1510 to 1519

Society

Anatomy by Leonardo contains drawing from life based on cadavers that he has somehow obtained and dissected, but he does not permit his work to be published.

Literature

A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode. Anonymous. British. 1510. Poem. Robin Hood was born in 1160. Known for his courage and skill in archery. Generous and popular.

Society

1511. Watches mentioned for the first time in print have hour hands but no minute hands.

1512. France's Louis XII imposes tax on converted Jews from Spanish states and Portugal.

1513. The Prince by Florentine public servant Niccolo Machiavelli, now 44, is an analysis of the means by which a man may rise to power.

1513. Florida is named by Ponce de Leon after Pascua Florida (the Easter season).

1513. Spanish explorer Vasco de Balboa sights the Pacific Ocean.

1513. Chartres Cathedral is completed 60 miles southwest of Paris after nearly 400 years of construction.

1514. Pope Leo X denounces the slave trade in a bull against slavery but the trade continues to grow.

1515. England's Henry VIII issues decrees designed to protect peasants from the results of land enclosure.

1515. Utopia (from Greek ou, "not," and topos, " a place" or "Nowhere") by Thomas More, 38, describes an imaginary island governed entirely by reason.

Literature

Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (Letters of Unknown Men). Anonymous. German. 1515/17. Satire. Satire on Scholasticism.

Orlando Furioso (Roland Mad). Lodovico Ariosto. Italian. 1516. Epic poem. Charlemagne's paladins vs. various pagan knights.

Society

1517. Florentine merchants granted a monopoly in the African slave trade.

1517. Spanish priest Bartolomeo de Las Casas, 43, protests enslavement of Indians in the New World.

1517. Reformation of the Catholic Church begins, October 31, at Wittenberg. Augustinian monk Martin Luther, 34, nails 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral and challenges the excesses and abuses of the Roman Church, notably the sale of indulgences.

Literature

The Ninety-Five Theses. Martin Luther. 1517. Religion. Condemns selling indulgences. After confession, absolution is dependent on the sinner's faith and divine grace, not upon the priest.

Society

1519. Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortez, 34, sails from Cuba to conquer New Spain. He is helped by an Aztec legend that the bearded white god Quetzalcoatl will return. He takes Montezuma II prisoner, and, by year's end, is ruling the country through Montezuma.