16th Century Chronology

Excerpts from Yahoo's chronology:

1502 Publication of the Apocalypsis Nova, which predicted the coming of an angelic pope, who would be preceded by holy men.

1503 Julius II (1503-13) became pope. While a cardinal, Julius had sired three daughters.

1503 Erasmus published his Handbook of the Christian Soldier, in which he presented a vision of the church in which the laity would gain power at the expense of the wealth and influence of the clergy. It was translated into several European languages and had become very popular by 1515.

1506 On 18 April, Pope Julius II (1503-13) laid the foundation stone for the new St. Peter’s. The basilica was completed in 1615.

1508-12 Commissioned by Pope Julius II (1503-13), Michelangelo painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

1509 Four Dominicans were burned at the stake in Berne for fabricating miracles to discredit the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

1510 140 persons were burned to death in Brescia for practicing witchcraft.

1511 A group of disaffected cardinals, supported by King Louis XII of France (1498-1515), held a council in opposition to Pope Julius II (1503-13) in Pisa. Since the council was considered a French political maneuver, it received little international support.

1512 In May, the Holy League of Spain, Venice, the German empire, England, and the Swiss drove the French from Milan.

1512 Jacques Lefevre, a professor at the University of Paris, published a Latin translation of Paul’s epistles. Anticipating Luther by several years, he appended a commentary in which he taught that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, not through works. He also denied transubstantiation.

1512-17 The Fifth Lateran Council opened in May, 1512. This council overturned the Council of Constance’s decree which had made councils superior to the pope. It also affirmed the immortality of the soul, and, in 1513, attempted to suppress preaching on the last days (see 1494 and 1502 above).

1513 Leo X (1513-21) elected pope. Leo, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent of Florence, had become a priest at age 7, and a cardinal when he was 13.

1514 300 persons were burned to death at Como for practicing witchcraft.

1516 Erasmus’ Greek New Testament published – the first Greek New Testament to be printed. It included a fresh translation into Latin. (In a note on Acts 17.34, Erasmus repeated Lorenzo Valla’s criticisms of the claim that Dionysius himself authored the works of the Dionysian corpus.)

The first edition of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament was based on only four Greek manuscripts, none earlier than the eleventh century. Even on the fourth edition, he had only one Greek manuscript for the book of Revelation. This lacked the final five verses, which Erasmus translated into Greek from Latin. He was (rightly) criticized for this procedure.

Erasmus was also taken to task for undermining the authority of the Vulgate. A certain scholar named Sutor argued, “if in one point the Vulgate were in error the entire authority of the Holy Scripture would collapse.” Controversies arose over Erasmus’ omissions of 1 John 5.7 (it was not in his manuscripts) and Matthew 6.13 (which was in his manuscripts, but which, he reasoned, could not have been in the Greek text Jerome had read). He was also criticized for not correcting Hebrews 2.7 according to the Hebrew, which has “a little lower than God” rather than “a little lower than the angels;” for translating the Greek word for “repent” with the Latin for “change your mind;” and the Greek word Logos with the Latin sermo.

1516 The Pragmatic Sanction (see 1438 & 39) abolished by the Concordat of Bologna, an agreement between the king of France and the pope. In return, Pope Leo X (1513-21) recognized the right of Francis I, king of France 1515-1547, to appoint bishops and abbots in his realm. The Gallican church thus in effect remained independent of the papacy. In return, the pope was to collect annates, appeals to Rome were permitted, and the superiority of popes to councils was admitted.

1517 When Pope Leo X (1513-21) discovered that some of his cardinals were plotting against him, he created 31 new cardinals in one day.

1517 Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. Some of the theses:
27: They preach human doctrine who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.
32 & 33: Those who believe that through letters of pardon they are made sure of their own salvation will be eternally damned along with their teachers. We must especially beware of those who say that these pardons from the pope are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God.
43: Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man or lends to a needy man does better than if he buys indulgences.
45: Christians should be taught that he who sees anyone in need and, passing him by, gives money for indulgences is not purchasing the indulgence of the pope, but calls down upon himself the wrath of God.
50: Christians should be taught that if the pope knew of the exactions of the preachers of indulgences, he would rather see the Basilica of St. Peter burned to ashes than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.
75 & 76: To think that papal indulgences have such power that they could absolve a man even if – to mention an impossibility – he had violated the Mother of God, is madness. We affirm, on the contrary, that papal indulgences cannot take away even the least of venial sins as regards its guilt.
89: Since it is the salvation of souls, rather than money, that the pope seeks by granting indulgences, why does he suspend the letters and indulgences granted long ago, since they are equally efficacious?
94 & 95: Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ, their Head, through pain, death, and hell; and thus to enter heaven through many tribulations rather than in the security of peace.

1517 Egypt brought under Ottoman rule.

1520 Erasmus’ Ratio (1520 edition) included these lines: “Some assert that the universal body of the Church has been contracted into a single Roman pontiff who cannot err on faith and morals, thus ascribing to the pope more than he claims for himself, though they do not hesitate to dispute his judgment if he interferes with their purses or their prospects. Is not this to open the door to tyranny in case such power were wielded by an impious and pestilent man?”

1520 Luther published The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In it, he argued that the papacy had held the church captive for 1000 years, corrupting it in faith, morals, and ritual. He urged communion in both kinds and presented the theory of consubstantiation, that Christ is present in the eucharist along with the bread and wine. Earlier that year, in his Open Letter, Luther opposed the distinction between clergy and laity, the right of popes to settle issues of scriptural interpretation, and the popes’ supposed exclusive right to call a general council. Later in the year, he published A Treatise on Christian Liberty, which stated his belief that man is saved by faith alone, apart from works.

1520 In June, Pope Leo X (1513-21) condemned Luther in the bull Exsurge Domine. Luther burned the pope's bull of excommunication on 10 December. In his opinion, "This burning is only a trifle. It is necessary that the pope and the papal see should also be burned. He who does not resist the papacy with all his heart cannot obtain eternal salvation."

1522 Pope Adrian VI (1522-23) taught that popes were capable of erring in their official role as teachers of the Church. A Dutchman, Adrian was the last non-Italian pope until John Paul II (1978).

1522 Erasmus’ Ratio (1522 edition) included these lines: “We do not impugn the majesty of the Roman pontiff. Would that he had the qualities attributed to him, that he were not able to err in matters of piety, that he were able to deliver souls from purgatory.”

1524 In June, the Zurich city council banned religious images. Zurich was the home of the reformer Huldrych Zwingli. At some point and under Zwingli’s influence, Zurich banned music from worship services. This ban was in force until 1598.

1524 In Riga (Latvia) a group of evangelicals tore a statue of the Virgin Mary out of the cathedral and threw it into the Dvina river. When it floated, they denounced it as a witch and burned it.

1528 Evangelicals destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary on a street corner in Paris.

1530 On December 8, a priest in Valencia, Spain, set off a riot when he denied the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary during a sermon.

1530 Between this year and 1640, an estimated 1,000,000 European Christians were enslaved by Islamic raiders from North Africa. This number is roughly equivalent to the number of African slaves transported westward across the Atlantic by European Christians during the same period.

1530-33 Melchior Hoffman preached in Strassburg and the Low Countries. He taught that Christ’s flesh had come directly from heaven (having come through Mary but not partaking of her), emphasized adult baptism, and predicted the coming of Christ in 1533, followed by the millennial reign of the saints. He was imprisoned in Strassburg in 1533 and died there.

1531 The Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to an Aztec named Juan Diego, about 5 miles north of Mexico City. As proof of her desire to have a chapel built at the foot of Tepeyac Hill, she caused an image of herself to appear on Diego’s cape and told him to call the image Santa Maria de Guadalupe.

1534/35 Affair of the Placards. In Paris, twenty-four Protestants were burned alive between Nov 10, 1534, and May 5, 1535, in reprisal for French Reformers’ placing posters in several French cities in October reviling the mass as idolatry and slandering the pope. Many French evangelical intellectuals (including John Calvin) left the country.

1545 Francis I, king of France (1515-47), allowed the Inquisition to persecute the Waldensees, followers of Peter Waldo (see 1184). The Waldensees lived in roughly 30 villages in Provence. Three thousand Waldensees were killed and a further 700 of the men were made galley slaves.

1546 Fourteen Lutherans were burned to death at Meaux, France. The tongues of eight of them had been torn out before the execution.

1557 The Spanish defeated the French at St. Quentin.

1559 The Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisition (later known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued the first catalog of forbidden books - the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the >Index of Forbidden Books. The last edition of the Index was published in 1948, and it was finally suppressed in 1966. (See also 496 above.) Under the title Biblia prohibita (prohibited Bibles), the Index forebade some Latin editions and the publication and possession of translations of the Bible into German, French, Spanish, Italian, English, or Dutch, without the permission of the Roman Inquisition. All the works of Erasmus were banned also. The Jesuits found this disconcerting, since they used Erasmus’s grammars in their schools.

1559 The Spanish Inquisition produced its own Index of Forbidden Books. Among the prohibited works was Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. All Spanish language books printed outside Spain were banned. The Inquisition also ordered the return of all Spanish students studying abroad, as well as all teachers.

1559 A peace treaty was signed at Cateau-Cambresis to end the war between France and Spain. In the celebratory jousting that followed, King Henry II of France sustained a mortal wound to the face. He died two weeks later. His wife, Catherine de Medici, assumed the regency for her son King Francois, the heir to the throne.

1559 Publication of the French (or Gallican) Confession, a statement of faith by French Huguenots. It was based on a draft prepared by John Calvin.

1561-72 During this period in France, Protestants were massacred on 18 occasions, and Catholics five times.

1561 Colloquy at Poissy. Catherine de Medici, regent of France, realizing that Protestantism in France had taken firm root, summoned Protestant leaders to attend a discussion at Poissy. Theodore de Beza came from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zurich. Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, unsuccessfully sought to reach agreement on a “middle way” based on the Augsburg Confession.

1562 The Massacre of Vassy. The first French religious war (1562-63) began when the Duke of Guise and his men were disturbed during mass in Vassy by the psalm singing of Huguenots in a barn nearby. Guise killed 23 of them. By this year, there were an estimated 2000 Huguenot (Calvinist) churches in France with two million members. Protestantism had gained ground in France rapidly through the 1550s. The Jesuits moved into France in force at about this time.

1562 Concerned that Catholic monarchs were seeking to reconcile with the Protestants (see Poissy, 1561), Pope Pius IV (1559-65) summoned the Council of Trent for its final meeting. It opened in January 1562 and closed in December 1563, with a ceremony at which the council’s decrees were signed. It became clear to Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, who had been instrumental in the Colloquy at Poissy, that reconciliation with Protestantism was impossible after the decrees of Trent had been ratified. He turned away from his former program of supporting communion in both kinds and vernacular worship and began urging that France implement the decrees of Trent.

The council forbade the sale of indulgences.

1562 Theodore de Beza published a metrical Psalter in French.

1567 A professor at Louvain named Michael Baius accused the Jesuits of Pelagianism. Baius took an Augustinian, pessimistic view of human nature, as Jansen was to do later. Baius’s teachings were condemned by Pius V (1566-72).

1567/68 The second French religious war. Fearing Catholic aggression, the Huguenots attempted unsuccessfully to capture the king (Charles IX, 1560-74) and his mother. But the Huguenots did manage to seize the cities of Orleans and La Rochelle.

1567 Eighty Catholics massacred by Huguenots at Nimes, France.

1568 Pope Pius V (1566-72) forbade bullfighting. He characterized it as sinful and prohibited anyone killed in a bullfight from Christian burial. Spain refused to promulgate the pope's decree.

1568-70 The third French religious war. It ended when Charled IX signed a peace treaty with the Huguenots, who were advancing on Paris.

1572 Huguenots assembled in Paris were slaughtered – the of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Charles IX was under the influence of Coligny, a leader of the Protestants, who urged him to support the Dutch war against Spain in hopes of acquiring Flanders for France. The queen mother, Catherine, convinced her son that the Protestants were about to kidnap him. Charles ordered the Huguenots killed. About 2000 were murdered in Paris, and a further 5000 in the provinces. Upon hearing of the massacre, Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) ordered a special medal to be produced to order the Ugonotorum strages, or defeat of the Protestants. He also commissioned a painting of the massacre with the title Pontifex Colignii necem probat, “The pope approves the killing of Coligny.”

1579 In France the anonymous work Vindiciae contro tyrannos (A Vindication against Tyrants) was published. It argued that a king, if he were a tyrant and failed to uphold the natural law, could be deposed by magistrates or by a body such as States-General.

1589 Henry of Navarre, heir to the throne of France and a Protestant, had overcome Catholic forces and was in a position to take Paris. In the face of Parisian opposition to having a Protestant king, Henry sent to the pope requesting instruction in the Catholic faith. He was advised by the Duke of Sully that “Paris is well worth a mass.”

1595 The secular clergy of the Sorbonne sent a petition to the Parlement of Paris requesting that the Jesuits be expelled from France. The Parlement agreed to their request. The Jesuits were agitating against the new king, Henry IV.

1595 Martin Del Rio, a Spanish Jesuit, published a book on witchcraft. According to Del Rio, witchcraft flourishes as the intial enthusiasm for heresy dies out. In his view, this phenomenon was then taking place in the Low Countries. Del Rio also popularized the notion that witches hold sabbats and engage in sexual intercourse with Satan.

1597 King James VI of Scotland a book entitled Demonologie, in which he encouraged the persecution of witches.

1598 The Edict of Nantes. The edict, issued by Henry IV, extended some freedom to French Protestants. Protestant pastors were to be paid by the state, and Protestants could maintain their strongholds for another eight years, also at the king’s expence. However, Protestant worship was forbidden from extending into Catholic areas. The edict was opposed by Pope Clement VIII (1592-1605).