Pope Clement VII
The Death of Servet. October 27, 1553.
Michael Servetus, also known as Miguel Servet, was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in his book Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages. When Juan de Quintana, an imperial theologian became Confessor to the Habsburg emperor Charles V, Servetus joined him in the imperial retinue as his secretary. Servetus travelled through Italy and Germany, and attended Charles‘ coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in Bologna. He was...
Anne Boleyn´s trial. May 15,1536.
Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henry VIII. Henry‘s marriage to her, and her execution by beheading, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the start of the English Reformation. Anne was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, but after her marriage plans were broken off, she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII’s wife, Catherine of Aragon. In February or March 1526, Henry VIII began his pursuit of Anne. She resisted his attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress, which her sister Mary had been. It soon became the one absorbing object of Henry’s desires to annul his marr...
Sacco di Roma. May 6, 1527.
The growing power of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V alarmed Pope Clement VII, who perceived Charles as attempting to dominate the Catholic Church and Italy. In effort to free both from Imperial domination, Clement VII formed an alliance with Charles V’s arch-enemy, King Francis I of France, which came to be known as the League of Cognac (including France, Milan, Venice, Florence and the Papacy). The imperial troops were 14,000 Germans, 6,000 Spanish, and an uncertain number of Italian infantry. The troops defending Rome were not at all numerous, consisting of 5,000 militiamen led by Renzo da Ceri and 189 Papal Swiss Guard. The city’s fortifications included the massive walls, and it possessed a good artillery force, which the Imperial army lacked. Charles III, Duke of Bourbon nee...
February 12, 1502. The Muslim Conversion or Expulsion.
Unlike the Muslims of Granada, who were under Muslim rule until 1492, Muslims in the rest of Castile had lived under Christian rule for generations. Following the conversions in Granada, Isabella decided to impose a conversion-or-expulsion decree against the Muslims. Castile outlawed Islam in a legislation dated July 1501 in Granada, but it was not immediately made public. The proclamation took place on February 12, 1502, in Seville, and then locally in other towns. The edict affected “all kingdoms and lordships of Castile and Leon“. According to the edict, all Muslim males aged 14 or more, or females aged 12 or more, should convert or leave Castile by the end of April 1502. The edict justified the decision by saying that after the successful conversion of Granada, allowing Mus...
Mary Tudor´s second marriage. May 13, 1515.
Mary had been unhappy with her marriage of state to King Louis XII, as at this time, she was almost certainly already in love with Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. King Henry VIII was aware of his sister Mary’s feelings; letters from his sister in 1515 indicated that Mary agreed to wed King Louis only on condition that “if she survived him, she should marry whom she liked.” However, King Henry VIII wanted any future marriage to be to his advantage. A pair of French friars went so far as to warn Mary that she must not wed Charles Brandon because he “had traffickings with the devil.” When King Henry VIII sent Charles to bring Mary back to England in late January 1515, he made the Duke promise that he would not propose to her. However once in France, Mary pe...
King Henry VIII, head of the Anglican Church. November 3, 1534.
The First Act of Supremacy was enacted on November 3 1534 in the English Parliament during Henry VIII reign. In this act, the king was proclaimed “the only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England” and that the English crown shall enjoy “all honours, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity.” The Act made the English Reformation official, though it had been building up since 1527, and it asserted the final independence of the Ecclesia Anglicana. The result of this act was a deep crisis of the relationships between England and Rome. Henry VIII´s desire of obtaining the annulment of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon, which had been repeatedly denied by Pope Clement VII (who was under ...
Henry VIII of England and Anne of Cleves – July 9, 1540 AD
Henry Tudor was born on June 28, 1491, the third child and second son of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. His childhood was a steady stream of appointments and titles. Before his third birthday in 1493, he was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Within the next year, he was appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and inducted to the Order of the Bath. The day after being in the Order, he was made Duke of York. About a month later, he was made Warden of the Scottish Marshes. In 1495, he was appointed to the Order of the Garter. Despite all of education and titles, his older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, was expected to be crowned King of England. In 1502, Arthur died suddenly of “English sweating sickness”, le...
Pope Clement VII Escapes – December 6, 1527 AD
When Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici became Pope Clement VII on November 19, 1523, the Italian War had already been raging for two years. The election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor and the allying of Pope Leo X with Charles against Martin Luther provoked the war of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII of England and the Papal States against King Francis I of France and the Republic of Venice. Clement sent the Archbishop of Capua to the kings of France, England and Spain to try to end the war. The mission failed and Francis invaded Milan. In return, Clement joined with the other Italian princes, Republic of Venice and France against the Imperial and Spanish forces. In doing so, Parma and Piacenza became Papal States, the Medici rule over Florence and free passage of the French troops ...
The Western/Papal Schism and the End of Papal States – September 20, 1378 AD and September 20, 1870 AD
Robert of Geneva was the son of Amadeus III, Count of Geneva. He was born in 1342 AD in Chateau d’Annecy, in the county of Savoy, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1361, he became the Bishop of Thérouanne; the Archbishop of Cambrai in 1368 and a cardinal in 1371. From 1376-1378, he was serving as papal legate in Upper Italy and during that time, he was called upon in 1377 to suppress a rebellion in the Papal States. He personally led forces against the city of Cesena in Forlì, which was resisting being annexed into the Patrimony of Peter, during the War of the Eight Saints (1375-1378). The Papal States were territories in Italy under the direct sovereignty of the Pope, from the 700s-1870, ending when the unified Kingdom of Italy laid siege to the city of Rome and Pope Pius XI. On Sept...