1548
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Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice commerce literature art population |
Poland's Sigismund I dies at Kraków April 1 at age 81 after a 42-year reign that has established Catholicism in the country (although he has tolerated the Protestant Reformation). He has defeated the Teutonic Knights and is succeeded by his only son, a man of 28 who will reign until 1572 as Sigismund II while the Reformation spreads in Poland. The new king refuses the diet's demand that he repudiate his second wife, the beautiful Lithuanian Calvinist Barbara Radziwill, and she will die under mysterious circumstances 5 days after her coronation in early December 1550.
Catherine Parr dies of puerperal fever September 7 at age 36 after giving birth to a daughter; Henry VIII's widow, she was married last year to the lord high admiral Thomas Seymour and is given the first royal Protestant funeral.
The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V annexes the 17 Lowland provinces to the empire's Burgundian Circle. Included are Artois, Flanders, Brabant, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Hainault, Holland, Zeeland, Namur, Zutphen, East Friesland, West Friesland, Mechlin, Utrecht, Overyssel, and Groningen.
Ottoman forces occupy Tabriz, Persia (see 1534).
Naval officer João de Castro dies in the arms of missionary Francis Xavier at Goa in Portuguese India June 6 at age 48.
The Laotian king Photisarath dies after a 28-year reign in which he has waged three wars against the Siamese kingdom of Ayudhya (Ayutthaya) and placed his son Setthathirath on the throne of Chiengmai (Chaing Mai), bringing Laos to the zenith of its territorial expansion. He is succeeded by Setthathirath, who will reign until 1571.
Burma's king Tabinshwehti lays siege to the brilliant Siamese capital of Ayutthaya but is repelled and forced to retire behind his border (see 1541). Having suffered two major defeats at the hands of Siam, he takes to drink (see 1550).
The Battle of Xaquixaguane in Peru gives Pedro de la Gasca a victory over Gonzalo Pizarro, son of the late conquistador, whom he captures April 9. He has Gonzalo executed at Cuzco April 10 at age 45 (approximate).
Hispaniola has another slave uprising.
The Edict of Châtellerault extends the Gabelle (salt tax) to all of France's western provinces. The French have adopted the idea of taxing salt from the Normans, who learned it from the Arabs (the word Gabelle comes from the Arabic al quabala) (see 1549). Civil war breaks out in Guienne as 40,000 peasants gather at Cognac and Châteauneuf to protest the tax. They rout the soldiers sent to restore order, seize Saintes, loot the town, and lay waste the countryside beween Poitiers and Blaye. The Constable de Montmorency is sent to suppress the rebellion (see 1549).
Pandectarum sive Partitionum universalium Konradi Gesneri by Konrad Gesner at Zurich is a monumental encyclopedia that attempts to record the knowledge of the world under 21 different headings (the 19th volume, devoted to theological musings, will be published next year; the final, 20th, volume, on medicine, will never be completed)
Nonfiction: First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge by Andrew Boorde is a continental guidebook written in prose and "rhyme doggerel." It is based on travels throughout Europe (Boorde visited the universities of Orléans, Poitiers, Toulouse, Montpelier, and Wittenberg in the 1530s and witnessed "much abominable vices" at Rome).
Poetry: Juvenilia by Paris lawyer-poet Théodore de Bèze, 29, who recovers from a serious illness, undergoes conversion, and travels to Geneva to meet John Calvin.
Painting: The Miracle of St. Mark by Venetian painter Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), 30, whose father is a dyer (tintore); Equestrian Portrait of Charles V and The Imperial Chancellor Antoine Perrenot de Granvella by Titian; Bevilacqua-Lazise altarpiece by Italian painter Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari), 20; Self-Portrait and Girl at the Spinet by Flemish painter Caterina van Hemessen, 20, at Antwerp.
Hispaniola's native population falls to 500 or less, down from 14,000 in 1514.
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