February 17 – Manchurian leader
Qing Tai Zu, referred to in the west as "Nurhaci", declares himself
khan and crowns himself as Emperor of China, founding the
Later Jin dynasty.
February 24 – A commission of
Roman Catholic theologians, the "Qualifiers," reports that the idea that the Sun is stationary is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture...".
February 26 – Astronomer
Galileo Galilei appears before Cardinal
Roberto Bellarmino and "warned of the error of the
Copernican opinion taught by him", and
enjoined by the Catholic Church against any attempt to hold, teach or defend the position of Copernicus that the Sun is stationary rather than revolving around the Earth "in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing."[6]
February 28 – In the aftermath of the
1613–
1614 anti-Jewish
pogrom called the
Fettmilch uprising in
Frankfurt, Germany, mob leader
Vincenz Fettmilch is beheaded, but the Jews, who had been expelled from the city on August 23, 1614, following the plundering of the
Judengasse, can return only as a result of direct intervention by
Holy Roman EmperorMatthias. After long negotiations, the Jews are left without any compensation for their plundered belongings.
February – English merchants of the
East India Company complain that the great troubles and wars in Japan since their arrival have put them to much pains and charges. Two great cities,
Osaka and Sakaii, have been burned to the ground, each one almost as big as London, and not one house left standing, and it is reported above 300,000 men have lost their lives, “yet the old Emperor Ogusho Same hath prevailed and Fidaia Same either been slain or fled secretly away, that no news is to be heard of him.”
Jesuits, priests, and friars are banished by the emperor and their churches and
monasteries pulled down; they put the fault on the arrival of the English; it is said if Fidaia Same had prevailed against the emperor, he promised them entrance again, when without doubt all the English would have been driven out of Japan.[7]
Galileo Galilei meets
Pope Paul V in person, to discuss his position as a defender of Copernicus'
heliocentrism. The Pope promises Galileo safety from any enemies, and Galileo complies for the next seven years with the injunction against teaching Copernican doctrines.[6]
Sir
Walter Ralegh, English explorer of the
New World, is released from prison in the
Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned for treason, in order to conduct a second (ill-fated) expedition, in search of
El Dorado in South America.[9]
May 25 – King
James I of England's former favourite, the
Earl of Somerset, and his wife
Frances, are convicted of the murder of
Thomas Overbury in
1613. They are spared death, and are sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London (until
1622).[15] Although the King has ordered the investigation of the poet's murder and allowed his former court favorite to be arrested and tried, his court, now under the influence of
George Villiers, gains the reputation of being corrupt and vile. The sale of peerages (beginning in July)[16] and the royal visit of James's brother-in-law,
Christian IV of Denmark, a notorious drunkard, add further scandal.
June 12 –
Pocahontas (now Rebecca) arrives in England, with her husband,
John Rolfe,[17] their one-year-old son,
Thomas Rolfe, her half-sister Matachanna (alias Cleopatra) and brother-in-law Tomocomo, the
shaman also known as Uttamatomakkin (having set out in May). Ten
PowhatanIndians are brought by Sir
Thomas Dale, the colonial governor, at the request of the
Virginia Company, as a fund-raising device. Dale, having been recalled under criticism, writes A True Relation of the State of Virginia, Left by Sir Thomas Dale, Knight, in May last, 1616, in a successful effort to redeem his leadership. Neither Pocahontas or Dale see Virginia again.
November 6 – Captain William Murray is granted a royal
patent, giving him the sole privilege of importing
tobacco to Scotland for a period of 21 years. Continuing from the reign of
Elizabeth I of England, the creation of grants and patents reaches a new highwater mark from
1614 to
1621, during the reign of
James I of England.
November 13 – Italian artist
Guido Reni's famous Pietà, commissioned by the Senate of
Bologna, is placed on the greater altar of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà.
The
Tepehuán Revolt begins in Nueva Vizcaya with the attack of a Spanish wagon train that is on its way to Mexico City. It tests the limits of Spanish and
Jesuitcolonialism, in western and northwestern
Durango and southern
Chihuahua, Mexico. [24]
Peter Paul Rubens begins work on classical
tapestries, when a contract is signed in
Antwerp with cloth dyers Jan Raes and Frans Sweerts in Brussels, and the
Genoese merchant Franco Cattaneo.
René Descartes, at age 20, graduates in
civil and
canon law at the
University of Poitiers, where he becomes disillusioned with books, preferring to seek truths from "le grand livre du monde." His thesis defense may be written in December.
With small profits to show, the
Virginia Company decides to distribute land in
Virginia to
shareholders according to the number of shares owned. Each stockholder can set up a "particular" plantation and pay associated expenses, receiving 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land for each share and 50 acres (200,000 m2) for each person transported (the "headrights" system).
December 22 – An Indian youth (called one of "the first fruits of India") is baptized with the name "Peter" in London at the St. Dionis Backchurch, in a ceremony attended by the
Lord Mayor, the
Privy Council, city aldermen, and officials of the
Honourable East India Company. Peter thus becomes the first convert to the
Anglican Church in India. He returns to India as a missionary, schooled in English and Latin.[28]
Oorsprong en voortgang der Nederlandtscher beroerten (Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands), by
Johannes Gysius, is published.[31]
A fatal disease of cattle, probably
rinderpest, spreads through the Italian provinces of
Padua,
Udine,
Treviso and
Vicenza, introduced most likely from
Dalmatia or Hungary. Great numbers of cattle die in Italy, as they had in previous years (
1559,
1562,
1566,
1590,
1598) in other European regions when
harvest failure also drives people to the brink of starvation (for example,
1595–
97 in Germany). The consumption of beef and veal is prohibited, and
Pope Paul V issues an edict prohibiting the slaughter of draught oxen that are suitable for plowing. Calves are also not slaughtered for some time afterwards, so that Italy's cattle herds can be replenished.[36]
At the behest of Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, Dr. Richard Vines, a physician, passes the winter of 1616–
17 at
Biddeford, Maine, at the mouth of the
Saco River, that he calls Winter Harbor. This is the site of the earliest permanent settlement in Maine, of which there is a conclusive record. Maine will become an important refuge for religious dissenters persecuted by the
Puritans.[37]
The first African
slaves are brought to
Bermuda, an English
colony, by Captain George Bargrave to dive for
pearls, because of their reputed skill in this activity. Harvesting pearls off the coast proves unsuccessful, and the slaves are put to work planting and harvesting the initial large crops of
tobacco and
sugarcane.[38] At the same time, some English refuse to purchase Brazilian sugar because it is produced by slave labour.[39]
Italian
natural philosopherGiulio Cesare Vanini publishes a radically
heterodox book in France, after his English interlude De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis, for which he is condemned and forced to flee Paris. For his opinion that the world is eternal and governed by immanent laws, as expressed in this book, he is executed in
1619.
Francesco Albani paints the ceiling frescoes of Apollo and the Seasons, at the Palazzo Verospi in
Via del Corso, for Cardinal Fabrizio Verospi.
John Cotta writes his influential book The Triall of Witch-craft.
Elizabeth Rutter is
hanged as a
witch in
Middlesex, England, Agnes Berrye in
Enfield, and nine women in
Leicester on the testimony of a raving 13-year-old named John Smith, under the
Witchcraft Act 1603.[40] In
Orkney,
Elspeth Reoch is tried. In France Leger (first name unknown) is condemned for
witchcraft on
May 6, Sylvanie de la Plaine is burned at Pays de Labourde as a witch, and in
Orléans eighteen witches are killed.
A second
witch-hunt breaks out in
Biscay, Spain. An Edict of Silence is issued by the
Inquisition, but the king overturns the Edict, and 300 accused witches are burned alive.
"Drink to me only with thine eyes" comes from
Ben Jonson's love poem, To Celia. Jonson's poetic lamentation On my first Sonne is also from this year.
Francis de Sales' literary masterpiece Treatise on the Love of God is published, while he is Bishop of
Geneva.
Orlando Gibbons' anthem See, the Word is Incarnate is written.
Italian naturalist Fabio Colonna states that "tongue stones" (glossopetrae) are
shark teeth, in his treatise De glossopetris dissertatio.
An important English dictionary is published by Dr.
John Bullokar with the title An English Expositor: teaching the interpretation of the hardest words used in our language, with sundry explications, descriptions and discourses.
Moralist writer John Deacon publishes a
quarto entitled Tobacco Tortured in the Filthy Fumes of Tobacco Refined (supporting the views of
James I of England). Deacon writes the same year that
syphilis is a "Turkished", "Spanished", or "Frenchized" disease that the English contract by "trafficking with the contagious courruptions."
Fortunio Liceti publishes De Monstruorum Natura in Italy, which marks the beginning of studies into malformations of the
embryo.
Fort San Diego, in
Acapulco Bay, Mexico, is completed by the Spanish as a defence against their erstwhile
vassals, the Dutch.[42]
Anti-Christian persecutions break out in
Nanjing, China, and
Nagasaki, Japan. The
Jesuit-lead Christian community in Japan at this time is over 3,000,000 strong.
Master seafarer
Henry Mainwaring,
Oxford graduate and lawyer turned successful Newfoundland
pirate, returns to England, is pardoned after rescuing a Newfoundland trading fleet near Gibraltar, and begins to write a revealing treatise on
piracy.
Croatian mathematician Faustus Verantius publishes his book Machinae novae, a book of mechanical and technological inventions, some of which are applicable to the solutions of hydrological problems, and others concern the construction of
clepsydras,
sundials,
mills, presses bridges and boats for widely different uses.
John Speed publishes an edition of his Atlas of Britain, with descriptive text in Latin.
The
States of Holland set up a commission to advise them on the problem of Jewish residency and worship. One of the members of the commission is
Hugo Grotius, a highly regarded jurist and one of the most important political thinkers of his day.
Marie Venier (called Laporte) is the first female actress to appear on the stage in Paris.[44]
The
Uskok War (1615–1618) continues between the Austrians and Spanish (
Habsburg Empire) on one side, and the
Venetians, Dutch, and English on the other. An Austro-Turkish treaty is signed in
Belgrade, under which the Austrians are granted the right to navigate the middle and lower
Danube River by the
Ottoman Empire.
^The Pontifical Decrees against the Motion of the Earth, Considered in their Bearing on the Theory of Advanced Ultramontanism (Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1870) pp.5-6
^Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006.
ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^
abEverett, Jason M., ed. (2006). "1616". The People's Chronology. Thomson Gale.
^The Jahangirnama: memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. Translated by Thackston, W. M. Washington, D.C.; New York: Freer Gallery of Art; Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; Smithsonian Institution; Oxford University Press. 1999 [1829].
ISBN9780195127188.
^Findly, Ellison Banks (2000). Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 94.
ISBN0-19-507488-2.
^Nath, Renuka (1990). Notable Mughal and Hindu women in the 16th and 17th centuries A.D. New Delhi: Inter-India Publ. p. 72.
ISBN9788121002417.
^Arano, Yasunori (2005). "The Formation of a Japanocentric World Order". International Journal of Asian Studies. 2 (2): 201.
doi:
10.1017/s1479591405000094.
S2CID145541884.
^From an etching in the Guerre de Beauté, a series of six etchings depicting a celebration which took place in Florence in the year 1616 in honor of the prince of Urbino.
^Bratton, Timothy (1988). "Identity of the New England Indian Epidemic of 1616–1619". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 62 (3): 352–383.
^Sluiter, Engel (1949). "The Fortification of Acapulco, 1615–1616". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 29 (1): 69–80.
doi:
10.2307/2508294.
JSTOR2508294. Today the fort houses the Acapulco Historical Museum.
^His notebooks, not fully published until the 20th century, reveal a coherent
mechanical philosophy of nature with incipient atomism, a force of inertia, and mathematical interpretations of natural philosophy are present. van Berkel, K. (1983). Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637) en de mechanisering van het wereldbeeld. Amsterdam.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
^Searles, Colbert (1925). "Allusions to the Contemporary Theater of 1616 by Francois Rosset". Modern Language Notes. 40 (8): 481–483.
doi:
10.2307/2914581.
JSTOR2914581.