1520
1520 was a year of diplomatic extravagance, brutal conquests, and political purges that underscored the era's tensions between emerging powers in Europe and the violent clash of civilizations in the Americas. In June, Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France convened the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a sumptuous summit near Calais featuring tournaments, banquets, and temporary alliance pledges amid rivalry for continental dominance.[1] Simultaneously, Hernán Cortés' forces in Mexico massacred Aztec nobles during a festival in May, provoking a revolt that forced the Spaniards' harrowing retreat from Tenochtitlan on June 30 in the episode known as La Noche Triste, with heavy losses from Aztec warriors and the inaugural smallpox outbreak devastating indigenous populations.[2][3] Ferdinand Magellan's expedition pressed across the Pacific, reaching the Philippines by March and advancing the first circumnavigation despite the commander's later death.[4] In Scandinavia, Christian II of Denmark and Norway orchestrated the Stockholm Bloodbath in November, executing around 82 Swedish nobles and clergy to crush opposition and secure his Swedish crown.[5] These events, alongside the sparking of the Comuneros Revolt in Castile and the parallel Galician fiscal revolts (Revueltas gallegas de 1520-1521) against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's absentee rule and fiscal impositions, highlighted 1520's role in reshaping alliances, empires, and demographics through raw power dynamics.[6]
Events
January–March
On January 19, Danish-Norwegian forces under King Christian II defeated Swedish regent Sten Sture the Younger at the Battle of Bogesund near Lake Åsunden, inflicting heavy casualties on the Swedish army of approximately 10,000 men and leaving Sture mortally wounded.[5] Christian II's victory facilitated his subsequent invasion of Sweden, aiming to assert control over the Kalmar Union.[7] Sture succumbed to his injuries on February 3, creating a power vacuum in Sweden that Christian II sought to exploit through further military advances and alliances with pro-Danish factions.[5] Concurrently, in the Holy Roman Empire's Spanish domains, the Revolt of the Comuneros intensified as cities in Castile, including Toledo and Salamanca, mobilized against Habsburg rule; this unrest stemmed from opposition to Charles V's foreign appointments and fiscal demands following his 1519 election as emperor.[8] By early February, Charles V's revocation of a promised amnesty for prior rebels reignited coordinated uprisings, with juntas forming to demand representative governance and the expulsion of Flemish advisors from the royal court.[8] Diplomatic efforts in Western Europe included English cardinal Thomas Wolsey's February 23 proposal to King Francis I of France, advocating his appointment as proctor by both Francis and Henry VIII of England to negotiate peace with Charles V amid rising tensions over Italian territories.[1] In the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim I, administrative routines persisted without recorded major shifts or campaigns in the first quarter, as resources consolidated after the 1517 conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate; Selim focused on internal stabilization, including tax reforms and janissary reorganizations to support future expansions.[9]April–June
On May 22, 1520, Pedro de Alvarado, commanding the Spanish forces left in Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortés, initiated a massacre of unarmed Aztec nobles and warriors gathered at the Great Temple for the Toxcatl festival honoring the god Tezcatlipoca.[10] Alvarado justified the action in his report to Cortés by claiming the Aztecs were plotting an attack and arming themselves with stone weapons hidden in their costumes, though this was disputed by other eyewitnesses who described the victims as celebrants engaged in ritual dances without arms.[11] Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who arrived with Cortés shortly after, recounted the scene as one of extreme violence, with the temple courtyard filled with corpses piled high, estimating hundreds slain based on the scale of the slaughter observed in the aftermath.[12] The killings, carried out by Spanish soldiers using swords, lances, and cannons against crowds confined by Alvarado's forces blocking the exits, numbered in the low hundreds according to Díaz's chronicle, though Alvarado claimed up to 1,200 to emphasize the perceived threat.[11] This unprovoked assault on Aztec elites, who included priests and high-ranking officials, ignited widespread outrage and directly precipitated the siege of the Spanish quarters by Aztec warriors, trapping the garrison until Cortés's return.[10] The escalating conflict forced Cortés to attempt a nocturnal withdrawal from Tenochtitlan on June 30, 1520, leading to La Noche Triste, a disastrous retreat across the lake's causeways under Aztec attack.[13] Spanish forces, burdened with looted gold and artillery, faced ambushes, bridge collapses, and warriors assaulting from canoes, resulting in the drowning or slaughter of many overloaded with treasure.[14] In his second Carta de relación, Cortés reported losses of 154 Spaniards (including 62 horsemen) and more than 2,000 native allies, primarily Tlaxcalans, during the flight to Tlaxcala, though these figures likely understated the toll to reassure the crown of his command's viability.[12] Bernal Díaz del Castillo, participating in the retreat, described greater devastation, with approximately 400–600 Spaniards and thousands of allies killed or captured, many sacrificed later, based on his firsthand observation of the causeway carnage and survivor counts.[15] The event marked a tactical reversal, compelling Cortés to regroup with Tlaxcalan reinforcements before resuming the campaign.[14]July–September
In July 1520, following the Spanish retreat from Tenochtitlan during La Noche Triste on July 1, Hernán Cortés and his surviving forces, numbering around 500 Spaniards and several thousand indigenous allies, faced pursuit by Aztec warriors under the new ruler Cuitláhuac.[16] On July 7, Cortés's troops decisively defeated a much larger Aztec army at the Battle of Otumba near Otumba, Mexico, through a focused cavalry charge targeting the enemy commander, which disrupted their formation and enabled the Spaniards' escape.[5] This victory, despite heavy losses including wounded leader Cortés, allowed the expedition to reach Tlaxcala by mid-July, where local leaders provided refuge, medical aid, and reinforcements, marking the start of a strategic regrouping phase that bolstered Cortés's position against the Aztecs. In August 1520, Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, after enduring a harsh winter in Port San Julián, Patagonia, from March to August, departed the harbor on August 24 with three remaining ships—the Trinidad, Victoria, and Concepción—following the suppression of mutinies and the loss of two vessels earlier in the year.[17] The fleet pressed southward along the South American coast, scouting for a western passage to the Spice Islands amid dwindling supplies and crew hardships, setting the stage for the subsequent discovery of the strait bearing Magellan's name. On September 22, Ottoman Sultan Selim I died of illness in Çorlu, Turkey, after a reign marked by conquests including the Mamluk Sultanate.[18] His son, Suleiman, aged 26, was proclaimed Sultan on September 30 in Istanbul, assuming the throne without immediate rivals and promptly ordering military reviews and mobilizations, including reinforcements for frontier garrisons against Hungarian and Safavid threats, which foreshadowed his expansive campaigns in Europe and the Middle East.[19]October–December
In October 1520, Hernán Cortés, having retreated to Tlaxcala after the Spanish expulsion from Tenochtitlan earlier that summer, focused on rebuilding his expedition's capabilities, including the construction of brigantine ships in allied territories and campaigns against resistant local groups such as those near Tepeaca to secure supply lines and alliances for a renewed advance.[20] [21] On October 23, Charles V was crowned King of the Romans in Aachen Cathedral, a ceremonial affirmation of his election the previous year that strengthened his authority over the German territories amid rising princely rivalries and the early stirrings of religious dissent.[22] From November 8 to 9, Danish forces under King Christian II executed around 100 Swedish nobles and clergy in Stockholm following his coronation as king of Sweden, an act framed as retribution for alleged treason and heresy but which primarily eliminated opposition to Danish control in the Kalmar Union.[23] The executions, carried out by axe in the town square, marked a brutal consolidation of power that provoked widespread Swedish rebellion.[24] Reports extended the period of arrests and trials into late November, heightening regional instability.[25] On December 10, Martin Luther conducted a public burning of Pope Leo X's bull Exsurge Domine—issued months earlier demanding his recantation of 41 theses deemed heretical—in Wittenberg, accompanied by copies of canon law, symbolizing his rejection of papal authority and accelerating the schism in Western Christendom.[26] This defiant act, witnessed by students and professors, underscored Luther's commitment to scriptural primacy over ecclesiastical decrees.[27]Date unknown
Matteo da Bascio, a Franciscan friar, was ordained as a priest around 1520 and soon developed a strong desire to restore the order's primitive practices of solitude, penance, and strict adherence to St. Francis's rule, which diverged from the more relaxed Observant branch.[28] This personal commitment foreshadowed the Capuchin reform movement, though formal separation and papal approval occurred later in the decade.[29] His emphasis on austerity reflected broader tensions within religious orders amid the era's calls for renewal, distinct from the Protestant Reformation's challenges to papal authority.[30]Exploration and Military Conquests
Magellan's Circumnavigation Expedition
The expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, sponsored by Spain to establish a western route to the Moluccas amid rivalry with Portugal over spice trade monopolies, encountered severe challenges in Patagonia during early 1520. After reaching the Río de la Plata estuary on January 10, the fleet wintered at Port St. Julian from March 31, where cold weather and dwindling supplies led to scurvy among the crew, claiming an estimated 20–30 lives through symptoms like swollen gums and tooth loss, exacerbated by reliance on salted meat and limited fresh provisions.[31] [32] On the night of April 1, Spanish captains mutinied against Magellan's Portuguese command, citing hardships and doubts about the route; Magellan suppressed the revolt by April 2, executing five leaders including captains Gaspar de Quesada and Luis de Mendoza, while marooning others, reducing effective crew strength by around 40 men and reinforcing hierarchical discipline through decisive force.[33] [31] Resuming southward in August after repairs, the fleet sighted the entrance to a narrow passage on October 21, which Magellan named the Strait of Magellan after confirming its connectivity through scouting parties navigating its 373-mile labyrinth of channels amid hostile Patagonian natives and treacherous currents.[32] One vessel, the San Antonio, deserted on November 20 and returned to Spain, but the remaining three ships—Trinidad, Concepción, and Victoria—completed traversal by November 28, emerging into an unexpectedly vast ocean that Magellan dubbed the Pacific, spanning over 60 million square miles and disproving underestimations of its girth based on prior theoretical calculations.[33] [34] This empirical passage validated first-principles dead-reckoning navigation, relying on compass bearings, log-line measurements, and stellar observations to chart longitude deviations, while exposing the causal limits of European geographic knowledge derived from Ptolemaic models. The 1520 milestones provided direct evidence toward confirming Earth's sphericity through practical circumnavigational progress, as the westward transit from Atlantic to Pacific demonstrated oceanic continuity without continental obstruction, aligning with spherical geometry by requiring curvature to reconcile observed horizons and stellar shifts across hemispheres—a validation rooted in navigational data rather than abstract hypothesis.[35] [36] Crew logs recorded consistent southward declination adjustments and equatorial crossings, yielding approximate circumference estimates via daily progress logs that foreshadowed the full voyage's measurement of roughly 40,000 kilometers, underscoring the expedition's role in causal realism by prioritizing observed distances over speculative maps influenced by mercantile interests.[35] The Victoria's later survival to complete the loop under Juan Sebastián Elcano built on this foundation, but 1520's strait navigation alone marked a pivotal empirical gain in understanding global hydrology and trade viability, unmarred by subsequent Portuguese interdictions.[37]Hernán Cortés and the Conquest of the Aztecs
In early 1520, Hernán Cortés maintained control over the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan through the captivity of Emperor Moctezuma II, whom he had seized in November 1519 to secure compliance and extract tribute.[38] This strategy relied on Moctezuma's authority to pacify resistance, but underlying tensions escalated when news arrived of a rival Spanish expedition under Pánfilo de Narváez landing on the coast in May 1520. Cortés defeated and incorporated Narváez's forces, but a subordinate, Pedro de Alvarado, had massacred Aztec nobles during a festival in Tenochtitlan, provoking widespread revolt.[39] [40] Moctezuma's death on June 29 or 30, 1520, marked a pivotal shift; Spanish accounts claim he was fatally injured by stones thrown by his own people during an attempt to address the uprising from a palace balcony, while Aztec sources attribute it to Spanish mistreatment or stabbing.[38] [41] The emperor's brother Cuitláhuac succeeded him, intensifying Aztec attacks on the Spanish-held palaces. On June 30, 1520, Cortés attempted a nighttime retreat across the causeways—known as La Noche Triste—suffering heavy casualties, with estimates of 400 to 860 Spaniards and thousands of indigenous allies killed, alongside the loss of most treasure.[38] [42] Fleeing to the allied territory of Tlaxcala, where initial hostilities in 1519 had given way to a strategic pact against the Aztecs by late 1520, Cortés rebuilt his forces with thousands of Tlaxcalan warriors, leveraging their long-standing enmity toward the Aztec empire's tribute demands and ritual sacrifices of captives.[43] [21] This alliance proved essential, as Tlaxcalans provided numerical superiority and local knowledge for subsequent campaigns. Concurrently, smallpox—introduced via a Narváez expedition soldier in April or May 1520—spread rapidly through Tenochtitlan, causing up to 25-30% mortality among Aztecs by mid-1520, weakening defenses and leadership before major Spanish offensives resumed, with Cuitláhuac succumbing to the disease in November.[39] [40] The epidemic's demographic impact, independent of battle losses, disrupted Aztec societal cohesion, including the cessation of large-scale ritual human sacrifices that had sustained their imperial ideology, as evidenced by Spanish eyewitness reports and post-conquest archaeological findings of tzompantli skull racks.[44]Diplomacy and European Affairs
The Field of Cloth of Gold
The Field of Cloth of Gold was a diplomatic summit convened between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France from 7 to 24 June 1520, spanning 18 days in the Val d'Or (Golden Valley) between the English-held town of Guînes and the French-held Ardres, within the English Pale of Calais.[45][46] Organized by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to reaffirm the Anglo-French entente from the 1518 Treaty of London—a broader pact for universal peace among Christian powers—the meeting aimed to isolate Holy Roman Emperor Charles V by showcasing mutual magnificence and goodwill amid rising continental tensions.[45][47] Logistics underscored the event's role as a spectacle of monarchical potency, with both sides erecting vast tent cities resembling palaces: the English constructed a portable structure of gilded timber and canvas, adorned in cloth of gold (a luxurious silk-wool blend woven with gold threads), requiring nearly 6,000 laborers and featuring fountains dispensing wine.[46] Retinues totaled over 5,000 per king, including nobles, musicians, and cooks who consumed 200,000 liters of wine alongside banquets of exotic meats and masques; costumes glittered with gold embroidery, jewels, and feathers, while tournaments involved jousting in full armor, wrestling, and archery displays.[46][48] Henry VIII's personal outlay approached £36,000—exceeding his annual royal household budget and equivalent to funding a major military campaign—highlighting fiscal overreach for England, whose treasury remained depleted from prior French wars and vulnerable to renewed conflict.[49] Substantive outcomes were limited to informal renewals of amity and gift exchanges, such as Henry's donation of a jeweled cross to Francis, yielding no binding treaties or military commitments against Charles V despite initial anti-Habsburg posturing.[45][47] By August 1521, Wolsey negotiated an Anglo-Imperial alliance, leading to war with France and exposing the summit's diplomacy as largely ceremonial.[47] Contemporaries and later observers critiqued the extravagance as profligate amid fiscal pressures and unresolved rivalries, yet the assembly demonstrably elevated both kings' prestige through Renaissance-era pomp, facilitated logistical rehearsals for elite mobilizations (including artillery escorts), and reinforced monarchical authority via public assertions of wealth and martial prowess independent of battlefield results.[50][51]The Stockholm Bloodbath
The Stockholm Bloodbath consisted of mass executions ordered by Christian II of Denmark and Norway in Stockholm from November 7 to 9, 1520, immediately following his coronation as King of Sweden on November 4.[24][23] These targeted Swedish nobles, clergy, and burghers accused of treason for supporting Sten Sture the Younger's rebellion against Danish authority in the Kalmar Union.[24][52] Christian II's forces had defeated Sture's partisans and captured Stockholm in September 1520 after a prolonged siege, enabling the Danish king to enforce union loyalty amid ongoing Swedish resistance to centralized rule from Copenhagen.[24] At the instigation of Archbishop Gustav Trolle, whom Sture's supporters had deposed and declared a traitor in 1517, Christian convened a tribunal that revoked prior amnesty promises to assembled opponents.[23][24] Danish records, including a report from chief executioner Jürgen Homut, confirm 82 beheadings by axe in the city's main square, though some accounts estimate up to 100 victims including indirect deaths.[23][52] The purge aimed to dismantle networks of union dissidents, viewed in Danish terms as a pragmatic security response to repeated rebellions that undermined Kalmar governance since its 1397 formation.[53] Swedish interpretations, however, frame the event as a betrayal of safe conduct pledges, emphasizing its role in galvanizing opposition.[52] The executions decimated the anti-union nobility, including relatives of Gustav Vasa, whose subsequent uprising exploited widespread resentment to expel Danish forces by 1523 and dissolve Swedish participation in the union.[24][23]Religious and Intellectual Developments
The Reformation and Papal Response
On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, condemning 41 specific propositions drawn from Martin Luther's writings as heretical or erroneous, including critiques of papal authority, the sacramental system, and the sale of indulgences.[54][55] The bull demanded that Luther recant these statements within 60 days or face excommunication, framing his teachings as a threat to ecclesiastical unity and doctrinal purity derived from tradition and councils.[54] This response escalated the conflict initiated by Luther's 95 Theses in 1517, which had empirically challenged the practice of selling indulgences—certificates purportedly reducing time in purgatory—on grounds that such sales lacked scriptural warrant and fostered moral laxity among the laity, as evidenced by widespread abuses in their distribution to fund St. Peter's Basilica.[56] Luther, prioritizing scripture as the ultimate authority over papal decrees—a principle rooted in his examination of biblical texts like Romans 1:17 for justification by faith alone—responded defiantly by publicly burning the bull, along with volumes of canon law and works by opponents like Johann Eck, on December 10, 1520, in Wittenberg.[57][56] This act symbolized rejection of Rome's jurisdictional claims, which Luther argued were unsubstantiated by empirical appeal to the Bible and historical church fathers, contrasting with Catholic insistence on the pope's interpretive supremacy as established in medieval decretals.[56] In the preceding months, Luther had amplified his scriptural critiques in three major treatises: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520), which assailed the papacy's monopolization of reform and called for secular princes to intervene based on priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9); The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520), reducing sacraments to two (baptism and communion) with biblical evidence and decrying others as inventions; and The Freedom of a Christian (November 1520), emphasizing inner faith over external works like indulgences.[57] Catholic apologists, drawing from conciliar precedents like the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), viewed Luther's positions as causal ruptures inviting anarchy by undermining the hierarchical chain linking scripture to magisterial authority, potentially eroding unified Christendom amid Ottoman threats.[55] Luther's defenders, however, highlighted empirical evidence of indulgences' corruption—such as Tetzel's sales tactics promising quantifiable remission—and causal realism in reverting to patristic and biblical norms, where papal overreach deviated from early church practices without textual mandate.[56] The bull's failure to engage Luther's scriptural citations directly, opting instead for condemnation without disputation, underscored a deepening schism, with Luther's burning precipitating his formal excommunication on January 3, 1521, and galvanizing Protestant appeals to vernacular Bible access over Latin vulgate traditions.[57] This 1520 confrontation marked the Reformation's irreconcilable pivot from reformist critique to outright defiance of papal supremacy.[54]Other Religious Events
On 30 September 1520, Suleiman I succeeded his father Selim I as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, inheriting a realm characterized by pragmatic religious policies that prioritized administrative stability over doctrinal uniformity.[58] Under Suleiman, non-Muslims—primarily Christians and Jews—continued to operate within the dhimmi framework, paying the jizya poll tax for legal protection, communal autonomy via the millet system, and exemption from military service, a arrangement driven by the empire's need for revenue, loyalty, and expertise from diverse subjects rather than theological leniency.[58] This approach, evident in early firmans reaffirming minority privileges, facilitated Suleiman's initial consolidation of power and set the stage for expansion into Christian territories, where such policies contrasted with the religious militancy of Ottoman military campaigns.[59] In Catholic Europe, the year marked the death of Raphael Sanzio on 6 April in Rome at age 37, shortly after completing much of his final work, The Transfiguration, an altarpiece commissioned for the French cardinal and completed by his assistants for installation in Narbonne Cathedral.[60] The painting juxtaposes Christ's radiant Transfiguration atop Mount Tabor—flanked by Moses and Elijah, witnessed by Peter, James, and John—with the Apostles' failed exorcism below, symbolizing divine revelation amid human limitation and underscoring Catholic emphases on sacramental mystery and hierarchical authority in biblical interpretation.[61] As a pinnacle of High Renaissance religious iconography, it exemplified the Church's patronage of art to evoke spiritual awe, predating iconoclastic reactions in reformist circles. The Knights Hospitaller, a sovereign Catholic military-religious order, held Rhodes as their base in 1520, actively maintaining fortifications and naval patrols to counter Ottoman naval presence in the Aegean, under Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto until his death the following year.[62] This defensive posture represented a persistent frontier of Christian resistance against Islamic expansion, with the order's 300 knights and local forces sustaining a theocratic bastion that had repelled prior sieges, though mounting Ottoman shipbuilding under Suleiman's early rule heightened pressures by year's end.Births
Notable Births
Deaths
Notable Deaths
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, a principal exponent of Italian High Renaissance painting and architecture, died on April 6, 1520, in Rome at age 37 from a sudden fever, likely worsened by excessive bloodletting prescribed by physicians.[67][68] His death halted ongoing commissions, including frescoes in the Vatican and designs for Saint Peter's Basilica, depriving Europe of further contributions from one of its most influential artists whose works exemplified classical harmony and ideal beauty.[69] Moctezuma II, the ninth tlatoani (ruler) of the Aztec Empire reigning from 1502 to 1520, died on June 30, 1520, in Tenochtitlan while held captive by Hernán Cortés's forces amid a popular uprising against the Spanish presence.[70][38] Accounts differ on the exact cause—Spanish sources claim he was fatally wounded by stones thrown by his own subjects attempting to rally resistance, while indigenous narratives suggest execution by the conquistadors—yet his demise triggered leadership vacuum and intensified Aztec factionalism, facilitating the Spanish expulsion during La Noche Triste and eventual empire collapse.[38][71] Selim I, Ottoman Sultan from 1512 known as "the Grim" for ruthless conquests that doubled the empire's territory including the Mamluk Sultanate and holy cities of Mecca and Medina, succumbed to cancer on September 22, 1520, near Çorlu at age 50.[72][73] His death paved the immediate accession of his son Suleiman I, enabling sustained Ottoman offensives into Europe and the Mediterranean that reshaped regional power dynamics for decades.[74] The Stockholm Bloodbath, occurring November 7–10, 1520, saw Danish King Christian II order the beheading of roughly 100 Swedish nobles, clergy, and burghers—including bishops Matthias of Strängnäs and Vincent of Skara—on charges of high treason tied to prior opposition against Danish rule.[24][23] This purge, conducted despite initial amnesty promises, decimated the Swedish aristocracy loyal to the Sture regency, creating conditions for Gustav Vasa's rebellion and Sweden's independence from the Kalmar Union by 1523.[24]