Pope Gregory VII: Did you mean...?

Pope Francis is facing calls to rescind a centuries-old policy called the ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ stemming from a series of edicts, known as papal bulls, dating back to...

The Constantinian Excerpts, or Excerpta Constantiniana is the conventional name given to the mid-10th Century Byzantine palace encyclopedia commissioned by the scholar emperor Constantine...

The Cullinan Diamond was discovered in Transvaal, South Africa in 1905 and presented as a birthday gift to Edward VII of England (r. 1901-1910) by the Transvaal Government. It weighed well over 3,000 carats, making it the largest...

Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos (r. 80-51 BCE) was king of Ptolemaic Egypt and father of Cleopatra VII (r. 51-30 BCE). His illegitimate birth and drunkenness inspired ridicule, and he was nicknamed "Auletes" ("the Flute-Player") for his...

The Second Crusade (1147-1149) was a military campaign organised by the Pope and European nobles to recapture the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia which had fallen in 1144 to the Muslim Seljuk Turks. Despite an army of 60,000 and...

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535 CE) was a lawyer, scholar, statesman, and Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE) who was executed in July 1535 CE for his refusal to endorse Henry's break of the Church in England...

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...

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221 CE) was called by Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 CE) with the objective, like previous crusades, of recapturing Jerusalem from Muslim control; only this time the strategy was to weaken the enemy by...

The province of Moesia was vital to the Roman military’s protection of the Balkans. Subdued by the Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus in 29 BCE, it was initially part of Macedonia. Due to its location along the Danube, it...

The Arsacid (Arshakuni) dynasty of Armenia ruled that kingdom from 12 CE to 428 CE. A branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, the Armenian princes also played out a prolonged balancing act by remaining friendly to the...