1492
Spain conquers Granada ending eight hundred years of war with the Moors. Pope Innocent VIII in recognition of King Ferdinand V, awarded him and his successors with the Title, Catholic Kings.

Death of Lorenzo The Magnificent De Medici. He was the grandson of Cosimo and the father of the future Pope, Leo X. Lorenzo made the city of Florence the most powerful state in Italy and one of the world’s most beautiful cities. He was an Italian banker and statesman, and a leading patron of art and scholarship during the Renaissance. He was also a poet. When his father, Piero died, he assumed the responsibilities of the Medici Bank and the De Facto Rule of the Florentine Republic. He married into the Noble Orsini family. Contemporaries of Lorenzo were among the leading artist and intellectuals of the time. Boticelli and Michelangelo enjoyed his patronage, as did the philosophers, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, and the humanist poet, Angelo Poliziano.

Bishop Edmund Audley was appointed Bishop of Hereford, England.

Desiderius Erasmus is ordained a priest.

Christopher Columbus continued to seek financial support for his quest to discover the Far East by sailing west across the Atlantic. In April, he was finally granted the support he needed and sponsorship of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The signed contract stipulated that Columbus was to become Viceroy of all territories he located. In addition to that, his reward would include a hereditary peerage and one-tenth of all precious metals found within his jurisdiction. On August 3, he set sail with ninety men and three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

Alexander VI becomes Pope. He was Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. He was one of the bad Popes. He won the Papal election by the slimmest of margins, one vote, probably his own. He had swung several Cardinals over to his cause by barefaced bribery and promises of rich preferments. His thirst for power and control were his passions. But these undesirable qualities are not what made him a bad Pope, it was his immoral activities. He had a major problem with concupiscence. He fathered eight children before taking Holy Orders and on up to the time when he was a Cardinal! A Prince of the Church! The notorious Caesar Borgia was his son, born in 1475. Pope Pius II rebuked him in 1460 for his scandalous behavior. He was an experienced administrator and made a favorable start in Rome. He dispensed justice vigorously, promised reform of the Curia, and a united effort against the Turkish menace. The Turks were a constant threat to Jews and Christians alike.

1493
Goffredo Borgia, the Pope’s son, married the granddaughter of King Charles VIII of France. The dowry was the rich principality of Squillace.

Birth of Antoinette De Bourbon. She will be married to Claude De Lorraine, the first Duke of Guise, Scotland. He belonged to the Ducal family of Guise in Lorraine, Scotland. Claude de Guise and his wife Antoinette were the proud parents of twelve children. The eldest of the dozen was Mary De Guise, who would become the mother of Mary Stuart, known to the world as Mary, Queen of Scots.

Christopher Columbus left Spain in September on his Second Voyage with seventeen ships and a crew of fifteen-hundred.

1494
Father Ximenes De Cisneros is made Grand Inquisitor of Spain.

Treaty of Tordesillas.

Dietrich Gresemund, a German humanist, publishes his first work, Catologus Illustrium Virorum.

Christopher Columbus left at what is now Cape Isabella, on an exploratory voyage. He surveyed the coast of Cuba, and looked over the island of Jamaica.

Michelangelo Buonarroti leaves Florence and settles in Bologna.

1495
Pope Alexander VI began his long duel with the preacher and heretic reformer, Savonarola.

Michelangelo executes several marble statuettes for the Arca (Shrine) Di San Domenico in the Church of San Domenico.

Christopher Columbus defeated the natives in a revolt that was caused by the brutality of the Europeans. A large number of natives were shipped to Spain as slaves. Queen Isabella, however, objected to this and had the natives returned. Christopher Columbus established a new capital named Santo Domingo and sailed for Spain, leaving his brother, Bartholomew in command.

Father Francisco Ximenes De Cisneros is consecrated Archbishop of Toledo. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were on hand for the celebration in Tarazona. Father Ximenes De Cisneros turned pale upon the reading of the Papal Bull. He was a man that was quite content sleeping on a board and wearing the rough brown Franciscan Robes. Even after his consecration he continued to sleep on his board. Queen Isabella, being a woman who was accustomed to getting what she wants, petitioned the Pope to do something about it. Pope Alexander VI then sent a letter to the Bishop, after reading it, he obeyed the Pontiff and slept in a nice warm bed from then on.

Cardinal Ximenes was Queen Isabella's confessor and Spiritual director, after Fray Torquemada. He was a humble man, he dies while gazing at a Crucifix in 1517, eight days after Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle door in Wittenberg.

Leonardo Da Vinci begins to paint his masterpiece, The Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria Della Grazie, in Milan.

1496
The Turks invaded Hungary.

Michelangelo begins working on his first large-scale sculpture, the over-life-size Baccus.

1497
In January, Nicholas Copernicus begins to study Canon Law at the University of Bologna. He stayed in Bologna in the home of the mathematician, Domenico Maria De Novara. It was he who had influenced Copernicus in astronomy. Together these two men observed the eclipse of the moon of the star Aldebaran on March 9.

Juan Borgia, the second son of Rodrigo Borgia, the Pope, was assassinated in Rome on June 16.

Martin Luther, at the age of fourteen, entered a school at Magdeburg, where, in the words of his biographer, “like many children of honorable and well-to-do parents, he sang and begged for bread.” (Panem Propter Deum-Mathesius).

Pope Alexander VI excommunicates the heretic, Savonarola.

The Turks captured Lepanto, Italy.

Leonardo Da Vinci fininshed his masterpice, The Last Supper.

Death of Fray Thomas De Torquemada. He is buried next to the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella in a building Thomas De Torquemada architected, the Aquin. When it came time to open his tomb to remove his remains due to work on the Aquin, sweet and agreeable odors came from it, as testified by all who were present.

"Torquemada was a gentle student who had left the cloister to perform a disagreeable but necessary task, in a spirit of justice tempered with mercy, and always with skill and prudence; a great lawgiver; the man who, next to the King and Queen and perhaps Columbus, contributed most to the greatness of Spain's siglo de oro, in the next age." -William Thomas Walsh.

1498
Savonarola is condemned as a heretic and is executed in Florence.

Thomas Wolsey is ordained a priest.

Louis XII ascends to the French Throne.

The Turks and Tarters ravage Poland. The land was strewn with corpuses, and the Moslems plundered and burned all the towns and hills and plains around Lemberg and Przemysl.

1499
The Turks harried the Italian seaboard of southern Italy.

Pope Alexander VI called the Council of all Christian Powers. The response was discouraging.

Michelangelo carves in marble, the famous Pieta. The famous sculpture is still in its original place in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Pieta was the only work Michelangelo ever signed his name to.

1500
Pope Alexander VI celebrates the Holy Year Jubilee.