King Arthur was a legendary British leader of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early sixth century. The details of Arthur's...

Thiruvalluvar, commonly known as Valluvar, was a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher. He is best known as the author of Thirukkural, a collection of couplets on ethics, political and economical matters, and love. The text is considered an...

Theodora was empress of the Byzantine Empire and the wife of Emperor Justinian I. Like her husband, she is a saint in the Orthodox Church, commemorated on the 14th of November. Theodora was perhaps the most influential and powerful woman in...

Totila was king of the Ostrogoths from 541 until his death. He waged the Gothic War against the Byzantine Empire for the mastery of Italy. Most of the historical evidence for Totila consists of chronicles by the Byzantine historian Procopiu...

Procopius of Caesarea was a prominent Byzantine scholar from Palestine. Accompanying the general Belisarius in the wars of the Emperor Justinian I, he became the principal historian of the 6th century, writing the Wars of Justinian, the Bui...

Flavius Belisarius was one of the greatest generals of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the old Western Roman Empire, which had been lost just under a century previ...

Saint Columba, sometimes referred to as Columba of Iona, or, in Old Irish, as Colm Cille, Columbkill, Columbkille or Columcille (meaning "Dove of the church") was an outstanding figure among the Gaelic missionary monks who, some of his advo...

After the repression of the frightful revolt, Justinian conceived the grandiose project of rebuilding the Great Church from its foundations. This time it was to be built on plans well in advance of the times, using new daring vaulting techn...

Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather. He wrote in form...

Pope Saint Gregory the Great not only saved the Church, in times so frightful that the men who lived in them were sure that the end of the world was come, but he founded the great civilization which has lasted down to our day and of which...

Emperor Wen of Sui (581-604), personal name Yang Jian, was the founder and first emperor of China's Sui Dynasty. He was a hard-working administrator and a micromanager. As a Buddhist, he encouraged the spread of Buddhism through the state;...

The Rule of St. Benedict is a fairly short book, pocket-sized, and only 96 pages long. It is a good example of the statement, 'good things come in small packages'. Father Timothy Fry, OSB (which stands for 'Order of St. Benedict', and is us...

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the 19th-century historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "The last scholar of the ancient world". At a time of disi...

Sophronius was the Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 until his death, and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before rising to the primacy of the see of Jerusalem, he was a monk and theologian who...

Emperor Gaozu of Tang China, born Li Yuan, was the founder of the Tang Dynasty of China, and the first emperor of this dynasty from 618 to 626. Under the shortlived Sui dynasty, Li Yuan was the governor in the area of modern-day Shanxi prov...