Cardinal Richelieu
Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, 1st Duke of Richelieu and Fronsac referred to as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman and statesman. He was consecrated as a bishop in 1607 and was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622, King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624, he remained in office until his death in 1642. Cardinal de Richelieu was known by the title of the king's "Chief Minister" or "First Minister", he sought to crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a centralized state, his chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty, to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War that engulfed Europe. Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in an attempt to achieve his goals. While a powerful political figure, events like the Day of the Dupes show that in fact he much depended on the king's confidence to keep this power.
As alumnus of the University of Paris and headmaster of the College of Sorbonne, he renovated and extended the institution. Richelieu was famous for his patronage of the arts. Richelieu is known by the sobriquet l'Éminence rouge, from the red shade of a cardinal's clerical dress and the style "eminence" as a cardinal; as an advocate for Samuel de Champlain and of the retention of New France, he founded the Compagnie des Cent-Associés and saw the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye return Quebec City to French rule under Champlain, after the settlement had been taken by the Kirkes in 1629. This in part allowed the colony to develop into the heartland of Francophone culture in North America. Richelieu has been depicted in popular fiction most notably as a leading character in Alexandre Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers and its numerous film adaptations. Born in Paris, Armand du Plessis was the fourth of five children and the last of three sons: he was delicate from childhood, suffered frequent bouts of ill-health throughout his life.
His family was somewhat prominent, belonging to the lesser nobility of Poitou: his father, François du Plessis, seigneur de Richelieu, was a soldier and courtier who served as the Grand Provost of France, his mother, Susanne de La Porte, was the daughter of a famous jurist. When he was five years old, his father died fighting in the French Wars of Religion, leaving the family in debt. At the age of nine, young Richelieu was sent to the College of Navarre in Paris to study philosophy. Thereafter, he began to train for a military career, his private life seems to have been typical of a young officer of the era: in 1605, aged twenty, he was treated by Théodore de Mayerne for gonorrhea. Henry III had rewarded Richelieu's father for his participation in the Wars of Religion by granting his family the bishopric of Luçon; the family appropriated most of the revenues of the bishopric for private use. To protect the important source of revenue, Richelieu's mother proposed to make her second son, the bishop of Luçon.
Alphonse, who had no desire to become a bishop, became instead a Carthusian monk. Thus, it became necessary, he threw himself into studying for his new post. In 1606 Henry IV nominated Richelieu to become Bishop of Luçon; as Richelieu had not yet reached the canonical minimum age, it was necessary that he journey to Rome for a special dispensation from the Pope. This secured, Richelieu was consecrated bishop in April 1607. Soon after he returned to his diocese in 1608, Richelieu was heralded as a reformer, he became the first bishop in France to implement the institutional reforms prescribed by the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563. At about this time, Richelieu became a friend of François Leclerc du Tremblay, a Capuchin friar, who would become a close confidant; because of his closeness to Richelieu, the grey colour of his robes, Father Joseph was nicknamed l'Éminence grise. Richelieu used him as an agent during diplomatic negotiations. In 1614, the clergymen of Poitou asked Richelieu to be one of their representatives to the States-General.
There, he was a vigorous advocate of the Church, arguing that it should be exempt from taxes and that bishops should have more political power. He was the most prominent clergyman to support the adoption of the decrees of the Council of Trent throughout France. At the end of the assembly, the First Estate chose him to deliver the address enumerating its petitions and decisions. Soon after the dissolution of the Estates-General, Richelieu entered the service of King Louis XIII's wife, Anne of Austria, as her almoner. Richelieu advanced politically by faithfully serving the Queen-Mother's favourite, Concino Concini, the most powerful minister in the kingdom. In 1616, Richelieu was made Secretary of State, was given responsibility for foreign affairs. Like Concini, the Bishop was one of the closest advisors of Louis XIII
Association football
Association football, more known as football or soccer, is a team sport played with a spherical ball between two teams of eleven players. It is played by 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport; the game is played on a rectangular field called a pitch with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing goal. Association football is one of a family of football codes, which emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity; the modern game traces its origins to 1863 when the Laws of the Game were codified in England by The Football Association. Players are not allowed to touch the ball with hands or arms while it is in play, except for the goalkeepers within the penalty area. Other players use their feet to strike or pass the ball, but may use any other part of their body except the hands and the arms; the team that scores most goals by the end of the match wins.
If the score is level at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shootout depending on the format of the competition. Association football is governed internationally by the International Federation of Association Football, which organises World Cups for both men and women every four years; the rules of association football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863 and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time rugby football. The first written "reference to the inflated ball used in the game" was in the mid-14th century: "Þe heued fro þe body went, Als it were a foteballe"; the Online Etymology Dictionary states that the "rules of the game" were made in 1848, before the "split off in 1863". The term soccer comes from a slang or jocular abbreviation of the word "association", with the suffix "-er" appended to it; the word soccer was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of socca.
Within the English-speaking world, association football is now called "football" in the United Kingdom and "soccer" in Canada and the United States. People in countries where other codes of football are prevalent may use either term, although national associations in Australia and New Zealand now use "football" for the formal name. According to FIFA, the Chinese competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for which there is evidence. Cuju players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a ball through an opening into a net, it was remarkably similar to modern football. During the Han Dynasty, cuju games were standardised and rules were established. Phaininda and episkyros were Greek ball games. An image of an episkyros player depicted in low relief on a vase at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship Cup. Athenaeus, writing in 228 AD, referenced the Roman ball game harpastum. Phaininda and harpastum were played involving hands and violence.
They all appear to have resembled rugby football and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football. As with pre-codified "mob football", the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking. Other games included kemari in chuk-guk in Korea. Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world FIFA has recognised that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe; the modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the varying forms of football played in the public schools of England. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century AD; the Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Rugby and Shrewsbury schools.
They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football; some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School devised an influential set of rules; these ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse; the Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand.
Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under
Marron glacé
A marron glacé is a confection, originating in northern Italy and southern France consisting of a chestnut candied in sugar syrup and glazed. Marrons glacés are an ingredient in many desserts and are eaten on their own. Candied chestnuts appeared in chestnut-growing areas in northern Italy and southern France shortly after the crusaders returned to Europe with sugar. Cooking with sugar allowed creation of new confectioneries. A candied chestnut confection was served around the beginning of the 15th century in Piedmont, among other places, but marrons glacés as such, may have been created only in the 16th century. Lyon and Cuneo dispute the title for the addition of the glazing, or icing, that makes the real marron glacé; the earliest known records of a recipe for marron glacés were written during the XVI century by an Italian cook that worked for Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, by the French at the end of 17th century in Louis XIV's Versailles court. In 1667, François Pierre La Varenne, ten years' chef de cuisine to Nicolas Chalon du Blé, Marquis of Uxelles, foremost figure of the nouvelle cuisine movement of the time, published his best-selling book Le parfaict confiturier.
In it he describes "la façon de faire marron pour tirer au sec". "Tirer au sec" means, in a confectionery context, "to remove from the syrup". La Varenne's book was edited thirty times over seventy-five years; that book was not mentioned when the recipe, applied to cocoa beans, was in 1694 passed on to Jean-Baptiste Labat, a French missionary in the Martinique. That year Father Labat wrote in a letter of a recipe for candied and iced cocoa beans which he had tasted when dining at a M. Pocquet's. Another early citation, still in French, is from 1690. Towards the end of 19th century, Lyon was suffering from the collapse of the textile market, notably silk. In the midst of this crisis, Clément Faugier, a bridge and roadworks engineer, was looking for a way to revitalize the regional economy. In 1882 in Privas, Ardèche, he and a local confectioner set up the first factory with the technology to produce marrons glacés industrially. Three years he introduced the crème de marrons de l'Ardèche, a sweetened chestnut purée made from marrons glacés broken during the production process, flavoured with vanilla.
The same process was used by José Posada in Ourense in 1980. He was the first businessman in Spain to build a factory to produce Spanish marrons glacés using Galician raw chestnuts, which were exported to France to produce the confectionary. Posada used the Italian formula to produce the marrons glacés. Today, there are two factories; the French refer to chestnuts as marron. Both terms refer to the fruit of the sweet chestnut Castanea sativa. However, marron tends to denote a higher quality, larger fruit, more peeled; the fifth edition of the dictionary Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Revu, corrigé et augmenté published in 1798 states that a marron glacé is a confit marron, covered in caramel; the 1767 book L'agronome, ou dictionnaire portatif du cultivateur claimed that the best marrons came from the Dauphiné region in southeastern France, contained instructions for preparing marron glacés. Chestnuts are covered with a membrane, known as a pellicle or episperm, which adheres to the fruit's flesh and must be removed because of its astringency.
Marron nuts have a pellicle, "superficially attached to the nut", making it removable from the fruit. Some chestnuts have two cotyledons separated with deep grooves penetrating nearly all the way through the fruit. There are other grooves on the surface, which means more embedded pellicle that must be painstakingly removed. "Marron"-quality nuts do not have the separation into two cotyledons. In Italy, the term marron denotes a specific high-quality cultivar of Castanea sativa bearing oblong fruits with a shiny, reddish epicarp and exhibiting a small rectangular hilar scar; as with the French use of the term, there should be no division of the cotyledons. Marron-quality nuts for marrons glacés may be three or four times more expensive than the châtaigne because they have a lower yield as the husk contains only one or two nuts and the plants have sterile male flowers. Marrons glacés may be eaten on their own. Crème de marrons are a staple ingredient for other desserts, such as the Mont Blanc, ice creams, sweet sauce or garnish for other desserts.
In the short story Reginald by Saki, the narrator leaves Reginald "near a seductive dish of marrons glacés" at a garden-party in the vain hope that these delicacies will distract him from wreaking social havoc. In the Overture to Swann's Way, Marcel Proust refers to M. Swann bringing to Marcel's great-aunt on New Year's Day a little packet of marrons glacés. In Patrick Skene Catling's children's book, The Chocolate Touch, marrons glacés are among the candies listed as the sweet-toothed young protagonist's favorite confectionary delights. In the 1899 novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin, on a comfortable night Edna Pontellier dines alone, she describes ma
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions. The word "chateau" is a French word that has entered the English language, where its meaning is more specific than it is in French; the French word "chateau" denotes buildings as diverse as a medieval fortress, a Renaissance palace and a 19th-century country house. Care should therefore be taken when translating the French word château into English, noting the nature of the building in question. Most French châteaux are "palaces" or "country houses" and not "castles", for these the English word "chateau" is appropriate. Sometimes the word "palace" is more appropriate. To give an outstanding example, the Château de Versailles is so called because it was located in the countryside when it was built, but it does not bear any resemblance to a castle, so it is known in English as the Palace of Versailles.
In French where clarification is needed, the term château fort is used to describe a castle, such as Château fort de Roquetaillade. The urban counterpart of château is palais, which in French is applied only to grand houses in a city; this usage is again different from that of the term "palace" in English, where there is no requirement that a palace must be in a city, but the word is used for buildings other than the grandest royal residences. The expression hôtel particulier is used for an urban "private house" of a grand sort. A château is a "power house", as Sir John Summerson dubbed the British and Irish "stately homes" that are the British Isles' architectural counterparts to French châteaux, it is the personal badge of a family that, with some official rank, locally represents the royal authority. However, the quality of the residences could vary from royal châteaux owned by royalty and the wealthy elite near larger towns to run-down châteaux vacated by poor nobility and officials in the countryside isolated and vulnerable.
A château was supported by its terres, composing a demesne that rendered the society of the château self-sufficient, in the manner of the historic Roman and Early Medieval villa system. The open villas of Rome in the times of Pliny the Elder and Emperor Tiberius began to be walled-in, fortified in the 3rd century AD, thus evolving to castellar "châteaux". In modern usage, a château retains some enclosures that are distant descendants of these fortifying outworks: a fenced, closeable forecourt a gatehouse or a keeper's lodge, supporting outbuildings. Besides the cour d'honneur entrance, the château might have an inner cour, inside, in the private residence, the château faces a and discreetly enclosed park. In the city of Paris, the Louvre and the Luxembourg represented the original château but lost their château etymology, becoming "palaces" when the City enclosed them. In the U. S. the word château took root selectively, in the Gilded Age resort town of Newport, Rhode Island, the châteaux were called "cottages", north of Wilmington, Delaware, in the rich, rural "Château Country" centred upon the powerful Du Pont family, château is used with its original definition.
In Canada in English, château denotes a hotel, not a house, applies only to the largest, most elaborate railway hotels built in the Canadian Railroad golden age, such as the Château Lake Louise, in Lake Louise, the Château Laurier, in Ottawa, the Château Montebello, in Montebello and the most famous Château Frontenac, in Quebec City. Moreover, in other French-speaking European regions, such as Wallonia, the word Château is used with the same definition. In Belgium, a strong French architectural influence is evident in the seventeenth-century Château des Comtes de Marchin and the eighteenth-century Château de Seneffe. There are many estates with true châteaux on them in Bordeaux, but it is customary for any wine-producing estate, no matter how humble, to prefix its name with "Château". If there were any trace of doubt that the Roman villas of Aquitaine evolved into fortified self-contained châteaux, the wine-producing châteaux would dispel it. On the other hand, there are many striking châteaux in the Bordeaux region still depicting this Roman villa style of architecture, an example of this being Château Lagorce in Haux.
The Loire Valley is home to more than 300 châteaux. They were built between the 10th and 20th centuries, firstly by the French kings followed soon thereafter by the nobility. Alternatively, due to its moderate climate, wine growing soils and rich agricultural land, the Loire Valley is referred to as "The Garden of France"; the châteaux range from the large to more'human-scale' châteaux such as the Château de Beaulieu in Saumur or the medieval Château du Rivau close to Chinon which were built of the local tuffeau stone. The Château de Chenonceau is a French château spanning the River Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux in the Indre-et-Loire department of the Loire Valley in France, it is one
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Diane de Poitiers
Diane de Poitiers was a French noblewoman and a prominent courtier at the courts of King Francis I of France and his son, Henry II. She became notorious as King Henry's chief mistress and in this role she wielded much influence and power at the French Court, which continued until Henry was mortally wounded in a tournament accident, it was during that tournament. The subject of paintings by François Clouet as well other anonymous painters, Diane was immortalised in a statue by Jean Goujon, she was born the daughter of Seigneur de Saint Vallier and Jeanne de Batarnay. When still a girl, she was in the retinue of Anne de Beaujeu, eldest sister of King Charles VIII, a capable and intelligent woman who held the regency of France during his minority. Diane was educated according to the principles of Renaissance humanism, in music, manners, the art of conversation, dancing, she learned how to read Latin and Greek, became a keen hunter and sportswoman, remaining in good physical condition well into middle age.
At the age of 15, she was married to Louis de Brézé, seigneur d'Anet, 39 years her senior. He was a grandson of King Charles VII who served as a courtier of King Francis I, they had two daughters: Françoise de Brézé Louise de Brézé In 1524, her father, was accused of treason as an accomplice of the rebellious Connétable de Bourbon. His death sentence was commuted, but he would be confined to prison until the Treaty of Madrid in 1526; when her husband died in 1531 in Anet, Diane adopted the habit of wearing black and white, her personal trademark for the rest of her life. They were among the permitted colours of mourning, which, as a widow, she was required to wear, but they were the symbolic colours of the bright and dark sides of the moon, they played on her name, which derived from Diana, the name of the Roman moon goddess. Her keen interest in financial matters and legal shrewdness became apparent for the first time during this period, she retained her late husband's emoluments as governor and grand-sénéchal of Normandy, assuming herself the title of "sénéchale de Normandie".
She challenged in court the obligation to return her husband's appanages to the royal domain. The king allowed her to enjoy the appanage's income "until the status of those lands has been clarified"; when Louise de Brézé was still alive, she became lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. After the queen died, she served in the same capacity to Louise of Savoy and Eleanor of Austria. After the capture of Francis I by Charles V's troops during the battle of Pavia, the two eldest princes and Henry, were retained as hostages in Spain in exchange for their father; because the ransom was not paid in time, the two boys had to spend nearly four years isolated in a bleak castle, facing an uncertain future. Henry found solace by reading the knight-errantry tale Amadis de Gaula; the experience may account for the strong impression that Diane made on him, as the embodiment of the ideal gentlewomen he read about in Amadis. As his mother was dead, Diane gave him the farewell kiss when he was sent to Spain.
At the tournament held for the coronation of Francis's new wife, Eleanor of Austria, in 1531, while the Dauphin of France saluted the new queen as expected, Henry addressed his salute to Diane. In 1533, Henry married Catherine de' Medici. There had been opposition to the alliance, the Medicis being no more than upstarts in the eyes of many in the French court. Diane, approved of the choice of bride. Diane and Catherine were both descendants of the La Tour d'Auvergne family; as the future royal couple remained childless, concerned by rumours of a possible repudiation of a queen that she had in control, Diane made sure that Henry's visits to his wife's bedroom would be frequent. In another act of preservation of the royal family, Diane helped nurse Catherine back to health when she was ill; until 1551, Diane was in charge of the education of her and Henry's children, whose governor and governess Jean d'Humières and Françoise d'Humières, took their orders from her. While Henry and Catherine would produce 10 children together, despite the occasional affair with such as Philippa Duci, Janet Fleming, Nicole de Savigny, Diane de Poitiers would remain Henry's lifelong companion.
For the next 25 years, she would be the most powerful influence in his life and the most powerful woman in France. Based on allusions in their correspondence, it is believed that she became his mistress in 1534, when she was 35 years old and Henry was 15. A noted beauty, she maintained her good looks well into her fifties, her appearance was immortalized in sculpture and paintings. Only two signed paintings by François Clouet are known to exist, one being a painting of Diane; the subject of that painting shows her seated nude in her bath. She sat for other paintings of the time topless or nude, other times in traditional poses. In about 1549, an unknown artist designed a statue for her in which she represented the goddess Diana, it features her reclining nude body together with her two dogs and a stag and was entitled "Fountain of Diana". It is displayed in the Louvre; when Francis I was still alive, Diane had to compete at the court with Anne de Pisseleu, the king's favourite. After Francis' death, his son Henry II had Anne banned from government and confiscated the duchy of Estampes.
Diane possessed a sharp intellect and was so politically astute that King Henry II tr
Reformation
The Reformation was a movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Roman Catholic church – and papal authority in particular. Although the Reformation is considered to have started with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther in 1517, there was no schism between the Catholics and the nascent Lutheran branch until the 1521 Edict of Worms; the edict condemned Luther and banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas. The end of the Reformation era is disputed: it could be considered to end with the enactment of the confessions of faith which began the Age of Orthodoxy. Other suggested ending years relate to the Counter-Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia, or that it never ended since there are still Protestants today. Movements had been made towards a Reformation prior to Luther, so some Protestants in the tradition of the Radical Reformation prefer to credit the start of the Reformation to reformers such as Arnold of Brescia, Peter Waldo, Jan Hus, Tomáš Štítný ze Štítného, John Wycliffe, Girolamo Savonarola.
Due to the reform efforts of Huss and others in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, Utraquist Hussitism was acknowledged by both the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, although other movements were still subject to persecution, as were the including Lollards in England and Waldensians in Italy and France. Luther began by criticising the sale of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Treasury of Merit had no foundation in the Bible; the Reformation developed further to include a distinction between Law and Gospel, a complete reliance on Scripture as the only source of proper doctrine and the belief that faith in Jesus is the only way to receive God's pardon for sin rather than good works. Although this is considered a Protestant belief, a similar formulation was taught by Molinist and Jansenist Catholics; the priesthood of all believers downplayed the need for saints or priests to serve as mediators, mandatory clerical celibacy was ended. Simul justus et peccator implied that although people could improve, no one could become good enough to earn forgiveness from God.
Sacramental theology was simplified and attempts at imposing Aristotelian epistemology were resisted. Luther and his followers did not see these theological developments as changes; the 1530 Augsburg Confession concluded that "in doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Church Catholic", after the Council of Trent, Martin Chemnitz published the 1565–73 Examination of the Council of Trent in order to prove that Trent innovated on doctrine while the Lutherans were following in the footsteps of the Church Fathers and Apostles. The initial movement in Germany diversified, other reformers arose independently of Luther such as Zwingli in Zürich and Calvin in Geneva. Depending on the country, the Reformation had varying causes and different backgrounds, unfolded differently than in Germany; the spread of Gutenberg's printing press provided the means for the rapid dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. During Reformation-era confessionalization, Western Christianity adopted different confessions.
Radical Reformers, besides forming communities outside state sanction, sometimes employed more extreme doctrinal change, such as the rejection of the tenets of the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon with the Unitarians of Transylvania. Anabaptist movements were persecuted following the German Peasants' War. Leaders within the Roman Catholic Church responded with the Counter-Reformation, initiated by the Confutatio Augustana in 1530, the Council of Trent in 1545, the Jesuits in 1540, the Defensio Tridentinæ fidei in 1578, a series of wars and expulsions of Protestants that continued until the 19th century. Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, came under the influence of Protestantism. Southern Europe remained predominantly Catholic apart from the much-persecuted Waldensians. Central Europe was the site of much of the Thirty Years' War and there were continued expulsions of Protestants in central Europe up to the 19th century. Following World War II, the removal of ethnic Germans to either East Germany or Siberia reduced Protestantism in the Warsaw Pact countries, although some remain today.
Absence of Protestants however, does not imply a failure of the Reformation. Although Protestants were excommunicated and ended up worshipping in communions separate from Catholics contrary to the original intention of the Reformers, they were suppressed and persecuted in most of Europe at one point; as a result, some of them lived as crypto-Protestants called Nicodemites, contrary to the urging of John Calvin who wanted them to live their faith openly. Some crypto-Protestants have been identified as late as the 19th century after immigrating to Latin America; as a result Reformation impulses continued to affect the Latin Church well past the end of what is considered the Reformation era. The oldest Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum and Moravian Church, date their origins to Jan Hus in the early 15th century; as it was led by a Bohemian noble majority, recognised, for a time, by the Basel Compacts, the Hussite Reformation was Europe's first "Magisterial Reformation" because the ruling magistrates supported it, unlike the "Radical Reformation", which the state did not support.
Common factors that played a role during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation included the rise of nationalism, the
