Word: viii
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...summit leaders, along with European Commission President Gaston Thorn, held their first working session together Thursday evening during a dinner at London's St. James's Palace, an octagonal-turreted brick structure built for King Henry VIII. Seated in the Armoury, a second-story room lined with muskets, swords, pikes and other antique weaponry, the summiteers listened as Thatcher broached her notion of the political communiqué on democratic values. Thatcher felt strongly about the idea. "The Brits are treating this like it's the Magna Carta," said a U.S. official...
...potion that was intended for some Cardinals. That was in 1503, and the rumors have not let up yet. Veteran Vatican observers recall the stories of how Pope Pius X died of poisoning in 1914. Then there were the whispers about how poison killed Leo XIII in 1903, Pius VIII...
...condition of the Catholic Church during the Renaissance papacies is enough to leave Jews, Moslems and Protestants snickering and to send Catholics scurrying for their rosary beads. The indulgences of Innocent VIII, the depravity of Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia bought himself the papacy and used it to benefit his illegitimate children), and the wars of Julias II left Rome bankrupt. When Cardinal Giovanni d'Medici became Pope Leo X, declaring "God has given us the papacy--now let us enjoy it", he was desperate for money and decided to sell the only thing he could--pardons. Full-scale simonry continued...
...Popes from both ends of her pencil. She takes Alexander VI to task for granting an undeserved annulment to the French King, Louis XII, and thereby scandalizing the faithful. A few pages later she faults Clement VII for bowing to Habsburg political pressure and denying an annulment to Henry VIII of England...
Bellarmine cautioned Galileo that the new Copernican view of the heavens should be treated as no more than a hypothesis. For a while the scientist heeded that advice. But when an old friend, Maffeo Cardinal Barberini, became Pope Urban VIII in 1623, Galileo felt confident enough to write his most controversial and, ultimately, self-ruinous work: Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems...