Pius V, Saint orig. Antonio or Michele Ghislieri (b. Jan. 17, 1504, Bosco, duchy of Milan—d. May 1, 1572, Rome, Papal States; can¬ onized May 22, 1712; feast day April 30) Pope (1566-72). He joined the Dominican order at age 14 and was ordained in 1528. A relentless pur¬ suer of heretics, he was named commissary general of the Inquisition in 1551. By 1556 he was a cardinal, and in 1566 he was elected pope. He zealously carried out church reforms and succeeded in keeping Protes¬ tantism out of Italy. In 1570 he excommunicated Elizabeth I, thus worsen¬ ing the position of Catholics in England. He organized the campaign that led to the victory of the Spanish, Venetian, and papal fleets over the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
Pius IX orig. Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (b. May 13, 1792, Senigallia, Papal States—d. Feb. 7, 1878, Rome; beatified Sept. 3, 2000; feast day February 7) Pope (1846-78). He became an archbishop in 1827, a cardinal in 1840, and pope on the death of Gregory XVI (1831-46). He
set out to make liberal reforms, but the revolutionary fervour of 1848 frightened him into extreme conser¬ vatism. He proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and convened the First Vatican Council (1869-70), which promulgated the doctrine of papal infallibility. After los¬ ing temporal power to Victor Emman¬ uel II upon Italian unification, he regarded himself as a “prisoner in the Vatican” and refused any contact with the Italian government. Pius’s pontificate was the longest in history.
He was beatified in 2000 by Pope John Paul II (1978-2005).
Pius X, Saint orig. Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto (b. June 2,
1835, Riese, Venetia, Austrian Empire—d. Aug. 20, 1914, Rome,
Italy; canonized May 29, 1954; feast day August 21) Pope (1903-14). Born in the Italian region of Venetia, he became bishop of Mantua in 1884 and patriarch of Venice in 1893. He was elected pope in 1903 and soon became known both for his piety and for his staunch religious and politi¬ cal conservatism. Pius suppressed the Catholic intellectual movement known as Modernism and opposed the political movement for social reform known as Christian Democracy. He worked to organize the laity for collaboration in the church’s apostolic work, and he reformed the Catho¬ lic liturgy. His decision to systematize canon law led to the publication of the new code in 1917, which became effective in 1918.
Pius XII orig. Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (b.
March 2, 1876, Rome, Italy—d. Oct.
9, 1958, Castel Gandolfo) Pope (1939-58). Before succeeding Pius XI in 1939, he served in the papal diplomatic service and as secretary of state to the Holy See. He was active in humanitarian work with prisoners and refugees during World War II but has been criticized by some for not having done more to prevent or battle the Holocaust. In the postwar era he was a defender of persecuted Catholics in communist countries. Known for his austere conservatism, he in 1950 defined the dogma of the bodily Assumption of the Virgin.
Pius, Sextus Pompeius Mag¬ nus See Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius
pixel in full picture element Smallest resolved unit of a video image that has specific luminescence and colour. Its proportions are determined by the number of lines making up the scanning raster (the pattern of dots that form the image) and the resolution along each line. In the most com¬ mon form of computer graphics, the thousands of tiny pixels that make up an individual image are projected onto a display screen as illuminated dots that from a distance appear as a continuous image. An electron beam creates the grid of pixels by tracing each horizontal line from left to right, one pixel at a time, from the top line to the bottom line. A pixel may also be the smallest element of a light-sensitive device, such as cameras that use charge-coupled devices (see CCD).
Pizarro, Francisco (b. c. 1475, Trujillo, Extremadura, Castile—d. June 26, 1541, Lima) Conquistador who seized the Inca empire for Spain. In 1510 he enrolled in an expedition of exploration in the New World, and three years later he joined Vasco Nunez de Balboa on the expedition that discovered the Pacific. He made two voyages of discovery down the Colombian coast (1524-25, 1526-28) and continued his explorations southward, naming the new territory Peru. In 1531 he set sail for Peru with his 4 brothers, 180 men, and 37 horses. He soon encountered emissaries of the Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, and arranged a meeting. There his men slaughtered the emperor’s unarmed retainers and took him hostage. After
Pius IX.
FELICI
Pius XII, photograph by Yousuf Karsh.
© KARSH FROM RAPHO/PHOTO RESEARCHERS
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Pizarro ► planarian I 1507
accepting a rich ransom for Atahuallpa’s release, Pizarro had him garroted. He spent the rest of his life consolidating Spain’s hold on Peru. He founded Lima (1535), where he was killed by fellow Spaniards he had betrayed.
Pizarro, Gonzalo (b. 1502?, Trujillo, Spain—d. April 10, 1548, Cuzco, Peru) Spanish explorer and conqueror. With his half brother Fran¬ cisco Pizarro, he took part in the conquest of Peru (1531-33), for which he received extensive land grants and was made governor of Quito (1539). In 1541—42 he led a disastrous expedition into the unexplored region east of Quito that cost the lives of almost 200 Spaniards and 4,000 Indians. He returned to find that Spain had restricted the conquerors’ privileges; the conquistadores revolted against the viceroy, and Pizarro led the anti¬ royalist forces to victory at the Battle of Anaquito (1546), but they were defeated in 1548, and he was executed.
pizza Food of Neapolitan origin. It consists of a flattened disk of bread dough, typically topped with olive oil, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese, baked quickly, and served hot. Pizza is eaten throughout Italy, with regional variations in toppings. Pizza came to the U.S. with Italian immi¬ grants; the first U.S. pizzeria opened in 1905, and pizza became one of the nation’s favourite foods after World War II. It is now popular world¬ wide.
PKK See Kurdistan Workers Party PKU See PHENYLKETONURIA
PL Kyodan \'pe- , el- , ky6-dan\ in full Perfect Liberty Kyodan Reli¬ gious group founded in Japan by Miki Tokuchika in 1946 as a revival of his father’s group, Hito-no-michi. Unaffiliated with any of the major reli¬ gious traditions of Japan, it teaches that the goal of human life is joyful self-expression. Misfortune and suffering come from forgetting God, but the believer may pray that his troubles be transferred to the patriarch, who is strengthened for vicarious suffering by the group’s collective prayers. Today PL Kyodan claims more than 2.5 million adherents worldwide. The sect’s headquarters are at Habikino, near Osaka.
placenta \pb-'sen-t3\ Organ in most mammals that develops in the uterus along with a fetus to mediate metabolic exchange. The umbilical cord attaches it to the fetus at the navel. Nutrients and oxygen in the mother’s blood pass across the placenta to the fetus, and metabolic wastes and car¬ bon dioxide from the fetus cross in the other direction; the two blood sup¬ plies do not mix. Other substances (e.g., alcohol or drugs) in the mother’s blood can also cross the placenta, with effects including congenital disor¬ ders and drug addiction in the newborn (see fetal alcohol syndrome); some microorganisms can cross it to infect the fetus, but so do the mother’s antibodies. The placenta, weighing a pound or more at the end of preg¬ nancy, is expelled at parturition. Some animals eat it as a source of nutri¬ ents; in some species this stimulates lactation.
placer deposit Natural concentration of heavy minerals caused by the effect of gravity on moving particles. When heavy, stable minerals are freed from their matrix by weathering processes, they are slowly washed downslope into streams that quickly winnow the lighter matrix. Thus the heavy minerals become concentrated in stream, beach, and lag (residual) gravels and constitute workable ore deposits. Minerals that form placer deposits include gold, platinum, cassiterite, magnetite, chromite, ilmenite, rutile, native copper, zircon, monazite, and various gemstones.