Philip I, known as Philip the Handsome or the Fair, was the first Habsburg King of Castile. The son of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Philip inherited the greater part of the Duchy of Burgundy and the Burgundian Netherlands (as Philip IV...

Clement VII, Pope 1523-1534, the illegitimate son of Giuliano de' Medici, he was raised by his uncle Lorenzo de' Medici. In 1513 he was made archbishop of Florence and cardinal by his cousin Pope Leo X. He commissioned art from Raphael and...

Sir Thomas More, known to Catholics as Saint Thomas More since 1935, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and was Lord Chancell...

Joanna or Joan, nicknamed Joanna the Mad (Spanish: Juana la Loca), was the first queen regnant to reign over both the Crown of Castile (1504–55) and the Crown of Aragon (1516–55), a union which evolved into modern Spain. Besides the kingdom...

Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Spaniard who would later become Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattani. Lucrezia's family later came to epitomise the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexua...

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Spanish expedition to the East Indies that resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano. He was born in a still disputed location i...

Margaret of Austria was, by her two marriages, Princess of Asturias and Duchess of Savoy, and was appointed Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530. Margaret was born as the second child and only d...

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...

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...