1400 Geoffrey Chaucer (poet of the Canterbury Tales) died.

1402 Jan Hus becomes rector of Prague University

1408-1416 Les Très Riches Heures by the Limbourg brothers for the Duc de Berry

1437 Emperor Sigismund, the last emperor from the House of Luxembourg, dies

1415 Resumption of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. French defeat at the Battle of Agincourt. Burning of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance

1418 First dated woodcut in Europe (Brussels Madonna) End of the Great Schism

1419-1436 Hussite Wars

1417-1435 The Italian humanist Leonardi Bruni translates Aristotle's Politics into Italian

1427-52 The Azores come under Portuguese rule

1431 Inquisition trial and execution of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, in Rouen

1431-65 François Villon (French ballad poet)

1432 Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece

1434 Cosimo de Medici gains control of Florence. Nicholas of Cusa's De concordantia catholica. Completion of the dome of Florence Cathedral by Filippo Brunelleschi

1436 End of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. First Portuguese settlements on the west coast of Africa

1440 Frederick III becomes King of Germany

1441 Start of the Portuguese slave trade

1444/45 Raids by the Armagnacs Firearms and mercenary armies increasingly dominate the European theater of war

1444 Cosimo de Medici founds the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence

1445 Death of the poet Oswald von Wolkenstein

1444-46 Prokop Waldvogel teaches the art of artificial writing in Avignon

1446 Oldest dated copperplate engraving (Berlin Passion)

1444-1448 Council of Basel

1447-1455 Pope Nicholas V, founder of the Bilioteca Vaticana

1450 Former mercenary leader Franzesco Sforza becomes Duke of Milan

1450/51 Nicholas of Cusa's legation trip to Germany

1452 Coronation of Frederick III as emperor in Rome Birth of Leonardo da Vinci and Savonarola

1452 Leon Battista Alberti: On Architecture

1452-1454/55 Gutenberg prints his 42-line Bible in Mainz in a print run of approx. 180 copies

1453 Conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed II (the Great). Flight of numerous Greek scholars to Italy

1454 Gutenberg prints letters of indulgence in Mainz, the proceeds of which are to be used to finance a crusade against the Turks

1455 Start of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster in England

1458-1464 Enea Silvio Piccolomini becomes Pope Pius II

1459 Founding of the Platonic Academy in Florence under Cosimo de Medici

1459 Founding of the University of Basel

Around 1460 Johannes Müller Regiomontanus develops decimal fraction arithmetic.

1462 Mainz loses its city privileges and becomes an archiepiscopal city

1466 First German Bible printed in Strasbourg by Johannes Mentelin

1467 Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheym establish the first printing press in Italy in Subiaco

1468 Johannes Gutenberg dies on February 3 in Mainz

1469 Erasmus of Rotterdam and Machiavelli are born

1471 The Portuguese cross the equator for the first time

1473 Construction begins on the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The Fugger banking house in Augsburg enters into business relations with the Habsburgs.

1474 Botticelli: The Spring
Michelangelo is born

1477 Archbishop Diether von Isenburg founds the University of Mainz. The death of Charles the Bold of Burgundy triggers protracted disputes between France and the House of Habsburg over the Burgundian inheritance.

1478 Thomas More is born

1481 Introduction of the Inquisition in Spain by Thomas de Torquemada

1483 Birth of Martin Luther. Birth of Raphael.

1491 Ignatius of Loyola is born

1492 Discovery of America. First world globe by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg. Capture of Granada ends the Spanish Reconquista; expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Leonardo da Vinci draws a flying machine.

1493 Hartmann Schedel's world chronicle is published by Anton Koberger in Nuremberg. Frederick III dies; Maximilian I of Habsburg ("The Last Knight"), German king since 1486, succeeds him. Division of the New World between Spain and Portugal by arbitration of Pope Alexander VI.

1494 Fall of the Medici in Florence. Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools. First appearance of syphilis in Europe.

1495 Diet of Worms, introduction of a general imperial tax (Gemeiner Pfennig).

1497 Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper

1497/98 Giovanni Caboto lands in North America on behalf of England.

1498 Vasco da Gama sails around the Cape of Good Hope and reaches India by sea. Albrecht Dürer's woodcut cycle Apocalypse. Execution of Savonarola

1499 Swiss confederates secede from the German Empire in the so-called Swabian War. The Fuggers control the European copper market; their fortune has increased tenfold in twenty years.

1500 Birth of Charles V. Portuguese navigator Pedro Caba lands in Brazil.