1477
Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy Marry
The Habsburg prince arrived in Ghent to marry Charles the Bold's heiress and keep the Netherlands out of French hands. The union brought Flanders, Brabant, and Holland under Habsburg rule and set Austria on a collision course with France that would last three centuries. A dynastic marriage had just rewritten Europe.
Battle of Nancy
Charles the Bold, besieging Nancy in January snow, attacked a Swiss relief army and was killed when his horse fell in a frozen stream. Wolves, the chroniclers claimed, had eaten his face by the time the searchers found him. Burgundy's dream of kingship died with him; his daughter Mary inherited a state already being dismembered.
Sistine Chapel Construction Completed
Pope Sixtus IV consecrated the rectangular chapel built within the Vatican Palace to the precise biblical dimensions attributed to Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Its side walls were soon frescoed by Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio with Old and New Testament narratives. The ceiling remained plain blue with painted gold stars for another thirty years, patiently waiting for Michelangelo to transform it into the most famous painted surface on earth.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales First Printed
William Caxton printed Geoffrey Chaucer's unfinished masterpiece at his Westminster press, fixing the sprawling text of the Canterbury Tales in a typeset form that subsequent editors could argue about, scholars could annotate, and ordinary literate readers could actually purchase and own. The printing made Middle English accessible far beyond the aristocratic manuscript circles where it had circulated for eight decades and effectively canonized Chaucer as the undisputed founder of the English literary tradition.
Caxton Prints Dictes or Sayengis
William Caxton's first book printed in England, a translation of a French compilation of wisdom sayings attributed to ancient philosophers, was published at Westminster. Its colophon gave the date and place. English vernacular printing was now reliably producing books in London, where they could be bought by lawyers, merchants, and clergy.