1310 Matteo Visconti 1322 Galeazzo Visconti 1328 1329 Azzo Visconti 1339 Luchino and Giovanni Visconti 1349 Giovanni Visconti 1354 Matteó Bernabò Galeazzo 1378 Gian Galeazzo Visconti 1402 Gian Maria Visconti 1412 Filippo Maria Visconti 1447…1450 Francesco Sforza 1466 Galeazzo Sforza 1476 Gian Galeazzo Sforza (Ludovico Sforza Regent) 1495 Ludovico Sforza 1499 Ludovico exiled
Some Important General Dates
1298 Battle of Falkirk 1306 Coronation of Bruce 1314 Battle of Bannockburn 1324 (?) John Wyclif born 1337 Froissart born (d. 1410?) 1339 Beginning of the Hundred Years' War 1346 Battle of Crécy 1347 Rienzi made Tribune of Rome Edward III took Calais 1348-9 Black Death in England 1348 S. Catherine of Siena born 1356 Battle of Poictiers 1362 First draft of Piers Plowman 1379 Thomas à Kempis born 1381 Wat Tyler's Rebellion 1400 Geoffrey Chaucer died 1414 Council of Constance 1428 Siege of Orléans 1431 Joan of Arc burnt 1435 (c.) Hans Meinling born 1450 John Gutenburg printed at Mainz Jack Cade's Insurrection 1453 Fall of Constantinople 1455 Beginning of the Wars of the Roses 1467 Erasmus born (d. 1528) 1470 (c.) Mabuse born (d. 1555) 1471 Albert Dürer born (d. 1528) Caxton's Press established in Westminster 1476 Chevalier Bayard born 1482 Hugo van der Goes died 1483 Rabelais born (d. 1553) Martin Luther born Murder of the Princes in the Tower 1491 Ignatius Loyola born 1492 America discovered by Christopher Columbus 1494 Lucas van Leyden born (d. 1533) 1505 John Knox born (d. 1582) 1509 Calvin born 1516 More's Utopia published 1519 First Voyage round the world (Ferd. Magellan) 1519-21 Conquest of Mexico 1520 Field of the Cloth of Gold 1527 Brantôme born (d. 1614) 1528 Albert Dürer died 1531-2 Conquest of Peru 1533 Montaigne born (d. 1592) 1535 Henry VIII became Supreme Head of the Church 1537 Sack of Rome 1544 Torquato Tasso born 1553 Edmund Spenser born 1554 Execution of Lady Jane Grey Sir Philip Sidney born 1555-6 Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer burnt 1558 Calais recaptured by the French 1564 Shakespeare born
NOTES
[1] One of Brunelleschi's devices to bring before the authorities an idea of the dome he projected, was of standing an egg on end, as Columbus is famed for doing, fully twenty years before Columbus was born.
[2] It was Charles V who said of Giotto's Campanile that it ought to be kept in a glass case.
[3] Hence its new name: Loggia de' Lanzi.
[4] In the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington are casts of the two Medici on the tombs and also the Madonna and Child. They are in the great gallery of the casts, together with the great David, two of the Julian tomb prisoners, the Bargello tondo and the Brutus.
[5] Cacus, the son of Vulcan and Medusa, was a famous robber who breathed fire and smoke and laid waste Italy. He made the mistake, however, of robbing Hercules of some cows, and for this Hercules strangled him.
[6] "Thick as leaves in Vallombrosa" has come to be the form of words as most people quote them. But Milton wrote ("Paradise Lost," Book I. 300-304):—