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Crusades
The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by popes and Christian western powers to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control and then defend those gains. There were eight major official crusades between 1095...

Definition
Treaty of Paris of 1783
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783 by representatives from Great Britain and the United States, was the peace agreement that formally ended the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and recognized the United States as an independent...

Article
1521 Excommunication of Luther: Complete Text
In response to Martin Luther's 95 Theses, as well as his other works, Pope Leo X sent a papal bull threatening him with excommunication in June 1520. Luther publicly burned the bull at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520 and was officially excommunicated...

Article
The Sixteenth-Century Massacre of the Waldensians of Mérindol
As the Reformation developed in France in the first half of the 16th century, there were several episodes of severe repression which preceded the Wars of Religion (1562-1598). These were times of great hardship and oppression against those...

Definition
Jay Treaty
The Jay Treaty, formally known as the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, was a controversial treaty signed by representatives of the United States and Great Britain in...

Definition
Donation of Constantine
The Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini or the Donatio) is a medieval forgery dated to the 8th century purporting to be an original 4th-century document in which the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306-337) granted supreme...

Definition
US Presidential Election of 1789
The US presidential election of 1789 was the first presidential election to take place after the ratification of the United States Constitution. Held on 4 February 1789, it resulted in the unanimous election of George Washington (l. 1732-1799...

Definition
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472 CE) was an Italian scholar, architect, mathematician, and advocate of Renaissance humanism. Alberti famously wrote the treatise On Architecture where he outlines the key elements of classical architecture...

Definition
Spanish Requirement
The Spanish Requirement or Requerimiento was a document intended to be read out to and agreed upon by indigenous peoples during the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Created in 1513, the document outlined the history of Christianity, the...

Definition
Johann Eck
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 could determine...