Early modern Europe: Did you mean...?

Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) was a Japanese poet and novelist who played a leading role in creating the so-called ‘floating world’ (ukiyo-zoshi) genre of popular literature in the 17th century. His work was significant because, in...

The Carolingian Dynasty (751-887) was a family of Frankish nobles who ruled Francia and its successor kingdoms in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. The dynasty expanded from Francia as far as modern Italy...

The conquistadors, meaning "conquerors", were Iberian military adventurers who operated as the vanguard of empires in the 15th and 16th centuries by exploring areas of the world unknown to Europeans, defeating indigenous armies...

Scotland is a country which, today, comprises the northern part of Great Britain and includes the islands known as the Hebrides and the Orkneys. The name derives from the Roman word "Scotti" which designated an Irish tribe who...

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (24 February 1500 to 21 September 1558) reigned from 1519 until his abdication in 1556 and was one of the most powerful rulers in the history of the Habsburg dynasty. Through a series of...

Ancient Greek science is a modern term for the application of systematic inquiry into the individual, the world, and the universe, which began in Ionia in the 6th century BCE with Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE) and continued...

The War of the Second Coalition (1798-1802), part of the broader French Revolutionary Wars, was the second attempt by an alliance of major European powers to defeat Revolutionary France. The Second Coalition, which included...

Bodo was a early 9th-century Frankish farmer. He and his family hailed from a manor owned by the monastery of St.-Germain-des-Prés near Paris and worked as its tenants. He ploughed...

This map illustrates the spread of the Urnfield culture in Europe by around 1300 BCE, a late Bronze Age archaeological horizon named for the practice of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns buried...

Gnosticism is the belief that human beings contain a piece of God (the highest good or a divine spark) within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into the bodies of humans. All physical matter is subject to decay...