Sublime

The most important surviving Cathar tract is The Book of the Two Principles, which was written in the 1240s, probably by John of Lugio, a Cathar from the Albanensian95 school, which was part of the absolutist church of Desenzano. It is ‘the most decisive evidence that the Cathars were evolving their own ideas about the nature of Dualism’,96 and wer

Elsewhere in Europe, other courts were also beginning to employ skilled cryptanalysts, such as Philibert Babou, cryptanalyst to King Francis I of France. Babou gained a reputation for being incredibly persistent, working day and night and persevering for weeks on end in order to crack an intercepted message. Unfortunately for Babou, this gave the k

Paper was made in Provence, so Farolfi may well have supplied himself locally, and we also know that the island of Mallorca exported it to nearby Marseille. But most Florentine merchants looked to a small town in central Italy, two hundred kilometres to their east, called Fabriano.

Pour avoir émis des opinions bien moins hardies que celles d'Érasme, mais parce qu'ils les avaient exprimées brutalement, d'autres sont montés sur le bûcher ; les papes et les princes de l'Église, les rois et les ducs se disputaient au contraire le privilège de lire ses livres et le comblaient d'honneurs et de présents. C'est grâce à cette aptitude

In 2011 a newly rediscovered painting by Leonardo surprised the art world. Each decade, a dozen or so pieces are proposed or pushed as having a reasonable claim to be previously unknown Leonardos, but only twice before in modern times had such assertions ended up generally accepted: the Benois Madonna oil painting in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage that

Yet Duveen told his doubting friends, “Not only will Mellon buy from me but he will buy only from me.” For several years he tracked his prey, learning the man’s habits, tastes, phobias. To do this, he secretly put several of Mellon’s staff on his own payroll, worming valuable information out of them. By the time he moved into action, he knew Mellon