1282

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political events

The Sicilian Vespers rebellion that begins in a church outside Palermo at the hour of vespers March 31 (Easter Tuesday) leads to a wholesale massacre of the French and triggers a war that will continue for years. A drunken French soldier has allegedly attacked a Sicilian woman on her wedding day, but the real basis of the rebellion is the heavy taxation imposed by Charles I (Charles d'Anjou) to equip an expedition against Constantinople. The Mafia (an Arabic word) has its beginnings in the Sicilian rebellion and will grow to have enormous power.

Sicilian noblemen support the popular uprising against French insolence and cruelty; they persuade Aragon's Pedro III to assert claims to the Sicilian crown (Pedro's wife, Constanza, is the daughter of the late Sicilian king Manfred, who was killed in 1266); and Pedro arrives at Palermo in September, beginning a reign of Sicily that will continue until his death in 1285.

The Prince of Wales Llywelyn ap Gruffud leads a second rebellion against England's Edward I (see 1277). Edward tries to recruit a wholly-paid army, but many of his feudal lords fear that accepting wages may compromise their independence and cost them their entitlement to any lands they may take during the campaign against the Welsh rebels. Llywelyn is killed December 11 in a skirmish near Builth outside Powys in central Wales by Roger de Mortimer, who is himself killed (see 1283).

Pope Martin IV excommunicates the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, who dies in Thrace December 11 at age 58 after a 21-year reign in which he has restored the empire to the Greeks after 57 years of Latin rule and founded the Palaeologian dynasty that will continue until 1453. His son will come of age in 1289 and reign until 1328 as Andronicus II Palaeologus.

Persia's Mongol Il-khan Abagha dies after a 17-year reign in which he has clung to his family's Buddhist faith. His brother Tegüder assumes the throne, but Abagha's son Arghun suspects Tegüder's followers of having poisoned his father and protests Tegüder's conversion to Islam (see 1284).

Florence's bourgeois merchants stage an armed rebellion against the nobility and set up a reformed government with the sanction of Pope Martin IV.

commerce

Florence's upper classes are known as the popolograsso (fat people), the poor are the popolo minuto (small, or lean people). Detached from the soil, the city's lower classes are dependent on their employers, who often force them to labor at night by torchlight.

religion

Constantinople's Greek Orthodox patriarch John XI Becchus abdicates upon the accession of the new Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus as relations with the Roman church break down. He abdicated 3 years ago but was recalled by the late Michael VIII Palaeologus for political reasons; this time he goes into exile and is succeeded by George of Cyprus, who will reign until 1289 as Gregory II.

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