16th century

From Missiopedia

Overview: History - Epochs - Turnings - Centuries BC - Centuries AD - Future Millenniums: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1500s - 1510s - 1520s - 1530s - 1540s - 1550s - 1560s - 1570s - 1580s - 1590s

[edit] Of Note

• Notable conflicts:
• Notable controversies:
• Notable empires: Ottoman Empire
• Notable peoples:
• Notable individuals:
• Notable missionary movements: Franciscans, Jesuits
• Notable Christian traditions:
• Notable Christians:

[edit] Events

• 16th century - Ottoman Empire at its height.
• 1500 - Franciscans enter Brazil with Cabral
• 1501 - Pope Alexander VI grants to the crown of Spain all the newly-discovered countries in the Americas, on condition that provision be made for the religious instruction of the native populations
• 1502 - Bartolome de Las Casas, who will later become an ardent defender of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, goes to Cuba. For his military services there he will be given an encomienda, an estate that included the services of the Indians living on it.
• 1503 - Mar Elijah, Patriarch of the East Syrian church, sends three missionaries "to the islands of the sea which are inside Java and to China."
• 1506 - Mission work begun in Mozambique
• 1508 - Franciscans begin evangelizing in Venezuela
• 1509 - First church building constructed on Puerto Rico
• 1510 - Dominicans begin work in Haiti
• 1511 - Martin de Valencia came to believe that Psalm 58 prophesied the conversion of all unbelievers. While reflecting on the Scripture passage, he asked, "When will this be? When will this prophecy be filled . . . we are already in the afternoon, at the end of our days, and the world's final era." Later that same week, while reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah, he reportedly saw a vision of vast multitudes being converted and baptised. He began to pray to be chosen to preach and convert all heathen. He would die 20 years later as a missionary to Mexico.
• 1512 - Dominican missionary Antonio de Montesino returns to Spain to try to convince King Ferdinand that all is not as it should be in the new western colonies. He reported that on the islands of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba, the indigeneous peoples were rapidly dying out under the system of slavery used by the colonists.
• 1513 - In Cuba, Bartolome de Las Casas is ordained (possibly the first ordination in the New World). Soon thereafter, Las Casas will renounce all claims to his Indian serfs
• 1514 - Franciscans begin missionary work in California
• 1514 - Ottomans defeat Safavids, turn them back from Anatolia.
• 1515 - Portuguese missionary Francisco Álvares is sent on a diplomatic mission to Dawit II, the Negus or Emperor of Abyssinia (an old name for Ethiopia)
• 1516 - Three Franciscans are killed by cannibals in northeastern South America, in the area of Colombia and Venezuela
• 1516 - Ottoman Empire conquers Syria and Palestine.
• 1517 - Ottoman Empire conquers Egypt.
• 1517 - The Mughal Rulers of Delhi opened the door of Bengal to Christian missionaries
• 1518 - Don Henrique, son of the king of the Congo, is consecrated by Pope Leo X as the first indigenous bishop from sub-Saharan Black Africa
• 1519 - Two Franciscans accompany Hernán Cortés in his expedition to Mexico
• 1520 - German missionary Maximilian Uhland, also known as Bernardino de San Jose, goes to Hispaniola with the newly appointed Bishop Geraldini.
• 1521 - Pope Leo X grants Franciscan Francis Quiñones permission and faculties to go as a missionary to the New World together with Juan Clapión
• 1522 - Portuguese missionaries establish presence on coast of Sri Lanka and begin moving inland with Portuguese military units
• 1523 - Martin Luther writes a missionary hymn based on Psalm 67. Titled "May God Bestow on Us His Grace," it has been called "the first missionary hymn of Protestantism."
• 1524 - Martin de Valencia goes to New Spain with 12 Franciscan friars
• 1525 - Italian Franciscan missionary Giulio Zarco is sent to Michoacán on the western coast of Mexico where he will become very proficient in Indian languages
• 1525 - Alliance between Ottoman Empire and Francis I of France against the Hapsburgs.
• 1526 - Franciscans enter Florida; Twelve Dominican friars arrive in the Mexican capital
• 1526 - Ottoman Empire under Suleiman crushes Hapsburgs and Hungarian army at Mohacs.
• 1527 - Missionary Conference of Augsburg -- Organized by the Anabaptists, it is the first-ever Protestant missionary conference
• 1528 - Franciscan missionary Juan de Padilla arrives in Mexico. He will accompany Coronado's expedition searching for the Seven Cities and eventually settle among the Quivira (now called the Wichita)
• 1529 - Franciscan Peter of Ghent writes from Latin America that he and a colleague had baptized 14,000 people on one day.
• 1529 - Ottoman Empire besieges Vienna but the army's insistence on returning home before winter denies the Ottomans control of all central Europe.
• 1530 - In his On Translating: An Open Letter, Martin Luther lays out some principles of correct Bible translating
• 1531 - Franciscan Juan de Padilla begins a series of missionary tours among Indian tribes southeast of Mexico City.
• 1532 - Evangelization of Peru begins when missionaries arrive with Francisco Pizzaro's military expedition
• 1533 - First Christian misssionaries arrive in Tonkin, Vietnam
• 1534 - The entire caste of Paravas on the Coromandel Coast are baptized -- perhaps 10,000 people in all
• 1535 - German Franciscan missionary Maximilian Uhland (also called Bernardino de San Jose) speaks before the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith about the wretched condition of Indians in the New World
• 1536 - Northern Italian Anabaptist missionary Hans Oberecker (also spelled Overacker and Overakker) is burned at the stake in Vienna, Austria
• 1537 - Pope Paul III orders that the Indians of the New World be brought to Christ "by the preaching of the divine word, and with the example of the good life."
• 1538 - Franciscans enter Paraguay
• 1538 - Ottoman Empire seizes control of the Ionian and Aegean Seas.
• 1539 - The Pueblos of what is now the U.S. Southwest are encountered by Spanish Franciscan missionary Marcos de Niza
• 1540 - Franciscans arrive in Trinidad and are killed by cannibals
• 1541 - Franciscans begin establishing missions in California
• 1542 - Francis Xavier goes to Portuguese colony of Goa in South India; Franciscans reach what is now New Mexico
• 1543 - Anabaptist Menno Simons goes as a missionary from the Netherlands to Germany
• 1544 - Franciscan Andrés de Olmos, a veteran missionary in Mexico, struck northward into the Texas wilderness. After gathering a group of Indian converts, he will lead them back into Tamaulipas
• 1545 - Testifying to the power that letters back home from missionaries have had, Antonio Araoz writes about Francis Xavier: "No less fruit has been obtained in Spain and Portugal through his letters than has been obtained in the Indies through his teaching.”
• 1546 - Francis Xavier travels to the Indonesian islands of Morotai, Ambon, and Ternate
• 1547 - Wealthy Spaniard Juan Fernandez becomes a Jesuit. He will wind up in Japan as a missionary.
• 1547 - Grand Prince Ivan (the Terrible) assumes title of tsar (emperor) of Russia.
• 1548 - Francis Xavier founds the College of the Holy Name of God in Baçaim on the northwest coast of India
• 1549 - Dominican Luis Cancer, who had worked among the Mayans of Guatemala and Mexico, lands at Tampa Bay, Florida with two companions. They are immediately killed by the Calusa within sight of the ship from which they had disembarked.
• 1550 - Printed Bibles are available in 28 languages
• 1551 - Dominican Jerome de Loaysa founds the National University of San Marcos in Lima (Peru) as well as a hospital for the Indians
• 1552 - Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, awaiting admission to China, dies off its coast; his last words: "O rock, O rock, when wilt thou open to us?"
• 1552 - Russia conquers the Muslim khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, taking them from the Tatars.
• 1553 - Portuguese missionaries build a church in Malacca Town, Malaysia
• 1554 - 1,500 converts to Christianity are reported in Siam (now called Thailand)
• 1555 - John Calvin sends Huguenots to Brazil
• 1555 - Ottoman Empire ruler Suleiman allies with German Protestant princes, forcing Catholic Hapsburgs to grant concessions to Protestants; this pressure becomes a key factor in the official recognition of Lutheran Protestants at the 1555 Peace of Augsburg.
• 1556 - Dominican Gaspar da Cruz arrives in Guangzhou, China
• 1557 - Jesuits arrive in Ethiopia
• 1558 - The Kabardian duke Saltan Idarov converts to Orthodox Christianity
• 1559 - Missionary Vilela settles in Kyoto, Japan
• 1560 - Goncalo da Silveira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, visited the Munhumutapa Empire, where he rapidly made converts
• 1562 - Diego de Landa burns the libraries of the Maya civilization
• 1563 - Jesuit missionary Luis Frois, who will later write a history of Jesuit activity in Japan, arrives in that country; Omura Sumitada becomes the first daimyo (feudal landholder) to convert to Christianity
• 1564 - Legaspi begins Augustinian work in Philippine Islands
• 1565 - Jesuits arrive in Macau.
• 1566 - The first Jesuit to enter what is now the United States, Pedro Martinez, is clubbed to death by fearful Indians on the sands of Fort George Island, Florida
• 1567 - Missionaries Jeronimo da Cruz and Sebastiao da Canto, both Dominicans, arrive at Ayutthaya, Thailand
• 1568 - In the Philippines, Diego de Herrera baptizes Chieftain Tupas of Cebu and his son
• 1569 - Jeronimo da Cruz is murdered along with two newly-arrived missionaries
• 1570 - Ignacio Azevedo and 39 other Jesuit missionaries are killed by pirates near Palma, one of the Canary Islands, while on their way to Brazil
• 1570 - Attacks of Christian privateers on Turkish shipping causes the Ottoman Empire to respond, conquering Cyprus.
• 1571 - A squadron of 200 Spanish, Venetian and papal galleys destroy the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, becoming the first major defeat of Ottoman forces by Christian forces.
• 1571 - Capuchin friars of the 'Strict Observance' arrive on the island of Trinidad with conquistador Don Juan Ponce of Seville.
• 1572 - Jesuits arrive in Mexico
• 1573 - Large-scale evangelization of the Florida Indian nations and tribes begins with the arrival of Franciscan friars
• 1574 - Augustinian Guillermo de Santa Maria writes a treatise on the illegitimacy of the war the Spanish government was waging against the Chichimeca in the Mexican state of Michoacán
• 1575 - Church building constructed in Kyoto. Built in Japanese architectural style, it was popularly called the "temple of the South Barbarians."
• 1576 - Jesuit missionaries enter the land of the Bengalis following Portuguese explorations
• 1577 - Dominicans enter Mozambique and penetrate inland, burning Muslim mosques as they go
• 1578 - King of Spain orders the bishop of Lima not to confer Holy Orders on mestizos
• 1579 - Jesuit Alessandro Valignano arrives in Japan where, as "Visitor of Missions," he formulates a basic strategy for Catholic proselytism in that country. Valignano's adaptationism attempted to avoid cultural frictions by covering the gap between certain Japanese customs and Roman Catholic values.
• 1580 - Japanese Daimyo (feudal landholder) Arima Harunobu becomes Christian and takes the name Protasio
• 1581 - Luis de Valdivia becomes a Jesuit. After finishing his studies, he will be sent to Peru
• 1582 - Jesuits begin mission work in China, introduce Western science, mathematics, astronomy
• 1583 - Five Jesuit missionaries -- Rudolph Acquaviva, Peter Berno, Francis Aranha, Alphonsus Pacheco and Anthony Francisco -- are murdered near Goa (India)
• 1584 - Matteo Ricci and a Chinese scholar translate a catechism into Chinese under the title T'ien-chu sheng-chiao shih-lu (A True Account of God and the Sacred Religion)
• 1585 - Carmelite leader Jerome Gracian meets with Martin Ignatius de Loyola, a Franciscan missionary from China. The two sign a vinculo de hermandad misionera -- a bond of missionary brotherhood -- by which the two orders would collaborate in missionary work in Ethiopia, China, the Philippines, and the East and West Indies.
• 1586 - Portuguese missionary Joao dos Santos reports that locals kill elephants to protect their crops in Sofala, Mozambique.
• 1587 - All foreigners ordered out of Japan; Manteo becomes the first American Indian to be baptized by the Church of England
• 1588 - A Dominican missionary arrives in the Philippines
• 1589 - Francis Solano goes to Peru as a missionary
• 1590 - A book by Belgian pastor Hadrian Saravia has a chapter arguing that the Great Commission is still binding on the church today because the Apostles did not fulfill it completely
• 1591 - First Roman Catholic church built in Trinidad; First Chinese admitted as members of the Jesuit order
• 1593 - The Franciscans arrive in Japan and establish St. Anna's hospital in Kyoto
• 1594 - First Jesuit missionaries arrive in Pakistan
• 1595 - Dutch East India Company chaplains expand their ministry beyond the European expatriates
• 1596 - Jesuit missionaries travel across the island of Samar in the Philippines to establish mission centers on the eastern side
• 1597 - Twenty-six Japanese Christians are crucified for their faith by General Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Nagasaki, Japan. By 1640, thousands of Japanese Christians will have been martyred.
• 1598 - Spanish missionaries push north from Mexico into what is now the state of New Mexico
• 1598 - End to French religious wars with the Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV.
• 1599 - Jesuit Francisco Fernandez goes to what is now the Jessore District of Bangladesh and, with the permission of King Pratapaditya, builds a church there