A world lit only by fire: the medieval mind and the Renaissance : portrait of an age
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1503
Julius II: the Warrior Pope
New universities include Wittenberg and Frankfurt an der Oder
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa
1505
Death of Russia’s Ivan the Great
1506
First stone of St. Peter’s Basilica laid
1507
Violent death of Cesare Borgia
Waldseemüller christens “America”
Martin Luther ordained a Catholic priest
1508
First English translation of Thomas à Kempis’s De imitatione Christi
1509
Aged 18, Henry VIII becomes England’s king
Humanist Erasmus: Encomium moriae
His books encourage critics of Rome
Beginnings of slave trade in America
Judenspiegel: an eruption of anti-Semitism
1510
Da Vinci discovers principle of water turbine
Two speakers of the House of Commons beheaded
Da Vinci’s Anatomy
1512
Michelangelo completes Sistine Chapel ceiling
1513
Balboa sights the Pacific
Ponce de Leon reaches Florida
Machiavelli’s Il principe, inspired by Cesare Borgia
1514
Copernicus postulates the solar system in De hypothesibus … commentariolus
Heroides Christianae: humanist blasphemy
1515
Raphael named chief architect of St. Peter’s
England’s Thomas Wolsey made cardinal and lord chancellor
1516
More’s Utopia
Birth of the future Bloody Mary
Raphael: The Sistine Madonna
1517
Wolsey hangs 60 May Day rioters
Strangling of Cardinal Petrucci
Turks sack Cairo
Pope Leo X’s jubilee sale of indulgences
Martin Luther brands Tetzel a fraud
Luther posts Ninety-five Theses on church door
1518
He defies Cardinal Cajetan
Titian: The Assumption
1519
Luther vs. Eck
Erasmus refuses to support Luther
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian dies
Spain’s King Carlos becomes Emperor Charles V
Magellan leaves to sail around the world
1520
San Julián mutiny against Magellan
He finds and negotiates Strait of Magellan
Rome hurls Exsurge Domine at Luther
He publishes Adel deutscher Nation
The pope excommunicates him
Aleandro’s witchhunt of Erasmus begins
Henry VIII and France’s Francis I meet on Field of the Cloth of Gold
Erasmus is Europe’s most popular author
German gunsmith invents the rifle
Scipione del Ferro solves cubic equation
1521
Diet of Worms; Luther becomes a fugitive
Germany rises in support of him
Magellan crosses the Pacific
He dies in Philippines
1522
The voyage of circumnavigation ends, vindicating Copernicus
Protestantism sweeps northern Europe
Archbishop slays Von Sickingen in battle
1524
Peasants’ revolt in Germany
1525
Tyndale’s translation of New Testament
Jakob Fugger II dies worth 6 million guilders
1527
Second sack of Rome; end of Renaissance
1528
Plague sweeps England
1529
Fall of Wolsey; More made lord chancellor
1533
Henry VIII divorces Catherine, marries pregnant Anne Boleyn; she gives birth to the future Elizabeth I
1534
Rabelais: Gargantua
Defiant Luther translates Bible into German
1535
Sir Thomas More beheaded for treason
1536
Pietro Aretino’s pornographic Ragionamenti
Queen Anne Boleyn found guilty of adultery and incest and beheaded
Tyndale burned at the stake
Death of Erasmus; his books banned
Calvin: Christianae religionis institutio
* Because of the complex method used to determine when Easter would fall each year, Easter tables reckoned the future dates of the celebration. Easter in turn determines the dates of all other movable feasts in the Christian calendar.
* This is a rough conversion. Providing modern equivalents of original currencies is extremely difficult. The sort of basic consumption items for which we have figures—e.g., grain, oil, wine—have tended to grow absolutely less expensive with the productivity of modern agriculture. Moreover, there were at least twenty distinct ducats afloat in the sixteenth century, each with a different value, and a similar number of florins, guilders, livres, pounds, et cetera. The florin and the ducat with the largest circulation had the same value. For the purpose of this narrative, that value may be considered analogous to twenty-five dollars today.
* The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as it was called after the mid-1400s, was also the First Reich, a cultural nation (Kulturvolk) of some three hundred different sovereign states. After Prussia’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Otto von Bismarck created the Second Reich, a nation-state (Staatsvolk) over which the Hohenzollerns reigned until its defeat in 1918. The Third Reich (1933–1945) was, of course, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
* Thais was an Athenian hetaira (courtesan) who, in the fourth century B.C., became Alexander the Great’s mistress. She is said to have persuaded him to burn down the Achaemenian capital of Persepolis during a drunken revel. Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast is based on the incident, which is probably apocryphal.
* In a letter to Duke George of Saxony. Here, for the first time, he gave his movement the name by which history knows it.
* Most German universities remained loyal to the Church. Two exceptions were Erfurt, where Luther had been a student, and Wittenberg, where he taught.
* Appearing this early, the word “Protestant” is slightly anachronistic. It would not enter the language for another eight years. In 1529 at a Speyer Reichstag, a Catholic bloc voted to rescind toleration of Lutheranism, which had been granted three years earlier. The protesting minority were called Protestants. The term is introduced here because even at the outset of the Reformation not all Protestants were Lutherans.
* In the 1560s the Council of Trent, after rescinding many of the bans, allowed dissemination of most of his works in expurgated editions.
* “Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” and “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
* He was also the last non-Italian elected pope until John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla of Poland) in 1978.
* “Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”
* Who became Henry’s third wife and deserves to be remembered as one of the few genuine ladies of the age. The sister of the duke of Somerset, Jane spurned the king’s advances as long as his queen lived. She asked him never to speak to her when they were alone and returned his letters and gifts unopened. Her first act as queen was to reconcile Henry and Catherine’s daughter.
* Or Aranda de Duero, also in Castile, or Barcelona, in Aragón. Since the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, uniting Castile and Aragón, the court had become a traveling circus. Madrid did not become the capital of Spain until 1561.
* Vespucci claimed that he had sailed to fifty degrees south latitude in 1502, but he has never been taken seriously.
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* He christened the islands San Lázaro. Twenty years later they were renamed for Philip II, “the most Catholic of kings.”
* Comparable distances: Columbus’s first crossing, 3,900 miles; Liverpool to New York, 3,576 miles; San Francisco to Yokohama, 5,221 miles.