1291 1292 1293 1294 1295 1296 1297 1298 1299 1300
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The Hapsburg German king Albrecht I gains English support and threatens to topple Jan van Avesnes, count of Hainaut, as count of Holland and Zeeland, but the Dutch have accepted the rule of Jan II and fend off the challenge (see 1296). Jan continues to fight the Flemish army of Guy de Dampierres (see 1304).
Bohemia's Premyslid king Wenceslas II is crowned king of Poland (see 1291; 1305).
Vietnamese military strategist Tran Hung Dao dies at Van Kiep at age 71 (approximate), having repelled two Chinese invasions.
The Hanseatic League begun in 1241 is solidified by a network of agreements that facilitate trade among towns on the Baltic and on north German rivers. Ships of the towns import salt from western Europe, wool and tin from England, and olives, wine, and other commodities from Lisbon, Oporto, Seville, and Cadiz, to which they carry dried and salted fish, hides, tallow, and other items of trade (see 1344).
The papacy at Rome reaches its zenith as Pope Boniface VIII (Gaetani) holds a great jubilee to mark the beginning of a century (which will not actually start until 1301). Some 2 million Christians make pilgrimages to Rome, where huge donations intended for the subjection of Sicily and for a second Gaetani state in Tuscany are raked over public tables by papal "croupiers." (The plan is to hold such a jubilee every century, but one will be declared every 50 years, then every 33, and later every 25.)
The Vatican replenishes its treasury, which has run short of money as a result of resistance to the 1296 papal bull Clericis laicos forbidding laymen to tax the clergy and making it an excommunicatory sin for any clergyman to pay taxes and for any layman to impose them. France's Philippe IV has led the resistance, forbidding export of precious metals.
Florentine poet-philosopher Guido Cavalcanti dies of malaria August 29 at age 45, leaving behind love lyrics, sonnets, and ballads. Cavalcanti has been exiled to Saranza with other leading Guelphs and Ghibellines but has returned to Florence to die.
Venetians introduce glass mirrors; invented in 1278, they make obsolescent the sand-polished metal mirrors used since about 3,500 B.C., but few can afford the new glass mirrors, and the images they reflect are blurred and distorted.
The Baltic Sea has been rich in fish through most of this century and will remain so in the century to come. The Hanseatic fisheries have developed an efficient system for salting the herring, a fat fish, within 24 hours after catching it, and Europe holds the Hanse herring in higher esteem than fish salted at sea by Norfolk doggers or by English fishermen out of Yarmouth or Scarborough.
The world's first brandy is distilled from wine at the 92-year-old Monptelier medical school by French medical professor Arnaldus de Villa Nova (Arnaud de Villeneuve, or Arnoldus Villanovanus), 65 (see 800).
1291 1292 1293 1294 1295 1296 1297 1298 1299 1300
