Glinski now establishes himself in Turov and contacts Vasili III.

Constantinople is devastated by an earthquake on September 14, 1509.

Ottoman sultan Bayezid II has failed to suppress revolts by nomadic Turkmen tribes in eastern Anatolia despite their connection with the heterodox Safavids, who are in the process of conquering Iran.

Now past sixty, Bayezid has selected his son Ahmed to be his successor and appears poised to abdicate, but the sultan’s final years see a succession battle between his sons Selim I and Ahmet.

Ahmet is the oldest living son of Bayezid II; his mother is Bülbül Hatun.

In Ottoman tradition, all princes (Turkish: şehzade) are required to serve as provincial (sanjak) governors in Anatolia as a part of their training.

Ahmet is the governor of Amasya, an important Anatolian city.

Although the status is not official, he is usually considered as the crown prince during these last years of his father's reign, in part because of the support of the grand vizier, Hadim Ali Pasha.

Ahmet has two living brothers.

Of the two, Korkut is governing in Antalya and Selim (future sultan Selim I) in Trabzon.

Custom dictates that whoever first reaches Constantinople after the death of the previous sultan has the right to ascend to throne (although disagreements over who had arrived first have very often led to civil wars between the brothers, most prominently displayed in the Ottoman Interregnum), so the distances from the sanjaks to Istanbul more or less determine the succession and usually whoever the previous sultan favors the most as his successor.

In this respect, Ahmet is the most fortunate because his sanjak is the closest to Constantinople.

Ahmet unexpectedly captures Karaman, an Ottoman city, and begins marching to Constantinople to exploit his triumph.

The ambitious Selim, fearing for his safety in Trabzon, marches with his men to Edirne to demand that he (Selim) be given a European province to rule.

Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a palace on the Grand Canal in the sestiere (quarter) of Cannaregio in Venice, was designed in the Lombardesque style in the late fifteenth century by Mauro Codussi, architect of Chiesa di San Zaccaria and other noteworthy churches and private residences in Venice.

Construction began in 1481 and is finished after his death by the Bottega dei Lombardo in 1509.

The twenty-eight-year period it has taken to complete construction is considered short, based on the technology available at that time.

The palace, more open than the those found in central Italy, features large and numerous windows.

The Dominicans, in order to prepare missionaries for work among the Moors and Jews in the middle of the thirteenth century, had organized schools for the teaching of Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek.

To cooperate in this work and to enhance the prestige of Seville, Alfonso the Wise in 1254 established in the city "general schools" (escuelas generales) of Arabic and Latin.

Alexander IV, by the Papal Bull of June 21, 1260, had recognized this foundation as a generale litterarum studium and granted its members certain dispensations in the matter of residence.

Later, the cathedral chapter established ecclesiastical studies in the College of San Miguel.

Rodrigo de Santaello, archdeacon of the cathedral and commonly known as Maese Rodrigo, began the construction of a building for a university in 1472; in 1502 the Catholic Monarchs published the royal decree creating the university, and in 1505 Julius II had granted the Bull of authorization; in 1509 the college of Maese Rodrigo is finally installed in its own building, under the name of Santa María de Jesús, but its courses will not be not opened until 1516.

The Catholic Monarchs and the pope had granted the power to confer degrees in logic, philosophy, theology, and canon and civil law.

Baldassare Castiglione, with Francesco Maria della Rovere, had taken part in Pope Julius II's expedition against Venice, an episode in the Italian Wars: for this he had received the title of Conte di Novilara, a fief near Pesaro.

Castiglione writes about his works and of those of other guests in letters to other princes, maintaining an activity very near to diplomacy, though in a literary form, as in his correspondence with Ludovico da Canossa.

He had been born into an illustrious Lombard family at Casatico, near Mantua, where his family had constructed an impressive palazzo.

The signoria (lordship) of Casatico (today part of the commune of Marcaria) had been assigned to an ancestor, one Baldasar da Castiglione, a friend of Ludovico II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in 1445.

The later Baldassare is related to Ludovico through his mother, Luigia Gonzaga.

In 1494, at the age of sixteen, Castiglione had begun his humanist studies in Milan, which will eventually inform his future writings.

However, in 1499, after the death of his father, Castiglione had left his studies and Milan to succeed his father as the head of their noble family.

Soon his duties seem to have included representative offices for the Gonzaga court; for instance, he accompanied his marquis for the Royal entry at Milan of Louis XII.

For the Gonzaga he had traveled quite often; during one of his missions to Rome, he had met Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, and in 1504 a reluctant Francesco Gonzaga had allowed him to leave and take up residence in that court.

Urbino is at this time the most refined and elegant among Italian courts, a meeting point of culture ably directed and managed by duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga and her sister-in-law Maria Emilia Pia.

The most constant guests include: Pietro Bembo, Giuliano de' Medici, Cardinal Bibbiena, Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso, and Cesare Gonzaga, a cousin of both Castiglione and the duke.

The hosts and guests organize intellectual competitions which result n an interesting, stimulating cultural life producing brilliant literary activity.

In 1506, he had written (and played in) a pastoral play, his eclogue Tirsi, in which allusively, through the figures of three shepherds, he depicts the court of Urbino.

The work contains echoes of both ancient and contemporary poetry, recalling Poliziano and Sannazzaro as well as Virgil.

Francesco Guicciardini, schooled in classics and law, in 1509 writes a history of the contemporary Italian wars, as well as of Florence, his native city, before embarking on his brilliant political career.

Lorenzo Lotto, one of the first great Venetian artists of the High Renaissance to see the art of central Italy and Rome, works with a number of artists in the Vatican Palace’s Stanze della Segnatura—the apartments of Pope Julius II—under the supervision of Raphael.

Like Leonardo’s earlier Milanese frescoes for the “Last Supper,” Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza are visually and contextually ultimate Florentine-Roman statements, whereas the oil paintings of Giorgione and Titian are most representative of Venetian concerns.