Chronology .....................................
The following are representative of themany significant events of the Renaissance
that has occurred throughout history:
1096 Christians launch the first Crusade
against the Muslims. By the end of the
First Crusade on 1099, Crusaders had es-
tablished several feudal states in the Near
East.
1233 Pope Gregory IX establishes the me-
dieval Inquisition by assembling a formal
tribunal with the power to seek out and
punish heretics.
1275 Venetian Marco Polo travels to
China, where he remains for almost twenty
years. During the Renaissance, Polo’s vari-
ous writings were the primary source of
Western information about the East.
c. 1300 Immanuel of Rome composes his
Notebooks, which contained thirty-eight
sonnets in Hebrew.
1306 Italian poet Dante Alighieri begins
writing his three-part workThe Divine
Comedy.
1337 England and France begin the Hun-
dred Years’ War over control of the French
throne.
1347–1350 Bubonic plague, more com-
monly known as “The Black Death,” sweeps
through Europe.
1364 The University of Cracow is founded
in Poland.
1412 JoanofArcisbornintheFrench
village of Domremy.
1421 Sultan Mehmed II restores the Ot-
toman Empire.
1432 Donatello creates his most famous
work, a bronze statue of David, the first
freestanding nude statue sculpted since the
time of ancient Rome.
1442 King Alfonso V of Aragon conquers
and reunites Sicily and southern Italy into
a single kingdom.
1453 Led by sultan Mehmed II, the Otto-
man Turks conquer Constantinople, the
capital of the Byzantine Empire.
1454 German printer Johannes Guten-
berg pioneers a new system of movable
type for book printing.
1455 The English houses of York and Tu-
dor begin the War of the Roses.
1487 Religious scholars and legal authori-
ties in Germany compile theMalleus ma-
leficarum(the “Hammer of Witches”), a
text that explored ideas about witchcraft
and argued strongly for its vigorous pros-
ecution.
1492 Italian navigator Christopher Co-
lumbus makes his first voyage to the New
World, establishing a small settlement on
Hispaniola called La Navidad.
1503 Giuliano della Rovere is elected
pope. Taking the name Julius II, Giuliano
became known as “the warrior pope” for
his involvement in several wars involving
church lands.
1506 Pope Julius II decides to rebuild
Saint Peter’s Church. The project will
eventually take over eighty-four years to
complete and involve many famous artists,
architects’ and sculpters, including Donato
Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
1512 Michaelangelo completes the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in
Rome.
1517 German priest Martin Luther posts