1524

1521 1522 1523 1524 1525 1526 1527 1528 1529 1530

political events

The Danish governor Soren Norrby raises a large peasant army in Skania in support of the deposed king Kristian II (see 1523). A peasant militia led by Nils Brahe and Otto Stissen faces an invading Swedish army outside Lund in April, and the resulting bloodbath ends with a loss of about 3,000 Scanian men (see 1534).

The Hapsburg prince Ferdinand of Austria makes an alliance with the two dukes of Bavaria and the bishop of southern Germany in a move taken at the instigation of the papal legate Lorenzo Campeggio to check religious changes.

The Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Zug join against Zürich and the Reformation movement.

French and imperial troops battle in Spain April 25 (see Charles, duc de Bourbon, 1523). The French knight Pierre du Terrail, chevalier de Bayard, is shot in the back by a Spanish harquebus ball in Italy and dies April 30 at age 51. His body is restored to his friends and buried at Grenoble.

French forces invade Italy and retake Milan October 29 (but see 1525).

The Constable de Bourbon lays siege to Marseilles in a civil war against France's François I. Female reinforcements arrive under the leadership of Améliane de Glandèves and throw back the Constable's forces. When the enemy lays mines, Améliane has her followers dig a trench to plant mines of their own.

Ottoman forces invade Egypt under the command of the new grand vizier Ibrahim, who reestablishes order, introducing administrative and fiscal measures that strengthen Constantinople's hand in the province (see 1517).

Persia's shah Ismail I dies May 23 at age 38 after a 22-year reign. His eldest son, now 10, will reign until 1576 as Tahmasp I (see Ottoman invasion, 1534).

Aden becomes a tributary of Portugal.

Vasco da Gama, 1st conde da Vidigueira, returns to India as Portuguese viceroy (see 1499). He dies at Cochin December 24 at age 64 (approximate), having helped to make Portugal a world power by opening a sea route to the East (see Mughal dynasty, 1526).

Spanish forces in New Spain disperse the main body of the Quiche army outside the city of Xelaju February 20. Chief Tecum Uman descends from his golden litter and kills the horse of Pedro de Alvarado, 39, a lieutenant of Hernándo Cortéz, in the belief that man and horse are one, Alvarado runs the chief through with his sword, and panic spreads through the Quiche warriors.

Peru's 11th Inca king Huayana Capac dies at Quito and his empire is divided between his sons Huascár and Atahualpa (see 1471). Without a written language, they rule a complex, orderly society of 12 million in which each head of family is allowed enough land for his own needs and must also help till common lands that support the Inca court, the priesthood, and the engineers who build irrigation systems, stone roads, and fiber suspension bridges (see 1530).

Pedro de Alvarado begins a 2-year campaign in which he will subdue Guatemala. He has been sent by Hernándo Cortéz at Mexico City.

exploration, colonization

Guatemala City is founded by Pedro de Alvarado.

Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano, 38, sets sail in January with two French ships financed by François I to look for a westward passage to Asia. He arrives in March at what later will be called Cape Fear in North Carolina, explores the North American coast in his 100-ton vessel Dauphine with a 49-man crew, comes upon a "beautiful" harbor in April, and gives the name Angoulême (the title held by his employer when he was heir presumptive to the throne) to the island that will later be called Manhattan. "At the end of a hundred leagues," he will write to the king, "we found a very agreeable location situated within two prominent hills, in the midst of which flowed to the sea a very great river which was deep at the mouth." Verrazano notes in his diary that "steep little hills" rose up on both sides of his ship, and that coming into the body of water where he lies at anchor is a "great stream of water" (see Hudson, 1609).

Francisco Pizarro proposes an expedition to "Piru." Now 54 and an officer who crossed the Isthmus of Panama with Balboa in 1513, he tells the elderly captain general Pedro Arias Dávila at Panama City about a land to the South where people drink from golden vessels and have animals (llamas) that are half sheep, half camel. Arias Dávila agrees to finance the expedition (see 1525).

Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar dies at Santiago de Cuba at age 59 (approximate).

science

German mathematician Peter Bennewitz proposes a lunar observatory to produce a standard time that may help navigators determine longitude. Observation of the moon's position among the fixed stars may produce such a standard time, says Bennewitz, professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt and a friend of the Spanish king Carlos I (the uncrowned Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; see transportation [Frisius], 1530).

medicine

Royal College of Physicians founder and former president Thomas Linacre dies at London October 20 at age 64 (approximate). Having treated patients who included Desiderius Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and Cardinal Wolsey, Linacre gave up his medical practice 4 years ago to become a Roman Catholic priest.

religion

"Only one woman in thousands has been endowed with the God-given aptitude to live in chastity and virginity," Martin Luther writes in Kritische Gesamtausgabe. "God fashioned her body so that she should be with a man, to have and to rear children. No woman should be ashamed of that for which God made and intended her."

A Peasants' Rebellion breaks out in the southern German states as Anabaptist Thomas Müntzer, 34, claims to be an apocalyptic messenger of God who brings "not peace, but the sword." Advocating social as well as religious reform, he overthrows the town government at Mühlhausen and sets up a communistic theocracy. His peasant followers demand an end to serfdom, feudal dues, and tithes. They battle Catholics, "heretical" books are burnt in the marketplace at Mainz, and an orgy of pillaging and slaughter ensues (see 1525).

art

Painting: Ascension of Christ by the Italian painter Correggio (Antonio Allegra), 30, is completed as a fresco on the cupola of the Benedictine Church of San Giovanni at Parma; The Sculptor by Andrea del Sarto; Il Parmigianino moves to Rome and presents as his credentials to Pope Clement VII a self-portrait reflected in a convex mirror (see 1523). Landscape painter Joachim (de) Patinir dies at Antwerp October 5 at age 39, having created many versions of his Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

architecture, real estate

The Château d'If is completed for France's François I on a small Mediterranean island near Marseilles. The castle will later find use as a state prison.

marine resources

An English rhyme will say, "Turkeys, Carps, Hoppes, Piccarell, and Beer, Came Into England all in one year," but scholars will question whether carp and pickerel, if not indigenous, were not imported into England much earlier (see agriculture [turkeys], 1523; restaurants [hops, beer], 1551).

agriculture

Pedro de Alvarado introduces cows, pigs, goats, sheep, domesticated hens, wheat, rice, sugarcane, apples, peaches, pears, and citrus fruits to the Central American highlands.

food and drink

Alvarado finds the Aztec eating foods that include a seed paste made from amarinth (Amarinthus hypochondrachus), which is used in tamales employed in worshipping the god Huitzilipochtli. The Spaniards will outlaw cultivation of amarinth in an effort to end human sacrifices to the god.

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