Council of Constance: Did you mean...?

Plebeians were members of the plebs, the hereditary social class of commoners in ancient Rome. Their exclusion from political power by the patricians, who claimed to be the descendants of the first senators, led to Conflict of the Orders...

Altamira is a Paleolithic cave located in Santillana del Mar (Cantabria region) in northern Spain, containing prehistoric paintings. The cave was inhabited for millennia and so, besides Paleolithic cave art, it contains remains of the daily...

The repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories. Designed to replace the inefficient...

Phocion (c. 402 – 318 BCE) was an Athenian statesman and military commander who, according to tradition, was made a general a staggering 45 times. A student of Plato and known as 'the Good', his political position was somewhat ambiguous...

A Very Useful Epistle (Epistre tres utile, 1539) is an open letter by the female reformer Marie Dentière (l. c. 1495-1561) to Marguerite of Navarre (l. 1492-1549) advocating for a greater role for women in the work of the Protestant Reformation...

Insei or 'cloistered government' describes the strategy of emperors during the late Heian Period (794-1185 CE) in ancient Japan where they abdicated in favour of a chosen heir yet still ruled in some capacity, typically after retiring to...

An 1875 oil on canvas painting, Blue Venice, by Edouard Manet (1832-83), the French modernist painter. Manet visited Venice in 1875 and produced some of his most impressionistic paintings. Apparently, Manet postponed his departure from the...

Stephen Hopkins (l. 1581-1644 CE) was a passenger of the Mayflower on the voyage of 1620 CE which established the Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts, USA. He was the only member of the party with prior experience in North America...

The German Crusade of 1197 CE, also known as the 'Emperor's Crusade', was led by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (r. 1191-1197 CE). Although the emperor died on his way east, his army did capture Beirut from the forces of the Ayyubid dynasty...

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 CE and 1270 CE and many...