On This Day: May 15th

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

The English church submits to the king of England in passing a convocation in which it surrenders a number of rights, such as to make provincial ecclesiastic laws independently of the king.

Insurgent peasants led by Anabaptist pastor Thomas Müntzer are defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War in the Holy Roman Empire.

Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad extirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

Michael the Syrian reconsecrates the Mor Bar Sauma Monastery, which he reconstructed after its destruction by a fire. The monastery stays a center of the Syriac Orthodox Church until the end of the thirteenth century.

Constantine VII is crowned Byzantine co-emperor.

Abd al-Rahman I, the founder of the Arab dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries, becomes emir of Cordova, Spain.

King Authari marries Theodelinda, daughter of the Bavarian duke Garibald I. A Catholic, she has great influence among the Lombard nobility.

Emperor Valentinian II is assassinated while advancing into Gaul against the Frankish usurper Arbogast. He is found hanging in his residence at Vienne.

Liu Bei, Chinese warlord, proclaims himself emperor of Shu Han, the successor of the Han dynasty.