Excommunication: Did you mean...?

Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (l.c. 1468-1534) was a Catholic theologian and philosopher best known for his disputations with Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) beginning in 1518. Cajetan, a philosophical Humanist, was thought to have...

"The Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire," wrote Voltaire, and this interpretation still dominates the popular imagination, so the Holy Roman Empire is treated as a bad joke, a pale...

On Faith and Works (1532) by Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (l. c. 1468-1534) is a refutation of the central arguments of Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) concerning justification before God as faith-based, having nothing to do...

In the ancient world, "religion" and society were not separate entities. Various gods dictated covenants, "law-codes," and social conventions. Such law-codes were most often the responsibility of...

Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) was a German priest, monk, and theologian who became the central figure of the religious and cultural movement known as the Protestant Reformation. Even though earlier reformers had expressed Luther's...

The Reconquista (Reconquest) or Iberian Crusades were military campaigns largely conducted between the 11th and 13th century CE to liberate southern Portuguese and Spanish territories, then known as al-Andalus, from the Muslim Moors...

The Doctrine of Discovery is a policy enacted initially by the 15th-century Catholic Church proclaiming the right of Christian nations to take possession of the lands of non-Christians in the interest of saving their souls...

Mary, Queen of Scots was the queen of both Scotland (r. 1542-1567) and briefly, France (r. 1559-1560). Obliged to flee Scotland, the queen was imprisoned for 19 years by Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) and finally executed...

King John of England (aka John Lackland) ruled from 1199 to 1216 CE and he has gone down in history as one of the very worst of English kings, both for his character and his failures. He lost the Angevin-Plantagenet...

The Albigensian Crusade (aka Cathars' Crusade, 1209-1229 CE), was the first crusade to specifically target heretic Christians - the Cathars of southern France. Not successful in repressing the heresy, the on-off campaigns over...