Pope Gregory IX was head of the Catholic Church and the ruler of the Papal States from 19 March 1227 until his death in 1241. He is known for issuing the Decretales and instituting the Papal Inquisition, in response to the failures of the episcopal inquisitions established during the time of Pope Lucius III, by means of the papal bull Ad abolendam, issued in 1184.
Giles of Rome was a medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian and a friar of the Order of St Augustine, who was also appointed to the positions of prior general of his order and as Archbishop of Bourges. He is famed as being a logician, who produced a commentary on the Organon by Aristotle, and as the author of two important works: De ecclesiastica potestate, a major text of early-14th-century papalism, and De regimine principum, a guide book for Christian temporal leadership. Giles was styled Doctor Fundatissimus by Pope Benedict XIV.
The Schola Medica Salernitana was a medieval medical school, the first and most important of its kind. Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the south Italian city of Salerno, it was founded in the 9th century and rose to prominence in the 10th century, becoming the most important source of medical knowledge in Western Europe at the time.
Catherine of Bologna [Caterina de' Vigri] was an Italian Poor Clare, writer, teacher, mystic, artist, and saint. The patron saint of artists and against temptations, Catherine de' Vigri was venerated for nearly three centuries in her native Bologna before being formally canonized in 1712 by Pope Clement XI. Her feast day is 9 March.
Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was an Italian politician and diplomat from Florence, who was also a humanist scholar of the early Italian Renaissance and an anti-Semitic polemicist.
Angela of Foligno was an Italian Franciscan tertiary who became known as a mystic from her extensive writings about her mystical revelations. Due to the respect those writings engendered in the Catholic Church she became known as Theologorum Magistra, as first used by Maximilian Sandaeus, later cited by Bollandus in the Acta Sanctorum).
Paterius was a bishop of Brescia. He is known as a compiler, in particular of works of Pope Gregory I, for whom he had worked as a notary.
Tito Livio Frulovisi was a humanist scholar and author, who is best known for his biography of King Henry V of England in Latin, the Vita Henrici Quinti.
Ermolao Barbaro was an Italian prelate. He is sometimes referred to as "the elder" to distinguish him from his relative Ermolao Barbaro.
Gerard of Abbeville (1220-1272) was a theologian from the University of Paris. He formally became a theologian in 1257 and from then was known as an opponent of the mendicant orders, particularly in the second stage of the conflict, taking part in a concerted attack that temporarily affected their privileges.
William George Henderson was Dean of Carlisle from 1884 to his death in 1905.
Bartholomew of Trent was a Dominican hagiographer and papal diplomat. His Epilogum in gesta sanctorum, which set a new style in hagiography designed for practical use by preachers, specifically to inspire a lay audience with marvels and moral admonitions, was one of two main sources for Jacobus de Voragine's compendium, Golden Legend.
Jean Pierier of Mailly, called Jean de Mailly, was a Dominican chronicler working in Metz in the mid-13th century. In his Latin chronicle of the Diocese of Metz, Chronica universalis Mettensis, the fable of Pope Joan first appears in written form. He is also the compiler of the Abbreviatio in gestis sanctorum, a collection of legends about the saints which is an important forerunner of the Golden Legend.
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani is an Italian historian, specializing in the history of the papacy, cultural anthropology, and in the history of the body and the relationship between nature and society during the Middle Ages.
John Duns Scotus was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.
Agostino Dati, also known as Augustinus Datus or Dathus was a fifteenth-century orator, historian and philosopher best known for his grammatical textbook Elegantiolae. In 1489 Erasmus praised Dati as one of the Italian masters of eloquence.
Trota of Salerno was a medical practitioner and writer in the southern Italian coastal town of Salerno who lived in the early or middle decades of the 12th century. She was one of a group of women physicians who studied in medieval Italy, at the Schola Medica Salernitana, the first medical schools to allow women in Europe.
John of Morigny was a French Benedictine monk renowned for his work on the form of medieval ritual magic known as the Ars Notoria.
Ugolino di Vieri, also known as Verino, was an Italian notary and poet in the Republic of Florence, best remembered for his Latin dactylic hexameter. Born in Florence to a noble family of magistrates, he was trained under Cristoforo Landino, and served as a court poet to Lorenzo de' Medici. He was a humanist and humanities teacher to Pope Leo X, Francesco Pitti, and Crinitus. He was also given patronage by Girolamo Savonarola and the Piagnoni. He died in Florence.
De mirabilibus mundi, which also circulated under the titles De secretis naturae and Liber secretorum, is an anonymous book of natural magic written in Latin in the 13th century. Already by the end of the century some copies erroneously ascribed the work to Albert the Great, but this attribution became common only in the 15th century. De mirabilibus was later included in the anthology known as the Book of Secrets.
