Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets When we hear the name of Richard the Lionheart, the chivalrous figure of the great warrior and famous king of England who fought in the Third Crusade against Saladin and who played a leading role in the adventures of legendary characters such as Robin im
According to popular superstition, it is good luck to be hit, usually on the head or shoulders, by a pigeons intestinal waste. Well, the explanation may have to be found in the election of Pope Fabian in 236. After the death of Pope Antero, martyred by Emperor Maximin Thracian who had reactivated t
Its capital was Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) which was converted into the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire in the year 330, after Constantine I the Great founded it in place of the old city of Byzantium, giving it its own name. It was the capital of the eastern Roman provinces, that is
Fighting against popular terrors, well anchored in the collective imagination, is almost in the realm of the impossible. They are all the more harmful as the risk of civil disorder, or even murder, within a rural population remains a well-founded concern. Yet this is what the Bishop of Lyon, Monsign