JOHN


Meaning of JOHN in English

born Dec. 12, 1801, Dresden, Saxony died Oct. 29, 1873, Pillnitz, near Dresden king of Saxony (185473) who was passionately interested in law and in the arts. Under the name Philalethes he published a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (183949). John took part in the commission that drew up the constitution of 1831 and succeeded to the throne upon the death of his brother, King Frederick Augustus II. He was persuaded by his minister, Friedrich von Beust, to support Austria against Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War (1866). After Austria's defeat, however, he dismissed Beust and supported Bismarck's North German Confederation. During the Franco-German War (187071) Saxony supported Prussia. flourished 9th century, , Italy antipope during January 844. A Roman archdeacon well liked by the populace, John was elected by them on January 25 against the nobility's candidate, Sergius II. John withdrew to the Lateran Palace, his stronghold for a brief period. Concurrently, Sergius was consecrated pope at St. Peter's without imperial sanction. John was saved from being murdered by the noble faction through the intervention of Sergius, who then imprisoned him in a monastery. In the following June, Sergius was finally approved by the Frankish emperor Lothair I, and John's subsequent history is unknown. born c. 1250 died April 1313, Chteau Galliard, Normandy, Fr. also called John De Balliol, or Baliol king of Scotland from 1292 to 1296, the youngest son of John de Balliol and his wife Dervorguilla, daughter and heiress of the lord of Galloway. His brothers dying childless, he inherited the Balliol lands in England and France in 1278 and succeeded to Galloway in 1290. In that year, when the heiress to the kingdom of Scotland, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, died, Balliol became one of 13 competitors for the crown. He at once designated himself heir of the kingdom of Scotland, clearly anticipating the vindication of his claim, which was derived from his mother, daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon, brother to kings Malcolm IV and William I the Lion. His chief rival was Robert de Bruce (grandfather of King Robert I). The English king Edward I met the Scottish baronage at Norham in Northumberland and insisted that as adjudicator between the claimants he should be recognized as overlord of Scotland. His court of 104 persons discussed the rival titles for more than a year, but Balliol's simple claim by primogeniture ultimately prevailed. Edward I confirmed the decision on Nov. 17, 1292, and Balliol was enthroned at Scone on November 30, doing homage to Edward at Newcastle on December 26. John, however, soon proved rebellious; and when in June 1294 Edward demanded military aid from Scotland for his projected war in Gascony, the Scottish reaction was to conclude a treaty of mutual aid with the French. When Edward I sent an army to Gascony in January 1296, the Scots raided northern England. Edward reacted quickly; he took Berwick on March 30. Castle after castle fell to the English king, and at Montrose, John resigned his kingdom to Edward. He was stripped of his arms and knightly dignity in a ceremony which later earned him the nickname Toom (empty) Tabard. John was a prisoner in the Tower of London until July 1299, when papal intervention secured his release. Thereafter, he lived in Normandy. born Aug. 10, 1296, Luxembourg died Aug. 26, 1346, Crcy, France byname John of Luxembourg, or John of Bohemia, Czech Jan Lucembursk, or Jan S Cech king of Bohemia from 1310 until his death, and one of the more popular heroic figures of his day, who campaigned across Europe from Toulouse to Prussia. He was born the son of the future Holy Roman emperor Henry VII of the house of Luxembourg and was made count of Luxembourg in 1310. At about the same time, he also was named king of Bohemia, and on Feb. 7, 1311, he was solemnly crowned at Prague. When his father died in 1313, John was too young to succeed him as emperor and supported instead the election of Louis the Bavarian as Emperor Louis IV (1314). John subsequently sided with Louis in his struggle against Frederick of Austria (1322); but in later years he was estranged from the Emperor, especially after Louis's alliance with England against France in the Hundred Years' War. John's own sympathies strongly favoured the French. He had sent his own son, the future emperor Charles IV, to be reared in Paris, and he several times fought in the service of France. Throughout his reign, John campaigned variously against the Lithuanians and the Russians, against Hungary, England, and Austria, and in northern Italy and in the Tirol. He extended his Bohemian crownland northward, acquiring parts of Upper Lusatia (132029) and Silesia (132730), and also made himself master of much of Lombardy. His lavish expenditures, heavy taxation, and incessant peregrinations, however, cost him popularity at home and enhanced the power of the Bohemian nobility. John's continuing quarrels with the Emperor brought him into alliance with the papacy; and in 1346, in concert with Pope Clement VI, he secured the formal deposition of Louis IV and the election of his son Charles as king of the Romans (July 1346). He then went to help King Philip VI of France against the English but was killed at the Battle of Crcy. born Aug. 3, 1513, Tangermnde, Brandenburg died Jan. 13, 1571, Kstrin, Neumark, Brandenburg margrave of Brandenburg-Kstrin and a German Protestant ruler who remained loyal to the Catholic Habsburg emperors; he fought against his fellow Protestant princes and was conspicuously successful in the government of his territories. John was the younger son of Joachim I, elector of Brandenburg, who divided his territory between his two sons. John inherited the eastern lands, the so-called Neumark, while his brother, Joachim II, received the larger, older territories (1535). Although brought up as a strict Roman Catholic, John became a strict Protestant and joined the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, formed to defend the Reformist princes from the Emperor. In 1545, however, having received assurances from Charles that he would not be forced to relinquish his beliefs, he joined the emperor Charles V's side, and his troops contributed to the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League in 1547. After the Augsburg Interim religious agreement of 1548, resulting in the exile of numerous Protestants, John once more opposed the Emperor, but again, impelled by distrust of his fellow princes, returned to the imperial fold. In return, Charles appointed him imperial councilor. John's salary, coupled with wise government of his lands and successful speculations, enabled him to leave a capital of more than 500,000 guilders on his death. Since he did not leave sons, his territories reverted to his brother's son John George. born May 28, 1371, Rouvres, Burgundy died Sept. 10, 1419, Montereau, Fr. byname John The Fearless, French Jean Sans Peur second duke of Burgundy (140419) of the Valois line, who played a major role in French affairs in the early 15th century. The son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders, John was born in the ducal castle at Rouvres, where he spent the greater part of his childhood. In 1385 he married Margaret of Bavaria, and in the following decade his father initiated him into the arts of government and warfare, though he was not given any post of responsibility. Even in 1396, at the age of 24, when he became leader of the Burgundian crusade against the Ottoman Turks in defense of Hungary, his leadership was only nominal. The actual conduct of the expedition, which ended in the disastrous defeat of the crusaders on the battlefield of Nicopolis and the capture of John by the Turks (an adventure that earned him the epithet the Fearless), was entrusted to a group of councilors and military advisers appointed by Philip the Bold. John evidently benefited from the blunders of these commanders, for his subsequent career showed that he was the only one of the Valois rulers of Burgundy who knew how to handle an army. When John at last succeeded his father in 1404 as duke of Burgundy and count of Burgundy, Flanders, and Artois, he was 33 years old. John the Fearless spent most of his time and his considerable political and military energies in France, Paris being his normal place of residence and seat of government. His only significant personal participation as duke of Burgundy in major events outside France took place in 1408, when he led a Burgundian army to aid his beleaguered brother-in-law, the bishop of Lige, John of Bavaria, against the citizens of Lige, who were in open revolt. On the field of Othe, on Sept. 23, 1408, the men of Lige were decisively defeated, and Burgundian influence was extended over the city and over the bishopric of Lige. From the start, then, John found himself involved in French affairs and was in part responsible for provoking a civil war in France with a rival house, headed by his first cousin, the King's younger brother, Louis, duc d'Orlans. Each man sought control of the mad king Charles VI and his queen and of the capital Paris. While the notorious murder by Duke John of his cousin by hired assassins in 1407 enabled John to subdue Paris and the crown, the opposition to the Burgundians by Louis's followers and heirs continued. Their faction was named after its main supporter, Bernard VII, comte d'Armagnac. During the five years between 1413 and 1418, in which the Armagnacs succeeded in driving the Burgundians out of Paris, the internal situation in France was further complicated by a new English invasion led by the ambitious king, Henry V. Duke John was one of those French princes who, while pretending to do his best to reach the battlefield of Agincourt to give battle to the English (1415), was unaccountably delayed on the way. His intermittent negotiations with King Henry V did not, however, lead to a firm Anglo-Burgundian alliance, and in the autumn of 1419 John turned instead to the Armagnacs, in the hopes of arranging a truce or even making a firm peace settlement with their youthful leader, the dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII), in an alliance against the English. The two princes, each with 10 companions, met on the bridge of Montereau, some 50 miles southeast of Paris. As the diplomatic parley began, John the Fearless was struck down and killed during a dispute started by the Armagnacs, a political assassination that contemporary evidence shows was almost certainly carefully premeditated. John pursued aims similar to those of the other rulers of his day: the consolidation and extension of his own and his family's power. In spite of his lapses into violence, his love of intrigue, his hypocrisy, and his rashness, he was a successful diplomat and military leader; he was more dynamic and more of a reformer than his son Philip the Good and more cunning, though less scrupulous, than his father. Yet he has received less attention from historians than either of them. In the eye of history, especially French history, he has long been regarded as a traitor and assassin. There was, perhaps, a dark and sinister element in his character, but he lived in an age when vice, tyranny, and murder were the common properties of every ruler. If he wrought destruction in France, he also brought peace and prosperity to his own Burgundian lands. Richard Vaughan born c. 1148 died March 1237, Constantinople byname John Of Brienne, French Jean De Brienne count of Brienne who became titular king of Jerusalem (121029) and Latin emperor of Constantinople (123137). A penniless younger son of the French count Erard II of Brienne and Agnes of Montbliard, John passed most of his life as a minor noble until befriended by King Philip II Augustus of France, who arranged for him to marry Mary (Marie) of Montferrat, queen of the crusader state of Jerusalem, in 1210. John reached the Palestinian town of Acre on Sept. 13, 1210, married Mary the following day, and was crowned at Tyre on October 3. Mary died in 1212, and John was named regent for their infant daughter, Yolande de Brienne, who inherited the crown as Isabella II. In 1214 John married Princess Stephanie of Armenia, daughter of the Armenian king Leo II, and later had a son by her. As regent, John arranged a five-year truce with al-Malik al-'Adil, sultan of Egypt and Syria, in July 1212, and during the truce he persuaded Pope Innocent III to launch the Fifth Crusade in support of his daughter's kingdom. In 1218 he joined the crusading force from the West in an expedition against the Egyptian port of Damietta. After quarrelling with the crusade leader, the cardinal legate Pelagius, John left Egypt in February 1220, returning in July 1221 to witness the humiliating defeat of the crusaders and the abandonment of the siege of Damietta. Stephanie died in 1219; John then married Berengaria, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile, and in 1225 gave his daughter Isabella in marriage to the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II, trying to retain his rights as regent of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Immediately following the marriage, however, Frederick began to contest these rights. In 1228 John was invited to Constantinople to be regent and co-emperor with the young Baldwin II and arranged a match between Baldwin and his four-year-old daughter by Berengaria. Crowned in 1231, John helped fend off attacks by the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II and the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes, but shortly before his death he was forced to appeal to the West for help. born June 5, 1455, Denmark died Feb. 20, 1513, lborg, Den. king of Denmark (14811513) and Norway (14831513) and king (as John II) of Sweden (14971501) who failed in his efforts to incorporate Sweden into a Danish-dominated Scandinavian union. He was more successful in fostering the commercial development of Danish burghers to challenge the power of the nobility. John succeeded his father, Christian I, king of Denmark and Norway, in 1481, but only by agreeing to a stringent charter imposed by the Danish nobles to limit royal power. Although he was also recognized as sovereign by the Swedish state council (1483), the Swedish regent, Sten Sture the Elder, was able to postpone John's coronation as king of Sweden. In 1490 John divided the territories of Schleswig and Holstein with his brother Frederick (later king of Denmark as Frederick I). Ignoring the royal charter of 1483, John expanded the authority of his office and further offset the nobles' power by supporting the Danish merchant class against its chief rivals, the traders of the Hanseatic League (a north German trading confederation). His anti-Hanseatic policy was furthered by trade agreements with England, the Netherlands (1490), and the merchants of the south German house of Fugger. John was able to force Sten Sture to resign the regency of Sweden (1497) and was crowned king after allying himself with Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, in 1493. He then ordered the building of a navy to control the Baltic Sea but suffered a serious military defeat in 1500 in a peasant uprising in Dithmarschen (now in Germany). The defeat helped persuade dissident Swedish nobles to rebel and reinstall Sten Sture as regent of Sweden, but Norwegian and Danish uprisings against John's rule were suppressed. John's commercial treaty with England led to a war against Sweden and the Hanseatic city of Lbeck (151012), in which the new Danish navy scored repeated victories. born Dec. 24, 1167, Oxford died Oct. 18/19, 1216, Newark, Nottinghamshire, Eng. John of England, from an early 14th century illumination byname John Lackland, French Jean Sans Terre king of England from 1199 to 1216. In a war with the French king Philip II, he lost Normandy and almost all his other possessions in France. In England, after a revolt of the barons, he was forced to seal the Magna Carta (1215). original name Jnos Zpolya, or Szpolyai born 1487, Szepesvralja, Hung. died July 22, 1540, Szszebes king and counterking of Hungary (152640) who rebelled against the House of Habsburg. John began his public career in 1505 as a member of the Diet of Rkos; it was upon his motion that the Diet voted that no foreign prince would ever again be elected king of Hungary after the death of King Ulszl II, who also was king of Bohemia as Vladislas II. Appointed voivode (governor) of Transylvania in 1511, John brutally suppressed the peasant uprising of 1514 and, thereby, increased his popularity with the gentry. Consequently the second Diet of Rkos appointed him governor of the infant king Louis II. He failed to acquire the appointment as palatine (imperial governor) of Hungary, which was given to Istvn (Stephen) Bthory in 1519, and dissension between the two contributed to the Turkish conquest of Belgrade two years later. When the Ottoman sultan Sleyman I the Magnificent invaded Hungary in 1526, and the young king Louis was slain at the Battle of Mohcs in August that year, John was accused, probably without justification, of deliberate treachery for failing to reach the king in time with a relief army. Nevertheless, the last Turkish regulars had left Hungary by the end of October; and, with the Turks gone, one party of nobles elected John king (Nov. 10, 1526); but Louis II's brother-in-law, Ferdinand, archduke of Austria (and later Holy Roman emperor as Ferdinand I), also claimed the throne in virtue of the Habsburg-Jagiello family compact, and his adherents crowned him, too, in 1527. An internecine struggle, in which Sleyman supported John, went on until 1538, when by the secret Treaty of Nagyvrad, Hungary was divided: Ferdinand took western Hungary with Croatia; John had the remaining two-thirds, with the royal title and his capital at Buda, and Ferdinand was to succeed on John's death. John, however, remarried and had a son, John Sigismund (154071), whom on John's death his adherents elected king. Ferdinand asserted his claim, but Sleyman then, posing as John Sigismund's protector, himself occupied most of central and southern Hungary, leaving Ferdinand with only the western portion. born June 30, 1468, Meissen, near Dresden, Saxony died Aug. 16, 1532, Schweinitz, near Wittenberg, Wittenberg byname John The Steadfast, German Johann Der Bestndige elector of Saxony and a fervent supporter of Martin Luther; he took a leading part in forming alliances among Germany's Protestant princes against the Habsburg emperors' attempts at forced reconversion. After his father's death in 1486, John ruled the lands of the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty of Saxony jointly with his older brother Frederick III the Wise, succeeding his brother as elector in 1525. A firm Lutheran, John immediately created the League of Gotha with Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, and shortly thereafter, the Torgau League with Germany's northern princes. For the first time, German Lutheran rulers were united in a firm alliance. He was leader of the church reformers at the Diet of Speyer (1526) and obtained concessions on the religious question from the emperor Charles V. When these concessions were rescinded at the next diet in 1529, John became one of the original Protestants by signing the minority protest. He accepted the Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530) and in the winter of 153031 was one of the key figures in the formation of the Schmalkaldic League to protect Protestant interests. Charles V, who needed the reformers' aid against the Turks, consequently agreed to the religious Peace of Nrnberg (1532). At the time of John's death, electoral Saxony, staunchly Lutheran, had become the leading Protestant state in Germany.

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