text:
Talk:Bohemond I of Antioch

A comment from our readers
The man was a legend.... strikes me as an early Frederick II type character, lacking Fred's intellectual vigour but certainly someone of a similar personality.... just thought I should put that view out there.

Um, according to this article his first wife was his mother, alberada... I was under the impression he had married Constance, the daughter of King Philip.

What does this mean?
What does this statement mean?

"This early hostility to Alexius had a great influence in determining the    course of his between Bohemund (whom his father had destined for the throne of Constantinople) and Duke Roger."

Tbarron 21:28 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

I was wondering the same. It may refer to the dispute in succession of Apulia, i.e between Bohemond and his half-brother Duke Roger. Or if meaning Roger of Sicily (who was not Duke: he was count, or II firstly count then king), it may refer to long-term political positoon, from the time of Bohemond to the time of king Roger II. 217.140.193.123 00:58, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

count or prince of Taranto?
In all material which I had read, he is always mentioned as Prince of T. So, where comes that "count" from? any document to support? (Actually, the act or document I am asking, is something that gives evidence that he expressly was created count by some liege lord, an act of investiture of the count-title)

I think that he was not count, as the situation was that he was given compensation when renouncing claims to inherit the duchy. Thus, he did not want to be a vassal of that duchy, presumably, and presumably his wish was given. Count indicates that he then became the duke's vassal - but we know that he was given his lordship to be independent. In feudal terminology, prince was lord of allodial estates. Counts, barons, dukes were holders of vassal fiefs, not allodial estates as such. Allodial estate was much more independent. For such reasons I believe he actually took the title of Prince (equivalent), not count nor made homage, AND received his portion as allodial. 62.78.106.188 14:17, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't know where the "count" comes from, either. This link makes it clear that the title of "Prince" didn't absolutely mean an allodial ruler, although I agree that in this case he was probably independent of Apulia. Looking at the later principality (granted as an appenage to Manfred on the death of Frederick II, held by him as a papal fief in 1154), I think it's clear that it became a fief of the Kingdom of Sicily (by conquest?) when Roger II consolidated the Hauteville possessions, but that is another article. Choess 04:17, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

Moved from Bohemund to Bohemond
I decided the be bold and move this and similar pages. There are two reasons for such a move. First, our hero (of course) was a Norman Italian and both the French and Italian Wikipedias use the "o" spelling. Second, "Bohemond Antioch" shows twice the English language Google hits as "Bohemund Antioch". Thanks, MapMaster 01:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I don't think that's necessary...this isn't the French or Italian Wikipedias, we don't have to adopt their spellings. Adam Bishop 01:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

 * My point is the Bohemond is the standard English spelling. It has twice the Google hits and is the spelling used by standard sources, including the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Encarta.  Amazon.com offers 499 books containing "Bohemond" and only 207 books containing "Bohemund".  I bring the French and Italian Wikipedias into this because it gives us a clue as to how the real Bohemond spelled his name.  If there is a reason to use the incorrect spelling of "Bohemund", please state so on this page.  MapMaster 03:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I checked more carefully and you are right, Bohemond is the more usual English spelling. I guess I was just used to seeing it here as -und. (However, -und is not really incorrect, we don't necessarily have to use the spellings adopted by other encyclopedias, and he probably spelled his own name in a multitude of ways - in Latin it appears as Boamundus, for example). Adam Bishop 07:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I also support Bohemond. Britannica is still (how long?) the most authoritative source for encyclopedias. Good. --Attilios 21:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Though it's good to see that this issue was solved pretty easily, I'll toss my (requested) two cents in anyway. My experience says that Bohemond is more common in English than Bohemund, though, of course, neither is wrong and spelling wasn't standardised any European language of his day. Thus, I support the current spelling and it should probably be the standard for all other figures of the same name. (In fact, I had created several other "Bohemond" pages a while ago even though "Bohemund" was used here.) Srnec 23:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Comparing Norman monarchies
"The Norman monarchy he founded in Antioch survived those in both England and Sicily." - I assume this regards the English monarchy as ceasing to be Norman with the Plantagenets. Though surely when quoting from a book, a page reference should be given ? -- Beardo (talk) 23:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Hey Beardo, I actually added that piece, but I see I neglected to add the page number. If you give me a few days I'll be with my book and I'll add it. Alternatively, I think it was the 2nd edition paperback, if you have a copy yourself. I think its good to include though, showing how stability in different parts of the world was changing! Cheers --Tefalstar (talk) 23:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

 * So, uh, how's looking up that page number going? May 12, 2021, and the link is still just a book title. 147.226.231.30 (talk) 05:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Biased?
From my understanding of the First Crusade, Bohemond was not a particularly good guy, especially in comparison to Raymond of Saint Gilles. It seems like he was mostly out to get wealth and power for himself rather than help ensure Christian access to holy places or protect the Byzantine Empire. Expert opinion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Forgind (talk • contribs) 16:10, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Birth place
I do not know where he was born. However, it is sure that self-published sources are not regarded reliable sources for WP purposes. Consequently, his place of birth should be verified. Borsoka (talk) 12:41, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
 * , please read reliable sources. Material published by an "an online gathering of men", or by a "lineage society" , or by a "free genealogy site on the web" are self-published and cannot be cited. Please remember all claims which are not substantiated by a reference to a reliable source can be deleted. 15:18, 29 May 2016 (UTC)Borsoka (talk)

 * Borsoka, if that is the case then a lot of information on Wikipedia would be deleted. These people have studied the history of these noblemen etc, so I can't understand why these sites are not acceptable. Tell me what types of sources are acceptable please. Aren't Encyclopedias put together by a "group" of people? Aren't books are put together by either 1 person or a "group" of people? Aren't most sites put together by a "group" of people? This is ridiculous, but don't worry, I will find out his actual birthplace for sure if you don't believe anything I reference. 17:31, 30 May 2016 (AEST)Moltafe (talk)

 * Yes, sooner or later most information that is not properly verified will be deleted. I suggest you should read WP:Reliable sources: books published by academic institutions are always reliable sources. UGC makes it clear that the web sites I referred to above could not be accepted as reliable sources. Borsoka (talk) 15:43, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Those websites almost certainly got their information from Wikipedia, since our own article said that he was born in San Marco Argentano for years starting in 2007. So even if they were correct, they can't be reliable sources for Wikipedia, because their source is Wikipedia. His father's main base of operations seems to have been Argentano, but that doesn't necessarily mean Bohemond was born there. I don't know of any source that says where Bohemund was born specifically, although it would certainly be interesting to find one. It's possible that it was just never recorded. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

 * OK, 2 references I now admit may be questionable, but the site reference of http://maccabeesociety.com/bohemond-i-prince-of-antioch, apparently has been authored by someone who has a PhD. What can I say? I will ask a well respected and internationally renowned medieval professor and scholar about this topic and see what he says. 18:34, 31 May 2016 (AEST) Moltafe (talk)

 * It doesn't matter if he has a PhD - he still got all of his information from an old version of this page. That guy apparently has a PhD in medieval philosophy, but he's certainly not an historian, and that website is definitely the least reliable out of any of the sources you proposed. I suppose that simply guessed that Bohemond was born in Argentano because that's where Robert Guiscard lived, but given that Daufer was banned from Wikipedia years ago, I don't see why we should trust anything he added without a source. But please let us know if you find anything. Which professor and scholar are you going to talk to? Adam Bishop (talk) 10:29, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think even a professor's view about Bohemond's birthplace can only be cited if that view was published, as per WP:Verify. Borsoka (talk) 12:04, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed! And if we found a primary source, a medieval document that actually states where he was born (whether Argentano or elsewhere), that would be original research and we still couldn't cite it here :) Adam Bishop (talk) 12:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * By the way, checking the other language Wikipedias, the French one does not mention a birthplace, German says he was "probably" born in Argentano (without citing a source), and Italian says he was named after San Marco Argentano "according to local tradition, without any historiographical or documentary basis". Adam Bishop (talk) 12:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
 * And I am pretty sure that one of the bearers of the local tradition was the editor who added this specific piece of information to the article. :) :) Borsoka (talk) 13:20, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

 * So apparently now we can honestly say that Bohemond has no official birthplace !! End of story !! Thank you Borsoka !! Moltafe (talk) 1:35, 1 June 2016 (AEST)
 * You are welcome. Yes, he is one of the thousands of historical figures whose place of birth is unknown. Borsoka (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

 * Here I find reference to Bohemond being baptised Mark because he was born at San Marco. It is a Google snippet from the Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania (1967). Alas, I cannot even identify the paper or author, since no index of this journal appears to be online, nor are there archives going back that far. The citation is to Malaterra, who does not mention San Marco in that passage, only Bohemond's birth, parentage and two names. I cannot identify the Chalandon reference. It is not to any of his usual works that I can search. None of them mention Bohemond's birthplace that I can see. Or have Bohemond-relevant information on p. 381. It's too bad, the article would be a reliable source for this piece of speculation. Srnec (talk) 01:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

 * I can see that journal online here...but only in PDFs of the individual pages, which is pretty inconvenient. I'm not sure where the article starts or ends! The only work by Chalanadon that seems to be mentioned in there is Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile, which is on archive.org, but I don't see anything on the cited page 381. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:46, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

 * The citation would be Emanuele Conti, "L'abbazia della Matina (note storiche)", Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 35 (1967), pp. 11–30. I don't know if it's worth adding, but it seems like a reasonable speculation to me. Srnec (talk) 22:21, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

 * Though the birthplace is somewhat hard to prove, the "so called" evidence makes a strong case that San Marco Argentano could be his birthplace. He could have been born in Calabria due to his father living there while conquering the region. He turned San Marco Argentano into a Norman stronghold. Bohemond was christened Mark after the town's patron saint. It could be coincidence but who knows?? Moltafe (talk) 21:37, 4 June 2016 (AEST)

"of Otranto"?
Sources calling him Bohemond of Taranto outnumber those using Bohemond of Otranto by an order of magnitude. It is obvious why he is called the former, but is there a reason behind the latter or is it perhaps an error? Srnec (talk) 23:16, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

No mention of the language he spoke?
Did he speak French like his father and other Normans in France and England, or had he adopted local Italian language of the place he was born? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.150.142.207 (talk) 16:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

 * Rightwisely, you should mean the Normans in Normandy NOT “in France” Anyway, a great deal of socalled ‘Normans’ in England had Breton and Flemish has their mothertungs. Other than the aforesaid, they spoke Latin and Anglo-Norman. Furthermore, William the Conqueror/Bastard (also known as William the “Mamzer” in Normandy) was a crypto-Jew and likely spoke/chanted in an Afro-Semitic tongue like his mother. 2A00:23C7:9C97:5D01:80E7:F9A:3EEB:5E7B (talk) 00:24, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bohemond I of Antioch


text:
Open-end fund

Open-end fund (or open-ended fund) is a collective investment scheme that can issue and redeem shares at any time. An investor will generally purchase shares in the fund directly from the fund itself, rather than from the existing shareholders. The term contrasts with a closed-end fund, which typically issues at the outset all the shares that it will issue, with such shares usually thereafter being tradable among investors.

Open-ended funds are available in most developed countries, but the terminology and operating rules vary. US mutual funds, UK unit trusts and OEICs, European SICAVs, and hedge funds are all examples of open-ended funds.

The price at which shares in an open-ended fund are issued or can be redeemed will vary in proportion to the net asset value of the fund and so directly reflects its performance.

Fees
There may be a percentage charge levied on the purchase of shares or units. Some of these fees are called an initial charge (UK) or 'front-end load' (US). Some fees are charged by a fund on the sale of these units, called a 'close-end load,' that may be waived after several years of owning the fund. Some of the fees cover the cost of distributing the fund by paying commission to the adviser or broker that arranged the purchase. These fees are commonly referred to as 12b-1 fees in US.

Not all fund have initial charges; if there are no such charges levied, the fund is "no-load" (US).

These charges may represent profit for the fund manager or go back into the fund.

Active management
Most open-end funds are actively managed, meaning that a portfolio manager picks the securities to buy, although index funds are now growing in popularity. Index funds are open-end funds that attempt to replicate an index, such as the S&P 500, and therefore do not allow the manager to actively choose securities to buy.

Net asset value
The price per share, or NAV (net asset value), is calculated by dividing the fund's assets minus liabilities by the number of shares outstanding. This is usually calculated at the end of every trading day.

Forward Pricing Rule 22c-1
Based on the forward pricing rule (22c-1); funds and their principal underwriters, and dealers must sell interests in the fund based on the Net Asset Value (NAV) which is calculated daily. This helps to mitigate shareholder dilution, as well as increasing efficiency.

Hedge funds
Hedge funds are typically open-ended and actively managed. However, investors can typically redeem shares only monthly or less frequently (e.g., quarterly or semi-annually).

Examples
U.S. mutual funds:
 * T. Rowe Price
 * Fidelity Investments' Magellan
 * The Vanguard Group's S&P 500
 * PIMCO Total Return
 * WorldCommodity Fund

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

title: Open-end fund


text:
Closed-end fund

A closed-end fund, also known as a closed-end mutual fund,   is an investment vehicle  fund that raises capital by issuing a fixed number of shares at its inception, and then invests that capital in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. After inception it is closed to new capital, although fund managers sometimes employ leverage. Investors can buy and sell the existing shares in secondary markets.

In the United States, closed-end funds sold publicly must be registered under both the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940.

U.S.-based closed-end funds are referred to under the law as closed-end companies and form one of three SEC-recognized types of investment companies along with mutual funds and unit investment trusts.

Like their better-known open-ended cousins, closed-end funds are usually sponsored by a fund management company. The fund's charter, prospectus and the applicable government regulations specify the types of investments the fund manager is permitted to buy. Some funds invest in stocks, others in bonds, and some in very specific things (for instance, tax-exempt bonds issued by the state of Florida in the USA).

Distinguishing features
A closed-end fund differs from an open-end mutual fund in that:
 * Closed-end fund shares are traded on stock exchanges, and can be purchased and sold through brokers at any time during market hours. An open-end fund can usually be traded only by transacting directly with the investment company that manages the fund, at a time of day specified by the investment company, and the dealing price will usually not be known in advance.
 * A closed-end fund usually trades at a premium or discount to the market value of its assets (known as net asset value, or NAV). In contrast, the price of an open-end fund cannot fall below net asset value, because the funds are required to transact with investors only at net asset value.
 * Closed-end fund investors who wish to exit the investment can do so only by selling the funds' shares to other investors on stock exchanges. In contrast, open-end funds are redeemed directly by the fund at net asset value.
 * In the United States, a closed-end company can own unlisted securities.

Another distinguishing feature of a closed-end fund is the common use of leverage (gearing) to obtain new money to invest after the fund's inception. This can be done by issuing preferred stock, commercial paper or rights offerings. Leverage amplifies gains when the market prices of the fund's investments rise, but it also amplifies losses when market prices decrease. This increases the volatility of a leveraged fund's net asset value, compared with an unleveraged peer.

The amount of leverage a fund uses is expressed as a percent of total fund assets (e.g. if it has a 25% leverage ratio, that means that for each $100 of total assets under management, $75 is equity and $25 is debt). In some cases, fund managers charge management fees based on the total managed assets of the fund, which includes leverage. This further reduces the income benefit of leverage to the common shareholder, while retaining the additional volatility.

Leveraged funds can seem to have higher expense ratios—a common way that investors compare funds—than their non-leveraged peers. Some investment analysts advocate that expenses attributable to the use of leverage should be considered a reduction of investment income rather than an expense, and publish adjusted ratios.

Since stock in closed-end funds is traded like other stock, an investor trading them will pay a brokerage commission similar to that paid when trading other stocks (as opposed to commissions on open-ended mutual funds, where the commission will vary based on the share class chosen and the method of purchasing the fund). In other words, closed-end funds typically do not have sales-based share classes with different commission rates and annual fees. The main exception is loan-participation funds.

Comparison to exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
Closed-end funds are traded on exchanges, and in that respect they are like exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but there are important differences between these two kinds of security. The price of a closed-end fund's shares is completely determined by investor demand, and this price often diverges substantially from the NAV of the fund assets. In contrast, the market price of an ETF trades in a narrow range very close to its net asset value, because the structure of ETFs allows major market participants to redeem shares of an ETF for a "basket" of the fund's underlying assets. This feature could in theory lead to potential arbitrage profits if the market price of the ETF were to diverge substantially from its NAV. The market prices of closed-end funds are often 10% to 20% higher or lower than their NAV, while the market price of an ETF is typically within 1% of its NAV. Since the market downturn of late 2008, a number of fixed income ETFs have traded at premiums of roughly 2% to 3% above their NAV.

Discounts and premiums
Closed-end fund shares often trade at prices that deviate from the market values of the securities in their portfolios. Such funds have a long history of trading at a discount to market value, although they may also trade at a premium. Reasons for the tendency towards discount pricing are thought to include:
 * investor perception that the fund's management fees are too high, or that future performance will be disappointing;
 * stockbrokers' reluctance to recommend closed-end funds to customers because other investments such as mutual funds generate higher sales commissions;
 * concerns that closed-end fund net asset values overstate the true market value of the underlying investments, for example because the fund holds illiquid securities (such as private placements or restricted stock), or because net asset value does not reflect capital gains taxes that will be incurred when the fund sells the underlying investments;
 * the practice of deducting fund expenses before dividends are distributed to investors, which makes the fund's yield lower than would be obtained by buying the identical stocks in the open market;
 * the belief that closed-end funds tend to attract less astute individual investors, rather than professional or institutional investors, and that individuals tend to be "noise traders", whose expectations about future returns are too high in some periods and too low in others, or who believe they have special information that provides them with insight about future trends; and
 * individual investors' tendency to sell closed-end funds near the end of the year, which causes discounts to widen near the end of the year.

However, financial economists Zvi Bodie, Alex Kane and Alan J. Marcus have opined that the various hypotheses put forth do not fully explain the persistence of discount pricing.

Recent trends
The Herzfeld Closed-End Average traded at a discount to net asset value during most of calendar year 2022 and all of 2023, according to the American weekly financial newspaper Barron's. This average measures 15 equally-weighted closed-end funds based in the U.S. that invest primarily in U.S. equities.

Examples
Among the biggest, long-running closed end funds are:
 * Adams Express Company (NYSE:ADX)
 * Witan Investment Trust plc (LSE:WTAN)
 * Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (LSE:SMT)
 * Tri-Continental Corporation (NYSE:TY)
 * Gabelli Equity Trust (NYSE:GAB)
 * General American Investors Company (NYSE:GAM)

title: Closed-end fund


text:
Holy Lance

The Holy Lance, also known as the Lance of Longinus (named after Saint Longinus), the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Spear, is alleged to be the lance that pierced the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross during his crucifixion. As with other instruments of the Passion, the lance is only briefly mentioned in the Christian Bible, but later became the subject of extrabiblical traditions in the medieval church. Relics purported to be the lance began to appear as early as the 6th century, originally in Jerusalem. By the Late Middle Ages, relics identified as the spearhead of the Holy Lance (or fragments thereof) had been described throughout Europe. Several of these artifacts are still preserved to this day.

Holy Lance relics have typically been used for religious ceremonies, but at times some of them have been considered to be guarantees of victory in battle. For example, Henry the Fowler's lance was credited for winning the Battle of Riade, and the Crusaders believed their discovery of a Holy Lance brought them a favorable end to the Siege of Antioch.

In the modern era, at least four major relics are claimed to be the Holy Lance or parts of it. They are located in Rome, Vienna, Vagharshapat and Antioch. The most prominent Holy Lance relic has been the one in Vienna, adorned with a distinctive gold cuff. This version of the lance is on public display with the rest of the Imperial Regalia at the Hofburg.

Biblical references
The lance (λόγχη, ) is mentioned in the Gospel of John, but not the Synoptic Gospels. The gospel states that the Romans planned to break Jesus' legs, a practice known as crurifragium, which was a method of hastening death during a crucifixion. Because it was the eve of the Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown), the followers of Jesus needed to "entomb" him because of Sabbath laws. Just before they did so, they noticed that Jesus was already dead and that there was no reason to break his legs ("and no bone will be broken" ). To make sure that he was dead, a Roman soldier (named in extra-Biblical tradition as Longinus) stabbed him in the side.

"One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance (λόγχη), and immediately there came out blood and water."

The name of the soldier who pierced Christ's side with a is not given in the Gospel of John, but in the oldest known references to the legend, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus appended to late manuscripts of the 4th century Acts of Pilate, the soldier is identified as a centurion and called Longinus (making the spear's Latin name Lancea Longini).

A form of the name Longinus occurs in the Rabula Gospels in the year 586. In a miniature, the name ΛΟΓΙΝΟΣ (LOGINOS) is written above the head of the soldier who is thrusting his lance into Christ's side. This is one of the earliest records of the name, if the inscription is not a later addition.

Rome

A Holy Lance relic is preserved at Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, in a loggia carved into the pillar above the statue of Saint Longinus.

The earliest known references to Holy Lance relics date to the 6th century. The Breviary of Jerusalem (circa 530) describes the lance on display at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In his Expositio Psalmorum (ca. 540-548), Cassiodorus asserts the continued presence of the lance in Jerusalem. A report by the Piacenza pilgrim (ca. 570) places the lance in the Church of Zion. Gregory of Tours described the lance and other relics of the Passion in his Libri Miraculorum (ca. 574-594). The holy lance is also supposed to have been stolen from Rome by Alaric and his Visigoths during their plundering in August 410. Therefore it could have been buried together with Alaric among tons of gold, silver and the golden menorah in Cosenza, southern Italy in the fall of 410. Nobody has found Alaric’s tomb and treasure that was probably emptied by the Byzantines, and therefore the holy lance could possibly appear some hundred years later in Jerusalem.

In 614, Jerusalem was captured by the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz. The Chronicon Paschale says that the Holy Lance was among the relics captured, but one of Shahrbaraz's associates gave it to Nicetas who brought it to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople later that year. However, De locis sanctis, describing the pilgrimage of Arculf in 670, places the lance in Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Arculf is the last of the medieval pilgrims to report the lance in Jerusalem, as Willibald and Bernard made no mention of it.

By the middle of the 10th century, a lance relic was venerated in Constantinople at the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. The relic was likely viewed by some of the soldiers and clergy participating in the First Crusade, adding to the confusion surrounding the emergence of another Holy Lance at Antioch in 1098. During the Siege of Tripoli, Raymond of Toulose reportedly brought the Antioch lance to Constantinople, and presented it to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Scholars disagree on how this presumably awkward situation was resolved. Steven Runciman argued that the Byzantine court regarded the Antioch relic as a nail (ἧλος), relying on Raymond's ignorance of the Greek language to avoid offending him. Alternatively, Edgar Robert Ashton Sewter believed that Alexios intended to denounce the crusaders' lance as a fraud, and that this was accomplished when Prince Bohemond I of Antioch was compelled in 1108  to swear an oath to him on the other lance. Whether Alexios kept the Antioch lance or returned it to Raymond is uncertain. Several 12th century documents state that a single Holy Lance was among the relics at Constantinople, without any details that could identify it as either the crusaders' discovery or the Byzantine spear.

According to Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, a fragment of the Holy Lance was set into the icon that Alexios V Doukas lost in battle with Henry of Flanders in 1204. The capture of this icon by Henry's forces was considered important to many contemporary sources on the Fourth Crusade. In addition to the crusaders' report to Pope Innocent III, the incident was documented by Geoffrey of Villehardouin,  the Devastatio Constantinopolitana,  Niketas Choniates,  Robert de Clari,  Ralph of Coggeshall,  and Robert of Auxerre. However, none of these sources mention the icon bearing any relics, whereas Alberic claimed it was adorned with the lance fragment, a portion of the Holy Shroud, one of Jesus's deciduous teeth, and other relics from thirty martyrs. Modern historians have regarded Alberic's account with some skepticism, characterizing it as "fanciful"  and "pure invention." In any case, after the battle the crusaders sent the icon to Cîteaux Abbey,  but there is no record of whether it reached that destination.

Following the sack of Constantinople, Robert de Clari described the spoils won by the newly-established Latin Empire, including "the iron of the lance with which Our Lord had His side pierced," in the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. However by the 1230s, the Latin Empire's financial state had grown desperate. In 1239, Baldwin II arranged to sell Constantinople's Crown of Thorns relic to King Louis IX of France. Over the next several years, Baldwin sold a total of twenty-two relics to Louis. The Holy Lance was included in the final lot, which probably arrived at Paris in 1242. All of these relics were later enshrined in the Sainte Chapelle. During the French Revolution they were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale, but the lance subsequently disappeared.

Despite the transfer of the Holy Lance to Paris, various travelers continued to report its presence in Constantinople throughout the late Byzantine period. Of particular interest, John Mandeville described the lance relics in both Paris and Constantinople, stating that the latter was much larger than the former. Although the authenticity of Mandeville's travelogue is questionable, the widespread popularity of the work demonstrates that the existence of multiple Holy Lance relics was public knowledge.

The relics remaining in Constantinople, including the lance, were presumably seized by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 when he conquered the city. In 1492, his son Bayezid II sent the lance to Pope Innocent VIII, to encourage the pope to continue to keep his brother and rival Cem prisoner. At this time great doubts as to its authenticity were felt at Rome, as Johann Burchard records, because of the presence of other rival lances in Paris, Nuremberg (see Holy Lance in Vienna below), and Armenia (see Holy Lance in Echmiadzin below). This relic has never since left Rome, and its resting place is at Saint Peter's. Innocent's tomb, created by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, features a bronze effigy of the pope holding the spear blade he received from Bayezid.

In the mid-18th century Pope Benedict XIV states that he obtained an exact drawing of the Saint Chapelle lance, to compare it with the spearhead in St. Peter's. He concluded that former relic was the broken point missing from the latter, and that the two fragments had originally formed one blade.

Vienna
The Holy Lance in Vienna is displayed in the Imperial Treasury or Weltliche Schatzkammer (lit. Worldly Treasure Room) at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. It is the head a typical winged lance of the Carolingian dynasty. The shaft was presumably lost or destroyed by the reign of Conrad II (1024–1039), who commissioned the Reichskreuz ("Imperial Cross") to serve as a reliquary for the spearhead.

The spearhead is wrapped in a distinctive gold cuff, added by Charles IV around 1354. The cuff is inscribed with the Latin text "LANCEA ET CLAVVS DOMINI" ("The lance and nail of the Lord"), affirming that the lance was once used by Longinus and that one of the Holy Nails has been incorporated into the spearhead. The gold cuff covers an older, silver cuff produced for Henry IV between 1084 and 1105, which also refers to the Holy Nail but identifies the spearhead as the lance of Saint Maurice. Gilded stripes on both sides of the silver cuff bear another Latin inscription: "CLAVVS DOMINICVS HEINRICVS D[EI] GR[ATI]A TERCIVS / ROMANO[RVM] IMPERATOR AVG[VSTVS] HOC ARGEN / TVM IVSSIT / FABRICARl AD CONFIRMATIONE[M] / CLAVI D[OMI]NI ET LANCEE SANCTI MAVRI / CII // SANCTVS MAVRICIVS" ("Nail of the Lord Henry by the Grace of God the Third, Emperor of the Romans and Augustus, ordered this silver piece to be made to reinforce the Nail of the Lord and the Lance of St. Maurice / Saint Maurice"). The inscription refers to Henry IV, the fourth of his name to reign as King of Germany, as "the third" because he was the third of his name crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

According to Liutprand of Cremona, the first German monarch to obtain the lance was King Henry the Fowler who purchased it in 926,  from King Rudolf II of Burgundy. Rudolf is supposed to have received the lance as a gift from a "Count Samson,", about whom nothing else is known. Liutprand associated the lance not with Longinus, but with Constantine the Great, citing a claim that the Roman emperor used the Holy Nails, discovered by his mother Helena, to make crosses in the middle of the spearhead. The description given by Liutprand closely corresponds to the relic kept in Vienna today.

An alternative account of how Henry received the lance is offered by Widukind of Corvey. According to Widukind, King Conrad I of Germany made arrangements on his deathbed in 918 to send his royal insignia, including the Holy Lance, to Henry, who would succeed him as king of East Francia. This version of events has been rejected by historians.

On 15 March 933, Henry carried his lance as he led his forces against the Magyars in the Battle of Riade. From that point forward, the Ottonian dynasty regarded the lance as a talisman guaranteeing victory. The timing of the battle—on the feast day of Longinus—indicates that by this time Henry associated the relic with the lance used in the crucifixion. Along the same lines, it may be telling that Henry's son Otto the Great fought the Battle of Birten in the first half of March 939. However, in 955 Otto sought support from Saint Lawrence to secure victory in the Battle of Lechfeld, which was planned to occur on Lawrence's feast day. This shift may have resulted from the increased diplomatic ties between Germany and the Byzantine Empire circa 949/950. As the Germans became aware of the Byzantine version of the Holy Lance, it became politically inconvenient to associate the Ottonian lance with Longinus. By 1008 the lance was identified with that of Saint Maurice, who had been venerated by Otto the Great.

Otto III commissioned two replicas of the lance. One of these was given to Prince Vajk of Hungary in 996, who was later crowned King Stephen I. The other was presented to Duke of Poland, Bolesław I, at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000. The Polish lance is currently displayed in the John Paul II Cathedral Museum in Kraków. The fate of the Hungarian lance is less clear. When Stephen's successor, Peter Orseolo was deposed in 1041, he sought the aid of German king Henry III, who captured the lance in the Battle of Ménfő. Whether Henry returned the lance to Peter upon his restoration is uncertain. Shortly before World War I, a gold-inlaid spearhead, identified as a Germanic work from around the year 1000, was dredged from the Danube River near Budapest. The gold inlay suggests that this artifact could be Stephen's lance replica, but this has not been confirmed.

In 1424, Sigismund had a collection of relics, including the lance, moved from his capital in Prague to his birthplace, Nuremberg, and decreed them to be kept there forever. This collection was called the Imperial Regalia (Reichskleinodien).

When the French Revolutionary army approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796, the local authorities turned over the Imperial Regalia to Johann Alois von Hügel, Chief Commissary of the Imperial Diet. Baron von Hügel took the regalia to Ratisbon for safekeeping, but by 1800 that city was also under threat of invasion, so he relocated them again to Passau, Linz, and Vienna. When the French entered Vienna in 1805, the collection was moved again to Hungary, before ultimately returning to Vienna. These movements were conducted in secret, as the status of the regalia had not been resolved amid plans for the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. When Nuremberg later appealed for the return of the regalia, the city's requests were easily dismissed by the Austrian Empire.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum has dated the lance to the 8th century. Robert Feather, an English metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested it for a documentary in January 2003. Based on X-ray diffraction, fluorescence tests, and other noninvasive procedures, he dated the main body of the spear to the 7th century at the earliest. Feather stated in the same documentary that an iron pin – long claimed to be a nail from the crucifixion, hammered into the blade and set off by tiny brass crosses – was "consistent" in length and shape with a 1st-century AD Roman nail.

Not long afterward, researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Archeology in Vienna used X-ray and other technology to examine a range of lances, and determined that the Vienna lance dates from around the 8th to the beginning of the 9th century, with the nail apparently being of the same metal, and ruled out the possibility of it dating back to the 1st century AD.

The Hofburg spear has been re-imagined in popular culture as a magical talisman whose powers may be used for good or evil.

Vagharshapat

A Holy Lance is conserved in Vagharshapat (previously known as Echmiadzin), the religious capital of Armenia. It was previously held in the monastery of Geghard.The first source that mentions it is a text Holy Relics of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in a thirteenth-century Armenian manuscript. According to this text, the spear which pierced Jesus was to have been brought to Armenia by the Apostle Thaddeus. The manuscript does not specify precisely where it was kept, but the Holy Relics gives a description that exactly matches the lance, the monastery gate (since the thirteenth century precisely), and the name of Geghardavank (Monastery of the Holy Lance).

In 1655, the French traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the first Westerner to see this relic in Armenia. In 1805, the Russians captured the monastery and the relic was moved to Tchitchanov Geghard, Tbilisi, Georgia.

It was later returned to Armenia, and is still on display at the Manoogian museum in Vagharshapat, enshrined in a 17th-century reliquary. Every year during the commemoration of the apostles St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew the relic is brought out for worship.

Antioch

During the June 1098 Siege of Antioch, a monk named Peter Bartholomew reported that he had a vision in which St. Andrew told him that the Holy Lance was buried in the Church of St. Peter in Antioch. After much digging in the cathedral, Bartholomew allegedly discovered a lance. Despite the doubts of many, including the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy, many of the crusaders credited the discovery of the lance for their subsequent victory in the Battle of Antioch, which broke the siege and secured the city.

Greek Orthodox sources such as the biography of patriarch Christopher indicate that a relic thought to be the Holy Lance was among the treasures of the church of St. Peter as early as the 10th century. Historian Klaus-Peter Todt has suggested this relic could have been buried to hide it from Seljuk forces in 1084, allowing the crusaders to find it in 1098.

Literary

The Holy Lance has been conflated with the bleeding lance depicted in the unfinished 12th century romance Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes. The story also refers to a javelot that has wounded the Fisher King, which may or may not be intended to be one and the same with the bleeding lance. Chrétien ascribes supernaturally destructive powers to the bleeding spear, which are inconsistent with any Christian tradition. Nevertheless, the continuations of Chrétien's poem attempted to explain the mysteries of the bleeding spear by identifying it with the lance from John 19:34.

Chrétien's Perceval was adapted by Wolfram von Eschenbach into the German epic Parzival. Like Chrétien, Wolfram depicts the bleeding lance in a manner that cannot easily be reconciled with the spear of Longinus. Parzival became the primary source for Richard Wagner's 1882 opera Parsifal, in which the Fisher King is wounded by the spear that pierced Jesus's side.

title: Holy Lance


text:
Denis Healey

Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey, (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 and as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970; he remains the longest-serving Defence Secretary to date. He was a Member of Parliament from 1952 to 1992, and was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983. To the public at large, Healey became well known for his bushy eyebrows, his avuncular manner and his creative turns of phrase.

Healey attended the University of Oxford and served as a Major in the Second World War. He was later an agent for the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the Foreign Office dedicated to spreading anti-communist propaganda during the early Cold War. Healey was first elected to Parliament in a by-election in 1952 for the seat of Leeds South East. He moved to the seat of Leeds East at the 1955 election, which he represented until his retirement at the 1992 election.

After Labour's victory at the 1964 election, he was appointed to the Cabinet by Prime Minister Harold Wilson as Defence Secretary; he held this role until Labour's defeat at the 1970 election, making him the longest-serving Secretary of State for Defence to date. When Labour returned to power after the 1974 election, Wilson appointed Healey Chancellor of the Exchequer. He stood for the leadership of the Labour Party in the election to replace Wilson in March 1976, but lost to James Callaghan; Callaghan retained Healey as Chancellor in his new government. During his time as Chancellor, Healey notably sought out an international loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the British economy, which imposed external conditions on public spending.

Healey stood a second time for the leadership of the Labour Party in November 1980, but narrowly lost to Michael Foot. Foot immediately chose Healey as his Deputy Leader, but after the Labour Party agreed a series of changes to the rules governing leadership elections, Tony Benn launched a challenge to Healey for the role; the election was bitterly contested throughout most of 1981, and Healey was able to beat the challenge by less than 1%. Standing down as Deputy Leader after Labour's landslide defeat at the 1983 election, Healey remained in the Shadow Cabinet until 1987, and entered the House of Lords soon after his retirement from Parliament in 1992. Healey died in 2015 at the age of 98, having become the oldest sitting member of the House of Lords, and the last surviving member of Wilson's first government formed in 1964.

Early life
Denis Winston Healey was born in Mottingham, Kent, son of William Healey (1886-1977) and Winifred Mary (1889-1988), née Powell. The family moved to Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire when he was five. His middle name honoured Winston Churchill. His father, the son of a tailor from Glenfarne, County Leitrim, was an engineering mechanic who worked his way up from humble origins, winning an engineering scholarship to Leeds University and qualifying to teach engineering, eventually becoming head of Keighley Technical School.

Healey had one brother, Terence Blair Healey (1920–1998), known as Terry. Healey's family often spent the summer in Scotland during his youth.

Education
Healey received early education at Bradford Grammar School. In 1936 he won an exhibition scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, to read Greats. He there became involved in Labour politics, although he was not active in the Oxford Union Society. Also while at Oxford, Healey joined the Communist Party in 1937 during the Great Purge, but left in 1940 after the Fall of France.

At Oxford, Healey met future Prime Minister Edward Heath (then known as "Teddy"), whom he succeeded as president of Balliol College Junior Common Room, and who became a lifelong friend and political rival.

Healey achieved a double first degree, awarded in 1940. He was a Harmsworth Senior Scholar at Merton College, Oxford in 1940.

Second World War
After graduation, Healey served in the Second World War as a gunner in the Royal Artillery before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in April 1941. Serving with the Royal Engineers, he saw action in the North African campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943) and the Italian campaign (1943–1945) and was the military landing officer ("beach master") for the British assault brigade at Anzio in 1944. He was twice mentioned in dispatches during this campaign.

Healey became an MBE in 1945. He left the service with the rank of Major. He declined an offer to remain in the army, with the rank of Lieutenant colonel, as part of the team researching the history of the Italian campaign under Colonel David Hunt. He also decided against taking up a senior scholarship at Balliol, which might have led to an academic career.

Early career
Healey joined the Labour Party. Still in uniform, he gave a strongly left-wing speech to the Labour Party conference in 1945, declaring, "the upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent" shortly before the general election in which he narrowly failed to win the Conservative-held seat of Pudsey and Otley, doubling the Labour vote but losing by 1,651 votes.

He became secretary of the international department of the Labour Party in 1945, becoming a foreign policy adviser to Labour leaders and establishing contacts with socialists across Europe. He was a strong opponent of the Communist Party of Great Britain at home and the Soviet Union internationally. From 1948 to 1960 he was a councillor for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 1958 until 1961. He was a member of the Fabian Society executive from 1954 until 1961. Healey used his position as the Labour Party's International Secretary to promote the Korean War on behalf of British state propagandists, used British intelligence agencies to attack Marxist leaders within UK trade unions, and to exploit his position in government to publish his books through IRD propaganda fronts.

Healey was one of the leading players in the Königswinter conference that was organised by Lilo Milchsack that was credited with helping to heal the bad memories after the end of the Second World War. Healey met Hans von Herwarth, the ex soldier Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin and future German President Richard von Weizsäcker and other leading West German decision makers. The conference also included other leading British thinkers like Richard Crossman and the journalist Robin Day.

Member of Parliament
Healey was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Leeds South East at a by-election in February 1952, with a majority of 7,000 votes. Following constituency boundary changes, he was elected for Leeds East at the 1955 general election, holding that seat until he retired as an MP in 1992. During these years, Healey was close friends with the Rev. Canon Ernest Southcott, and Douglas Gabb, who would go on to become Lord Mayor of Leeds.

He was a moderate on the right during the series of splits in the Labour Party in the 1950s. He was a supporter and friend of Hugh Gaitskell. He persuaded Gaitskell to temper his initial support for British military action in 1956 when the Suez Canal was seized by the Nasserist Egypt, resulting in the Suez Crisis. When Gaitskell died in 1963, he was horrified at the idea of Gaitskell's volatile deputy, George Brown, leading Labour, saying "He was like immortal Jemima; when he was good he was very good but when he was bad he was horrid". In the 1963 Labour Party leadership election, he voted for James Callaghan in the first ballot and Harold Wilson in the second. Healey thought Wilson would unite the Labour Party and lead it to victory in the next general election. He didn't think Brown was capable of doing either. He was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Defence after the creation of the position in 1964.

Defence Secretary
Following Labour's victory in the 1964 general election, Healey served as Secretary of State for Defence under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He was responsible for 450,000 British Armed Forces uniformed servicemen and women, and for 406,000 civil servants stationed around the globe. He was best known for his economising, liquidating most of Britain's military role outside of Europe, and cancelling expensive projects. The cause was not a fiscal crisis but rather a decision to shift money and priorities to the domestic budget and maintain a commitment to NATO. He cut defence expenditure, scrapping the carrier HMS Centaur (R06) and the reconstructed HMS Victorious (R38) in 1967, cancelling the proposed CVA-01 fleet-carrier replacement and, just before Labour's defeat in 1970, downgrading HMS Hermes (R12) to a commando carrier. He cancelled the fifth planned Polaris submarine. He also cancelled the production of the Hawker Siddeley P.1154 and HS 681 aircraft and, more controversially, both the production of the BAC TSR-2 and subsequent purchase of the F-111 in lieu.

Of the scrapped Royal Navy aircraft carriers, Healey commented that to most ordinary seamen they were just "floating slums" and "too vulnerable". He continued postwar Conservative governments' reliance on strategic and tactical nuclear deterrence for the Navy, RAF and West Germany and supported the sale of advanced arms abroad, including to regimes such as those in Pahlavi Iran, Libya, Chile, and apartheid South Africa, to which he supplied nuclear-capable Buccaneer S.2 strike bombers and approved a repeat order. This brought him into serious conflict with Wilson, who had, initially, also supported the policy. Healey later said he had made the wrong decision on selling arms to South Africa.

In January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Wilson and Healey announced that the two large British fleet carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Eagle would be scrapped in 1972. They also announced that British troops would be withdrawn in 1971 and the British military and navy bases in South East Asia, "East of Aden", closed, large facilities in Malaysia and Singapore and the Persian Gulf and the Maldives. The next Prime Minister Edward Heath slowed the implementation of the policy, with 5/6 frigates on station East of Suez until 1976, when Healey as Chancellor used the IMF crisis to withdraw the Royal Navy frigates attached to the Five Power Defence Arrangements squadron and the Hong Kong Guard frigate, HMS Chichester (F59). Healey also authorised the removal of the Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago and authorised the building of the United States military base at Diego Garcia. Following Labour's defeat in the 1970 general election, he became Shadow Defence Secretary.

Chancellor of the Exchequer
Healey was appointed Shadow Chancellor in April 1972 after Roy Jenkins resigned in a row over the European Economic Community (Common Market). At the Labour Party conference on 1 October 1973, he said, "I warn you that there are going to be howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings". In a speech in Lincoln on 18 February 1974, Healey went further, promising he would "squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak." He alleged that Lord Carrington, the Conservative Secretary of State for Energy, had made £10m profit from selling agricultural land at prices 30 to 60 times as high as it would command as farming land. When accused by colleagues including Eric Heffer of putting Labour's chances of winning the next election in jeopardy through his tax proposals, Healey said the party and the country must face the consequences of Labour's policy of the redistribution of income and wealth; "That is what our policy is, the party must face the realities of it".

Healey became Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1974 after Labour returned to power as a minority government. His tenure is sometimes divided into Healey Mark I and Healey Mark II. The divide is marked by his decision, taken with Prime Minister James Callaghan, to seek an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and submit the British economy to IMF supervision. The loan was negotiated and agreed in November and December 1976, and announced in Parliament on 15 December 1976. Within some parts of the Labour Party the transition from Healey Mark I (which had seen a proposal for a wealth tax) to Healey Mark II (associated with government-specified wage control) was regarded as a betrayal. Healey's policy of increasing benefits for the poor meant those earning over £4,000 per year would be taxed more heavily. His first budget saw increases in food subsidies, pensions and other benefits.

When Harold Wilson stood down as Leader of the Labour Party in 1976 Healey stood in the contest to elect the new leader. On the first ballot he came only fifth out of six candidates. However, he also contested the second round, coming third of the three candidates but increasing his vote somewhat.

Deputy Leader of the Labour Party
Labour lost the general election to the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher in May 1979, following the Winter of Discontent during which Britain had faced a large number of strikes. On 12 June 1979 Healey was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Healey won the most votes in the 1979 Shadow Cabinet elections which followed and The Glasgow Herald suggested that this showed that he was the "strongest contender" to succeed Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party.

When Callaghan stood down as Labour leader in November 1980, Healey was the favourite to win the Labour Party leadership election, decided by Labour MPs. In September an opinion poll had found that when asked who would make the best prime minister if Healey were Labour leader, 45% chose Healey over 39% for Thatcher. However, he lost to Michael Foot. He seems to have taken the support of the right of the party for granted; in one notable incident, Healey was reputed to have told the right-wing Manifesto Group they must vote for him as they had "nowhere else to go". When Mike Thomas, the MP for Newcastle East defected to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he said he had been tempted to send Healey a telegram saying he had found "somewhere else to go". Four Labour MPs who defected to the SDP in early 1981 later said they voted for Foot in order to give the Labour Party an unelectable left-wing leader, thus helping their newly established party.

In an essay addressing why Healey did not become Prime Minister (or Labour leader) Steve Richards states that in 1980 Healey, not Foot, was widely expected by the media and many political figures to be the next Labour leader. Richards also notes that of by this point his main rivals as potential leaders from the right of the party from 1976 and earlier, Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, were no longer in contention for the position with the former out of parliament and the latter having died in 1977. However he also argues that while "Healey was widely seen as the obvious successor to Callaghan", and that sections of the media ultimately reacted with "disbelief" at Labour not choosing him to be their leader, the decision to opt for Foot "was not as perverse as it seemed". He argues Labour MPs were looking for a figure from the left who could unite the wider party with the leadership which Healey could not do. Richards believes that Foot was not a "tribal politician" and had proved he could work with those of different ideologies and had been a loyal deputy to Callaghan and so came to be "seen as the unity candidate" which allowed him to defeat Healey.

Healey was returned unopposed as deputy leader to Foot, but the next year was challenged by Tony Benn under the new election system, one in which individual members and trades unions voted alongside sitting members of parliament. The contest was seen as a battle for the soul of the Labour Party, and long debate over the summer of 1981 ended on 27 September with Healey winning by 50.4% to Benn's 49.6%. The narrowness of Healey's majority can be attributed to the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) delegation to the Labour Party conference. Ignoring its members, who had shown two-to-one majority support for Healey, it cast the union's block vote (the largest in the union section) for Benn. A significant factor in Benn's narrow loss, however, was the abstention of 20 MPs from the left-wing Tribune Group, which split as a result. Healey attracted just enough support from other unions, Constituency Labour Parties, and Labour MPs to win.

Healey was Shadow Foreign Secretary during most of the 1980s, a job he coveted. He believed Foot was initially too willing to support military action after the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentina in April 1982. He accused Thatcher of "glorying in slaughter", and had to withdraw the remark (he later claimed he had meant to say "conflict"). Healey was retained in the shadow cabinet by Neil Kinnock, who succeeded Foot following the disastrous 1983 general election, when the Conservatives bolstered their majority and Labour suffered their worst general election result in decades. Healey had declined to run as leader to succeed Foot as well as standing down as deputy leader.

Retirement
His views on nuclear weapons conflicted with the unilateral nuclear disarmament policy of the Labour Party. After the 1987 general election, he retired from the Shadow Cabinet, and in 1992 stood down after 40 years as a Leeds MP. In that year he received a life peerage as Baron Healey, of Riddlesden in the County of West Yorkshire. Healey was regarded by some – especially in the Labour Party – as "the best Prime Minister we never had". He was a founding member of the Bilderberg Group. He was interviewed on his role as a co-founder of the Bilderberg Group by Jon Ronson for the book Them: Adventures with Extremists.

During an interview with Nick Clarke on BBC Radio 4, Healey was the first Labour politician to publicly declare his wish for the Labour leadership to pass to Tony Blair in 1994, following the death of John Smith. Healey later became critical of Blair. He publicly opposed Blair's decision to use military force in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the spring of 2004, and again in 2005, he publicly called on Blair to stand down in favour of Gordon Brown. In July 2006 he argued, "Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War", and, "I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer".

In March 2013 during an interview with the New Statesman, Healey said that if there was a referendum on British membership of the EU, he would vote to leave. In May, he further said: "I wouldn't object strongly to leaving the EU. The advantages of being members of the union are not obvious. The disadvantages are very obvious. I can see the case for leaving – the case for leaving is stronger than for staying in".

Following the death of Alan Campbell, Baron Campbell of Alloway, in June 2013, Healey became the oldest sitting member of the House of Lords. Following the death of John Freeman on 20 December 2014, Healey became the surviving former MP with the earliest date of first election, and the second-oldest surviving former MP, after Ronald Atkins.

Public image
Healey's notably bushy eyebrows and piercing wit earned him a favourable reputation with the public. When the media were not present, his humour was equally caustic but more risqué. The popular impressionist Mike Yarwood coined the catchphrase "Silly Billy", and incorporated it into his shows as a supposed "Healey-ism". Healey had never said it until that point, but he adopted it and used it frequently. Healey's direct speech made enemies. "At a meeting of the PLP I accused Ian Mikardo of being 'out of his tiny Chinese mind' – a phrase of the comedienne Hermione Gingold, with which I thought everyone was familiar. On the contrary, when it leaked to the press, the Chinese Embassy took it as an insult to the People's Republic." The controversy may have contributed to a poor performance when he fought for the Labour leadership following Harold Wilson's resignation.

His long-serving deputy at the Treasury, Joel Barnett, in response to a remark by a third party that "Denis Healey would sell his own grandmother", quipped, "No, he would get me to do it for him". On 14 June 1978, Healey likened being attacked by the mild-mannered Sir Geoffrey Howe in the House of Commons to being "savaged by a dead sheep". Nevertheless, Howe appeared and paid warm tribute when Healey was featured on This Is Your Life in 1989. The two remained friends for many years, and Howe died only six days after Healey.

Personal life and death
Healey married Edna May Edmunds on 21 December 1945, the two having met at Oxford University before the war. The couple had three children, one of whom is the broadcaster and writer Tim Healey. Edna Healey died on 21 July 2010, aged 92. They were married for almost 65 years and lived in Alfriston, East Sussex. In 1987, Edna underwent an operation at a private hospital – this event drawing media attention as being seemingly at odds with Healey's pro-NHS beliefs. Challenged on the apparent inconsistency by the presenter Anne Diamond on TV-am, Healey refused to comment and ended the interview. He then hit journalist Adam Boulton with a jab.

Healey was an amateur photographer for many years; he also enjoyed music, painting and reading crime fiction. He sometimes played popular piano pieces at public events. In a May 2012 interview for The Daily Telegraph, Healey reported that he was swimming 20 lengths a day in his outdoor pool. Healey was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.

After a short illness Healey died in his sleep at his home in Alfriston, Sussex, on 3 October 2015, at the age of 98. He was buried alongside his wife in the graveyard of St Andrew's Church, Alfriston. In 2017, his personal archives were deposited at the Bodleian Library.

Honours
In 2004, Healey became the recipient of the first Veteran's Badge.

Legacy
Healey is credited with popularising in the UK a proverb which became known as Healey's First law of holes. This is a minor adaptation of a saying often attributed to Will Rogers.

Film, television and theatre
Healey is the only Chancellor of the Exchequer to have appeared on BBC One's Morecambe and Wise Show. In 1986 he appeared in series one of Saturday Live. He was portrayed by David Fleeshman in the 2002 BBC production of Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play. He appeared on The Dame Edna Experience in the song and dance number "Style" alongside actor Roger Moore.

Healey was satirised in the ITV series Spitting Image, his caricature mainly focusing on his famous eyebrows, with the real Healey appearing in the twelfth episode of the programme's first series in 1984 briefly noting the show was late covering that year's European elections. The iconic eyebrows were similarly parodied in the 1977 serial The Sun Makers from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which the antagonist known as the Collector is distinguished by having similarly bushy eyebrows to Healey.

In 1994, Healey appeared in a TV advertisement for Visa Debit cards. This was banned by the Independent Television Commission as it contained a reference to a scandal, subsequently revealed to be a fabrication, involving Norman Lamont's personal life. Healey had appeared in an advert for Sainsbury's in the previous year.

Music
During Led Zeppelin's 1975 and 1977 concert tours, Robert Plant facetiously dedicated the song "In My Time of Dying" to Healey for the tax exile issues the band was facing. During Yes's recording of what was to become the album Tormato (1978), there was an outtake called "Money", on which the Yes keyboardist at the time, Rick Wakeman, provides a satirical voice-over parodying Healey.

title: Denis Healey


text:
Three Sisters

Three Sisters may refer to:

Australia

 * Three Sisters (Australia), a rock formation near Katoomba, NSW
 * The Three Sisters (Queensland), three islands
 * Three Sisters Island (Tasmania), three small islands

Canada

 * The Three Sisters (Alberta), three peaks in the Canadian Rockies near Canmore, Alberta
 * The Three Sisters (Lake Huron), three islands in Lake Huron
 * The Three Sisters (Temagami), three lakes in Temagami, Ontario
 * Three Sisters (Elk Valley), three peaks in the Canadian Rockies just north of the town of Fernie, British Columbia
 * Three Sisters Range, three peaks in the Stikine Country, British Columbia
 * Three Sisters Lakes Provincial Park, a park near Hixon, British Columbia
 * Three Sisters, a rock formation along the shore of Cape Chignecto Provincial Park

Ireland

 * The Three Sisters (Ireland), three rivers
 * An Triúr Deirféar (Irish for The Three Sisters), three peaks on the Dingle Peninsula

South Africa

 * Three Sisters (Northern Cape), a rock formation consisting of a group of three conical peaks situated on the watershed between Beaufort West and Richmond

United Kingdom

 * Three Sisters (Glen Coe), three ridges
 * Three Sisters Recreation Area, Wigan

United States

 * Three Sisters, mineral springs at Lake Ouachita State Park, Arkansas
 * Three Sisters (Los Angeles County), a mountain range in California
 * Three Sisters (Riverside County), a mountain range in California
 * Three Sisters (Siskiyou County), a mountain range in California
 * Three Sisters (District of Columbia), three islands
 * Three Sisters Springs (Florida)
 * Three Sisters (Georgia), three peaks
 * Three Sisters (Oregon), three volcanoes
 * Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon
 * Three Sisters (Pittsburgh), three bridges in Pennsylvania

Stage, film and television

 * Three Sisters (play), a play by Anton Chekhov
 * The Three Sisters (1966 film), an American film
 * Three Sisters (1970 film), a British film directed by Laurence Olivier
 * The Three Sisters (1970 film), a British television adaptation
 * Three Sisters (1988 film), aka Love and Fear, directed by Margarethe von Trotta
 * Three Sisters (1994 film), a Russian film adaptation
 * Three Sisters (opera), a 1998 opera by Péter Eötvös
 * The Three Sisters (fairy tale), an Italian fairy tale
 * The Three Sisters (1930 film), an American film directed by Paul Sloane
 * Three Sisters (musical), a 1934 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II
 * Three Sisters (1934 film), a Chinese film of the 1930s
 * Three Sisters (2012 film), a Chinese documentary film
 * Three Sisters (2020 film) a 2020 South Korean film

 * Three Sisters (American TV series), a 2001–2002 American TV series starring Dyan Cannon, Katherine LaNasa, and David Alan Basche
 * Three Sisters (South Korean TV series), a 2010 South Korean television drama

Mythology

 * Gorgons, three sisters in Greek mythology, named Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa
 * Graeae, three grey sisters (witches) in Greek mythology, named Deino, Enyo, and Pemphredo

Other uses

 * Three Sisters (album), a 2004 album by Alice Donut
 * Three Sisters (agriculture), a Native American agricultural technique for planting maize (corn), beans, and squash close together for shared benefits
 * Three Sisters (sternwheeler), a steamboat
 * Three Sisters tomato, a variety of tomato
 * Three Sisters Bridge, a cancelled bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
 * Three Sisters Tavern, a restaurant in Portland, Oregon
 * Three Sisters of Nauset, a trio of lighthouses in Nauset, Massachusetts
 * Three sisters, a name for a combination of rogue waves, particularly on Lake Superior
 * "The Three Sisters" is a colloquial phrase referring to the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK), Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NHK), and Reformed Churches in South Africa
 * Orion's Belt, a part of the Orion constellation, or group of stars, located on the celestial equator

title: Three Sisters


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Talk:Special cities of Korea

moving, separating, and merging
We are dealing with two countries. There is no article for cities of Czechoslovakia, likewise there shouldn't be one for Korea, it is a fiction of sorts. There are two different governments here and therefore two completely different ways of approaching city administration. They should be treated that way here as well. I recommend taking that information related to South Korea and moving it to Cities of South Korea and that of the north to Cities of North Korea.DaronDierkes (talk) 06:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I suggest this page and Do page be merged into korean provinces or something. Rather we should divide the contents into the cities and provinces of South Korea and of North Korea. Seoul Teukbyeol-si was still Teukbyeol-si, when the name Jikhal-si was used. soax

We need to rework this page a tiny bit. "Special City" translates Teukbyeolsi, but Gwangyeoksi is better translated as "Metropolitan City." I also created a new page--Administrative Divisions of South Korea--that summarizes the different levels of government. --Sewing 14:37, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

...Also, administrative divisions in North Korea seem to change quite a bit over the years. The NK table has to be revised. I added a link to the North Korea page for an up-to-date list, where there is a link to the Chosun Ilbo page I got the information from. --Sewing 15:56, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have moved Administrative Divisions of South Korea to Administrative divisions of Korea, which will provide info on the modern-day admin. divisions of N and S Korea... Provinces of Korea and Special cities of Korea will provide historical information. --Sewing 17:20, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Revised Dates
The new dates and data for Seoul, Daegu, Incheon, and Gwangju come from those cities' respective metro government website history pages. --Sewing 03:00, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Is this vandalism? --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 14:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Special vs Direct Governed
It is not clear as an observer what is the significance of referring to a city as a "Special City"(Teukbyeolsi) versus "Directly Governed City" (Chikhalsi), there should be a definition of what these words mean and why the distinction in the Note about Pyongyang is important. Chaozu42 (talk) 21:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Seoul's full English name
Pleas read Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea and discuss this. ― Yes0song 10:11, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:Special cities of Korea


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Municipal bond

A municipal bond, commonly known as a muni, is a bond issued by state or local governments, or entities they create such as authorities and special districts. In the United States, interest income received by holders of municipal bonds is often, but not always, exempt from federal and state income taxation. Typically, only investors in the highest tax brackets benefit from buying tax-exempt municipal bonds instead of taxable bonds. Taxable equivalent yield calculations are required to make fair comparisons between the two categories.

The U.S. municipal debt market is relatively small compared to the corporate market: total municipal debt outstanding was $4 trillion as of the first quarter of 2021, compared to nearly $15 trillion in the corporate and foreign markets. But conversely, the number of municipal bond issuers (state and local governments and other affiliated entities) far exceeds the number of corporate bond issuers.

Local authorities in many other countries in the world issue similar bonds, sometimes called local authority bonds or other names.

History
Municipal debt predates corporate debt by several centuries—the early Renaissance Italian city-states borrowed money from major banking families. Borrowing by American cities dates to the nineteenth century, and records of U.S. municipal bonds indicate use around the early 1800s. Officially the first recorded municipal bond was a general obligation bond issued by the City of New York for a canal in 1812. During the 1840s, many U.S. cities were in debt, and by 1843 cities had roughly $25 million in outstanding debt. In the ensuing decades, rapid urban development demonstrated a correspondingly explosive growth in municipal debt. The debt was used to finance both urban improvements and a growing system of public education.

Years after the American Civil War, significant local debt was issued to build railroads. Railroads were private corporations, and these bonds were very similar to today's industrial revenue bonds. Construction costs in 1873 for one of the largest transcontinental railroads, the Northern Pacific, closed down access to new capital. Around the same time, the largest bank of the country of the time, which was owned by the same investor as that of Northern Pacific, collapsed. Smaller firms followed suit as well as the stock market. The 1873 panic and years of depression that followed put an abrupt but temporary halt to the rapid growth of municipal debt. Responding to widespread defaults that jolted the municipal bond market of the day, new state statutes were passed that restricted the issuance of local debt. Several states wrote these restrictions into their constitutions. Railroad bonds and their legality were widely challenged, and this gave rise to the market-wide demand that an opinion of qualified bond counsel accompany each new issue.

When the U.S. economy began to move forward once again, municipal debt continued its momentum, which was maintained well into the early part of the twentieth century. The Great Depression of the 1930s halted growth, although defaults were not as severe as in the 1870s. Leading up to World War II, many American resources were devoted to the military, and prewar municipal debt burst into a new period of rapid growth for an ever-increasing variety of uses. Today, in addition to the 50 states and their local governments (including cities, counties, villages and school districts), the District of Columbia and U.S. territories and possessions (American Samoa, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) can and do issue municipal bonds. Another important category of municipal bond issuers which includes authorities and special districts has also grown in number and variety in recent years. The two most prominent early authorities were the Port of New York Authority, formed in 1921 and renamed Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1972, and the Triborough Bridge Authority (now the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority), formed in 1933. The debt issues of these two authorities are exempt from federal, state and local governments taxes.

Types of municipal bonds
The basic types of municipal bonds are:
 * General obligation bonds: Principal and interest are secured by the full faith and credit of the issuer and usually supported by either the issuer's unlimited or limited taxing power. These bonds are usually considered the most secure type of municipal bond, and therefore carry the lowest interest rate. In many cases, general obligation bonds require voter approval to levy the tax required for repayment. Bond financing is usually used to finance capital investments, not current operating expenditures.
 * Assessment bonds promise repayment based on property tax assessments of properties located within the issuer's boundaries. These are generally considered a form of general obligation bond, in that if the assessments fail to provide the required revenue for payment, the government is still obligated to redeem the bonds in full with interest.
 * Revenue bonds promise to repay principal and interest from a specified stream of future income, such as income generated by a water utility from payments by customers. Other public projects financed by revenue bonds include toll roads, bridges, airports, water and sewage treatment facilities, hospitals and subsidized housing.

Traditional issuance process
Depending on the jurisdiction and the basis for issuing the bond, voter approval may be required, especially if a property tax levy is involved. Some bonds, for minor projects or emergency situations, may be issued without voter pre-approval. But in all cases, public input (whether a vote, or the opportunity to speak for or against issuance at a public hearing) is required.

Voter approval of the bond proposal does not automatically result in the bonds being issued. Frequently, bonds under a proposal are issued in series over a period of time, in order to allow contractors a steady stream of work and the jurisdiction to not be overwhelmed in managing too many projects at once.

Before a particular municipal bond is offered to the public, the issuer must publish an "official statement" disclosing material information about the offering. Key players in the issuance process include:
 * Municipal advisor: serves as a fiduciary for the municipal issue, taking care of all of the assets and finances involved in the issuance process. The advisor is legally obligated to represent the interests of the issuer and serve as a source of financial advice.
 * Bond counsel: verifies the legal aspects of the issuance and opines as to whether an issuance is exempt from state or federal taxes.
 * Securities underwriter: manages the distribution of the bonds to investors through brokers.

Tax regulations generally require all money raised by a municipal bond sale to be spent on capital projects within three to five years of issuance.

Taxability
In the United States, although not all municipal bonds are tax-exempt, most are. Tax-exempt securities represented about 80% of trading volume in U.S. municipal bonds in 2020. Interest income from most municipal bonds is excludable from gross income for federal income tax purposes, and may be exempt from state income tax as well, depending on the applicable state laws. Internal Revenue Code section 103(a) is the statutory provision that excludes interest on municipal bonds from federal income tax. , other rules, however, such as those pertaining to private activity bonds, are found in sections 141–150, 1394, 1400, 7871.

The state and local exemption was the subject of litigation in Department of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis.

Bonds issued for certain purposes are subject to the alternative minimum tax as an item of tax preference.

Coupon rates
Municipal bonds' coupon rates are generally lower than those of comparable corporate bonds, but higher than those of their FDIC-insured counterparts: CDs, savings accounts, money market accounts, and others.

Liquidity
Historically, municipal bonds have been one of the least liquid assets on the market. One indicator of this is their infrequent trading. Municipal bonds are actively traded in a "when issued" market, and also immediately after they are issued. Once the bonds find their way into retail and mutual fund portfolios, the volume of trade drops off dramatically. The MSRB reports that from March 1998 to May 1999, 71% of the outstanding issues did not trade at all. A 2005 study concluded that 4–6 months after issuance, less than 10% of the sampled bonds traded at all; the probability then rises somewhat so that by four years from issuance, roughly 15% of the bonds in the sample traded at least once during a given month. A 2007 study concluded that the average investment grade tax exempt 1-10 year municipal bond traded 21 times over its 11-year sample and 5.65% of issues only traded once.

Unlike corporate and Treasury bonds, which are more likely to be held by institutional investors, municipal bond owners are more diverse, and hence harder to locate, giving this market less liquidity. Compared to stocks, municipal bonds are much harder to maneuver. At the same time, the minimum investment amounts for stocks are typically <$500 and about $1000 for CDs and money markets; in comparison, municipal bonds typically have minimum denomination buy-ins of $5000 but smaller issuers may have buy-ins of $1000 to incentivize local or regional investors. An investor's overall principal cost may be lower than the $5000 minimum denomination by purchasing the bonds at a discount.

While minimum denominations contribute to illiquidity, another such reason is the total amount of municipal bonds outstanding. There are over 1,500,000 individual municipal CUSIPs representing over 50,000 issuers. To put this into context, there are ~4300 US domestically incorporated exchange-listed stocks and 10,500 stocks that trade over-the-counter.

Over the last decade, technology solutions have been applied to make the market more responsive to investors, more financially transparent and ultimately easier for issuers and buyers. The emergence of small denomination municipal bonds makes the muni market more accessible to middle-income buyers. It is believed that these initiatives will reduce lower debt issuance costs.

Default risk, credit ratings and insurance
Default risk is a measure of the possibility that the issuer will fail to make all interest and principal payments, on time and in full. It is among the risks evaluated by a rating agency, which assigns a credit rating to the bond. Credit ratings are generally the starting point buyers use when deciding how much to pay for a municipal bond.

Historical default rates have been lower in the municipal sector than in the corporate market. This may be due in part to the fact that some municipals are backed by state and local government power to tax, or revenue from public utilities. However, sharp drops in property valuations (as in the 2009 mortgage crisis) can strain state and local finances, potentially creating municipal defaults. Harrisburg, PA, when faced with falling revenues, skipped several bond payments on a municipal waste to energy incinerator. The prospect of municipal bankruptcy was raised by the Controller of Harrisburg, although it was opposed by Harrisburg's mayor.

Default risk to the investor can be greatly reduced through municipal bond insurance, which promises to pay interest and principal if the issuer does not do so.

Return analysis
Projecting the yield to maturity on municipal bonds usually involves incorporating tax brackets.

Comparison to taxable bonds
Comparing the yield on a municipal bond to that of a corporate or U.S. Treasury bond can be misleading, because of differing tax treatment of the income from the two types of securities. For that reason, investors use the concept of taxable equivalent yield to compare municipal and corporate or Treasury bonds. The taxable equivalent yield on a municipal bond is calculated as follows. Where rm = interest rate of municipal bond, rc = interest rate of comparable corporate bond and t = investor's tax bracket (also known as marginal tax rate):
 * $$r_c = \frac{r_m}{( 1 - t )} $$

For example, assume an investor in the 38% tax bracket is offered a municipal bond that has a tax-exempt yield of 1.0%. Using the formula above, the municipal bond's taxable equivalent yield is 1.6% (0.01/(1-0.38) = 0.016) - a figure which can be fairly compared to yields on taxable investments such as corporate or U.S. Treasury bonds for decision making purposes.

Typically, investors in the highest tax brackets benefit from buying tax-exempt municipal bonds instead of taxable corporate bonds, but those in the lowest tax brackets may be better off buying corporate bonds and paying the taxes. Investors in higher tax brackets may arbitrage municipal bonds against corporate bonds using a strategy called municipal bond arbitrage.

Statutory regulation
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) that the federal government had no power under the U.S. Constitution to tax interest on municipal bonds, but in South Carolina v. Baker (1988), the Supreme Court held the Congress could tax interest income on municipal bonds if it so desired on the basis that tax exemption of municipal bonds is not protected by the Constitution. In this case, the Supreme Court stated that the contrary decision of the Court in Pollock had been "effectively overruled by subsequent case law".

The Revenue Act of 1913 first codified exemption of interest on municipal bonds from federal income tax.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 greatly reduced private activities that may be financed with tax-exempt bond proceeds.

In other countries
The United Kingdom's UK Municipal Bonds Agency (UK MBA) provides services for borrowing by municipalities. Canada has CIBC.

Municipal bonds agencies also known as Bond banks or Local government funding agencies exist in other countries, such as Sweden and Finland. In New Zealand, the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA), is the second-biggest issuer of New Zealand-dollar debt behind the government.

Local governments in China were not permitted to issue bonds in the open market until 2015, and historically these governments relied on local government financing vehicles as a major source of debt finance. By the end of 2022 a total of CN¥35.1 trillion of bonds were outstanding. In India, the Bangalore City Corporation was the first municipal government to issue bonds in November 1997, followed by the Ahmedabad City Corporation in February 1998.

title: Municipal bond