The historian Nicolas Le Roux, professor of modern history at the University Lumière Lyon 2, enriches our understanding by bringing several facts made at that time, then, somewhat laboriously try to put them in perspective.
Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies and America with its horrors of the desired incident and extermination (spread of disease) of the Indian people, the reaction of the Church face this barbarity conducted by conquerors eager for riches.
It is also the open sea by Vasco da Gama to India that will allow Portugal to outdo Venice in the spice trade. It is also, in contrast, the discovery that the earth is round with another Portuguese, Magellan (see Magellan Stefan Zweig).
1515 is a year also ease tensions between Persians and Ottomans, the end of the dreams of the Crusades, the development of humanism with Erasmus, the beginnings of theological affirmation of Luther announcing the 30-year war.
Nicolas Le Roux describes this period as that of the obsession with the end of time like the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
1515 is indicative of a time of major changes both in Western Europe and America, India and the Ottoman Empire.
However, it lacks in this book a historical perspective that we must (always) pick in the essential history of France Jacques Bainville to understand this political and spiritual time.
"(...) To defend against the German power, France will always find allies in Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The Protestant princes, the Turks were auxiliaries that were available. A policy that of the balance, is sketched.
The same evening of Pavia (1525), François 1st, secretly sent her ring to Soliman. The Sultan and his Minister Ibrahim understood that sign. Relations between France and Turkey were old. They dated from Jacques Coeur and Charles VII. But it was a business relationship. Become an ally of the Turks that the king crossed such a step, it was necessity. "The Turks occupy the Emperor and make the safety of all the princes," said François 1er to the Venetians. It will go further since launch against his enemy up pirates of Algiers. This alliance with the Infidel, however it was the end of the idea of Christendom. To the extent that it existed, she had survived so many wars between the nations of Europe, the design of the Christian Republic was abolished. It was by Germanism itself proposing to France a matter of life and death, ordered him to defend himself. This war was the beginning of inexpiable wars where old Europe would be swallowed up so many times for new metamorphoses. The Most Christian King sent his ring to Soliman. But soon (because the repudiation by Francis I of the Treaty of Madrid unacceptable had reopened hostilities), Charles V Catholic Majesty, Rome delivered his motley troops at his Vandals and his Goths. The sack of the Eternal City, where the Constable of Bourbon, unforgettable figure of the renegade of his country, was killed, frightened Europe as an omen (1527). Perhaps Christianity, distant memory of the Roman unit, was she already an illusion. It was only a dream. "(P.142-143)
