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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce science religion literature art theater, film music |
Russian forces lay siege to Smolensk, but Poland's new king Wladislaw IV relieves the siege and obtains help from Zaporzhian Cossacks on the Dnieper River (see 1632). Polish troops under the command of Stanislaw Koniecpolski repel a large Ottoman-Tatar invasion force in July (see 1634).
The Ottoman sultan Murad IV sends an army into Lebanon; his troops defeat Fakhr ad-Din II, who has come to dominate most of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine; the Lebanese ruler escapes into the mountains, but he will be captured next year (see 1618; 1635).
The new director general of New Netherland arrives at Nieuw Amsterdam in April and wastes no time in turning his office to his own profit. Wouter van Twiller is a former clerk at the Amsterdam warehouse of the Dutch West India Company who has married a niece of Kiliaen van Rensselaer; he deeds himself several hundred acres of tobacco-growing land in what later will be Greenwich Village—land that Peter Minuit had set aside for the company. Not satisfied, van Twiller goes on to acquire Nutten (later Governors) Island, two islands in the East River, and will also acquire a share in the Brooklyn Flatlands (see 1637).
An expedition to start the first Roman Catholic colony in North America leaves England in November as Cecilius Calvert's younger brother Leonard embarks with the vessels Ark and Dove (see 1632; 1634).
Some 30 Dutch colonists settle in Delaware.
Dutch colonists from Nieuw Amsterdam establish a trading post on the Connecticut River at what later will be called Hartford (see 1636; Connecticut colony, 1635).
Galileo Galilei goes on trial at Rome April 12 although he is suffering from arthritis, hernias, kidney stones, and gout (see 1632). The Inquisition threatens the astronomer and mathematician with torture on the rack if he does not retract his "heretical" defense of the Copernican idea that the sun is the center of the universe and the Earth a movable planet. Torn between wanting to fight for the truth and not wanting to offend the Church, Galileo equivocates, saying that the heliocentric design "may very easily turn out to be a most foolish hallucination and a majestic paradox," but he does what is necessary to save himself, saying, "I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged 70 years, abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and I swear that I will never again say or assert that the sun is the center of the universe and immovable and that the Earth is not the center and moves." He is sent to his villa outside Florence, where he will be confined for the remaining 9 years of his life.
René Descartes takes warning from the trial of Galileo Galilei; now living in Holland, Descartes stops publishing in France (see 1619; 1637).
The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul has its beginnings in a Roman Catholic congregation founded at Paris by Vincent de Paul, now 52, and Louise de Marillac, 42. The first non-cloistered religious institute of women devoted to active philanthropic work, it attracts laywomen of means who want to help the poor and will eventually enlist peasant girls to help the Ladies of Charity nurse the poor in their homes, run hospitals, teach poor children, and provide nursing services to the wounded on battlefields.
The Union of Brest-Litovsk created in 1596 suffers a major defection as the metropolitanate of Kiev returns to the Orthodoxy of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Poetry: The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by the late English metaphysical and religious poet George Herbert, who asked on his deathbed that his friend Nicholas Ferrar, now 41, destroy his manuscript poems or have them published (Ferrar has written a preface); Poetical Blossoms by English poet Abraham Cowley, 15.
Poet George Herbert dies of tuberculosis at Bemerton, Wiltshire, March 1 at age 39.
Painting: Portrait of a Bearded Man in a Red Coat by Rembrandt van Rijn; Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland and Self-Portrait with Sunflower by Anthony Van Dyck; Mother Sewing with Children by Lamplight, Mother Cleaning a Child's Hair, Soldier's Family, Card Players, and Self-Portrait by Judith Leyster, now 24, who opens her own studio after several years of studying under Frans Hals and accepts students of her own. When Hals appropriates one of her apprentices, thus cheating her out of her fee for the young man's training, she sues Hals and, to everyone's surprise, wins.
Theater: A Match at Midnight by William Rowley contains the line, "He's a chip o' the old block"; Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford at London's Phoenix Theatre; The Maidservant (La suivante) by Pierre Corneille at the Fontaine Tennis Court, Paris; Place Royale, or The Extravagant Lover (La place royale, ou Lamoureux extravagant) by Pierre Corneille, in December, at the Fontaine Tennis Court.
Operatic composer Jacopo Peri dies at Florence August 12 at age 71, having pioneered the art form that will become the most popular theatrical entertainment in most of Europe.
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