1521 in literature

• January 3 – Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther, by the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. • January 14 – Martin Luther writes to Johann von Staupitz, saying that he has burned the papal bull. • February 9 – Íñigo López de Mendoza y Zúñiga arrives in Rome to campaign against Erasmus; later in the year he publishes an account of his journey from Spain. • June (probably 29 or 30) – Neacșu's letter, the oldest surviving dateable document written primarily in the Romanian language (in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet), is approximately dated to this month. • August 13 – Marko Marulić's poem Judita (Judith, written 1501), a landmark in Croatian literature, is printed in Venice by Guglielmo da Fontaneto. 's Judita • unknown date – John Siberch is active in Cambridge, the city's earliest known printer. ==New books==

Prose • Codex Ňuu Tnoo - Ndisi Nuu • Jacopo Berengario da Carpi – Commentaria cum amplissimus additionibus super anatomiam Mundini (published in Bologna), containing the first printed anatomical illustrations taken from nature • Goražde Psalter • Henry VIII of England – Defence of the Seven Sacraments (Assertio Septem Sacramentorum) • Niccolò Machiavelli – The Art of War (''Dell'arte della guerra'') • Piri Reis – Kitab-ı Bahriye Poetry • Alexander Barclay – The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas, the author's "Fourth Eclog" • Henry Bradshaw – The Life of St. Werburgh Approximate year • (A Book of a Ghostly Father, published in London by Wynkyn de Worde) ==Births==

• May 8 – Peter Canisius, German theologian (died 1597) • unknown dates • Sir Thomas Chaloner the elder, English statesman and poet (died 1565) • Xu Wei (徐渭), Chinese painter, poet and dramatist (died 1593) • probable • Anne Askew, English poet and Protestant martyr (burned at the stake 1546) • Jorge de Montemor, Portuguese novelist and poet writing in Spanish (died 1561) • Pontus de Tyard, French poet and priest, a member of La Pléiade (died 1605) ==Deaths==

• May 10 – Sebastian Brant, German satirical poet and humanist (born c. 1457) • unknown date– Jean Bourdichon, French illuminator of manuscripts (born 1457/9) ==References==