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Li T'ang

(Encyclopedia)Li T'ang lē täng [key], c.1050–1130, Chinese painter of the Sung dynasty. A leader of the academy founded by the Emperor Hui-tsung, he established a mode of painting that was widely followed in su...

homily

(Encyclopedia)homily hŏmˈəlē [key], type of oral religious instruction delivered to a church congregation. In the patristic period through the Middle Ages the focus of the homily was on the explanation and appl...

Alcman

(Encyclopedia)Alcman ălkˈmən [key], fl. 620 b.c., Greek lyric poet of Sparta. He was the earliest writer of Dorian choral poetry whose work has survived. Short choral fragments and a longer one (part of a parthe...

O Salutaris Hostia

(Encyclopedia)O Salutaris Hostia sălˌyo͞otârˈĭs, säˌlo͞otäˈrĭs [key] [Lat.,=O saving victim], hymn to the Host, one of the two hymns regularly sung at the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the Rom...

Lampedusa

(Encyclopedia)Lampedusa, island, 8 sq mi (20.7 sq km), S Sicily, Italy, in the Mediterranean Sea between Malta and Tunisia, the largest of the Pelagie Islands and Italy's southernmost territory. Il Porto is the onl...

Cimarosa, Domenico

(Encyclopedia)Cimarosa, Domenico dōmĕˈnēkō chēmärôˈzä [key], 1749–1801, Italian operatic composer. He wrote almost 80 operas, which were successfully produced in Rome, Naples, Vienna, and St. Petersburg...

Amato, Giovanni Antonio d'

(Encyclopedia)Amato, Giovanni Antonio d' jōvänˈnē äntôˈnyō dämäˈtō [key], 1475–1555, Neapolitan painter, called Il Vecchio [the elder]. He imitated the style of Perugino. Paintings by him are in many ...

Nicolai, Otto

(Encyclopedia)Nicolai, Otto ôˈtō nēkōläˈē, nēˈkōlī [key], 1810–49, German composer. His opera Il Templario (1840), after Scott's Ivanhoe, was successful, but his masterpiece was the comic opera The Me...

Manzoni, Alessandro

(Encyclopedia)Manzoni, Alessandro älās-sänˈdrō mändzôˈnē [key], 1785–1873, Italian novelist and poet. Taken in his youth to Paris by his mother in 1805, Manzoni embraced the deism that he was later to di...

Göncz, Árpád

(Encyclopedia)Göncz, Árpád ärpäd gŭnts [key], 1922–2015, Hungarian writer, translator, and political leader, first democratically elected president of Hungary (1990–2000). A lawyer, he was conscripted (19...