1489
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The Treaty of Medina del Campo signed March 27 in northern Spain represents an effort to coordinate Anglo-Spanish opposition to France; it effects a mutual reduction of tariffs and settles the details of a proposed marriage between the eldest son of England's Henry VII and the Spanish infanta Caterina, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but although Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile ratify the treaty March 28, Henry VII will not ratify it until September of next year, and then only with amendments that the Spaniards will find unacceptable. The marriage terms will be renegotiated in 1496 along lines much like those in the treaty.
Venice buys Cyprus March 14 from Caterina Cornaro, last of the island's Lusignan dynasty, after 7 centuries of Frankish rule (see 1473; 1573).
The Japanese shōgun Yoshihisa Ashigaga dies at age 24 after a 16-year reign; his uncle Yoshima Fujiwara was named as successor to the former shōgun Yoshimasa before Yoshihisa's birth, and Yoshimasa appeases his brother by making his son Yoshihisa's successor.
Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches [the hammer with which to strike witches]) by the inquisitors Hendrich (or Heinrich) Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in northern Germany is a handbook on witch-hunting that will be used to justify the burning and shackling of innocent midwives and countless mentally ill people (see 1484): "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable . . . Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils"; "They have slippery tongues, and are able to conceal from their fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know; and, since they are weak, they find an easy and secret manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft." The University of Cologne endorses the work, which has much to say about the sexual problems (infertility, impotence, painful coitus, nymphomania, and satyriasis) caused by "witches" and is studied throughout western Europe (see Wier, 1563).
The pound sterling (£) created by England's Henry VII will go through various changes and survive as the kingdom's basic currency. The Saxon kingdoms began issuing silver coins known as sterlings in about 775, obtaining 225 coins per pound of sterling, and large transactions were reckoned in "pounds of sterlings" (later shortened to "pounds sterling"); since sometime after the Norman Conquest the pound has been divided for accounting purposes into 20 shillings (or 240 pence) per pound sterling, but the English have used farthings, groats, and other coins for most commerce and taxation; the name of the nation's exchequer derives by some accounts from early 12th century meetings at which authorities sat around a table covered with a checkered cloth to assess whether local taxes were collected properly (see guinea, 1662).
The first major European epidemic of typhus breaks out in Aragon, where the disease is introduced by Spanish soldiers returning from Cyprus after helping the Venetians fight the Moors.
Painting: Shrine of St. Ursula by Hans Memling at Bruges.
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