Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God. Ricci started learning theology and law in a Roman Jesuit...

Pope Paul V, born Camillo Borghese, was Pope from 16 May 1605 until his death. In Rome the Pope financed the completion of St. Peter's Basilica, and improved the Vatican Library. He restored the Aqua Traiana, an ancient Roman Aqueduct (name...

Petrus Plancius was a Dutch astronomer, cartographer and clergyman. He was soon recognized as an expert on the shipping routes to India. He strongly believed in the idea of a North East passage until the failure of Willem Barentsz's third v...

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...

Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar also known as Akbar the Great was the son of Nasiruddin Humayun whom he succeeded as ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1605, and the grandson of Babur who founded the Mughal dynasty. On the eve of his death i...

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...

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...

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...

Philip II, king of Spain and Portugal, was born at Valladolid, the only son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V and Isabella of Portugal. Philip II, the self-proclaimed leader of Counter-Reformation, assumed the throne in 1556 with a great...

Catherine de' Medici was born in Florence, Italy, as Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de' Medici. Both of her parents, Lorenzo II de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, Countess of Boulogne, died within weeks of h...

John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, (properly The Acts and Monuments), an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferi...

Johann Weyer (in Dutch Jan/Johan/Johannes Wier, in Latin Ioannes Wierus and Piscinarius), was a Dutch physician, occultist and demonologist, disciple and follower of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. He was among the first to publish against the...

Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a p...

John Knox was a Scottish clergyman and a leader of the Protestant Reformation who is considered the founder of the Presbyterian denomination in Scotland. Influenced by early church reformers such as George Wishart, he joined the movement to...

John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer,...