| 1100–1532 | South America [administration] | The Inca empire dominates the Andes region of South America. Its population numbers as many as 12 million. Incan society is based on a strict hierarchy, with an emperor who rules with absolute power. Their religion is based on sun-worship, and they are skilled builders who create a system of roads and irrigation. |
| 1516 | Italy [fiction] | Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto publishes the romantic epic Orlando Furioso. A sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato of 1495, Orlando Furioso is one of the central works of Italian Renaissance literature. |
| 1516 | England [plays] | The English poet John Skelton writes Magnyfycence, the first secular morality play in English. It is published posthumously in 1533. |
| 1516 | England [thought and scholarship] | English statesman and scholar Thomas More publishes Insula Utopiae/Island of Utopia (the original Latin text of his Utopia). The English translation appears in 1551. |
| 23 January 1516 | Spain [political events] | Following the death of King Ferdinand I of Aragon, his son (also grandson of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I), Archduke Charles of Austria (later the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V), succeeds as King Charles I of Spain, thereby founding the Habsburg dynasty in Spain. The regency council appoints Cardinal Jiménez de Cisnéros as regent. |
| 23 January 1516 | Spain [births and deaths] | Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Sicily (as Ferdinand II, 1468–1516), Aragon (as Ferdinand II, 1479–1516), Castile (as Ferdinand V and joint sovereign with his wife Isabella I 1474–1504), and Naples (as Ferdinand III, 1504–16), who united the Spanish kingdoms into one nation and began Spain's period of imperial expansion, dies (63). |
| 18 February 1516 | England [births and deaths] | Mary I (‘Bloody Mary’), first reigning queen of England 1553–58, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, wife of Philip II of Spain, born in Greenwich, near London, England (–1558). |
| 9 August 1516 | Netherlands [births and deaths] | Hieronymus Bosch (pseudonym of Jerome van Aeken), highly original Dutch painter, associated with complex and fantastic symbolism and allegory, whose major works include The Temptation of St Antony and The Garden of Earthly Delights, dies in 's-Hertogenbosch, Brabant, Netherlands (c. 66). |
| 18 August 1516 | Papal States, Italy, France [political events] | Pope Leo X and the French king Francis I establish the Concordat of Bologna to resolve the long-standing conflict over the power of the church in France. The king of France is allowed to make ecclesiastical appointment, but the nominations have to be confirmed by the pope; and appeals to Rome from France are restricted. Francis also concedes that the pope is not subject to a general council of the church. |
| 24 August 1516 | Ottoman Empire, Mameluke Sultanate, Syria, Palestine, Egypt [wars] | Ottoman armies under Sultan Selim I rout the fractious army of the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, Kansu-al-Guari, at Marj Dabik near Aleppo, Syria, killing Kansu. The Ottomans go on to conquer Syria and Palestine before the end of the year. |
| 13 December 1516 | Spain, France, Holy Roman Empire, Venice, Italy [treaties] | The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I accedes to the Treaty of Noyon agreed in August between King Francis I of France and King Charles I of Spain, overturning an agreement with England reached in October in the Treaty of Brussels. He waives his claims in Italy for 200,000 ducats, handing over the city of Verona to Venice. |
