Curated category
People excommunicated by the Catholic Church
- Henry VIIIHenry VIII once dressed all in yellow, with a white feather in his bonnet, the day after he learned that Catherine of Aragon had died.
- NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte was born Napoleone di Buonaparte on the 15th of August 1769, on the island of Corsica, to a family of Italian origin.
- Elizabeth IAt Tilbury in Essex on the 8th of August 1588, Elizabeth I rode before her militias wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress.
- Frederick II, Holy Roman EmperorFrederick II was born in Jesi, near Ancona, on the 26th of December 1194, and the circumstances surrounding that birth were so extraordinary that rumors…
- Henry IV, Holy Roman EmperorHenry IV stood barefoot in the snow outside Canossa Castle for three days in January 1077, dressed in sackcloth, waiting for a pope to forgive him.
- John, King of EnglandJohn, King of England, was nicknamed John Lackland, or Jean sans Terre, because as the youngest son of Henry II he was not expected to inherit significant…
- Thomas CranmerThomas Cranmer was born on the 2nd of July 1489 in the village of Aslockton in Nottinghamshire, England, a younger son from a modest gentry family with deep…
- Victor Emmanuel IIVictor Emmanuel II rode into Rome on the 20th of September 1870, entering a city that no Italian king had controlled since the fall of the Western Roman…
- Martin LutherMartin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms on the 17th of April 1521, a German priest summoned to answer for his own books. The Emperor Charles V presided.
- John WycliffeJohn Wycliffe died in his church at Lutterworth, but the men who hated him would not let his body rest. In 1428, more than forty years after his death, his…
- Alexander AlesOn the 17th of May 1528, a Lutheran pastor named Patrick Hamilton stood before a fire in St Andrews. He was about to be burned alive for his religious…
- Josip Broz TitoJosip Broz, known to the world as Tito, once wrote a letter that read: "Stalin. Stop sending assassins to murder me. We have already caught five, one with a…
- Girolamo SavonarolaGirolamo Savonarola stood in the cathedral of Florence in December 1494 and made a promise to an entire city. Florence, he declared, would be "more glorious…
- Huldrych ZwingliHuldrych Zwingli celebrated his first Mass in his hometown of Wildhaus on the 29th of September 1506, a young priest who, by his own admission, had studied…
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-PérigordCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born on the 2nd of February 1754, and he died on the 17th of May 1838, having served every major French government…