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25 May 1521, inside the emperor's palace

On 25 May 1521, Imperial Vice-Chancellor Mercurino Gattinara read the Edict of Worms at a gathering in Charles V's palace — after a formal session of the Diet, not during one.

Joachim of Brandenburg announced the assent of the electors and princes who were present. The text was put to them for acknowledgment rather than reopened for substantive deliberation.

The draft had been prepared by the papal nuncio Hieronymus Aleander.

What the edict commanded

It declared Luther an obstinate schismatic and notorious heretic, forbade sheltering or supporting him, and ordered his capture once the safe-conduct period ran out — twenty days from his departure.

It also prohibited buying, possessing, reading, printing, preaching or defending his writings.

The operative instruction was to capture and hold him for further imperial instructions.

Signed the next day, dated weeks earlier

Charles V did not sign the German and Latin instruments until 26 May, when he also issued the publication mandate. Both documents nevertheless carried the date 8 May.

Printed copies were then distributed, and implementation varied sharply by territory: some princes promptly published and enforced the edict, while several cities delayed and other territories resisted.

6 March 1521: a letter and a promise

On 6 March 1521 Charles V issued a letter summoning Martin Luther to the imperial gathering at Worms.

The summons assured Luther safe passage there, where he was to be questioned in the presence of the emperor and the imperial estates.

A hearing the empire did not owe him

Leo X had excommunicated Luther on 3 January 1521, which normally called for a corresponding imperial ban.

Imperial princes and nobles insisted that he first be heard at an Imperial Diet. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony and Luther's territorial prince, argued for handling the case under imperial law and supported granting him a hearing.

What was contemplated was an exceptional hearing about Luther's authorship and possible recantation, not an open-ended theological trial. Rome had already condemned his teachings, and the emperor and Diet would ordinarily only have enforced that judgment.

What the letter set in motion

Luther now had a formal imperial command and protection for the journey.

He departed Wittenberg on 2 April, reached Worms on 16 April, and was questioned on 17 and 18 April.

6 June 1523, in the churchyard at Strängnäs

At an assembly in Strängnäs on 6 June 1523, the Swedish regent Gustav Eriksson was elected king of Sweden.

Archdeacon Laurentius Andreae conducted the election in the cathedral churchyard. Gustav held relics while making the prescribed royal promises and oath.

His religious installation inside the cathedral followed the next day.

Two men from Lübeck in the crowd

Two leading Lübeck councillors attended as highly favoured guests. Lübeck wanted a king who could confirm its trade privileges and take responsibility for Sweden's large war debt.

How much leverage they actually had is contested. The archival biography concludes that Lübeck wanted the election and pressed for it, and historians also disagree over how reluctant Gustav was.

Elected, not crowned

The act changed Gustav's status from regent to elected king. His coronation came years later.

It also did not clear the Danish garrisons out at a stroke. Stockholm remained under Danish control until its capitulation later that month, and official Stockholm accounts place Gustav's ceremonial royal entry on Midsummer Day, 24 June.

The date is the Swedish Julian one. Sweden did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1753, so 6 June 1523 corresponds to 16 June in the proleptic Gregorian calendar; Swedish commemoration keeps 6 June.

Night of 23–24 February 1525: through the park wall

During the night of 23–24 February 1525, the Imperial relief army feigned withdrawal, breached the wall of the Visconti hunting park north of Pavia, and entered around daybreak.

The attackers set part of their own camp on fire to sell the illusion of retreat, and the whole assault force was ordered to wear a white shirt or white sign.

Its commanders were short of provisions and money, and Antonio de Leyva had warned that Pavia's garrison was nearing crisis. They chose a risky attack rather than lose the army or the city without a battle.

The charge that crossed its own guns

French artillery struck the advancing Imperial formations at first. Then Francis I's cavalry moved across its field of fire and became separated from the supporting infantry.

Spanish arquebusiers attacked the isolated gendarmes at close range. Imperial Landsknechts and Spanish infantry defeated the French-employed Black Band and the Swiss formations, while Leyva's garrison sallied from Pavia against another Swiss force.

The detailed Pavia reconstruction puts the main battle at less than two hours.

Three men-at-arms and a king on the ground

Francis I's horse was brought down near the Repentita farmstead. Documentary research identifies three Imperial heavy cavalrymen — Juan de Urbieta, Alonso Pita da Veiga and Diego de Ávila — as his captors; Charles de Lannoy subsequently received his formal surrender.

The French army was routed and the siege of Pavia broken. Francis was taken under guard to the convent of San Paolo, and two days later transferred to Pizzighettone.

29 August 1526, on the plain near Mohács

On 29 August 1526, Suleiman I's Ottoman army met the smaller Christian army of Louis II on the plain near Mohács and won a decisive victory.

The Christian army included Hungarian, Czech, Croatian, Polish, German and other Central European troops, commanded principally by King Louis, Archbishop Pál Tomori and George Zápolya.

Louis chose to fight before several expected forces, including John Zápolya's, could join him. Estimates put the Ottoman main army at 60,000–80,000 against roughly 25,000–27,000.

The king who vanished in the retreat

Louis II died while fleeing the defeated army. Recent landscape research supports death while crossing the Csele watercourse along the Danube, although the exact mechanism and location remain debated.

The traditional account has him drowning in the flooded stream. Historians continue to discuss whether drowning, crushing or violence after the battle caused his death.

What was left of the kingdom's leadership

A large part of the Hungarian political and ecclesiastical leadership fell with the army. A museum study identifies 16 knight-bannerets, 12 magnates and 7 prelates among the high-ranking dead, besides Louis himself.

Survivors fled toward Pécs and Buda. The royal chancellor István Brodarics escaped and wrote the most important Christian narrative source for the battle.

The Ottomans remained near Mohács for several days and executed many prisoners — 1,500 in Brodarics's account, about 2,000 in the Ottoman campaign diary — before marching north.

Khanwa, west of Agra, 17 March 1527

Babur's army deployed near Khanwa, west of Agra, behind a cart-protected position divided into right, left and centre. His memoir's chronology places this on 17 March 1527.

Rana Sanga had advanced toward Babur's recently conquered Agra–Delhi position with a coalition of Rajput rulers and Afghan opponents of Mughal rule. Failed negotiations and preliminary clashes around Bayana brought the two armies to Khanwa.

The date is genuinely inconsistent across modern references. Babur's memoir as translated by Annette Beveridge, and Encyclopaedia Iranica, convert 13 Jumada II 933 to 17 March; several modern histories and the Smithsonian chronology give 16 March.

Carts, matchlocks and flanking parties

The coalition attacked both Mughal wings repeatedly. Babur reinforced the threatened positions, fired matchlocks and artillery from behind the carts, sent flanking parties toward the coalition's rear, and eventually ordered his centre and reserves forward.

The coalition broke and dispersed after prolonged fighting. Babur retained Agra and the core of his new Indian state, and afterwards publicly styled himself ghazi.

Encyclopaedia Iranica cautions against reducing the victory to technological superiority: disciplined deployment, mobility, carts, reserves and flanking tactics were integral. The opposing army was not exclusively Rajput or Hindu either — it included Afghan opponents of Babur, notably Mahmud Lodi and Hasan Khan Mewati.

The account it all comes from

Babur's detailed battle narrative is embedded in a highly polemical victory letter composed by Shaikh Zain. Its religious rhetoric and claims about enemy losses are not neutral reporting.

That letter names Hasan Khan Mewati among the dead, saying he was struck by matchlock fire. Babur's own memoir also records that he ordered a tower of enemy heads erected afterward.

The familiar details it does not contain — that Rana Sanga was shot, that Ajja Jhala assumed his insignia, that Silhadi deserted — derive from later traditions.

Morning of 6 May 1527, from the Janiculum

On the morning of 6 May 1527, Charles, Duke of Bourbon, launched assaults from the Janiculum area against Rome's Vatican-side defences.

Bourbon was mortally struck while scaling the defences at Porta del Torrione. Spanish mercenaries then broke through that gate while German Landsknechte entered the Borgo and the St Peter's area.

His was an underpaid army of German, Spanish and Italian troops, marching on a vulnerable Rome during the War of the League of Cognac after pay, plunder and leverage against Clement VII's anti-Habsburg policy.

147 of 189

Of the 189 Pontifical Swiss Guards, Vatican sources say 147 died defending Clement VII while 42 escorted him into Castel Sant'Angelo.

Their commander Kaspar Röist was wounded and then killed at home in front of his wife, according to the Guard's official history.

By nightfall Rome had been breached, organized restraint had largely collapsed, and the looting, killings, kidnapping, ransom-taking and sacrilege had begun. The pillage ran for a week, and many artists afterwards left the city.

What did not happen that day

Charles V was not there. The attackers were troops in his service, but the mutinous army was operating with severely weakened command, and Bourbon — who led the approach and the initial attack — died during the breach rather than directing the sack.

Clement VII did not make peace on 6 May. He stayed besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo and capitulated about a month later, on a date variously given as 5 or 6 June; he agreed to pay 400,000 ducats.

Benvenuto Cellini later claimed he had fired the shot that killed Bourbon. The claim comes from his own autobiography and cannot be independently verified.

8 April 1530: the date in the summons

Charles V's summons of 21 January 1530 instructed the Imperial Diet to convene at Augsburg on 8 April, and asked the imperial estates to address Ottoman defence and religious division.

Nothing opened at Augsburg that day. Charles V had not reached the city, and Elector John of Saxony's delegation was still travelling.

Some older narratives use "convened" loosely for the date appointed in a summons. Institutional and manuscript sources distinguish it from the actual opening.

Where everyone actually was

The Saxon party had left Torgau on 3 April and reached Coburg on 15 April. Luther stayed there while the elector and the other delegates continued south, arriving in Augsburg on 2 May.

As an outlaw under the Edict of Worms, Luther contributed to the preparatory work from Coburg rather than attending. Philipp Melanchthon developed and revised the confession at Augsburg itself.

The Diet that did open

Charles V opened the Diet on 20 June.

The Lutheran estates presented the Augsburg Confession five days later, on 25 June, when the Saxon chancellor Christian Beyer read the German text before the assembled estates.

That confession was not an official imperial set of rules for Protestantism. It was a statement submitted by Lutheran princes and cities to the emperor.

Before dawn on 9 December 1531, at Tepeyac

According to the Catholic tradition recorded in the Nican Mopohua, Juan Diego was walking toward religious services early on Saturday 9 December 1531 when a young woman appeared to him at Tepeyac.

In the narrative he was travelling from Cuauhtitlán toward Tlatelolco, heard singing and a voice, and approached the hill.

The woman identified herself as the mother of the true God and asked him to carry her request for a sacred house at Tepeyac to the bishop of Mexico.

To the bishop and back the same day

The traditional narrative says Juan Diego went to Juan de Zumárraga that day. The bishop listened but remained unconvinced.

The tradition records a second encounter later on 9 December, when Juan Diego reported the response and was told to return and persist.

Zumárraga was bishop of Mexico in 1531, not archbishop; the see was elevated to an archdiocese only in 1546.

How late the written record is

The date and episode are traditional rather than independently documented by contemporary sources. The first known Spanish printed telling appeared in 1648 — 117 years afterward — and the principal Nahuatl narrative was published in 1649.

The Guadalupe cult is documented at Tepeyac by 1555–56, but evidence of a sixteenth-century cult does not by itself verify the detailed 1531 apparition narrative.

Scholars disagree about the age and authorship of the Nican Mopohua and about the historicity of Juan Diego. Stafford Poole argues the familiar narrative emerged in the mid-seventeenth century; Catholic authorities accept the tradition and canonized Juan Diego in 2002.

April 1532, not 13 May

Reliable modern Peruvian sources place Francisco Pizarro's arrival at Tumbes in April 1532 rather than on 13 May. He established a garrison and remained there until 16 May.

A manuscript dated at Tumbes on 12 April provides especially strong evidence that the expedition's presence there preceded 13 May.

No dependable consulted source records a fresh landing on 13 May. The date falls inside a stay already under way, shortly before the march south.

A contested landing at a damaged port

By April the expedition had overcome resistance from an Inca governor and local inhabitants, and was examining the remains of Tumbes — a port damaged during the Inca civil war and known to Pizarro from earlier reconnaissance.

An account based on early conquest sources describes the entry as contested: three Spaniards transporting baggage on a balsa were seized and killed, while Hernando Pizarro landed with cavalry farther along the shore.

What the date does not cover

The expedition left Tumbes on 16 May, reached Poechos on 25 May, and continued toward the site where San Miguel was founded later that year.

The landing, the departure, the founding of San Miguel and the entry into Cajamarca were separate events spread across months.

The familiar figure of 168 Spaniards belongs to Pizarro's force at the Cajamarca encounter in November, not to the party at Tumbes.

7 April 1533, at the close of the session

Henry VIII gave royal assent to 24 Hen. VIII c.12, commonly called the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, at the close of the parliamentary session on 7 April 1533.

The act declared that testamentary, matrimonial, divorce, tithe, oblation and obvention cases were to be finally adjudged within the king's jurisdiction rather than appealed to Rome or any other foreign court.

It is sometimes styled the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532, a product of the regnal-year and session convention, although the assent came on 7 April 1533.

What it actually restricted

For ordinary litigants the act kept an English ecclesiastical appeal ladder — archdeacon, then diocesan bishop, then provincial archbishop — with fifteen days allowed after judgment. It did not make Henry the personal judge of every case.

Cases touching the king went instead to the spiritual peers in Convocation, whose decision was final.

Attempting to obtain or enforce a foreign appeal in the specified cases incurred the penalties of praemunire, not automatically high treason.

Why the timing was urgent

Henry and Thomas Cromwell needed an English judgment on the king's marriage that Catherine of Aragon could not appeal to Rome. Henry had already married the pregnant Anne Boleyn, which made a fast domestic resolution pressing.

With appeals in the enumerated cases barred from leaving the realm, Thomas Cranmer could convene his Dunstable court in May and issue an English judgment without a legally recognized Roman appeal.

Dunstable Priory, 23 May 1533

At Dunstable Priory on 23 May 1533, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer issued the formal sentence declaring null the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

His court had sat on 10, 12, 16, 17 and 23 May. Catherine rejected the tribunal's competence and did not appear, so the proceedings treated her as contumacious.

A surviving manuscript catalogue identifies Cranmer's letter to Henry reporting his pronouncement of the sentence that day.

Void from the beginning

The judgment held that Henry's marriage to his brother Arthur's widow had been contracted contrary to divine law, and was therefore void from its beginning.

Contemporary English documents often call the decision a "divorce," but its legal theory was nullity: the court claimed that no valid marriage had ever existed.

Five days later Cranmer separately declared Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn valid, and Anne was crowned on 1 June.

Two irreconcilable judgments

Catherine refused the resulting title "Princess Dowager" and continued to regard herself as Henry's wife and Queen of England.

Neither she nor the papal authorities recognized Cranmer's jurisdiction or his conclusion. The papal tribunal issued its own final ruling in March 1534, upholding the Catherine marriage.