Christian martyr: Did you mean...?

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (16-18 October 1859) was carefully planned and, at first, perfectly executed – until he made the mistake of letting the physician John Starry go...

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 477-524/525) was a scholar in Late Antiquity who was imprisoned and executed by Theodoric (r. 493-526 CE) but was later idolised by medieval intellectuals. His most famous work...

Jesus Christ is the designation of Jesus of Nazareth (d. c. 30 CE), who was an itinerant Jewish prophet from the Galilee in northern Israel. He preached the imminent intervention in human affairs by the God of the Jews, when God...

The Roman imperial cult was the practice of venerating Roman emperors and their families as having divine attributes, honoring their contributions to the spread of Roman religion and culture. It was instituted by the first...

Walpurgis Night (30 April, annually) is a modern-day European and Scandinavian festival derived from the merging of the ancient pagan celebration of Beltane with the commemoration of the canonization of the Christian Saint Walpurga...

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by Christian powers in order to retake Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control. There would be eight officially sanctioned crusades between 1095...

Religion in the Middle Ages, though dominated by the Catholic Church, was far more varied than only orthodox Christianity. In the Early Middle Ages (c. 476-1000), long-established pagan beliefs and practices entwined...

The best-known vision of the Norse afterlife is that of Valhalla, the hall of the heroes where warriors chosen by the Valkyries feast with the god Odin, tell stories from their lives, and fight each other in preparation...

Oswald of Northumbria (c. 604 - c. 642 CE) was a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon king and saint. He came to power in Northumbria c. 633 or 634 CE following his victory over Cadwallon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd. Oswald ruled over the...

Huldrych Zwingli (l. 1484-1531) broke with the Church in 1522 and defended his beliefs at the First Disputation in 1523, encouraging many people in Zürich to embrace his teachings. Among his followers was a...