1414

1411 1412 1413 1414 1415 1416 1417 1418 1419 1420

political events

A group of English Lollards assembles on the night of January 9 at St. Giles's Fields, near London, in response to a summons from Sir John Oldcastle, who has conspired with bookseller William Fisher at Smithfield to kidnap the new king Henry V (see human rights, 1413). Agents of the king warn him of the plot, and the Lollards are arrested. But Sir John escapes as he did last year, and Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, dies February 19 at age 70 (see 1417).

Venetian naval hero Tommaso Mocenigo wins election as doge. Now 71, he will negotiate to extend Venice's dominion over Dalmatia, Friuli, and Trentino, using force only as a last resort.

Ladislas of Naples advances to Bologna in an effort to prevent the antipope John XXIII from meeting with Sigismund of Luxembourg, but he falls ill and is taken back to his native Naples, where he dies August 6 at age 37 after a 28-year reign in which he has expanded into central Italy. His widowed sister will reign until 1435 as Joanna (Giovanna) II, keeping Italian diplomacy in turmoil with her amorous intrigues as she plays off rival claimants to the throne. Sigismund is crowned German king at Aix-la-Chapelle late in the year, succeeding the late Jobst of Moravia, who reigned for only 15 weeks (see 1411; 1433).

The Ottoman sultan Mehmet I defeats a Karamanid army and restores Adrianople's power over the emirs of Anatolia.

religion

The Council of Constance convenes at the insistence of the German king Sigismund of Luxembourg, who wants the Church's unity restored. Assembled by the antipope John XXIII, the council is also to reform the Church's leadership and its members and to extirpate heresy, especially that of Jan Hus (see 1411), who has arrived under an imperial safe conduct that permits his free return to Bohemia whatever judgment may be passed upon him. A friendly baron at Krakovec, 40 miles west of Prague, has permitted Hus to preach out of doors in defiance of a papal ban, and Hus has then ridden 285 miles in autumn from the baron's castle to Constance, saying, "If I have to face the fire that is ready for me, it is better to die well than to live badly." French theologian and Christian mystic Jean de Gerson (né Jean Charlier), 50, and Pierre Cardinal d'Ailly, 64, lead a conciliar movement to effect a reconciliation in the Church (see 1415).

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