Curated playlist
Italian Roman Catholic writers
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas's family held him prisoner for nearly a year. At nineteen he chose to join the Dominican preachers.
- Galileo GalileiGalileo watched four points of light move beside Jupiter. In January 1610 he realized they were moons circling it.
- Pope Leo XIIIPope Leo XIII stepped in front of a motion picture camera in 1898 and blessed it while the film ran. The inventor W. K. Dickson shot three short segments. In one, the pope sits on a throne. In another, he arrives in a horse-drawn carriage.…
- Francis of AssisiFrancis of Assisi crossed enemy lines during a crusade to meet a sultan. He returned unharmed.
- Pope Paul VIPope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Montini, once tried to talk a room of cardinals out of electing him. On the 20th of June 1963, the second day of the conclave, Cardinal Gustavo Testa lost his temper. He demanded that Montini's…
- Pope Pius XIIPope Pius XII was elected on the 2nd of March 1939, which happened to be his 63rd birthday. The cardinals needed only one day and three ballots to choose him. According to rumour, he asked for one more ballot to be sure the result was…
- Pope Pius XPope Pius X spent the days before his election insisting that he did not want the office. Before the conclave of 1903, the man then known as Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto is said to have remarked, "rather dead than pope." In one of the last…
- Giovanni BoccaccioGiovanni Boccaccio hated banking and disliked law just as much. He became a poet who wrote The Decameron.
- Pope Pius VIIPope Pius VII was crowned in 1800 wearing a papier-mâché tiara. French forces had confiscated the real papal tiaras.
- Pope John XXIIIPope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, left Venice for the conclave of 1958 carrying a return train ticket. He never used it. On the 28th of October 1958, at the age of 76, he was elected pope. The cardinals who chose him seemed…
- Lorenzo VallaLorenzo Valla, a priest, proved a famous papal land grant was a fraud. He used grammar and history.
- Giovanni Pico della MirandolaAt 23, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola offered to pay any scholar's way to Rome to debate his 900 theses.
- Pope Gregory IPope Gregory I, later honored as Saint Gregory the Great, once forced a dying monk to die alone because the man had hidden three gold pieces. After the death, Gregory had the body and the coins thrown onto a manure heap, with the words…