Religion

From their origins in the 13th century until the suppression of the Sufis by Atatürk, the whirling dervishes symbolized their beliefs through their ecstatic dances.

James I was a firm believer in Christian unity; Dorothy Boyd Rush describes his distrust of extremists, Catholic or Protestant.

The eighteenth-century partitions and nineteenth-century uprisings worsened the livelihood of Jews in Poland, writes Adam Zamoyski.

By the eighteenth century, writes Adam Zamoyski, four fifths of the world's Jews lived in Poland.

During the Reformation, writes Christine King, Tudor agents demolished many venerated shrines, and made great use of the frauds and trickeries that they claimed to have detected.

G.R. Potter describes how one of the Reformers active in Berne during the early sixteenth century was also a painter and man of erratic genius.

The Charity school movement in the eighteenth century, writes L.W. Cowie, was the first attempt to provide for the education of the children of the poor in England.

The author of the History of My Own Time was both a keen churchman and a compulsive writer. Mary Delorme describes how Burnet's style, whether graphic, humorous or pompous, was usually as free and expansive as the historian himself.

M.L. Clarke describes how, from the seventh century onwards, Rome attracted from Britain faithful pilgrims and churchmen with business to transact.

In the New Testament layers of tradition overlay accounts of John the Baptist. J.K. Elliott describes how these accounts were imposed by writers who altered historical details to suit their own doctrinal ends.