseph Leutgeb, and the clarinettist brothers Anton and Johann Stadler. In the first violin section was Franz de Paula Hofer, who later became Mozart's brother-in-law. The four musicians who played the "Turkish" instruments remain anonymous, though it is known that they were recruited for this purpose by one Franz Tyron, Kapellmeister of the Austrian Second Field Artillery Regiment.

Synopsis

 * Place: the country house of the Pasha (German "Bassa"), in Turkey
 * Time: 16th century

Act 1
After a lively overture Belmonte enters, looking for his betrothed, Konstanze, who, with her English servant, Blonde, has fallen into the hands of pirates and been sold to Pasha Selim (Aria: "Hier soll ich dich denn sehen" – "Here surely I must find her"). Osmin, the Pasha's bad-tempered servant, comes to pluck figs in the garden and contemptuously ignores Belmonte's questions (Aria: "Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden" – "You may think, you've found a maiden"). Belmonte tries to obtain news of his servant, Pedrillo, who has been captured with the women and is serving as a servant in the Pasha's palace. Osmin replies with insults and abuse (Duet: "Verwünscht seist du samt deinem Liede!" – "The devil take you and your song, sir"). Belmonte leaves in disgust. Pedrillo enters and Osmin rages at him, vowing to get him tortured and killed in many different ways (Aria: "Solche hergelaufne Laffen" – "These young men who go a-spying"). Osmin leaves and Belmonte enters and happily reunites with Pedrillo. Together, they resolve to rescue Konstanze and Blonde, who is Pedrillo's fiancée (Aria: "Konstanze, Konstanze, dich wiederzusehen … O wie ängstlich" – "Konstanze, Konstanze, to see thee again … Oh what trembling").

Accompanied by a chorus of Janissaries ("Singt dem großen Bassa Lieder" – "Sing to the mighty Pasha Selim"), Pasha Selim appears with Konstanze, for whose love he strives in vain (Aria of Konstanze: "Ach ich liebte" – "How I loved him"). Pedrillo tricks the Pasha into hiring Belmonte as an architect. When Belmonte and Pedrillo try to enter the palace, Osmin bars their way, but they hurry past him anyway (Terzett: "Marsch! Marsch! Marsch! Trollt euch fort!" – "March! March! March! Clear off!").

Act 2

The Pasha has given Blonde to Osmin, to be his slave; however, she defiantly rebuffs her new master's rough lovemaking attempts (Aria: "Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln" – "With smiles and kind caresses"), threatens to scratch out his eyes, and chases him out of the room (Duet: "Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir" – "I'm going, but mark what I say"). Konstanze enters in distress (Aria: "Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele … Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose" – "Oh what sorrow overwhelms my spirit … Endless grief tortures my spirit"). The Pasha enters, demands Konstanze's love, and threatens to use force, but she resolutely rejects him. (Aria: "Martern aller Arten" – "Tortures unrelenting") Left alone, he muses on her determination to remain chaste, which increases his desire for her.

Pedrillo informs Blonde that Belmonte has come and is planning to rescue them, filling Blonde with joy. (Aria: "Welche Wonne, welche Lust" – "Oh, the happy, happy day"). After singing a short ditty to boost his courage (Aria: "Frisch zum Kampfe" – "Now Pedrillo, now for battle!"), Pedrillo invites Osmin to drink (Duet: "Vivat Bacchus! Bacchus lebe!" – "Here's to Bacchus, long live Bacchus"). Despite his religious prohibition against alcoholic beverages, Osmin drinks heavily and falls asleep. Konstanze joins Belmonte who declares his love (Aria: "Wenn der Freude Tränen fließen" – "When tears of joy flow"). The two couples reunite (Quartet, Belmonte, Konstanze, Pedrillo, Blonde: "Ach Belmonte! Ach, mein Leben" – "Ah, Belmonte, ah my dear one!"). After their initial expressions of love and joy, Belmonte and Pedrillo both question anxiously whether their respective fiancees have remained faithful during their forced separation; to their delight, the women respond with indignation and dismay, and Blonde slaps Pedrillo's face. The two men apologize for their lack of confidence; the women forgive them for their offensive questions.

Act 3
Belmonte and Pedrillo come to the garden with ladders (Aria, Belmonte: "Ich baue ganz auf deine Stärke" – "Love, only love, can now direct me"). Pedrillo attracts the attention of the women by singing a ballad about a rescue similar to the one he is planning (Romanze, Pedrillo: "In Mohrenland gefangen war" – "In Moorish lands a maiden fair"). However, Osmin enters, sees the ladders, and rouses the castle. Osmin exults in the prospect of seeing them all hanged (Aria: "O, wie will ich triumphieren" – "My triumphant hour's approaching"). Belmonte pleads for their lives and tells Pasha Selim that his father is a Spanish Grandee and Governor of Oran, named Lostados, and will pay a generous ransom. Unfortunately, Pasha Selim and Lostados are long-standing enemies. The Pasha rejoices in the opportunity to subject his enemy's son to a horrible death. He leaves Belmonte and Konstanze to bid each other a last farewell; they lovingly assure each other that being tortured to death will be a pleasure, so long as they get tortured to death together (Duet: "Welch ein Geschick! O Qual der Seele.... Weh, du soltest für mich sterben" – "What dreadful fate conspires against us.... Woe, you will die because of me"). However, the Pasha then decides that he can make a better point against Lostados by showing mercy and releasing Belmonte and his friends. All are set at liberty – much to the dismay of Osmin (Finale: "Nie werd' ich deine Huld verkennen" – "Your noble mercy passes measure").

Adaptations
The Australian Broadcasting Commission made a TV production in 1961 as the English-language The Abduction from the Seraglio, using outdoor filming in addition to the stage setting.

The American post-modernist writer Donald Barthelme wrote a surreal comic short story entitled "The Abduction from the Seraglio" (published in The New Yorker in January 1978, collected in Great Days, Farrar, Strous & Giroux 1979, and in Sixty Stories, 1981) in which Belmonte, as narrator, is reconfigured into a cowboy sculptor (whose arias are Country & Western songs), Constanze into his ex-lover, a counter-culture free spirit seduced by the Pasha, who in turn is a Plymouth automobile dealer worth five million dollars a year. Belmonte's rescue attempt fails as Constanze decides to stay with the Pasha, and he is left bereft.

Music professor, composer, and humorist Peter Schickele claims to have "discovered" the fictitive composer P. D. Q. Bach's The Abduction of Figaro (1984), a pastiche of the Entführung and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

The Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen wrote an opera called The Palace (first performed 1995); it contains characters whose names are adapted from Abduction and loosely uses elements of the plot of Mozart's opera as the starting point of a satirical fantasy.

title: Die Entführung aus dem Serail