1469
Ferdinand and Isabella Marry in Valladolid
The seventeen-year-old princess of Castile and the eighteen-year-old prince of Aragon were secretly wed in a private ceremony with a forged papal dispensation, both dressed in borrowed finery. The marriage quietly united the Iberian crowns and set in motion the Reconquista's completion, the Inquisition, and eventually the Spanish Empire. The forged papal dispensation was replaced by a genuine one only after consummation, a diplomatic irregularity that nearly derailed the union.
Guru Nanak Born in Talwandi
In a Punjabi village, a son was born to a Hindu tax collector of the Khatri caste. He would grow up hearing both Hindu bhajans and Muslim qawwali, disappear at age thirty into a river for three days, and emerge declaring that there was no Hindu and no Muslim. Sikhism's founder had begun his mission.
Lorenzo de Medici Inherits Florence
The twenty-year-old grandson of Cosimo, poet and athlete, took over family affairs after his father Piero's death. Florence's unofficial ruler for the next twenty-three years, he would sponsor Botticelli, Verrocchio, the young Michelangelo, and Poliziano, and survive an assassination conspiracy that killed his brother in the cathedral. Known as il Magnifico, Lorenzo was less a patron of painting than of philosophy, yet his era became synonymous with Florentine brilliance.
Machiavelli Born in Florence
A minor notary's son was born in a Florentine house near the Ponte Vecchio. He would hold modest diplomatic posts under the republic, be tortured and exiled when the Medici returned, and write a short treatise on realpolitik in a country villa that would permanently rearrange the vocabulary of political thought.
Piero de Medici Dies
Cosimo's son Piero the Gouty, who had managed the Medici bank through a period of tightening credit, died after five years as Florence's unofficial ruler. His son Lorenzo inherited the unstable mantle at age twenty. The Medici bank had begun its slow slide toward insolvency, papered over for another generation by political influence.