Women of the Romance Countries

The wealth which had come to Spain as the result of her conquests in Moorish territory, and, far more, the treasure which was beginning to pour into the country from the new Spa...

Spain, in all the days of her history, has been conspicuous among all other continental countries for the number of women who have wielded the sovereign power, and the reasons f...

When the long and unfortunate reign of Philip the Catholic came to an end on the eve of the seventeenth century, Spain, sadly buffeted by the rough waves of an adverse fortune,...

In the first half of the fifteenth century in Spain there was one woman, Isabella of Portugal, who deserves to be remembered for her many good qualities and for the fact that sh...

The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century in Italy was marked by no sudden changes of any kind. The whole country was thoroughly prostrate and under the contr...

The eleventh century, which culminated in the religious fervor of the First Crusade, must not on that account be considered as an age of unexampled piety and devotion. Good men...

In spite of the fact that Spain was an easy conquest for the Moors and that whole cities surrendered to the invaders without having struck a single blow in their own defence, it...

After the time of the good Queen Constance and with the growth of the Spanish monarchies, which in spite of all their internal turmoil and confusion were fast becoming more powe...

Near the close of the first half of the fourteenth century, after the terrible ravages of the great plague had abated, the people were prostrate with fear and terrorized by the...

If you drive along the beautiful shore of the Mergellina to-day, beneath the high promontory of Pausilipo, to the southwest of Naples, you will see there in ruins the tumbling r...

The tales of crime and sensuality which fill the annals of the sixteenth century are so repulsive that it is with a feeling of relief that we turn our attention to other picture...

The closing years of Gothic rule in Spain, and the various causes which finally led to the Moorish invasion, are somewhat involved in legend and mystery. But in spite of a scept...

In the early days of the thirteenth century, Pedro II. of Aragon had married the somewhat frivolous, yet devout, Maria of Montpellier, whose mother had been a Greek princess of...

Things went from bad to worse, as is their habit, and Italian life in the sixteenth century shows an increasing corruption and a laxity in public morals which were but the natur...

After the torpor and stagnation of the last two centuries, after the self-abasement of the people, and the apparent extinction of all spirit of national pride, the French invasi...

The age of Lorenzo de' Medici--that bright fifteenth century--in the history of the Italian peninsula was signalized by such achievement and definite result in the intellectual...

To one whose fancy roves to Spain in his dream of fair women there comes at once the picture of a dark-eyed beauty gazing out discreetly from behind her lattice window, listenin...

Although the fourteenth century in Italy was one of almost continuous warfare between the different contending states of the peninsula, the fact remains that the whole country w...

"Nine times now since my birth, the heaven of light had turned almost to the same point in its own gyration, when the glorious Lady of my mind--who was called Beatrice by many w...

It must have been part of the plan of the universe that the sunny southern provinces of France should have given to the world a gay, happy, and intellectual society wherein was...