Edict of Milan: Did you mean...?

Nara, located around 30 km south of modern Kyoto, was the capital of ancient Japan between 710 and 784 CE. It gave its name to the Nara Period (710-794 CE), although the name during the 8th century CE was Heijokyo. Modelled on the...

Alexios I Komnenos (Alexius Comnenus) was emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 1081 to 1118 CE. Regarded as one of the great Byzantine rulers, Alexios defeated the Normans, the Pechenegs, and, with the help of the First Crusaders...

The Achaemenid Persian Empire functioned as well as it did because of the efficient bureaucracy established by its founder Cyrus the Great (r. c. 550-530 BCE) which was administered through the satrapy system. A Persian...

The Twelve Articles (1525) is a document written between 27 February and 1 March 1525 addressing grievances of the peasants of the Germanic regions of the Holy Roman Empire against the policies of their lords. The work was written...

The meeting of the Assembly of Notables in 1787 was a last-ditch effort by the ministers of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) to fix the disastrous condition of French finances. The assembly failed to agree on...

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed in July 1790 during the French Revolution (1789-1799), which caused the immediate subordination of the Catholic Church in France to the French government. An attempt...

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan (1762-1833) was a French general who held significant commands in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). He won a major victory for the French Republic at the Battle...

Ireland is an island country located in the North Atlantic, bounded by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St. George's Channel. It is known as Eire in the Gaelic language, which comes from the old Irish Eriu, the name of a...

Catherine de' Medici (l. 1519-1589) was the queen of France, mother of three kings and two queens and, between 1559 and c. 1576, the most powerful woman in France and, possibly, all of Europe. She was the strength behind the...

Johann Eck (l. 1486-1543) was a Catholic theologian and writer best known for his disputations with Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) beginning in 1517 and continuing until his death in 1543. Eck maintained the position that, if anyone...