1559
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The Danish-Norwegian king Kristian III dies at Kolding January 1 at age 55 after a reign of nearly 24 years that has strengthened and enriched the realm. His cousin dies later in the month at age 79, still a prisoner as he has been since 1531; he reigned as Kristian II until he was deposed in 1523, and his 24-year-old son ascends the throne. The son will reign until 1588 as Frederik II.
England's lord keeper of the great seal Sir Nicholas Bacon, 48, begins in January to exercise his judicial authority as lord chancellor, working with the queen's secretary, William Cecil. Queen Elizabeth replies February 6 to a petition from the House of Commons: "To me it shall be a full satisfaction both for the memorial of my name, and for the glory also, if when I shall let my last breath, it be engraven upon my marble tomb, 'Here lieth Elizabeth, who reigned a virgin and died a virgin.'" Elizabeth raises her court favorite, Robert Dudley, to the privy council in April and makes him a Knight of the Garter.
Former English lord deputy (viceroy) to Ireland Sir Anthony St. Leger dies at Ulcombe, Kent, March 16 at age 62. Irish chieftain Conn O'Neill, 1st earl of Tyrone, dies at age 79 (approximate), and Queen Elizabeth settles the chieftainship on his son Shane while giving the earldom to Hugh O'Neill, whose illegitimate half-brother Matthew was murdered last year by some of Shane's followers (see 1562).
The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis April 3 ends the last war between the late Charles V and France and marks the finish of a 65-year-old struggle. The treaty confirms Spanish possession of the Franche-Comte and the Italian states Milan, Naples and Sicily. Emmanuel-Philibert, comte de Savoy, regains Piedmont and Savoy; Genoa regains Corsica, but France retains five fortresses, including those at Turin, Saluzzo, and Pignerol. France also retains Calais and the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun.
Spain's Felipe II marries Elizabeth de Valois, 14, amidst great ceremony June 22 (she is the eldest daughter of Catherine de' Medici and Henri II; the Spanish will call her "Isabel de la Paz" and take her to their hearts).
France's Henri II sustains a head wound June 30 in a tournament celebrating the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis and his daughter's marriage. His younger sister Marguerite marries Emmanuel-Philibert, comte de Savoy, at Henri's insistence July 8. The king has worn the colors of his aging mistress Diane de Poitiers in the joust. He dies in agony July 10 at age 40, and his eldest son, still only 14, begins an 18-month reign as François II, with his uncles François de Lorraine, duc de Guise, and Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, as regents. The hunchbacked Louis de Bourbon, 29, 1st Prince de Condé, assumes leadership of the Huguenots, who find his dissolute elder brother Anthony de Bourbon unacceptable but need a princely patron (see Conspiracy of Amboise, 1560).
France's new king François II was married in early April of last year to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who is heir presumptive to the throne of her cousin Elizabeth I and assumes the title Queen of England (see 1560).
Suleiman the Magnificent helps his son Selim defeat Selim's brother Bayazid at the Battle of Konya. Bayazid and his five sons flee to Persia, where Suleiman pays to have them executed.
Some 1,500 Spanish colonists land at Pensacola, Florida, but hostile natives force them to move to Port Royal Sound in what later will become the English colony of South Carolina (see 1561; Ribaut, 1562; St. Augustine, 1565; Albemarle, 1653).
English food prices soar to three times their 1501 levels largely because Henry VIII debased the coinage to raise quick money for his wars with Spain, France, and Scotland. The typical English wage is up only 69 percent above its 1501 level (see 1550; coinage, 1561).
Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo, 48, at Padua advances knowledge of human blood circulation. A pupil of Andreas Vesalius, Colombo shows that the right and left ventricles of the heart are separated by an impenetrable wall, that blood is conveyed from the right side to the lungs, where it is mixed with air, and that it returns in aerated form to the right side (the "pulmonary circuit"). But Columbo hews to the traditional view that the liver is the center of the venous system and is the organ that creates blood (see Servetus, 1553; Harvey, 1628).
Pope Paul IV founds the Order of the Golden Spur as a military body, but Fernando, duque de Alva, now 51, defeats the papal forces. The pope dies at Rome August 18 at age 83 and Romans vent their anger at him by demolishing his statue, liberating the prisoners of the Inquisition, and scattering the Inquisition's records. Paul is succeeded by Giovanni Angelo de' Medici, 60, no kin to Florence's de' Medici family; the father of three children, he will reign until 1566 as Pius IV.
The University of Geneva has its beginnings in an academy founded by John Calvin and the French Protestant reformer Théodore de Bèze, 40.
The Index auctorum et librorum qui tanquam haeretici aut suspecti aut perverse ab Officio S. R. Inquisitionis reprobantur et in universa Christiana republica interdicuntur published by Pope Paul IV before his death condemns certain authors with all their writings, prohibits certain books whose authors are known, and prohibits pernicious books published anonymously. It is the first Roman Index in the modern ecclesiastical use of the term (see 1543).
Printer-scholar Robert Etienne dies at Geneva September 7 at age 56. Opposition from theologians at the Sorbonne forced him to leave Paris 8 years ago, and he printed a Greek New Testament that year at Geneva, dividing the text into verses for the first time. His Paris-born son Henri, 31, takes over the Geneva press and will be a scholar in his own right (see 1566).
Painting: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent and Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Brueghel; The Entombment, Diana and Actaem, and Diana and Callisto by Titian; Holy Family by Sofonisba Anguissola, who travels 85 miles in the autumn from Milan to Genoa, embarks for Barcelona, and makes her way to Madrid, where she will be lady-in-waiting to the new Spanish queen, Isabel (Elizabeth) de Valois.
French pirates seize and burn the Spanish Caribbean ports of Cartagena and Havana.
Botanist Konrad Gesner records the presence of tulips growing in a garden at Augsburg, Bavaria, whose owner has evidently imported bulbs from Constantinople (see 1573).
Ice cream appears in Italy as ice and salt are discovered to make a freezing combination.
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