1494
Treaty of Tordesillas
Spain and Portugal, negotiating in a Castilian town, moved Alexander VI's dividing line 270 leagues further west, inadvertently granting Portugal Brazil before anyone knew it existed. The treaty was signed by men who had never seen the lands they were dividing. It remains, legally, the basis of the linguistic map of Latin America.
Charles VIII Invades Italy
The French king crossed the Alps with a well-equipped army, new bronze field cannons, and a flimsy claim to Naples. Italian states watched, hedged, and collapsed. Within months he would walk into Florence unopposed, then Rome, then Naples itself. The Italian Wars, which would last sixty-five years, had begun in a saddle pass.
Pacioli Publishes Summa de Arithmetica
The Franciscan mathematician, friend of Leonardo, published a vernacular Italian treatise on arithmetic, geometry, and what he called the 'Venetian method' of double-entry bookkeeping. Commerce and mathematics fused in print. European capitalism acquired its grammar, and accountants their patron saint, on the Rialto. His exposition of the Venetian method of double-entry bookkeeping gave commercial mathematics its foundational textbook.
Medici Expelled from Florence
Piero de Medici, terrified by Charles VIII's advance, negotiated humiliating terms without consulting the Signoria. Florence rose up, expelled the family, and declared a republic under the preaching of the friar Savonarola. Cosimo and Lorenzo's careful constructions were dismantled in a weekend. The Medici would return, but not soon. The apocalyptic friar Savonarola filled the vacuum, and his bonfires of vanities consumed paintings and cosmetics in the same squares where Medici festivals had celebrated beauty.
Luca Pacioli Publishes Summa
The Franciscan friar published his encyclopedic Summa de Arithmetica in Venice, including the first printed description of double-entry bookkeeping. The technique had been used in Italian counting houses for centuries; Pacioli made it public. European commerce acquired, in print, the foundational grammar of modern accounting. His friendship with Leonardo produced a collaboration on geometric solids that united mathematics and art in a single manuscript.
Charles VIII Enters Florence
The French king rode into Florence on his march to Naples. Savonarola welcomed him as a divine scourge. The Medici were already fleeing. Charles's troops looted quietly while the friar negotiated the city's survival. The entry was bloodless, humiliating, and epoch-making: Italy's independence from transalpine power had evaporated overnight. The ease with which a foreign army crossed Italy exposed the peninsula's weakness and inaugurated sixty years of devastating Italian Wars.
Savonarola Effectively Rules Florence
With the Medici expelled and Charles VIII departed south, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola effectively became Florence's spiritual dictator. His sermons drew weeping crowds. He preached republican government, moral reform, and the imminent scourge of God. For four years Florence became a laboratory of theocratic experiment before his burning. His bonfires of vanities, where citizens burned cosmetics, mirrors, and artworks, represented the most dramatic collision between Renaissance aesthetics and puritanism.