elector of Brandenburg who, while supporting the Holy Roman emperor, tolerated the Reformation in his lands and resisted imperial efforts at re-Catholicization.
Italian mystic, theologian, biblical commentator, philosopher of history, and founder of the monastic order of San Giovanni in Fiore. He developed a philosophy of history according to which history develops in three ages of increasing spirituality: the ages of the ...
British philosopher, author, teacher, and radio personality. He was one of Britain's most colourful and controversial intellectual figures of the 1940s. A pacifist and an agnostic until the last years of his life, a champion of unpopular causes and a ...
queen of Castile (from 1504) and of Aragon (from 1516), though power was exercised for her by her husband, Philip I, her father, Ferdinand II, and her son, the emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain).
countess of Provence and queen of Naples (1343-82) who defended her claim as well as that of the house of Anjou to the throne of Naples, only to lose it to Charles of Durazzo (Charles III of Naples). Beautiful and ...
queen of Naples whose long reign (1414-35) was marked by a succession of love affairs, by continual intrigues, and by power struggles over her domain between the French house of Anjou and that of Aragon, in Spain.
national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orleans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years' War. Captured ...
legendary female pontiff who supposedly reigned, under the title of John VIII, for slightly more than 25 months, from 855 to 858, between the pontificates of Leo IV (847-855) and Benedict III (855-858). It has subsequently been proved that a ...
port city and capital, Paraiba estado ("state"), northeastern Brazil. It is situated at 148 feet (45 m) above sea level, on the right bank of the Paraiba do Norte River, 11 miles (18 km) above its mouth and north of ...
(species Coix lacryma-jobi), leafy, jointed-stemmed annual grass of the family Poaceae, native to tropical Asia and naturalized in North America. It is 1 to 3 m (3 to nearly 10 feet) tall. Job's tears receives its name from the hard, ...
book of Hebrew scripture that is often counted among the masterpieces of world literature. It is found in the third section of the biblical canon known as the Ketuvim ("Writings"). The book's theme is the eternal problem of unmerited suffering, ...
Brazilian songwriter and composer who transformed the extroverted rhythms of the Brazilian samba into an intimate music, the bossa nova ("new wrinkle" or "new wave"), which became internationally popular in the 1960s.
margrave of Moravia and Brandenburg and for 15 weeks German king (1410-11), who, by his political and military machinations in east-central Europe, played a powerful role in the political life of Germany.
Icelandic poet, translator, journalist, dramatist, and editor whose versatility, intellectual integrity, and rich humanity established him as a national figure.
supreme authority in control of horse racing and breeding in Great Britain, formed about 1750 to regulate racing at Newmarket, Suffolk, and support the sport generally. Its Turf Board, consisting of nine Jockey Club stewards, coordinates long-term policy as opposed ...
French dramatist and poet, one of the seven members of the literary circle known as La Pleiade, who applied the aesthetic principles of the group to drama.
city, administrative headquarters of Jodhpur district, Rajasthan state, northwestern India. It was founded in 1459 by Rao Jodha, a Rajput (one of the warrior rulers of the historic region of Rajputana), and served as the capital of the former princely ...
(Japanese: Way to the Pure Land), devotional sect of Japanese Buddhism stressing faith in the Buddha Amida and heavenly reward. See Pure Land Buddhism.
location of one of the world's largestfully steerable radio telescopes, which has a reflector that measures 76 metres(250 feet) in diameter. The telescope is located with other smaller radio telescopes at Jodrellbank (formerly Jodrell Bank), about 32 kilometres (20 miles) ...
(1232), in Japanese history, administrative code of the Kamakura shogunate (central military government) by which it pledged just and impartial administration of law to its vassal subjects. The shikimoku, or formulary (called Joei because of its promulgation during the year ...
second of 12 Old Testament books that bear the names of the Minor Prophets. The Jewish canon lumps all together as The Twelve and divides Joel into four chapters; Christian versions combine chapters 2 and 3.
city, capital of Pohjois-Karjalan laani (province), southeastern Finland, at the mouth of the Pielisjoki (river), southeast of Kuopio. Chartered in 1848, the city is a rail junction and centre for lumber shipment and has connections by steamship, highway, and air. ...
cataract of the Sharavati River, western Karnataka state, southwestern India. The Jog Falls are located 18 miles (29 km) upstream from Honavar at the river's mouth on the Arabian Sea. As it plunges 830 feet (253 m) into a chasm, ...
Japanese sculptural style of the Early Heian period (794-897). Works of Buddhist sculpture are the most numerous monuments of the period. The figures are columnar icons, erect, symmetrical, and perfectly balanced, carved from single blocks of wood and displaying a ...
form of running at an easy pace, particularly popular from the 1960s in the United States. There, an estimated 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 joggers sought fitness, weight loss, grace, physical fulfillment, and relief from stress by jogging. Joggers expend from 10 ...
Palestinian Jewish sage, founder of an academy and an authoritative rabbinic body at Jamnia, who had a decisive influence on the continuance and development of traditional Judaism after the destruction of the Temple (AD 70).
Bohemian author of the remarkable dialogue Der Ackermann aus Bohmen (c. 1400; Death and the Ploughman), the first important prose work in the German language.
Danish botanist and geneticist whose experiments in plant heredity offered strong support to the mutation theory of the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries (that changes in heredity come about through sudden, discrete changes of the heredity units in germ cells). ...
silicate mineral in the pyroxene family. It has a molecular formula of Ca(Mn,Fe)Si2O6. A calcium-manganese-iron silicate mineral, johannsenite is produced either by metamorphic processes in altered limestones or is associated with pyrite or other minerals in copper, lead, and zinc ...
Swedish-born ballet dancer and principal teacher at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, who made a fundamental contribution to the development of the Russian style of classical ballet.
nonexistent pope. A confusion in the numbering of popes named John after John XIV resulted because Marianus Scotus and other 11th-century historians mistakenly believed that there had been a pope named John between antipope Boniface VII and the true John ...
