What is a wiseman? What is a prophet? Someone with a strange, unflappable demeanor. Someone who speaks in cryptic koans, words whose meanings take years to unravel. Someone who has confronted death, God, sin, and the immortal soul. Someone unfit for this world, but too brilliant to depart it. Someon[...]

Exploiting the turbulence and strife of sixteenth-century France, the House of Guise arose from a provincial power base to establish themselves as dominant political players in France and indeed Europe, marrying within royal and princely circles and occupying the most important ecclesiastical and mi[...]