Maximilian was born in Vienna as the son of the Emperor Frederick III and Eleanore of Portugal. He married (1477-1482) the heiress of Burgundy, Mary, the only daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Through this marriage, Maximilian...

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figu...

Mehmed II (1432-1481), nicknamed the conqueror, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire a short time in 1444 to 1446, and from 1451 to 1481. Mehmed II brought an end to the Byzantine Empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453 (during the well-...

Henry IV was the King of England and France and Lord of Ireland from 1399 to 1413. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence the other name by which he was known, "Henry (of) Bolingbroke". His father, John of Gaunt, was the t...

Margaret of Dampierre was the last Countess of Flanders (as Margaret III) of the House of Dampierre, Countess of Artois and Countess Palatine of Burgundy (as Margaret II) and twice Duchess consort of Burgundy. Margaret was widowed in 13...

Saint Catherine of Siena was a tertiary of the Dominican Order and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Ita...

Timur meaning "iron" or Tamerlane in English, was a 14th-century conqueror of much of western and central Asia, founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, and great great grandfather of Babur, the founder...

Louis IV, called the Bavarian, of the house of Wittelsbach, was King of the Romans from 1314, King of Italy from 1327, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1328. Louis IV was Duke of Upper Bavaria from 1294/1301 together with his elder brother Ru...

Conrad, called the Younger or the Boy, but usually known by the diminutive Conradin, was the Duke of Swabia (1254–1268, as Conrad IV), King of Jerusalem (1254–1268, as Conrad III), and King of Sicily (1254–1258, de jure until 1268, as Conra...

Moses Maimonides is regarded by many as the greatest Jewish philosopher ever. As a doctor, rabbi, religious scholar, mathematician, astronomer, and commentator on the art of medicine, his influence has spanned centuries and cultures. He was...

Averroës is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd, a mediæval Andalusian Muslim polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical...

Malcolm III was King of Scots from 1058 to 1093. He was later nicknamed "Canmore" ("ceann mòr", Gaelic for "Great Chief": "ceann" denotes "leader", "head" (of state) and "mòr" denotes "pre-eminent", "great", and "big"). Malcolm's long reign...

Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great, was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Cent...

Saint Jerome was an Illyrian Latin Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, who also became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known f...

Constantius I, commonly known as Constantius Chlorus, was Caesar, a form of Roman co-emperor, from 293 to 306. He was the father of Constantine the Great and founder of the Constantinian dynasty. As Caesar, he defeated the usurper Allect...