Joseph Justus Scaliger was considered to be the foremost scholar in sixteenth-century Europe, referred to as "the light of the world", "the sea of sciences" and similar epithets, and it is to him that we owe a "modern" definition of chronol...

Giovanni Maria Artusi was an Italian theorist, composer, and writer. Artusi was one of the most famous reactionaries in musical history, fiercely condemning the new style developing around 1600, the innovations of which defined the early Ba...

William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and consort music....

El Greco was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin. El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the c...

Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, reigned over Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. Mary, the only surviving legitimate child of King James V of Scotland, was six days old when her father d...

Saint John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) was a major figure in the Catholic Reformation, a Spanish mystic and Carmelite friar born at Fontiveros, a small village near Ávila. He is renowned for his cooperation with Saint Teresa of Avila...

Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira (or Neyra) was a Spanish navigator. Born in Congosto, in León, he was the nephew of Lope García de Castro, viceroy of Peru. He is best known for the two voyages of discovery he led into the Pacific in 1567 and 159...

Giovanni Leonardo di Bona or Giovanni Leonardo da Cutri, known as Il Puttino (Italian Small Child), was an early Italian chess master. Giovanni Leonardo was born in Cutro, Calabria. He studied law in Rome. In 1560, he lost a match to Ruy...

Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar also known as Akbar the Great was the son of Nasiruddin Humayun whom he succeeded as ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1605, and the grandson of Babur who founded the Mughal dynasty. On the eve of his death i...

Nicolaus Copernicus: The Ptolemaic system of the universe, with the earth at the center, had held sway since antiquity as authoritative in philosophy, science, and church teaching. Following his precise observations of the heavenly bodies,...

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603,...

The scientific revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed views of society and nature. The...

William Gilbert, also known as Gilberd, was an English physician, physicist and natural philosopher. He was an early Copernican, and passionately rejected both the prevailing Aristotelian philosophy and the Scholastic method of university t...

The Council of Trent is reckoned by the Roman Catholic Church to be the Nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the universal church. It was held from December 13, 1545, to December 4, 1563 in the Italian city of Trent. Although called an Ecumenic...

Túpac Amaru or Thupa Amaro was the last indigenous monarch (Sapa Inca) of the Neo-Inca State, remnants of the Inca Empire in Vilcabamba, Peru. He was executed by the Spanish. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s...