Jews in the Spain of the Middle Ages, though never popular, were permitted to convert from Judaism to Christianity; rigorous tests conducted by priests followed equally stern…
Category: Jewish History
The Inquisition
This was a Catholic tribunal founded on a temporary basis in France and Germany. Its purpose was to seek out heresy, prosecute and punish it. In the thirteenth…
Alexander II (killed) & Alexander III (survived) of Russia
Alexander II, the second son of Nicholas I was born in 1818. It is true but sad to say that the only significant reforms made in Russia in…
Appeasement
A bit of a dirty word since 1938 but it shouldn’t be. There is enough appeasement going on now over the disgusting situation in Syria to fill the…
Pope Pius the Twelfth
Eugenio Pacelli was born in 1876, and was elected Pope in 1939. He came from a familyprominent for its loyal service to the Vatican. He was ordained priest…
Heydrich and the massacre at Lidice
My new wife and I settled into our new home in a country lane at Santa Úrsula on the island of Tenerife in 1980. In a small cottage…
The Emperor Constantine (known as ‘the Great’)
Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus was born around 274 AD. His was a patrician family in Rome and his father was Constantius I who died in the year 306,…
The Final Solution
Researchers have tried to find cogent reasons for Hitler’s pathological hatred of the Jews. Nothing in his childhood in Austria happened which might have sown the…
Feminism – a 20th century phenomenon?
There will I suppose be frenzied and furious cries from members of the ‘gentler sex’ after (not) reading this post in General-History. The title will be enough to…