- Jan 21 Swiss Anabaptist Movement is born when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and a dozen others baptize each other in the home of Manz's mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union
Albert's Oath
Feb 10 Albert of Prussia pledges a personal oath to Sigismund I the Old and is invested with the duchy for himself and his heirs
- Mar 20 Paris' parliament begins pursuit of Protestants
- May 10 Church reformer John Pistorius caught in the Hague
- May 12 Battle at Biblingen: Zwabische Union beats rebel Wurttemberg farmers
- May 15 The battle of Frankenhausen: German peasant army surrounded, 5,000 slaughtered ; ends the peasants' uprising
- May 17 Battle at Zabern: duke of Lutherans beats rebels
- Jun 9 Tax revolt in Hertogenbosch
- Jul 11 Trial against "heretic" John Pistorius at The Hague
- Jul 19 Catholic German monarchy form Union of Dessau
- Jul 24 Second attempt to circumnavigate the globe as seven ships departs Corunna headed by García Jofre de Loaísa on orders of King Charles I of Spain for the Spice Islands (only one will make it)
- Sep 7 Trial against "heretic" John Pistorius ends in the Hague
Gregory I
Gregory XIII
Julius II
Julius III
Leo X
Pius V