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The tenth-century manuscript on parchment presented here, Latin 4787 in the collections of the National Library of France, contains the texts of three important early medieval bodies of law: the Lex Salica, the Lex Alamannorum, and the Lex Ribuariorum. The Lex Salica, or Salic Law, is the legal code of the Salian Franks, written around the time of Clovis (ruled 481-511), the Merovingian king who united all of the Franks under his rule. The code deals mainly with monetary compensation for injuries and contains provisions relating to the inheritance of land and succession to the throne. The Lex ...

Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651--95) is considered among the greatest writers of Mexico, a central figure of 17th-century Latin American literature, and an early feminist who championed the right of women to acquire knowledge. She was born on the hacienda of Nepantla to parents who were not married and placed in the custody of her maternal grandfather. In 1667, she joined the Order of Discalced Carmelites in Mexico City, where she was free to pursue her intellectual and literary interests. She owned a library of some 4,000 books, and became deeply learned in literature, philosophy, theology, ast...

This general map of the Middle East was published in London 1918. It shows Anatolia, Egypt, and the Arabian Desert. Despite the title, it is not focused on the region as a theater of battle. The political borders shown on the map are vague, except for the eastern border of Egypt and the Iranian and Russian frontiers. The map was issued at the end of World War I, before the division of Ottoman territories by the League of Nations. Armenia is shown to cover a large portion of Asia Minor. The Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf is marked as "Pirate Coast." The present-...

Xu Guangqi (1562--1633), a scholar and official, was a native of Shanghai. He came into contact with Christianity in 1596, later met the Jesuit missionaries Matteo Ricci and João da Rocha in Nanjing, and was baptized in 1603 under the name Paul. After receiving a jin shi degree in 1604, Xu became a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy. From 1604 to 1607 he worked continuously with Ricci, translating works on mathematics, hydraulics, astronomy, and geography, among them Euclid's Elements, entitled Ji he yuan ben. In 1628 Xu was recalled from retirement to the court and later was appointed to ta...

This scientific work is by Gao Yizhi (the Chinese name of the Italian Jesuit missionary Alfonso Vagnoni (1566--1640)). Vagnoni left Europe for China in 1603, arrived in Macao in 1605, and later was transferred to Nanjing, where he built a new church in 1611. The building of the church caused jealousy and displeasure among the Chinese officials and Buddhist and Taoist monks. In 1616 Shen Que, vice minister of the Nanjing Board of Rites, submitted two memorials to the imperial court, asking for the expulsion of the missionaries on the grounds that they were undermining the traditional ways of Ch...