1553

1551 1552 1553 1554 1555 1556 1557 1558 1559 1560

political events

England's Edward VI dies of tuberculosis at Greenwich July 6 at age 15 and is succeeded by his Catholic half sister Mary, 37, who has been raised by her mother, Catherine of Aragon. A treaty of marriage is arranged between Mary and Spain's Prince Felipe, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who is to be given the title King of England but to have no hand in government and no right to succeed Mary.

England's new queen releases Thomas Howard from imprisonment and restores him to his position as duke of Norfolk. But Howard faces an insurrection led by Henry Grey, marquess of Dorset, who has married his daughter Lady Jane Grey, now 16, to Lord Guildford Dudley as part of a plot to alter the succession (Dudley induced the late Edward VI to sign letters of patent, making Lady Jane Grey heir to the crown). Suffolk is supported by Sir Thomas Wyatt, 32, son and namesake of the poet-statesman who died in 1542. Norfolk is unable to suppress the uprising, and Lady Jane is proclaimed queen July 9, but forces loyal to Mary disperse Dorset's troops and imprison Lady Jane July 19 (see 1554). Mary enters London August 3 to begin a harsh 5-year reign. She has John Dudley, earl of Warwick, arrested, tried for treason, and executed August 22 (Mary will grant the earldom to Thomas Percy, now 28, in 1557).

Maurice of Saxony sustains a mortal wound July 9 at Sievershausen as his forces defeat Albrecht of Brandenburg-Kulmbach.

The Battle of Marciano August 2 ends in defeat for a French army that has invaded Tuscany.

Cambodia's Chan I is crowned again at Lovek, where he has built a new palace that he will occupy until his death in 1566.

exploration, colonization

English navigator Richard Chancellor reaches Moscow by way of the White Sea and Archangel. Commander of a ship in Sir Hugh Willoughby's expedition of 1527 in search of a Northeast Passage to Cathay, Chancellor has studied navigation under John Dee (see 1558; Muscovy Company, 1555).

science

Astronomer Erasmus Reinhold dies at his native Saalfeld February 19 at age 41. Both of his wives having died in childbirth, he fled Wittenberg last year to escape the plague.

Italian schoolboy Giambattista della Porta, 15, introduces a convex lens that improves the camera obscura devised by Roger Bacon in 1267 and will make it more useful for observing the sun (see sunspots, 1611).

medicine

Christianismi Restitutio by Spanish physician and theologian Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto), 42, is the first book to refute the Galen idea of 164 A.D. that the ventricular system is perforated. Servetus shows a familiarity with pulmonary circulation.

Physician Girolamo Fracastoro dies of apoplexy at Casi outside his native Verona August 8 at age 70, having given syphilis its name and pioneered the scientific germ theory of disease; Michael Servetus is arrested for his views and brought before the Inquisition at Vienna, escapes to Geneva, is imprisoned on orders from John Calvin, and is burnt at the stake for heresy October 27 at age 42. Having rejected the idea of the Trinity, he is the first to be martyred in the name of Unitarianism.

religion

England's new queen has Protestant bishops arrested and restores Roman Catholic bishops.

Poland's largely Calvinist gentry (szlachia) resists a restoration of independent Roman Catholic ecclesiastical courts and receives support from Jan Tarnowski, even though he himself is a Catholic. Poland will have 300 Unitarian churches by the end of the century, but Calvinists and Jesuits will stamp out the movement.

literature

French humanist and classical scholar Marc-Antoine de Muret, 27, publishes a commentary in elegant Latin prose on Pierre de Ronsard's Les Amours. A collection of his own poems appears under the title Juvenilia. Muret will be condemned next year on charges of sodomy and heresy, but he will escape punishment by fleeing to Italy and will take holy orders in 1576.

art

Painting: Landscape with Christ Appearing to the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberius by Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel, 28; All-Saints altar (La Gloria) by Titian. Lucas Cranach (the Elder) dies at Weimar October 16 at age 81.

architecture, real estate

Florence's Strozzi Palace is completed by the sons of the late banker Filippo Strozzi the Elder, who began construction of the palazzo in 1489 but died 2 years later at age 65.

agriculture

The first written reference to the potato appears in Chronica del Peru by Pedro de León (Pedro Creca), which is published at Seville (see 1540). The author calls the tuber a battata or papa (see 1563).

1551 1552 1553 1554 1555 1556 1557 1558 1559 1560