Update on the Blog. 1542 to 1548.

Why this Blog?

The purpose of this blog is to share with the reader brief summaries of the events and people in the history of society and of the best-known literary works of the time. Presently we are working on the 1500s, having proceeded from the period before Christ. These summaries have been reduced to a sentence or two based on information in The People's Chronology for the history of events and people and Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia for the literary works.

Want to know who discovered the potato? Who were the parents of Elizabeth I of England? The stories in the Bible and the Canterbury Tales? They're all right here.

Society

1542. England's Henry VIII has his fifth wife Catherine Howard beheaded on charges of adultery.

1542. Henry VIII makes Ireland a kingdom.

1542. The Universal Inquisition established by Pope Paul III tries to stem the tide of the Reformation with cruel repression. A council of Dominican cardinals conducts trials of alleged heretics and permits them no legal counsel.

1542. The Battle of Solway Moss gives Henry VIII a victory over Scotland's James V, who is succeeded at his death by his week-old daughter Mary queen of Scots.

1543. England's Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr, 31.

1543. The Spanish Inquisition burns Protestants at the stake for the first time.

1543. Nikolaus Copernicus, 70, defies Church doctrine that the earth is the center of the universe and establishes the theory that the earth rotates daily on its axis and revolves in orbit round the sun.

1543. Andreas Vesalius produces the first accurate book on human anatomy.

1543. Pope Paul III issues an index librorum prohibitorum forbidding Roman Catholics to read certain books.

1543. The Council of Trent, convened by Pope Paul III, undertakes reform of the Church. Establishes the Latin liturgy that will be used in Roman Catholic church services for more than 400 years.

1546. Parisian printer Etienne Dolet is hanged and burnt at the stake, August 3. He has been denounced as a heretic and blasphemer for printing the works of Erasmus, Melancthon, and other humanists.

1546. Mayans in New Spain stage a major uprising against the Spanish but are crushed by the conquistadors.

1546. The health of England's Henry VIII fails rapidly. He has grown grossly overweight.

1546. Martin Luther dies at age 63.

1546. Henry VIII dies January 28 at age 58. Succeeded by Jane Seymour's son who reigns as Edward VI.

1548. The Book of Common Prayer (first Prayer Book of Edward VI) by the archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer simplifies and condenses the Latin services of the medieval church into a single, convenient, comprehensive English volume.

1548. Giorgio Vasari gives Gothic architecture its name and disparages it. A pupil of Michelangelo, he says that medieval cathedrals were built in a style originated by the Goths ("those Germanic races untutored in the classics"), and describes them as a "heap of spires, pinnacles, and grotesque decorations lacking in all the simple beauty of the classical orders."