1501 1502 1503 1504 1505 1506 1507 1508 1509 1510
Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization religion literature art architecture, real estate |
The Swedish royal council's military leader Ake Hansson Natt och Dag plunders the Danish provinces of Halland and Skania before being driven off (see 1452; 1507).
Poland's Aleksander I dies at Vilna August 8 at age 45 after a 5-year reign in which he has lost the left bank of the Dnieper to Muscovy. His surviving brother is now 39 and will reign until his own death in 1548 as Sigismund I.
A Florentine militia created by the city's vice-chancellor Niccolo Machiavelli, 37, is the first Italian national army.
Perugia's Baglioni family acknowledges the overlordship of Pope Julius II in Perugia (see 1503).
Castile and León's Felipe I dies suddenly at Burgos September 25 at age 28. His wife, Juana, lapses into profound melancholia and is declared unfit to govern (she will be known as "Juana la loca" and, along with her youngest daughter, Catalina, will be held under close surveillance at Tordesillas until her death in 1555); her father, Ferdinand II of Aragon, becomes regent of Castile, marries Germaine de Foix, niece of France's Louis XII, and will rule Castile and León until 1516 as Ferdinand V.
Chinese bureaucrat Wang Yangming (Wang Yang-Ming), 34, defends a censor who has been imprisoned for attacking a corrupt and powerful eunuch. A secretary to the ministry of war at Beijing (Peking), Wang is beaten with 40 strokes and sent to prison himself for several months; he is then banished to the remote region of Kweichow, where he will serve as head of a dispatch station, live among the aborigines, and often fall ill until he comes to realize suddenly at age 36 that the place to seek the principles of things is not in the things themselves but in one's own mind (see politics, 1510).
Korean rebels overthrow the cruel ruler Yonsangun and will install Chungjong on the throne next year.
Christopher Columbus dies in obscurity at Valladolid May 21 at age 55. His bones will be removed to Santo Domingo on the island that he discovered December 6, 1492, changing the course of history. His eldest son Diego Colón, 25, will endeavor to secure his late father's claims (see 1509).
Lisbon has a riot that takes the lives of between 2,000 and 4,000 converted Jews.
Poetry: The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis by William Dunbar.
Painting: St. Jerome in the Wilderness by Lorenzo Lotto; Madonna di Casa by Raphael; St. Catherine altarpiece by Lucas Cranach. Andrea Mantegna dies at Mantua September 13 at age 75.
The Laocoön sculpture of 38 B.C. turns up in excavations of Rome's Esquiline Hill.
The Italian architect Bramante begins rebuilding St. Peter's at Rome in the form of a huge Greek cross with a central dome. Bramante's successors will alter his plan.
1501 1502 1503 1504 1505 1506 1507 1508 1509 1510
