"The number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gather with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom - which had recently been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits - to a miserable ruin."
- Pope Pius V, declaring English queen Elizabeth I to be a heretic in his papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis (1570)
In the year AD 1570...
- Increasingly insane Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible's reign of terror reaches its height when he personally leads his army in an attack Russia's second-largest city, Novgorod, looting and pillaging the city's churches and massacring thousands of its inhabitants in a month-long horror remembered as the "Massacre of Novgorod."
- The Ottoman Invasion of Cyprus sets off the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War, which will last until 1573.
- In France, the Third War of Religion continues as Protestant forces led by the Admiral de Coligny and Gabriel, comte de Montgomery pillage Toulouse and raid up the Rhone River Valley. Staggering under a mountain of debt, French king Charles IX sues for peace, resulting in the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which yet again promises the Huguenots freedom of religion.
- Pope Pius V declares Queen Elizabeth I of England a heretic and her rule null and void in his bull Regnans in Excelsis, bringing an end to Elizabeth's attempts at reconciliation with English Catholics and leading to a new wave of Catholic plots against Elizabeth (starting with the Ridolfi Plot the following year), as well as a new wave of government crackdowns on Catholics in England.
- Japan is trapped in a cycle of endless warfare known as the "Warring States Period." Locked in a struggle to the death with the Asai and Asakura clans, Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga forges an alliance with his former enemy Tokugawa Ieyasu, and together they deal a major defeat to the Asai and Asakura forces at the Battle of Anegawa.
- In the Ajacán Mission, two Spanish Jesuit priests and six Jesuit brothers travel to Virginia from Havana, Cuba and attempt to bring Christianity to the Indians. They manage to build a small wooden hut as their "church," and trade with some friendly Indians for food and supplies, but are massacred a few months later by other, more hostile Indians.
- James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, the Protestant regent of Scotland on behalf of his nephew, the infant king James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by James Hamilton, a Catholic supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, using a carbine, in the first recorded assassination using a firearm.
- Italian architect Andrea Palladio publishes the most influential architecture treatise of all time, The Four Books of Architecture (I quattro libri dell'architettura).
These people were born in 1570...
These people died in 1570...
1569 - 1570 - 1571
16th century
How they were made