Giulio "Delminio" Camillo was an Italian philosopher. He is best known for his Theatre of Memory, described in his posthumously published work L’Idea del Theatro. Camillo notes that L’Idea del Theathro is concerned with ‘the eternal aspect...

Christian II was a Danish monarch and King of Denmark, Norway (1513 – 1523) and Sweden (1520 – 1521), under the Kalmar Union. Christian was born the son of King Hans of Denmark and Christina of Saxony, at Nyborg Castle in 1481 and succeeded...

Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo...

Count Henry III of Nassau-Dillenburg-Dietz, Lord (from 1530 Baron) of Breda, Lord of the Lek, of Dietz, etc. was a count of the House of Nassau. He was the son of Count John V of Nassau-Dillenburg and Elisabeth of Hesse. His younger brother...

Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of India. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Geng...

Martin Luther was a German priest and professor of theology who initiated the Protestant Reformation. Strongly disputing the claim that freedom from God's punishment of sin could be purchased with money, he confronted indulgence salesman J...

Ulrich Zwingli was a leader of the Swiss Reformation. While Germany struggled under the political and religious consequences of Luther's reform movement, the movement itself quickly spilled out of the German borders into neighboring Switzer...

Prince Bartholomeus Welser was a German banker. He was the head of the banking firm of Welser Brothers, who claimed descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius. They possessed great riches, and Bartholomeus was created a prince of the emp...

Painted for the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello; Tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm; now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. Among the Florentine artists of the second half of the fifteenth century who strove...

Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian explorer of North America, in the service of the French crown. He is renowned as the first European since the Norse expeditions to North America around AD 1000 to explore the Atlantic coast of North Ame...

Catherine of Aragon was Queen of England from 1509 until 1533 as the first wife of King Henry VIII; she was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Prince Arthur. The daughter of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of A...

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, was an English statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540. Cromwell was one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation. Cromwell helped engineer a...

Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras was a Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala. He participated in the conquest of Cuba, in Juan de Grijalva's exploration of the coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the conquest of Mexico le...

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Cas...

Dragut was an Ottoman Greek Admiral and privateer who also served as Bey of Algiers; Beylerbey of the Mediterranean; and first Bey, later Pasha, of Tripoli. Under his naval command the Ottoman Empire's maritime power was extended across Nor...