Definitions

Scythian religion appears to be an amalgam of belief in a pantheon of gods grafted to more ancient animal reverence and shamanistic practice. According to their burial finds, the Scythians appear to have had a deep affinity with...

The New Model Army was created in February 1645 by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) that turned England from a monarchy to a republic. It was a professional army in terms of its personnel, training...

Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) was a German priest, monk, and theologian who became the central figure of the religious and cultural movement known as the Protestant Reformation. Even though earlier reformers had expressed Luther's...

The Kingdom of Mitanni, known to the people of the land, and the Assyrians, as Hanigalbat and to the Egyptians as Naharin and Metani, once stretched from present-day northern Iraq, down through Syria and into Turkey and was among the...

The Ghent Altarpiece, otherwise known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is a painted panel altarpiece created in 1432 for the Vijd Chapel in the church of St. John the Baptist, now St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. The...

Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon) is one of the oldest cities in the world, dating back over 4,000 years, during which it has been inhabited almost continuously. It was one of the most important, and at times the dominant, city of Phoenicia...

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine is a monument of 11th-century architecture, painting, and mosaic work. The cathedral was named after Hagia Sophia and, as the main temple of the state, played the role of its spiritual...

Jan Žižka (l. c. 1360 – 1424) was a Czech general and one of the most brilliant tacticians in military history. In the Hussite Wars (1419 to c. 1434), he was undefeated as the leader of the Hussites against the Catholic loyalists...

The Hussite Wars (1419 to c. 1434) were a series of conflicts fought in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) between followers of the reformer Jan Hus and Catholic loyalists toward the end of the Bohemian Reformation (c. 1380 to c...

The Bohemian Reformation (c. 1380 to c. 1436) was the first concerted effort by Catholic clergy to reform the abuses and corruption of the medieval Church. Bohemian clerics and theologians called for reform and, like later...