1500

Lore & Background

The year 1500 was seen as being especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought it would bring the beginning of the end of the world. Their belief was based on the phrase 'half-time after the time', when the apocalypse was due to occur, which appears in the Book of Revelation and was seen as referring to 1500. This time was also just after the Old World's discovery of the Americas in 1492, and therefore was influenced greatly by the New World. Historically, the year 1500 is also often identified, somewhat arbitrarily, as marking the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the early modern period. The end of this year marked the halfway point of the 2nd millennium, as there were 500 years before it and 500 years after it.

In Their Own Story

The war room in Paris smells of beeswax and wet wool. A map the size of a dining table is unrolled across the oak, its edges weighted with iron candlesticks. The king's hand traces the coastline of the Iberian Peninsula, then stops at the tiny, ink-stippled islands someone has marked beyond the Atlantic. "They say a Genoese sailor found them," he murmurs, more to his chancellor than to the room. The chancellor, a thin man with ink-stained fingers, adjusts his spectacles. "We say nothing of it, Sire. Not yet." Outside the window, the bells of Notre-Dame ring the hour, and somewhere over the Seine a barge creaks under a load of salt. The world is still small. It will not stay that way long.

Reader's Guide

Events include: January 5 – Duke Ludovico Sforza recaptures Milan, but is soon driven out again by the French. January 26 – Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón reaches the northern coast of Brazil. February 5 – Ludovico Sforza's Swiss mercenary army retakes the city of Milan from the French during the Second Italian War. February 17 – Battle of Hemmingstedt: The Danish army fails to conquer the peasants' republic of Dithmarschen. March 9 – Pedro Álvares Cabral, with a fleet of 13 ships, departs Portugal on a voyage to the New World. March 11 – The Parliament of Bohemia adopts a new constitution that limits the power of King Vladislav II and subsequent Bohemian monarchs. March 24 – The day after departing the Cape Verde Islands with the rest of Cabral's fleet, Vasco de Ataíde and his 150 crewmates die when their ship goes down in a storm. April 22 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew on 13 vessels arrive in Brazil, anchoring at Monte Pascoal and naming the country Vera Cruz. Cabral claims the land for the Kingdom of Portugal. May 1 – Pero Vaz de Caminha finishes writing his chronicle of the Portuguese discovery of Brazil while accompanying Cabral. May 3 – Cabral and his fleet depart from Brazil and sail eastward toward Africa, resuming their journey to India. May 5 – Representatives of the English and Spanish royal families sign a treaty at Canterbury for the marriage of 13-year-old Arthur, Prince of Wales (son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York) to 14-year-old Princess Catherine of Aragon. Arthur's marriage to Catherine takes place the next year, but Arthur dies five months later; she marries Arthur's younger brother Henry VIII in 1509. May 8 – The first guide to distilling of liquor is published, Liber de arte distillandi de simplicibus by Hieronymus Brunschwig. May 29 – Traveling eastward from Brazil, Cabral and his fleet run into a storm off of the coast of Africa near the Cape of Good Hope and lose four of their 13 ships. Navigator Bartolomeu Dias is among the persons killed. June 1 – Pope Alexander VI issues the papal bull Quamvis ad amplianda, calling on a Roman Catholic crusade against the Ottoman Empire. June 29 – A combined force of troops from the Kingdom of France and from the Republic of Florence lay siege to the city of Pisa. June 30 – Sultan Abu Sa'id Qansuh of Egypt is overthrown and sent into exile. Al-Ashraf Abu a

Did You Know?

• The year 1500 was seen as especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought it would bring the beginning of the end of the world.
• The end of this year marked the halfway point of the 2nd millennium, as there were 500 years before it and 500 years after it.
• Europe's population is estimated at 56.7 million people in 1500.
• The last wolf in England is thought to have been killed this year, in Allithwaite, Cumbria.