1341
Petrarch crowned Poet Laureate in Rome
1378
Ciompi Revolt
1378
Black Death hits Europe
1387
Chaucer starts The Canterbury Tales
1397
Establishment of the Medici Bank
1403
Alberti begins work on the doors of the baptistery in Florence
1405
Christine de Pisan’s City of Ladies
1406
Florence conquers Pisa
1415
Burning at the stake of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance
1415
Prince Henry the Navigator participates in capture of Ceuta in northwestern Africa
1417
Great Schism comes to an end
1420s
Development of single-point perspective
1440
Lorenzo Valla’s On the Donation of Constantine
1440s
Donatello’s David
1452
Gutenberg prints Bible
1453
End of the Hundred Years’ War
1453
Fall of Constantinople
1454
Treaty of Lodi
1469
Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castle
1485
Henry VII begins Tudor dynasty following Battle of Bosworth
1486
Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man
1487
Bartholomew Dias sails around Cape of Good Hope
1490
Ludovico il Moro becomes despot of Milan
1492
Columbus leaves Spain for what he believes will be Asia
1492
Expulsion of the Jews from Spain
1492
Reconquista of Spain completed
1492
Lorenzo de Medici dies
1494
King Charles VIII of France invades Italy
1494
The Treaty of Tordesillas divides the discoveries in the New World between Spain and Portugal
1498
Vasco da Gama reaches the coast of India
1498
Burning of Savonarola
1501
Michelangelo’s David
1503
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa
1509
Raphael’s School of Athens
1513
Machiavelli writes The Princ
1515
Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly
1516
More’s Utopia
1517
Luther’s 95 Theses
1519
Charles V becomes Holy Roman Emperor
1519
Ferdinand Magellan sets out to circumnavigate the globe
1519
Hernán Cortés lands on the coast of Mexico
1521
Luther called before the Diet of Worms
1522
Ignatius Loyola begins The Spiritual Exercises
1525
German Peasant Revolt
1528
Castiglione’s The Courtier
1529
Diet of Speyer
1529
Henry VIII summons the “Reformation Parliament”
1531
Zwingli dies in battle
1531
Francisco Pizarro sets out for Peru
1534
Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy
1534
Anabaptists seize Munster
1535
Sir Thomas More executed by Henry VIII
1536
Calvin publishes first edition of his Institutes
1540
Jesuits receive official papal sanction as religious order
1540
Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn
1540s
Schmalkaldic War
1543
Copernicus publishes his Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres
1543
Andreas Vesalius writes De humani corporis fabrica with its critique of the anatomical work of Galen
1545
Council of Trent convenes
1553
End of reign of Edward VI of England
1553
Michael Servetus burnt at the stake in Geneva
1555
Peace of Augsburg
1556
Philip II becomes King of Spain after Charles V abdicates
1558
Death of Queen Mary of England
1558
Beginning of reign of Elizabeth Tudor
1559
Frederick III of the Palatinate converts to Calvinism
1559
Death of King Henry II of France
1559
Elizabethan religious settlement
1562
Beginning of the French Wars of Religion
1571
Battle of Lepanto
1572
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre during the French Wars of Religion
1587
Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
1588
Failure of the Spanish Armada to invade England
1589
Henry Bourbon becomes King Henry IV
1593
Henry IV converts to Catholicism
1598
Edict of Nantes
1600
Giordano Bruno burned at the stake
1602
First known performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
1602
Dutch East India Company established
1603
James I becomes king following death of Elizabeth
1603
Michael Romanov begins new dynasty in Russia
1605
Cervantes publishes first part of Don Quixote
1607
Founding colony at Jamestown
1610
Assassination of Henry IV
1610
Galileo begins astronomical observations with his telescope
1613
Galileo publishes Letters on Sunspots
1616
William Harvey announces his discovery of the circulatory system
1618
Johannes Kepler reveals his third and final law of planetary motion
1618
Beginning of the Thirty Years’ War
1620
Battle of White Mountain
1620
Founding of Plymouth Colony
1620
Francis Bacon publishes Novum Organum
1624
Cardinal Richelieu becomes Louis XIII’s chief minister
1625
Charles I becomes king upon death of James I
1628
Petition of Right
1628
Murder of the Duke at Buckingham
1629
Edict of Restitution
1629
Personal Rule of Charles I begins and will last 11 years
1632
Gustavus Adolphus dies at the Battle of Lutzen
1632
Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World