Pope clement v: Did you mean...?

Pope Joan was a legendary female pope of the Middle Ages said to have reigned from 855 to 858. After her story was popularized by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), a statue of her was placed alongside those of other popes at...

A 1526 CE portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo of Pope Clement VII (r. 1523-1534 CE). (National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples, Italy)

Matilda of Canossa (c. 1046-1115), the Countess of Tuscany (r. 1055-1115) and Vice-Queen of Italy (r. 1111-1115), was the final head of the noble House of Canossa following the deaths of her father in 1052 and her elder brother in 1055. One...

Martin Luther's 95 Theses of 31 October 1517, although they have since come to represent the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, were not written to challenge the authority of the Roman Catholic Church but were simply an invitation to...

The Investiture Controversy, also referred to as the Investiture Contest or Investiture Dispute, was a conflict lasting from 1076 to 1122 between the papacy of the Catholic Church and the Salian Dynasty of German monarchs who ruled the Holy...

Frederick II (l. 1194-1250 CE) was the king of Sicily (r. 1198-1250 CE), Germany (r. 1215-1250 CE), Jerusalem (r. 1225-1228 CE), and also reigned supreme as the Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1220-1250 CE). He was born in Jesi in 1194 CE but spent...

"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 parody of the glory of Rome...

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...

Drawing of Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215 CE) by French author André Thévet (1516–1590)

Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York (l. c. 1473-1530 CE) served as Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE) from around 1513 CE to 1529 CE. Wolsey rose to become the most powerful man in England after the king, he...