Pope Julius II: Did you mean...?

A portrait of Pope Julius II (r. 1503-1513 CE) by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, c. 1512 CE. (National Gallery London)

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...

Gaius Julius Caesar was born 12 July 100 BCE (though some cite 102 as his birth year). His father, also Gaius Julius Caesar, was a Praetor who governed the province of Asia and his mother, Aurelia Cotta, was of noble birth. Both held to the...

The beauty of being an archaeologist is having the good fortune to find something on an archaeological dig that remains in a relatively good state of preservation. In various degrees, there are those who study how nature can actually help...

Last March marked the anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination over 2,000 years ago, and after two millennia, his legendary achievements still linger in today's consciousness just as they have for centuries. He was so revered that in...

Batavian revolt was a rebellion of the Batavians against the Romans in 69-70 CE. After initial successes by their commander Julius Civilis, the Batavians were ultimately defeated by the Roman general Quintus Petillius Cerialis. The year...

Veni, vidi, vici! This was the simple message the Roman commander Julius Caesar sent to the Senate in Rome after a resounding victory in the east against King Pharnaces of Pontus - a message that demonstrated both arrogance as well as great...

By the time he led his invasions of Britain, Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) was already an experienced politician and successful military commander. As a member of a patrician family which claimed a pedigree reaching back even earlier than the...

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 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...