Influence and Inspiration

In the centuries following the invention of printing, almost 400 Italian editions of The Divine Comedy were published. Editions have appeared illustrated by Italian masters Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo, English artist William Blake, and French illustrator Gustave Doré. It has been translated into more than 25 languages. The work of modern poets throughout the world has been inspired by Dante, especially that of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and Paul Claudel.

4. Montesquieu ["mPntes'kju:] , Baron de la Brede et de

Montesquieu.Title of Charles de Secondat, (1689-1755), French philosopher,writer and jurist, born in the Château of la Brède. An outstanding figure of the early French Enlightenment, he wrote the influential Parisian Letters (1721), a veiled attack on the monarchy and the ancien régime, and The Spirit of the Laws (1748), a discourse on government. Montesquieu first became prominent as a writer with Persian Letters (1721), in which he satirized contemporary French politics, social conditions, ecclesiastical matters, and literature. The book was one of the earliest works of the movement known as the Enlightenment, which, by criticizing French institutions under the monarchy, helped bring about the French Revolution (1789-1799). Montesquieu was elected to the French Academy in 1728. His masterpiece was The Spirit of Laws (1748), in which he examined the three main types of government (republic, monarchy, and despotism) and held that governmental powers should be separated to guarantee individual freedom.

5. Jean Bodin [dZi:n 'bPdqn] (1530–1596), French social and political philosopher. A lawyer, he was dismayed=(наляканий) by the chaos resulting from conflict between Roman Catholics and Huguenots ['hju:gqnqVts] and argued in his most important work, Six Books of the Republic (1576), that the well-ordered state required religious toleration and a fully sovereign monarch. His exposition of the principles of stable government was widely influential. Its influence can be seen in the theories of sovereignty developed by Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His writings made a major theoretical contribution to the rise of the modern nation-state. In 1580 he published De la démonomanie des sorciers/On the Fiendishness of Sorcerers, a guide for judges in witchcraft trials.Note! fiendish ['fi:ndIS] диявольський, лиходійський, жорстокий.

6. Johannes Althusius ["dZqV'xnIs xl'TjuzIqs] (1557 – 1638), the German jurist, who publishes Politica methodice digesta/A Digest of Political Method in 1603. A grammar of politics, it lays the foundation for much subsequent political theory. АЛЬТУЗІЙ Іван (1557, Діденгаузен, Вестфалія - 1638, Емден) – нім. філософ права. З 1586 професор Херборнського ун-ту; с 1604 – адвокат. Розвивав вчення про те, що люди можуть об'єднуватися в залежності від спонукань і потреб, результатом чого може бути договір. Народ – це "тіло, що представляє собою співжиття індивідів" (лат. corpus symbioticum); він має всі суверенні права також і по відношенню до уряду, що залежить від його волі; уряд, за Альтузієм, повинен здійснювати в першу чергу адміністративну діяльність в державі, яка становить "універсальнє суспільне об'єднання" (лат. universalis publica consociatio), поряд з яким, однак, існує та здійснює свої життєво необхідні права сім'я, муніципалітет, провінція та ін. Задача політика – здійснення природнього етичного закону та волі божої. Головна робота – "Politica", 1603.

7. Hugo Grotius ['hju:gqV 'groVSi"qs] (1583-1645).Originally Huig de Groot. Dutch jurist, politician, and theologian whose major work, Of the Law of War and Peace (1625), is considered the first comprehensive treatise on international law. Humanist, and statesman, whose legal writings laid the foundation for modern international law.

Grotius was born in Delft. His first published work on international law, The Free Sea (1609), challenged the right of any nation to claim part of the open sea as exclusively its own. Such a claim, Grotius argued, was against natural law and the basic law of humanity. In On the Law of War and Peace (1625) he argued that war violates natural law and can be condoned only if it is for a righteous cause and conciliation has failed. Earlier, Grotius's efforts to moderate a bitter doctrinal dispute among Dutch Calvinists had embroiled him in a political clash between his province of Holland and the rest of the Dutch Republic and its orthodox majority. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1619 but escaped to Paris in 1621. Grotius became Sweden's ambassador to Paris in 1634 and served in that post until 1644.

8. Richard Hooker ['rItSqd 'hVkq] (1554 -1600), English writer and theologian. His Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594) was central to the formation of Anglican theology; born in Exeter. As a clergyman in the Church of England, he is noted for his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (8 volumes). The immediate purpose of Hooker's work was to demonstrate the advantages of the episcopal form of organization of the Church of England over the presbyterian form used by its opponents.

9. John Milton [dZPn 'mIlt(q)n] (1608-1674), English poet and scholar who is best known for the epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), an account of humanity's fall from grace. His verse was a powerful influence on succeeding English poets, and whose prose was devoted to the defense of civil and religious liberty. Milton is often considered the greatest English poet after William Shakespeare. Life Milton was born in London and attended Christ's College, University of Cambridge. From 1632 to 1638 he lived in his father's country home, reading the Latin and Greek classics and ecclesiastical and political history. From 1638 to 1639 he toured France and Italy, and on his return to England, he settled in London and began writing a series of social, religious, and political tracts. Milton supported the parliamentary cause in the English Civil War (1642-1649), and in 1649 he was appointed foreign secretary by the government of the Commonwealth.

He became totally blind about 1652 and thereafter carried on his literary and government work helped by assistants. After the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, Milton was briefly imprisoned for his support of Parliament. Works Milton's career as a writer can be divided into three periods. The first, from 1625 to 1640, was the period of such early works as the sonnet "On Shakespeare" (1630), "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (both probably 1631), and the elegy Lycidas (1637). His second period, from 1640 to 1660, was devoted chiefly to the writing of numerous social, political, and religious tracts, the most famous of which is Areopagitica (1644), an impassioned plea for freedom of the press.

He also wrote pamphlets to justify the execution of King Charles I. During the third period of Milton's career, from 1660 to 1674, he completed his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) and wrote the companion epic Paradise Regained (1671) and the poetic drama Samson Agonistes (1671). Paradise Lost, in which Milton recounts the story of the fall of Adam in a context of cosmic drama, is considered Milton's masterpiece and one of the greatest poems in world literature.

10. James Harrington [dZeImz 'hxrINtqn] (1611–1677), English political philosopher. His Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) described a utopian society in which political power rested with the landed gentry. He advocated a written constitution and limitations on the amount of land one individual could hold. His ideas foreshadowed doctrines of the American and French revolutions. In 1656 he publishes Commonwealth of Oceana, which argues in favor of a system of republicanism on the lines of the Venetian oligarchy. In 1658 -The Prerogative of Popular Government. In 1660 - Political Discourses.

11. Abraham Lincoln ['eIbrqhxm 'lINkqn] (1809-1865), The 16th President of the United States (1861-1865), who led the Union during the Civil War and emancipated slaves in the South (1863). He was assassinated shortly after the end of the war by John Wilkes Booth.

A humane, far-sighted statesman, he became a legend and a folk hero after his death. In his effort to preserve the Union during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Lincoln assumed more power than any preceding president. His actions had a lasting influence on American political institutions, most importantly in setting the precedent of vigorous executive action in time of national emergency. Early Life Lincoln was born in a log cabin near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky. In 1816 his family moved to Indiana, which at that time was a heavily forested wilderness. Lincoln had less than one full year of formal education in his entire life, but he was taught at home and at an early age could read, write, and do simple arithmetic. In 1830 the Lincoln family settled west of what is now Decatur, Illinois. Lincoln worked as a laborer on farms and on flatboats, and as a store clerk in New Salem, a small community near Springfield, Illinois. He soon became one of New Salem's most popular citizens. Early Political Career In 1832 Lincoln decided to run for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party. He was defeated in the election. A short time later he was appointed postmaster of New Salem. In 1834 Lincoln again ran for representative to the Illinois legislature. By then he was known throughout the county. He won and served a total of eight years. Meanwhile, he continued his study of law, and in 1836 he became a licensed attorney. In 1842 he married Mary Todd. As a frontier lawyer, Lincoln traveled a great deal. For three months each spring and fall, lawyers and judges of the Springfield courts held court at different rural county seats, resolving local cases. Because of his storytelling abilities and skill as a lawyer, Lincoln was popular on the circuit. In 1846 Lincoln was elected U.S. representative for the Seventh Congressional District of Illinois. The extension of slavery into new U.S. territories was an important question during Lincoln's term in Congress. He supported the Wilmot Proviso, which proposed that slavery in the United States be prohibited in any territory acquired during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Lincoln wanted to run for a second term in Congress, but it was traditional that the Whig candidate from his district serve only one term. He returned to Springfield to practice law, soon becoming one of the most respected lawyers in the state. Lincoln was losing interest in politics when, in 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the old dividing line between free and slave states as set by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, came to Springfield to defend the newly enacted law in October 1854. The next night Lincoln spoke, attacking the act. In 1855 Lincoln was the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate. Senators were then elected by the state legislatures, and when Lincoln realized that he could not win, he threw his support to an anti-Douglas Democrat, Lyman Trumbull, who was elected. In 1856 Lincoln publicly identified himself as a Republican Party member and delivered the main address at the Republican state convention. Agitation over the slavery issue increased in 1856 and 1857.

In the Dred Scott case the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. In Kansas proslavery and antislavery partisans engaged in a bloody civil war for control of the territorial government. In 1858 Senator Douglas came up for reelection. The Republican Party nominated Lincoln to oppose him. The two engaged in a series of face-to-face debates on the morality of slavery. The debates captivated Illinois. Although the Republicans won a majority of the popular votes, the Democratic legislature reelected Douglas. The Lincoln-Douglas debates brought Lincoln national recognition.

In 1860 the Republican national convention met in Chicago to nominate a presidential candidate. Only Lincoln was acceptable to all factions of the party, and he won the nomination. The convention chose Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as the vice-presidential candidate. The party's policies included a moderate antislavery position designed to appease the South: Slavery was not to be extended, but it would not be abolished where it existed. Also included were a high tariff (tax on imports) to appeal to the industrial North, and the promise of free land for settlers to satisfy the West. The Democrats split into a Northern faction, which nominated Douglas for president, and a Southern faction, which nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. A fourth party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell of Tennessee. With the Democratic Party split, Lincoln was easily elected.

President of the United States Even before election day, Southern militants had threatened to secede from the Union if Lincoln were elected. By February, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had seceded. These states joined together to form the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was sworn in as president. His inaugural address aimed at allaying Southern fears, although he flatly rejected the right of any state to secede from the Union. When the Confederacy demanded the evacuation of Fort Sumter, located at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, Lincoln decided to send supplies to the fort by sea.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter. Two days later the fort surrendered. Lincoln asked loyal states to provide 75,000 militia. Lincoln's call for arms caused Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to join the Confederacy. The states on the border between the North and the South–Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland–remained in the Union. Lincoln also ordered a blockade of Confederate ports, expanded the regular army beyond its legal limit, directed government expenditures in advance of congressional appropriations, and suspended the legal right of habeas corpus (the constitutional guarantee that a person could not be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with some specific crime).

The North expected a brief struggle and an easy victory. In July the federal Army of the Potomac was defeated in Virginia in the first Battle of Bull Run. The North then realized that it faced a long, hard war. Lincoln placed Major General George B. McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan soon restored the army's morale and whipped it into a superb fighting force.

In September 1862, the Union won a minor victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. Lincoln chose this opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that on January 1, 1863, all slaves residing in rebellious states would "be then, thenceforward, and forever free..."With this advance warning, Lincoln gave the rebellious states an opportunity to rejoin the Union with slavery intact. Because Lincoln only had the power to free the slaves as a necessity of war, the proclamation did not affect border states in the Union or areas in the rebellious states under federal control. For these states, Lincoln encouraged voluntary, compensated emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation isolated the Confederacy from potential allies in Europe. France and Britain had threatened to recognize the Confederate government and give it aid. Freeing the slaves brought the people of these countries and their governments over to the Northern side because the North represented the cause of freedom.

When McClellan refused to take the offensive after Antietam, Lincoln replaced him with a series of commanders who proved unqualified for the task. When Confederate general Robert E. Lee turned his army north to invade Pennsylvania, Lincoln appointed Major General George G. Meade to lead Union forces. The two armies met at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in early July 1863. On July 5 Lee retreated, his army badly beaten. That same day Lincoln received word that General Ulysses S. Grant had captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, the key Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. In March 1864 Lincoln promoted Grant to commander in chief of all Union armies. Grant's overall strategy was bold. Instead of going after key Southern cities, he decided to attack principal Southern armies.

Despite its military successes, the Union was faced with the problem of raising huge sums of money to fight the war. New federal taxes were levied, and the tariff was raised. The federal government also began printing paper money. The 1863 National Banking Act made it easier to sell government bonds. The act also provided for a system of federally chartered, privately owned national banks that could issue notes backed by government bonds. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln was called upon to deliver remarks at a ceremony dedicating a military cemetery at the Gettysburg battle site. After a two-hour speech by distinguished orator Edward Everett, Lincoln spoke briefly, rededicating the war effort to the principles of democracy. The speech is called the Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln gave frequent consideration to the reconstruction of the rebel states and their restoration to the Union. Whenever Union armies gained control in a rebellious area, he encouraged the local people to form a government loyal to the Union, asking only that the new government outlaw slavery and that the number of those voting for the new government be at least 10 percent of those who had voted in the 1860 presidential election. Congressional leaders also had a plan of reconstruction, but it was designed to punish the South and to make it subservient to the Republican Party of the North. As the 1864 presidential elections approached, Democrats and radical Republicans were dissatisfied with Lincoln's policies. But the moderate Republicans remained faithful to their leader. Lincoln was again nominated for president, with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee receiving the vice-presidential nomination. The Democrats nominated General McClellan. In the spring and summer of 1864, Lincoln did not think he would win the election. In September the political and military situation took a turn for the better, and Lincoln easily won reelection.

Second Term as President At his second inaugural, on the threshold of Union victory, Lincoln made a speech that spoke only of peace and of ending the nation's sectional differences. In early April the Union Army took Petersburg and Richmond. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his army to Grant at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. The war was all but over. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife attended a performance of a comic melodrama, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre in Washington. At about 10:30 PM John Wilkes Booth, an actor with pro-Southern sympathies, made his way into the box, put a pistol to Lincoln's head, and fired once. Booth escaped, but he was killed while resisting arrest 12 days later. After the shooting, the president was taken to a lodging house across the street, where he died the next morning.

12. Cardinal Richelieu ['kQ:d(q)nql rJSqlu] (1585-1642) Duc de. Title of Armand Jean du Plessis. French prelate and politician. As chief minister of Louis XIII he worked to strengthen the authority of the monarchy and directed France during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). In 1624 Louis XIII chose that man as his first minister. He was the effective ruler of France for the next 18 years.

Richelieu eliminated rivals to royal power by breaking the power of the nobility and creating new administrative districts. He contained threats from abroad by encouraging the development of the French Navy and a merchant fleet, chartering foreign-trade companies, and supporting colonial expansion. However, inflation, mounting taxes, and, after 1635, the devastation of the Thirty Years' War (in which France, Sweden, and the Netherlands were eventually victorious over the Roman Catholic Habsburgs) reduced the French peasantry to new depths of misery.

His Career and Life He gained the favor of the king's mother, MARIE DE' MEDICI, and was made secretary of state (1616), cardinal (1622), and chief minister (1624). In 1630 Marie conspired against Richelieu, but the king had her exiled. Richelieu then enjoyed full control of the government until his death. Domestically, he centralized royal authority by destroying the political power of the HUGUENOTS with the capture of La Rochelle (1628) and the Peace of Alais (1629).

Conspiracies by the nobles were rigorously suppressed. In foreign affairs, he rejected Marie de' Medici's pro- HAPSBURG policy, and in 1635 France openly entered the THIRTY YEARS WAR against the Hapsburgs. In France the war led to heavy taxation and caused dissatisfaction with his rule. Richelieu encouraged trade and the arts; he was the founder of the learned society known as the French Academy.

13. John Foster Dulles [dZPn 'fPstq 'dAlqs] (1888-1959), American diplomat and politician who as U.S. secretary of state (1953-1959) pursued a policy of opposition to the U.S.S.R. largely through military and economic aid to American allies.He is remembered as an uncompromising foe [fqV](ворог) of Communism. He was born in Washington, D.C. Dulles was appointed to negotiate the United States peace treaty with Japan in 1951; two years later he became secretary of state in the Cabinet of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

A staunch anti-Communist, Dulles was active in promoting the establishment of the European Defense Community as a barrier to possible Soviet aggression in the West. He also initiated the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO (1954), and the Baghdād Pact, or Central Treaty Organization (1955), which were designed to contain Soviet and Chinese power in Asia.

Dulles made controversial threats of "massive nuclear retaliation" against Communist aggression and declared that the United States must be prepared to "go to the brink" of war to attain its objectives. His brother, Allen Welsh Dulles, 1893–1969, was director (1953–61) of the CIA.

14. Henry Alfred Kissinger ['henrI 'xlfrId 'kIsiNGq] (b.1923), served as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. He was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon and kept the post after Gerald R. Ford became President in 1974. Kissinger also served as assistant to the President for national security affairs from 1969 to 1975. He was the most influential foreign policy adviser of both Presidents. Between 1969 and 1973, Kissinger conducted secret negotiations with North Vietnamese diplomats in an effort to end the Vietnam War. The negotiations led to a cease-fire agreement signed in January 1973 by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the cease-fire. But fighting went on until the war ended in 1975.

Kissinger carried out other missions for Nixon. In 1971, he went to China to arrange Nixon's 1972 visit. He went to Moscow in 1972 to prepare Nixon's meeting with Soviet leaders. In 1974, Kissinger helped arrange agreements to separate the fighting forces of Israel from those of Egypt and Syria. These nations were involved in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan named Kissinger head of a federal commission to develop U.S. policy on Central America.

Kissinger was born in Furth, Germany. His family came to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution of Jews. Kissinger served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943. Kissinger earned three degrees at Harvard University, and taught courses there on international relations. His writings on foreign policy include Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957). Kissinger has published two volumes of memoirs, White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (зрушень) (1982). Diplomacy (1994) deals with notable statesmen since the 1600's.