1484
Innocent VIII Issues Witch Bull
The pope's Summis desiderantes affectibus authorized the Dominican inquisitors Kramer and Sprenger to investigate witchcraft in German lands. Their Malleus Maleficarum followed two years later. The bull helped industrialize witch-hunting into a bureaucratic process. The fires that followed burned, chiefly, old women who could not answer procedural questions. The Malleus Maleficarum that followed became the most widely used manual for witch-hunters across Europe for two centuries.
Columbus Petitions Portuguese Court
The Genoese navigator presented his audacious plan for a westward sea route to Asia to King Joao II of Portugal. A royal committee of experienced mathematicians and navigators rejected it, correctly noting that Columbus had drastically underestimated the earth's circumference and that the open ocean between Europe and Asia was far too vast for his small ships to cross. Dismissed by the court that knew the most about oceanic navigation, the stubborn Genoese turned his pitch to Spain.
Botticelli Paints Mars and Venus
Sandro Botticelli produced a languid, dreamlike panel of the war god Mars asleep in post-coital exhaustion while Venus watches with alert, knowing eyes, a Neoplatonic allegory of love conquering aggression through beauty rather than force. Small satyrs play mischievously with Mars's abandoned lance and helmet. Painted for the Vespucci family, it captured the Medici circle's obsession with synthesizing classical mythology, Christian philosophy, and unabashed sensual beauty into a single visual language.
Sixtus IV Dies in Rome
The Franciscan pope who had commissioned the Sistine Chapel and orchestrated the Pazzi Conspiracy died of gout. The conclave that followed produced Innocent VIII, who would father eight acknowledged children and preside over the Inquisition's witch-hunting expansion. The papal court was becoming, by any reasonable definition, a royal court. His pontificate irrevocably transformed the papacy from a spiritual office into a Renaissance court with dynastic ambitions and military campaigns.
Richard III Holds First Parliament
The English parliament passed the Titulus Regius formally recognizing Richard III's claim based on the alleged illegitimacy of his nephews. It also passed important legal reforms, including the first English statute in English rather than French. Richard's brief, energetic government was producing administrative change his reputation would later obscure. His legal innovations, including bail for the accused and prohibition of forced benevolences, survived his overthrow and remained in English law.