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The Renaissance

Timeline

TEXTS   CONTEXTS

1335
Petrarch’s poems to Laura, including Sonnets, under way (published 1360)

 
 

1338–1453
Hundred Years’ War

 

1348–1350
The Black Death: Petrarch’s Laura dies in the plague

1349–1353
Boccaccio’s Decameron in progress

 

1387–1399
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in progress; he dies in 1400

 
 

1428
Joan of Arc liberates Orléans from the British; she is burned at the stake for heresy in 1431

 

1453
Constantinople falls to the Turks, increasing dissemination of Greek culture in Western Europe

 

1473
Printing comes to Spain

 

1474
William Caxton prints the first book in English

 

1492
Columbus discovers America •
Expulsion of the Jews from Spain •
Spanish reconquest of Granada •
Expedition of Charles VIII of France

1494
Sebastian Brandt’s Ship of Fools

 
 

1502
The "Nuremberg Egg," first portable
timepiece

 

1503
Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa

1511
Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly
published

 
 

1512
Michelangelo completes the Sistine Chapel ceiling

1516
Erasmus’s edition of the New
Testament of the Bible • First publication of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso

 
 

1517
Luther’s Ninety-five Theses
denounces abuses of the Roman Church

  1519
Charles I of Spain becomes
Roman Emperor, Charles V
1521
Second edition of Orlando Furioso
1521
Luther is excommunicated
  1524
Francis I is captured in battle
against the armies of Charles V
 

1527
Rome sacked by the French •
Castiglione, now bishop of Avila, is
accused of treachery • Marguerite marries Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre

1528
Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier published; he dies the following year
 

1531
Erasmus publishes first complete edition of Aristotle’s works

 

1532
Rabelais’s Pantagruel
Machiavelli’s The Prince • Final
publication of Orlando Furioso; Ariosto dies the following year

 
 

1533
Sorbonne accuses Marguerite’s
chaplain of heresy

1534
Rabelais’s Gargantua

1534
Henry VIII breaks with Rome and becomes head of the Church of England

1536
John Calvin’s Institutes of the
Christian Religion

 
1546
Rabelais’s Third Book
 
  1547
Francis I dies; Henry II accedes to the French throne
 1549
Rabelais’s Fourth Book

1549
England declares war on France

1551
First English translation of More’s Utopia; More had been executed for high treason by Henry VIII in 1535

 
 

1555
Tobacco brought to Spain from
America for the first time

1558
Marguerite de Navarre’s
Heptameron published

 
 

1559
Spain’s most severe Index of banned books

 

1563
Council of Trent concludes

1571?
Montaigne’s Essays in progress; books 1 and 2 published in 1580;
complete publication in 1588

1571
Spain’s battle of Lepanto against the Turks

1581 Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered

 
 

1586
El Greco paints the Burial of Count Orgaz

 

1588
Spain’s Invincible Armada defeated by England

1590 Sir Philip Sidney’s revised Arcadia

 

1596
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie
Queene
1–6 plus the “Mutabilitie Cantos”

 

1597
Tasso’s revised Jerusalem Conquered

 

1597–1604
Cervantes’s Don Quixote in
progress; part 1 was published in 1605, part 2 in 1615

 
 

1598
Philip II of Spain dies; Philip III
crowned • Literary quarrel between Lope de Vega and Luis de Gongora

1600
Shakespeare’s Hamlet appears

 

1611
King James version of the Bible
published

1608
Dutch scientist Johann Lippershey invents the telescope

 

1620
Colony founded by Pilgrims at
Plymouth, Massachusetts
 

1633
Galileo forced by the Inquisition to repudiate Copernican theory that Earth rotates around the sun

1641 René Descartes publishes his Meditations on First Philosophy

 
 

1643–1715
Reign of Louis XIV of France,"the Sun King"

 

1645–1649
England’s Charles I surrenders to antimonarchical forces of Oliver Cromwell and is executed; monarchy is abolished

1655?
Milton’s Paradise Lost in progress; published 1667

1655
Velázquez paints Las Meniñas

 

1660
Charles II restores the English
monarchy