Hey all,
I'm writing a paper which is partly a biography (Sabbatai Zevi, who I highly recommend reading up on if you're into religious history). Part of the introduction is just a quick sketch of his life - birth, family, death, etc - events that are pretty much undisputed. How should stuff like this, for which I have 4 or 5 sources that all agree, be cited? Should I pick one source and go with it, or what?
For that kind of information; things you would expect to find in an encyclopedia, I would not bother with any citations.
An exception to this would be if our understanding of his biography- or brief life sketch- has radically changed any time in the past twenty years through new sources or ways of reading old sources. Then you might need a citation and some acknowledgement.