title: Illumination (company)

text: Future projects include "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", an animated film based on the "Mario" franchise as a collaboration with Nintendo on April 7, 2023, an original film titled "Migration" on December 22, 2023, and "Despicable Me 4" on July 3, 2024. Other films the studio has in development include "Big Tree", a film based on an illustrated novel by Brian Selznick from an idea by Meledandri and Steven Spielberg, "The Secret Life of Pets 3," and an original animated film with frequent collaborator and musician Pharrell Williams that will be "made from scratch."


title: Synth-pop

text: Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.


title: Synth-pop

text: Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, and the mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians. After the breakthrough of Gary Numan in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, and the band would be a major influence on early British synth-pop acts. The development of inexpensive polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI and the use of dance beats, led to a more commercial and accessible sound for synth-pop. This, its adoption by the style-conscious acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV, led to success for large numbers of British synth-pop acts in the US during the Second British Invasion.


title: Synth-pop

text: The term “techno-pop” was coined by Yuzuru Agi in his critique of Kraftwerk’s "The Man-Machine" in 1978 and is considered a case of multiple discovery of naming. Hence, the term can be used interchangeably to “synth-pop” but generally used to the scene of Japan and is a preferred term there.


title: Synth-pop

text: "Synth-pop" is sometimes used interchangeably with "electropop", but "electropop" may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, more electronic sound. In the mid to late 1980s, duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was highly successful on the US dance charts, but by the end of the decade, the 'new wave' synth-pop of bands such as A-ha and Alphaville was giving way to house music and techno. Interest in new wave synth-pop began to revive in the indietronica and electroclash movements in the late 1990s, and in the 2000s synth-pop enjoyed a widespread revival and commercial success.


title: Synth-pop

text: The genre has received criticism for alleged lack of emotion and musicianship; prominent artists have spoken out against detractors who believed that synthesizers themselves composed and played the songs. Synth-pop music has established a place for the synthesizer as a major element of pop and rock music, directly influencing subsequent genres (including house music and Detroit techno) and has indirectly influenced many other genres, as well as individual recordings.


title: Synth-pop

text: Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but "characterised by a broad set of values that eschewed rock playing styles, rhythms and structures", which were replaced by "synthetic textures" and "robotic rigidity", often defined by the limitations of the new technology, including monophonic synthesizers (only able to play one note at a time).


title: Synth-pop

text: Many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were "typically woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic 'progression' to speak of". Early synth-pop has been described as "eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow.


title: Synth-pop

text: In its second phase in the 1980s, the introduction of dance beats and more conventional rock instrumentation made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras and horns. Thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally more optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism and aspiration. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its "emotional, at times operatic singers" such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation.


title: Synth-pop

text: Although synth-pop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on "authenticity" and often pursued a deliberate "artificiality", drawing on the critically derided forms such as disco and glam rock. It owed relatively little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, and instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and particularly Eastern European influences, which were reflected in band names like Spandau Ballet and songs like Ultravox's "Vienna". Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style more influenced by other genres, such as soul music.


title: Synth-pop

text: Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, around the same time as rock music began to emerge as a distinct musical genre. The Mellotron, an electro-mechanical, polyphonic sample-playback keyboard was overtaken by the Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog in 1964, which produced completely electronically generated sounds. The portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Instrumental prog rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesizer-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synth rock.


title: Synth-pop

text: In 1971 the British movie "A Clockwork Orange" was released with a synth soundtrack by American Wendy Carlos. It was the first time many in the United Kingdom had heard electronic music. Philip Oakey of the Human League and Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, as well as music journalist Simon Reynolds, have cited the soundtrack as an inspiration. Electronic music made occasional moves into the mainstream, with jazz musician Stan Free, under the pseudonym Hot Butter, having a top 10 hit in the United States and United Kingdom in 1972, with a cover of the 1969 Gershon Kingsley song "Popcorn" using a Moog synthesizer, which is recognised as a forerunner to synth-pop and disco.


title: Synth-pop

text: The mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians such as Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Tomita. Tomita's album "Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock" (1972) featured electronic renditions of contemporary rock and pop songs, while utilizing speech synthesis and analog music sequencers. In 1975, Kraftwerk played their first British show and inspired concert attendees Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who would later found Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) to 'throw away their guitars' and become a synth act. Kraftwerk had its first hit UK record later in the year with "Autobahn", which reached number 11 in the British Singles Chart. The group was described by the BBC Four program "Synth Britannia" as the key to synth-pop's future rise there. In 1977, Giorgio Moroder released the electronic Eurodisco song "I Feel Love" that he had produced for Donna Summer, and its programmed beats would be a major influence on the later synth-pop sound. David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, comprising the albums "Low" (1977), ""Heroes"" (1977), and "Lodger" (1979), all featuring Brian Eno, would also be highly influential.


title: Synth-pop

text: Early guitar-based punk rock that came to prominence in the period 1976–77 was initially hostile to the "inauthentic" sound of the synthesizer, but many new wave and post-punk bands that emerged from the movement began to adopt it as a major part of their sound. British punk and New wave clubs were open to what was then considered an "alternative" sound. The do it yourself attitude of punk broke down the progressive rock era's norm of needing years of experience before getting up on stage to play synthesizers. The American duo Suicide, who arose from the post-punk scene in New York, utilised drum machines and synthesizers in a hybrid between electronics and post-punk on their eponymous 1977 album.


title: Synth-pop

text: The Cat Stevens album "Izitso", released in April 1977, updated his pop rock style with the extensive use of synthesizers, giving it a more synth-pop style; "Was Dog a Doughnut" in particular was an early techno-pop fusion track, which made early use of a music sequencer. "Izitso" reached No. 7 on the "Billboard" 200 chart, while the song "(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard" was a top 40 hit. That same month, the Beach Boys released their album "Love You", performed almost entirely by bandleader Brian Wilson with Moog and ARP synthesizers, and with arrangements somewhat inspired by Wendy Carlos's "Switched-On Bach" (1968). Although it was highly praised by some critics and musicians (including Patti Smith and Lester Bangs), the album met with poor commercial reception. The album has been considered revolutionary in its use of synthesizers, while others described Wilson's extensive use of the Moog synthesizer as a "loopy funhouse ambience" and an early example of synth-pop. In July 1977, the song "I Feel Love" by recording trio Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Belotte was released, pioneering the Hi-NRG genre, and influencing later synth-pop acts such as Divine and Dead or Alive. Around this time, Ultravox member Warren Cann purchased a Roland TR-77 drum machine, which was first featured in their October 1977 single release "Hiroshima Mon Amour".


title: Synth-pop

text: Be-Bop Deluxe released "Drastic Plastic" in February 1978, leading off with the single "Electrical Language" with Bill Nelson on guitar synthesizer and Andy Clark on synthesizers. Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) with their self-titled album (1978) and "Solid State Survivor" (1979), developed a "fun-loving and breezy" sound, with a strong emphasis on melody. They introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, and the band would be a major influence on early British synth-pop acts. 1978 also saw the release of UK band the Human League's début single "Being Boiled", while American post-punk band Devo began moving towards a more electronic sound. At this point synth-pop gained some critical attention, but made little impact on the commercial charts.


title: Synth-pop

text: British punk-influenced band Tubeway Army, intended their debut album to be guitar driven. In 1978, Gary Numan, a member of the group, found a minimoog left behind in the studio by another band, and started experimenting with it. This led to a change in the album's sound to electronic new wave. Numan later described his work on this album as a guitarist playing keyboards, who turned "punk songs into electronic songs". A single from the album, "Are Friends Electric?", topped the UK charts in the summer of 1979. The discovery that synthesizers could be employed in a different manner from that used in progressive rock or disco, prompted Numan to go solo. On his futuristic album "The Pleasure Principle" (1979), he played only synths, but retained a bass guitarist and a drummer for the rhythm section. A single from the album, "Cars" topped the charts.


title: Synth-pop

text: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) released their debut single "Electricity" in May 1979, followed by their 1980 hit singles "Messages" and "Enola Gay" and two albums, all of which are regarded as synth-pop landmarks.


title: Synth-pop

text: Giorgio Moroder collaborated with the band Sparks on their album "No. 1 In Heaven" (1979). That same year in Japan, the synth-pop band P-Model made its debut with the album "In a Model Room". Other Japanese synth-pop groups emerging around the same time included the Plastics and Hikashu. This zeitgeist of revolution in electronic music performance and recording/production was encapsulated by then would-be record producer Trevor Horn of the Buggles in the international hit "Video Killed the Radio Star" (1979).


title: Synth-pop

text: 1980 also saw the release of where "Video Killed the Radio Star" came from, the Buggles' debut album "The Age of Plastic", which some writers have labeled as the first landmark of another electropop era, as well as what for many is the defining album of Devo's career, the overtly synth-pop "Freedom of Choice".


title: Synth-pop

text: The emergence of synth-pop has been described as "perhaps the single most significant event in melodic music since Mersey-beat". By the 1980s synthesizers had become much cheaper and easier to use. After the definition of MIDI in 1982 and the development of digital audio, the creation of purely electronic sounds and their manipulation became much simpler. Synthesizers came to dominate the pop music of the early 1980s, particularly through their adoption by bands of the New Romantic movement.


title: Synth-pop

text: The New Romantic scene had developed in the London nightclubs Billy's and the Blitz and was associated with bands such as Duran Duran, Visage, and Spandau Ballet. They adopted an elaborate visual style that combined elements of glam rock, science fiction and romanticism. Spandau Ballet were the first band of the movement to have a hit single as the synth-driven "To Cut a Long Story Short" reached number 5 on the UK Singles Chart in December 1980. Visage's "Fade to Grey", characteristic of synth-pop and a major influence on the genre, reached the top ten a few weeks later. Duran Duran have been credited with incorporating dance beats into synth-pop to produce a catchier and warmer sound, which provided them with a series of hit singles, beginning with their debut single "Planet Earth" and the UK top five hit "Girls on Film" in 1981. They would soon be followed into the British charts by a large number of bands utilising synthesizers to create catchy three-minute pop songs. In summer 1981 Depeche Mode had their first chart success with "New Life", followed by the UK top ten hit "Just Can't Get Enough". A new line-up for The Human League along with a new producer and a more commercial sound led to the album "Dare" (1981), which produced a series of hit singles. These included "Don't You Want Me", which reached number one in the UK at the end of 1981.


title: Synth-pop

text: Synth-pop reached its commercial peak in the UK in the winter of 1981–2, with bands such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Japan, Ultravox, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Yazoo and even Kraftwerk, enjoying top ten hits. The Human League's and Soft Cell's UK number one singles "Don't You Want Me" and "Tainted Love" became the best selling singles in the UK in 1981. In early 1982 synthesizers were so dominant that the Musicians' Union attempted to limit their use. By the end of 1982, these acts had been joined in the charts by synth-based singles from Thomas Dolby, Blancmange, and Tears for Fears. Bands such as Simple Minds also adopted synth-pop into their music on their 1982 album "New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)". ABC and Heaven 17 had commercial success mixing synth-pop with influences from funk and soul music.


title: Synth-pop

text: Dutch entertainer Taco, who has a background in musical theatre, released his own synth-driven re-imagining of Irving Berlin's "Puttin' On the Ritz"; resulting in a subsequent long-play, "After Eight", a concept album that takes music of 1930s sensibilities as informed by the soundscape of 1980s technology. The proliferation of acts led to an anti-synth backlash, with groups including Spandau Ballet, Human League, Soft Cell and ABC incorporating more conventional influences and instruments into their sounds.


title: Synth-pop

text: In the US, where synth-pop is considered a subgenre of new wave and was described as "technopop" or "electropop" by the press at the time, the genre became popular due to the cable music channel MTV, which reached the media capitals of New York City and Los Angeles in 1982. It made heavy use of style-conscious New Romantic synth-pop acts, with "I Ran (So Far Away)" (1982) by A Flock of Seagulls generally considered the first hit by a British act to enter the "Billboard" Top Ten as a result of exposure through video. The switch to a "new music" format in US radio stations was also significant in the success of British bands. Reaching No.2 in the UK and No.1 in the US, "Rolling Stone" called Eurythmics’ 1983 song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" "a synth-pop masterpiece". The success of synth-pop and other British acts would be seen as a Second British Invasion. Synth-pop was taken up across the world, with international hits for acts including Men Without Hats and Trans-X from Canada, Telex from Belgium, Peter Schilling, Sandra, Modern Talking, Propaganda and Alphaville from Germany, Yello from Switzerland and Azul y Negro from Spain.


title: Synth-pop

text: In the mid-1980s, key artists included solo performer Howard Jones, who S.T. Erlewine has stated to have "merged the technology-intensive sound of new wave with the cheery optimism of hippies and late-'60s pop", (although with notable exceptions including the lyrics of "What Is Love?" – "Does anybody love anybody anyway?") and Nik Kershaw, whose "well-craft synth-pop" incorporated guitars and other more traditional pop influences that particularly appealed to a teen audience. Pursuing a more dance-orientated sound were Bronski Beat whose album "The Age of Consent" (1984), dealing with issues of homophobia and alienation, reached the top 20 in the UK and top 40 in the US. and Thompson Twins, whose popularity peaked in 1984 with the album "Into The Gap", which reached No.1 in the UK and the US top ten and spawned several top ten singles. Initially dismissed in the music press as a "teeny bop sensation" were Norwegian band a-ha, whose use of guitars and real drums produced an accessible form of synth-pop, which, along with an MTV friendly video, took their 1985 single "Take On Me" to number two in the UK and number one in the US.


title: Synth-pop

text: Synth-pop continued into the late 1980s, with a format that moved closer to dance music, including the work of acts such as British duos Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and the Communards. The Communards' major hits were covers of disco classics "Don't Leave Me This Way" (1986) and "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1987). After adding other elements to their sound, and with the help of a gay audience, several synth-pop acts had success on the US dance charts. Among these were American acts Information Society (who had two top 10 singles in 1988), Anything Box, and Red Flag. British band When in Rome scored a hit with their debut single "The Promise". Several German synth-pop acts of the late 1980s included Camouflage and Celebrate the Nun. Canadian duo Kon Kan had major success with their debut single, "I Beg Your Pardon" in 1989.


title: Synth-pop

text: An American backlash against European synth-pop has been seen as beginning in the mid-1980s with the rise of heartland rock and roots rock. In the UK the arrival of indie rock bands, particularly the Smiths, has been seen as marking the end of synth-driven new wave and the beginning of the guitar-based music that would dominate rock into the 1990s. By 1991, in the United States synth-pop was losing its commercial viability as alternative radio stations were responding to the popularity of grunge. Exceptions that continued to pursue forms of synth-pop or rock in the 1990s were Savage Garden, the Rentals and the Moog Cookbook. Electronic music was also explored from the early 1990s by indietronica bands like Stereolab, EMF, the Utah Saints, and Disco Inferno, who mixed a variety of indie and synthesizer sounds.


title: Synth-pop

text: Indietronica began to take off in the new millennium as the new digital technology developed, with acts such as Broadcast from the UK, Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany, and Ratatat and the Postal Service from the US, mixing a variety of indie sounds with electronic music, largely produced on small independent labels. Similarly, the electroclash subgenre began in New York at the end of the 1990s, combining synth-pop, techno, punk and performance art. It was pioneered by I-F with their track "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1998), and pursued by artists including Felix da Housecat, Peaches, Chicks on Speed, and Fischerspooner. It gained international attention at the beginning of the new millennium and spread to scenes in London and Berlin, but rapidly faded as a recognizable genre as acts began to experiment with a variety of forms of music.


title: Synth-pop

text: In the new millennium, renewed interest in electronic music and nostalgia for the 1980s led to the beginnings of a synth-pop revival, with acts including Adult and Fischerspooner. Between 2003 and 2004, it began to move into the mainstream with Ladytron, the Postal Service, Cut Copy, The Bravery and The Killers all producing records that incorporated vintage synthesizer sounds and styles that contrasted with the dominant genres of post-grunge and nu metal. In particular, The Killers enjoyed considerable airplay and exposure and their debut album "Hot Fuss" (2004) reached the top ten of the "Billboard" 200. The Killers, The Bravery and the Stills all left their synth-pop sound behind after their debut albums and began to explore classic 1970s rock, but the style was picked up by a large number of performers, particularly female solo artists. Following the breakthrough success of Lady Gaga with her single "Just Dance" (2008), the British and other media proclaimed a new era of female synth-pop stars, citing artists such as Little Boots, La Roux, and Ladyhawke. Male acts that emerged in the same period include Calvin Harris, Empire of the Sun, Frankmusik, Hurts, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Kaskade, LMFAO, and Owl City, whose single "Fireflies" (2009) topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. In 2009, an underground subgenre with direct stylistic origins to synth-pop became popular, chillwave. Other 2010s synth-pop acts include The Naked and Famous, Chvrches, M83, and Shiny Toy Guns.


title: Synth-pop

text: American singer Kesha has also been described as an electropop artist, with her electropop debut single "Tik Tok" topping the "Billboard" Hot 100 for nine weeks in 2010. She also used the genre on her comeback single "Die Young". Mainstream female recording artists who have dabbled in the genre in the 2010s include Madonna, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Jessie J, Christina Aguilera, and Beyoncé.


title: Synth-pop

text: In Japan, girl group Perfume, along with producer Yasutaka Nakata of capsule, produced technopop music combining 1980s synth-pop with chiptunes and electro house from 2003. Their breakthrough came in 2008 with the album "Game", which led to a renewed interest in technopop within mainstream Japanese pop music. Other Japanese female technopop artists soon followed, including Aira Mitsuki, immi, Mizca, SAWA, Saoriiiii and Sweet Vacation. Model-singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu also shared the same success as Perfume's under Nakata's production with the album "Pamyu Pamyu Revolution" in 2012, which topped electronic charts on iTunes as well as the Japanese Albums chart. Much like Japan, Korean pop music has also become dominated by synth-pop, particularly with girl groups such as f(x), Girls' Generation and Wonder Girls.


title: Synth-pop

text: In 2020, the genre experienced a resurgence in popularity as 1980s-style synth-pop and synthwave songs from singers such as The Weeknd and Dua Lipa gained success on international music charts. "Blinding Lights", a synthwave song by The Weeknd, peaked at number one in 29 countries, including the United States, in early 2020; and later became the "Billboard" number-one greatest song of all time in November 2021.


title: Synth-pop

text: Synth-pop has received considerable criticism and even prompted hostility among musicians and in the press. It has been described as "anaemic" and "soulless". Synth-pop's early steps, and Gary Numan in particular, were also disparaged in the British music press of the late 1970s and early 1980s for their German influences and characterised by journalist Mick Farren as the "Adolf Hitler Memorial Space Patrol". In 1983, Morrissey of the Smiths stated that "there was nothing more repellent than the synthesizer". During the decade, objections were raised to the quality of compositions and the limited musicianship of artists. Gary Numan observed "hostility" and what he felt was "ignorance" regarding synth-pop, such as his belief that people "thought machines did it".


title: Synth-pop

text: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark frontman Andy McCluskey recalled a great many people "who thought that the equipment wrote the song for you", and asserted: "Believe me, if there was a button on a synth or a drum machine that said 'hit single', I would have pressed it as often as anybody else would have – "but there isn't". It was all written by real human beings".


title: Synth-pop

text: According to Simon Reynolds, in some quarters synthesizers were seen as instruments for "effete poseurs", in contrast to the phallic guitar. The association of synth-pop with an alternative sexuality was reinforced by the images projected by synth-pop stars, who were seen as gender bending, including Phil Oakey's asymmetric hair and use of eyeliner, Marc Almond's "pervy" leather jacket, skirt wearing by figures including Martin Gore of Depeche Mode and the early "dominatrix" image of the Eurythmics' Annie Lennox. In the U.S. this led to British synth-pop artists being characterised as "English haircut bands" or "art fag" music, though many British synth-pop artists were highly popular on both American radio and MTV. Although some audiences were overtly hostile to synth-pop, it achieved an appeal among those alienated from the dominant heterosexuality of mainstream rock culture, particularly among gay, female and introverted audiences.


title: Synth-pop

text: By the mid-1980s, synth-pop had helped establish the synthesizer as a primary instrument in mainstream pop music. It also influenced the sound of many mainstream rock acts, such as Bruce Springsteen, ZZ Top and Van Halen. It was a major influence on house music, which grew out of the post-disco dance club culture of the early 1980s as some DJs attempted to make the less pop-oriented music that also incorporated influences from Latin soul, dub, rap music, and jazz.


title: Synth-pop

text: American musicians such as Juan Atkins, using names including Model 500, Infinity and as part of Cybotron, developed a style of electronic dance music influenced by synth-pop and funk that led to the emergence of Detroit techno in the mid-1980s. The continued influence of 1980s synth-pop could be seen in various incarnations of 1990s dance music, including trance. Hip hop artists such as Mobb Deep have sampled 1980s synth-pop songs. Popular artists such as Rihanna, UK stars Jay Sean and Taio Cruz, as well as British pop star Lily Allen on her second album, have also embraced the genre.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: According to traditions dating back to the 4th century, it contains the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus's empty tomb, which is where he was buried and resurrected. Each time the church was rebuilt, some of the antiquities from the preceding structure were used in the newer renovation. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule. The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the 4th century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Control of the church itself is shared, a simultaneum, among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic, and to a lesser degree the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (); is also called the "Church of the Resurrection" or "Church of the Anastasis" by Eastern Christians ( ; ; ).


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Following the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of "Aelia Capitolina", on the site. Circa AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to create a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. The temple remained until the early 4th century.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: After allegedly seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favor Christianity, signed the Edict of Milan legalising the religion, and sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to look for Christ's tomb. With the help of Bishop of Caesarea Eusebius and Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one which allegedly cured people of death was presumed to be the True Cross Jesus was crucified on, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary. Constantine ordered in about 326 that the temple to Jupiter/Venus be replaced by a church. After the temple was torn down and its ruins removed, the soil was removed from the cave, revealing a rock-cut tomb that Helena and Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus. A shrine was built, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In 327, Constantine and Helena separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to commemorate the birth of Jesus.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over the two holy sites: a rotunda called the "Anastasis" ("Resurrection"), where Helena and Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried, and across a courtyard to the east, the great basilica, an enclosed colonnaded atrium (the "Triportico", sometimes called the "Martyrium") with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the 4th century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: This building was destroyed by a fire in May of AD 614, when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius rebuilt the church after recapturing the city. After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Early in the 9th century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. The damage was repaired in 810 by Patriarch Thomas I. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the rotunda. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out, which was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and Patriarch John VII was murdered.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews, serving as an impetus to later Crusades.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–28, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople in 1048. As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the renunciation of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by al-Hakim and the reestablishment of a patriarch in Jerusalem. Contemporary sources credit the emperor with spending vast sums in an effort to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after this agreement was made. Still, "a total replacement was far beyond available resources. The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins."


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The rebuilt church site consisted of "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it." The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as 'a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature'... since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins." Control of Jerusalem, and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, continued to change hands several times between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks (loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad) until the Crusaders' arrival in 1099.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abassids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. The classical theory is that Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself "Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri" ("Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre"). By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the , but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: According to the German priest and pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians", and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given to them by the pilgrims at the south door of the church.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Eight 11th- and 12th-century Crusader leaders (Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V — the first eight rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem) were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: It is unclear if the remains of those men were exhumed; some researchers hypothesize that some of them may still be in unmarked pits under the church.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reports on the renovation of the Church in the mid-12th century. The Crusaders investigated the eastern ruins on the site, occasionally excavating through the rubble, and while attempting to reach the cistern, they discovered part of the original ground level of Hadrian's temple enclosure; they transformed this space into a chapel dedicated to Helena, widening their original excavation tunnel into a proper staircase. The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. These renovations unified the small chapels on the site and were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149, placing all the holy places under one roof for the first time. The church became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and the site of the kingdom's scriptorium. It was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187, although the treaty established after the Third Crusade allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the site. Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50) regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century while under a ban of excommunication, with the curious consequence that the holiest church in Christianity was laid under interdict. The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the Latin control of Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians in 1244.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian (Church of the East) presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate. The Franciscan friars renovated the church in 1555, as it had been neglected despite increased numbers of pilgrims. The Franciscans rebuilt the Aedicule, extending the structure to create an antechamber. A marble shrine commissioned by Friar Boniface of Ragusa was placed to envelop the remains of Christ's tomb, probably to prevent pilgrims from touching the original rock or taking small pieces as souvenirs. A marble slab was placed over the limestone burial bed where Jesus's body is believed to have lain.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: After the renovation of 1555, control of the church oscillated between the Franciscans and the Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favorable "firman" from the "Sublime Porte" at a particular time, often through outright bribery. Violent clashes were not uncommon. There was no agreement about this question, although it was discussed at the negotiations to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. During the Holy Week of 1757, Orthodox Christians reportedly took over some of the Franciscan-controlled church. This may have been the cause of the sultan's "firman" (decree) later developed into the Status Quo.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: A fire severely damaged again in 1808, causing the dome of the Rotunda to collapse and smashing the Aedicule's exterior decoration. The Rotunda and the Aedicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–10 by architect Nikolaos Ch. Komnenos of Mytilene in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style. The interior of the antechamber, now known as the , was partly rebuilt to a square ground plan in place of the previously semicircular western end.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Another decree in 1853 from the sultan solidified the existing territorial division among the communities and solidified the Status Quo for arrangements to "remain in their present state", requiring consensus to make even minor changes.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: By the time of the British Mandate for Palestine following the end of World War I, the cladding of red marble applied to the Aedicule by Komnenos had deteriorated badly and was detaching from the underlying structure; from 1947 until restoration work in 2016–17, it was held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In 1948, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan and the Old City with the church were made part of Jordan. In 1967, Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem in the Six Day War, and that area has remained under Israeli control ever since. Under Israeli rule, legal arrangements relating to the churches of East Jerusalem were maintained in coordination with the Jordanian government. The dome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored again in 1994–97 as part of extensive modern renovations that have been ongoing since 1959. During the 1970–78 restoration works and excavations inside the building, and under the nearby Muristan bazaar, it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white "meleke" limestone was struck.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: East of the Chapel of Saint Helena, the excavators discovered a void containing a 2nd-century drawing of a Roman pilgrim ship, two low walls supporting the platform of Hadrian's 2nd-century temple, and a higher 4th-century wall built to support Constantine's basilica. After the excavations of the early 1970s, the Armenian authorities converted this archaeological space into the Chapel of Saint Vartan, and created an artificial walkway over the quarry on the north of the chapel, so that the new chapel could be accessed (by permission) from the Chapel of Saint Helena.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: After seven decades of being held together by steel girders, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the visibly deteriorating Aedicule structure unsafe. A restoration of the Aedicule was agreed upon and executed from May 2016 to March 2017. Much of the $4 million project was funded by the World Monuments Fund, as well as $1.3 million from Mica Ertegun and a significant sum from King Abdullah II of Jordan. The existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule was confirmed, and a window was created to view this from the inside. The presence of moisture led to the discovery of an underground shaft resembling an escape tunnel carved into the bedrock, seeming to lead from the tomb. For the first time since at least 1555, on 26 October 2016, marble cladding that protects the supposed burial bed of Jesus was removed. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, only a layer of debris was visible. This was cleared in the next day, and a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved was revealed. By the night of 28 October, the original limestone burial bed was shown to be intact. The tomb was resealed shortly thereafter. Mortar from just above the burial bed was later dated to the mid-4th century.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On 25 March 2020, Israeli health officials ordered the site closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the keeper of the keys, it was the first such closure since 1349, during the Black Death. Clerics continued regular prayers inside the building, and it reopened to visitors two months later, on 24 May.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: During church renovations in 2022, a stone slab covered in modern graffiti was moved from a wall, revealing Cosmatesque-style decoration on one face. According to an IAA archaeologist, the decoration was once inlaid with pieces of glass and fine marble; it indicates that the relic was the front of the church's high altar from the Crusader era (c. 1149), which was later used by the Greek Orthodox until being damaged in the 1808 fire.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Two streets open into the parvis: (west) and (east). Around the parvis are a few smaller structures.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: A borders the parvis on its west side. They originally formed the baptistery complex of the Constantinian church. The southernmost chapel was the vestibule, the middle chapel the baptistery, and the north chapel the chamber in which the patriarch chrismated the newly baptized before leading them into the rotunda north of this complex. Now they are dedicated as (from south to north)


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The 12th-century Crusader is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its upper level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved arched doors. Today, only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the right doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church leads to the south transept, through the crusader façade in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a group of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large structure has proven to be hazardous at times. For example, when a fire broke out in 1840, dozens of pilgrims were trampled to death.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: According to their own family lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as an impartial party to the church's denominations already since the 7th century. However, they themselves admit that the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century, in the time of Saladin, which is the date more generally accepted. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, which is made of iron and long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained its doorkeepers.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Just inside the church entrance is a stairway leading up to Calvary (Golgotha), traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated part of the church. The exit is via another stairway opposite the first, leading down to the ambulatory. Golgotha and its chapels are just south of the main altar of the catholicon.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Calvary is split into two chapels: one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic, each with its own altar. On the left (north) side, the Greek Orthodox chapel's altar is placed over the supposed rock of Calvary (the of the Cross), which can be touched through a hole in the floor beneath the altar. The rock can be seen under protective glass on both sides of the altar. The softer surrounding stone was removed when the church was built. The Roman Catholic (Franciscan) Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross (the of the Cross) stretches to the south.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Between the Catholic Altar of the Nailing to the Cross and the Orthodox altar is the Catholic Altar of the Stabat Mater, which has a statue of Mary with an 18th-century bust; this middle altar marks the of the Cross.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On the ground floor, just underneath the Golgotha chapel, is the . According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam's skull was buried. According to some, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill Adam's skull. Through a window at the back of the 11th-century apse, the rock of Calvary can be seen with a crack traditionally held to be caused by the earthquake that followed Jesus's death; some scholars claim it is the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Behind the Chapel of Adam is the (Treasury of the Greek Patriarch). Some of its relics, such as a 12th-century crystal mitre, were transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Museum (the Patriarchal Museum) on .


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Just inside the entrance to the church is the (also Stone of the Anointing or Stone of Unction), which tradition holds to be where Jesus's body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea, though this tradition is only attested since the crusader era (notably by the Italian Dominican pilgrim Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in 1288), and the present stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The wall behind the stone is defined by its striking blue balconies and -bearing red banners (depicting the insignia of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre), and is decorated with lamps. along the wall depicts the anointing of Jesus's body, preceded on the right by the Descent from the Cross, and succeeded on the left by the Burial of Jesus.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The wall was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire; it blocks the view of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the catholicon, sits on top of four of the now empty and desecrated Crusader graves and is no longer structurally necessary. Opinions differ as to whether it is to be seen as the 13th Station of the Cross, which others identify as the lowering of Jesus from the cross and located between the 11th and 12th stations on Calvary.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The lamps that hang over the Stone of Unction, adorned with cross-bearing chain links, are contributed by Armenians, Copts, Greeks and Latins.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Immediately inside and to the left of the entrance is (formerly a divan) that has traditionally been used by the church's Muslim doorkeepers, along with some Christian clergy, as well as electrical wiring. To the right of the entrance is a wall along the ambulatory containing the staircase leading to Golgotha. Further along the same wall is the entrance to the Chapel of Adam.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The is the building of the larger dome located on the far west side. In the centre of the rotunda is a small chapel called the in English, from the Latin , in reference to a small shrine. The Aedicule has two rooms: the first holds a relic called the Angel's Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second, smaller room contains the tomb of Jesus. Possibly to prevent pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, by 1555, a surface of marble cladding was placed on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb. In October 2016, the top slab was pulled back to reveal an older, partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved in it. Beneath it, the limestone burial bed was revealed to be intact.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Under the Status Quo, the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches all have rights to the interior of the tomb, and all three communities celebrate the Divine Liturgy or Holy Mass there daily. It is also used for other ceremonies on special occasions, such as the Holy Saturday ceremony of the Holy Fire led by the Greek Orthodox patriarch (with the participation of the Coptic and Armenian patriarchs). To its rear, in the , constructed of iron latticework, lies the altar used by the Coptic Orthodox. Historically, the Georgians also retained the key to the Aedicule.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: To the right of the sepulchre on the northwestern edge of the Rotunda is the Chapel of the Apparition, which is reserved for Roman Catholic use.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In the central nave of the Crusader-era church, just east of the larger rotunda, is the Crusader structure housing the main altar of the Church, today the Greek Orthodox "catholicon". Its dome is in diameter, and is set directly over the centre of the transept crossing of the choir where the "compas" is situated, an omphalos ("navel") stone once thought to be the center of the world and still venerated as such by Orthodox Christians (associated with the site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection).


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Since 1996 this dome is topped by the monumental Golgotha Crucifix, which the Greek Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem consecrated. It was at the initiative of Israeli professor Gustav Kühnel to erect a new crucifix at the church that would not only be worthy of the singularity of the site, but that would also become a symbol of the efforts of unity in the community of Christian faith.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The iconostasis is flanked to the front by two episcopal thrones: the southern seat (cathedra) is the patriarchal throne of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, and the northern seat is for an archbishop or bishop. (There is also a popular claim that both are patriarchal thrones, with the northern one being for the patriarch of Antioch — which has been described as a misstatement, however.)


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: South of the Aedicule is the "Place of the Three Marys", marked by a stone canopy (the ) and a large modern . From here one can enter the Armenian monastery, which stretches over the ground and first upper floor of the church's southeastern part.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: West of the Aedicule, to the rear of the Rotunda, is the with the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, located in a Constantinian apse and containing an opening to an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb. This chapel is where the Syriac Orthodox celebrate their Liturgy on Sundays.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The Syriac Orthodox Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Nicodemus. On Sundays and feast days it is furnished for the celebration of Mass. It is accessed from the Rotunda, by a door west of the Aedicule.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On the far side of the chapel is the low entrance to an almost complete first-century Jewish tomb, initially holding six "kokh"-type funeral shafts radiating from a central chamber, two of which are still exposed. Although this space was discovered relatively recently and contains no identifying marks, some believe that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were buried here.Since Jews always buried their dead outside the city, the presence of this tomb seems to prove that the Holy Sepulchre site was outside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The are seven arches (an arcade) at the northern end of the north transept, which is to the catholicon's north.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In the northeast side of the complex, there is the , alleged to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox are showing pilgrims yet another place where Jesus was allegedly held, the similarly named Prison of Christ in their , located near the Church of Ecce Homo, between the Second and Third Stations of the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins beneath the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mount Zion is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ. To reconcile the traditions, some allege that Jesus was held in the Mount Zion cell in connection with his trial by the Jewish high priest, at the Praetorium in connection with his trial by the Roman governor Pilate, and near the Golgotha before crucifixion.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The chapels in the ambulatory are, from north to south: the Greek (named after Longinus), the Armenian , the entrance to the Chapel of Saint Helena, and the Greek .


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: An Ottoman decree of 1757 helped establish a "status quo" upholding the state of affairs for various Holy Land sites.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The "status quo" was upheld in Sultan Abdülmecid I's "firman" (decree) of 1852/3, which pinned down the now-permanent statutes of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Greek Orthodox act through the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. Roman Catholics act through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures in and around the building.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: None of these controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family. The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved doors. The Joudeh al-Goudia (al-Ghodayya) family were entrusted as custodian to the keys of the Holy Sepulchre by Saladin in 1187. Despite occasional disagreements, religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the full restoration of the Aedicule from 2016 to 2017.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In 1902, 18 friars were hospitalized and some monks were jailed after the Franciscans and Greeks disagreed over who could clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, Franciscan custos, Ottoman governor and French consul general signed a convention that both denominations could sweep it.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 9 November 2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In February 2018, the church was closed following a tax dispute over 152 million euros of uncollected taxes on church properties. The city hall stressed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all other churches are exempt from the taxes, with the changes only affecting establishments like "hotels, halls and businesses" owned by the churches. NPR had reported that the Greek Orthodox Church calls itself the second-largest landowner in Israel, after the Israeli government.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: There was a lock-in protest against an Israeli legislative proposal which would expropriate church lands that had been sold to private companies since 2010, a measure which church leaders assert constitutes a serious violation of their property rights and the Status Quo. In a joint official statement the church authorities protested what they considered to be the peak of a systematic campaign in:


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: a discriminatory and racist bill that targets solely the properties of the Christian community in the Holy Land ... This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The 2018 taxation affair does not cover any church buildings or religious related facilities (because they are exempt by law), but commercial facilities such as the Notre Dame Hotel which was not paying the arnona tax, and any land which is owned and used as a commercial land. The church holds the rights to land where private homes have been constructed, and some of the disagreement had been raised after the Knesset had proposed a bill that will make it harder for a private company not to extend a lease for land used by homeowners. The church leaders have said that such a bill will make it harder for them to sell church-owned lands. According to "The Jerusalem Post":


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The stated aim of the bill is to protect homeowners against the possibility that private companies will not extend their leases of land on which their houses or apartments stand.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: In June 2019, a number of Christian denominations in Jerusalem raised their voice against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the sale of three properties by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to Ateret Cohanim – an organization that seeks to increase the number of Jews in Jerusalem. The church leaders warned that if the organization gets the access to control the sites, Christians will lose access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The site of the church had been a temple to Jupiter or Venus built by Hadrian before Constantine's edifice was built. Hadrian's temple had been located there because it was the junction of the main north–south road with one of the two main east–west roads and directly adjacent to the forum (now the location of the Muristan, which is smaller than the former forum). The forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north–south road with the other main east–west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east–west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Alexander Nevsky Church complex of the "Russian Mission in Exile").


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: From the archaeological excavations in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure and that the "Triportico" and "Rotunda" roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall of the temple itself would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it) if it had not already been destroyed when foundations for the wall were made.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Other archaeologists have criticized Corbo's reconstructions. Dan Bahat, the former city archaeologist of Jerusalem, regards them as unsatisfactory, as there is no known temple of Aphrodite (Venus) matching Corbo's design, and no archaeological evidence for Corbo's suggestion that the temple building was on a platform raised high enough to avoid including anything sited where the Aedicule is now; indeed Bahat notes that many temples to Aphrodite have a rotunda-like design, and argues that there is no archaeological reason to assume that the present rotunda was not based on a rotunda in the temple previously on the site.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The New Testament describes Jesus's tomb as being outside the city wall, as was normal for burials across the ancient world, which were regarded as unclean. Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been well documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus's time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early first century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: The Christian Quarter and the (also Christian) Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem are both located in the northwestern and western part of the Old City, due to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre is located close to the northwestern corner of the walled city. The adjacent neighbourhood within the Christian Quarter is called the Muristan, a term derived from the Persian word for hospital – Christian pilgrim hospices have been maintained in this area near the Holy Sepulchre since at least the time of Charlemagne.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: From the 9th century onward, the construction of churches inspired by the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem.


title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre

text: Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been wholly or partially modeled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. They include the ("Holy Tomb") of Görlitz, constructed between 1481 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, DC in 1898.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick (, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and French as its official languages.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick is bordered by Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to the west. New Brunswick is about 83% forested and its northern half is occupied by the Appalachians. The province's climate is continental with snowy winters and temperate summers.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick has a surface area of and 775,610 inhabitants (2021 census). Atypically for Canada, only about half of the population lives in urban areas. New Brunswick's largest cities are Moncton and Saint John, while its capital is Fredericton.


title: New Brunswick

text: In 1969, New Brunswick passed the Official Languages Act which began recognizing French as an official language, along with English. New Brunswickers have the right to receive provincial government services in the official language of their choice. About of the population are English speaking and is French speaking. New Brunswick is home to most of the cultural region of Acadia and most Acadians. New Brunswick's variety of French is called Acadian French and 7 regional accents can be found.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick was first inhabited by First Nations like the Miꞌkmaq and Maliseet. In 1604, Acadia, the first New France colony, was founded with the creation of Port-Royal. For 150 years afterwards, Acadia changed hands a few times due to numerous conflicts between France and the United Kingdom. From 1755 to 1764, the British deported Acadians en masse, an event known as the Great Upheaval. This, along with the Treaty of Paris, solidified Acadia as British property. In 1784, following the arrival of many loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, the colony of New Brunswick was officially created, separating it from what is now Nova Scotia. In the early 1800s, New Brunswick prospered and the population grew rapidly. In 1867, New Brunswick decided to confederate with Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada (now Quebec and Ontario) to form Canada. After Confederation, shipbuilding and lumbering declined, and protectionism disrupted trade with New England.


title: New Brunswick

text: From the mid-1900s onwards, New Brunswick was one of the poorest regions of Canada, a fact eventually mitigated by transfer payments. However, the province has seen the highest eastward migration in 45 years in both rural and urban areas, as people living in Ontario and other parts of Canada migrate to the area. As of 2002, the provincial GDP was derived as follows: services (about half being government services and public administration) 43%; construction, manufacturing, and utilities 24%; real estate rental 12%; wholesale and retail 11%; agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, mining, oil and gas extraction 5%; transportation and warehousing 5%. A powerful corporate concentration of large companies in New Brunswick, including most newspapers, are owned by the Irving Group of Companies. The province's 2019 output was CA$38.236 billion, which is 1.65% of Canada's GDP.


title: New Brunswick

text: Tourism accounts for 9% of the labour force either directly or indirectly. Popular destinations include the Hopewell Rocks, Fundy National Park, Magnetic Hill, Kouchibouguac National Park and Roosevelt Campobello International Park.


title: New Brunswick

text: After the founding in 1784, the colony was named New Brunswick in honour of George III, King of Great Britain, King of Ireland, and prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg in what is now Germany.


title: New Brunswick

text: Prior to European arrival, Indigenous tribes did not leave a written record, but their Eastern Algonquian languages are present in many placenames, such as Aroostook, Bouctouche, Memramcook, Petitcodiac, Quispamsis, Richibucto and Shediac.


title: New Brunswick

text: Indigenous peoples have been in the area since about 7000 BC. At the time of European contact, inhabitants were the Mi'kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy.


title: New Brunswick

text: The first documented European visits were by Jacques Cartier in 1534. In 1604, a party including Samuel de Champlain visited the mouth of the Saint John River on the eponymous Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Now Saint John, this was later the site of the first permanent European settlement in New Brunswick. French settlement eventually extended up the river to the site of present-day Fredericton. Other settlements in the southeast extended from Beaubassin, near the present-day border with Nova Scotia, to Baie Verte, and up the Petitcodiac, Memramcook, and Shepody Rivers.


title: New Brunswick

text: By the early 18th century, the French settlements formed a part of Acadia, a colonial division of New France. Acadia covered what is now the Maritimes, as well as bits of Quebec and Maine. The British conquest of most of the Acadian peninsula occurred during the Queen Anne's War, and was formalized in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. After the war, French Acadia was reduced to Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and Île-Royale (Cape Breton Island). The ownership of continental Acadia (New Brunswick) remained disputed, with an informal border on the Isthmus of Chignecto. In an effort to limit British expansion into continental Acadia, the French built Fort Beauséjour at the isthmus in 1751.


title: New Brunswick

text: From 1749 to 1755, the British engaged in a campaign to consolidate its control over Nova Scotia. The resulting conflict led to an Acadian Exodus to French-controlled territories in North America, including portions of continental Acadia. In 1755, the British captured Fort Beauséjour, severing the Acadian supply lines to Nova Scotia, and Île-Royale. Unable to make most of the Acadians sign an unconditional oath of allegiance, British authorities undertook a campaign to expel the Acadians in the initial periods of the Seven Years' War.


title: New Brunswick

text: Continental Acadia was eventually incorporated into the British colony of Nova Scotia, with nearly all of New France being surrendered to the British with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Acadians that returned from exile discovered several thousand immigrants, mostly from New England, on their former lands. Some settled around Memramcook and along the Saint John River. In 1766, settlers from Pennsylvania founded Moncton, and English settlers from Yorkshire arrived in the Sackville area. However, settlement of the area remained slow in the mid-18th century.


title: New Brunswick

text: After the American Revolution, about 10,000 loyalist refugees settled along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, commemorated in the province's motto, ("hope restored"). The number reached almost 14,000 by 1784, with about one in ten eventually returning to America. New Brunswick was founded in 1784 upon the partition of Nova Scotia into two areas which became the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In the same year, New Brunswick formed its first elected assembly. In 1785, Saint John became Canada's first incorporated city. The population of the colony reached 26,000 in 1806 and 35,000 in 1812.


title: New Brunswick

text: The 19th century saw an age of prosperity based on wood export and shipbuilding, which was bolstered by the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and demand from the American Civil War. St. Martins became the third most productive shipbuilding town in the Maritimes and produced over 500 vessels. In 1848, responsible home government was granted, and the 1850s saw the emergence of political parties largely organised along religious and ethnic lines. The first half of the 1800s saw large-scale immigration from Ireland and Scotland, with the population reaching 252,047 by 1861.


title: New Brunswick

text: The notion of unifying the separate colonies of British North America was discussed increasingly in the 1860s. Many felt the American Civil War to be the result of weak central government and wished to avoid such violence and chaos. The 1864 Charlottetown Conference was intended to discuss a Maritime Union, but concerns over possible conquest by the Americans, coupled with a belief that Britain was unwilling to defend its colonies against an American attack, led to a request from the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) to expand the meeting's scope. In 1866 the United States cancelled the Reciprocity Treaty, leading to loss of trade with New England and prompting a desire to build trade within British North America, and Fenian raids increased support for union. On 1 July 1867, New Brunswick entered the Canadian Confederation along with Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada.


title: New Brunswick

text: Confederation brought into existence the Intercolonial Railway in 1872, a consolidation of the existing Nova Scotia Railway, European and North American Railway, and Grand Trunk Railway. In 1879 John A. Macdonald's Conservatives enacted the National Policy which called for high tariffs and opposed free trade, disrupting the trading relationship between the Maritimes and New England. The economic situation was worsened by the decline of the wooden ship building industry. The railways and tariffs did foster the growth of new industries in the province such as textile manufacturing, iron mills, and sugar refineries, many of which eventually failed to compete with better capitalized industry in central Canada.


title: New Brunswick

text: In 1937 New Brunswick had the highest infant mortality and illiteracy rates in Canada. At the end of the Great Depression the New Brunswick standard of living was much below the Canadian average. In 1940 the Rowell–Sirois Commission reported that the federal government attempts to manage the depression illustrated grave flaws in the Canadian constitution. While the federal government had most of the revenue gathering powers, the provinces had many expenditure responsibilities such as healthcare, education, and welfare, which were becoming increasingly expensive. The Commission recommended the creation of equalization payments, implemented in 1957.


title: New Brunswick

text: After Canada joined World War II, 14 NB army units were organized, in addition to The Royal New Brunswick Regiment, and first deployed in the Italian campaign in 1943. After the Normandy landings they redeployed to northwestern Europe, along with The North Shore Regiment. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, a training program for ally pilots, established bases in Moncton, Chatham, and Pennfield Ridge, as well as a military typing school in Saint John. While relatively unindustrialized before the war, New Brunswick became home to 34 plants on military contracts from which the province received over $78 million. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had promised no conscription, asked the provinces if they would release the government of said promise. New Brunswick voted 69.1% yes. The policy was not implemented until 1944, too late for many of the conscripts to be deployed. There were 1808 NB fatalities among the armed forces.


title: New Brunswick

text: The Acadians in northern New Brunswick had long been geographically and linguistically isolated from the more numerous English speakers to the south. The population of French origin grew dramatically after Confederation, from about 16 per cent in 1871 to 34 per cent in 1931. Government services were often not available in French, and the infrastructure in Francophone areas was less developed than elsewhere. In 1960 Premier Louis Robichaud embarked on the New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program, in which education, rural road maintenance, and healthcare fell under the sole jurisdiction of a provincial government that insisted on equal coverage throughout the province, rather than the former county-based system. In 1969 the Robichaud government adopted the Official Languages Act making the province officially bilingual and establishing the right of New Brunswickers to obtain provincial government services in the official language of their choice. In 1982 at the request of the government of Richard Hatfield, this right became part of the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" and therefore part of the Constitution of Canada.


title: New Brunswick

text: The flag of New Brunswick, based on the coat of arms, was adopted in 1965. The conventional heraldic representations of a lion and a ship represent colonial ties with Europe, and the importance of shipping at the time the coat of arms was assigned.


title: New Brunswick

text: Roughly square, New Brunswick is bordered on the north by Quebec, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Bay of Fundy, and on the west by the US state of Maine. The southeast corner of the province is connected to Nova Scotia at the isthmus of Chignecto.


title: New Brunswick

text: Glaciation has left much of New Brunswick's uplands with only shallow, acidic soils which have discouraged settlement but which are home to enormous forests.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick's climate is more severe than that of the other Maritime provinces, which are lower and have more shoreline along the moderating sea. New Brunswick has a humid continental climate, with slightly milder winters on the Gulf of St. Lawrence coastline. Elevated parts of the far north of the province have a subarctic climate.


title: New Brunswick

text: Evidence of climate change in New Brunswick can be seen in its more intense precipitation events, more frequent winter thaws, and one quarter to half the amount of snowpack. Today the sea level is about higher than it was 100 years ago, and it is expected to rise twice that much again by the year 2100.


title: New Brunswick

text: Most of New Brunswick is forested with secondary forest or tertiary forest. At the start of European settlement, the Maritimes were covered from coast to coast by a forest of mature trees, giants by today's standards. Today less than one per cent of old-growth Acadian forest remains, and the World Wide Fund for Nature lists the Acadian Forest as endangered. Following the frequent large scale disturbances caused by settlement and timber harvesting, the Acadian forest is not growing back as it was, but is subject to borealization. This means that exposure-resistant species that are well adapted to the frequent large-scale disturbances common in the boreal forest are increasingly abundant. These include jack pine, balsam fir, black spruce, white birch, and poplar. Forest ecosystems support large carnivores such as the bobcat, Canada lynx, and black bear, and the large herbivores moose and white-tailed deer.


title: New Brunswick

text: Fiddlehead greens are harvested from the Ostrich fern which grows on riverbanks. Furbish's lousewort, a perennial herb endemic to the shores of the upper Saint John River, is an endangered species threatened by habitat destruction, riverside development, forestry, littering and recreational use of the riverbank. Many wetlands are being disrupted by the highly invasive Introduced species purple loosestrife.


title: New Brunswick

text: The deer population in the province has dropped by 70% since 1985. The widespread use of glyphosate may have contributed to this.


title: New Brunswick

text: Since 2014, the New Brunswick government has allowed forestry companies to harvest 20 percent more wood there than before.


title: New Brunswick

text: Much of the bedrock in the west and north derives from ocean deposits in the Ordovician that were subject to folding and igneous intrusion and that were eventually covered with lava during the Paleozoic, peaking during the Acadian orogeny.


title: New Brunswick

text: During the Carboniferous period, about 340 million years ago, New Brunswick was in the Maritimes Basin, a sedimentary basin near the equator. Sediments, brought by rivers from surrounding highlands, accumulated there; after being compressed, they produced the Albert oil shales of southern New Brunswick. Eventually, sea water from the Panthalassic Ocean invaded the basin, forming the Windsor Sea. Once this receded, conglomerates, sandstones, and shales accumulated. The rust colour of these was caused by the oxidation of iron in the beds between wet and dry periods. Such late Carboniferous rock formed the Hopewell Rocks, which have been shaped by the extreme tidal range of the Bay of Fundy.


title: New Brunswick

text: In the early Triassic, as Pangea drifted north it was rent apart, forming the rift valley that is the Bay of Fundy. Magma pushed up through the cracks, forming basalt columns on Grand Manan.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick lies entirely within the Appalachian Mountain range. The rivers of New Brunswick drain into either the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the east or the Bay of Fundy to the south. These watersheds include lands in Quebec and Maine.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick and the rest of the Maritime Peninsula was covered by thick layers of ice during the last glacial period (the Wisconsinian glaciation). It cut U-shaped valleys in the Saint John and Nepisiguit River valleys and pushed granite boulders from the Miramichi highlands south and east, leaving them as erratics when the ice receded at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, along with deposits such as the eskers between Woodstock and St George, which are today sources of sand and gravel.


title: New Brunswick

text: The four Atlantic Provinces are Canada's least populated, with New Brunswick the third-least populous at 775,610 in 2021, up 3.8% since 2016. A more recent estimate is that the population surpassed 800,000 in March 2022.


title: New Brunswick

text: The Atlantic provinces also have higher rural populations. New Brunswick was largely rural until 1951; since then, the rural-urban split has been roughly even. Population density in the Maritimes is above average among Canadian provinces, which reflects their small size and the fact that they do not possess large, unpopulated hinterlands, as do the other seven provinces and three territories.


title: New Brunswick

text: New Brunswick's 107 municipalities cover of the province's land mass but are home to of its population. The three major urban areas are in the south of the province and are Greater Moncton, population 126,424, Greater Saint John, population 122,389, and Greater Fredericton, population 85,688.


title: New Brunswick

text: In the 2001 census, the most commonly reported ethnicities were British 40%, French Canadian and Acadian 31%, Irish 18%, other European 7%, First Nations 3%, Asian Canadian 2%. Each person could choose more than one ethnicity.


title: New Brunswick

text: As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the most spoken languages in the province included English (698,025 or 91.94%), French (317,825 or 41.86%), Spanish (7,580 or 1%), Arabic (6,090 or 0.8%), Tagalog (4,225 or 0.56%), and Hindi (3,745 or 0.49%). The question on knowledge of languages allows for multiple responses.


title: New Brunswick

text: According to the Canadian Constitution, both English and French are the official languages of New Brunswick, making it the only officially bilingual province. Government and public services are available in both English and French.


title: New Brunswick

text: For education, English-language and French-language systems serve the two linguistic communities at all levels. Anglophone New Brunswickers make up roughly two-thirds of the population, while about one-third are Francophone. Recently there has been growth in the numbers of people reporting themselves as bilingual, with 34% reporting that they speak both English and French. This reflects a trend across Canada.


title: New Brunswick

text: In the 2011 census, 84% of provincial residents reported themselves as Christian: 52% were Roman Catholic, 8% Baptist, 8% United Church of Canada, 7% Anglican and 9% other Christian. 15% percent of residents reported no religion.


title: New Brunswick

text: As of October 2017, seasonally adjusted employment is 73,400 for the goods-producing sector and 280,900 for the services-producing sector. Those in the goods-producing industries are mostly employed in manufacturing or construction, while those in services work in social assistance, trades, and health care. A large portion of the economy is controlled by the Irving Group of Companies, which consists of the holdings of the family of K. C. Irving. The companies have significant holdings in agriculture, forestry, food processing, freight transport (including railways and trucking), media, oil, and shipbuilding.


title: New Brunswick

text: The United States is the province's largest export market, accounting for 92% of a foreign trade valued in 2014 at almost $13 billion, with refined petroleum making up 63% of that, followed by seafood products, pulp, paper and sawmill products and non-metallic minerals (chiefly potash). The value of exports, mostly to the United States, was $1.6 billion in 2016. About half of that came from lobster. Other products include salmon, crab, and herring. In 2015, spending on non-resident tourism in New Brunswick was $441 million, which provided $87 million in tax revenue.


title: New Brunswick

text: The influence of the Irving family (owners of Canada's largest refinery, vast farms and forest estates, newspapers, numerous sawmills and paper mills, a fleet of boats and trucks, or a rail network) on New Brunswick is such that the province is sometimes described as being subject to a form of economic feudalism. In 2016, the 200 or so companies it controls gave it about $10 billion in capital.


title: New Brunswick

text: The group's activities are supported by the authorities through numerous tax exemptions and the payment of subsidies, notably through the Renewable Energy Purchase Program for Large Industry. The province has also progressively handed over the management of the public sector forestry assets to the Irving Group, regularly lowering standards. In 2014, the latter reduced the size of buffer zones between forests and human settlements, allowed more clear-cutting, increased the planned production volume and reduced the proportion of protected areas from 31% to 22%.


title: New Brunswick

text: The family owns all of the province's English-language newspapers. It also owns several local radio and television stations. For academic Alain Deneault, "the conflicts of interest that arise from this situation seem caricatural: the group's media essentially echo the positions of the Irving family in all the fields of social and industrial life in which it is involved." The information transmitted by the group and disseminated by the press is sometimes questioned (notably in the fall of 2018, during an explosion at the Saint John refinery), but few public officials, professors and members of parliament carry denunciations, as the family's financial contributions to universities and political parties provide it with leverage.


title: New Brunswick

text: Biologists, academics and Eilish Cleary, the province's former head of public health, have reported being subjected to intense pressure (including dismissal in Cleary's case) while analyzing the impact of the company's pesticides and its opaque forest management. Since the 1970s, every premier in the province has been elected with the support of Irving. Blaine Higgs, premier since November 2018, is a former executive of the group. According to journalist Michel Cormier: "We might be able to win an election without Irving's tacit support, but we could hardly aspire to power if he decided to openly oppose it."


title: New Brunswick

text: A large number of residents from New Brunswick are employed in the primary sector of industry. More than 13,000 New Brunswickers work in agriculture, shipping products worth over $1 billion, half of which is from crops, and half of that from potatoes, mostly in the Saint John River valley. McCain Foods is one of the world's largest manufacturers of frozen potato products. Other products include apples, cranberries, and maple syrup. New Brunswick was in 2015 the biggest producer of wild blueberries in Canada. The value of the livestock sector is about a quarter of a billion dollars, nearly half of which is dairy. Other sectors include poultry, fur, and goats, sheep, and pigs.


title: New Brunswick

text: About 85 to 90% of New Brunswick is forested. Historically important, it accounted for more than 80% of exports in the mid-1800s. By the end of the 1800s the industry, and shipbuilding, were declining due to external economic factors. The 1920s saw the development of a pulp and paper industry. In the mid-1960s, forestry practices changed from the controlled harvests of a commodity to the cultivation of the forests. The industry employs nearly 12,000, generating revenues around $437 million.


title: New Brunswick

text: Mining was historically unimportant in the province, but has grown since the 1950s. The province's GDP from the Mining and Quarrying industry in 2015 was $299.5 million. Mines in New Brunswick produce lead, zinc, copper, and potash.


title: New Brunswick

text: Forest management in the province is particularly opaque. Donald Bowser, an international expert on political corruption, says he is "shocked to discover that there is less transparency in New Brunswick than in Kurdistan, Guatemala or Sierra Leone, despite the huge public funds committed to natural resource development.


title: New Brunswick

text: Public education elementary and secondary education in the province is administered by the provincial Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. New Brunswick has a parallel system of Anglophone and Francophone public schools. In the anglophone system, approximately 27 per cent of the students are enrolled in a French immersion programs.


title: New Brunswick

text: The province also operates five public post-secondary institutions, including four public universities and one college. Four public universities operate campuses in New Brunswick, including the oldest English-language university in the country, the University of New Brunswick. Other English-language public universities include Mount Allison University and St. Thomas University. Université de Moncton is the province's only French-language university. All four universities offer undergraduate, and postgraduate education. Additionally, the Université de Moncton and the University of New Brunswick also provide professional programs.


title: New Brunswick

text: Public colleges in the province are managed as a part of the New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) system, except for the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design, which has operated through the Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour since 1938. In addition to public institutions, the province is also home to several private vocational schools, such as the Moncton Flight College; and universities, the largest being Crandall University.


title: New Brunswick

text: Under Canadian federalism, power is divided between federal and provincial governments. Among areas under federal jurisdiction are citizenship, foreign affairs, national defence, fisheries, criminal law, Indigenous policies, and many others. Provincial jurisdiction covers public lands, health, education, and local government, among other things. Jurisdiction is shared for immigration, pensions, agriculture, and welfare.


title: New Brunswick

text: The parliamentary system of government is modelled on the British Westminster system. Forty-nine representatives, nearly always members of political parties, are elected to the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. The head of government is the Premier of New Brunswick, normally the leader of the party or coalition with the most seats in the legislative assembly. Governance is handled by the executive council (cabinet), with about 32 ministries. Ceremonial duties of the Monarchy in New Brunswick are mostly carried out by the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick.


title: New Brunswick

text: Under amendments to the province's Legislative Assembly Act in 2007, a provincial election is held every four years. The two largest political parties are the New Brunswick Liberal Association and the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick. Since the 2018 election, minor parties are the Green Party of New Brunswick and the People's Alliance of New Brunswick.


title: New Brunswick

text: The system consists of eight Judicial Districts, loosely based on the counties. The Chief Justice of New Brunswick serves at the apex of this court structure.


title: New Brunswick

text: Historically the province was divided into counties with elected governance, but this was abolished in 1966. While county governments have been abolished in New Brunswick, counties continue to be used as census divisions by Statistics Canada, and as an organizational unit, along with parishes, for registration of real-estate and its taxation. Counties continue to figure into the sense of identity of many New Brunwickers. Counties are further subdivided into 152 parishes, which also lost their political significance in 1966 but are still used as census subdivisions by Statistics Canada.


title: New Brunswick

text: Ninety-two per cent of the land in the province, inhabited by about 35% of the population, is under provincial administration and has no local, elected representation. The 51% of the province that is Crown land is administered by the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development.