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Alcuin
Alcuin of York (Latin: Alcuinus) or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus (730s or 740s – 19 May 804) was an English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Saint Martin's at Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. "The most learned man anywhere to be found" according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.
Alcuin of York had a long career as a teacher and scholar, first at the school at York founded in AD 627 (now known as St Peter's School, York) and later as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational matters. From 796 until his death he was Abbot of the great monastery of St. Martin of Tours.
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Americas
The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World.
In the English language, the Americas refers to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, whereas America, in current usage, usually refers to the United States of America.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.
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Aquitaine
Aquitaine (French pronunciation: [a.ki.tɛn], English /ˌækwɪˈteɪn/; Occitan: Aquitània; Basque: Akitania), archaic Guyenne/Guienne (Occitan: Guiana), is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It is composed of the 5 departments of Dordogne, Lot et Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes and Gironde. In the Middle Ages Aquitaine was a kingdom and a duchy, whose boundaries fluctuated considerably.
There are traces of human settlement by prehistoric peoples, especially in the Périgord, but the earliest attested inhabitants in the south-west were the Aquitani, who were not proper Celtic people, but more akin to the Iberians (see Gallia Aquitania). Although a number of different languages and dialects were in use in the area during ancient times, it is most likely that the prevailing language of Aquitaine during the late pre-historic to Roman period was an early form of the Basque language. This has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, and which are currently easily readable as Basque. Whether this Aquitanian language (Proto-Basque) was a remnant of a Vasconic language group that once extended much farther, or whether it was generally limited to the Aquitaine/Basque region is not currently known. One reason the language of Aquitaine is important is because Basque is the last surviving non-Indo-European language in western Europe and it has had some effect on the languages around it, including Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French.
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Battle of Adrianople
The Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), sometimes known as the Battle of Hadrianopolis, was fought between a Roman army led by the Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels (largely Thervings as well as Greutungs, non-Gothic Alans, and various local rebels) led by Fritigern. The battle took place about 8 miles (13 km) north of Adrianople (modern Edirne in European Turkey, near the border with Greece and Bulgaria) in the Roman province of Thracia and ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths.
Part of the Gothic War (376–382), the battle is often considered the start of the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Adrianople actually was fought between the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire, which ultimately withstood the Gothic invasions and developed into the Byzantine Empire.
In 376 AD, displaced by the invasions of the Huns, the Goths, led by Alavivus and Fritigern, asked to be allowed to settle in the Roman Empire. Hoping that they would become farmers and soldiers, the emperor Valens allowed them to establish themselves in the Empire as allies (foederati). However, once across the Danube (and in Roman territory), the dishonesty of the provincial commanders Lupinicus and Maximus led the newcomers to revolt after suffering many hardships. Valens (of the Eastern Empire) then asked Gratian, the western emperor, for reinforcements to fight the Goths. Gratian sent the general Frigeridus with reinforcements, as well as the leader of his guards, Richomeres. For the next two years preceding the battle of Adrianople there were a series of running battles with no clear victories for either side.
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Battle of Manzikert
The Battle of Manzikert (Modern Turkish: Malazgirt Meydan Savaşı; Classical Armenian: Մամազկերտ – Manazkert, City of Manaz) was fought between the Byzantine Empire and Seljuq Turks led by Alp Arslan on August 26, 1071 near Manzikert (modern Malazgirt in Muş Province, Turkey). The decisive defeat of the Byzantine army and the capture of the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes played an important role in undermining Byzantine authority in Anatolia and Armenia, and allowed for the gradual Turkification of Anatolia.
The brunt of the battle was borne by the professional soldiers from the eastern and western tagmata, as large numbers of the mercenaries and Anatolian levies fled early and survived the battle. The fallout from Manzikert was disastrous for the Byzantines, resulting in civil conflicts and an economic crisis that severely weakened the Byzantine Empire's ability to adequately defend its borders. This led to the mass movement of Turks into central Anatolia; by 1080 an area of 30,000 square miles (78,000 km2) had been gained by the Seljuk Turks. It took three decades of internal strife before Alexios I Komnenos (1081 to 1118) restored stability to the Byzantines. Historian Thomas Asbridge says: "In 1071, the Seljuqs crushed an imperial army at the Battle of Manzikert (in eastern Asia Minor), and though historians no longer consider this to have been an utterly cataclysmic reversal for the Greeks, it still was a stinging setback."
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Bohemia
Bohemia (Czech: Čechy;German:
Böhmen (help·info); Polish: Czechy; French: Bohême; Latin: Bohemia) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague. In a broader meaning, it often refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in historical contexts, such as the Kingdom of Bohemia.
Bohemia has an area of 52,065 km² and today is home to approximately 6 million of the Czech Republic's 10.3 million inhabitants. It is bordered by Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, the historical region of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), the highest within the Sudeten mountain range.
In the 2nd century BC, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy, with various peoples including the Boii. The Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia (194 BC) and the Battle of Mutina (193 BC). After this, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps.
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Bologna
Bologna (Italian pronunciation: [boˈloɲɲa] (
listen); Emilian: Bulåggna pronounced [buˈləɲɲa]; Latin: Bononia) is the principal city (capital) of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history, art, cuisine, music, and culture. It is the seventh largest city in terms of population in Italy and it is the heart of a metropolitan area (officially recognized by the Italian government as a metropolitan city) of about 1,000,000 inhabitants. The urban sprawl of Bologna, including nearby Modena, whose metropolises are adjoining, is continuously expanding.
The city, the first settlements of which date back to at least one millennium before Christ, has always been an important urban center, first under the Etruscans (Velzna/Felsina) and the Celts (Bona), then under the Romans (Bononia), then again in the Middle Ages, as a free municipality (for one century it was the fifth largest European city based on population). Home to the oldest university in the world, University of Bologna, founded in 1088, Bologna hosts thousands of students who enrich the social and cultural life of the city. Famous for its towers and lengthy porticoes, Bologna has a well-preserved historical centre (one of the largest in Italy) thanks to a careful restoration and conservation policy which began at the end of the 1970s, on the heels of serious damage done by the urban demolition at the end of the 19th century as well as that caused by wars.
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British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from many countries, in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books (second only to the United States' Library of Congress), along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC.
As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. It also has a programme for content acquisitions. The British Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6.0 mi) of new shelf space.
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Caliphate of Córdoba
The Caliphate of Córdoba (Arabic: خلافة قرطبة; trans. Khilāfat Qurṭuba) ruled the Iberian peninsula (Al-Andalus) and part of North Africa, from the islamic Qurtuba (Córdoba) city, from 929 to 1031. This period was characterized by remarkable success in trade and culture; many of the masterpieces of Islamic Iberia were constructed in this period, including the famous Great Mosque of Córdoba. In January 929, Abd-ar-Rahman III proclaimed himself Caliph (Arabic: خليفة) of Qurtuba in place of his original title Emir of Córdoba (Arabic: أمير قرطبة 'Amīr Qurṭuba). Abd-ar-Rahman III was a member of the Umayyad dynasty; the same dynasty who held the titles of Emir of Córdoba since 756. The rule of the Caliphate is known as the heyday of Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula. The Caliphate was practically disintegrated due to civil war (fitna) between descendants of the last legitimate Caliph Hisham II and the successors of his prime minister (hayib) Al-Mansur. The shell of the Caliphate existed until 1031 when, after years of infighting, it fractured into a number of independent Taifa kingdoms. Despite these fractures, the Islamic civilisation in Iberia, one of the most culturally florid periods of European civilisation, continued until 1492 when its last bastion, the Alhambra in Granada, was formally surrendered to the Christians.
wn.com/Caliphate_of_Córdoba -
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (English /kəˈnɛəri ˈaɪləndz/; Spanish: Islas Canarias [ˈizlas kaˈnaɾjas, ˈihlah kaˈnaɾjas]), also known as the Canaries (Spanish: Canarias), is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union. The islands include (from largest to smallest): Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro, La Graciosa, Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Este and Roque del Oeste. The Canary Islands are legally recognized as a nationality of Spain. Geographically it is a part of the African Continent.[citation needed]
The archipelago's beaches, climate and important natural attractions, especially Teide National Park and Mount Teide (the third tallest volcano in the world measured from its base on the ocean floor), make it a major tourist destination, with over 12 million visitors per year, especially Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote. The islands have a subtropical climate, with long warm summers and moderately warm winters. Due to their location above the temperature inversion layer, these islands are ideal for astronomical observation. For this reason, two professional observatories, Teide Observatory on the island of Tenerife and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, have been built on the islands.
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Cape Breton Island
Cape Breton Island (French: île du Cap-Breton—formerly Île Royale, Scottish Gaelic: Ceap Breatainn or Eilean Cheap Bhreatainn, Míkmaq: Únamakika, simply: Cape Breton) is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. The name probably corresponds to the word Breton, the French adjective referring to the Atlantic province of Brittany.
Cape Breton Island is part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The 10,311 km2 (3,981 sq mi) island accounts for 18.7% of the total area of Nova Scotia. Although physically separated from the Nova Scotia peninsula by the Strait of Canso, it is artificially connected to mainland Nova Scotia by the 1,385 m (4,544 ft) long rock-fill Canso Causeway. The island is located east-northeast of the mainland with its northern and western coasts fronting on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; its western coast also forming the eastern limits of the Northumberland Strait. The eastern and southern coasts front the Atlantic Ocean; its eastern coast also forming the western limits of the Cabot Strait. Its landmass slopes upward from south to north, culminating in the highlands of its northern cape. One of the world's larger salt water lakes, Bras d'Or ("Arm of Gold" in French), dominates the centre of the island.
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Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope (Afrikaans: die Kaap van Goeie Hoop, Dutch: Kaap de Goede Hoop (help·info), Portuguese: Cabo da Boa Esperança) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.
There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres (90 mi) to the east-southeast. The currents of the two oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold water Benguela current and turns back on itself—a point that fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point.
When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus, the first modern rounding of the cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East (although in his histories Herodotus proves, disbelievingly, that some Phoenicians had done so far earlier than this).[citation needed] Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas. "Cape of Storms" was the original name of the "Cape of Good Hope".
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Cape Verde
Cape Verde
i/ˌkeɪp ˈvɜrd/ (Portuguese: Cabo Verde, pronounced: [ˈkabu ˈveɾdɨ]), officially the Republic of Cape Verde, is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa. The islands, covering a combined area of slightly over 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi), are of volcanic origin and while three of them (Sal, Boa Vista and Maio) are fairly flat, sandy and dry, the remaining ones are generally rockier and have more vegetation. However, because of the infrequent occurrence of rainfall the overall landscape is not particularly green.
The name of the country stems from the nearby Cap Vert, on the Senegalese coast, which in its turn was originally named "Cabo Verde" when it was sighted by Portuguese explorers in 1444, a few years before the islands were discovered (verde is Portuguese for "green").
The previously uninhabited islands were discovered and colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th Century, and became important in the Atlantic slave trade for their location. The islands' prosperity often attracted privateers and pirates, including Sir Francis Drake, a corsair (privateer) under the authority of the British crown, who twice sacked the (then) capital Ribeira Grande, in the 1580s. The islands were also visited by Charles Darwin's expedition in 1832. The decline in the slave trade in the 19th century resulted in an economic crisis for the islands. With few natural resources, and without strong sustainable investment from the Portuguese, the citizens grew increasingly discontent with the colonial masters, who nevertheless refused to provide the local authorities with more autonomy. This discontent festered and culminated in 1975, when a movement originally led by Amílcar Cabral who was assassinated on 20 January 1973 then passed onto his half-brother Luís Cabral, achieved independence for the archipelago.
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Catalonia
Catalonia (English /kætəˈloʊniə/, /kætəˈloʊnjə/; Catalan: Catalunya [kətəˈɫuɲə] or [kataˈluɲa]; Spanish: Cataluña [kataˈluɲa]; Occitan: Catalonha [kataˈluɲɔ]) is an autonomous region of Spain in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula, with the official status of a "nationality". Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona which is the second largest Spanish city by population after Madrid. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an official population of 7,535,251. Its borders essentially reflect those of the former Principality of Catalonia. It borders France and Andorra to the north, Aragon to the west, the Valencian Community to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the east (580 km coastline). The official languages are Catalan, Spanish and Aranese (Occitan).
The name Catalunya (Catalonia) began to be used in the late 11th century in reference to the group of counties that comprised the Marca Hispanica. The origin of the term is subject to diverse interpretations. A theory suggests that Catalunya derives from the term "Land of Castles", having evolved from the term castlà, the ruler of a castle (see castellan). This theory therefore suggests that the names Castile and Catalonia have the same etymology.
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Chartres Cathedral
The French medieval Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres) is a Latin Rite Catholic cathedral located in Chartres, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) southwest of Paris. It is considered one of the finest examples of the French High Gothic style. The current cathedral, mostly constructed between 1193 and 1250, is one of at least five which have occupied the site since the town became a bishopric in the 4th century.
What makes the cathedral special from an artistic viewpoint is its exceptional state of preservation. The majority of the original stained glass windows survive intact, while the architecture has seen only minor changes since the early 13th century. The building's exterior is dominated by heavy flying buttresses which allowed the architects to increase the window size significantly, while the west end is dominated by two contrasting spires – a 105-metre (349 ft) plain pyramid dating from the 1140s and a 113-metre (377 ft) early 16th century Flamboyant spire on top of an older tower. Equally notable are the three great façades, each adorned with hundreds of sculpted figures illustrating key theological themes and narratives.
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Cluny Abbey
Cluny Abbey (or Cluni, or Clugny, French pronunciation: [klyˈni]) is a Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was built in the Romanesque style, with three churches built in succession from the 10th to the early 12th centuries.
Cluny was founded by William I, Duke of Aquitaine in 910. He nominated Berno as the first Abbot of Cluny, subject only to Pope Sergius III. The Abbey was notable for its stricter adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict and the place where the Benedictine Order was formed, whereby Cluny became acknowledged as the leader of western monasticism. The establishment of the Benedictine order was a keystone to the stability of European society that was achieved in the 11th century. In 1790 during the French Revolution, the abbey was sacked and mostly destroyed. Only a small part of the original remains.
Dating around 1334, the abbots of Cluny had a townhouse in Paris known as the Hôtel de Cluny, which has been a public museum since 1833. Apart from the name, it no longer possesses anything originally connected with Cluny.
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Constantinople
Constantinople (Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, Konstantinoúpolis; Latin: Constantinopolis; Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطینیه, Qostantiniyye; and modern Turkish: İstanbul) was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin and the Ottoman Empires. It was founded in AD 330, at ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine I, after whom it was named. The city was the largest and wealthiest European city of the Middle Ages, and shared the glories of the Byzantine Empire, which was eventually reduced to the city and its environs.
Although besieged on numerous occasions by various peoples, it was taken only in 1204 by the army of the Fourth Crusade, in 1261 by Michael VIII, and in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. An inner wall was erected by Constantine I, and the city was surrounded by a triple wall of fortifications, begun during the 5th century by Theodosius II. The city was built on seven hills as well as on the Bosporus, and thus presented an impregnable fortress enclosing magnificent palaces, domes and towers. The Church of Hagia Sophia, the sacred palace of the emperors, the hippodrome, and the Golden Gate were among the largest of the many churches, public edifices, and monuments lining the arcaded avenues and squares.
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Council of Constance
The Council of Constance is the 15th ecumenical council recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, held from 1414 to 1418. The council ended the Three-Popes Controversy, by deposing or accepting the resignation of the remaining Papal claimants and electing Pope Martin V.
The Council also condemned and executed Jan Hus and ruled on issues of national sovereignty, the rights of pagans, and just war in response to a conflict between the Kingdom of Poland and the Order of the Teutonic Knights. The Council is important for its relationship to ecclesial Conciliarism and Papal supremacy.
The council's main purpose was to end the Papal schism which had resulted from the confusion following the Avignon Papacy. Pope Gregory XI's return to Rome in 1377, followed by his death and the controversial election of his successor, Pope Urban VI, resulted in the defection of a number of cardinals and the election of a rival pope based at Avignon in 1378. After thirty years of schism, the Council of Pisa had sought to resolve the situation by deposing the two claimant popes and elected a new pope, Alexander V. The council claimed that in such a situation, a council of bishops had greater authority than just one bishop, even if he were the bishop of Rome. Though Alexander and his successor, John XXIII, gained widespread support, especially at the cost of the Avignon pope, the schism remained, now involving not two but three claimants: Gregory XII at Rome, Benedict XIII at Avignon and John XXIII.
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Crown of Castile
The Crown of Castile was a medieval and modern state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then King Ferdinand III of Castile to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs in 1469 and wasn't formally abolished until the unification policies of Philip V of Spain in the early 18th century. During its existence, the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Philippines were also considered part of the Crown of Castile.
The Kingdom of León arose out of the Kingdom of Asturias. The Kingdom of Castile appeared initially as a county of the Kingdom of León. From the second half of the 10th century to the first half of the 11th century it changed hands between León and the Kingdom of Navarre. In the 11th century it became a kingdom in its own right.
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Dalmatia
Dalmatia (Croatian: Dalmacija, Croatian pronunciation: [dǎlmaːt͡sija]; see names in other languages) is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south. The Dalmatian dog received its name from Dalmatia, as does the dalmatic, a Roman Catholic liturgical vestment worn by deacons and bishops.
The name Dalmatia derives from the name of the tribe of the Dalmatae, which is connected with the Illyrian word delme, dele in modern Albanian, meaning "sheep" in English.
In antiquity the Roman province of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Dalmatia County of Croatia, stretching from Istria in the north to historical Albania in the south. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.
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East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of the East Anglian princess Etheldreda, the Isle of Ely also became part of the kingdom. Formerly a standard statistical region, for administrative purposes East Anglia now forms part of the East of England government office region and is defined as a Level 2 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire including the city of Peterborough unitary authority area.
The Kingdom of the East Angles, formed about the year 520 by the merging of the North and the South Folk (Angles who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during the previous century) was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms (as defined in the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon). For a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around the year 616, East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, and its king Raedwald was Bretwalda (overlord of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms). But this did not last: over the next forty years, East Anglia was defeated by the Mercians twice, and it continued to weaken relative to the other kingdoms until in 794, Offa of Mercia had its king Æthelberht killed and took control of the kingdom himself.
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Finland
Coordinates: 65°N 27°E / 65°N 027°E / 65; 027
Finlandi/ˈfɪnlənd/ ( Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.
Around 5.4 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern region. It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in Helsinki and local governments in 336 municipalities, and an autonomous region of the Åland Islands. About one million residents live in the Greater Helsinki area, which consists of Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa, and a third of the country's GDP is produced there. Other larger cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio.
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Flanders
Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen (help·info)) is the (political) community of the Flemings, one of the communities of Belgium, and also a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
"Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp. Over the course of history, the geographical territory that was called "Flanders" has varied. In the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a gradual shift of political and economic power from French-speaking Wallonia (which was industrialized earlier) to the Flemish.
To the English-speaking peoples, Flanders meant historically (from circa 1000 AD) the land situated along the North Sea from the Strait of Dover to the Scheldt estuary. The southern borders were generally ill-defined. Over the last millennium, it was mostly the southern and western borders that receded to give the present day borders within northern Belgium.
Flanders has figured prominently in European history. Between the early 17th century and 1945, the political outcomes of modern Spain, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria were often decided by battles on the plains of Flanders. Even earlier in British and Irish history, the Flemings (or Flemish) were important allies of the Normans in their conquest of England (1066) and invasion of Ireland (1169–71).
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Florence
Florence (Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] ( listen), alternate obsolete form: Fiorenza; Latin: Florentia) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area.
Florence is famous for its history. A centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, Florence is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1870 the city was also the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy.
The historic centre of Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, and Euromonitor International ranked the city as the world's 72nd most visited in 2009, with 1,685,000 visitors. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the city is noted for its history, culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace, amongst others, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.
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Genoa
Genoa
/ˈdʒɛnoʊ.ə/ (Italian: Genova [ˈdʒɛːnova] (
listen); Genoese and Ligurian Zena [ˈzeːna]; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is the capital of Liguria and the sixth largest city in Italy, with a population of 608,676 within its administrative limits on a land area of 243.6 km2 (94 sq mi). The urban zone of Genoa extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 718,896. The urban area of Genoa has a population of 800,709. In the metropolitan area live between 859,000 and 1.4 million or 1.5 million people. Genoa is one of Europe's largest cities on the Mediterranean Sea and the largest seaport in Italy.
Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba ("the Superb one") due to its glorious past and impressive landmarks. Part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List (UNESCO) in 2006 (see below). The city's rich art, music, gastronomy, architecture and history, allowed it to become the 2004's European Capital of Culture. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus.
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Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain (Welsh: Prydain Fawr, Scottish Gaelic: Breatainn Mhòr, Cornish: Breten Veur) is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, the largest European island, and the largest of the British Isles. With a population of about 60.0 million people in mid-2009, it is the third most populous island in the world, after Java and Honshū. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1,000 smaller islands and islets. The island of Ireland lies to its west. Politically, Great Britain may also refer to the island itself together with a number of surrounding islands which comprise the territory of England, Scotland and Wales.
All of the island is territory of the sovereign state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and most of the United Kingdom's territory is in Great Britain. Most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island of Great Britain, as are their respective capital cities: London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.
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Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia (/hɑːɨə soʊfiːə/; from the Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, "Holy Wisdom"; Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia; Turkish: Ayasofya) is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. From the date of its dedication in 360 until 1453, it served as the Greek Patriarchal cathedral of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931, when it was secularized. It was opened as a museum on 1 February 1935.
The Church was dedicated to the Logos, the second person of the Holy Trinity, its dedication feast taking place on 25 December, the anniversary of the Birth of the incarnation of the Logos in Christ. Although it is sometimes referred to as Sancta Sophia (as though it were named after Saint Sophia), sophia is the phonetic spelling in Latin of the Greek word for wisdom – the full name in Greek being Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, "Church of the Holy Wisdom of God".
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Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa; Low German: Hanse, Dudesche Hanse, Latin: Hansa, Hansa Teutonica or Liga Hanseatica) was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period (c. 13th–17th centuries).
The League was created to protect commercial interests and privileges granted by foreign rulers in cities and countries the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own protection and mutual aid. Despite this, the organization was not a city-state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.
The legacy of the Hansa is remembered today in several names, for example the German airline Lufthansa (i.e., 'Air Hansa'), F.C. Hansa Rostock, the Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, in the Netherlands, and the Hansa Brewery in Bergen.
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Hungary
Hungaryi/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
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Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (Asturian, Galician, Leonese, Mirandese, Portuguese and Spanish: Península Ibérica, Catalan: Península Ibèrica, Aragonese and Occitan: Peninsula Iberica, French: Péninsule Ibérique, Basque: Iberiar Penintsula), sometimes called Iberia, is a peninsula located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the north, west and southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. The Pyrenees form the northeast edge of the peninsula, separating it from the rest of Europe. In the south, it approaches the northern coast of Africa. It is the second-largest peninsula in Europe, with an area of approximately 582,000 km2 (225,000 sq mi).
The English word Iberia was adapted from the use of the Ancient Greek word Ιβηρία (Ibēría) by the Greek geographers under the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabo's Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south-west (he named it "west") of there.
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Italian Peninsula
The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula, also Italy (Italian: Penisola italiana or Penisola appenninica) is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe (the other two being the Iberian Peninsula and Balkan Peninsula), spanning 1,000 km (620 mi) from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale (The Boot). Three smaller peninsulas contribute to this characteristic shape, namely Calabria, Salento and Gargano.
Since the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus (end of first century BCE), the northern border of the peninsula has been set on the Alps watershed, but geographically it coincides with a line extending from the Magra to the Rubicone rivers, north of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, which excludes the Po Valley and the southern slope of the Alps.
Nearly all of the peninsula is part of the state of the Italian Republic, apart from San Marino and the Vatican City. Additionally, Sicily, Elba, Malta (an independent state), and other smaller islands, as Palagruža (It. Pelagosa), belonging to Croatia, are usually considered as islands off the peninsula and in this sense geographically grouped along with it.
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem ( /dʒəˈruːsələm/; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim ; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds and/or أورشليم Ûrshalîm) is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such, and one of the oldest cities in the world. It is located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea. If the area and population of East Jerusalem is included, it is Israel's largest city in both population and area, with a population of 801,000 residents over an area of 125.1 km2 (48.3 sq mi). Jerusalem is also a holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond its boundaries.
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Kalmar Union
The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: Kalmarunionen Latin: Unio Calmariensis) is a historiographical term meaning a series of personal unions (1397–1523) that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, prior to their annexation by Scotland in 1471, Shetland and Orkney), and Sweden (then including Finland) under a single monarch, though intermittently and with a population fewer than 3 million.
The countries had not given up their sovereignty or even their independence, but in practice, they were not autonomous, the common monarch holding sovereignty and, in practice, leading foreign policy; diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction over the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that would hamper the union in several intervals from the 1430s until its breakup in 1523 when Gustav Vasa became king of Sweden.
Norway and its overseas dependencies continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries until its dissolution in 1814.
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Kievan Rus
Kievan Rus (also Kyivan Rus) was a medieval polity in Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240.
Contemporarily, the state was known as "land of the Rus'" (Old East Slavic русьскаꙗ землꙗ, from the ethnonym Рѹ́сь, Greek Ῥώς, Arabic الروس ar-Rūs), in Greek as Ῥωσία, later also Latin pseudo-antique Ruthenia. The name "Kievan Rus'" (Ки́евская Русь Kievskaya Rus’) was coined in the 19th century in Russian historiography to refer to the period when the center was in Kiev. In English, the term was introduced in the early 20th century, when it was found in the 1913 English translation of Vasily Klyuchevsky's A History of Russia, to distinguish the early polity from successor states, which were also called Rus in their title. Also in the 20th century, the Russian term was rendered in Belarusian and Ukrainian as Кіеўская Русь Kijeŭskaja Rus’ and Ки́ївська Русь Kyivs'ka Rus’, respectively.
The early phase of the state is sometimes known as the "Rus Khaganate", while the history of Rus' proper begins in 882, when the capital was moved from Novgorod to Kiev, after Varangians (Vikings), who were called Rus, liberated this slavic city from the Khazars' tribute. The state reached its zenith in the mid 11th century, when it encompassed territories stretching south to the Black Sea, east to the Volga, and west to the Kingdom of Poland and to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav I the Wise (1019–1054) constituted the "Golden Age" of Kiev, which saw the introduction of Christianity and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda ("Justice of Rus").
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Kingdom of Aragon
The Kingdom of Aragon (Aragonese: Reino d'Aragón, Catalan: Regne d'Aragó, Latin: Regnum Aragonum, Spanish: Reino de Aragón) was a medieval and early modern kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain. It should not be confused with the larger Crown of Aragon, of which the Kingdom of Aragon became a member along with other territories such as the Kingdom of Valencia or the County of Provence, all of them under the rule of the King of Aragon.
This kingdom was originally a Frankish feudal county around the city of Jaca, which in the first half of the 8th century became a vassal state of the kingdom of Pamplona (later Navarre), its own dynasty of counts ending without male heir in 922.
On the death of Sancho III of Navarre in 1035, the Kingdom of Navarre was divided in to three parts: (1) Navarre with some Basque lands, (2) Castile and (3) Sobrarbe, Ribagorza and Aragon. As the most important Christian monarch in Iberia and the King of All Spain, each of his three lands were converted into a Kingdom. Sancho's son Gonzalo inherited Sobrarbe and Ribargorza, but Gonzalo was killed soon after and all the land he owned went to his illegitimate brother Ramiro, creating the future Kingdom of Aragon.
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Kingdom of Asturias
The Kingdom of Asturias (Latin: Regnum Asturorum) was a Kingdom in the Iberian peninsula founded in 718 by Visigothic nobles under the leadership of Pelagius of Asturias. It was the first Christian political entity established following the collapse of the Visigothic kingdom after Islamic conquest of Hispania. In 722, Pelagius subsequently defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Covadonga, in what is usually regarded as the beginning of the Reconquista. The kingdom lasted until 924, when Fruela II became King of León.
The birthplace of the Asturian kingdom was the western and central territory of the Cantabrian Mountains part of the Gallaecia, particularly the Picos de Europa and the central area of Asturias. The main political and military events during the first decades of the kingdom's existence took place in this region. According to the descriptions of Strabo, Dio Cassius and other Graeco-Roman geographers, the lands of Asturias were inhabited in the beginning of the Christian era by several peoples, amongst whom the more important were: From the Cantabrians, the Vadinienses, who inhabited the Picos de Europa region and whose settlement gradually expanded southward during the first centuries of the modern era; the Orgenomesci, who dwelled along the Asturian eastern coast; and from the Astures, the Saelini, whose settlement extended through the Sella valley; the Luggones, who had their capital in Lucus Asturum and whose territories stretched between the rivers Sella and Nalón; the Astures (in the strictest sense), who dwelled in inner Asturias, between the current councils of Piloña and Cangas del Narcea; and the Paesici, who had settled along the coast of Western Asturias, between the mouth of the Navia river and the modern city of Gijón.
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Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain (including both modern-day England and Wales) and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales. It had a land border with the Kingdom of Scotland to the north. At the start of the period its capital and chief royal residence was Winchester, but Westminster and Gloucester were accorded almost equal status, with Westminster gradually gaining preference.
England as a state began on 12 July 927 after a gathering of kings from throughout Britain at Eamont Bridge, Cumbria, but broadly traces its origins to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the Heptarchy of petty states that followed and ultimately united. The Norman invasion of Wales from 1067–1283 (formalised with the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284) put Wales in England's control, and Wales came under English law with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. On 1 May 1707, England was united with Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707. Though no longer a sovereign state, modern England continues as one of the countries of the United Kingdom.
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Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a country in Central Europe covering what is today Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania (now part of Romania), Carpatho Ruthenia (now part of Ukraine), Vojvodina (now part of Serbia), Burgenland (now part of Austria), and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders. From 1102 it also included Croatia (except Istria), being in personal union with it, united under the Hungarian king. The kingdom existed for almost one thousand years (1000–1918 and 1920–1946) and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world.
The Latin Regnum Hungariae/Vngarie (Regnum meaning kingdom); Regnum Marianum (Kingdom of St. Mary); or simply Hungaria was the form used in official Latin documents from the beginning of the kingdom to the 1840s. The German name (Königreich Ungarn) was used from 1849 to the 1860s, and the Hungarian name (Magyar Királyság) was used in the 1840s, and again from the 1860s to 1918. The names in other languages of the kingdom were: Polish: Królestwo Węgier, Romanian: Regatul Ungariei, Croatian: Kraljevina Ugarska, Slovene: Kraljevina Ogrska, Czech: Uherské království, Slovak: Uhorské kráľovstvo, Italian (for the city of Fiume), Regno d'Ungheria.
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Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León (Asturian: Reinu de Llión, Spanish: Reino de León, Galician: Reino de León, Portuguese: Reino de Leão, Latin: Regnum Legionense) was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León. The County of Portugal separated to become the independent Kingdom of Portugal in 1139 and the eastern, inland part of León was joined to the Kingdom of Castile in 1230.
From 1296 to 1301, the Kingdom of León was again independent and after the re-union with Castile remained a kingdom until 1833, but as part of a united Spain. In the Royal Decree of 30 November 1833, the Kingdom of León was considered one of the Spanish regions and divided into the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca. In 1978, these three provinces of the region of León were included along with six provinces of the historic region of Old Castile to create the autonomous community of Castile and León.
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Kingdom of Naples
The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of Naples to distinguish it from the island-based polity. During much of its existence, the realm was contested between French and Aragonese (Spanish) dynasties. In 1816, it again merged with island-based Kingdom of Sicily to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Following the rebellion, King Charles I of Sicily (Charles of Anjou) was forced to leave the island of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon's troops. Charles, however, maintained his possessions on the mainland, customarily known as the "Kingdom of Naples", after its capital city. Charles and his Angevin successors maintained a claim to Sicily, warring against the Aragonese until 1373, when Queen Joan I of Naples formally renounced the claim. Joan's reign was contested by Louis the Great, the Angevin King of Hungary, who captured the kingdom several times (1348–1352).
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Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal (Portuguese: Reino de Portugal, Latin: Regnum Portugalliae), or the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves (Portuguese: Reino de Portugal e dos Algarves,Latin: Regnum Portugalliae et Algarbia), was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910. It was replaced by the Portuguese First Republic after the 5 October 1910 revolution.
The Kingdom of Portugal finds its origins in the County of Portugal (1093–1139). The Portuguese County was a semi-autonomous county of the Kingdom of Leon. Independence from Leon took place in three stages:
Once Portugal was independent, D. Afonso I's descendants, members of the Portuguese House of Burgundy, would rule Portugal until 1383. Even after the change in royal houses, all the monarchs of Portugal were descended from Afonso I, one way or another, through both legitimate and illegitimate links.
With the turn of the twentieth century, republicanism would grow in numbers and support. This height of support for the republican cause would lead to the Lisbon Regicide on February 1, 1908. When returning from the Ducal Palace at Vila Viçosa, King Carlos I and the Prince Royal Luis Filipe were killed in the Terreiro do Paço, in Lisbon. With the death of the king and his heir, Carlos I's second son would become king as King Manuel II of Portugal. Manuel's reign, however, would be short and would end with the 5 October 1910 revolution, which sent Manuel into exile in England and would start the Portuguese First Republic.
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Kingdom of Sicily
The Kingdom of Sicily (Italian: Regno di Sicilia, Latin: Regnum Siciliae, Sicilian: Regnu di Sicilia) was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy. Until 1282 the Kingdom (sometimes called the regnum Apuliae et Siciliae) covered not only the island of Sicily, but also the whole Mezzogiorno region of southern Italy and the Maltese archipelago. The island was divided into three regions: Val di Mazara, Val Demone and Val di Noto.
In 1282 a revolt against the Angevin rule, known as the Sicilian Vespers, threw off Charles of Anjou's rule of the island of Sicily. The Angevins managed to maintain control in the mainland part of the kingdom, which became a separate entity also styled Kingdom of Sicily, although it is commonly referred to as the Kingdom of Naples, after its capital. The island became a separate kingdom as a kingdom of the Crown of Aragon. After 1302 the island kingdom was sometimes called the Kingdom of Trinacria. Often the kingship was vested in another monarch such as the King of Aragon, the King of Spain or the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1816 the island Kingdom of Sicily merged with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1861 its areas were united with the Kingdom of Italy.
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Krak des Chevaliers
Krak des Chevaliers (French pronunciation: [kʁak de ʃəvaˈlje]), also Crac des Chevaliers, is a Crusader castle in Syria and one of the most important preserved medieval castles in the world. The site was first inhabited in the 11th century by a settlement of Kurds; as a result it was known as Hisn al Akrad, meaning the "Castle of the Kurds". In 1142 it was given by Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, to the Knights Hospitaller. It remained in their possession until it fell in 1271. It became known as Crac de l'Ospital; the name Krak des Chevaliers was coined in the 19th century.
The Hospitallers began rebuilding the castle in the 1140s and were finished by 1170 when an earthquake damaged the castle. The order controlled a number of castles along the border of the County of Tripoli, a state founded after the First Crusade. Krak des Chevaliers was amongst the most important and acted as a centre of administration as well as a military base. After a second phase of building was undertaken in the 13th century, Krak des Chevaliers became a concentric castle. This phase created the outer wall and gave the castle its current appearance. The first half of the century has been described as Krak des Chevaliers' "golden age". At its peak, Krak des Chevaliers housed a garrison of around 2,000. Such a large garrison allowed the Hospitallers to extract tribute from a wide area. From the 1250s the fortunes of the Knights Hospitaller took a turn for the worse and in 1271 Krak des Chevaliers was captured by the Mamluk Sultan Baibars after a siege lasting 36 days.
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Lithuania
Lithuania (i/ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ or /ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 3.2 million as of 2011, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The Lithuanians are a Baltic people, and the official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages (together with Latvian) in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
For centuries, the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the first Lithuanian state, on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
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Lordship of Ireland
The Lordship of Ireland (Irish: Tiarnas na hÉireann) was a period of feudal rule in Ireland between 1177 and 1541 under the King of England, styled as Lord of Ireland. The lordship was created as a Papal possession following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169–71. As the Lord of Ireland was also King of England, he was represented locally by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Ostensibly, the lordship extended throughout all of Ireland. However, in reality, the king's rule only ever extended to parts of the island. Areas under English rule expanded and retreated over time. Some areas remained separate outside of English rule until the 16th century.
The fluid political situation and feudal system allowed for a significant amount of practical autonomy for the Hiberno-Norman nobility, who carved earldoms out for themselves and had almost as much authority as some of the native Gaelic kings. The period was brought to a close by the creation of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1541.
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Lyon
Coordinates: 45°45′35″N 4°50′32″E / 45.7597°N 4.8422°E / 45.7597; 4.8422
Lyon (French pronunciation: [ljɔ̃] ( listen), locally: [lijɔ̃]; Occitan: Lion [liˈu]; Arpitan: Liyon [ʎjɔ̃]; English: /liːˈɒn/), traditionally spelt Lyons in English, is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located approximately 470 km (292 mi) from Paris, 320 km (199 mi) from Marseille, 420 km (261 mi) from Strasbourg, 160 km (99 mi) from Geneva, 280 km (174 mi) from Turin. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais.
The city of Lyon has 483,181 inhabitants. Together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Lyon forms the largest conurbation in France outside Paris with a population estimated to be 1,422,331; its overall metropolitan area was estimated to have a population of 2,118,132. Its urban region represents half of the Rhône-Alpes region population with 2.9 million inhabitants. Lyon is the capital of this region, as well as the capital of the smaller Rhône département.
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Malbork Castle
The Marienburg Castle in Malbork (Polish: Zamek w Malborku, German: Ordensburg Marienburg) is the largest castle in the world by surface area, and the largest brick building in Europe. It was built in Prussia by the Teutonic Knights, a German Roman Catholic religious order of crusaders, in a form of an Ordensburg fortress. The Order named it Marienburg (Mary's Castle). The town which grew around it was also named Marienburg.
The castle is a classic example of a medieval fortress and, on its completion in 1406, was the world's largest brick castle.UNESCO designated the "Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork" and its Museum as the World Heritage Site in December 1997. It is one of two World Heritage Sites in the region with origins in the Teutonic Order. The other is the "Medieval Town of Toruń", founded in 1231 as the site of the castle Thorn (Toruń).
The castle was founded by the Teutonic Order after the conquest of Old Prussia. Its main purpose was to strengthen their own control of the area following the Order's 1274 suppression of the Great Prussian Uprising of the Baltic tribes. No contemporary documents survive relating to its construction, so instead the castle's phases have been worked out through the study of architecture and the Order's administrative records and later histories. The work lasted until around 1300, under the auspices of Commander Heinrich von Wilnowe. The castle is located on the southeastern bank of the river Nogat. It was named Marienburg after Mary, patron saint of the religious Order. The Order had been created in Acre (present-day Israel). When this last stronghold of the Crusades fell to Muslim Arabs, the Order moved its headquarters to Venice before arriving in Poland.
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Mercia
Mercia ( /ˈmɜrsiə/, /ˈmɜrʃə/) was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands. The name is a Latinisation of the Old English Mierce or Myrce, meaning "border people".
Mercia's neighbours included Northumbria, Powys and the kingdoms of southern Wales, Wessex, Sussex, Essex and East Anglia.
The name Mercia is still in use today by a wide range of organisations, including military units, public, commercial and voluntary bodies; and occurs as a female given name.
Mercia's exact evolution from the Anglo-Saxon invasions is more obscure than that of Northumbria, Kent, or even Wessex. Also, Mercia developed an effective political structure and adopted Christianity later than the other kingdoms. Archaeological surveys show that Angles settled the lands north of the River Thames by the 6th century. The name Mercia is Old English for "boundary folk" (see Welsh Marches), and the traditional interpretation is that the kingdom originated along the frontier between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon invaders. However, P. Hunter Blair argued an alternative interpretation: that they emerged along the frontier of Northumbria and the inhabitants of the Trent river valley.
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Mâcon
Coordinates: 46°18′23″N 4°49′53″E / 46.30630°N 4.8313°E / 46.30630; 4.8313
Mâcon (French pronunciation: [ma.kɔ̃]) is a small city (commune) in central France. It is prefecture of the Saône-et-Loire department, in the region of Bourgogne, and the capital of the Mâconnais district. Mâcon is home to over 35,000 residents, called Mâconnais.
The city lies on the western bank of the Saône river, between Bresse in the East and the Beaujolais hills in the South. Mâcon is the southernmost city in the region of Burgundy. It is located 65 kilometres north of Lyon and 400 kilometres from Paris.
The Saône river runs through the town. The climate is temperate with a slight continental tendency.
The agglomeration of Mâcon originates from the establishment of an oppidum and of a river port by the Celts from the Aedui, probably at the beginning of the first century BC. Known then under the name of Matisco, the town developed significantly during the age of the Roman Empire. During the 4th century, the town was fortified.
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Northumbria
Northumbria (Old English: Norþanhymbra / Norþhymbre) was a mediæval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.
Northumbria was formed by Æthelfrith in central Great Britain in Anglo-Saxon times. At the beginning of the 7th century the two kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira were unified. (In the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon the kingdom was defined as one of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.) At its greatest the kingdom extended at least from just south of the Humber, to the River Mersey and to the Forth (roughly, Sheffield to Runcorn to Edinburgh) – and there is some evidence that it may have been much greater (see map).
The later (and smaller) earldom came about when the southern part of Northumbria (ex-Deira) was lost to the Danelaw. The northern part (ex-Bernicia) at first retained its status as a kingdom but when it become subordinate to the Danish kingdom it had its powers curtailed to that of an earldom, and retained that status when England was reunited by the Wessex-led reconquest of the Danelaw. The earldom was bounded by the River Tees in the south and the River Tweed in the north (broadly similar to the modern North East England).
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Papal States
The Papal State(s), the State(s) of the Church, the Pontifical States, the Ecclesiastical States, or the Roman States (Italian: Stato Pontificio, also Stato della Chiesa, Stati della Chiesa, Stati Pontifici, and Stato Ecclesiastico; Latin: Status Pontificius, also Dicio Pontificia) were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (after which the Papal States, in less territorially extensive form, continued to exist until 1870).
The Papal States comprised territories under direct sovereign rule of the papacy, and at its height it covered most of the modern Italian regions of Romagna, Marche, Umbria and Lazio. This governing power is commonly called the temporal power of the Pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.
The plural Papal States is usually preferred; the singular Papal State (equally correct since it was not a mere personal union) tends to be used (normally with lower-case letters) for the modern State of Vatican City, an enclave within Italy's national capital, Rome. The Vatican City was founded in 1929, again allowing the Holy See the political benefits of territorial sovereignty.
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Pisa
Pisa ( /ˈpiːzə/; Italian pronunciation: [ˈpiːsa]) is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower (the bell tower of the city's cathedral), the city of over 88,332 residents (around 200,000 with the metropolitan area) contains more than 20 other historic churches, several palaces and various bridges across the River Arno.
The city is also home of the University of Pisa, which has a history going back to the 12th century and also has the mythic Napoleonic Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies as the best Superior Graduate Schools in Italy.
Pisa lies at the junction of two rivers, the Arno and the Serchio, which form a laguna at the Tyrrhenian Sea. The origin of the name, Pisa, is a mystery. While the origin of the city had remained unknown for centuries, the Pelasgi, the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Ligurians had variously been proposed as founders of the city. Archaeological remains from the 5th century BC confirmed the existence of a city at the sea, trading with Greeks and Gauls. The presence of an Etruscan necropolis, discovered during excavations in the Arena Garibaldi in 1991, confirmed its Etruscan origins.
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Poland
Polandi/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.
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Pyrenees
Coordinates: 42°40′N 1°00′E / 42.667°N 1°E / 42.667; 1
The Pyrenees ( /ˈpɪərɨniːz/; Spanish: Pirineos or Pirineo, French: Pyrénées, Catalan: Pirineus, Occitan: Pirenèus, Aragonese: Perinés, Basque: Pirinioak or Auñamendiak), also spelled Pyrénées, is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain. It separates the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe, and extends for about 491 km (305 mi) from the Bay of Biscay (Cap Higuer) to the Mediterranean (Cap de Creus).
For the most part, the main crest forms a massive divider between France and Spain, with the tiny country of Andorra sandwiched in between. Catalonia and Navarre have historically extended on both sides of the mountain range, with small northern portions now in France and much larger southern parts now in Spain.
The adjective related to the noun "Pyrenees" in English is Pyrenean.
In classical mythology, Pyrene is a princess who gave her name to the Pyrenees. The Greek historian Herodotus says Pyrene is the name of a town in Celtic Europe. According to Silius Italicus, she was the virginal daughter of Bebryx, a king in Mediterranean Gaul by whom the hero Hercules was given hospitality during his quest to steal the cattle of Geryon during his famous Labors. Hercules, characteristically drunk and lustful, violates the sacred code of hospitality and rapes his host's daughter. Pyrene gives birth to a serpent and runs away to the woods, afraid that her father will be angry. Alone, she pours out her story to the trees, attracting the attention instead of wild beasts who tear her to pieces.
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Ravenna
Ravenna [raˈvenna] ( listen) (Romagnol: Ravêna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. Afterwards, it served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Franks in 751, after which it became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
Although an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal. It is the location of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The origin of the name Ravenna is unclear, although it is believed the name is Etruscan. Some have speculated that "ravenna" is related to "Rasenna" (later "Rasna"), the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, but there is no agreement on this point.[citation needed]
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Reims Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Rheims) is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original structure had been erected on the site of the Roman baths. As the cathedral it remains the seat of the Archdiocese of Reims.
A major site for tourism in the Champagne region, it received half a million visitors in 2006.
See also: Coronation of the French monarch
Excavations have shown that the present building occupies roughly the same site as the original cathedral, founded c.400 under the episcopacy of St Nicaise. That church was rebuilt during the Carolingian period and further extended in the 12th century.
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Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England, and is considered one of the leading examples of Early English architecture. The main body was completed in only 38 years, from 1220 to 1258.
The cathedral has the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom (123m/404 ft). Visitors can take the "Tower Tour" where the interior of the hollow spire, with its ancient wood scaffolding, can be viewed. The cathedral also has the largest cloister and the largest cathedral close in Britain (80 acres (320,000 m2)). The Cathedral contains the world's oldest working clock (from AD 1386) and has the best surviving of the four original copies of Magna Carta (all four original copies are in England). Although commonly known as Salisbury Cathedral, the official name is the Cathedral of Saint Mary. In 2008, the cathedral celebrated the 750th anniversary of its consecration in 1258.
It is the Mother Church of the Diocese of Salisbury, and seat of the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt. Revd. Nick Holtam.
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Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge, in the English county of Suffolk, is the site of two 6th- and early 7th-century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial including a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artifacts of outstanding art-historical and archaeological significance, now held in the British Museum in London.
Sutton Hoo is of a primary importance to early medieval historians because it sheds light on a period of English history that is on the margin between myth, legend and historical documentation. Use of the site culminated at a time when Rædwald, the ruler of the East Angles, held senior power among the English people and played a dynamic if ambiguous part in the establishment of Christian rulership in England; it is generally thought most likely that he is the person buried in the ship. The site has been vital in understanding the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the whole early Anglo-Saxon period.
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University of Paris
The University of Paris (French: Université de Paris) was a university located in Paris, France, and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid-12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250. After many changes, including a century of suspension (1793–1896), it ceased to exist in 1970 and 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII) were created from it. The university is often referred to as the Sorbonne or La Sorbonne after the collegiate institution (Collège de Sorbonne) founded about 1257 by Robert de Sorbon. In fact, the university as such was older and was never completely centered on the Sorbonne. Of the 13 current successor universities, the first four have a presence in the historical Sorbonne building, and three include "Sorbonne" in their names.
The universities in Paris are now essentially independent of each other, and some fall under the Académie of Créteil or the Académie of Versailles rather than the Académie of Paris. Some residual administrative functions of the 13 universities are formally supervised by a common chancellor, the Rector of the Académie of Paris, with offices in the Sorbonne. As of 2006, Maurice Quénet is the Rector of the Academy of Paris and Chancellor of the Universities of Paris. The Vice-Chancellor of the Universities of Paris is Pierre Gregory. Despite this link, and the historical ties, there is no University of Paris system that binds the universities at an academic level.
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Venice
Venice (Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] ( listen), Venetian: Venexia [veˈnɛsja]; (Latin: Venetia) is a city in northeast Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. The city in its entirety is listed as World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon.
Venice is the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland), mostly in the large frazioni of Mestre and Marghera; 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) (population 1,600,000).
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Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex ( /ˈwɛsɨks/) or Kingdom of the West Saxons (Old English: Westseaxna rīce) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons in South West England, from the 6th century until the emergence of a united English state under the Wessex dynasty in the 10th century. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest of 1016, from 1020 to 1066. After the Norman Conquest there was a dissolution of the English earldoms and Wessex was split among the followers of William the Conqueror.
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Alans
The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.
The various forms of Alan — Greek: Αλανοί, Αλαννοί; Chinese: 阿蘭聊 Alanliao (Pinyin) in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan (Pinyin) in the 3rd century — and Iron (a self-designation of the Alans' modern Ossetian descendants, indicating early tribal self-designation) are Iranian dialectical forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan (such as Iran), were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, the common ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranian peoples to whom the Alans belonged.
The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As, and Os (Bulgarian Uzi, Hungarian Jász, Russian Jasy, Georgian Osi). It is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian.
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Alcuin
Alcuin of York (Latin: Alcuinus) or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus (730s or 740s – 19 May 804) was an English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Saint Martin's at Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. "The most learned man anywhere to be found" according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.
Alcuin of York had a long career as a teacher and scholar, first at the school at York founded in AD 627 (now known as St Peter's School, York) and later as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational matters. From 796 until his death he was Abbot of the great monastery of St. Martin of Tours.
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Alemanni
The Alemanni (also Alamanni, Alamani) were a confederation of Suebian Germanic tribes located on the upper Rhine river. First mentioned by the Romans in 213, the Alamanni captured the Agri Decumates in 260, and later expanded into present-day Alsace, and northern Switzerland, establishing the German language in those regions. In 496, the Alamanni were conquered by Frankish leader Clovis and incorporated into his dominions. The legacy of the Alamanni survives in the names of Germany in several languages.
According to Asinius Quadratus (quoted in the mid-6th century by Byzantine historian Agathias) their name means "all men". It indicates that they were a conglomeration drawn from various Germanic tribes. This was the derivation of Alemanni used by Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and by the anonymous contributor of notes assembled from the papers of Nicolas Fréret, published in 1753, who noted that it was the name used by outsiders for those who called themselves the Suevi. This etymology has remained the standard derivation of the term.
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Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I Komnenos, Latinized as Alexius I Comnenus (Greek: Ἀλέξιος Α' Κομνηνός, 1056 – 15 August 1118—note that some sources list his date of birth as 1048), was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118, and although he was not the founder of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power. The title 'Nobilissimus' was given to senior army commanders, the future emperor Alexios I Komnenos being the first to be thus honoured. Inheriting a collapsing empire and faced with constant warfare during his reign against both the Seljuq Turks in Asia Minor and the Normans in the western Balkans, Alexios was able to halt the Byzantine decline and begin the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the Komnenian restoration. His appeals to Western Europe for help against the Turks were also the catalyst that triggered the Crusades.
Alexios was the son of Ioannis Komnenos and Anna Dalassena, and the nephew of Isaac I Komnenos (emperor 1057–1059). Alexios' father declined the throne on the abdication of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors of other families between 1059 and 1081. Under one of these emperors, Romanos IV Diogenes (1067–1071), Alexios served with distinction against the Seljuq Turks. Under Michael VII Doukas Parapinakes (1071–1078) and Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1078–1081), he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac, against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace, and in Epirus.
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Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great (Old English: Ælfrēd, Ælfrǣd, "elf counsel"; 849 – 26 October 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.
Alfred successfully defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, and by his death had become the dominant ruler in England. He is the only English monarch to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Details of his life are described in a work by the 10th century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser. Alfred was a learned and merciful man who encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system and military structure.
Alfred was born in the village of Wanating, now Wantage, Oxfordshire. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, by his first wife, Osburh.
In 853, at the age of four, Alfred is said to have been sent to Rome where, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV who "anointed him as king". Victorian writers interpreted this as an anticipatory coronation in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of Wessex. However, his succession could not have been foreseen at the time, as Alfred had three living elder brothers. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a "consul"; a misinterpretation of this investiture, deliberate or accidental, could explain later confusion. It may also be based on Alfred's later having accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome where he spent some time at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854–855.
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Angles
The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The Angles were one of the main groups that settled in Britain in the post-Roman period, founding several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name "England".
The name of the Angles is first recorded in Latinized form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. The name is usually derived from a toponym, Angeln, from a Germanic word *anguz meaning "narrow" (of an estuary) or "angular" (of the shape of the Jutland peninsula).
Gregory the Great in an epistle simplified the Latinized name Anglii to Angli, the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word. The country remained Anglia in Latin. King Alfred's (Alfred the Great) translation of Orosius' history of the world uses Angelcynn (-kin) to describe England and the English people; Bede used Angelfolc (-folk); there are also such forms as Engel, Englan (the people), Englaland, and Englisc, all showing i-mutation.
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Anthony the Great
Anthony the Great or Antony the Great (ca. 251–356), also known as Saint Anthony, Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Anthony of Thebes, Abba Antonius (Ἀββᾶς Ἀντώνιος), and Father of All Monks, was a Christian saint from Egypt, a prominent leader among the Desert Fathers. He is celebrated in many churches on his feast days: 30 January in the Old-Calendar Eastern Orthodox Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church; 17 January in the New-Calendar Eastern Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Coptic Catholic Church.
The biography of Anthony's life by Athanasius of Alexandria helped to spread the concept of monasticism, particularly in Western Europe through Latin translations. He is often erroneously considered the first monk, but as his biography and other sources make clear, there were many ascetics before him. Anthony was, however, the first known ascetic going into the wilderness (about A.D. 270–271), a geographical move that seems to have contributed to his renown. Accounts of Anthony enduring supernatural temptation during his sojourn in the Libyan Desert inspired the often-repeated subject of the temptation of St. Anthony in Western art and literature.
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Aristotle
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.
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Aspar
Flavius Ardabur Aspar (c. 400 – 471) was an Alan patrician and magister militum ("Master of soldiers") of the Eastern Roman Empire. Aspar's family exerted a great influence on the Eastern Roman Emperors for half a century, from the 420s to his death in 471, over Theodosius II, Marcian and Leo I, who, in the end, had him killed.
Alans were an Iranic people and the name of Aspar (originally Aspwar or Aspidar) in Iranian languages means "Horse-master" and "Horse-rider".
Son of the magister Ardaburius, Aspar played a crucial role in his father's expedition in 424 to defeat the western usurper, Joannes of Ravenna, and to install Galla Placidia and her son, Valentinian III, in his place. He also helped to negotiate a peace treaty with Geiseric after the Vandal invasion of Africa.
Aspar attained the consulship in 434 after campaigning in Africa. However, Aspar could not become emperor because of his Arian religion. Instead, he played the role of kingmaker with his subordinate, Marcian, who became emperor by marrying Theodosius II's sister Pulcheria.
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Attila
Attila ( /ˈætɨlə/ or /əˈtɪlə/; ?–453), more frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea.
During his reign he was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (modern France), crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching as far as Aurelianum (Orléans) before being defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
Subsequently he invaded Italy, devastating the northern provinces, but was unable to take Rome. He planned for further campaigns against the Romans but died in 453.
There is no surviving first-person account of Attila's appearance. There is, however, a possible second-hand source, provided by Jordanes, who cites a description given by Priscus. It suggests a person of Asian features.
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Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage. In idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive person.
The term originates from the Greek civilization, meaning "anyone who is not Greek". In ancient times, Greeks used it for the people of the Persian Empire; in the early modern period and sometimes later, they used it for the Turks, in a clearly pejorative way. Comparable notions are found in non-European civilizations. In the Roman empire, barbarian was meant as "anyone not educated in Roman ways".
The Ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros), "barbarian", was an antonym for πολίτης (politis) "citizen," from polis "city-state." The sound of barbaros onomatopoetically evokes the image of babbling (a person speaking a non-Greek language). The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.
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Barry Cunliffe
Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, CBE, known professionally as Barry Cunliffe (born 10 December 1939) is a former Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, a position held from 1972 to 2007. He is now Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology.
Cunliffe's decision to become an archaeologist was sparked off at the age of nine by the discovery of Roman remains on his uncle's farm in Somerset. After studying at Portsmouth Northern Grammar School (now the Mayfield School) and reading archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, he became a lecturer at the University of Bristol in 1963. Fascinated by the Roman remains in nearby Bath he threw himself into a programme of excavation and publication.
In 1966 he became an unusually young professor when he took the chair at the newly-founded Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. There he became involved in the excavation (1961–68) of the Fishbourne Roman Palace in Sussex. Another site in southern England led him away from the Roman period. He began a long series of summer excavations (1969–88) of the Iron Age hill fort at Danebury, Hampshire and was subsequently involved in the Danebury Environs Programme (1989–95). His interest in Iron Age Britain and Europe generated a number of publications and he became an acknowledged authority on the Celts,
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Basil I
Basil I, called the Macedonian (Greek: Βασίλειος ὁ Μακεδών, Basíleios hō Makedṓn; Armenian: Բարսեղ Ա Մակեդոնացի, Barsegh A Makedonatsi; 830/835 – August 29, 886) was a Byzantine Emperor of probable Armenian descent who reigned from 867 to 886. Born a simple peasant in the Byzantine theme of Macedonia, he rose in the Imperial court, and usurped the Imperial throne from Emperor Michael III (r. 842–867). Despite his humble origins, he showed great ability in running the affairs of state, leading a revival of Imperial power and to a renaissance of Byzantine art. He was perceived by the Byzantines as one of their greatest emperors, and the dynasty he founded, the Macedonian (Greek: Μακεδονική δυναστεία), ruled over what is regarded as the most glorious and prosperous era of the Byzantine Empire.
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Basil II
Basil II (Greek: Βασίλειος Β΄, Basileios II; 958 – December 15, 1025) was a Byzantine Emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from January 10, 976 to December 15, 1025. He was known in his time as Basil the Porphyrogenitus and Basil the Young to distinguish him from his ancestor Basil I the Macedonian,
The first part of his long reign was dominated by civil war against powerful generals from the Anatolian aristocracy. Following their submission, Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontier, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed by later authors as "the Bulgar-slayer" (Greek: Βουλγαροκτόνος, Boulgaroktonos), by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests, four centuries earlier.
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Bede
Bede ( /ˈbiːd/ BEED; Old English: Bǣda or Bēda; 672/673 – 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede (Latin: Bēda Venerābilis), was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Monkwearmouth-Jarrow), both in the Kingdom of Northumbria. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius among many others.
He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History". In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII, a position of theological significance; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation (Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy). Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons.
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Benedict of Nursia
Saint Benedict of Nursia (Italian: San Benedetto da Norcia) (c.480–543) is a Christian saint, honored by the Roman Catholic Church as the patron saint of Europe and students.
Benedict founded twelve communities for monks at Subiaco, about 40 miles (64 km) to the east of Rome, before moving to Monte Cassino in the mountains of southern Italy. There is no evidence that he intended to found a religious order[citation needed]. The Order of St Benedict is of later origin and, moreover, not an "order" as commonly understood but merely a confederation of autonomous congregations.
Benedict's main achievement is his "Rule", containing precepts for his monks. It is heavily influenced by the writings of John Cassian, and shows strong affinity with the Rule of the Master. But it also has a unique spirit of balance, moderation and reasonableness (ἐπιείκεια, epieikeia), and this persuaded most religious communities founded throughout the Middle Ages to adopt it. As a result, the Rule of Benedict became one of the most influential religious rules in Western Christendom. For this reason, Benedict is often called the founder of western Christian monasticism.
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Bulgars
The Bulgars (also Bolgars, Bulghars, Huno-Bulgars) were a semi-nomadic people who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century. Ethnically, the Bulgars comprised Turkic and probably Scytho-Sarmatian elements. They had enveloped also other ethnic groups by their migration westwards across the Eurasian steppe.
The Bulgars emerged after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century. Initially, they conquered the Pontic-Caspian steppe and around the lower Volga basin, by the 7th century dispersing further towards Bessarabia. Originating as nomadic equestrians of Central Asia, they became sedentary during the 7th century, establishing the polities (khanates) of Old Great Bulgaria in the Pontic steppe and Volga Bulgaria on the middle Volga.
Old Great Bulgaria was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in the 8th century, but in the 680s, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire, which was however Slavicized by the 10th century. Volga Bulgaria preserved their national identity well into the 13th century by repelling the first Mongol attacks in 1223. But they were eventually subdued, and their capital Bolghar city became one of major cities of the Mongol Golden Horde. Later, Volga Bulgars mixed with Tatars of Kazan.
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Burgundians
The Burgundians (Latin: Burgundiōnes; Old Norse: Burgundar; Old English: Burgendas; Greek: Βούργουνδοι) were an East Germanic tribe which may have emigrated from mainland Scandinavia to the island of Bornholm, whose old form in Old Norse still was Burgundarholmr (the Island of the Burgundians), and from there to mainland Europe.
The name of the Burgundians has since remained connected to the area of modern France that still bears their name: see the later history of Burgundy. Between the 6th and 20th centuries, however, the boundaries and political connections of this area have changed frequently; none of those changes have had anything to do with the original Burgundians. The name Burgundians used here and generally used by English writers to refer to the Burgundiones is a later formation and more precisely refers to the inhabitants of the territory of Burgundy which was named from the people called Burgundiones. The descendants of the Burgundians today are found primarily among the west Swiss and neighbouring regions of France.
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Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/ or /ˈʃɑrləmeɪn/; French pronunciation: [ʃaʁ.lə.maɲ]; c. 742 – 28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus), 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 Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 in Rome.
His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.
The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in 768 and was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. It has often been suggested that the relationship between Charlemagne and Carloman was not good, but it has also been argued that tensions were exaggerated by Carolingian chroniclers.
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Charles Martel
Charles Martel (Latin: Carolus Martellus) (23 August 686 – 22 October 741), also known as Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian kings and ruled de facto during an interregnum (737–43) at the end of his life, using the title Duke and Prince of the Franks. In 739 he was offered the title of Consul by the Pope, but he refused. He is remembered for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, in which he defeated an invading Moorish army. This victory is traditionally credited with halting northward Islamic expansion in western Europe.
A brilliant general, he is considered to be a founding figure of the Middle Ages, often credited with a seminal role in the development of feudalism and knighthood, and laying the groundwork for the Carolingian Empire. He was also the father of Pepin the Short and grandfather of Charlemagne.
Martel was born in Herstal, the illegitimate son of duke Pepin II and his concubine Alpaida. In German-speaking countries he is known as Karl Martell. Alpaida also bore Pepin another son, Childebrand.
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Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald (13 June 823 – 6 October 877), Holy Roman Emperor (875–877, as Charles II) and King of West Francia (840–877, as Charles II, with the borders of his land defined by the Treaty of Verdun, 843), was the youngest son of the Emperor Louis the Pious by his second wife Judith.
He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were already adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father. The attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia and then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (in 832, after the rising of Pepin I of Aquitaine) were unsuccessful. The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles's share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land which was once Gaul and would eventually be France. At a diet near Crémieux in 837, Louis the Pious bade the nobles do homage to Charles as his heir. This led to the final rising of his sons against him and Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles received that kingdom, finally once and for all. Pepin's son Pepin II would be a perpetual thorn in his side.
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Charles the Simple
Charles III (17 September 879 – 7 October 929), called the Simple or the Straightforward (from the Latin Karolus Simplex), was the undisputed King of France from 898 until 922 and the King of Lotharingia from 911 until 919/23. He was a member of the Carolingian dynasty, the third and posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer by his second wife, Adelaide of Paris.
As a child, Charles was prevented from succeeding to the throne at the time of the death in 884 of his half-brother Carloman. The nobles of the realm instead asked his cousin, Charles the Fat, to rule them. He was also prevented from succeeding the unpopular Charles, who was deposed in November 887 and died in January 888, although it is unknown if his deposition was accepted or even made known in West Francia before his death. The nobility elected Odo, the hero of the Siege of Paris, king, though there was a faction that supported Guy III of Spoleto. Charles was put under the protection of Ranulf II, the Duke of Aquitaine, who may have tried to claim the throne for him and in the end used the royal title himself until making peace with Odo. Finally, in 893 Charles was crowned by a faction opposed to Odo at Reims Cathedral. He only became the effectual monarch with the death of Odo in 898.
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Childeric I
Childeric I (c. 440 – 481/82) was a Merovingian king of the Salian Franks and the father of Clovis.
He succeeded his father Merovech as king, traditionally in 457 or 458 (?). With his Frankish warband he was established with his capital at Tournai, on lands which he had received as a foederatus of the Romans, and for some time he kept the peace with his allies.
In 463 in Orléans, in conjunction with the Roman General Aegidius, who was based in Soissons, he defeated the Visigoths, who hoped to extend their dominion along the banks of the Loire River. After the death of Aegidius, he first assisted Comes ("count") Paul of Angers, together with a mixed band of Gallo-Romans and Franks, in defeating the Goths and taking booty. Saxon raiders under the command of a certain Adovacrius (perhaps, but not surely Odoacer) reached Angers but Childeric arrived the next day and a battle ensued. Count Paul was killed and Childeric took the city. Childeric, having delivered Angers, followed a Saxon warband to the islands on the Atlantic mouth of the Loire, and massacred them there. In a change of alliances, he also joined forces with Odoacer, according to Gregory of Tours, to stop a band of the Alamanni who wished to invade Italy.
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Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan (also seen as de Pisan) (1363 – c. 1430) was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the late medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career (1399–1429), and can be regarded as Europe’s first professional woman writer. She married in 1380, at the age of 15 and was widowed 10 years later. Much of the impetus for her writing came from her need to earn a living for herself and her three children. She spent most of her childhood and all of her adult life based in Paris and then the abbey at Poissy, and wrote entirely in her adoptive tongue of Middle French.
Her early courtly poetry is marked by her knowledge of aristocratic custom and fashion of the day, particularly involving women and the practice of chivalry. Her early and later allegorical and didactic treatises reflect both autobiographical information about her life and views and also her own individualized and humanist approach to the scholastic learned tradition of mythology, legend, and history she inherited from clerical scholars and to the genres and courtly or scholastic subjects of contemporary French and Italian poets she admired. Supported and encouraged by important royal French and English patrons, she influenced 15th-century English poetry. Her success stems from a wide range of innovative writing and rhetorical techniques that critically challenged renowned male writers, such as Jean de Meun who incorporated misogynist beliefs within their literary works.
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Christoph Cellarius
Christoph (Keller) Cellarius (22 November 1638 – 4 June 1707) was a German classical scholar from Schmalkalden who held positions in Weimar and Halle. Although the Ancient-Medieval-Modern division of history was used earlier by Italian Renaissance scholars Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo, Cellarius' Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period helped popularize it. After him, this tripartite division became standard.
The library of the University of Applied Sciences in Schmalkalden bears his name, it is called the "Cellarius Bibliothek", in honor of Cellarius.
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Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (before 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements in the island of Hispaniola, initiated the process of Spanish colonization, which foreshadowed the general European colonization of what became known as the "New World".
In the context of emerging western imperialism and economic competition between European kingdoms seeking wealth through the establishment of trade routes and colonies, Columbus's speculative proposal to reach the East Indies by sailing westward received the support of the Spanish crown, which saw in it a promise, however remote, of gaining the upper hand over rival powers in the contest for the lucrative spice trade with Asia. During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming them for the Spanish Empire.
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Christopher Wickham
Christopher John Wickham, FBA (born 18 May 1950) is Chichele Professor of Medieval History in the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College.
Wickham was educated at Millfield and Keble College, Oxford, where he obtained first a BA and then in 1975 a DPhil with a thesis entitled Economy and society in 8th century northern Tuscany.
He spent nearly thirty years of his career at the University of Birmingham, as Lecturer (1977–87), Senior Lecturer (1987–89), Reader (1989–93), and Professor of Medieval History (1993–2005). In 2005 he was appointed Chichele Professor of Medieval History in the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College.
In 1998 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
He is a member of both the Labour Party and Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of the Left).
He is married to fellow medieval historian, Leslie Brubaker.
His main area of research is Medieval Italy - and more specifically Tuscany and central Italy - from the end of the Roman empire through to about 1300. His emphasis has largely been social and economic, though he has undertaken study into the law and politics of the area as well. More generally Wickham has worked under a modified Marxist framework on how European society changed from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and has pioneered comparative socio-economic analysis in this period.
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( /ˈsɪsɨroʊ/; Classical Latin: [ˈkɪkɛroː]; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as Tully), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, Roman consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia) distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, "Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity." The peak of Cicero's authority and prestige came during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, and Montesquieu was substantial. His works rank among the most influential in European culture, and today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.
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Cimabue
Cimabue [Italian pronunciation: [tʃimaˈbue]; (c. 1240–1302), also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was a Florentine painter and creator of mosaics.
Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break away from the Italo-Byzantine style, although he still relied on Byzantine models. The art of this period comprised scenes and forms that appeared relatively flat and highly stylized. Cimabue was a pioneer in the move towards naturalism, as his figures were depicted with rather more life-like proportions and shading. Even though he was a pioneer in that move, his Maestà paintings show Medieval techniques and characteristics.
According to Giorgio Vasari, he was the teacher of Giotto, considered the first great artist of the Italian Renaissance.
Owing to little surviving documentation, not much is known about Cimabue's life. He was born in Florence and died in Pisa. His career was described in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Although it is one of the few early records about him, its accuracy is uncertain.
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Clovis I
Clovis (c. 466 – 511) or Chlodowech (Latin Chlodovechus) was the first King of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the leadership from a group of royal chieftains, to rule by kings, ensuring that the kingship was held by his heirs. He was also the first Catholic King to rule over Gaul, known today as France. He was the son of Childeric I and Basina. In 481, when he was fifteen, he succeeded his father. Clovis was not only a Frankish king, he was also a Roman official. The Salian Franks were one of two Frankish tribes who were then occupying the area west of the lower Rhine, with their center in an area known as Toxandria, between the Meuse and Scheldt (in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium). Clovis's power base was to the southwest of this, around Tournai and Cambrai along the modern frontier between France and Belgium. Clovis conquered the neighboring Salian Frankish kingdoms and established himself as sole king of the Salian Franks before his death. The small church in which he was baptized stood in the vicinity of the subsequent abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims, and a statue of him being baptized by Saint Remigius can be seen there. Clovis and his wife Clotilde were buried in the St. Genevieve church (St. Pierre) in Paris, the original name of the Church was the Church of the Holy Apostles. An important part of Clovis' legacy is that he locally succeeded to the power of the Romans in 486 by beating the Gallo-Roman ruler Syagrius in the battle of Soissons.
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Columba
Saint Columba (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD)—also known as Colum Cille (Old Irish, meaning "dove of the church"), Colm Cille (Irish), Calum Cille (Scottish Gaelic), Colum Keeilley (Manx Gaelic) and Kolban or Kolbjørn (Old Norse, meaning "black bear")—was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period. He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Columba was born to Fedlimid and Eithne of the Cenel Conaill in Gartan, near Lough Gartan, in modern County Donegal, part of the Provinces of Ulster in the north of Ireland. On his father's side he was great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the 5th century. He was baptised in Temple-Douglas, in the County Donegal parish of Conwal (mid-way between Gartan and Letterkenny), by his teacher and foster-uncle Saint Crunathan.
In early Christian Ireland the druidic tradition collapsed due to the spread of the new Christian faith. The study of Latin learning and Christian theology in monasteries flourished. Columba became a pupil at the monastic school at Clonard Abbey, situated on the River Boyne in modern County Meath. During the sixth century, some of the most significant names in the history of Irish Christianity studied at the Clonard monastery. It is said that the average number of scholars under instruction at Clonard was 3,000. Twelve students who studied under St. Finnian became known as the Twelve Apostles of Ireland; Columba was one of them. He became a monk and eventually ordained a priest. During this time he is said to have founded a number of monasteries, including ones at Kells, Derry, and Swords.
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Columbanus
Columbanus (540 – 23 November 615; Irish: Columbán, meaning "the white dove") was an Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries on the European continent from around 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil (in present-day France) and Bobbio (Italy), and stands as an exemplar of Irish missionary activity in early medieval Europe.
He spread among the Franks a Celtic monastic rule and Celtic penitential practices for those repenting of sins, which emphasized private confession to a priest, followed by penances levied by the priest in reparation for the sin. He is also one of the earliest identifiable Hiberno-Latin writers.
Columbanus (the Latinised form of Columbán) was born in Nobber, County Meath, Ireland, in the year Saint Benedict died, and from childhood was well instructed. His name may be looked on as the diminutive of "Colm" (a dove), or as Colm (Colum) Bán meaning the 'white dove'.
He left home to study under Sinell, Abbot of Cluaninis in Lough Erne. The Irish words "Cluan Innish", which mean "meadow and island", have been contracted to "Cleenish", where the remains of the monastery can be seen at Bellanaleck, County Fermanagh. Under Sinell's instruction, Columbanus composed a commentary on the Psalms (for another identification, see Mo Sinu moccu Min). He then moved to the celebrated monastery of Bangor on the coast of Down, which at that time had for its abbot St. Comgall. He spent many years there until c.589 he received Comgall's permission to travel to the continent.
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Constantine VII
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" (Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος Ζ΄ Πορφυρογέννητος, Kōnstantinos VII Porphyrogennētos; September 2, 905 – November 9, 959) was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959. He was the son of the emperor Leo VI and his fourth wife Zoe Karbonopsina, and the nephew of his predecessor, the emperor Alexander.
Most of his reign was dominated by other co-regents: from 913 until 919, he was under the regency of his mother, while from 920 until 945, he shared his throne with Romanos Lekapenos, whose daughter Helena he married, and his sons. Constantine VII is best known for his four books, De Administrando Imperio, De Ceremoniis, De Thematibus and Vita Basilii.
His nickname alludes to the Purple Room of the Imperial palace, decorated with porphyry, where legitimate children of reigning emperors were normally born. Constantine was also born in this room, although his mother Zoe had not been married to Leo at that time. Nevertheless, the epithet allowed him to underline his position as the legitimized son, as opposed to all others who claimed the throne during his lifetime. Sons born to a reigning Emperor held precedence in the Eastern Roman line of succession over elder sons not born "in the purple".
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David Nicolle
Dr. David C. Nicolle (born 4 April 1944) is a British historian specialising in the military history of the Middle Ages, with a particular in the Middle East.
Nicolle has worked for the BBC Arabic Service, and also lectured in World and Islamic art and architecture at Yarmouk University, Jordan. He currently lives in the United Kingdom.
Nicolle was on the editorial board of the Medieval History Magazine.
David Nicolle worked for the BBC Arabic Service before getting his MA at the School of African Oriental Studies. He gained a PHD in Edinburgh University. His interest in the medieval world was shown in the number of books and articles he has written to teach World and Islamic art and architectural history at Yarmouk University in Jordan.
He married an American, Colette Giroux in 1976; they have a son Frederick Joseph ("Fred", born 1982) and a daughter Dr. Antoinette Laura ("Nette", born 1984). He now lives and works in Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershire.
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Diocletian
Diocletian (Latin: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus; c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia, Diocletian rose through the ranks of the military to become cavalry commander to the Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on campaign in Persia, Diocletian was proclaimed Emperor. The title was also claimed by Carus' other surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus. With his accession to power, Diocletian ended the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian Augustus his senior co-emperor in 285.
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Duccio
Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260 – c. 1318-1319) was born in the city of Siena, Tuscany in Northern Italy. Much about his early life and family is uncertain; but we do have records that say he was married with seven children. Although there is a lot still unconfirmed about Duccio di Buoninsegna and his life, documentation of him is much more prevalent than compared to other Italian painters of his time and earlier. Fortunately due to unrelenting research from art historians and archeologists around the world we have been able to uncover some concrete information about this famous, unique and beloved Sienese painter. A large part his life must be reconstructed from the evidence of works that can be attributed to him with certainty, and from the evidence contained in his stylistic development. We do know from confirmed documents; that he often found himself in situations with the government. Many time he had debts and fines; historians believe that he had a difficult time managing his life and his money. His artistic talents were enough to overshadow his lack of organization as a citizen, and he became famous in his own lifetime. In the 1300s Duccio becomes one off the most favored and radical painters in Siena. He is considered to be the father of Sienese painting and along with a few others the founder of Western art. He was hired throughout his life to complete many important works in government and religious buildings around Italy. Duccio is credited with creating the painting style of Trecento and the Sienese school, and contributed significantly to the Sienese Gothic style.
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Edward Grant
Edward Grant (born April 6, 1926) is an American historian. He was named a Distinguished Professor in 1983. Other honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as an historian of science.
Grant is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington. Before arriving at Indiana University in the fall of 1959, Professor Grant taught at the University of Maine and in the history of science program at Harvard University. Professor Grant was twice chair of his department (1973–1979; 1987–1990) where he taught courses on medieval science, natural philosophy and science and religion.
He has received many honors and awards, including the George Sarton Medal in 1992, the most prestigious award given by the History of Science Society that "recognizes those whose entire careers have been devoted to the field and whose scholarship is exceptional."
In his book The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, Grant discusses the developments and discoveries that culminated in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. He emphasize how the roots of modern science were planted in the ancient and medieval worlds long before the modern period, and that the Christian Latin civilization of Western Europe began the last stage of its intellectual development. One basic factor is how Christianity developed in the West with the establishment of the medieval universities around 1200.
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Ernst Kitzinger
Ernst Kitzinger (December 12, 1912 - January 22, 2003) was a German-American historian of late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine art.
Kitzinger was born into a highly educated Jewish family in Munich; his father, Wilhelm Nathan Kitzinger, was a prominent lawyer, and his cousin, Richard Krautheimer, would likewise become a major historian of late antique and Byzantine architecture. He entered the University of Munich in 1931, where he studied the history of art under Wilhelm Pinder. The beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933 raised the immediate possibility that Jewish students might be banned from receiving degrees. Kitzinger accordingly completed his dissertation, a brief but influential study of Roman painting in the 7th and 8th centuries, with exceptional speed, and defended it in the fall of 1934. Later that same year he left Germany.
Kitzinger travelled first to Rome, before settling in England, where he found employment at the British Museum. He quickly developed an interest in Anglo-Saxon art, publishing several important studies of the subject, and assessing the Sutton Hoo treasure when it was unearthed in 1939. In 1937 he travelled to Egypt and Istanbul, thus further widening his perspective on late antique and early medieval art as an "international" phenomenon. It was this perspective that he brought to his first book, Early Medieval Art at the British Museum (1940). More than a guidebook, this was in fact an attempt to describe the transformation of the classical style into the medieval, a subject which Kitzinger would revisit on many occasions throughout his career.
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Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars ( /ˈævɑrz/) were a Turkic people from the steppes of Central Asia, and later they became a confederation of Eurasian tribes of mixed origin. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors. Although the name Avar first appeared in the mid-fifth century, the Avars of Europe enter the historical scene in the mid-sixth century AD, when they established a pax spanning considerable areas of Central and Eastern Europe. Their state was the Avar Khaganate. The rule of their country over much of the Pannonian Plain persisted until the early 9th century.
The origin of the Eurasian Avars is unclear. Information about origins is derived primarily from the works of Byzantine historians Menander Protector and Theophylact Simocatta. John of Ephesus used the term "those, who are called "Avars," because of their long hair." The confusion is compounded by the fact that many clans carried a particular name because they believed it to be prestigious, or it was attributed to them by outsiders describing their common characteristics, believed place of origin or reputation.[citation needed] Such a case has been seen repeatedly for many nomadic confederacies.
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Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone; 1181/1182 – October 3, 1226) was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history.
Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for Assisi. While going off to war in 1204, Francis had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life. On a pilgrimage to Rome, he begged with the beggars at St. Peter's. The experience moved him to live in poverty. Francis returned home, began preaching on the streets, and soon amassed a following. His order was endorsed by Pope Innocent III in 1210. He then founded the Order of Poor Clares, which was an enclosed order for women, as well as the Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance. In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan. By this point, the Franciscan Order had grown to such an extent that its primitive organizational structure was no longer sufficient. He returned to Italy to organize the order. Once his organization was endorsed by the Pope, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs. In 1223, Francis arranged for the first Christmas manger scene. In 1224, he received the stigmata, making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ's Passion. He died in 1226 while preaching Psalm 141.
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Franks
The Franks (Latin: Franci or gens Francorum) were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as populating a broad strip of land on the right bank of the Lower and Middle Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a kingdom on Roman-held soil that was acknowledged by the Romans after 357. In the climate of the collapse of imperial authority in the West, the Frankish tribes were united under the Merovingians and conquered all of Gaul except Septimania in the 6th century. The Salian political elite was one of the most active forces in spreading Christianity over western Europe. The Franks had created one of the most strong and stable barbaric kingdoms.
The Merovingian dynasty, descended from the Salians, founded one of the Germanic monarchies which replaced the Western Roman Empire from the fifth century. The Frankish state consolidated its hold over large parts of western Europe by the end of the eighth century, developing into the Carolingian Empire which dominated most of Western Europe. This empire would gradually evolve into France and the Holy Roman Empire.
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François Villon
François Villon (in modern French, pronounced [fʁɑ̃swa vijɔ̃]; in fifteenth-century French, [frɑnswɛ viˈlɔn]) (c. 1431 – after 5 January 1463) was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. The question "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?", taken from the Ballade des dames du temps jadis and translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?", is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world.
Villon's real surname has been a matter of dispute; he has been called François de Montcorbier and François Des Loges and other names, though in literature Villon is the sole name used. Villon was born in 1431, almost certainly in Paris. The singular poems called Testaments, which form his chief if not his only certain work, are largely autobiographical.
It appears that he was born in poverty and that his father died in his youth, but that his mother was still living when her son was thirty years old. The name "Villon" was stated by the sixteenth-century historian Claude Fauchet to be merely a common noun, signifying "cheat" or "rascal," but this seems to be a mistake. It is, however, certain that Villon was a person of loose life, and that he continued, throughout his recorded life, a reckless way of living common among the wilder youth of the University of Paris. It is possible that he derived his surname from his uncle, a close friend and benefactor named Guillaume de Villon, chaplain in the collegiate church of Saint-Benoît-le-Bestourne, and a professor of canon law, who took Villon into his house.
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Gautier de Metz
Gautier de Metz (also Gauthier, Gossuin, Gossouin, German: Walther von Metz) ) was a French priest and poet.
About 1246, he wrote L'Image du monde (French, the image of the world), a work in poem form about creation, the Earth and the universe, wherein facts are mixed with fantasy. A chapter discussed astrology. It was translated in the Middle Ages into many languages and partly illustrated.
It illustrated a spherical Earth.
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Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( /ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".) In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure—bourgeois, if not elite. John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated April 3, 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie' .
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Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth (Latin: Galfridus Monemutensis, Galfridus Arturus, Galfridus Artur, Welsh: Gruffudd ap Arthur, Sieffre o Fynwy) (c. 1100 – c. 1155) was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain"), which was widely popular in its day and was credited, uncritically, well into the 16th century, being translated into various other languages from its original Latin.
Geoffrey was probably born some time between 1100 and 1110 in Wales or the Welsh Marches. He must have reached the age of majority by 1129, when he is recorded as witnessing a charter.
In his Historia, Geoffrey refers to himself as Galfridus Monumetensis, "Geoffrey of Monmouth", which indicates a significant connection to Monmouth, Wales, and which may refer to his birthplace. Geoffrey's works attest to some acquaintance with the place-names of the region. To contemporaries, Geoffrey was known as Galfridus Artur(us) or variants thereof. The "Arthur" in these versions of his name may indicate the name of his father, or a nickname based on Geoffrey's scholarly interests.
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Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance.
Giotto's contemporary Giovanni Villani wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence."
The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years."
Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Comune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and his burial place.
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Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni bokˈkattʃo]; 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.
The exact details of his birth are uncertain. The majority of sources state that he was born either in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from.Giovanni Villani, a contemporary of Boccaccio and chronicler, states that he was born in Paris as a consequence of an illicit relation but others denounce this as a romanticism by the earliest biographers. He was the son of a Florentine merchant and an unknown woman, and almost certainly born illegitimate.
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Gregory of Tours
Saint Gregory of Tours (November 30, c. 538 – November 17, 594) 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 of late Vulgar Latin; however, it has been argued that this was a deliberate ploy to ensure his works would reach a wide audience. He is the main contemporary source for Merovingian history. His most notable work was his Decem Libri Historiarum or Ten Books of Histories, better known as the Historia Francorum ("History of the Franks"), a title given to it by later chroniclers, but he is also known for his credulous accounts of the miracles of saints, especially four books of the miracles of Martin of Tours. St Martin's tomb was a major draw in the 6th century, and Gregory's writings had the practical aspect of promoting this highly organized devotion.
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Gundobad
Gundobad (c. 452–516) was King of the Burgundians (473–516), succeeding his father Gundioc of Burgundy. Previous to this, he had been a Patrician of the Western Roman Empire in 472–473, succeeding his uncle Ricimer.
Gundobad seized the title of Patrician when his uncle Ricimer, who had been the power behind the throne for the Western Empire, died 18 August 472. According to John of Antioch, Gundobad had previously executed the deposed emperor Anthemius on his uncle's orders.
Once in power, Gundobad elevated the current Count of the Domestics, Glycerius, to the position of Western Roman Emperor. However, not long after Gundobad left for Burgundy where his father, Gundioc, had died; the exact date is unclear, with authorities stating it was in either 473 or 474. Once in Burgundy, his three brothers have been assumed to challenge to his rule: Godegisel, Chilperic II and Gundomar. Ian Wood speculates that Gundobad's departure may have been connected with the arrival of a new emperor, Julius Nepos, who had the support of the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. Once Julius Nepos landed in Portus (June 474), he deposed Glycerius, whom he made bishop of Salona.
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Guy of Boulogne
Guy of Boulogne (1313 – 25 November 1373) was a statesman and a churchman, serving the Avignon Papacy for 33 years. He participated in the papal conclaves of 1352, 1362 and 1370, and was the Subdean of the Sacred College of Cardinals. His diplomatic postings were extensive. American historian Kenneth Setton called him "one of the commanding figures of his day, and the letters of Petrarch abound with references to him".
Guy was the third son of Count Robert VII of Auvergne, and his family was well-connected to the greatest houses in France and the Empire. His sister Matilda married Count Amadeus III of Geneva, making Guy uncle of four successive counts of Geneva and of antipope Clement VII. The daughter, Joan, of Guy's eldest brother, Count William XII of Auvergne, married John, Duke of Normandy, later King of France, who thus called Guy his "uncle[-in-law]". On 11 October 1340, Pope Benedict XII approved Guy's election as Archbishop of Lyon, but he did hold it long, surrendering it to become cardinal-priest tituli S. Caeciliae, of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, on 20 September 1342.
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Henri Pirenne
Henri Pirenne (23 December 1862 - 25 October 1935) was a Belgian historian. A medievalist of Walloon descent, he wrote a multivolume history of Belgium in French and became a national hero. He also became prominent in the nonviolent resistance to the Germans who occupied Belgium in World War I.
Henri Pirenne's reputation today rests on three contributions to European history: for what has become known as the Pirenne Thesis, concerning origins of the Middle Ages in reactive state formation and shifts in trade; for a distinctive view of Belgium's medieval history; and for his model of the development of the medieval city.
Pirenne argued that profound social, economic, cultural, and religious movements in the long-term resulted from equally profound underlying causes, and this attitude influenced Marc Bloch and the outlook of the French Annales School of social history. Though Pirenne had his opponents, notably Alfons Dopsch who disagreed on essential points, recent historians of the Middle Ages usually take Pirenne's main theses, however much they are modified, as starting points.
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Henry II of England
Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle, Henry FitzEmpress or Henry Plantagenet, ruled as King of England (1154–89), Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Nantes, and Lord of Ireland; at various times, he also controlled Wales, Scotland and Brittany. Henry was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda, who was the daughter of King Henry I and took the title of Empress from her first marriage. He became actively involved by the age of 14 in his mother's efforts to claim the throne of England, and was made the Duke of Normandy at 17. He inherited Anjou in 1151 and shortly afterwards married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose marriage to the French king Louis VII had recently been annulled. King Stephen agreed to a peace treaty after Henry's military expedition to England in 1153, and he inherited the kingdom on Stephen's death a year later. Still quite young, he now controlled what would later be called the Angevin empire, stretching across much of western Europe.
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Henry III of England
Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready. England prospered during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster, which he made the seat of his government and where he expanded the abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor. He is the first of only five monarchs to reign in the Kingdom of England or its successor states for 50 years or more, the others being Edward III (1327–1377), George III (1760–1820), Victoria (1837–1901) and Elizabeth II (1952–present).
He assumed the crown under the regency of the popular William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, but the England he inherited had undergone several drastic changes in the reign of his father. He spent much of his reign fighting the barons over Magna Carta and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to call the first "parliament" in 1264. He was also unsuccessful on the Continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish English control over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine.
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Henry Kamen
Henry A. Kamen (born 4 October 1936 in Rangoon) is a British historian.
He studied at the University of Oxford, earning his doctorate at St Antony's College. He subsequently taught at the University of Warwick and various universities in Spain. In 1970, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 1984 he was appointed Herbert F. Johnson Professor at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin - Madison. He was a Professor of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Barcelona from 1993 until his retirement in 2002. Since then he has continued lecturing and writing, and lives currently in Spain and in the United States. He is an influential contributor to the pages of the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo. He considers the most stimulating points of his career to have been when he was received by Pope John Paul II during a private conference in the Vatican, and when Queen Sofia of Spain slipped into one of his classes as a student and took notes during a lecture he was giving at a summer conference in Santander, Spain.
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Henry the Navigator
Henry the Navigator (Portuguese pronunciation: [ẽˈʁik(ɨ)]; Portuguese: Henrique o Navegador) (Porto, 4 March 1394 – Sagres, 13 November 1460) was an infante of the Kingdom of Portugal and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire. He was responsible for the early development of European exploration and maritime trade with other continents.
Henry was the third child of King John I of Portugal, founder of the Aviz dynasty, and of Philippa of Lancaster, John of Gaunt's daughter. Henry encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian peninsula. He learnt of the opportunities from the Saharan trade routes that terminated there, and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade. Henry is regarded as the patron of Portuguese exploration.
In "Crónica da Guiné" Henry is described as having no luxuries, not avaricious, speaking with soft words and calm gestures, a man of many virtues who never allowed any poor person leave his presence empty-handed.
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Henry VII of England
Henry VII (Welsh: Harri Tudur; 28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry won the throne when he defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle. He was successful in restoring the power and stability of the English monarchy after the political upheavals of the Wars of the Roses. He founded a long-lasting dynasty and, after a reign of nearly 24 years, was peacefully succeeded by his son, Henry VIII.
Although Henry can be credited with the restoration of political stability in England, and a number of commendable administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives, the latter part of his reign was characterised by a financial rapacity which stretched the bounds of legality. According to the contemporary historian Polydore Vergil, simple "greed" in large part underscored the means by which royal control was over-asserted in Henry's final years.
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Heraclius
Heraclius (Latin: Flavius Heraclius Augustus, Greek: Φλάβιος Ἡράκλειος, c. 575 – February 11, 641) was Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641.
He was responsible for introducing Greek as the Eastern Empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, successfully led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.
Heraclius' reign was marked by several military campaigns. The year Heraclius came to power, the empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Heraclius immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Sassanids. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Byzantines; the Persian army fought their way to the Bosphorus. However, because Constantinople was protected by impenetrable walls and a strong navy, Heraclius was able to avoid total defeat. Soon after, he initiated reforms to rebuild and strengthen the military. Heraclius drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh. The Persian king Khosrau II was assassinated soon after and peace was restored to the two deeply strained empires.
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Hildebrand
Hildebrand is a character from Germanic legend. Hildebrand is the modern German form of the name: in Old High German it is Hiltibrant and in Old Norse Hildibrandr. The word hild means "battle" and brand means "sword". The name itself is very likely of Langobard origin.
He is associated with the cycle of legends about Theodoric the Great, called Dietrich in German, to whom he is a companion. Hildebrand figures in three famous songs: in the Old High German Hildebrandslied, the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, and in the Old Norse song Hildebrand's death in Ásmundar saga kappabana (called Hildibrandr). He also appears as Hildiger in Gesta Danorum.
In the Nibelungenlied, he is the armourer, brother-in-arms and fatherly friend of Dietrich von Bern. It is he that kills Kriemhild, after she ordered her brother's death and killed Hagen herself.
In the Hildebrandslied, which is older, Hildebrand fights his own son Hadubrand. In fact Hildebrand became Dietrich's armourer, because he had to leave his home, he left his wife and his son. 30 years later, Hildebrand returns. His son Hadubrand is now ruling over his land, he is leading his army against the supposed invasion. As is customary, the two leaders meet between the armies. They start to list their family tree, in order to prevent themselves from killing a relative. Hadubrand says that he is "Hadubrand Hildebrand's son", but he was told that Hildebrand died, and he thinks that the fighter before him is using Hildebrand's name to deceive him. In fact in the original text with the end of the song is lost, but the legends and the third song tell the end of the story. Hildebrand has to kill his son otherwise he would be killed by him; he has pictures of all the warriors he killed on his red shield, and his son's picture is added to the others.
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Hungarian people
Hungarians, also known as Magyars (Hungarian: magyarok), are a nation and ethnic group who speak Hungarian and are primarily associated with Hungary. There are around 14-15 million Hungarians, of whom 10 million live in today's Hungary (as of 2011). About 2.2 million Hungarians live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the 1918-1920 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Treaty of Trianon, and are now parts of Hungary's seven neighbour countries, especially Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Significant groups of people with Hungarian ancestry live in various other parts of the world, most of them in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada and Australia. Unlike the Hungarians living on the former territory of pre-1918-20 Kingdom of Hungary, only some of the ethnic Hungarians in other areas preserve the Hungarian language and traditions. The Hungarians can be classified into several subgroups according to local linguistic and cultural characteristics; subgroups with distinct identities include the Székely, the Csángó, the Palóc, and the Jassic people.
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Huns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns.Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject of debate for centuries. Most authorities suppose that it may have been a member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family, with the languages Bulgar, Khazar, Turkic Avar and Chuvash. Numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun pax including East Germanic, which was widely used as a lingua franca in the Hunnic territories. Their main military technique was mounted archery.
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Jan Hus
Jan Hus (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈɦus] ( listen); c. 1369 – 6 July 1415), often referred to in English as John Hus or John Huss, was a Czech priest, philosopher, reformer, and master at Charles University in Prague. After John Wycliffe, the theorist of ecclesiastical Reformation, Hus is considered the first Church reformer (living prior to Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli).
He is famed for having been burned at the stake for heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church, including those on ecclesiology, the Eucharist, and other theological topics. Hus was a key predecessor to the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century, and his teachings had a strong influence on the states of Europe, most immediately in the approval for the existence of a reformist Bohemian religious denomination, and, more than a century later, on Martin Luther himself.
Between 1420 and 1431, the Hussite forces defeated five consecutive papal crusades against followers of Hus. Their defence and rebellion against Roman Catholics became known as the Hussite Wars. A century later, as many as 90% of inhabitants of the Czech lands were non-Catholic and followed the teachings of Hus and his successors.
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Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck (or Johannes de Eyck) (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈɛjk]) (before c. 1395 – before 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and is generally considered one of the most significant Northern European painters of the 15th century. The few surviving records indicate that he was born around 1390, most likely in Maaseik. Little is known of his early life, but his activities following his appointment to the court of Philip the Good c. 1425 are comparatively well documented. Van Eyck had previously served John of Bavaria-Straubing, then ruler of Holland, Hainault and Zeeburg. By this time van Eyck had assembled a workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. He moved to Bruges sometime around 1425 and there came to the attention of Philip the Good. He served as both court artist and diplomat and became a senior member of the Tournai painters' guild, where he enjoyed the company of similarly esteemed artists such as Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden. Over the following decade van Eyck's reputation and technical ability grew, mostly from his innovative approaches towards the handling and manipulating of oil paint. His revolutionary approach to oil was such that a myth, perpetuated by Giorgio Vasari, arose that he had invented oil painting.
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Jerome
Saint Jerome (c. 347 – 30 September 420; (also Hierom or Jerom) (Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Ancient Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος) was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), and his list of writings is extensive.
He is recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Vulgate is still an important text in Catholicism. He is also recognized as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is known as St. Jerome of Stridonium or Blessed Jerome.
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon around 347. He was not baptized until about 360 or 366, when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus (who may or may not have been the same Bonosus whom Jerome identifies as his friend who went to live as a hermit on an island in the Adriatic) to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though probably not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later claim to have acquired as a schoolboy.
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Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: Jeanne d'Arc,IPA: [ʒan daʁk]; ca. 1412 – 30 May 1431), is a folk heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in what is now eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII of France. She was captured by the Burgundians, transferred to the English in exchange for money, put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon for charges of "insubordination and heterodoxy," and was burned at the stake for heresy when she was only 19 years old.
Twenty-five years after her execution, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr. Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. She is – along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux – one of the patron saints of France. Joan said that she had visions from God that instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.
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Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjoːɦɑn ˈɦœyzɪŋɣaː]) (Groningen, December 7, 1872 – De Steeg, February 1, 1945), was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his degree in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, gaining a good command of Sanskrit. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.
It was not until 1902 that his interest turned towards medieval and Renaissance history. He continued teaching as an Orientalist until he became a Professor of General and Dutch History at Groningen University in 1905. In 1915, he was made Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942. That year, he spoke critically of his country's German occupiers, comments that were consistent with his writings about Fascism in the 1930s. From then until his death in 1945, he was held in detention by the Nazis. He died in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended, and he lies buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.
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John Cabot
John Cabot (known in Italian as Giovanni Caboto; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the continent of North America since the Norse Vikings visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland.
Cabot's birthplace is in Italy. In Italy he is known today as Giovanni Caboto, in England as John Cabot, in France as Jean Cabot, and in Spain as Juan Caboto. The non-Italian forms reflect references to him in the related 15th-century documents. Only one set of documents has been found bearing his signature. These are Venetian testamentary documents of 1484, on which he signed as "Zuan Chabotto", Zuan being a form of John typical to Venice. That he continued to use this form in England, at least among Italians, is supported by two letters referring to him that were written by others in London in 1497. One, from a London-based Venetian, gives Cabot's first name as Zuam. Another, from the Milanese Ambassador, spells his name Zoane. In a document identified in October 2010, he is described by his Italian banker in London as 'Giovanni Chabbote', this being the only known contemporary document to use this version of his first name.
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John I Tzimiskes
John I Tzimiskes or Tzimisces, (Greek: Ιωάννης Α΄ Τζιμισκής, Iōannēs I Tzimiskēs; Armenian: Հովհաննես Ա Չմշկիկ Hovhannes A Čmškik, Armenian pronunciation: [hovɑˈnɛs tʃʰəməʃˈkik]; circa 925 – January 10, 976) was Byzantine Emperor from December 11, 969 to January 10, 976. A brilliant and intuitive general, John's short reign saw the expansion of the Empire's borders and the strengthening of Byzantium itself.
John was born into the Kourkouas clan, a family of Armenian origin. Scholars have speculated that his nickname "Tzimiskes" was derived either from the Armenian Chmushkik, meaning "red boot", or from an Armenian word for "short stature." A more favorable explanation is offered by the medieval Armenian historian Matthew of Edessa, who states that "Tzimiskes was from the region of Khozan, from the area which is now called Chmushkatzag." Khozan was located in the region of Paghnatun, in the Byzantine province of Fourth Armenia (Sophene).
Tzimiskes was born sometime in 925 to an unnamed member of the Kourkouas family by the sister of the future Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. Both the Kourkouai and the Phokadai were distinguished Cappadocian families, and among the most prominent of the emerging military aristocracy of Asia Minor. Several of their members had served as prominent army generals, most notably the great John Kourkouas, who conquered Melitene and much of Armenia.
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Julius Nepos
Julius Nepos (c. 430 – 480) was Western Roman Emperor de facto from 474 to 475 and de jure until 480. Some historians consider him to be the last Western Roman Emperor, while others consider the western line to have ended with Romulus Augustulus in 476.
In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, and its line of Emperors, survived this historical period relatively intact.
Nepos, already the ruler of Roman Dalmatia, was nominated by the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I in early 474, to replace the Western Emperor Glycerius, who was regarded as a usurper. It was probably Nepos' marriage to the emperor Leo's wife's niece which earned him the agnomen of "Nepos" (nephew).
Glycerius surrendered in June 474, shortly after Nepos' arrival in Italy. Nepos spared Glycerius' life, and appointed him bishop of Salona. After this Nepos ruled, briefly, over the whole of the remaining Western Roman Empire; still centered on Italy, the Empire's heartland, and including his native Dalmatia, and the remaining parts of Roman Gaul. Nepos' rule in Italy ended in 475, when he was deposed by his magister militum, Orestes. After fleeing from Italy and Orestes without opposition, Nepos returned to Dalmatia, over which he retained control.
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Justinian I
Justinian I ( /dʒʌˈstɪniən/) (Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus, Ancient Greek: Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ἰουστινιανός) (c. 482 – 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.
One of the most important figures of Late Antiquity and the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as a first language, Justinian's rule constitutes a distinct epoch in the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. The impact of his administration extended far beyond the boundaries of his time and domain. Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire. His general Belisarius swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, extending Roman control to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the Empire after more than half a century of barbarian control.
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Jutes
The Jutes, Iuti, or Iutæ (pronounced /dʒuːts/) were a Germanic people who, according to Bede, were one of the three most powerful Germanic peoples of their time, the other two being the Saxons and the Angles. They are believed to have originated from Jutland peninsula (called Iutum in Latin) in modern Denmark,Southern Schleswig (Southern Jutland) and part of the East Frisian coast in northern Germany.
Bede places the homeland of the Jutes on the other side of the Angles relative to the Saxons, which would mean the northern part of the Jutland Peninsula. Tacitus portrays a people called the Eudoses living in the north of Jutland and these may have been the later Iutae. The Jutes have also been identified with the Eotenas (ēotenas) involved in the Frisian conflict with the Danes as described in the Finnesburg episode in the poem Beowulf (lines 1068–1159). Others have interpreted the ēotenas as jotuns ("ettins" in English), meaning giants, or as a kenning for "enemies."
Disagreeing with Bede, some historians identify the Jutes with people called the Eucii (or Saxones Eucii) who were evidently associated with the Saxons and dependents of the Franks in 536. The Eucii may have been identical with an obscure tribe called the Euthiones and probably associated with the Saxons. The Euthiones are mentioned in a poem by Venantius Fortunatus (583) as being under the suzerainty of Chilperic I of the Franks. This identification would agree well with the later location of the Jutes in Kent, since the area just opposite of Kent on the European mainland (present-day Flanders) was part of Francia. Even if Jutes were present to the south of the Saxons in the Rhineland or near the Frisians, this does not contradict the possibility that they were migrants from Jutland.
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Leo VI the Wise
Leo VI, surnamed the Wise or the Philosopher (Greek: Λέων ΣΤ΄ ὁ Σοφός, Leōn VI ho Sophos, 19 September 866 – 11 May 912), was Byzantine Emperor from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty (although his parentage is unclear), he was very well-read, leading to his surname. During his reign, the renaissance of letters begun by his predecessor Basil I continued, but the Empire also saw several military defeats in the Balkans against Bulgaria and against the Arabs in Sicily and the Aegean.
Born to the empress Eudokia Ingerina, Leo was either the illegitimate son of Emperor Michael III or the second son of his successor, Basil I the Macedonian. Eudokia was both Michael III's mistress and Basil’s wife. In 867, Michael was assassinated by Basil, who succeeded him as Emperor. As the second eldest son of the Emperor, Leo was associated on the throne in 870 and became the direct heir on the death of his older half-brother Constantine in 879. However, Leo and Basil did not like each other; a relationship that only deteriorated after Eudokia's death, when Leo, unhappy with his marriage to Theophano Martiniake, took up a mistress in the person of Zoe Zaoutzaina. Basil married Zoe off to an insignificant official, and later almost had Leo blinded when he was accused of conspiring against him. On August 29, 886, Basil died in a hunting accident, though he claimed on his deathbed that there was an assassination attempt in which Leo was possibly involved.
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Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni (or Leonardo Aretino) (c. 1370 – March 9, 1444) was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman. He has been called the first modern historian.
Leonardo Bruni was born in Arezzo, Tuscany circa 1370. Bruni was the pupil of political, and cultural leader Coluccio Salutati, whom he succeeded as chancellor of Florence. Bruni's years in office—1410 to 1411 and again from 1427 to his death in 1444—were plagued by warfare. Though he occupied one of the highest political offices, Bruni was relatively powerless compared to the Albizzi and Medici families. Historian Arthur Field has identified Bruni as an apparent plotter against Cosimo de Medici in 1437 (see below). Bruni died in 1444 and was succeeded in office by Carlo Marsuppini.
Bruni's most notable work is History of the Florentine People, which has been called the first modern history book. Bruni was the first historian to write using the three-period view of history: Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modern. The dates Bruni used to define the periods are not exactly what modern historians use today, but he laid the conceptual groundwork for a tripartite division of history. While it probably was not Bruni's intention to secularize history, the three period view of history is unquestionably secular and for that Bruni has been called the first modern historian. The foundation of Bruni's conception can be found with Petrarch, who distinguished the classical period from later cultural decline, or tenebrae (literally "darkness"). Bruni argued that Italy had revived in recent centuries and could therefore be described as entering a new age.
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Lombards
The Lombards or Langobards (Latin: Langobardī), were a Germanic tribe who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy.
The Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the Historia Langobardorum that the Lombards descended from a small tribe called the Winnili, dwelling in southern Scandinavia (Scadanan), who had migrated southward to seek new lands. In the 1st century AD they formed part of the Suebi, in northwestern Germany. By the end of the 5th century they had moved into the area roughly coinciding with modern Austria north of the Danube river, where they subdued the Heruls and later fought frequent wars with the Gepids. The Lombard king Audoin defeated the Gepid leader Thurisind in 551 or 552; his successor Alboin eventually destroyed the Gepids at the Battle of Asfeld in 567.
Following this victory, Alboin decided to lead his people to Italy, which had become severely depopulated after the long Gothic War (535–554) between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom there. The Lombards were joined by numerous Saxons, Heruls, Gepids, Bulgars, Thuringians, and Ostrogoths, and their invasion of Italy was almost unopposed. By late 569 they had conquered all the principal cities north of the Po River except Pavia, which fell in 572. At the same time, they occupied areas in central Italy and southern Italy. They established a Lombard Kingdom in Italy, later named Regnum Italicum ("Kingdom of Italy"), which reached its zenith under the eighth-century ruler Liutprand. In 774, the Kingdom was conquered by the Frankish King Charlemagne, and integrated into his Empire. However, Lombard nobles continued to rule parts of the Italian peninsula well into the 11th century, when they were conquered by the Normans, and added to their Kingdom of Sicily. Their legacy is apparent in the regional appellation, Lombardy.
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Lothair I
Lothair I or Lothar I (German: Lothar, French: Lothaire, Italian: Lotario, Dutch: Lotharius) (795 – 29 September 855) was the Emperor of the Romans (817–855), co-ruling with his father until 840, and the King of Bavaria (815–817), Italy (818–855) and Middle Francia (840–855). The territory of Lothringen (Lorraine in French and English) is named after him.
Lothair was the eldest son of the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious and his wife Ermengarde of Hesbaye, daughter of Ingerman the duke of Hesbaye. On several occasions, Lothair led his full-brothers Pippin I of Aquitaine and Louis the German in revolt against their father to protest against attempts to make their half-brother Charles the Bald a co-heir to the Frankish domains. Upon the father's death, Charles and Louis joined forces against Lothair in a three year civil war (840–843). The struggles between the brothers lead directly to the breakup of the Frankish Empire assembled by their grandfather Charlemagne, and laid the foundation for the development of modern France and Germany.
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Louis the German
Louis (also Ludwig or Lewis) the German (806 – 28 August 876), also known as Louis II or Louis the Bavarian, was a grandson of Charlemagne and the third son of the succeeding Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye.
He received the appellation 'Germanicus' shortly after his death in recognition of the fact that the bulk of his territory had been in the former Germania.
Louis II was made the King of Bavaria from 817 following the Emperor Charlemagne's practice of bestowing a local kingdom on a family member who then served as one of his lieutenants and the local governor. When his father, Louis I (called the pious), partitioned the empire toward the end of his reign in 843, he was made King of East Francia, a region that spanned the Elbe drainage basin from Jutland southeasterly through the Thuringerwald into modern Bavaria from the Treaty of Verdun in 843 until his death.
His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather, Charlemagne, whose special affection he is said to have won. When the emperor Louis divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received Bavaria and the neighbouring lands but did not undertake the governing of such until 825, when he became involved in wars with the Wends and Sorbs on his eastern frontier. In 827, he married Emma of Altdorf, sister of his stepmother Judith of Bavaria, and daughter of Welf, whose possessions ranged from Alsace to Bavaria. Louis soon began to interfere in the quarrels arising from Judith's efforts to secure a kingdom for her own son Charles (later known as Charles the Bald) and the consequent struggles of his brothers with their father.
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Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious (778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor (as Louis I) with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. As the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position which he held until his death, save for the period 833–34, during which he was deposed.
During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of the Empire's southwestern frontier. He conquered Barcelona from the Muslims in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor he included his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy, for which Louis atoned in a public act of self-debasement. In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons, only exacerbated by Louis's attempts to include his son Charles by his second wife in the succession plans. Though his reign ended on a high note, with order largely restored to his empire, it was followed by three years of civil war. Louis is generally compared unfavourably to his father, though the problems he faced were of a distinctly different sort.
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Meister Eckhart
Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. (c. 1260 – c. 1327), commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris. Coming into prominence during the Avignon Papacy and a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Friars Preachers, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition.
Tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII, his "Defence" is famous for his reasoned arguments to all challenged articles of his writing and his refutation of heretical intent. He purportedly died before his verdict was received, although no record of his death or burial site has ever been discovered. He was well known for his work with pious lay groups such as the Friends of God and succeeded by his more circumspect disciples of John Tauler and Henry Suso.[citation needed] In his study of medieval humanism, Richard Southern includes him along with Saint Bede the Venerable and Saint Anselm as emblematic of the intellectual spirit of the Middle Ages.
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Mercia
Mercia ( /ˈmɜrsiə/, /ˈmɜrʃə/) was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands. The name is a Latinisation of the Old English Mierce or Myrce, meaning "border people".
Mercia's neighbours included Northumbria, Powys and the kingdoms of southern Wales, Wessex, Sussex, Essex and East Anglia.
The name Mercia is still in use today by a wide range of organisations, including military units, public, commercial and voluntary bodies; and occurs as a female given name.
Mercia's exact evolution from the Anglo-Saxon invasions is more obscure than that of Northumbria, Kent, or even Wessex. Also, Mercia developed an effective political structure and adopted Christianity later than the other kingdoms. Archaeological surveys show that Angles settled the lands north of the River Thames by the 6th century. The name Mercia is Old English for "boundary folk" (see Welsh Marches), and the traditional interpretation is that the kingdom originated along the frontier between the native Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon invaders. However, P. Hunter Blair argued an alternative interpretation: that they emerged along the frontier of Northumbria and the inhabitants of the Trent river valley.
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Mongols
Mongols (Mongolian: Монголчууд (help·info)), Mongolchuud) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. Owing to wars and migrations, Mongols are also found in some Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia (a smaller number of Mongols can also be found in Xinjiang in northwest China). The Buryat branch of the Mongol ethnic group can be found in the autonomous republic of Buryatia, Russia. Ethnic Mongols are bound together by a common language and culture. They speak languages belonging to the Mongolic languages. The contiguous territories inhabited by ethnic Mongols is also known as Greater Mongolia[disambiguation needed 
]. There are approximately 10 million ethnic Mongols in total.
A definition includes the Mongols proper, who can be approximately divided into the eastern Mongols (the Khalkha Mongols, the Inner Mongolians, the Buryats), and the Oirats. In a wider sense, the Mongol people includes all people who speak a Mongolic language, such as the Kalmyks of eastern Europe.
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Muhammad
Muhammad (c. 26 April 570 – 8 June 632; also transliterated as Mohammad, Mohammed, or Muhammed; Arabic: محمد), full name: Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib (Arabic: محمد بن عبدالله بن عبد المطلب ) was a leader from Mecca who unified the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by Muslims and Bahá'ís to be a messenger and prophet of God. Muslims believe that Islam was not his own invention but was revealed by God, and most consider him to be the last prophet of God Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (islām) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.
Born in 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in the surrounding mountains for several nights of meditation and prayer, he later reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islām) is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.
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Nicholas of Verdun
Nicholas of Verdun (1130–1205) was a French artist, one of the most famous goldsmiths and enamellists of the Middle Ages, a major figure in Romanesque art, and the leading figure of Mosan art in his day. He created shrines, figurines, and candlesticks decorated with precious stones, travelling around Europe to fulfill major commissions.
During the last quarter of the 12th century steps were being taken towards Classical Antiquity by a Mosan metalworker Nicholas of Verdun. Nicholas was a remarkable French enamellist and a goldsmith of the Middle Ages. His work transitions from late Romanesque to early Gothic styles. During his career he spent most of his time traveling to different locations where he was commissioned to develop most of his work. Some examples of his transition towards an antique style can be seen through his great craftsmanship of metal making of the enameled altarpiece which was created for Klosterneuburg Monastery, near Vienna in c.1180. The work reveals his master metalworking and the technique of champlevé enameling. His even more notable Shrine of the Three Kings in the Cologne Cathedral, in c.1200, would be an even more appropriate example that takes us back towards classical representations of Antiquity. (Myers & Copplestone 1985, 350) In his work the artist reveals a deep understanding for the conventions centering on the physicality of the classical draperies which oblique the figures, while his faces resemble a classical Byzantine style. Nicholas of Verdun was an innovator and a master metalworker in which it was no accident that his work development occurred in the medium of metal making. The records indicate that most of his work ranges from figurines, to decorated candles with precious stones and shrines. (Myers & Copplestone 1985, 350-351)
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Nigel Saul
Professor Nigel Saul (born 1952) is a British academic who was formerly the Head of the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). He is recognised as one of the leading experts in the history of medieval England.
Professor Saul has written numerous books including Knights and Esquires, The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), and The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England (Oxford, 1997). His major biography Richard II (Yale, 1997) was the product of ten years' work and was acclaimed by P. D. James as "unlikely to be surpassed in scholarship, comprehensiveness, or in the biographer's insight into his subject's character".
He has served as Honorary President of the Royal Holloway's Conservative Future Society.
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Norman Davies
Professor Ivor Norman Richard DaviesFBA, FRHistS (born 8 June 1939) is a leading English historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
Davies was born to Richard and Elizabeth Davies in Bolton, Lancashire. He studied in Grenoble, France from 1957 to 1958 and then under A. J. P. Taylor at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in History in 1962. He was awarded an M.A. at the University of Sussex in 1966 and also studied in Perugia, Italy. He intended to study for a Ph.D. in the Soviet Union but was denied an entry visa, so instead he went to Kraków, Poland, to study at the Jagiellonian University and do research on the Polish–Soviet War. As this war was denied in the official communist Polish historiography of that time, he was obliged to change the title of his dissertation to The British Foreign Policy towards Poland, 1919–20. After he obtained his Ph.D. in Kraków in 1968, the English text appeared under the title White Eagle, Red Star. The Polish-Soviet War 1919–20 in 1972.
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Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths (Latin: Ostrogothi or Austrogothi) were a branch of the Goths (the other branch being the Visigoths), a Germanic tribe who developed a vast empire north of the Black Sea in the 3rd century AD and, in the late 5th century, under Theodoric the Great, established a Kingdom in Italy.
Invading southward from the Baltic Sea, the Ostrogoths, at the time known as the Greuthungi, built up a huge empire stretching from the Dniester to the Volga river and from the Black Sea to the Baltic shores. The Ostrogoths were probably literate in the 3rd century, and their trade with the Romans was highly developed. Their Danubian kingdom reached its zenith under King Ermanaric, who is said to have committed suicide at an old age when the Huns attacked his people and subjugated them about 370.
After their subjugation by the Huns, little is heard of the Ostrogoths for about 80 years, after which they reappear in Pannonia on the middle Danube River as federates of the Romans. However, a pocket remained behind in the Crimea when the bulk of them moved to central Europe, and these Crimean Ostrogoths existed until at least the 16th century. After the collapse of the Hun empire after the Battle of Nedao (453), the Ostrogoths under Theodoric the Great first moved to Moesia (c. 475–488) and later conquered the Italian Kingdom of the German warrior Odoacer. Theodoric became King of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in 493 and died in 526. A period of instability then ensued, tempting the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian to declare war on the Ostrogoths in 535 in an effort to restore the former western provinces of the Roman Empire. Initially, the Byzantines were successful, but under the leadership of Totila, the Goths reconquered most of the lost territory until Totila's death at the Battle of Taginae. The war lasted for almost 20 years and caused enormous damage and depopulation of Italy. The remaining Ostrogoths were absorbed into the Lombards who established a Kingdom in Italy in 567 AD.
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Ottonian dynasty
The Ottonian dynasty was a dynasty of Germanic Kings (919-1024), named after its first emperor but also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin. The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Liudolf and one of its primary leading-names. The Ottonian rulers are also regarded as the first dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, as successors of the Frankish Carolingian dynasty and Charlemagne, who is commonly viewed as the founder of the Holy Roman Empire.
Although never Emperor, Henry I the Fowler, Duke of Saxony, was arguably the founder of this imperial dynasty, since his election as German king made it possible for his son, Otto the Great to take on the imperium. Since Otto I most of the German kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Under the reign of the Ottonian rulers, the kingdom of the Eastern Franks finally became Germany with the conclusion of the unification[clarification needed] of the duchies of Lorraine, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Thuringia and Bavaria into one empire[citation needed]. Also the union of Germany with the Holy Roman Empire, which dominated German history until 1806, began with the coronation of Otto I the Great in Rome in 962. But the projected restoration of the Roman Empire failed already under Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor.
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Peter Abelard
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Peter Abelard (English pronunciation: /ˈæb.ə.lɑːrd/, French pronunciation: [a.beˈlaːʁ], Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard) (1079–21 April 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century".
Abelard, originally called "Pierre le Pallet", was born in Le Pallet, about 10 miles (16 km) east of Nantes, in Brittany, the eldest son of a minor noble Breton family. As a boy, he learned quickly. His father, a wealthy lord called Berengar, encouraged Pierre to study the liberal arts, wherein he excelled at the art of dialectic (a branch of philosophy), which, at that time, consisted chiefly of the logic of Aristotle transmitted through Latin channels. Instead of entering a military career, as his father had done, Abelard became an academic. During his early academic pursuits, Abelard wandered throughout France, debating and learning, so as (in his own words) "he became such an one as the Peripatetics." The nominalist Roscellinus of Compiègne was his teacher during this period.
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Peter Heather
Peter Heather is a historian of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, currently Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He has held appointments at University College London and Yale University and was Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at Worcester College, Oxford until December 2007. He joined the History Department of King's College London in January 2008. Heather was born in Northern Ireland in 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and New College, Oxford (MA, DPhil).
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Peter Lombard
Peter Lombard (rather Peter the Lombard) or Petrus Lombardus (c. 1096, Novara, Lombardy - August 21/22, 1164, Paris, France) was a scholastic theologian and bishop and author of Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he earned the accolade Magister Sententiarum.
Peter Lombard was born in Lumellogno (then a rural commune, now a quartiere of Novara, Piedmont), in northwestern Italy, to a poor family. His date of birth was likely between 1095 and 1100.
His education most likely began in Italy at the cathedral schools of Novara and Lucca. The patronage of Odo, bishop of Lucca, who recommended him to Bernard of Clairvaux, allowed him to leave Italy and further his studies at Reims and Paris. Petrus Lombardus studied first in the cathedral school at Reims, where Magister Alberich and Lutolph of Novara were teaching, and arrived in Paris about 1134, where Bernard recommended him to the canons of the church of St-Victor. In Paris, where he spent the next decade teaching at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, he came into contact with Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, who were among the leading theologians of the time. There are no proven facts relating to his whereabouts in Paris until 1142 when he became recognized as writer and teacher. Around 1145, Peter became a "magister", or professor, at the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. Peter's means of earning a living before he began to derive income as a teacher and from his canon's prebend is shrouded in uncertainty.
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Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism". In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio and, especially, Dante Alighieri. This would be later endorsed by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the "Dark Ages".
Petrarch was born July 20, 1304 at Vicolo dell'Orto 28 according to tradition in the city of Arezzo, just at dawn on a Monday. He was the son of Ser Petracco. His given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca and later was Anglicized to Petrarch. Petrarch's younger brother was born in Incisa in Val d'Arno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father.
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Picts
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval Celtic people living in ancient eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the geographical distribution of brochs, Brythonic place name elements, and Pictish stones. Picts are recorded from before the Roman conquest of Britain until the 10th century, when they merged with the Gaels. They lived to the north of the rivers Forth and Clyde, and spoke the extinct Pictish language, thought to have been related to the Brythonic languages spoken by the Britons to the south. They are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes named by Roman historians or found on the world map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also known as Pictavia, gradually merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba (Scotland). Alba expanded, absorbing the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde and Bernician Lothian, and by the 11th century the Pictish identity had been subsumed into the "Scots" amalgamation of peoples.
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Poles
The Polish people, or Poles (Polish: Polacy [pɔˈlat͡sɨ]; singular: Polak), are a nation indigenous to Poland. They speak the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe. The Polish word for a Polish person is "Polak" (masculine) and "Polka" (feminine).
The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland. Poland's inhabitants live in the following historic regions of the country: Wielkopolska, Małopolska, Mazovia, Pomerania, Warmia, Mazury, Podlasie, Kujawy and Silesia. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine), the Americas (the United States, Brazil and Argentina) and Australia. Chicago, in the United States, has the world's largest urban Polish population after Warsaw.
Over a thousand years ago, the Polans of Giecz, Gniezno and Poznań — an influential tribe in Wielkopolska — succeeded in uniting Lechitic tribes under what became the Piast dynasty, thus giving rise to the Polish state.
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Pope Gregory VII
Pope Gregory VII (c. 1015/1028 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (Italian: Ildebrando da Soana), was Pope from 22 April 1073 until his death.
One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor that affirmed the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope.
He twice excommunicated Henry, who in the end appointed Antipope Clement III to oppose him in the political power struggles between the Catholic Church and his empire. Hailed as one of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs after his reforms proved successful, Gregory was, during his own reign, despised by some for his expansive use of papal powers.
Gregory was beatified by Gregory XIII in 1584 and canonized in 1728 by Pope Benedict XIII.
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Pope Leo IX
Pope Saint Leo IX (21 June 1002 – 19 April 1054), born Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg, was Pope from 12 February 1049 to his death. He was a German aristocrat and a powerful secular ruler of central Italy while holding the papacy. He is regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, his feast day celebrated on April 19. Leo IX is widely considered the most historically significant German Pope of the Middle Ages. His citing of the Donation of Constantine in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople brought about the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
He was born to Count Hugh and Heilwig and was a native of Eguisheim, Upper Alsace(present day France). His family was of noble rank, and his father, Count Hugh, was a cousin of Emperor Conrad II (1024–1039). He was educated at Toul, where he successively became canon and, in 1026, bishop. In the latter capacity he rendered important political services to his relative Conrad II, and afterwards to Emperor Henry III. He became widely known as an earnest and reforming ecclesiastic by the zeal he showed in spreading the rule of the order of Cluny.
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Pope Martin V
Pope Martin V (c. 1368 – 20 February 1431), born Odo (or Oddone) Colonna, was Pope from 1417 to 1431. His election effectively ended the Western Schism (1378–1417).
He was born at Genazzano, the son of Agapito Colonna and Caterina Conti. He belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Rome. His brother Giordano became Prince of Salerno and Duke of Venosa, while his sister Paola was Lady of Piombino between 1441 and 1445.
Oddone most likely studied at the University of Perugia. He became apostolic protonotary under Pope Urban VI (1378–89), and was created Cardinal-Deacon of San Giorgio al Velabro by Pope Innocent VII in 1405. In 1409 he took part in the Council of Pisa, and was one of the supporters of Antipope Alexander V. Later he confirmed his allegiance to another antipope, John XXIII, by whom his family obtained several privileges, while Oddone obtained for himself the vicariate of Todi, Orvieto, Perugia and Umbria. He was excommunicated for this by Pope Gregory XII. Oddone was with John XXIII's entourage at the Council of Constance and followed him in his escape at Schaffhausen on 21 March 1415. Later he returned to Constance and took part in the process leading to the deposition of John XXIII.
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Pope Stephen II
Pope Stephen II (715 – 26 April 757) was Pope from 752 to 757, succeeding Pope Zachary following the death of Pope-elect Stephen. Stephen II marks the historical delineation between the Byzantine Papacy and the Frankish Papacy.
The Lombards to the north of Rome had captured Ravenna, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire Exarchate of Ravenna, in 751, and began to put pressure on the city of Rome.
Relations were very strained in the mid-8th century between the papacy and the Eastern Roman emperors over the support of the Isaurian Dynasty for iconoclasm. Likewise, maintaining political control over Rome became untenable as the Eastern Roman Empire itself was beset by the Abbasid Caliphate to the south and Bulgars to the northwest. As a result, Rome was unable to secure military support from Constantinople to push back Lombard forces.
Stephen turned to Pepin the Younger, the recently-crowned King of the Franks, and even traveled to Paris to plead for help in person. On 6 January 754, Stephen re-consecrated Pepin as king. In return, Pepin assumed the role of ordained protector of the Church and set his sights on the Lombards.
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Pope Urban II
Blessed Pope Urban II (ca. 1035 – 29 July 1099), born Otho de Lagery (alternatively: Otto, Odo or Eudes), was Pope from 12 March 1088 until his death on 29 July 1099. He is best known for starting the First Crusade (1096–1099) and setting up the modern-day Roman Curia in the manner of a royal court to help run the Church.
Pope Gregory VII named him cardinal-bishop of Ostia ca. 1080. He was one of the most prominent and active supporters of the Gregorian reforms, especially as legate in Germany in 1084 and was among the few whom Gregory VII nominated as possible successors to be Pope. Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino was first chosen Pope as Victor III when Gregory VII died in 1085, but after Victor's short reign, Otho was elected Pope Urban II by acclamation (March 1088) at a small meeting of cardinals and other prelates held in Terracina in March 1088. He took up the policies of Pope Gregory VII, and while pursuing them with determination, showed greater flexibility and diplomatic finesse. At the outset, he had to reckon with the presence of the powerful antipope Clement III in Rome, but a series of well-attended synods held in Rome, Amalfi, Benevento, and Troia supported him in renewed declarations against simony, Investiture Controversy, clerical marriages, and continued opposition to Emperor Henry IV.
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Ricimer
Flavius Ricimer (c. 405 – August 18, 472) Latin pronunciation: [ˈrɪkɪmɛr]) was a Romanized Germanic general who effectively ruled the remaining territory of the Western Roman Empire from 456 until his death in 472. Deriving his power from his position as magister militum of the Western Empire, Ricimer exercised political control through a series of puppet emperors.
Ricimer's military office and his dominance over the Empire led to historians such as J.B. Bury to conclude that he was a link between previous magistri militum, such as the Vandal Stilicho, and the Germanic king of Italy, Odoacer. Odoacer deposed Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, in an act often considered to mark the fall of the Roman Empire.
Ricimer was the son of Rechila, the Suevic King of Galicia, and a daughter of the Visigothic king Wallia. , an Arian Christian, the son of Rechila, the Suevic King of Galicia. His mother was the daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths. It has been surmised that such an alliance between the Suevi and the Visigoths would have been made before Wallia's death in 418, after which Wallia's successors may have become hostile toward the family members of the deceased king. As entry into the Western Empire's military was a frequently-used option for "losers of struggles for leadership among the barbarians", and Ricimer's family would have thus entered the service of Rome.
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Robert Guiscard
Robert d'Hauteville, known as Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, the Fox, or the Weasel (c. 1015 – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was from the noble Maison d'Hauteville of the Hauteville family, he went on to become Count (1057–1059) and then Duke (1059–1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his half-brother Humphrey's death.
From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.
In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliæ e Calabriæ ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.
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Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. (c. 1214–1294), (scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, meaning "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods. He is sometimes credited, mainly starting in the 19th century, as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Aristotle and later pseudo-Aristotelian works, like the works of Muslim scientist Alhazen. However, more recent reevaluations emphasize that he was essentially a medieval thinker, with much of his "experimental" knowledge obtained from books, in the scholastic tradition. A survey of the reception of Bacon's work over centuries found that it often reflects the concerns and controversies central to the receivers.
Roger Bacon was born in Ilchester in Somerset, England, possibly in 1213 or 1214 at the Ilchester Friary. The only source for his date of birth is his statement in the Opus Tertium, written in 1267, that "forty years have passed since I first learned the alphabet". The 1214 birth date assumes he was not being literal, and may have meant 40 years had passed since he matriculated at Oxford at the age of 13. If he had been literal, his birth date was more likely to have been around 1220/1222. In the same passage he reports that for all but two of those forty years he had always been engaged in study. His family appears to have been well-off, but, during the stormy reign of Henry III of England, their property was despoiled and several members of the family were driven into exile.
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Roger Collins
Roger J. H. Collins (born 1949) is an English medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh.
Collins studied at the University of Oxford (Queen's and Saint Cross Colleges) under Peter Brown and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill. He then taught ancient and medieval history at the universities of Liverpool and Bristol. He arrived at the University of Edinburgh in 1994 and joined the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities before becoming an honorary fellow in the Department of History (now the School of History, Classics and Archaeology) in 1998.
His research has primarily concerned the Early Middle Ages, with an emphasis on Spain, but also the Franks. His studies on the Basques and the Papacy (ongoing) have extended beyond this medieval period into the modern. His most recent publication is a book on the seventh- and eighth-century versions of the Chronicle of Fredegar for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
The following select list of writing. Only first printings and English versions are noted, as well as the latest revisions.
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Rollo
Rollo (c. 846 – c. 931), baptised Robert and so sometimes numbered Robert I to distinguish him from his descendants, was a Norse nobleman of Norwegian or Danish descent and founder and first ruler of the Viking principality in what soon became known as Normandy. His descendants were the Dukes of Normandy.
The name "Rollo" is a Latin translation from the Old Norse name Hrólfr, modern Scandinavian name Rolf (cf. the latinization of Hrólfr into the similar Roluo in the Gesta Danorum), but Norman people called him by his popular name Rou(f) (see Wace's Roman de Rou). Sometimes his name is turned into the Frankish name Rodolf(us) or Radulf(us) or the French Raoul, that are derived from it.
Rollo was a powerful Viking leader of contested origin. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, in his De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, tells of a powerful Danish nobleman at loggerheads with the king of Denmark, who had two sons, Gurim and Rollo; upon his death, Rollo was expelled and Gurim killed. William of Jumièges also mentions Rollo's prehistory in his Gesta Normannorum Ducum, but states that he was from the Danish town of Fakse. Wace, writing some 300 years after the event in his Roman de Rou, also mentions the two brothers (as Rou and Garin), as does the Orkneyinga Saga.
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Romanos II
Romanos (or Romanus) II (Greek: Ρωμανός Β΄, Rōmanos II) (938 – 15 March 963) was a Byzantine Emperor. He succeeded his father Constantine VII in 959 at the age of twenty-one, and died suddenly in 963.
Romanos II was a son of Emperor Constantine VII and Helena Lekapene, the daughter of Emperor Romanos I and his wife Theodora. Named after his maternal grandfather, Romanos was married, as a child, to Bertha, the illegitimate daughter of Hugh of Arles, King of Italy, who changed her name to Eudokia after her marriage. On April 6, 945, after the fall of the Lekapenoi, Constantine VII crowned his son Romanos co-emperor.[citation needed][clarification needed] With Hugh out of power in Italy and dead by 947, and Bertha herself dying in 949, Romanos secured the promise from his father that he would be allowed to select his own bride. Romanos' choice fell on an innkeeper's daughter named Anastaso, whom he married in 956 and renamed Theophano.
In November 959 Romanos II succeeded his father on the throne, among rumors that he or his wife had contributed to the death of Constantine VII by poisoning him. Romanos purged his father's courtiers of his enemies and replaced them with his friends and those of his wife. Among the persons removed from court were the Empress Mother, Helena, and her daughters, all of them being sent to a nunnery. Nevertheless, many of Romanos' appointees were able men, including his chief adviser, the eunuch Joseph Bringas.
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Romulus Augustulus
Romulus Augustus (born perhaps around 460 – died after 476, possibly alive around 500), is sometimes considered the last Western Roman Emperor (although by other accounts the last Western Roman Emperor was Julius Nepos), reigning from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. His deposition by Odoacer traditionally marks the end of the Western Roman Empire, the fall of ancient Rome, and the beginning of the Middle Ages in Western Europe.
He is also known by his nickname "Romulus Augustulus", though he ruled officially as Romulus Augustus. The Latin suffix -ulus is a diminutive; hence, Augustulus effectively means "Little Augustus".
The historical record contains few details of Romulus' life. He was installed as emperor by his father Orestes, the Magister militum (master of soldiers) of the Roman army after deposing the previous emperor Julius Nepos. Romulus, little more than a child, acted as a figurehead for his father's rule. Reigning for only ten months, Romulus was then deposed by the Germanic chieftain Odoacer and sent to live in the Castellum Lucullanum in Campania; afterwards he disappears from the historical record.
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Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (Arabic: صلاح الدين يوسف بن أيوب, Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, Kurdish: سهلاحهدین ئهیوبی, Selah'edînê Eyubî) (ca. 1138 – March 4, 1193), better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a KurdishMuslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant. At the height of his power, his sultanate included Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, Yemen, and parts of North Africa.
Under his personal leadership, his forces defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin, leading the way to his re-capture of Palestine, which had been seized from the Fatimid Egyptians by the Crusaders 88 years earlier. Though the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem would continue to exist for a period, its defeat at Hattin marked a turning point in its conflict with the Muslims and Arabs. As such, Saladin is a prominent figure in Kurdish, Arab, and Muslim culture. Saladin was a strict adherent of Sunni Islam. His noble and chivalrous behavior was noted by Christian chroniclers, especially in the accounts of the Siege of Kerak, and despite being the nemesis of the Crusaders, he won the respect of many of them, including Richard the Lionheart; rather than becoming a hated figure in Europe, he became a celebrated example of the principles of chivalry.
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Salian dynasty
The Salian dynasty was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages of four German Kings (1024-1125), also known as the Frankish dynasty after the family's origin and role as dukes of Franconia. All of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor (1027-1125): the term 'Salic dynasty' also applies to the Holy Roman Empire as a separate term.
After the death of the last Saxon of the Ottonian Dynasty in 1024, first the elected German King and then three years later the elected position of Holy Roman Emperor both passed to the first monarch of the Salian dynasty in the person of Conrad II, the only son of Count Henry of Speyer and Adelheid of Alsace (both territories in the Franconia of the day). He was elected German King in 1024 and crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on 26 March 1027.
The four Salian kings of the dynasty — Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V — ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1027 to 1125, and firmly established their monarchy as a major European power. They achieved the development of a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.
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Saracen
Saracen is an historical term for a certain group of people but the meaning changed during its history. In the early centuries AD in Greek and Latin it referred to a people who lived in desert areas in and near the Roman province of Arabia, and who were specifically distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Early Middle Ages, the term began to be used to describe Arab tribes. By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature. This expansion of the meaning had begun centuries earlier among the Byzantine Greeks, as evidenced in Byzantine Greek documents from the era of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate.
Ptolemy's Geography from the second century CE describes Sarakene as a region in the northern Sinai peninsula. Ptolemy also mentions a people called the Sarakenoi living in north-western Arabia (near neighbor to the Sinai).Eusebius of Caesarea references Saracens in his Ecclesiastical history, in which he narrates an account wherein Dionysus, Bishop of Alexandria mentions Saracens in a letter while describing the Roman emperor Decius' persecution: "Many were, in the Arabian mountain, enslaved by the barbarous sarkenoi." The Historia Augusta also refers to an attack by Saraceni on Pescennius Niger's army in Egypt in 193 CE but provides little information on who they might have been.
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Saxons
The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sassen) were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the North German plain, who during the Middle Ages migrated to the British Isles and formed part of the Anglo-Saxons.
The Saxons were originally Ingvaeonic tribes, whose earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This area overlapped the area of the Angles, a tribe with which they were frequently closely linked. Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the fifth century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers are around two hundred thousand. During the Middle ages, because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the North Germanic and Baltic and Finnic peoples, and also upon the Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic people.
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Scottish people
The Scottish people (Scots Gaelic: Albannaich), or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. Later the Normans also had some influence.
In modern use, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland. The Latin word Scotti originally applied to a particular, 5th century, Goidelic tribe that inhabited Ireland. Though sometimes considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been used for the Scottish people, though this usage is current primarily outside Scotland.
There are people of Scottish descent in many countries other than Scotland. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, and latterly industrial decline and unemployment, resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is a Scottish presence at a particularly high rate in Canada, which has the second largest population of descended Scots ancestry, after the United States. They took with them their Scottish languages and culture.
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Stilicho
Flavius Stilicho (occasionally written as Stilico) (ca. 359–408) was a high-ranking general (magister militum) who was, for a time, the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. Half Vandal and married to the niece of the Emperor Theodosius, Stilicho’s regency for the underage Honorius marked the high point of German advancement in the service of Rome. After many years of victories against a number of enemies, both barbarian and Roman, a series of political and military disasters finally allowed his enemies in the court of Honorius to remove him from power, culminating in his arrest and subsequent execution in 408. Known for his military successes and sense of duty, Stilicho was, in the words of the great historian Edward Gibbon, “the last of the Roman generals.”
Stilicho was the son of a Vandal father and a Roman mother. Despite his father's origins there is little to suggest that Stilicho considered himself anything other than a Roman, and his high rank within the Empire suggests that he was probably not Arian like many Germanic Christians but rather a Nicene Christian like his patron Theodosius I, who declared Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
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Susan Wise Bauer
Susan Wise Bauer (born 1968) is an American author, English instructor of writing and American literature at The College of William and Mary, and founder of Peace Hill Press.
She holds a Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA, a Master of Arts in English and a Ph.D. in American Studies from The College of William and Mary. She received her B.A. from Liberty University. She has been a member of the English faculty at William and Mary since 1993.
She is the author of The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, a guide to reading the great books published by W. W. Norton (2003); a four-volume world history series for children, The Story of the World, published by Peace Hill Press; and the first two volumes of a forthcoming four-volume world history series for W. W. Norton. She co-authored, with her mother, Jessie Wise, The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, published by W. W. Norton in 1999 and revised and updated it in 2004 and 2009. This text established Bauer as a central figure in the modern classical education and home education movements.
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Swiss mercenaries
Swiss mercenaries were notable for their service in foreign armies, especially the armies of the Kings of France, throughout the Early Modern period of European history, from the Later Middle Ages into the Age of the European Enlightenment. Their service as mercenaries was at its peak during the Renaissance, when their proven battlefield capabilities made them sought-after mercenary troops.
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5, Swiss mercenaries are called "Switzers"(Switzer is actually what the Swiss were called in English until the 19th century).
During the Late Middle Ages, mercenary forces grew in importance in Europe, as veterans from the Hundred Years War and other conflicts came to see soldiering as a profession rather than a temporary activity, and commanders sought long-term professionals rather than temporary feudal levies to fight their wars. Swiss mercenaries (Reisläufer) were valued throughout Late Medieval Europe for the power of their determined mass attack in deep columns with the pike and halberd. Hiring them was made even more attractive because entire ready-made Swiss mercenary contingents could be obtained by simply contracting with their local governments, the various Swiss cantons—the cantons had a form of militia system in which the soldiers were bound to serve and were trained and equipped to do so. Some Swiss also hired themselves out individually or in small bands.
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Ted Peters
Ted Peters (born 1941) is a Lutheran theologian and Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. In addition to his work as a theologian and educator, he is a prolific author and editor on Christian and Lutheran theology in the modern world. He is also the editor of Dialog, a quarterly scholarly magazine of modern and postmodern theology, and co-editor of Theology and Science. He received a B.A. from Michigan State University, a M.Div. from Trinity Lutheran Seminary and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
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Theodor Mommsen
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist, and writer generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century. His work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, and was also a prominent German politician, as a member of the Prussian and German parliaments. His works on Roman law and on the law of obligations had a significant impact on the German civil code (BGB).
Mommsen was born in Garding in Schleswig in 1817, and grew up in Bad Oldesloe, where his father was a Lutheran minister. He studied mostly at home, though he attended the gymnasium Christianeum in Altona for four years. He studied Greek and Latin and received his diploma in 1837. As he could not afford to study at Göttingen, he enrolled at the University of Kiel in Holstein.
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Theodoric the Great
Theoderic the Great (Gothic: Þiudareiks; Latin: Flāvius Theodericus; Greek: Θευδέριχος, Theuderikhos; Old English: Þēodrīc; Old Norse: Þjōðrēkr, Þīðrēkr; 454 – August 30, 526) was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), ruler of Italy (493–526), regent of the Visigoths (511–526), and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire. His Gothic name Þiudareiks translates into "people-king" or "ruler of the people".
A son of King Theodemir, an Amali nobleman, Theoderic was born in Pannonia, after his people had defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao. Growing up as a hostage in Constantinople, Theoderic received a privileged education, and succeeded his father as leader of the Pannonian Ostrogoths in 471 AD. Settling his people in lower Moesia, Theoderic came in conflict with Thracian Ostrogoths led by Theoderic Strabo, whom he eventually supplanted, uniting the peoples in 484.
Subsequently, Byzantine Emperor Zeno gave him the title of Patrician and the office of Magister militum (master of the soldiers), and even appointed him as Roman Consul. Trying to achieve further aims, Theoderic frequently ravaged the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire, eventually threatening Constantinople itself. In 488, Emperor Zeno ordered Theoderic to overthrow the German usurper Odoacer, who had established himself as King of Italy. After a victorious three-year long war, Theoderic killed Odoacer with his own hands, settled his 100,000 to 200,000 people in Italy, and founded a Kingdom based in Ravenna. Although promoting separation between the Arian Ostrogoths and the Roman population, Theoderic stressed the importance of racial harmony. Seeking to restore the glory of Ancient Rome, he ruled Italy in its most peaceful and prosperous period since Valentinian, until his death in 526. Memories of his reign made him a hero of Germanic legend as Dietrich von Bern.
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Theophanu
Theophanu (960 – June 15, 991) (Greek: Θεοφανώ Σκλήραινα, Theophano Skleraina), also spelled Theophania, Theophana or Theophano, was born in Constantinople, and was the wife of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor.
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor had requested a Byzantine princess for his son, Otto, to seal a treaty between the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The unwise reference by the pope to the Nikephoros II Phokas, the ruler in Constantinople, as "Greek" in a letter[citation needed] while Otto's ambassador, Liudprand of Cremona, was in the Byzantine court, had destroyed the first round of negotiations[citation needed]. With the ascension of a new emperor who had not been personally referred to other than as Roman Emperor, the treaty negotiations were able to resume. Theophanu duly arrived in grand style in 972, with a magnificent escort and bearing great treasure. However, according to the chronicler Thietmar, she was not the virgo desiderata, the anticipated imperial princess. Theophanu is identified in the marriage contract as the neptis (niece or granddaughter) of Emperor John I Tzimiskes. Theophanu was nevertheless of distinguished noble heritage: recent research has established her as the daughter of Sophia Phokaina, Tzimiskes' cousin and niece of Nikephoros II, and of Tzimiskes' brother-in-law (from his first marriage) Constantine Skleros.
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Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. ( /əˈkwaɪnəs/ ə-KWY-nəs; 1225 – 7 March 1274), also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus ([the] Angelic Doctor), Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis. "Aquinas" is not a surname, but is a Latin demonym for a resident of Aquino, his place of birth. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of Thomism. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory.
Thomas is held in the Catholic Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood. The works for which he is best-known are the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. As one of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. Pope Benedict XV declared: "This (Dominican) Order ... acquired new luster when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master and patron of Catholic schools."
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Thomas à Kempis
Thomas à Kempis (Thomas van Kempen or Thomas Hemerken or Haemerken, litt. "small hammer"); (c. 1380 – † Zwolle, 25 July 1471) was a late Medieval Catholic monk and the probable author of The Imitation of Christ, which is one of the best known Christian books on devotion. His name means, "Thomas of Kempen", his home town and in German he is known as Thomas von Kempen. He also is known by various spellings of his family name: Thomas Haemerkken; Thomas Hammerlein; Thomas Hemerken, and Thomas Hämerken.
He was born at the Lower Rhine region in Kempen, Germany, County of Cleves ca.1380. His paternal name was Hemerken, Kleverlandish for little hammer. His father John was a blacksmith and his mother, Gertrude was a school-mistress.
In 1392 he followed his brother, Jan, to Deventer, Netherlands in order to attend the city school. While attending school in Deventer, Thomas encountered the Brethren of the Common Life, followers of Gerard Groote's Modern Devotion. He attended school in Deventer from 1392 to 1399.
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Treaty of Verdun
The Treaty of Verdun (Verdun-sur-Meuse, August 843) was a treaty between the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne, which divided the Carolingian Empire into three kingdoms. It ended the three year long Carolingian Civil War.
When Louis the Pious died in 840, his eldest son, Lothair I, claimed overlordship over his brothers' kingdoms and supported the claim of his nephew Pepin II as king of Aquitaine, a large province in western France. After his brother Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald defeated his forces at the Battle of Fontenay (841) and sealed their alliance with the Oaths of Strasbourg (842), Lothair became willing to negotiate instead of continuing the warfare.
Each of the three brothers was already established in one kingdom: Lothair in Italy, Louis the German in Bavaria, and Charles the Bald in Aquitaine. In the settlement, Lothair (who had been named co-emperor in 817) retained his title as emperor and:
After the death of Lothair in 855, Upper and Lower Burgundy (Arles and Provence) passed to his third son Charles of Provence, and the remaining territory north of the Alps to his second son Lothair II, after whom the hitherto nameless territory was called Lotharingia, which name eventually evolved into the modern Lorraine. Lothair's eldest son, Louis II inherited Italy and his father's claim to the Imperial title.
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Valens
Valens ([pronunciation?]; Latin: Flavius Julius Valens Augustus; 328 – 9 August 378) was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 364 to 378. He was given the eastern half of the empire by his brother Valentinian I after the latter's accession to the throne. Valens, sometimes known as the Last True Roman, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Adrianople, which marked the beginning of the collapse of the decaying Western Roman Empire.
Valens and his brother Valentinian were both born in Cibalae (in present-day Croatia) into an Illyrian family in 328 and 321 respectively. They had grown up on estates purchased by their father Gratian the Elder in Africa and Britain. While Valentinian had enjoyed a successful military career prior to his appointment as emperor, Valens apparently had not. He had spent much of his youth on the family's estate and only joined the army in the 360s, participating with his brother in the Persian campaign of Emperor Julian.
In February 364, reigning Emperor Jovian, while hastening to Constantinople to secure his claim to the throne, was asphyxiated during a stop at Dadastana, 100 miles east of Ankara. Among Jovian's agents was Valentinian, a tribunus scutariorum. He was proclaimed Augustus on 26 February, 364. Valentinian felt that he needed help to govern the large and troublesome empire, and, on 28 March of the same year, appointed his brother Valens as co-emperor in the palace of Hebdomon. The two Augusti travelled together through Adrianople and Naissus to Sirmium, where they divided their personnel, and Valentinian went on to the West.
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Vandals
The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe who in 429 under king Genseric entered Africa and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics. In 455, they sacked the city of Rome. Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Justinian I managed to reconquer the Africa province for the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
Renaissance and Early Modern writers characterized the Vandals as barbarians, "sacking and looting" Rome. This led to the use of the term "vandalism", to describe any senseless destruction, particularly the "barbarian" defacing of artworks. However, modern historians tend to regard the Vandals during the transitional period (from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages) as perpetuators, not destroyers, of Roman culture.
The name of the Vandals has often been connected to that of Vendel,[citation needed] the name of a province in Uppland, Sweden, which is also eponymous of the Vendel period of Swedish prehistory, corresponding to the late Germanic Iron Age leading up to the Viking Age. The connection would be that Vendel is the original homeland of the Vandals prior to the Migration Period, and retains their tribal name as a toponym.
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Visigoths
The Visigoths (Latin: Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, or Wisi) were one of two main branches of the later Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. These tribes were among the Germanic peoples who spread through the late Roman Empire during Late Antiquity or the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged out of the Gothic groups who entered the Roman Empire in and after 376 and defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and famously sacked Rome in 410 AD, eventually settling in Spain and Portugal, where they founded a powerful Kingdom.
After numerous years of migration, which led the Visigoths to compare themselves to the Biblical Hebrew people wandering for 40 years in the Sinai Desert, the Visigoths settled in southern Gaul as foederati of the Romans in 418. For unknown reasons, they soon fell out with their hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. Extending their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Vandals, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I at the Battle of Vouillé in 507. Thereafter the only territory north of the Pyrenees that the Visigoths held was Septimania, such that their kingdom became limited to Hispania. The province came to be dominated by the Visigothic small governing elite at the expense of the Byzantine province of Spania and the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia.
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Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex ( /ˈwɛsɨks/) or Kingdom of the West Saxons (Old English: Westseaxna rīce) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons in South West England, from the 6th century until the emergence of a united English state under the Wessex dynasty in the 10th century. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest of 1016, from 1020 to 1066. After the Norman Conquest there was a dissolution of the English earldoms and Wessex was split among the followers of William the Conqueror.
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William Langland
William Langland (ca. 1332 – ca. 1386) is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.
The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This directly ascribes 'Perys Ploughman' to one 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (most likely shorthand for 'William of Wychwood'). The poem itself also seems to point towards Langland's authorship. At one stage the narrator remarks: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille' (B.XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature (see, for instance, Villon's acrostics in Le Testament). Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s. It is not, however, entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.
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William of Ockham
William of Ockham ( /ˈɒkəm/; also Occam, Hockham, or several other spellings; c. 1288 – c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although he is commonly known for Ockham's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April.
William of Ockham joined the Franciscan order at an early age. It is believed that he studied theology at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1321, but never completed his master's degree (the usual undergraduate degree in those times). Because of this, he acquired the byname Venerabilis Inceptor, or "Worthy Beginner" (an inceptor was a student formally admitted to the ranks of teachers by the university authorities). He was also known as the Doctor Invincibilis or "Unconquerable Teacher."
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William Paton Ker
William Paton Ker (usually referred to as "W. P. Ker"; 30 August 1855 - 17 July 1923) was a Scottish literary scholar and essayist.
He was born in Glasgow in 1855. He studied at Glasgow Academy, the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford.
He was appointed to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford in 1879. He became Professor of English Literature and History at the University College of South Wales, Cardiff in 1883; and moved to University College London as Quain Professor in 1889. He was the Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1920 to his death whilst hill-climbing in Europe. A W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture is held at Glasgow University in his honour.
He is referred to repeatedly in J. R. R. Tolkien's essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. W. H. Auden's discovery of Ker was a turning point:
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Árpád
Árpád (c. 840 – c. 907) was the second Grand Prince of the Hungarians (Magyars) (c. 895 – c. 907 or 907). Under his rule the Hungarian people settled in the Carpathian basin. The dynasty descending from him ruled the Principality of Hungary and later the Kingdom of Hungary until 1301.
Árpád was the son of Grand Prince Álmos (Grand Prince of the Magyars), leader of the Hungarian tribal federation; his mother's name and descent is unknown.[citation needed] According to a Hungarian legends, he was a son of an Émésé and Turul (Sacred Hawk), following the old concept of "son of heaven", "Tanyu" or "Shanyu", same title of his supposed ancestor Attila.
The emergence of the Magyar tribes and their leaders is a specific period in the history of the Hungarian people that refers to the time starting from when the Hungarians were considered a people separate and identifiable from other Ugric speakers (1000-500 BC) up until their occupation and settlement of the Carpathian Basin around 896 AD (Hungarian: Honfoglalás). According to Koestler the Onogurs were led by Prince Árpad, breaking part of the Khazars empire. Árpad led 10 tribes (Onogurs) doing what was known as the second hun invasion in Europe. The ten tribes were: 3 tribes (Ság, Ladány, Berény-Tárkány) settled in Hungarian Transilvania plus 7 tribes (Megyer/Magyar/Madar/Madjar/Muageris, Jenő, Keszi, Nyék, Kér, Tarján e Kürt/Kubat/Kubrat) settled in Panonia
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"You still can have a life...children..and most important, you'll know
it's dead. Let me help you"
"Come on come on come on... COME ON! Come on!"
"No no no no move no! No!"
"He built a funny philosophy out of fast cars, high-fi and naked women"
"Hold it, hold it"
"I feel like putting little holes in the heads of rednecks" (x2)
"Feel it!"
"I feel like putting little holes in the heads of rednecks" (x2)
"Hold it, hold it"
"Cameron!"
"Feel it!"
"Cameron!"
"Hold it.."
"I feel like.."
"He built a funny philosophy out of fast cars, high-fi and naked women"
"Feel it!"
"He built a funny philosophy out of fast cars, high-fi and naked women"
"Hold it.."
"I feel like putting little holes in the heads of rednecks"
"We can't allow it to live; everything we know would be in jeopardy."
"Feel it!" x2
"Cameron!"
NOTE: I could go on, but it would take up lots of room, so I won't.
"He's in." or "Ease him in"
ravish one thing
excuse ? still capsules on
explosively no question why
mass motion nothing divide
scarey thought
misery
fortunately not me
make beyond reality
disconnect disconnected
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Mediaeval Baebes - Veni Veni Bella
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:39
- Updated: 05 Mar 2013
Taken from the forthcoming album 'The Huntress' due for release November 2012. Video filmed at St John At Hackney Church in London.
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Veni_Veni_Bella
Taken from the forthcoming album 'The Huntress' due for release November 2012. Video filmed at St John At Hackney Church in London.
Trio Mediaeval - "Gjendine's Lullaby" from Folk Songs
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:58
- Updated: 05 Mar 2013
The traditional Norwegian melody "Gjendine's Lullaby" from Trio Mediaeval's Grammy nominated recording "Folk Songs."
http://wn.com/Trio_Mediaeval_Gjendine's_Lullaby_from_Folk_Songs
The traditional Norwegian melody "Gjendine's Lullaby" from Trio Mediaeval's Grammy nominated recording "Folk Songs."
- published: 15 Jun 2009
- views: 53455
- author: AllianceArtists
Mediaeval Baebes - Umlahi
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:31
- Updated: 03 Mar 2013
The new lineup! Mediaeval Baebes 2008. Bev Lee Harling Claire Rabbitt Esther Dee Emily Alice Ovenden Katharine Blake Melpomeni Kermanidou http://www.mediaeva...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Umlahi
The new lineup! Mediaeval Baebes 2008. Bev Lee Harling Claire Rabbitt Esther Dee Emily Alice Ovenden Katharine Blake Melpomeni Kermanidou http://www.mediaeva...
- published: 25 Apr 2008
- views: 135851
- author: UnafromMT
Gaudete - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:13
- Updated: 04 Mar 2013
Song: Gaudete Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Song Number: 8 Album: Salva Nos I DO NOT OWN MUSIC, PHOTO OR VIDEO.
http://wn.com/Gaudete_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Gaudete Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Song Number: 8 Album: Salva Nos I DO NOT OWN MUSIC, PHOTO OR VIDEO.
- published: 04 Jun 2010
- views: 45824
- author: gingerdots
Trio Mediaeval - The Little Child
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:45
- Updated: 27 Feb 2013
Det lisle bånet (The little child) - Trio Mediaeval, norwegian singers Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, Torunn Østrem Ossum and Birger Mistereggen on...
http://wn.com/Trio_Mediaeval_The_Little_Child
Det lisle bånet (The little child) - Trio Mediaeval, norwegian singers Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, Torunn Østrem Ossum and Birger Mistereggen on...
- published: 25 Feb 2010
- views: 22894
- author: xAmandine
Mediaeval Baebes - The Snake
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:15
- Updated: 03 Mar 2013
Taken from 'The Rose' album: Era vn ortolano byen simpre e syn mal En el mes de enero con fuerte tenporal Andando por su huerta, vido so vn peral Vna culebra...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_The_Snake
Taken from 'The Rose' album: Era vn ortolano byen simpre e syn mal En el mes de enero con fuerte tenporal Andando por su huerta, vido so vn peral Vna culebra...
- published: 22 Sep 2007
- views: 236450
- author: angelwithreaper
Gaudete Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:05
- Updated: 08 Feb 2013
Watch Later Mediaeval Baebes2002 UndrentideBlow Northern Windby Dgrador 19990 views; 321. Watch Later The Mediæval Bæbes Come My Sweetby throbnwood 1223 views; 951. Watch Later Mediæval Bæbes Blackfriars Theatre Crownsville MD 20081019by daulphy86 30302 views; 225. Watch Later Mediaeval Baebes Adam Lay Ibounden liveby maksphoto78 2538 views; Thumbnail 51 videos Thumbnail ... Mediaeval Baebes Veni Veni Bellaby mediaevalbaebestv 58661 views · 220. Watch Later ...
http://wn.com/Gaudete_Mediaeval_Baebes
Watch Later Mediaeval Baebes2002 UndrentideBlow Northern Windby Dgrador 19990 views; 321. Watch Later The Mediæval Bæbes Come My Sweetby throbnwood 1223 views; 951. Watch Later Mediæval Bæbes Blackfriars Theatre Crownsville MD 20081019by daulphy86 30302 views; 225. Watch Later Mediaeval Baebes Adam Lay Ibounden liveby maksphoto78 2538 views; Thumbnail 51 videos Thumbnail ... Mediaeval Baebes Veni Veni Bellaby mediaevalbaebestv 58661 views · 220. Watch Later ...
- published: 24 Dec 2010
- views: 3750
- author: Wendolyn3
Mediaeval Baebes Temptasyon
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:21
- Updated: 15 Feb 2013
Mediaeval BaebesTill A the Seas Gang DryRobert BurnsA Red Red Roseby ozgurcesett 10781 views · 313. Watch Later Gaudete Mediaeval Baebesby gingerdots 45653 views · 310 ... The Mediaeval Baebes Say it's not soby completelyyoung 7421 views · 1053. Watch Later Mediæval Bæbes Jury Stage Crownsville MD 20071020by ... Wiccan Mysteriesby beggindogs 26029 views · 206. Watch Later Virgin Queen Soundtrack Track 1by sillysam182002uk 277364 views · Mediaeval Baebes TV 5 videos ...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Temptasyon
Mediaeval BaebesTill A the Seas Gang DryRobert BurnsA Red Red Roseby ozgurcesett 10781 views · 313. Watch Later Gaudete Mediaeval Baebesby gingerdots 45653 views · 310 ... The Mediaeval Baebes Say it's not soby completelyyoung 7421 views · 1053. Watch Later Mediæval Bæbes Jury Stage Crownsville MD 20071020by ... Wiccan Mysteriesby beggindogs 26029 views · 206. Watch Later Virgin Queen Soundtrack Track 1by sillysam182002uk 277364 views · Mediaeval Baebes TV 5 videos ...
- published: 11 Jul 2009
- views: 63672
- author: VELOSO FELBER
TRIO MEDIAEVAL INTERVIEW
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:25
- Updated: 09 Aug 2012
Entrevista realizada a Trio Mediaeval con motivo de sus concierto en el Otoño Cultural de CajaCanarias.
http://wn.com/TRIO_MEDIAEVAL_INTERVIEW
Entrevista realizada a Trio Mediaeval con motivo de sus concierto en el Otoño Cultural de CajaCanarias.
- published: 09 Aug 2012
- views: 145
- author: TVCajaCanarias
Mediæval Bæbes - Adam Lay Ibounden (live)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:13
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
The Festival Of Immortality, Vancouver, Canada November 2002 High quality available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlfhkSrz8AI&feature;=channel.
http://wn.com/Mediæval_Bæbes_Adam_Lay_Ibounden_live
The Festival Of Immortality, Vancouver, Canada November 2002 High quality available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlfhkSrz8AI&feature;=channel.
- published: 07 May 2006
- views: 214425
- author: AsioshTheDiabeu
Mediaeval Baebes - In Dulce Jubilo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:20
- Updated: 03 Mar 2013
Here is a lovely festive video by the magnificent Mediaeval Baebes, from the album Mistletoe & Wine. I own nothing, all credit to the Baebes!!
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_In_Dulce_Jubilo
Here is a lovely festive video by the magnificent Mediaeval Baebes, from the album Mistletoe & Wine. I own nothing, all credit to the Baebes!!
- published: 09 Nov 2012
- views: 1694
- author: Iggymcpig
Mediaeval Baebes - Temptasyon (Lyrics)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:16
- Updated: 04 Mar 2013
From Wiki Lyrics: The lyrics to this song are the Lord's Prayer in the Cornish language. The first strophe ("Bith ho ma nath, en tha gan prees go thes re bys...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Temptasyon_Lyrics
From Wiki Lyrics: The lyrics to this song are the Lord's Prayer in the Cornish language. The first strophe ("Bith ho ma nath, en tha gan prees go thes re bys...
- published: 28 Oct 2011
- views: 2167
- author: darkhair15
Dringo Bell - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:36
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
Song: Dringo Bell Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 11 Album: The Rose I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
http://wn.com/Dringo_Bell_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Dringo Bell Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 11 Album: The Rose I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
- published: 10 Dec 2009
- views: 16000
- author: gingerdots
Pearl - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:42
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
Song: Pearl Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 12 Album: Worlds Blysse I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
http://wn.com/Pearl_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Pearl Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 12 Album: Worlds Blysse I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
- published: 10 Dec 2009
- views: 28345
- author: gingerdots
Kilmeny - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:00
- Updated: 03 Feb 2013
Song: Kilmeny Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 8 Album: Undrentide I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
http://wn.com/Kilmeny_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Kilmeny Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 8 Album: Undrentide I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
- published: 30 Dec 2009
- views: 5975
- author: gingerdots
Mediaeval Baebes - I Am Eve
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:33
- Updated: 04 Mar 2013
Mediaeval Baebes - I Am Eve from 'The Rose' Album Mé Éva, ben Ádaim uill Mé ro sáraig Ísu thall Mé ro thall nem ar mo chloinn Cóir is mé do-chóid sa crann Mé...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_I_Am_Eve
Mediaeval Baebes - I Am Eve from 'The Rose' Album Mé Éva, ben Ádaim uill Mé ro sáraig Ísu thall Mé ro thall nem ar mo chloinn Cóir is mé do-chóid sa crann Mé...
- published: 05 Nov 2007
- views: 239182
- author: angelwithreaper
Mediaeval Baebes-Glass Window
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:40
- Updated: 04 Mar 2013
Mistletoe and Wine.
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes-Glass_Window
Mediaeval Baebes The Snake
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:59
- Updated: 22 Feb 2013
Mediaeval Baebes at the Maryland RenFest 18 Oct 2008 Illumination Tour Set 2 Second Set.
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_The_Snake
Mediaeval Baebes at the Maryland RenFest 18 Oct 2008 Illumination Tour Set 2 Second Set.
- published: 19 Oct 2008
- views: 24442
- author: talcert
Mediaeval Baebes - Sunrise
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:25
- Updated: 27 Feb 2013
Mediaeval Baebes - Sunrise :) English lyrics: Sing all ye joyful now sing ye together! The doubt of future foes will come now not ever. The merry are dancing...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Sunrise
Mediaeval Baebes - Sunrise :) English lyrics: Sing all ye joyful now sing ye together! The doubt of future foes will come now not ever. The merry are dancing...
- published: 17 Mar 2010
- views: 17129
- author: Glenna Ward
Salva Nos - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:52
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
Song: Salva Nos Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Song Number: 11 Album: Salva Nos I DO NOT OWN MUSIC, PHOTO OR VIDEO.
http://wn.com/Salva_Nos_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Salva Nos Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Song Number: 11 Album: Salva Nos I DO NOT OWN MUSIC, PHOTO OR VIDEO.
- published: 04 Jun 2010
- views: 5792
- author: gingerdots
The Snake - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:16
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
Song: The Snake Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 4 Album: The Rose I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
http://wn.com/The_Snake_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: The Snake Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 4 Album: The Rose I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
- published: 10 Dec 2009
- views: 5058
- author: gingerdots
Star of the Sea - Mediaeval Baebes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:33
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
Song: Star of the Sea Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 1 Album: Undrentide I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
http://wn.com/Star_of_the_Sea_Mediaeval_Baebes
Song: Star of the Sea Artist: Mediaeval Baebes Number: 1 Album: Undrentide I DO NOT OWN MUSIC OR PHOTOS.
- published: 30 Dec 2009
- views: 18041
- author: gingerdots
Mediaeval Baebes - Come My Sweet
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:20
- Updated: 24 Feb 2013
The new-old lineup. Mediaeval Baebes 2007. Maxine Fone Sofia Escobar Melpomeni Kermanidou Emily Alice Ovenden Bev Lee Harling Katharine Blake Claire Rabbitt ...
http://wn.com/Mediaeval_Baebes_Come_My_Sweet
The new-old lineup. Mediaeval Baebes 2007. Maxine Fone Sofia Escobar Melpomeni Kermanidou Emily Alice Ovenden Bev Lee Harling Katharine Blake Claire Rabbitt ...
- published: 25 May 2007
- views: 150351
- author: UnafromMT
photo: AP / Lai Seng Sin
05 Mar 2013
KUALA LUMPUR. Malaysian security forces attacked a group of armed Filipinos early Tuesday to end the group's three-week occupation of a Borneo village, the prime minister said after the siege turned violent and became Malaysia's biggest security crisis in years ... The Philippine government asked Malaysia on Monday to exercise maximum tolerance to avoid further bloodshed ... 9 ... ....(size: 4.7Kb)
photo: AP / Aaron Favila
05 Mar 2013
Manila. Members of a major Philippine Muslim rebel force who were meant to have disarmed in the 1990s as part of a peace pact are involved in deadly battles in Malaysia, the group’s leader said on Tuesday. Nur Misuari, who founded the Moro National Liberation Front in the late 1960s, confirmed “freedom fighters” from his group were part of the militia sent by a self-proclaimed sultan to claim the Malaysian state of Sabah....(size: 2.6Kb)
photo: AP / Gali Tibbon, Pool
05 Mar 2013
WASHINGTON - US Vice-President Joe Biden insisted on Monday that President Barack Obama was not bluffing about using force to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions if all else fails, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a "credible military threat" against Tehran ... "Words alone will not stop Iran. Sanctions alone will not stop Iran ... Tehran denies it is seeking one ... "We are not looking for war ... Previous Page 1 2 Next Page....(size: 3.5Kb)
photo: US Navy / MCS1 Daniel N. Woods
05 Mar 2013
FOSTER KLUG , The Associated Press. Posted. Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 4.12 AM. SEOUL, South Korea - The Cold War still rages in North Korea, and enemy No. 1 is the United States, which Pyongyang blames for making its much-condemned drive to develop nuclear weapons necessary ... North Korea's latest nuclear test in February , its third , has led even China, its only major ally, to support another round of punishing U.N ... invasion plans. U.S ... Cops ... ....(size: 9.2Kb)
photo: AP / Narciso Contreras
04 Mar 2013
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- More than 40 Syrian soldiers who had sought temporary safety in Iraq from rebel fighters along the border were killed on Monday in an attack by unidentified gunmen as the Iraqi military was transporting the soldiers back to Syria in a bus convoy, the government said ... He said Iraq would deploy more security forces on the border ... "We will not allow any terrorist to enter the Iraqi lands," Mr ... Mr ... Mr ... Mr ... But last week, Mr ... ....(size: 7.0Kb)
The Examiner
05 Mar 2013
Below are key excerpts of important news articles on why medical bills are causing bankruptcy, FBI entrapment of innocents, a holocaust shocker on Nazi internment camps, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails, click here ... The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary” ... ....(size: 34.2Kb)
Stuff
04 Mar 2013
Orvieto doesn't share the gentle beauty of many of Italy's hill towns ... The town has preserved its mediaeval layout, which means you're constantly switchbacking through the narrow streets that run into each other in a labyrinthine fashion ... Ad Feedback ... FAST FACTS. Staying there Locanda Palazzone, 15 minutes from Orvieto, offers loft-style accommodation in a converted mediaeval barn, gourmet dinners and, of course, superb wines ... ....(size: 7.7Kb)
PhysOrg
04 Mar 2013
"The IT industry is without doubt one of the possibilities and one of my dreams ... is to create the same founding conditions for all small IT companies everywhere in Europe," said Merkel ... Also likely to draw attention is a 3D display allowing users to scroll through precious mediaeval books with just a wave of the hand, tomes that are normally banished behind a glass case or touchable only with white gloves ... ....(size: 3.7Kb)
The Independent
03 Mar 2013
While commerce remains at the forefront of the minds of the Paris Fashion Week designers, many of whom answer to luxury conglomerates such as PPR and LVMH, providing a fantasy and a sense of spectacle is king ... a garment he has continually worked into his designs ... With punkish signatures abounding elsewhere, it was characteristic of Westwood's contrary nature to chose to take another direction, with mediaeval Europe her inspiration ... ....(size: 2.5Kb)
Independent online (SA)
01 Mar 2013
Paris - Forensic scientists on Thursday announced they had delved into the embalmed heart of Richard the Lionheart, finding chemical evidence that the remains of England's Crusader king were handled with holy reverence ... Mediaeval embalmers used mercury and tar-like creosote to preserve the heart, then applied frankincense, myrtle, daisy and mint to it so that it would smell sweet, his team found ... - Sapa-AFP ... ....(size: 4.7Kb)
Canberra Times
01 Mar 2013
Way to go ... discounts apply to some Eurostar fares. Birthday bonanza. Rail Europe 4A is having a birthday sale and offering good discounts on various train journeys. Deals range between 10 per cent and 65 per cent off regular fares. For example ... Those fares represent savings of about 20 per cent ... The Central Europe tour takes in Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague with visits to palaces, monasteries and mediaeval architecture ... ....(size: 4.7Kb)
Deccan Chronicle
01 Mar 2013
. Vatican City. Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in over 700 years on Thursday, waving a last goodbye to a tearful crowd of faithful and telling them he would be ‘a simple pilgrim’ on life's last journey ... Church bells tolled to announce the arrival of the soon-to-be former pope in the lakeside mediaeval town of Castel Gandolfo, which has a special bond with the papacy going back to the 16th century ... ....(size: 5.8Kb)
Canberra Times
01 Mar 2013
Kevin Rudd has abandoned a celebrity tour of Sydney's western suburbs to avoid an embarrassing clash with the Prime Minister's election campaign visit there next week ... ''But he has no wish to engage in a popularity contest with Julia Gillard ... talk.'' ... The Morrison plan would see refugees now being held in offshore detention released to roam in parks on the Australian mainland, much as absconding serfs were treated in mediaeval Britain ... ....(size: 6.1Kb)
Canberra Times
28 Feb 2013
Click to play video. Return to video Video settings. Please Log in to update your video settings ... IT IS a tough gig, taking arguably Victoria's daggiest tourist attraction and turning it into a theme park that draws the new wave of fans of all things mediaeval ... Kryal Castle reopens as a mediaeval tourism centre ... Mr Holland, known as Sir Baldwin Silverhand, said 37,000 people attended a mediaeval jousting event in Queensland last year ... ....(size: 3.5Kb)
Reuters
28 Feb 2013
Mediaeval dirt and an infected wound most likely caused his lingering death, aged 41 ... For the French, whom Richard was fighting when he died, his reputation as a ruthless warrior, against Muslims in the Holy Land but also in Europe, may explain the care taken to preserve the king's heart in a costly manner bound up in the mediaeval mind with the embalming of Jesus after the crucifixion ... NO DOUBT....(size: 4.2Kb)
Sydney Morning Herald
28 Feb 2013
One wing of the palace looks out onto the main square of Castel Gandolfo, a mediaeval town listed among Italy's most beautiful, and it is from a balcony there that Benedict ......(size: 0.9Kb)
PhysOrg
28 Feb 2013
Reduced to dust by eight centuries, the heart of the legendary warrior was analysed by modern lab technology ... "We found things that we didn't expect," said Charlier, one of the world's top historical pathologists. Mediaeval embalmers used mercury and tar-like creosote to preserve the heart, then applied frankincense, myrtle, daisy and mint to it so that it would smell sweet, his team found ... So using it is a direct reference to Christ."....(size: 4.3Kb)
noodls
28 Feb 2013
(Source. ROM - Royal Ontario Museum) Embark on a Global Adventure with ROM Experts and Behind-the-Scenes Artifacts. (Toronto, Ontario - February 28, 2013) Your passport to virtually travel the world awaits at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) this March Break ... Explore history at the mediaeval fair, and get in touch with the animal kingdom with the Earth Rangers Bring Back the Wild live animal show. Natural World ... Prehistoric World ... LEGO....(size: 3.9Kb)
For other uses, see Middle Ages (disambiguation).
The Middle Ages (adjectival form: medieval, mediaeval or mediæval) is a period of European history encompassing the 5th to the 15th centuries. It is normally marked from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, accepted as the end of Classical Antiquity, until the beginning of the Renaissance and Age of Discovery, which ushered in the Modern Era. It is thus the middle period of the traditional division of Western history into Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The Middle Ages is often split into two or three sub-divisions.
In the Early Middle Ages, depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasion, all of which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued apace. The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the eastern empire, became an Islamic Empire after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break was not as extreme as once put forth by historians, with most of the new kingdoms incorporating as many of the existing Roman institutions as they could. Christianity expanded in western Europe and monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of western Europe; it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders – the Vikings, Magyars, and Saracens.
During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as new technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. Manorialism – the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labor service to nobles – and feudalism – a political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors – were two of the ways of organizing medieval society that developed during the High Middle Ages. Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire. The Crusades, which were first preached in 1095, were an attempt by western Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from the Muslims, and succeeded long enough to establish some Christian states in the Near East. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the age.
The Late Middle Ages were marked by a number of difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague and war decimated the population of western Europe; the Black Death alone killed approximately a third of the population between 1347 and 1350. Controversy, heresy, and schism within the Church was echoed by warfare between states as well as civil war and peasant revolts within kingdoms. A number of cultural and technological developments began to transform European society, bringing an end to the Middle Ages and signaling the start of the Early Modern period.
Contents |
Etymology and periodization[link]
See also: Periodization
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analyzing European history: classical civilization, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period.[2] Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People (1442).[3] The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604,[4] and media scecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period in 1683. English is the only major language that retains the plural form.[5]
The most commonly given start date for the Middle Ages is 476,[6] first used by Bruni.[7][a] For Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages,[9] but there is no universally agreed upon end date;[10] depending on the context, events such as Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used.[11] In contrast, English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period.[12] For Spain, dates commonly used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492.[13]
Historians in the Romance languages tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and later "Low" period. English-speaking historians, following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals: "Early", "High" and "Late".[2] Belgian historian Henri Pirenne and Dutch historian Johan Huizinga popularized the following subdivisions in the early 20th century: the Early Middle Ages from 476 to 1000, the High Middle Ages from 1000 to 1300, and the Late Middle Ages from 1300 to 1453. In the 19th century, the entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the "Dark Ages",[14][b] but with the creation of these subdivisions use of this term was restricted to the Early Middle Ages, at least among historians.[14]
Timeline[link]
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Colors =
id:time value:rgb(0.7,0.7,1) # id:period value:rgb(1,0.7,0.5) # id:span value:rgb(0.9,0.8,0.5) # id:age value:rgb(0.95,0.85,0.5) # id:era value:rgb(1,0.85,0.5) # id:eon value:rgb(1,0.85,0.7) # id:filler value:gray(0.8) # background bar id:black value:black
Period = from:400 till:1500 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:100 start:400 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:10 start:400
PlotData =
align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line, black) width:15 shift:(0,-3)
bar:Europe color:era from: 476 till: 1000 text:Early Middle Ages from: 1000 till: 1300 text:High Middle Ages from: 1300 till: 1453 text:Late Middle Ages from: 1453 till: 1500 text:Early modern bar: color:age from: 400 till: 632 text:Late Antiquity from: 1400 till: 1500 text:Renaissance bar:Eurasia color:age from: 1237 till: 1240 text:Mongols from: 1240 till: 1500 text:Golden Horde
</timeline>
Later Roman Empire[link]
The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD, with the following two centuries witnessing the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories.[15] Economic issues, including inflation, and external pressures on the frontiers combined to make the 3rd century politically unstable, with a number of emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new usurpers.[16] Military expenses increased steadily during the 3rd century, mainly in response to the need to defend against the renewed war with Sassanid Persia, which began in the middle of the 3rd century.[17] The army doubled in size and various reforms in composition resulted in a new emphasis on cavalry and smaller units instead of the legion as the main tactical unit.[18] The need for revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial landowning class, and decreasing numbers of them willing to shoulder the burdens of holding office in their native towns.[17] More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army, which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax-collectors in the empire than tax-payers.[18]
The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) split the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286; however, the empire was not considered divided by its inhabitants or rulers, as legal and administrative promulgations in one division were considered valid in the other.[19][c] In 330, after a period of civil war, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) refounded the city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital, Constantinople.[20] Diocletian's reforms created a strong governmental bureaucracy, reformed taxation, and strengthened the army, which bought the empire time but did not completely resolve the problems it was facing: excessive taxation, a declining birthrate, and pressures on its frontiers amongst others.[21] Civil war between rival emperors became common in the middle of the 4th century, diverting men from the empire's frontier forces and allowing the barbarians to encroach.[22] But for much of the 4th century, Roman society had reached a new, stable form that differed from the earlier classical period in a number of significant ways - a widening gulf between the rich and poor as well as a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns.[23] Another change was the conversion of the empire to Christianity, which occurred in a gradual process that lasted from the 2nd through the 5th centuries.[24][25]
In 376, the Ostrogoths, fleeing from the Huns, received permission from the Roman emperor Valens (r. 364–378) to settle in the Roman province of Thracia. The settlement did not go smoothly, and when Roman officials mishandled the situation, the Ostrogoths began to raid and plunder Thracia. Valens, attempting to put down the disorder, was killed in battle with the Ostrogoths at the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378.[26] Besides the barbarian threat from the north, internal divisions within the empire, especially within the Christian Church, caused troubles.[27] In 400, the Visigoths invaded the Western Roman Empire and, although briefly forced back from Italy, in 410 they were able to sack the city of Rome.[28] While the Visigoths were invading, in 406 the Alans, Vandals, and Suevi crossed into Gaul; over the next three years they spread across Gaul and in 409 crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into modern-day Spain.[29] Other groups of barbarians took part in the movements of peoples in this time period. The Franks, Alemanni, and the Burgundians eventually all ended up in northern Gaul while the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settled in Britain.[30] In the 430s the Huns began invading the empire; their king Attila led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447, into Gaul in 451, and into Italy in 452.[31] With Attila's death in 453, the Hunnic confederation he led fell apart.[32] All of these invasions by the varied tribes totally rearranged the political and demographic face of what had been the Western Roman Empire.[30]
By the end of the 5th century the western section of the empire was divided into smaller political units, ruled by the tribes that had invaded in the early part of the century.[33] The last emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476, which has led that year to be traditionally cited as the end of the Western Roman Empire.[8][d] The Eastern Roman Empire, conventionally referred to as the "Byzantine Empire" after the fall of its western counterpart, had little ability to assert control over the lost western territories. Even though Byzantine emperors maintained a claim over the territory, and no barbarian king in the west dared to elevate himself to the position of Emperor of the West, Byzantine control of most of the West could not be sustained; the reconquest of the Italian peninsula and Mediterranean periphery by Justinian was the sole, and temporary, exception.[34]
Early Middle Ages[link]
Main article: Early Middle Ages
New societies[link]
Main article: Migration Period
Although the political structure in western Europe had changed, the divide is not as extensive as some historians have claimed. Although usually described as "invasions", they were not always just military expeditions but were mostly caused by the movement of peoples immigrating into the Empire. Such movements were aided by the refusal of the western Roman elites to either support the army or pay the taxes that would have allowed the military to suppress the migration.[35] The emperors of the 5th century were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Ricimer (d. 472), Gundobad (d. 516), or Aspar (d. 471), and when the western emperors ceased, many of the kings who replaced them were from the same background as those military strongmen. Intermarriage between the new kings and the Roman elites was common.[36] This led to a fusion of the Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes, including the popular assemblies which allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters.[37] Material artifacts left by the Romans and the invaders are often similar, with tribal items often being obviously modeled on Roman objects.[38] Similarly, much of the intellectual culture of the new kingdoms was directly based on Roman intellectual traditions.[39] An important difference was the gradual loss of tax revenue by the new polities. Many of the new political entities no longer provided their armies with tax revenues, instead allocating land or rents. This meant there was less need for large tax revenues and so the taxation systems decayed.[40] Warfare was common between and within the kingdoms. Slavery declined as the supply declined, and society became more rural.[41]
Between the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and powerful individuals filled the political void left by Roman centralized government.[39] The Ostrogoths settled in Italy in the late 5th century under Theodoric (d. 526) and set up a kingdom marked by its cooperation between the Italians and the Ostrogoths, at least until the last years of Theodoric's reign.[42] The Burgundians settled in Gaul, and after an earlier kingdom was destroyed by the Huns in 436, formed a new kingdom in the 440s between today's Geneva and Lyon. This grew to be a powerful kingdom in the late 5th and early 6th centuries.[43] In northern Gaul, the Franks and Britons set up small kingdoms. The Frankish kingdom was centered in northeastern Gaul and the first king of whom much is known is Childeric, who died in 481.[e] Under Childeric's son Clovis (r. 509–511), the Frankish kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity. The Britons, related to the natives of Britannia, settled in what is now Brittany, which took its name from their settlement.[45] Other kingdoms were established by the Visigoths in Spain, the Suevi in northwestern Spain, and the Vandals in North Africa.[43] In the 6th century, the Lombards settled in northern Italy, replacing the Ostrogothic kingdom with a grouping of duchies that occasionally selected a king to rule over all of them. By the late 6th century this arrangement had been replaced by a permanent monarchy.[46]
With the invasions came new ethnic groups into parts of Europe, but the settlement was uneven, with some regions such as Spain having a larger settlement of new peoples than other places. Gaul's settlement was uneven, with the barbarians settling much thicker in the northeast than in the southwest. Slavonic peoples settled in central and eastern Europe and into the Balkan Peninsula. The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in languages. The Latin of the Western Roman Empire was gradually replaced by languages based on Latin but distinct. These changes from Latin to the new languages like French or Portuguese or Romanian took many centuries, however, and went through a number of stages. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but the migrations of the Slavs added Slavonic languages to the mix.[47]
Byzantine survival[link]
Main articles: Byzantium under the Justinian dynasty and Byzantium under the Heraclians
As western Europe witnessed the formation of new kingdoms, the eastern section of the Roman Empire remained intact and even enjoyed an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century. There were fewer invasions of the eastern section of the Empire, with the majority occurring in the Balkans. Peace with Persia, the traditional enemy of Rome, lasted throughout most of the 5th century. The Eastern Empire was marked by closer relations between the political state and Christian church, with doctrinal matters assuming an importance in eastern politics that they did not have in western Europe. Legal developments included the codification of Roman law known as the Theodosian Code.[48] Under the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), a further compilation took place, known as the Corpus Juris Civilis.[49] Justinian also oversaw the construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths. The conquest of Italy was not completed, as a deadly outbreak of plague in 542 led to the rest of Justinian's reign concentrating on defensive measures rather than further conquests.[50]
In the eastern empire the slow infiltration of the Balkans by the Slavs added a further complication. Although it began as a small invasion, by the late 540s Slavic tribes were in Thrace and Illyrium, and had defeated an imperial army near Adrianople in 551. In the 560s the Avars began to expand from their base on the north bank of the Danube River; by the end of the 6th century they were the dominant power in Central Europe and routinely able to force the eastern emperors to give tribute. They remained a strong power until 796.[51] Further complications were the involvement of the emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) in Persian politics when he intervened in a succession dispute. This led to a period of peace but when Maurice was overthrown in turn, the Persians invaded and during the reign of the emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) managed to control large chunks of the Empire, including Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Heraclius was eventually able to secure a peace treaty with the Persians in 628 that restored the earlier boundaries of the Empire.[52]
Western society[link]
Society in Western Europe changed with the new rulers. Some of the Roman elite families died out while others became more involved with Church than secular affairs. The older values of Latin classics scholarship and education mostly disappeared, and while literacy remained an important skill, it became a practical skill. In the 4th century, Jerome dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more time reading Cicero than the Bible. By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours had a similar dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand.[53] By the late 6th century, the principal means of instruction in the Church ceased to be the book and was replaced with music and art.[54] With laymen, a similar change took place, with the aristocratic culture focusing on great feasts held in halls. Clothing for the elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold. Lords and kings supported entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces of the time. Family ties between the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour. These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society, examples of which included those related by Gregory of Tours that took place in Merovingian Gaul. Most feuds, however, seem to have ended quickly with the payment of some sort of compensation usually ending the feud.[55] Women took part in aristocratic society mainly in terms of their functions as wives or mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society, the lack of many child rulers meant less role for women as queen mothers but this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were considered as always under the protection and control of some male relative.[56]
Peasant society is much less documented than the nobility. Most of the surviving information available to historians comes from archaeology; few detailed written records documenting peasant life remain from before the 9th century. Most the descriptions of the lower classes come from either law codes or writers from the upper classes.[57] Landholding patterns in the West were not uniform, with some areas having greatly fragmented landholding patterns and other areas with a pattern of large, contiguous blocks of land being the norm. These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant societies with some being dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having a great deal of autonomy.[58] Land settlement also varied greatly. Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as many as 700 inhabitants. Others lived in small groups of a few families and still others lived on isolated farms spread over the countryside. There were also areas where the pattern was a mix of two or more of those systems.[59] Unlike in the late Roman period, there was no sharp break between the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat, however, and it was possible for a free peasant's family to rise into the aristocracy over a number of generations through military service to a powerful lord.[60]
Rise of Islam[link]
Main article: Muslim conquests
Religious beliefs in the eastern empire and Persia were in flux during the late 6th and early 7th centuries. Judaism was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted to Judaism. Christianity had active missions competing with the Persian's Zoroastrianism in seeking converts, especially amongst residents of the Arabian peninsula. All strands came together with emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad.[61] After Muhammad's death in 632, Islamic forces went on to conquer much of the eastern Empire as well as Persia, starting with Syria in 634–635 and later as far as Egypt in 640–641, Persia between 637 and 642, North Africa in the later 7th century and the Iberian Peninsula in 711.[62] By the middle of the 8th century, new trading patterns were emerging in the Mediterranean, with trade between the Franks and the Arabs replacing the old Roman patterns of trade. Franks traded timber, furs, swords and slaves to the Arabs in return for silks and other fabrics, spices, and precious metals.[63]
Trade and economy[link]
The barbarian invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries caused disruption in trade networks around the Mediterranean. African trade goods disappear from the archeological record slowly, first disappearing from the interior of Europe and by the 7th century they are usually only found in a few cities such as Rome or Naples. By the end of the 7th century, under the impact of the Muslim conquests, African products are no longer found in Western Europe, and have been mostly replaced by local products. The replacement of trade goods with local products was a trend throughout the old Roman lands that happened in the Early Middle Ages. This was especially marked in the lands that did not lie on the Mediterranean, such as northern Gaul or Britain. What non-local goods that appear in the archeological record are usually luxury goods. In the northern parts of Europe, not only were the trade networks local, but those goods that were produced were simple, with little use of pottery or other complex products. Around the Mediterranean Sea, however, pottery remained prevalent and appears to have been traded over medium range networks and not just produced locally.[64]
Church and monasticism[link]
Main article: History of the East–West Schism
Christianity was a major unifying factor between Eastern and western Europe before the Arab conquests, but the conquest of North Africa sundered maritime connections between the areas. Increasingly the Byzantine Church, which became the Orthodox Church, differed in language, practices, and liturgy from the western Church, which became the Catholic Church. The eastern church used Greek instead of the western Latin. Theological and political differences emerged, and by the early and middle 8th century issues such as iconoclasm, clerical marriage, and state control of the church had widened enough that the cultural and religious differences were greater than the similarities.[65] The formal break came in 1054, when the papacy and the patriarchy of Constantinople clashed over papal supremacy and mutually excommunicated each other, which led to the division of Christianity into two churches – the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.[66]
The ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Empire survived the barbarian invasions in the west mostly intact, but the papacy was little regarded, with few of the western bishops looking to the bishop of Rome for religious or political leadership. Many of the popes prior to 750 were in any case more concerned with Byzantine affairs and eastern theological concerns. The register, or archived copies of the letters, of Pope Gregory the Great, (pope 590–604) survives, and of those more than 850 letters, the vast majority were concerned with affairs in Italy or Constantinople. The only part of western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain, where Gregory had sent the Gregorian mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.[67] Other missionary efforts were led by the Irish, who between the 5th and the 7th centuries were the most active missionaries in western Europe, with missionaries going first to England and Scotland and then later onto the continent. Irish missionaries, under such monks as Columba (d. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615), not only founded monasteries but also taught in Latin and Greek and were active authors of secular and religious works.[68]
The Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism in the West. The shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. The style of monasticism that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism, was pioneered by Pachomius (d. 348) in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Anthony.[69] Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) wrote the Benedictine Rule for Western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot.[70] Monks and monasteries had a deep effect on the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered regions, bases for mission, and proselytization.[71] In addition, they were the main and sometimes only outposts of education and literacy in a region. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the Roman classics were copied in monasteries in the early Middle Ages.[72] Monks were also the authors of new works, including history, theology, and other subjects, which were written by authors such as Bede (d. 735), a native of northern England who wrote in the late 7th and early 8th century.[73]
Carolingian Europe[link]
Main articles: Frankish Empire and Carolingian Empire
The Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul developed into kingdoms called Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy during the 6th and 7th centuries, under the Merovingians who were descended from Clovis. The 7th century was a tumultuous period of civil wars between Austrasia and Neustria.[74] Such warfare was exploited by Pippin of Landen, the Mayor of the Palace who became the power behind the throne. Later members of his family line inherited the office, acting as advisors and regents. One of his descendents, Charles Martel (d. 741), won the Battle of Poitiers in 732, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees.[75] Muslim armies had earlier conquered the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, after defeating the last Visigothic king Ruderic (d. 711 or 712) at the Battle of Guadalete in 711, finishing the conquest by 719.[76] Across the English Channel in the British Isles, the island of Britain was divided into small states dominated by the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, and East Anglia, which were descended from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the original native British and Picts.[77] Ireland was divided into even smaller political units, usually known as tribal kingdoms, which were under the control of kings. There were perhaps as many as 150 local kings in Ireland, of varying importance.[78]
The Carolingian dynasty, as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III (r. 752–768). A contemporary chronicle claims that Pippin sought, and gained, authority for this coup from Pope Stephen II (pope 752–757). Pippin's takeover was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as inept or cruel rulers and exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel and circulated stories of the family's great piety. At the time of his death in 783, Pippin left his kingdom in the hands of his two sons, Charles (r. 768–814) and Carloman (r. 768–771). When Carloman died of natural causes, Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's minor son and installed himself as the king of the united Austrasia and Neustria. Charles, known to his contemporaries as Charles the Great or Charlemagne, embarked in 774 upon a program of systematic expansion that would unify a large portion of Europe, eventually controlling modern-day France, northern Italy, and Saxony. In the wars that lasted just beyond 800, he rewarded loyal allies with war booty and command over parcels of land.[80]
The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800 is regarded as a turning-point in medieval history, marking a return of the western Roman Empire, since the new emperor ruled over much of the area previously controlled by the western emperors.[81] It also marks a change in Charlemagne's relationship with the Byzantine Empire, as the assumption of the imperial title by the Carolingians asserted their equivalency to the eastern empire.[82] However, there were a number of differences between the newly established Carolingian Empire and both the older western Roman Empire and the concurrent Byzantine Empire. The Frankish lands were rural in character, with few cities, and what cities existed were very small. Farming techniques were not advanced, and most of the people were peasants settled on small farms. Little trade existed and much of that was with the northern realms of the British Isles and Scandinavia, in contrast to the older Roman Empire which had its trading networks centered on the Mediterranean.[81] The administration of the empire was from an itinerant court that traveled with the emperor as well as through approximately 300 imperial officials called counts, who administered the counties which the empire had been divided into. Clergy and local bishops were used as imperial officials also, as well as the imperial officials called missi dominici, who served as roving inspectors and troubleshooters.[83]
Carolingian Renaissance[link]
Main articles: Carolingian Renaissance and Carolingian art
Charlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of the cultural revival sometimes referred to as the "Carolingian Renaissance". The period saw an increase in literacy, developments in the arts, architecture and jurisprudence, as well as liturgical and scriptural studies. The English monk Alcuin (d. 804) was invited to Aachen, and brought the classical Latin education available in the monasteries of Northumbria. Charlemagne's chancery made use of a new script today known as Carolingian minuscule,[f] allowing a common writing style that advanced communication across much of Europe. Charlemagne sponsored changes in church liturgy, imposing the Roman form of church service on his domains, as well as the Gregorian chant form of liturgical music in the churches. An important activity for scholars during this period was the copying, correcting, and dissemination of basic works on religious and secular topics, with the aim of encourage learning. New works on religious topics and schoolbooks were also produced.[85]
Breakup of the Carolingian Empire[link]
Main articles: Holy Roman Empire and Viking Age
Territorial divisions of the Carolingian Empire in 843 (Treaty of Verdun), 855, and 870 (Treaty of Meersen).
While Charlemagne planned to continue the Frankish tradition of dividing his kingdom between all his heirs, this ended when only one son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), was still alive by 813. That year, Charlemagne crowned Louis as his successor, and died in 814. Louis's long reign of 26 years was marked by numerous divisions of the empire among his sons and, after 829, numerous civil wars between various alliances of father and sons against other sons over the control of various parts of the empire. Eventually, Louis recognized his eldest son Lothair I (d. 855) as emperor and gave him Italy. Louis divided the rest of the empire between Lothair and Charles the Bald (d. 877), his youngest son. Lothair took East Francia, comprising both banks of the Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia with the empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps. Louis the German (d. 876), the middle child, who had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder brother. The division was not undisputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine (d. after 864), the emperor's grandson, rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine, while Louis the German tried to annex all of East Francia. Louis died in 840, with the empire still in chaos.[86]
A three-year civil war followed his death. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom between the Rhine and Rhone rivers was created for Lothair to go with his lands in Italy, and his imperial title was recognized. Louis the German was in control of Bavaria and the eastern lands in modern-day Germany. Charles the Bald received the western Frankish lands, comprising most of modern-day France.[86] Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their descendants, eventually causing all internal cohesion to be lost.[87]
The breakup of the Carolingian Empire was accompanied by the invasions, migrations, and raids of external foes. The Atlantic and northern shores were harassed by the Vikings, who also raided the British Isles and settled in both Britain and Ireland as well as the distant island of Iceland. A further settlement of Vikings was made in France in 911 under the chieftan Rollo (d. around 931), who received permission from the Frankish king Charles the Simple (r. 898–922) to settle in what became Normandy.[88] The eastern parts of the Frankish kingdoms, especially Germany and Italy, were under constant Magyar assault until their great defeat at the Battle of the Lechfeld in 955.[89] The breakup of the Abbasid dynasty meant that the Islamic world fragmented into a number of smaller political states, some of which began expanding into Italy and Sicily, as well as over the Pyrenees into the southern parts of the Frankish kingdoms.[90]
New kingdoms and a revived Byzantium[link]
Main articles: Byzantium under the Macedonians, Kingdom of Germany , and Christianization of Scandinavia
Efforts by local kings to fight back the invaders led to the formation of new political entities. In Britain, King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) in the late 9th century came to a settlement with the Viking invaders, with Danish settlements in Northumbria, Mercia, and parts of East Anglia.[91] By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred's successors had conquered Northumbria, and restored English control over most of the southern part of the island of Great Britain.[92] In northern Britain, Kenneth mac Alpin (d. c. 860) united the Picts and the Scots into one kingdom.[93] In the early 10th century, the Ottonian dynasty had established itself in Germany, and the Ottonians were engaged in driving back the Magyar invaders. Their efforts culminated in the coronation in 962 of Otto I (r. 936–973) as emperor.[94] In 972, Otto secured the recognition of his title by the Byzantine Empire, and sealed the recognition with the marriage of his son Otto II to Theophanu, a daughter of the previous Byzantine Emperor Romanos II (r. 959–963).[95] Italy was drawn into the Ottonian sphere by the late 10th century, after a period of instability.[96] The western Frankish kingdom was more fragmented, and although a nominal king remained theoretically in charge, much of the political power had devolved to the local lords.[97]
Missionary efforts to Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries helped strengthen the growth of kingdoms there. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian kingdoms gained power and territory in the course of the 9th and 10th centuries, and some of the kings converted to Christianity, although the process was not complete by 1000. Scandinavians also expanded and colonized throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement took place in what became Russia as well as in Iceland. Swedish traders and raiders ranged down the rivers of the Russian steppe, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and in 907.[98] Christian Spain, initially driven into a small section of the peninsula in the north, expanded slowly south during the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the kingdoms of Asturias and León in the process.[99]
In eastern Europe, Byzantium had revived its fortunes under the Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his successors Leo VI (r. 886–912) and Constantine VII (r. 913–959), members of the Macedonian dynasty. Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The military was reorganized which allowed the emperors John I (r. 969–976) and Basil II (r. 976–1025) to expand the frontiers of the empire on all fronts. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance. Writers such as John Geometres composed new hymns, poems, and other works.[100] Missionary efforts by both eastern and western clergy resulted in the conversion of the Moravians, Bulgars, Bohemians, Poles, Magyars, and the Slavic inhabitants of the Kievan Rus'. These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples – the states of Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'.[101]
Art and architecture[link]
Main articles: Medieval art and Medieval architecture
Further information: Migration Period art and Pre-Romanesque art and architecture
Few truly large stone buildings were attempted between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century and the 8th century, but many smaller stone buildings were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture.[103] One feature of the renewed basilica was the use of a transept,[104] or the "arms" of a cross-shaped building that are perpendicular to the long nave.[105] Other new features of religious architecture include the crossing tower[106] and a monumental entrance to the church, usually at the west end of the building.[107]
Carolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court, and the monasteries and churches they supported. It was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial Roman and Byzantine art, but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles. Insular art integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with Mediterranean forms such as the book and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the medieval period. Surviving religious works from the Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated manuscripts and carved ivories, originally made for metalwork that has been destroyed for its materials.[108][109] Objects in precious metals were the most prestigious form of art, but nearly all are lost, except for a few crosses like the Cross of Lothair, several reliquaries, and finds such as the Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo and the hoards of Gourdon from Merovingian France, Guarrazar from Visigothic Spain and Nagyszentmiklós near Byzantine territory. There are numbers of survivals from the large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were a key piece of personal adornment for elites, including the Irish Tara Brooch.[110] Highly decorated books were mostly Gospel books and these have survived in larger numbers, including the Insular Book of Kells and Book of Lindisfarne, and the imperial Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which is one of the few to retain its "treasure binding" of gold encrusted with jewels.[111] Charlemagne's court seems to have been responsible for the crucial acceptance of figurative monumental sculpture in Christian art,[112] and by the end of the period near life-size figures such as the Gero Cross were common in important churches.[113]
High Middle Ages[link]
Main article: High Middle Ages
Society and economic life[link]
The High Middle Ages saw an expansion of population. Rough estimates of the increase from the year 1000 until 1347 indicate that the population of Europe grew from 35 to 80 million. The exact cause or causes of the growth remain unclear; improved agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a more clement climate and the lack of invasion have all been put forward.[114][115] As much as 90 percent of the European population remained rural peasants. Many of them, however, were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages.[115] These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and owed them rents and other services, in a system known as manorialism. There remained, however, a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond.[116]
Other sections of society included the nobility, clergy and townsmen. Nobles, both the titled and simple knights, were the exploiters of the manors and the peasants, although they did not own lands outright, rather they were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord through the customs of feudalism. During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs, came to be considered hereditary and in most areas they were no longer divisible between all the heirs as had been the case in the early medieval period. Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son.[117] The dominance of the nobility was built upon its control of the land, its military service as heavy cavalry, control of castles, and the various immunities from taxes or other impositions that the nobles enjoyed. Heavy cavalry had been introduced into Europe from the Persian cataphract of the 5th and 6th centuries, but the addition of the stirrup in the 7th allowed the full force of the horse and rider to be used in combat. Stone castles began to be constructed in the 9th and 10th centuries in response to the disorders of the time, and allowed inhabitants to take refuge from invaders. Control of castles allowed the nobles to defy kings or other overlords.[118]
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The clergy was divided into two types – the secular clergy who lived in the world, and the regular clergy, or those who lived under a religious rule and were usually monks.[119] Most of the regular clergy were drawn from the ranks of the nobility, the same social class that served as the recruiting ground for the upper levels of the secular clergy. The local parish priests were often drawn from the peasant class.[120] Townsmen were in a somewhat unusual position, as they did not fit into the traditional three-fold division of society into nobles, clergy, and peasants. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the ranks of the townsmen expanded greatly as existing towns grew and new population centres were founded.[121]
In Central and Northern Italy and in Flanders, the rise of towns that were, to a degree, self-governing, stimulated economic growth and created an environment for new types of trade associations. Commercial cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic League, and Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa expanded their trade throughout the Mediterranean.[122] Besides new trading opportunities, the agricultural and technological improvements enabled the increase in crop yields, which in turn allowed the trade networks to expand.[123] Rising trade brought new methods of dealing with money, and gold coinage was again minted in Europe, at first in Italy and later in France and other countries. New forms of commercial contracts emerged, allowing risk to be shared amongst merchants. Accounting methods improved, partly through the use of double-entry bookkeeping; letters of credit also emerged, to allow easy transmission of money through the trading networks.[124]
Political states[link]
The High Middle Ages is a formative period in the history of the Western state. Kings in France, England and Spain consolidated their power, and set up lasting governing institutions.[125] Also new kingdoms like Hungary and Poland, after their conversion to Christianity, became Central-European powers.[126] Hungary owed its settlement to the Magyars, who settled there around 900 under King Árpád (d. around 907) after their invasions during the 9th centuries.[127] The papacy, long attached to an ideology of independence from the secular kings, first asserted its claims to temporal authority over the entire Christian world. The Papal Monarchy reached its apogee in the early 13th century under the pontificate of Innocent III (pope 1198–1216).[128] Northern Crusades and the advance of Christian kingdoms and military orders into previously pagan regions in the Baltic and Finnic northeast brought the forced assimilation of numerous native peoples into Europe.[129]
During the early High Middle Ages, Germany was under the rule of the Saxon dynasty, which struggled to control the powerful dukes ruling over territorial duchies tracing back to the Migration period. In 1024, the ruling dynasty changed to the Salian dynasty, who famously clashed with the papacy under Emperor Henry IV (r. 1084–1105) over church appointments.[130] His successors continued to struggle against the papacy as well as the German nobility. After the death of Emperor Henry V (r. 1111–1125) without heirs, a period of instability arose until Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1155–1190) took the imperial throne in the late 12th century.[131] Although Barbarossa managed to rule effectively, the basic problems remained, and his successors continued to struggle with them into the 13th century.[132] One difficulty was the invasion of the Mongols into Europe in the mid 13th century. Mongols campaigns first shattered the Kievan Rus principalities and then invaded eastern Europe in 1241, 1259, and 1287.[133]
France under the Capetian dynasty, began to slowly expand its power over the nobility, managing to expand out of the Ile de France to exert control over more of the country as the 11th and 12th centuries.[134] They faced a powerful rival in the Dukes of Normandy, who in 1066 under William the Conqueror (duke 1135–1187), subjugated England and created a cross-channel empire that would last, in various forms, throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.[135][136] Under the Angevin dynasty of King Henry II (r. 1154–1189) and his sons, the kings of England ruled over England and large sections of France.[137] However King John (r. 1199–1216) lost Normandy and the rest of the northern French possessions in 1204. This led to dissension amongst the English nobility, while John's financial exactions to pay for his unsuccessful attempts to regain Normandy led in 1215 to Magna Carta, a charter that confirmed the rights and privileges of free men in England. Under Henry III (r. 1216–1272), John's son, further concessions were made to the nobility, and royal power was diminished.[138] The French monarchy, however, continued to make gains against the nobility during the late 12th and 13th centuries, bringing more territories within the kingdom under their personal rule and centralizing the royal administration.[139] Normans not only expanded into England, but also settled in Sicily and southern Italy, when Robert Guiscard (d. 1085) landed there in 1059 and established a duchy that later became a kingdom.[140]
Crusades[link]
In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, taking the ancient lands of Persia during the 1040s, Armenia in the 1060s, and capturing Jerusalem in 1070. In 1071, the Turkish army defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV (r. 1068–1071). This allowed the Turks to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine Empire by seizing a large part of the empire's population and its economic heartland. Although the Byzantines managed to regroup and recover somewhat, they never regained Asia Minor and were often on the defensive. The Turks also ran into difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars.[142]
The Crusades intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The first Crusade was preached by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–1099) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilized across Europe, and captured Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade. The Crusaders consolidated their conquests in a number of Crusader states During the 12th century and 13th century, there were a series of conflicts between them and the surrounding Islamic states. Further crusades were called to aid the Crusaders,[143] or to try to regain Jerusalem, which was captured by Saladin in 1187.[144] Military religious orders such as the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were formed and went on to play an integral role in the Crusader states.[145] In 1203, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and captured that city in 1204, setting up a Latin Empire of Constantinople[146] and greatly weakening the Byzantine Empire, which finally recaptured Constantinople in 1261, but the Byzantines never regained their former strength.[147] By 1291 all the Crusader states had been either captured or forced from the mainland, with a titular Kingdom of Jerusalem surviving on the island of Cyprus for a number of years after 1291.[148]
Popes called for crusades to take place other than in the Holy Land, with crusades being proclaimed in Spain, southern France, and along the Baltic.[143] The Spanish crusades became fused with the Reconquista, or reconquest, of Spain from the Muslims. Although the Templars and Hospitallers took part in the Spanish crusades, Spanish military religious orders were also founded in imitation of the Templars and Hospitallers, with most of them becoming part of the two main orders of Calatrava and Santiago by the beginning of the 12th century.[149] Northern Europe also remained outside Christian influence until the 11th century or later; these areas also became crusading venues as part of the Northern Crusades of the 12th through the 14th centuries. This too spawned a military order, the Order of the Sword Brothers. Another order, the Teutonic Knights, although originally founded in the Crusader states, focused much of its activity in the Baltic after 1225, and in 1309 moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia.[150]
Intellectual life[link]
During the 11th century, developments in philosophy and theology began to stimulate intellectual activity. There was debate between the realists and the nominalists over the concept of "universals". Philosophical discourse was stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and his emphasis on empiricism and rationalism. Scholars such as Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Peter Lombard (d. 1164) introduced Aristotelian logic into theology. The late 11th and early 12th century also saw the rise of cathedral schools throughout western Europe, which signaled the shift of learning from monasteries to cathedrals and towns.[151] Cathedral schools were then in turn replaced in the late 11th century by the universities established in major European cities.[152] Philosophy and theology fused in scholasticism, an attempt by 12th and 13th-century scholars to reconcile Christian theology with itself, which eventually resulted in a system of thought that tried to employ a systemic approach to truth and reason.[153] This culminated in the thought of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), who wrote the Summa Theologica, or Summary of Theology.[154]
Besides the universities, royal and noble courts saw the development of chivalry and the ethos of courtly love. This culture was expressed in the vernacular languages rather than Latin, and comprised poems, stories, legends and popular songs spread by troubadors. Often the stories were written down in the chansons de geste, or "songs of great deeds", such as The Song of Roland or The Song of Hildebrand.[155] Besides these products of chivalry, other writers composed histories, both secular and religious.[156] Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. around 1155) composed his Historia Regum Britanniae, which was a collection of stories and legends about Arthur.[157] Other works were more clearly history, such as Otto von Freising's (d. 1158) Gesta Friderici Imperatoris detailing the deeds of Emperor Frederick I or William of Malmesbury's (d. around 1143) Gesta Regum on the kings of England.[156]
Legal studies also advanced during the 12th century. Both secular law and canon law, or ecclesiastical law, were studied in the High Middle Ages. Secular law, or Roman law, was advanced greatly by the discovery of the corpus iuris civilis in the 11th century, and by 1100 Roman law was being taught at Bologna. This teaching of Roman law led to the recording and standardization of legal codes throughout western Europe. Canon law was also studied, and around 1140 a monk named Gratian (flourished 12th century), a teacher at Bologna, wrote what became the standard text of canon law – the Decretum.[158]
Among the results of the Greek and Islamic influence on this period in European history was the replacement of Roman numerals with the decimal positional number system and the invention of algebra, which allowed more advanced mathematics. Astronomy also advanced, with the translation of Ptolomey's Almagest from Greek into Latin in the late 12th century. Medicine was also studied, especially in southern Italy, where Islamic medicine influenced the school at Salerno.[159]
Science and technology[link]
Main articles: Medieval science and Medieval technology
In the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe saw a number of innovations in the management of the means of production and economic growth. Major technological advances include the invention of the windmill, the first mechanical clocks, the first investigations of optics and the creation of crude lenses, the manufacture of distilled spirits and the use of the astrolabe.[160] Glassmaking advanced with the development of a process that allowed the creation of transparent glass in the early 13th century. Transparent glass made possible the science of optics by Roger Bacon (d. 1294), who is credited with the invention of eyeglasses.[161][g]
A major agricultural innovation was the development of a 3-field rotation system for planting crops. The development of the heavy plow allowed heavier soils to be farmed more efficiently, an advance that was helped along by the spread of the horse collar and the horseshoe, both of which lead to the use of draught animals in place of oxen. Horses are faster than oxen and require less pasture, factors which aided the utilization of the 3-field system.[115]
The development of cathedrals and castles advanced building technology, leading to the development of large stone buildings. Ancillary structures included new town halls, houses, bridges, and tithe barns.[162] Shipbuilding also improved, with the use of the rib and plank method rather than the old Roman system of mortice and tenon. Other improvements to ships included the use of lateen sails and the stern-post rudder, both of which increased the speed at which ships could be sailed.[163] Crossbows, which had been known in Late Antiquity, returned to use with the increase in siege warfare in the 10th and 11th centuries.[164] Gunpowder was known in Europe by the mid-13th century with a recorded use in European warfare by the English against the Scots in 1304, although it was merely used as an explosive and not as a weapon. Cannon were being used for sieges in the 1320s, and hand held guns were known and in use by the 1360s.[165]
Architecture and art[link]
Main articles: Romanesque art and Gothic art
In the 10th century the establishment of churches and monasteries lead to the development of stone architecture that elaborated vernacular Roman forms, which led to it being later named Romanesque. Where available, Roman brick and stone buildings were recycled for their materials. From the fairly tentative beginnings known as the First Romanesque, the style flourished and spread across Europe in a remarkably homogeneous form. Right before 1000 there was a great wave of building stone churches all over Europe.[166] Besides the architecture, "virtually all the churches in the West were decorated with wall-paintings",[167] of which few survive.[167] The architectural features of Romanesque are massive stone walls, openings topped by semi-circular arches, small windows, and, particularly in France, arched stone vaults.[168] The large portal with coloured sculpture in high relief became a central feature of facades, especially in France, and the capitals of columns were often carved with narrative scenes of imaginative monsters and animals.[169] The distinctive European form of the castle was developed, and became crucial to politics and warfare.[170]
Romanesque art, especially metalwork, was at its most sophisticated in Mosan art, where distinct artistic personalities such as Nicholas of Verdun (d. 1205) become apparent, and an almost classical style is seen in works like a font at Liège,[171] contrasting with the writhing animals of the exactly contemporary Gloucester Candlestick. Large illuminated bibles and psalters were the typical forms of luxury manuscripts, and wall-painting flourished in churches, often following a scheme with a Last Judgement on the west wall, a Christ in Majesty at the east end, and narrative biblical scenes down the nave, or in the best surviving example, at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, on the barrel-vaulted roof.[172]
From the early 12th century, French builders developed the Gothic style, marked by the use of rib vaults, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large stained glass windows. The Gothic style was mainly used in churches and cathedrals, and continued in use until the 16th century in much of Europe. Classic examples of Gothic architecture include Chartres Cathedral and Reims Cathedral in France as well as Salisbury Cathedral in England.[173] Stained glass became a crucial element in the design of churches, which continued to use extensive wall-paintings, now almost all lost.[174]
During this period the practice of manuscript illumination gradually passed from monasteries to lay workshops, so that "by 1300 most monks bought their books in shops",[175] and the book of hours developed as a form of devotional book for lay-people. Metalwork continued to be the most prestigious form of art, with Limoges enamel an option for reliquaries and crosses,[176] but in Italy the innovations of Cimabue, followed by the Trecento masters Giotto (d. 1337) and Duccio (d. around 1318), greatly increased the sophistication and status of panel painting and fresco.[177] In the 12th century secular art increased with the growing prosperity and many carved ivory objects such as gaming-pieces, combs, and small religious figures survive.[178]
Church and society[link]
Main article: Gregorian reform
Monastic reform became an important issue during the 11th century, as elites began to worry that monks were not adhering to the rules binding them to a stricy religious life. Cluny Abbey, founded in the Mâcon in 909, was established as part of the Cluniac Reforms, a larger movement of monastic reform in response to this fear.[180] The monastery quickly established a reputation for austerity and rigour. Cluny sought to maintain a high quality of spiritual life by electing its own abbot without interference from laymen, thus maintaining economic and political independence from local lords and placing itself under the protection of the papacy.[181]
Monastic reform inspired change in the secular church. The ideals that it was based upon were brought to the papacy by Pope Leo IX (pope 1049–1054), and provided the ideology of the clerical independence that lead to the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th century. This involved Pope Gregory VII (pope 1073–1085) and Emperor Henry IV, who initially clashed over episcopal appointments, disputes that turned into a battle over the ideas of investiture, clerical marriage, and simony. The emperor saw the protection of the Church as one of his responsibilities as well as wanting to preserve the right to appoint his own choices as bishops within his lands. The papacy, however, insisted on the Church's independence from secular lords These issues themselves remained unresolved after the compromise of 1122 known as the Concordat of Worms. The conflict represents a significant stage in the creation of a papal monarchy separate from and equal to lay authorities. It also had the permanent consequence of empowering German princes at the expense of the German emperors.[180]
The High Middle Ages was a period of great religious movements. Besides the Crusaders and monastic reformers, other people sought to participate in new forms of religious life. New monastic orders were founded, including the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and the military orders such as the Knights Templar. These new orders were formed in response to the feeling of the laity that Benedictine monasticism no longer met the needs of the laymen. Laymen and those wishing to enter the religious life wanted to return to the simpler hermetical monasticism of early Christianity or to live an Apostolic life.[182] In the 13th century, mendicant orders – the Franciscans and the Dominicans – who swore vows of poverty and earned their living by begging, were approved by the papacy.[183] Besides the recognized orders, other religious groups such as the Waldensians and the Humiliati attempted to return to the life of early Christianity in the middle 12th and early 13th centuries, but they were condemned as heretical by the papacy. Others joined the Cathars, another heretical movement condemned by the papacy. In 1209, a crusade was preached against the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade, which in combination with the medieval Inquisition, finally eliminated them.[184]
Late Middle Ages[link]
Main article: Late Middle Ages
Famine and plague[link]
The first years of the 14th century were marked by a number of famines, culminating in the Great Famine of 1315–1317.[185] The causes of the Great Famine were not just related to the ongoing climatic change that was taking place, a slow transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age, but also had causes in overspecialization in single crops, which left the population vulnerable when bad weather caused crop failures.[186] Other troubles included an economic downturn and the aforementioned climate change – which resulted in the average annual temperature for Europe declining 2 degrees Celsius during the 14th century.[187]
These troubles were followed in 1347 by the Black Death, a disease that spread throughout Europe in the years 1348, 1349, and 1350.[188] The death toll was probably about 35 million people in total in Europe, about one-third of the population. Towns were especially hard-hit because of the crowded conditions. Large areas of land were left sparsely inhabited, and in some places fields were left unworked. Because of the sudden decline in available labourers, the price of wages rose as landlords sought to entice workers to their fields, but the lower rents were balanced out by the lower demand for food, which cut into agricultural income. Urban workers also felt that they had a right to greater earnings, and popular uprisings broke out across Europe.[189] Among the uprisings were the jacquerie in France, the Peasants' Revolt in England, and revolts in the cities of Florence in Italy and Ghent and Bruges in Flanders. The trauma of the plague led to an increased piety throughout Europe, which manifested itself in the foundation of new charities, the extreme self-mortification of the flagellants, and the scapegoating of the Jews.[190] Conditions were further unsettled by the return of the plague throughout the rest of the 14th century. It continued to strike Europe throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.[188]
State resurgence[link]
The Late Middle Ages also witnessed the rise of strong, royalty-based nation-states throughout Europe, particularly in England, France, and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula – Aragon, Castile, and Portugal. The long conflicts of the later Middle Ages strengthened royal control over the kingdoms, even though they were extremely hard on the peasantry. Kings profited from warfare by gaining land and extended royal legislation throughout their kingdoms.[191] Paying for the wars required that the methods of taxation become more efficient and the rate of taxation often increased.[192] The requirement to obtain the consent of those taxed meant that representative bodies such as the English Parliament or the French Estates General gained some power and new authority.[193]
Throughout the 14th century, French kings sought to expand their influence throughout the kingdom at the expense of the territorial holdings of the nobility.[194] This ran into difficulties when they attempted to confiscate the holdings of the English kings in southern France, leading to the Hundred Years' War,[195] which lasted until 1453.[196] The stresses of this war almost caused the disintegration of the French kingdom during the early years of the war.[197] In the early 15th century, France once more teetered on the brink of dissolving, but in the late 1420s military successes led by Joan of Arc (d. 1431) led to the eventual victory of the French kings over the English with the capture of the last of the English possessions in southern France in 1453.[198] The price was high, however, as the population of France at the end of the Wars was likely half what it had been prior to the start of the conflict. Conversely, the Wars had a positive effect on English national identity, doing much to fuse the various local identities into a national English ideal. The conflict with the French also helped create a national culture in England that was separate from French culture, which had been the dominant cultural influence in England prior to the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War.[199] The early Hundred Years' War also saw the dominance of the English longbow,[200] and the appearance of cannon on the battlefield at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.[165]
In modern-day Germany, the Empire continued, but the elective nature of the imperial crown meant that there was no strong dynasty around which a strong state could form.[201] Further east, the kingdoms of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia grew into powerful kingdoms.[202] The Iberian Peninsula kingdoms continued to gain land from the Muslim kingdoms of the peninsula,[202] with Portugal concentrating on expanding overseas during the 15th century while the other kingdoms were riven by difficulties over the royal succession and other concerns throughout the 15th century.[203][204] England, after losing the Hundred Years' War, went on to suffer a long civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which lasted into the 1490s.[204] Scandinavia went through a period of union under the Union of Kalmar in the late 14th and early 15th century, but dissolved once more after the death of Queen Margaret I of Denmark (r. in Denmark 1353–1412), who had united Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. The major power around the Baltic Sea was the city states of the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation which traded from western Europe to Russia.[205]
Collapse of Byzantium[link]
Main article: Byzantium under the Palaiologoi
Although the Palaeologi emperors managed to recapture Constantinople from the western Europeans in 1261, they were never able to regain control of much of the former imperial lands. They usually controlled only a small section of the Balkan Peninsula near Constantinople, the city itself, and some coastal lands on the Black Sea and around the Aegean Sea. The former Byzantine lands in the Balkans were divided between the new kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria and the city-state of Venice. The power of the Byzantine emperors was threatened by a new Turkish tribe, the Ottomans, who established themselves in Anatolia in the 13th century and steadily expanded throughout the 14th century. The Ottomans expanded into Europe, reducing Bulgaria to a vassal state by 1366 and taking over Serbia after the Serbian defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Western Europeans rallied to the plight of the Christians in the Balkans and declared a new Crusade in 1396, and a great army was sent to the Balkans which met defeat at the Battle of Nicopolis.[206] Constantinople finally was captured by the Ottomans in 1453.[207]
Controversy within the Church[link]
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The troubled 14th century saw both the Avignon Papacy of 1305–1378,[208] also called the "Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy" (a reference to the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews),[209] and then the Great Schism that lasted from 1378 to 1418, when there were two, then later three, rival popes, each supported by a number of states.[210] In the early years of the 15th century, after a century of turmoil, ecclesiastical officials convened in Constance in 1414, and in 1415 the council deposed one of the rival popes, leaving only two claimants. Further depositions followed, and in November 1417 the council elected Martin V (pope 1417–1431) as pope.[211]
Besides the schism, the western church was riven by theological controversies, some of which turned into heresies. John Wyclif (d. 1384), an English theologian, was condemned as a heretic in 1415 for teaching that the laity should have access to the text of the Bible as well as holding views on the Eucharist that were contrary to church doctrine.[212] Wyclif's teachings influenced two of the major heretical movements of the later Middle Ages – Lollardry in England and Hussitism in Bohemia.[213] The Bohemians were also influenced by the teaching of Jan Hus, who was eventually burned at the stake in 1415 after being condemned as a heretic by the Council of Constance. The Hussite church, although subject to a crusade being called against it, survived past the end of the Middle Ages.[214]
The papacy refined the concept of transubstantiation further in the Late Middle Ages, stating that the clergy alone was allowed to partake of the wine in the Eucharist. This further distanced the secular laity from the clergy. The laity continued the practices of pilgrimages, veneration of relics, and the belief in power of the Devil. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) or Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471) wrote works that taught the laity to focus on their inner spiritual life, something that contributed to the Protestant Reformation. Besides mysticism, belief in witches and witchcraft became widespread, and by the late 15th century the Church had begun to lend credence to populist fears of witchcraft with its condemnation of witches in 1484 and the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, the most popular handbook for witchhunters, in 1486.[215]
Scholars, intellectuals, and exploration[link]
The Later Middle Ages saw a reaction against scholasticism led by John Duns Scotus (d. 1308)[h] and William of Ockham (d. around 1348),[153] both of whom objected to the application of reason to faith. Their efforts, along with others, led to an undermining of the prevailing Platonic idea of "universals". Ockham's insistence that reason operates independently of faith allowed science to be separated from theology and philosophy.[216] Legal studies were marked by the steady advance of Roman law into areas of jurisprudence previously governed by customary law. The one exception to this trend was England, where the common law remained pre-eminent. Countries also codified their laws, with legal codes being promulgated in countries as far apart as Castile, Poland, and Lithuania.[217]
Education remained mostly focused on the training of future clergy. The basic learning of the letters and numbers remained the province of the family or a village priest, but the secondary subjects of the trivium – grammar, rhetoric, logic – were studied in either cathedral schools or in schools provided by cities. Commercial secondary schools spread also, with some towns in Italy having more than one such enterprise. Universities also spread throughout Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The rise of vernacular literature increased in pace, with Dante, Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio in 14th century Italy, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland in England, and François Villon and Christine de Pizan in France. Literature remained mainly religious in character, but although much of this continued to be written in Latin, a new demand developed for saints' lives and other devotional tracts in the vernacular languages. Theatre also developed in the guise of miracle plays put on by the Church.[217] At the end of the period, the development of the printing press around 1450 led to the establishment of publishing houses throughout Europe by 1500.[218]
Beginning in the early 15th century, the countries of the Iberian peninsula began sponsoring exploration past the boundaries of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (d. 1460), sent expeditions that discovered the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Cape Verde during his lifetime. After his death, exploration continued, with Bartholomew Diaz (d. 1500) going around the Cape of Good Hope in 1486 and Vasco de Gama (d. 1524) sailing around Africa to India in 1498.[219] The combined Spanish monarchies of Castile and Aragon sponsored Christopher Columbus' (d. 1506) voyage of exploration in 1492 that discovered the Americas.[220] The English crown under King Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) sponsored the voyage of John Cabot (d. 1498) in 1497, which landed on Cape Breton Island.[221]
Late medieval art and architecture[link]
The Late Middle Ages in Europe as a whole correspond to the Trecento and Early Renaissance in Italy, while Northern Europe and Spain continued to use Gothic styles, increasingly elaborate in the 15th century, until almost the end of the period. International Gothic was a courtly style that reached much of Europe in the decades around 1400, producing masterpieces such as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.[222] All over Europe secular art continued to increase in quantity and quality, and in the 15th century the mercantile classes of Italy and Flanders became important patrons, commissioning small portraits of themselves in oils as well as a growing range of luxury items such as jewellery, ivory caskets, cassone chests and maiolica pottery. These objects also included the Hispano-Moresque ware produced by mostly Mudéjar potters in Spain. Although royalty owned huge collections of plate, little survives except for the Royal Gold Cup.[223] Italian silk manufacture developed, so that Western churches and elites no longer needed to rely on imports from Byzantium or the Islamic world. In France and Flanders tapestry weaving of sets like The Lady and the Unicorn became a major luxury industry.[224]
The large external sculptural schemes of Early Gothic churches gave way to more sculpture inside the building, as tombs became more elaborate and other features such as pulpits were sometimes lavishly carved, as in the Pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in Sant'Andrea. Painted or carved wooden relief altarpieces became common, especially as churches created many side-chapels. Early Netherlandish painting with artists such as Jan van Eyck (d. 1441) and Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464) rivalled that of Italy, as did northern illuminated manuscripts, which in the 15th century began to be collected on a large scale by secular elites, who also commissioned secular books, especially histories. From about 1450 printed books rapidly became popular, though still expensive, and there were around 30,000 different editions of incunabula printed by 1500,[225] and by then illuminated manuscripts were only commissioned by royalty and a few others. Very small woodcuts, nearly all religious, were affordable even by peasants in parts of Northern Europe from the middle of the 15th century, with more expensive engravings supplying a wealthier market with a variety of images.[226]
Modern image[link]
Further information: Dark Ages (historiography)
The medieval period is frequently caricatured as supposedly a "time of ignorance and superstition" which placed "the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity."[227] This is a legacy from both the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when scholars contrasted their intellectual cultures with the medieval period, with a negative attitude toward the Middle Ages. Renaissance scholars saw the Classical world as a time of high culture and civilization, and saw the Middle Ages as a decline from that culture. Enlightenment scholars saw reason as superior to faith, and thus viewed the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition.[10]
Others argue that reason was generally held in high regard during the Middle Ages. Science historian Edward Grant writes, "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed [in the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".[228] Also, contrary to common belief, David Lindberg writes, "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led".[229]
The caricature of the period is also reflected in a number of more specific notions. For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century[230] and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. This claim is mistaken.[230] In fact, lecturers in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.[231] Lindberg and Numbers write: "There was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[232]
Notes[link]
- ^ This is the date of the deposition of the last western Roman Emperor.[8]
- ^ A reference work published in 1883 equates the Dark Ages with the Middle Ages, but beginning with William Paton Ker in 1904, the term "Dark Ages" is generally restricted to the early part of the Medieval period. For example, the 1911 edition of Britannica defines the Dark Ages this way. See Dark Ages for a more complete historiography of this term.
- ^ This system, which eventually encompassed two senior co-emperors and two junior co-emperors, is known as the Tetrarchy.[19]
- ^ An alternate date of 480 is sometimes given, as that was the year Romulus Augustulus' predecessor Julius Nepos died; Nepos had continued to assert that he was the western emperor while holding onto Dalmatia.[8]
- ^ His grave was discovered in 1653 and is remarkable for its grave goods, which included a number of weapons and a large quantity of gold.[44]
- ^ The Carolingian minuscule was developed from the unical script of Late Antiquity, which was a smaller, rounder form of writing the Latin alphabet than the classical forms.[84]
- ^ An early depiction of eyeglasses is at Strasburg Cathedral where a stained glass image of the Emperor Henry VII shows him with spectacles.[161]
- ^ The word "dunce" in the English language derives from Duns Scotus' name.[216]
Citations[link]
- ^ Nees Early Medieval Art pp. 109–112
- ^ a b Power Central Middle Ages p. 304
- ^ BruniHistory of the Florentine people p. xvii
- ^ Albrow Gllobal Age p. 205
- ^ Robinson "Medieval, the Middle Ages" Speculum
- ^ "Middle Ages" Dictionary.com
- ^ Bruni History of the Florentine people p. xvii
- ^ a b c Wickham Inheritance of Rome p. 86
- ^ See the titles of Watts Making of Polities Europe 1300–1500 or Epstein Economic History of Later Medieval Europe 1000–1500 or the end date used in Holmes (ed.) The Oxford History of Medieval Europe
- ^ a b Davies Europe pp. 291–293
- ^ Bordone and Sergi Dieci secoli di medioevo
- ^ See the title of Saul Companion to Medieval England 1066–1485
- ^ Kamen Spain 1469–1714 p. 29
- ^ a b Mommsen "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages'" Speculum
- ^ Cunliffe Europe Between the Oceans pp. 391–393
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 3–5
- ^ a b Heather Fall of the Roman Empire p. 111
- ^ a b Brown World of Late Antiquity pp. 24–25
- ^ a b Collins Early Medieval Europe p. 9
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe p. 24
- ^ Cunliffe Europe Between the Oceans pp. 405–406
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 31–33
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity p. 34
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity pp. 65–68
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity pp. 82–94
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 47–49
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 56–59
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 80–83
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 59–60
- ^ a b Cunliffe Europe Between the Oceans p. 417
- ^ James Europe's Barbarians pp. 67–68
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 117–118
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome p. 79
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 116–134
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity pp. 122–124
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 95–98
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 100–101
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe p. 100
- ^ a b Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 96–97
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 102–103
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 86–91
- ^ James Europe's Barbarians pp. 82–85
- ^ a b James Europe's Barbarians pp. 77–78
- ^ James Europe's Barbarians pp. 79–80
- ^ James Europe's Barbarians pp. 78–81
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 196–208
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 235–238
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 81–83
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 200–202
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 206–213
- ^ James Europe's Barbarians pp. 95–99
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 140–143
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity pp. 174–175
- ^ Brown World of Late Antiquity p. 181
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 189–193
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 195–199
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome p. 204
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 205–210
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 211–212
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome p. 215
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 143–145
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 149–151
- ^ Cunliffe Europe Between the Oceans pp. 427–428
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 218–219
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 218–233
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 328–332
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 170–172
- ^ Colish Medieval Foundations pp. 62–63
- ^ Lawrence Medieval Monasticism pp. 10–13
- ^ Lawrence Medieval Monasticism pp. 18–24
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 185–187
- ^ Hamilton Religion in the Medieval West pp. 43–44
- ^ Colish Medieval Foundations pp. 64–65
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 246–253
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 347–349
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World p. 344
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 158–159
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 164–165
- ^ Stalley Early Medieval Architecture p. 73
- ^ Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 371–378
- ^ a b Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 109
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 117–120
- ^ Davies Europe p. 302
- ^ Davies Europe p. 241
- ^ Colish Medieval Foundations pp. 66–70
- ^ a b Bauer History of the Medieval World pp. 427–431
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 139
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 141–144
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 144–145
- ^ Bauer Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 147–149
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 378–385
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe p. 387
- ^ Davies Europe p. 309
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 394–404
- ^ Davies Europe p. 317
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 435–439
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 439–444
- ^ Collins Early Medieval Europe pp. 385–389
- ^ Wickham Inheritance of Rome pp. 500–505
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 318–320
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 321–326
- ^ Nees Early Medieval Art p. 145
- ^ Stalley Early Medieval Architecture pp. 29–35
- ^ Stalley Early Medieval Architecture pp. 43–44
- ^ Cosman Medieval Wordbook p. 247
- ^ Stalley Early Medieval Architecture p. 45
- ^ Stalley Early Medieval Architecture p. 49
- ^ Kitzinger Early Medieval Art pp. 36–53, 61–64
- ^ Henderson Early Medieval pp. 18–21, 63–71
- ^ Henderson Early Medieval pp. 36–42, 49–55, 103, 143, 204–208
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 41–49
- ^ Lasko Ars Sacra pp. 16–18
- ^ Henderson Early Medieval pp. 233–238
- ^ Jordan Europe in the High Middle Ages pp. 5–12
- ^ a b c Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 156
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 164–165
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 37–41
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 311–315
- ^ Hamilton Religion on the Medieval West p. 33
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 33–34
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 48–49
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 60–67
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 160
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 74–76
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 283–284
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 365–380
- ^ Davies Europe p. 296
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 262–279
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 371–372
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 181–186
- ^ Jordan Europe in the High Middle Ages pp. 143–147
- ^ Jordan Europe in the High Middle Ages pp. 250–252
- ^ Davies Europe p. 364
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 187–189
- ^ Jordan Europe in the High Middle Ages pp. 59–61
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 189–196
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 263
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 286–289
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 289–293
- ^ Davies Europe p. 294
- ^ Kaufmann and Kaufmann Medieval Fortress pp. 268–269
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 332–333
- ^ a b Riley-Smith "Crusades" Middle Ages pp. 106–107
- ^ Payne Dream and the Tomb pp. 204–205
- ^ Lock Routledge Companion to the Crusades pp. 353–356
- ^ Lock Routledge Companion to the Crusades pp. 156–161
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 299–300
- ^ Lock Routledge Companion to the Crusades p. 122
- ^ Lock Routledge Companion to the Crusades pp. 205–213
- ^ Lock Routledge Companion to the Crusades pp. 213–224
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 232–237
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 247–252
- ^ a b Loyn "Scholasticism" Middle Ages pp. 293–294
- ^ Colish Medieval Foundations pp. 295–301
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 252–260
- ^ a b Davies Europe p. 349
- ^ Saul "Geoffrey of Monmouth" Companion to Medieval England
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 237–241
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 241–246
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 246
- ^ a b Davies Europe p. 369
- ^ Barber Two Cities p. 68
- ^ Barber Two Cities p. 73
- ^ Nicolle Medieval Warfare p. 80
- ^ a b Nicolle Medieval Warfare pp. 296–298
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages 55
- ^ a b Dodwell Pictorial Arts of the West p. 37
- ^ Adams History of Western Art pp. 181–189
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 58–60, 65–66, 73–75
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 295–299
- ^ Lasko Ars Sacra pp. 240–250
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 91–92
- ^ Adams History of Western Art pp. 195–216
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages 185–190; 269–271
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages p. 250
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 245–247
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 264–278
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 248–250
- ^ Hamilton Religion in the Medieval West p. 47
- ^ a b Rosenwein Rhinoceros Bound pp. 40–41
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 143–144
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 145–147
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 155–167
- ^ Barber Two Cities pp. 185–192
- ^ Loyn "Famine" Middle Ages p. 128
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 373–374
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe p. 370
- ^ a b Schove "Plague" Middle Ages p. 269
- ^ Backman Worlds of Medieval Europe pp. 374–380
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 412–413
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 201–219
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 224–233
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 233–238
- ^ Watts Making of Polities p. 166
- ^ Watts Making of Polities p. 169
- ^ Loyn "Hundred Years' War" Middle Ages p. 176
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 180–181
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 317–322
- ^ Davies Europe p. 423
- ^ Nicolle Medieval Warfare p. 186
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 170–171
- ^ a b Watts Making of Polities pp. 173–175
- ^ Watts Making of Polities pp. 327–332
- ^ a b Watts Making of Polities p. 340
- ^ Davies Europe p. 431
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 385–389
- ^ Davies Europe p. 446
- ^ Thomson Western Church pp. 170–171
- ^ Loyn "Avignon" Middle Ages p. 45
- ^ Loyn "Great Schism" Middle Ages p. 153
- ^ Thomson Western Church pp. 184–187
- ^ Thomson Western Church pp. 197–199
- ^ Thomson Western Church p. 218
- ^ Thomson Western Church pp. 213–217
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 436–437
- ^ a b Davies Europe pp. 433–434
- ^ a b Davies Europe pp. 438–439
- ^ Davies Europe p. 445
- ^ Davies Europe p. 451
- ^ Davies Europe pp. 454–455
- ^ Davies Europe p. 511
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 253–256
- ^ Lightbown Secular Goldsmiths' Work p. 78
- ^ Benton Art of the Middle Ages pp. 257–262
- ^ Staff "Incunabula Short Title Catalogue" British Library
- ^ Griffiths Prints and Printmaking pp. 17–18; 39–46
- ^ Lindberg "Medieval Church Encounters" When Science & Christianity Meet p. 8
- ^ Grant God and Reason p. 9
- ^ Quoted in Peters "Science and Religion" Encyclopedia of Religion
- ^ a b Russell Inventing the Flat Earth pp. 49–58
- ^ Grant Planets, Stars, & Orbs pp. 626–630
- ^ Lindberg and Numbers "Beyond War and Peace" Church History
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- Bordone, Renato and Sergi, Giuseppe (2009) (in Italian). Dieci secoli di medioevo. Turin: Einaudi. ISBN 978-88-06-16763-9.
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- Collins, Roger (1999). Early Medieval Europe: 300–1000 (Second ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-21886-9.
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