Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Willibrord, Saint wĭˈlĭbrôrd [key], 658–739, English Benedictine missionary, called the Apostle to the Frisians. He was brought up at Ripon by St. Wilfrid and studied further (678–90) in Irela...

(Encyclopedia) Baronius, Caesar bərōˈnēəs [key], 1538–1607, Italian ecclesiastical historian, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He went to Rome c.1557 and soon came under the tutelage of St. Philip Neri....

(Encyclopedia) Yeats, W. B. (William Butler Yeats), 1865–1939, Irish poet and playwright, b. Dublin. The greatest lyric poet Ireland has produced and one of the major figures of 20th-century literature, Yeats was ...

(Encyclopedia) Henry IV, 1050–1106, Holy Roman emperor (1084–1105) and German king (1056–1105), son and successor of Henry III. He was the central figure in the opening stages of the long struggle between the ...

(Encyclopedia) Schism, Great, or Schism of the West, division in the Roman Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417. There was no question of faith or practice involved; the schism was a matter of persons and politics. Sho...

(Encyclopedia) naturalism, in literature, an approach that proceeds from an analysis of reality in terms of natural forces, e.g., heredity, environment, physical drives. The chief literary theorist on naturalism was...

(Encyclopedia) Keynes, John Maynard, Baron Keynes of Tilton kānz [key], 1883–1946, English economist and monetary expert, studied at Eton and Cambridge. Keynesian economics stands as the most influential eco...

(Encyclopedia) Williams, Roger, c.1603–1683, clergyman, advocate of religious freedom, founder of Rhode Island, b. London. A protégé of Sir Edward Coke, he graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1627 and...

(Encyclopedia) Walton, Sam (Samuel Moore Walton), 1918–92, American retailing executive, b. Kingfisher, Okla. After 17 years of operating franchise retail stores, he opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Roge...

(Encyclopedia) fable, brief allegorical narrative, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral thesis or satirizing human beings. The characters of a fable are usually animals who talk and act like people while retainin...