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Medici, Lorenzo de', 1492–1519, duke of Urbino

(Encyclopedia)Medici, Lorenzo de', 1492–1519, duke of Urbino (1516–19); son of Piero de' Medici. His uncle, Pope Leo X, made the youthful Lorenzo duke of Urbino. After his early death, however, Urbino reverted ...

Schism of East and West

(Encyclopedia)Schism of East and West, division between the Orthodox Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church. See Christianity; Ferrara-Florence, Council of; Leo IX, Saint; Lyons, Second Council of; papacy; Ph...

Lombards

(Encyclopedia)Lombards lŏmˈbərdz, –bärdz [key], ancient Germanic people. By the 1st cent. a.d. the Lombards were settled along the lower Elbe. After obscure migrations they were allowed (547) by Byzantine Emp...

Piccolomini, Ottavio

(Encyclopedia)Piccolomini, Ottavio ōt-täˈvyō pēk-kōlôˈmēnē [key], 1599–1656, Italian general in the service of the Holy Roman emperor during the Thirty Years War (1618–48). He came of a distinguished ...

Frederick William III

(Encyclopedia)Frederick William III, 1770–1840, king of Prussia (1797–1840), son and successor of Frederick William II. Well-intentioned but weak and vacillating, he endeavored to maintain neutrality in the Nap...

Henry the Lion

(Encyclopedia)Henry the Lion, 1129–95, duke of Saxony (1142–80) and of Bavaria (1156–80); son of Henry the Proud. His father died (1139) while engaged in a war to regain his duchies, and it was not until 1142...

Epirus, despotate of

(Encyclopedia)Epirus, despotate of. When, in 1204, the army of the Fourth Crusade set up the Latin Empire of Constantinople on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, an independent Greek state emerged in Epirus under M...

Carolingians

(Encyclopedia)Carolingians kărəlĭnˈjēənz [key], dynasty of Frankish rulers, founded in the 7th cent. by Pepin of Landen, who, as mayor of the palace, ruled the East Frankish Kingdom of Austrasia for Dagobert ...

papacy

(Encyclopedia)CE5 papacy pāˈpəsē [key], office of the pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is pope by reason of being bishop of Rome and thus, according to Roman Catholic belief, successor in the see ...

Torcello

(Encyclopedia)Torcello tōrchĕlˈlō [key], village, on a small island of the same name in the Lagoon of Venice, NE Italy, NE of Venice. A prosperous town until the early Middle Ages, it has a Byzantine cathedral ...