Robert Johnson was an English composer and lutenist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras. He is sometimes called "Robert Johnson II" to distinguish him from an earlier Scottish composer. Johnson worked with William Shakespeare providin...

Wallenstein was a Bohemian soldier and politician who gave his services (an army of 30,000 to 100,000 men) during the Danish Period of the Thirty Years' War to Ferdinand II for no charge except the right to plunder the territories that he c...

Girolamo Frescobaldi was a major composer from the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods whose keyboard works rank among the most important of his time. His sacred and secular vocal music is generally assessed to be less important but...

Hugo Grotius, also known as Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christ...

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. This volume presents new translations of Ca...

Balthazar Gerards (1557-1584) was the assassin of the Dutch independence leader, William the Silent. Gerards was born in Vuillafans, France, at number 3 in the street now called Rue Gerard. He came from a Roman Catholic family with 11 child...

Frederick Henry, prince of Orange; son of William the Silent by Louise de Coligny. He became stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands upon the death (1625) of his brother Maurice of Nassau. As a minor prince heading a federati...

Tirso de Molina, pseudonym of Gabriel Téllez, one of the outstanding dramatists of the Golden Age of Spanish literature. The most powerful dramas associated with his name are two tragedies, El burlador de Sevilla (“The Seducer of Seville...

Caspar Barlaeus was a Dutch polymath, humanist theologian, poet, and historian. Born Caspar (Kaspar) van Baerle in Antwerp, Barlaeus' parents fled the city when it was occupied by Spanish troops shortly after his birth. They settled in Zal...

The Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) was an intermittent conflict between the kingdoms of Spain and England that was never formally declared. The war was punctuated by widely separated battles, and began with England's military expedition in 1...

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero is considered the major Dutch poet of his generation, particularly for his spontaneous love sonnets. The first Dutch master of comedy, Bredero was an important innovator; he drew upon classical elements as well as...

Cardinal Richelieu was extremely intelligent and at the age of nine was sent to College de Navarre in Paris. In 1602, at age seventeen he began studying theology seriously. In 1606 he was appointed Bishop of Luçon, and in 1622 Pope Gregory...

Jacques Specx was a Dutch merchant, who founded the trade on Japan and Korea in 1609. Jacques Specx received the support of William Adams to obtain extensive trading rights from the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu on August 24, 1609, which allowed h...

Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and is often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claud...

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General in the Dutch East Indies. He was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, for provi...