1371 1372 1373 1374 1375 1376 1377 1378 1379 1380
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The Truce of Bruges brings a pause in the Hundred Years' War between France and England.
Tuscan humanist (Lino) Coluccio (di Piero) Salutati, 44, assumes office as chancellor of Florence's signorie, whose members are elected lords who rule as despots. Salutati has previously been chancellor of the commune of Todi, north of Rome, and then of Lucca, capably handling his administrative duties while also writing treatises and letters on philosophical questions. He will continue as Florence's chancellor until his death in 1406.
English mercenary Sir John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto) leads his White Company on raids into Tuscany (see 1373). Now 55 but still unmarried, he has entered into the service of Florence, he becomes the father of two sons, and he makes the Tuscan raids to obtain spoils, Pope Gregory XI having been late in making payments, but Florence's despots agree to pay him and his companions 30,000 gold florins on condition that he undertake no action against them. The priors of the arts and the gonfalonier agree in addition to giving him a pension of 1,200 florins per year for as long as he remains in Italy (see 1377).
Denmark's Valdemar IV Atterdag dies in Schleswig October 24 at age 55 (approximate), having recovered nearly all of Schleswig and united the country under his personal rule. He is survived by his 22-year-old daughter Margrethe, Margrethe's 5-year-old son Olaf, her sister Ingeborg, and Ingeborg's son Albert. Valdemar betrothed Margrethe to Norway's Haakon VI when she was 7 to cement an alliance between the two countries, hoping that her son would rule over both kingdoms, but she has lived apart from Haakon and been obliged to borrow money from the Norwegian treasury in order to support herself and her son (see 1376).
The kingdom of Armenia founded by Tigranes I in 94 B.C. ends with the surrender of the new Armenian king Levon V to the governor of Aleppo, who has besieged the Armenian capital of Sis with a force of early 30,000 Mamelukes. The victors slaughter many of the Armenians, convert many of the rest to Islam, and take Levon to Cairo; he will remain in royal prison until his royal Aragon and Castile in-laws ransom him in 1382, and France's Charles VI will give him a pension and a house.
The Hanseatic League receives formal recognition from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, who visits Lübeck (see 1370). The league establishes common weights, measures, and coinage, arranges for the settlement of disputes at home and abroad, secures new trading privileges for its member cities, protects merchants and their goods on the road and at sea, draws up a Seebuch to help navigators find lighthouses, harbors, and buoys from Riga to Lisbon (see portolan chart, 1311; Henry the Navigator, 1421), and opens up new lines of trade to supplement its commerce in herring, cod, salt, leather, hides, wool, grain, beer, amber, timber, pitch, tar, turpentine, iron, copper, horses, and falcon hawks (see 1377).
Poet-humanist Giovanni Boccaccio dies at Certaldo December 21 at age 62.
Buckles come into general use for European footwear; they will inspire the nursery rhyme, "One, two, buckle my shoe" (date approximate).
England's Parliament forbids transportation of seed oysters during the month of May. The English continue the oyster cultivation begun by the Romans in 110 B.C.
Le Viander de Taillevent by Guillaume Tirel, 49, gives a detailed account of France's developing cuisine. Tirel began his career as a very young boy in Normandy, working as a helper in the kitchens of Louis, count of Evreux, assisting the bellows tenders (souffleurs) and spit turners (hasteurs), keeping their fires burning hot and steady, helping to render lard and clarify fat from dripping pans, working with the soup cooks (potagiers) by hacking, mincing, and mashing their ingredients, raising and lowering the chains that held the cauldrons of meat stock, pease porridge, and almond tea, plucking fowl, washing salt meat for the cooks (queux), helping to strain vinegar and crush sour grapes and crabapples for verjus. His nickname was Taillevent, meaning a flexible, quick-moving sail. He has served as cook to the late Philippe VI of Valois and then to Charles V, and his book explains ragouts, galimafrees, mortreux, and hochepots, describes sauce Robert and fameline, and recommends using plain and grilled bread as binders in making sauce (the use of flour as a binder is unknown). Tirel tells of having coaxed the king to eat his first cabbage.
1371 1372 1373 1374 1375 1376 1377 1378 1379 1380
