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Contents: political eventseducation art |
The Crusade of Nicopolis advances along the Danube, pillaging and killing under the leadership of the Hungarian king Sigismund, who is supported by both the Roman and Avignon popes and has enlisted Balkan princes, a Venetian fleet under the command of Tommaso Mocenigo, 53, and many French, German, and English knights. The 20,000 Crusaders sack Nicopolis but encounter an equal number of Turks four miles south of Nicopolis. The Turks overwhelm the Crusaders in a battle September 25 and take many of the survivors prisoner. Included is the marshal of France Jean II le Meingre Boucicaut, 33, who is ransomed; well known for his skill in the tournament, he is a champion of chivalric ideals and founder of the White Lady of the Green Shield (Dame Blanche à l'Ecu Vert), an order whose mission is to defend the female relatives of absent knights.
The Treaty of Vienna attempts to settle continuing differences between survivors of the late Austrian duke Albrecht III (see 1395). Austrian diets (estates) are assembled for the first time to counter the threatened advance of Ottoman forces; noblemen tend to dominate the diets, but representatives of monasteries, towns, and marketplaces also attend, with even peasants having representation in some cases.
France's Charles VI makes a truce with England, whose Richard II takes Charles's daughter Isabella as his second wife. The truce will last for nearly 20 years.
William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, dies at Maidstone, Kent, July 31 at age 54 (approximate).
Cologne has a bloodless revolution (see 1288): the patrician plutocracy is overthrown and a new city constitution is estabished with a government based on the 22 branches of the guilds with an elected council having power over all internal and external affairs (see 1475).
Florence's chancellor Coluccio Salutati welcomes the Greek scholar Manuel Chrysoloras, 44, to his city. The Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus has sent him to Italy to seek help in resisting the Ottoman Turks, but Chrysoloras is more interested in scholarship than politics, the 75-year-old University of Florence establishes the first chair in Greek for him, and after 1403 he will remain largely in the West. Now 65, Salutati begins the study of Greek.
Painter Agnolo Gaddi dies at his native Florence October 16 at age 46. A son of the late Taddeo Gaddi who died in about 1366, he has created a cycle of scenes from the life of the Virgin for the Cathedral of Prat but leaves incomplete his altar of the Crucifixion at the church of San Miniato al Monte outside of town.
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