検索キーワード： 16世紀

"Il 6 maggio abbiamo preso d'assalto Roma, ucciso seimila persone, saccheggiato le case, preso quello che abbiamo trovato nelle chiese e alla fine incendiato buona parte della città". Così un lanzichenecco descrive il saccheggio che le truppe imperiali infliggono a Roma. Le truppe a difesa della città sono deboli, le mura e l'artiglieria non bastano a fermare gli assedianti. Clemente VII riesce a riparare a Castel Sant'Angelo solo grazie al sacrificio dell'intera Guardia svizzera.

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography. In this work, which was actually begun in 1558 but not published until 1730, Cellini beautifully chronicles his flamboyant times. He tells of his adventures in Italy and France, and his relations with popes, kings, and fellow artists.

Henry's relationships with the men who surrounded him reveal much about his beliefs, behaviour and character. They show him to be capable of fierce but seldom abiding loyalty, of raising men only to destroy them later. He loved to be attended and entertained by boisterous young men who shared his passion for sport, but at other times he was more diverted by men of intellect, culture and wit.

What was life like for Shakespeare's first audiences? In a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, how did Elizabethan play-goers make sense of their changing world? What did the plays mean to the public when they were first performed? In this fascinating series, Neil MacGregor attempts to answer these questions by examining 20 objects from that turbulent period. There are grand objects such as a communion chalice, a Venetian goblet, and Dr Dee's mirror, as well as everyday items.

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

Mary Boleyn, ‘the infamous other Boleyn girl’, began her court career as the mistress of the king of France. François I of France would later call her ‘The Great Prostitute’ and the slur stuck. Mary would emerge the sole survivor of a family torn apart by lust and ambition, and it is in Mary and her progeny that the Boleyn legacy rests.

The Tudors retained only a precarious grip on the crown of England, founded on a title that was both tenuous and legally flimsy. This left them preoccupied by two major obsessions: the necessity for a crop of lusty male heirs to continue their bloodline and the elimination of threats from those who had strong if not superior claims to the throne. None was cursed more by this rampant insecurity than Henry VIII.

The best-selling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th century. Orphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at 14 to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress, Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots, and like many of her children he died young).

Antonia Fraser deals with each woman in turn with sympathy - the sympathy they deserve for having had the unenviable fate of being Henry's wife. Inevitably, there was great rivalry between them; there was jealousy too: the desperate jealousy of queens who found themselves abandoned, but also the sexual jealousy of the king who discovered himself betrayed. The story Antonia Fraser tells is romantic and cruel, funny and sad, dramatic and enthralling. This is historical biography at its best.

During the long 18th century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic book, author Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. A momentous work by one of Europe's most eminent historians, Unfabling the East takes listeners on a thrilling voyage to the farthest shores, bringing back vital insights for our own multicultural age.

For five centuries, Martin Luther has been lionized as an outspoken and fearless icon of change who ended the Middle Ages and heralded the beginning of the modern world. In Rebel in the Ranks, Brad Gregory, renowned professor of European history at Notre Dame, recasts this long-accepted portrait. Luther did not intend to start a revolution that would divide the Catholic Church and forever change Western civilization. Yet his actions would profoundly shape our world in ways he could never have imagined.

Aber die Inquisition, welche jetzt gemeint ist, kam aus dem Westen von Europa, anders in ihrem Ursprung und anders an Gestalt. Der letzte maurische Thron war im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert in Granada gefallen und der saracenische Gottesdienst endlich dem überlegenen Glück der Christen gewichen. Aber neu und noch wenig befestigt war das Evangelium in diesem jüngsten christlichen Königreich, und in der trüben Mischung ungleichartiger Gesetze und Sitten hatten sich die Religionen noch nicht geschieden.

France, 1180 to 1600. A tale of power, intrigue, and change. Kings and queens ruled with ambition. Wars raged across the land. Culture flourished. Society evolved.

Anne Boleyn has mesmerised the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier's daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn's downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate.

King at 9 and dead at 15, Edward VI oversaw a brief but dramatic chapter in English history. Described by his father as his "most precious jewel", Edward’s birth in 1537 marked the end of Henry VIII’s quest to procure a son and heir to continue the Tudor dynasty. But even kings can’t choose their destiny, and the boy’s premature demise prevented the intelligent, ambitious, and strong-minded youth’s potential from being fulfilled. Reliant on councillors to govern the kingdom on his behalf, his reign was not a happy time.

Each Tudor monarch made their name with a Dudley by their side - or by crushing one beneath their feet. The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. Under Elizabeth I, the family were once again at the centre of power and would do anything to remain there. With three generations of felled favourites, what was it that caused this family to keep rising so high and falling so low?

The Teutonic Knights were powerful and ferocious advocates of holy war. Their history is suffused with crusading, campaigning, and struggle. Feared by their enemies but respected by medieval Christendom, the knights and their Order maintained a firm hold over the Baltic and Northern Germany and established a formidable regime that flourished across Central Europe for 300 years. William Urban's narrative charts the rise and fall of the Order and, in an accessible and engaging style, throws light on a band of knights whose deeds and motives have long been misunderstood. 

Revoluciones, reformas y el Renacimiento: hicieron falta muchos movimientos para convertir la Europa medieval en lo que conocemos hoy. Las aportaciones europeas al arte, la literatura, la ciencia, la cultura, la religión y la tecnología dieron forma al mundo.

The Spanish Empire was the first truly global empire and the first to be described as one on which “the sun never sets.” It rapidly grew to become one of the largest and most powerful empires in the history of the world and brought us goods such as potatoes, chocolate, and chewing gum.

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach; across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. Goodwin tells the story of Spain and the Spaniards, from great soldiers like the Duke of Alba to literary figures and artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, and the monarchs who ruled over them.