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* Childbirth, conducted at home, was still lethal; women made wills before going into labour. The pain was scarcely eased by doses of myrrh, valerian root and ‘Turkish poppy’ – opium. Statistics are guesswork but over many centuries, child mortality before the age of five varied from 20 per cent to 50; as many as 20 per cent of births ended in death for the mother. Midwives, often operating in families who passed on their knowledge, dilated mothers with unsterile fingers and, if a baby could not be delivered, Caesarian section killed the mothers; doing nothing killed both; and generally midwives used a hook, a crochet, to save the mother and remove the baby. Even in successful births, tearing could lead to fatal puerperal sepsis. Often the infection of the open wound left by the placenta developed into puerperal fever; mothers often died of peritonitis. So far doctors – all men – were uninvolved. When doctors started to get involved and in the next century maternity hospitals were founded, the mortality rates soared. For a long time, home births were considerably safer.

* Clement was an open-minded humanist, who protected the Jews of Rome against the Inquisition and was interested in the theories of a well-connected, Italian-educated Polish priest, Nicolaus Copernicus, who argued that the earth revolved around the sun. Clement saw no threat to the Church from heliocentricity. Ironically the radical Luther rejected Copernicus as ‘that fellow who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down’.

* A throwback to the Borgias, Farnese was known as the Petticoat Cardinal, raised to the scarlet because he was the teenaged brother of Pope Alexander’s mistress. Paul also hired Titian, who painted revealing portraits of the aged pope and his shifty nephews. Titian balanced papal with imperial patronage, playing the Farnese against the Habsburgs. But Paul never paid for the paintings. Finally in 1548, Titian left for Augsburg to become the Habsburgs’ top painter.

* In 1549, Pope Paul III died with Michelangelo at his bedside. Michelangelo was close to those who flirted with Protestantism, but now he had to be very careful. In 1555, the zealous Giampietro Carafa was elected Paul IV and launched a crackdown on dissent, deploying the Inquisition and ordering some of the nudes in The Last Judgment to be painted over. Michelangelo died aged eighty-eight in 1563.

* As Lorenzaccio escaped, the Medici invited a cousin, Cosimo de’ Medici of Urbino, to become duke. Cosimo turned out to have the right stuff. He was as murderous and cultivated as a Medici should be, killing enemies, hunting down Lorenzaccio and personally stabbing to death his own disloyal valet. His descendants ruled Tuscany for two centuries. As for the Black Duke’s widow, Margarita, Charles married her to another papal popinjay, Paul III’s grandson Ottavio Farnese, duke of Parma. Free-spirited and intelligent, she refused to consummate the marriage for several years and then only on the condition that she kept her own court. Later she was a competent and tolerant governor of the Netherlands. Her son would be the duke of Parma who in 1588 failed to rendezvous with the Armada.

* Roxelana now officially became Hürrem Sultan with the title of Royal Consort Haseki Sultan. Valide and haseki sultans were traditionally served by a Jewish lady-in-waiting – known as the kira – mediating with the male and Christian worlds, often acting as a diplomat with foreign monarchs. Hafsa’s kira Strongila was inherited by Hürrem and later converted to Islam.

Tamerlanians and Rurikovichi, Ottomans and the House of Mendes

STRANGLINGS AND SEA BATTLES: THE BARBAROSSA BROTHERS AND THE PIRATE QUEEN

In 1533, Barbarossa sailed into the Bosphoros and past the Topkapı Palace with forty vessels, banners aflutter, before presenting Suleiman with camel-loads of gold, jewels and textiles escorted by lions and a procession of Christian enslaved girls, each bearing a gift of treasure. Suleiman appointed Barbarossa, red-bearded, burly, bushy-browed, as Kapudan-ı Derya – Captain of the Sea – while ordering Ibrahim to create shipyards and build a fleet.

Barbarossa was born on Lesbos, son of an Albanian Christian cavalryman turned potter and a Greek priest’s widow, converts to Islam. Two of his brothers, Oruç and Ilyas, had started as traders until they were captured by the crusading Knights of St John. They killed Ilyas and enslaved Oruç in their galleys until Khidr, the future Barbarossa, freed his brother. When Isabella and Ferdinand started to persecute their Muslim subjects, the brothers launched a rescue mission, ferrying some of the refugees to safety in Morocco.