Isabella of Portugal was Duchess of Burgundy as the third wife of Duke Philip the Good. Born a Portuguese infanta of the House of Aviz, Isabella was the only surviving daughter of King John I of Portugal and his wife Philippa of Lancaster....

Guillaume Du Fay, also Dufay, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. A central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the leading composers in Europe in the mid-15th century. His un...

Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer. Toscanelli is noted for his observations of comets and the painstaking calculation of their orbits. Among these was the comet of 1456; only named Halley'...

Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture was an Early Flemish painter. His surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces and commissioned single and diptych portraits. Although his life was generally uneventful, he...

Originating in Bruges, the Gruuthuse Manuscript is a very diverse collection of Middle Dutch rhyming literature which was compiled in about 1400. There are many reasons why it can be described as special. Perhaps the most important of these...

Jacqueline of Wittelsbach (Dutch: Jacoba van Beieren; French: Jacqueline de Bavière; was Duchess of Bavaria-Straubing, Countess of Hainaut and Holland from 1417 to 1432. She was the only daughter of William VI, Count of Hainaut and Holland...

Nicholas of Kues, also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany (Holy Roman Empire), a philosopher, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the...

Francesco I Sforza was an Italian condottiero, the founder of the Sforza dynasty in Milan, Italy. He was the brother of Alessandro, with whom he often fought. Francesco Sforza is mentioned several times in Niccolò Machiavelli's book The Pri...

Charles VII, called the Victorious or the Well-Served, was King of France from 1422 to his death, though he was initially opposed by Henry VI of England, whose Regent, the Duke of Bedford, ruled much of France including the capital, Paris....

Murad II Kodja was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1421 to 1451 (except for a period from 1444 to 1446 when his son Mehmed II reigned). Murad II's reign was marked by the long war he fought against the Christian feudal lords of the Ba...

Constantine XI Dragaš Palaiologos, was the last reigning Byzantine Emperor, reigning as a member of the Palaiologos dynasty from 1449 to his death in battle at the fall of Constantinople. Following his death, he became a legendary figure in...

Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer and general Renaissance humanist polymath. Although he is often characterized as an "architect" exclusively, as James Beck ha...

John Hunyadi was a leading Hungarian military and political figure in Central and Southeastern Europe during the 15th century. According to most contemporary sources, he was son of a noble family of Romanian ancestry. He mastered his milita...

Lorenzo Valla was an Italian humanist, rhetorician, and educator. He is best known for his textual analysis that proved that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. The Donation of Constantine suggests that Constantine I "donated" the...

The Yongle Encyclopedia, literally The Great Canon or Vast Documents of the Yongle Era, was a Chinese compilation commissioned by the Chinese Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle in 1403 and completed by 1408. Until Wikipedia, it was the world's lar...