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Contents: political eventscommerce religion music food and drink |
William Longsword, 3rd earl of Salisbury, dies at Salisbury, Wiltshire, March 7 and is buried at the Cathedral of Salisbury whose foundation stones he and his wife, Isabel, helped to lay 6 years ago.
France's Louis VIII marches down the Rhône Valley in the spring with a huge army of knights in a renewal of the crusade against the Cathar "heretics." Elders of the walled town of Avignon have promised to let him use their stone bridge to cross the river but close their gates to him when they see the size of his army. Louis lays siege to the town, its defenders resist for 3 months while the crusaders live in squalor on the marshy plain to the north, and more than 3,000 crusaders die of dysentery and other disease before Avignon capitulates. Louis accepts the surrender of other towns and castles, but he has fallen ill during the long siege, and although his supporters escort him north he dies at Montpensier November 8 at age 39 after a 3-year reign. Louis is succeeded by his 12-year-old son, who assumes the throne November 29 at Reims and will reign until 1270 as Louis IX. The boy's mother, Blanche of Castile, now 39, serves as regent with financial support from the Vatican and will effectively block efforts by ambitious vassals to weaken royal authority and return France to feudal anarchy.
Large-scale copper extraction begins at Sweden's Falun Mines, where mining has been going on for more than 200 years; Stora Kopparberget will become the nation's most important industrial concern, shafts will go as deep as 208 meters, it will remain a major producer well into the 19th century, and operations will continue until December 1992.
The order of Teutonic Knights that was founded in 1198 is commissioned to conquer Prussia and convert her people to Christianity. The order has been headed since 1209 by Thuringian-born soldier and politician Hermann von Salza, now about 47, who has persuaded Pope Honorius III to make the Teutonic Knights equal in status to the older Knights Hospitaler and Knights Templar (see 1237).
More than 100 Cathars meet at a small town south of Carcassonne to organize a new diocese (see 1219). Scores of Cathar homes have reopened in the last decade, but the royal crusade against the "heretics" continues after the death of Louis VIII. Too small to renew the attack on Toulouse, the crusader army uses the walled city of Carcassonne as a base from which to lay waste the countryside (see 1229).
Francis of Assisi (Giovanni Francesco Bernardone) dies at Assisi October 3 at age 44, allegedly after having had a vision of an angel. He has taught that materialism corrupts because it leads to detachment from the natural world (see 1228).
"Kreuzlied" is sung by Middle High German lyric poet and minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide, 56, whose religious songs follow love songs such as "Unter den Linden" and political songs ("Sprijehe") that he has sung at the courts of Philip of Swabia, Hermann of Thuringia, Otto IV, Friedrich II, and others since 1198. The political songs have urged German unity and independence and opposed the more extreme claims of the popes.
England's Henry III, now 19, asks the mayor of Winchester to obtain three pounds of sugar, a quantity considered enormous. Sugar is imported from the Middle East, processed in the form of cones called "loaves" and treated as a spice (see 1319).
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