1494
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King Ferrante of Naples dies January 25 at age 70. He has tried to persuade his son-in-law Ludovico Sforza to join him against France's Charles VIII.
Bianca Maria Sforza reaches Vienna in March; her husband, Maximilian I, arrives, and they finally consummate their marriage. He treats her kindly at first but quickly begins to find fault with her extravagant habits and will soon leave her mostly to her own devices as her health begins to fail (she will die in 1510).
France's Charles VIII crosses the Alps July 10 in the vanguard of an army with 40 lightweight, mobile bronze cannon that fire iron balls and can accomplish in hours what has previously required weeks of bombardment. Ludovico Sforza goes to meet him 3 days later; Charles asks for a loan of 60,000 ducats; Ludovico undertakes to arrange the loan; but they soon have a falling-out.
Piero de' Medici, 21, rides out to meet the invading French, and although the agreement he reaches with Charles VIII is the best that can be obtained under the circumstances, it creates a furor at Florence, where the people revolt, sack the Medici Palace, and expel the Medici family, which has dominated the city for 60 years but has come under attack from the religious fanatic Girolamo Savonarola, who has reportedly made Charles VIII burst into tears by chastising him for being desultory about undertaking his divine mission of reform and crusade. Piero will never again see Florence, but its republican leaders will fall to fighting among themselves.
Gian Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, dies at Pavia October 21 at age 25, and there are false rumors that he was poisoned by his uncle, Ludovico Sforza (Il Moro), who receives the ducal crown October 22 (see 1476). He has received imperial investiture of the duchy of Milan from the German king, Maximilian I, who has married his niece Bianca. Young Gian Galeazzo's mother, Bona of Savoy, departs for Amboise and will return in 1499 to Savoy, where she will remain until her death in 1504. France's Charles VIII has helped the new duke, but he soon joins a league against Charles. Isabella d'Este arrives at Milan November 28 to be with her sister Beatrice, the duchess, and will remain in complete retirement for the next 2 years (see 1499).
The grand duke of Muscovy Ivan III gains his sobriquet Ivan the Great by driving out Novgorod's German merchants, closing the Hanseatic Kontor and extending his realm eastward to the Urals by annexing the vast territories of Novgorod (see 1480; Lithuania, 1501).
A new pretender to the English throne gains financial support from the German king Maximilian and others (see Simnel, 1487). Perkin Warbeck, 20, is a Walloon boatman's son who worked as a servant to a Breton silk merchant in Ireland, some people have mistaken him for the son of the duke of Clarence or of Richard III, and he professes to be the second son of Edward IV's sons murdered in the Tower of London in 1484. Margaret, dowager duchess of Burgundy, has accepted him as her nephew, the earls of Desmond and Kildare have lent their support, and France's Charles VIII has entertained him as Richard IV (see 1495).
The lord deputy of Ireland Garret Fitzgerald, 8th earl of Kildare, is removed from office for having supported the pretender Perkin Warbeck. Englishman Sir Edward Poynings, 35, is appointed in September to replace Kildare; he summons the Drogheda parliament, and it enacts Poyning's law, which provides that every act of Parliament must be approved by the English privy council (but not by Parliament) to be valid. Poynings subdues Kildare and will retain his title until December of next year, when he will be removed because his administrative expenses are considered excessive. Although he cannot reconquer the northern Gaelic Irish his law will prevail until 1782, barring Parliament from meeting in Ireland unless given license to do so by the English lord chancellor and then only after the causes of such a meeting and the issues put before it have first been approved by the English king and his council (see 1782). Henry VII will restore Kildare as lord deputy in 1496, and the earl will continue as lord deputy until his death in 1513.
The Treaty of Tordesillas signed June 7 divides the globe between Spain and Portugal along lines similar to those established last year by Pope Alexander VI. It is agreed that Spain shall be entitled to all lands discovered west of a north-south line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands; Portugal to all lands east of the line.
Queen Isabella of Castile and León suspends a royal order for the sale of more than 500 Carib "Indians" into slavery. Christopher Columbus brought the Caribs home from the West Indies last year, but the queen suggests in a letter to Bishop Fonseca that any sale await an inquiry into the causes for the imprisonment of the docile Indians and the lawfulness of their sale. When theologians differ on the lawfulness, Isabella orders the Caribs returned to their island.
Christopher Columbus sets sail with three ships April 24 from La Isabela on the island of Hispaniola with a view to finding the mainland of Cathay (see 1493), reaches Cuba April 30, discovers the 4,411-square-mile island of Jamaica May 4, and names it Santiago (St. James). It will be a Spanish possession until 1655. Finding the natives on Jamaica hostile, he leaves May 13, reaches Cuba May 14, and proceeds to land on islands that will be called Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, St. Martin, and the Virgin Islands. Finding no mainland but unwilling to admit failure, he has each man in his little fleet sign a document June 13 swearing that Cuba is so large that it must be the mainland. He reaches Hispaniola August 20 after a voyage in which he has gone for 33 days with almost no sleep, lost his memory, and come close to death, but by the end of September he is seriously ill and his crew takes him back to La Isabela (see 1496).
Genoese merchant Hieronomo de Santo Stephano visits Calicut on the Indian Coast and observes trade in ginger and pepper (see da Gama, 1498).
Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proporitionalità by Franciscan monk Luca Pacioli, 49, at Venice is a seminal work showing how to use double-entry bookkeeping, which he did not invent but which will have huge economic consequences (see Cortugli, 1458). Every entry is recorded in two parts, debits and credits, with the debits in one part always equalling the credits in the other part. This creates a logical basis for portraying the financial picture of any enterprise, a common system of accounting whose standards theoretically make the balance sheet or income statement of any kind of business in any country understandable to anyone (although generally accepted accounting practices will vary from one country to another). The system is not totally inflexible, and an item on a balance sheet may not always be defined in the same way by every company, but double-entry bookkeeping provides a language by which people can communicate financially, and Pacioli's study of debits and credits represents the first comprehensive textbook on accounting.
Augsburg's Fugger family establishes its first public company, with a capital of 54,385 guilders (see 1469). Having taken charge of the family's Innsbruck agency 10 years ago, the tight-lipped Jakob Fugger II has long since taken command of the business. He has obtained a partnership interest for the family in Tyrolean silver mines and granted permanent loans to the archduke Sigismund and King Maximilian, who have secured their loans with deliveries of copper and silver (see 1495).
The first English paper mill begins operation.
Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino retires to the country following the expulsion of the Medici family. Now 61, he has been a major influence in the Renaissance revival of Platonism, which he has tried to reconcile with Christianity.
Scholar-philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola dies at Florence November 17 at age 31, having been absolved from the charge of heresy 2 years ago by Pope Alexander VI. He leaves incomplete a treatise against the enemies of the Church, a work that includes a critique of astrology.
The humanist poet Politian dies at Florence September 28 or 29 at age 40.
Painting: Pietà and Francesco delle Opere by Perugino; Calumny by Sandro Botticelli. Domenico Ghirlandajo dies at his native Florence January 11 at age 44; Hans Memling at Bruges August 11 at age 64.
Flemish composer Josquin des Pres, 49, accepts an invitation to be chief singer at the chapel of France's Charles VIII. In his 8 years at the papal chapel in Rome he has composed numerous masses, motets, psalms, and other sacred works.
Munich's Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) is completed off the Kaufingerstrasse.
Christopher Columbus plants the first wheat ever seen in the New World, but efforts to cultivate wheat in the West Indies and elsewhere in tropical Spanish America will be uniformly unsuccessful (see 1621).
Christopher Columbus's men find Jamaica covered with 30-foot trees (Pimenta dioica) bearing spicy green berries that turn brown when dried, bear some resemblance to oversized black peppercorns, and have an aroma suggestive of a blend of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pimenta officinalis will come to be known as allspice, pimiento, or pimento (Spaniards will call it Pimenta Jamaica, or Jamaica Pepper).
De Partibus Aedium by Italian author Francesco Mario Grapaldi, published at Parma, discusses the various foods and wines to be kept on hand in the perfect home.
Scotland's James IV orders his exchequer to give "eight bowles of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aquavitae." It is the first recorded reference to Scotch whisky.
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