1506
New Saint Peter's Begun
Pope Julius II laid the first stone of a basilica so vast that its dome could cover the Pantheon entire. Bramante's plan demolished the crumbling fourth-century church of Constantine. To pay for the new Saint Peter's, the pope would sell indulgences across Europe, with consequences he never imagined. Bramante's Greek-cross design would be modified by every subsequent architect, from Raphael to Michelangelo, whose dome defined Rome's skyline.
Zhengde Emperor's Eunuchs Rule
In Beijing, the eccentric Ming Zhengde Emperor handed routine government to the eunuch Liu Jin, who soon accumulated enough silver to rival the imperial treasury. Scholarly officials muttered in the Hanlin Academy. Ming Confucian governance, always precarious, was beginning its long decline toward dynastic exhaustion. Liu Jin's arrest in 1510 exposed enormous stockpiles of gold and silver, but did little to reform Ming governance's structural weaknesses.
Death of Christopher Columbus
In a rented room in Valladolid, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea died still insisting he had reached the outskirts of Asia. He was fifty-four, gout-crippled, and convinced the Spanish Crown had cheated him of his promised titles. Few attended the funeral of the man who had broken the world open.
Lisbon Massacre of New Christians
During a drought and plague, a Dominican friar whipped a Lisbon crowd into a frenzy against conversos suspected of secret Judaism. For three days mobs dragged men, women, and children from their homes and burned them in the streets. Nearly two thousand died before King Manuel restored order. King Manuel punished the instigators by executing several friars, but tensions between Old and New Christians fueled persecution for centuries.
Juana the Mad in Flanders
Juana of Castile, heiress to her mother Isabella, arrived in Flanders with her husband Philip the Handsome, who promptly died of fever. Juana, inconsolable, refused to let the coffin be buried and reportedly opened it periodically to kiss his feet. Her father Ferdinand would use her grief to reclaim Castile.
Wittenberg University Growing
Frederick the Wise expanded his new university at Wittenberg, attracting theologians and humanists. Within a decade it would host a friar named Martin Luther and become ground zero of the Reformation. For now it was still a provincial institution struggling for recognition, its lectures attended by a few hundred students.