Enlightenment: Did you mean...?

Mystery cults, or mystery religions, were ancient religious associations characterized by secrecy and initiation rites. They typically surrounded one primary deity, but some mystery cults venerated multiple deities in their rites. Members...

Maria Theresa (1717-1780) was the ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy, a sprawling empire that included Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and other territories spread out across Italy, the Netherlands, and Central Europe. Though her ascension to the...

Mount Koya (aka Koyasan), located in the Wakayama Prefecture, south of Osaka, Japan, is the site of a temple complex founded in 819 CE by the scholar monk Kukai as the headquarters for Shingon Buddhism. There are temples and sacred buildings...

Cats in the Middle Ages were generally disapproved of, regarded as, at best, useful pests and, at worst, agents of Satan, owing to the medieval Church and its association of the cat with evil. Prior to the widespread acceptance of Christianity...

The game of chess has a particularly long and fascinating history of more than 1500 years. Over the centuries, there have also been hundreds of different chess variants, all of which incorporate the fundamental distinguishing feature of standard...

Buddhism, in Korean Bulgyo, was introduced by monks who visited and studied in China and then brought back various Buddhist sects during the Three Kingdoms period. It became the official state religion in all Three Kingdoms and subsequent...

The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote and published his seminal work History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire between 1776 and 1788. The dominant theme of Gibbon's six-volume work is that the fall of the Roman Empire...

Buddhist monasteries have been part of the Japanese cultural landscape ever since the 7th century CE, and they remained both powerful and socially important institutions right through the medieval period. Today, many of Japan's finest examples...

Many events can be said to have changed history, and not everyone might agree with all of those chosen for this collection, but – undeniably – these twelve would appear somewhere on anyone's list: - First Agricultural Revolution - Development...

An 1814 oil painting by Anocet Lemonnier showing the Parisian salon of Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777). Original title: Une soirée chez Mme Geoffrin. The sitters include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Montesquieu, and Fontenelle. Madame...