Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley or The Nine Days Queen, was an English noblewoman and de facto monarch of England from 10 July until 19 July 1553. The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, Jan...

Pope Clement VIII, born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 30 January 1592 to 3 March 1605.The Aldobrandini are an Italian noble family from Florence, with close ties to the Vatican. Its Roman fortunes were made when Ippolito Aldobrandini...

Count John VI of Nassau-Dillenburg was a Count of Nassau in Dillenburg. Other names he had were Jan VI or Jan de Oude ("John the Elder", to distinguish him from his 2nd son, "John the Middle", and his grandson "John the Younger"). John VI w...

Edward VI was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first...

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a daimyo who rose to become the second unifier of japan, after Oda Nobunaga. Hideyoshi was a very powerful emperor who exercised control over nearly all of mainland Japan through shrewd military tactics. He is known f...

Louis of Nassau was the third son of William, Count of Nassau and Juliana of Stolberg, and the younger brother of Prince William of Orange Nassau. Louis was a key figure in the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and a strongly convince...

Philips van Marnix, lord of St Aldegonde, was a Dutch writer and statesman, and the probable author of the text of the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus. He was born at Brussels, the son of Jacob van Marnix, baron of Pottes. Marnix van...

Alessandro Valignano was a Jesuit missionary born in Chieti, back then part of the Kingdom of Naples, who helped supervise the introduction of Catholicism to the Far East, and especially to Japan. Valignano founded the St. Paul's Jesuit col...

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, and a politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the...

Joseph Justus Scaliger was considered to be the foremost scholar in sixteenth-century Europe, referred to as "the light of the world", "the sea of sciences" and similar epithets, and it is to him that we owe a "modern" definition of chronol...

Giovanni Maria Artusi was an Italian theorist, composer, and writer. Artusi was one of the most famous reactionaries in musical history, fiercely condemning the new style developing around 1600, the innovations of which defined the early Ba...

William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and consort music....

El Greco was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin. El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the c...

Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, reigned over Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. Mary, the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, was six days old when her father d...

Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila. He is renowned for his cooperation with Saint Teresa of Avila...