1208

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Year 1208 (MCCVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events

By area

Asia

• April 15 – A fire breaks out in the Song Chinese capital city of Hangzhou, raging for 4 days and nights, destroying 58,097 houses over an area of more than 3 miles, killing 59 people, and an unrecorded amount of other people who are trampled while attempting to flee. The government provides temporary lodging for 5,345 people in nearby Buddhist and Taoist monasteries. The collective victims of the disaster are given 160,000 strings of cash, along with 400 tons of rice. Some of the government officials who lost their homes take up residence in rented boathouses on the nearby West Lake.

Europe

• January 15 – Peter of Castelnau is killed by a vassal of Raymond VI of Toulouse, who is held responsible and excommunicated by Pope Innocent III.
• January 31 – Battle of Lena: Inferior Swedish forces defeat the invading Danes and king Sverker the Younger is deposed as king of Sweden. He is succeeded by his rival Erik Knutsson.
• March 24 – Pope Innocent III places England under an interdict as punishment for King John of England rejecting his choice for Archbishop of Canterbury. Under the interdict, Church sacraments including marriage and consecrated burial are probably stopped, but there is no sign of the popular discontent which interdicts are intended to produce over the next several years.^[1]
• June 21 – Philip of Swabia, King of Germany and rival to Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, is assassinated in Bamberg by German Count Otto of Wittelsbach, because Philip had refused to give him his daughter in marriage.
• With the help of the newly converted local tribes of Livs and Letts, the Crusaders initiate raids into part of what is present-day Estonia; the resulting ancient fight for independence lasts until 1227.

By topic

Arts and culture

• Robert of Courçon writes his Suma.

Births

• February 2 – King James I of Aragon (d. 1276)
• Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford, Constable of England (d. 1275)
• Möngke Khan of the Mongol Empire
• Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester (d. 1265)
• Akerian Redfern of the Redfern Clan

Deaths

• April 22 – Philip of Poitou, Prince-Bishop of Durham
• June 21 – Philip of Swabia, King of Germany
• November 9 – Sancha of Castile, queen of Alfonso II of Aragon (b. 1155)
• Amhaoibh O'Rothlain, Chief of Calruidhe Cuile Cearnadha

References