Events, Verisoph

c. 1200 The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela 0 cit. Under the Zagwe king Lalibela, eleven churches were cut downward out of solid volcanic rock, each carved as a single piece with windows, columns, and drainage channels. The site was meant as a new Jerusalem for Ethiopian Christians who could no longer easily reach the Holy Land. The churches remain in active use and are among the most striking works of medieval engineering anywhere. culture / religion / technology ●●●

c. 1200 Sirikwa holes mark an Iron Age herding culture in the western highlands contested 0 cit. Across the western Kenyan highlands are thousands of saucer-shaped hollows dug into hillsides, known as Sirikwa holes, dated to roughly 1200 to 1600 CE. Each was a walled homestead with a sunken cattle pen that could be guarded against raiders at night. Many Kalenjin groups link these remains to their ancestors, though scholars debate how directly the Sirikwa connect to any single present-day community. society / technology ●●

1202 to April 1204 Fourth Crusade 0 cit. no story A crusade bound for Egypt is diverted and sacks Christian Constantinople in 1204. The blow permanently weakens Byzantium and deepens the split between the Latin and Greek churches. religion / war ●●●●

1202 Fibonacci brings Hindu-Arabic numerals to Europe 0 cit. Leonardo of Pisa, called Fibonacci, learned Hindu-Arabic numerals from Muslim merchants in North Africa and argued for them in his book Liber Abaci. The new digits with their zero made calculation far easier than Roman numerals, though cities were slow to trust them and some banned them for a time. He did not invent the famous rabbit-breeding sequence, which was known earlier in India, but his book carried it into European mathematics. economy / science ●●●●

13 April 1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople 0 cit. A crusade meant for the Holy Land was diverted and turned on the Christian city of Constantinople, which the crusaders looted and burned. Pope Innocent III had forbidden the attack and condemned it, but the assault crippled the Byzantine Empire and deepened the split between Rome and the Eastern Church. politics / religion / war ●●●●

c. 1206 to c. 1368 Mongol Invasions and Conquests 0 cit. no story Genghis Khan and his successors conquer the largest contiguous land empire in history, from China to Eastern Europe. The conquests kill tens of millions and reconnect the Eurasian trade routes. war ●●●●●

c. 1206 Genghis Khan unites the Mongols 0 cit. Temujin is proclaimed Genghis Khan, ruler of all the Mongol tribes. His armies go on to build the largest contiguous land empire in history, linking and devastating much of Eurasia. politics / war ●●●●

1206 Founding of the Mongol Empire 0 cit. Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and was proclaimed ruler of all the steppe peoples. The Mongols went on to build the largest contiguous land empire in history. politics / war ●●●●●

1206 Founding of the Delhi Sultanate 0 cit. Qutb al-Din Aibak established Muslim rule over northern India from Delhi. The sultanate reshaped the politics and culture of the subcontinent. politics / religion ●●●●

1209 to 1229 Albigensian Crusade 0 cit. no story A crusade against the Cathar heresy devastates Languedoc over twenty years. It destroys Cathar society and brings southern France under the French crown. religion / war ●●●

1209 The University of Cambridge is founded 0 cit. Cambridge was founded in 1209 by scholars who left Oxford after a dispute with townspeople. It grew into one of the two great English universities alongside Oxford. culture / society ●●●

1209 to 1229 The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars 0 cit. Pope Innocent III called a crusade against the Cathars, a dissenting Christian sect in the south of France. Tens of thousands were killed over twenty years, and the massacre at Beziers, where a papal legate is reported to have said to kill all and let God sort them out, became infamous. The war destroyed Cathar society and extended the Inquisition to root out survivors. politics / religion / war ●●●

1211 Mongol invasions of China begin 0 cit. Genghis Khan launched campaigns against the Jin dynasty in 1211. Decades of Mongol warfare followed across northern and central China. war ●●●●

15 June 1215 Magna Carta 0 cit. King John seals a charter accepting that even the king is bound by law. Magna Carta becomes a founding symbol of limited government and individual rights in the English-speaking world. politics / society ●●●●

15 June 1215 Magna Carta limits the English crown 0 cit. Rebel barons forced King John to accept a charter promising that the king was bound by law and could not act purely at will. It became a lasting symbol of limits on royal power and the roots of constitutional monarchy. politics ●●●●●

15 June 1215 Magna Carta limits the power of the English king 0 cit. Rebellious barons force King John to seal Magna Carta, which states that the king cannot tax or imprison freemen at will and must act within the law. Most of its clauses address feudal grievances of the time, but its principle that the ruler is bound by law becomes a founding text of English constitutionalism. politics ●●●

1215 The Fourth Lateran Council orders Jews to wear distinguishing marks 0 cit. The Fourth Lateran Council, called by Pope Innocent III, required Jews and Muslims to wear distinguishing clothing or badges so Christians would not mix with them unknowingly. It also moved to bar Jews from public office and to limit their contact with Christians. These rules formalized segregation and marked Jews as a group apart. Later states would harden this legal separation into ghettos and exclusion. politics / religion / society ●●

1215 The Fourth Lateran Council targets Jewish lending and dress 0 cit. The Fourth Lateran Council orders that Jews who charge Christians heavy interest be pressured to make restitution, and requires Jews to wear distinguishing dress. The rules both leaned on Jewish credit and marked Jews out as a resented outsider group. The resentment was manufactured by law and sermon, not earned by any outsized economic power. religion / society ●●

1218 The University of Salamanca is founded 0 cit. Founded in 1218, Salamanca became the oldest university in the Spanish-speaking world. It later helped shape early debates on law and the rights of peoples in the Americas. culture / society ●●

c. 1220 Snorri Sturluson writes the Prose Edda 0 cit. The Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson compiled the Prose Edda as a handbook of Norse myth and poetry for Christian-era poets. Much of what we know of Norse mythology comes from his work. culture / religion ●●

c. 1220 Ragnarok foretells the twilight and rebirth of the Norse gods 0 cit. Norse myth describes Ragnarok, a final battle in which Odin, Thor, and other gods fall and the world burns and sinks, then rises green and renewed. The vision is recorded in the Eddas. culture / religion ●●

c. 1220 Mapungubwe declines, Great Zimbabwe rises 0 cit. Mapungubwe was abandoned by around the early thirteenth century, likely due to climate shifts, and regional political and trading power shifted north to Great Zimbabwe. Bantu-speaking chiefdoms across the interior of what is now South Africa continued to develop into more complex polities over the following centuries. Stone-walled settlements, such as those later associated with Sotho-Tswana groups, appeared across the highveld. economy / society ●●

c. 1220 The ShUM cities set the Takkanot ShUM 0 cit. Rabbis of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz met in joint synods and issued shared ordinances, the Takkanot ShUM, on marriage, communal life, and law. These three Rhineland towns acted as the religious authority for Ashkenazi Jewry across the German lands. Their old synagogues and cemeteries were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. culture / religion / society ●●

c. 1221 Fall of the Khwarazmian Empire 0 cit. Between 1219 and 1221 the Mongols under Genghis Khan destroyed the Khwarazmian Empire that ruled Central Asia and Persia. Great cities such as Samarkand and Urgench were sacked and their populations slaughtered. politics / war ●●●

31 May 1223 Battle of the Kalka River 0 cit. A Mongol reconnaissance force defeated a combined army of Rus princes and Cumans in the first clash between the Rus and the Mongols. The defeat exposed how divided the Rus principalities were. war ●●●

1224 Frederick II founds the University of Naples 0 cit. Emperor Frederick II founded the University of Naples in 1224, the first university created by a ruler to train officials for the state. It marked an early tie between higher education and government need. politics / society ●●●

c. 1230 The Gerona circle of Kabbalists 0 cit. A group of scholars in Gerona, including Azriel and Nachmanides, systematized Kabbalistic doctrine and gave it wider standing among Jewish scholars. Their work bridged the earlier Provencal traditions and the later Spanish schools. culture / religion ●●●

1231 The papal Inquisition is established 0 cit. Pope Gregory IX created a standing office to investigate heresy and appointed inquisitors, often drawn from the Dominican order. It marked the papacy building a permanent machinery to police belief. politics / religion / society ●●●

c. 1232 to c. 1233 The Maimonidean Controversy and the burning of the Guide 0 cit. Rabbis who feared that philosophy corrupted faith placed a ban on the study of Maimonides' Guide and parts of his code, while his defenders banned the banners. According to a widely repeated account, opponents appealed to the Christian authorities and the Guide was burned by the Inquisition, a turn that shocked both sides and left deep bitterness. The clash was the sharpest early confrontation between rationalists and traditionalists. religion / society ●●●

c. 1235 Founding of the Mali Empire 0 cit. Sundiata Keita defeated his rivals and founded the Mali Empire in West Africa. It controlled the trans-Saharan gold trade and became famously wealthy. economy / politics ●●●●●

c. 1238 Founding of the Sukhothai Kingdom 0 cit. The Sukhothai Kingdom is founded, traditionally regarded as the first Thai state; Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never colonized. politics ●●●

1239 Frederick II, the wonder of the world, wars with the papacy 0 cit. Emperor Frederick II, a brilliant and unconventional ruler nicknamed stupor mundi, the wonder of the world, was excommunicated more than once as he fought to control Italy. Popes branded him a heretic and even the Antichrist. His long duel with Rome exhausted the empire's grip on the south. politics / religion / war ●●

December 1240 Mongol Sack of Kiev 0 cit. In December 1240 the Mongols captured and destroyed Kiev, the chief city of the Rus. The sack broke the power of Kievan Rus and placed its lands under Mongol overlordship. politics / war ●●●

1240 The Disputation of Paris and the burning of the Talmud 0 cit. A convert from Judaism accused the Talmud of blasphemy, prompting a forced disputation before the French court in which rabbis had to defend their own sacred texts. The trial ended in condemnation, and in 1242 wagonloads of Talmud manuscripts were burned in Paris. Forced disputations trapped Jews in a debate they could not win, since a strong defense could itself be treated as an attack on Christianity. culture / politics / religion ●●

1240 The Talmud burned after the Paris disputation 0 cit. In 1240 a convert's denunciation, taken up by Pope Gregory IX, led to a public trial of the Talmud in Paris. The book was condemned, and in 1242 wagonloads of confiscated Jewish manuscripts, said to number in the thousands, were burned in the city. Later popes ordered further seizures and censorship of Hebrew texts. culture / politics / religion ●●●

c. 1242 Establishment of the Golden Horde 0 cit. The Mongols set up the Golden Horde, a khanate that made the Rus principalities tributary states for roughly two and a half centuries. Rus princes had to seek a patent to rule from the khan and collect tribute for him. politics / society ●●●●

5 April 1242 Battle on the Ice 0 cit. Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod defeated the Livonian Order on the frozen Lake Peipus, checking crusader expansion from the west. The battle later became a strong symbol in Russian national memory. religion / war ●●●

1244 Battle of Embūte wikidata 0 cit. no story 1244 battle ●●

c. 1250 Mamluk slave soldiers rule Egypt 0 cit. The Mamluks were enslaved soldiers, mostly from the Caucasus and Central Asia, who seized power and ruled Egypt and Syria for centuries. Their rise shows how slavery could take military and political forms far from plantation labour. politics / war ●●

c. 1250 The reality of small-scale Jewish lending 0 cit. Most Jewish lenders were not great financiers but small operators making modest loans against pledged goods, often to neighbors and local farmers. They had little power to force repayment, depended on royal courts to collect debts, and could be ruined when a king cancelled debts or taxed them heavily. The picture of the all-powerful Jewish moneylender is a later invention that ignores how exposed and dependent these lenders actually were. economy / society ●●

c. 1250 The Lombards and Cahorsins, Christendom's Christian lenders 0 cit. Christian financiers from Lombardy and Cahors ran large lending and pawnbroking operations across Europe, often outweighing Jewish lenders in scale. They charged interest through legal workarounds that dodged the usury ban, and their name survives in London's Lombard Street. Their prominence is direct evidence that big medieval finance was never a Jewish preserve. economy / society ●●

c. 1250 Jews prosper, then decline, under Christian rule 0 cit. In the Christian kingdoms of the thirteenth century Jews served kings as physicians, tax collectors, financiers, and translators, and Sephardic learning continued. But their position rested on royal favor and grew more precarious. Church preaching, forced public debates, and popular resentment steadily worsened the climate through the fourteenth century. politics / religion / society ●●

c. 1250 The Great Interregnum leaves the throne contested 0 cit. After the Hohenstaufen dynasty collapsed, rival and often absent claimants held the imperial title while no one ruled effectively. Princes and cities grew stronger as central power faded. The years of weak or disputed kingship deepened the empire's drift toward a loose federation. politics ●●

c. 1252 to c. 1494 Florence as the banking capital of Europe 0 cit. Florence mints the gold florin in 1252 and its banking houses, from the Bardi and Peruzzi to the Medici, lend to kings and popes across Europe. The collapse of the Medici Bank in 1494 ends its dominance. economy ●●●●

1252 The Florentine florin 0 cit. Florence struck the gold florin, which held a consistent standard and became a leading currency for European trade and banking. Its reliability made it a benchmark for merchants across the continent. economy ●●●●

15 May 1252 Ad extirpanda authorizes torture 0 cit. Pope Innocent IV issued a bull permitting inquisitors to use torture to extract confessions from suspected heretics. It gave formal Church sanction to a practice that shaped inquisitorial trials for centuries. politics / religion / society ●●●

11 July 1253 Battle of Westkapelle wikidata 0 cit. no story 1253 conflict ●●

1255 The Lincoln blood libel and Little Saint Hugh 0 cit. When a boy called Hugh was found dead in Lincoln, authorities accused the town's Jews of killing him in a ritual. Around ninety were arrested and roughly nineteen executed after confessions extracted under threat. The cult of Little Saint Hugh grew from a baseless charge. King Henry III's direct role in the trials showed how the crown could use the libel to justify seizing Jewish property. politics / religion / society ●●

10 February 1258 Mongol sack of Baghdad 0 cit. Hulagu's Mongol army takes Baghdad, kills the caliph, and destroys the city, ending the Abbasid Caliphate. The sack closes the Islamic Golden Age centered on Baghdad and shifts power in the Muslim world. religion / war ●●●●

10 February 1258 Fall of Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate 0 cit. On 10 February 1258 the Mongols under Hulagu Khan took Baghdad and soon killed the last Abbasid caliph. The sack ended the caliphate and is often seen as the close of the Islamic Golden Age. politics / religion / war ●●●●●

c. 1260 Nachmanides lends Kabbalah rabbinic authority 0 cit. Nachmanides, a leading rabbinic authority, wove Kabbalistic allusions into his influential Torah commentary. His prestige helped move Kabbalah from a guarded esoteric current toward mainstream acceptance. culture / religion ●●●

c. 1260 Yuan dynasty paper currency 0 cit. Under Kublai Khan the Yuan dynasty made paper money the main currency across its empire and required its acceptance. The traveler Marco Polo described the system with astonishment in his account of China. economy / politics ●●●●

25 July 1261 The Byzantines retake their capital 0 cit. Forces of the Nicaean successor state under Michael VIII Palaiologos recaptured Constantinople from the Latins and restored the empire. But the state they revived was a shadow of the old power, poor, encircled, and shorn of most of Anatolia. The Palaiologan dynasty would rule a shrinking realm for its final two centuries. politics / war ●●

1263 The Disputation of Barcelona 0 cit. King James I of Aragon summoned the scholar Nachmanides to a public disputation with the convert Pablo Christiani over whether Jewish texts proved Jesus was the messiah. Nachmanides was promised free speech but was later punished for the written account he gave and chose to leave Aragon. These staged debates were meant to pressure Jews toward conversion rather than to seek any honest conclusion. culture / politics / religion ●

1264 Poland-Lithuania offers charters of refuge 0 cit. As western states expelled Jews, rulers in the east invited them in. The Statute of Kalisz of 1264, later confirmed and widened by King Casimir the Great, granted Jews legal protection, freedom of worship, and the right to trade and lend. Over the following centuries Poland-Lithuania grew into the home of the largest Jewish population in the world. The contrast shows that expulsion was a political choice, not an inevitability. economy / politics / society ●●

1264 The Statute of Kalisz protects Jews in Poland 0 cit. Duke Bolesław the Pious of Greater Poland issued the Statute of Kalisz, a charter granting Jews wide protection. It guaranteed their safety, their trade, their courts, and their synagogues, and it explicitly rejected the blood libel. Later Polish kings confirmed and extended the charter, making Poland a refuge as western Europe expelled its Jews. economy / politics / society ●●●

c. 1265 to c. May 1453 Byzantine-Ottoman Wars 0 cit. no story The rising Ottoman state gradually absorbs Byzantine territory over two centuries, ending with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The conquest ends the Roman imperial line and establishes Ottoman power in Europe. war ●●●●

20 January 1265 Simon de Montfort summons an early parliament 0 cit. During a baronial revolt against Henry III, Simon de Montfort calls an assembly that for the first time includes elected knights and burgesses from towns, not just nobles and bishops. It is a precedent for representative government, even though de Montfort is killed later that year and the king reasserts control. politics ●●●

c. 1270 Founding of the Ethiopian Empire 0 cit. Yekuno Amlak establishes the Solomonic dynasty, founding the Ethiopian Empire that endured until 1974; Ethiopia was never colonized. politics ●●●●

c. 1270 The Poetic Edda preserves Old Norse mythological verse 0 cit. The Poetic Edda, gathered in the Icelandic Codex Regius, collects older poems about the Norse gods and heroes. It is a primary source for stories of creation and the end of the world. culture / religion ●●

c. 1270 The Poetic Edda is preserved in the Codex Regius 0 cit. The Codex Regius manuscript gathers the Poetic Edda, the old mythological and heroic poems, including the Voluspa that tells of creation and Ragnarok, the doom of the gods. It is the primary source for Norse mythology. culture / religion ●●●

c. 1270 Aquinas States the Conditions of Just War 0 cit. In the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas laid out three conditions for a just war: it must be declared by a legitimate sovereign authority, fought for a just cause, and waged with rightful intention. Aquinas explicitly built on Augustine's earlier arguments and gave the just-war tradition its most systematic medieval statement. His formulation remained the standard reference point for Christian and later secular just-war theory. religion / war ●●●

1270 The Solomonic dynasty is restored under Yekuno Amlak 0 cit. Yekuno Amlak overthrew the last Zagwe king and founded a line that claimed direct descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. This so-called Solomonic dynasty would rule Ethiopia, with breaks, until 1974. The claim gave the emperors a sacred charter, tying the throne to the Bible and to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. politics / religion ●●●

1271 Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty 0 cit. Kublai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty in 1271, establishing Mongol rule over China with its capital at Dadu, modern Beijing. It was the first foreign dynasty to rule all of China. politics / war ●●●●●

1273 Rumi and the flowering of Sufism 0 cit. The poet Jalal al-Din Rumi dies at Konya, leaving verse that becomes among the most loved in the Muslim world. His followers form the Mevlevi order, known for whirling dance as worship. Sufism, the mystical strand of Islam organized in such orders, spreads the faith widely through devotion and poetry. culture / religion ●●

1273 Rudolf of Habsburg elected king, the dynasty's first crown 0 cit. The electors chose Rudolf I of Habsburg, a middling count thought easy to control, to end the leaderless years. He used the office to build a family power base in Austria. It was the first step in the Habsburgs' long climb toward dominating the imperial title. politics ●●

November 1274 to August 1281 Mongol Invasions of Japan 0 cit. no story Kublai Khan twice sends invasion fleets against Japan, and both are wrecked by storms the Japanese call kamikaze. The failures mark the limit of Mongol expansion in the east. war ●●●

c. 1275 Marco Polo in China 0 cit. The Venetian traveler Marco Polo is said to have served the Yuan court in the late thirteenth century. His account introduced many Europeans to China's wealth and cities. exploration ●●●

c. 1275 Rulers tax the Jews as a royal sponge, then expel them 0 cit. English kings treated Jews as royal property and taxed them through heavy levies called tallages until the community was drained of wealth. Once the Jews could no longer yield revenue, expelling them let the crown cancel its own duty to protect them and seize outstanding debts and assets. Historians describe the method as squeezing a sponge dry and then throwing it away. The 1290 expulsion followed decades of this fiscal exploitation. economy / politics / society ●●

c. 8 September 1278 Formation of Andorra 0 cit. no story The Pareage of 1278 establishes Andorra as a co-principality shared between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix. politics ●●

c. 1278 The friars and the forced conversion sermons 0 cit. From the thirteenth century Dominican and Franciscan friars led campaigns to convert Jews, staffing the Inquisition and staging public disputations. Pope Nicholas III's bull Vineam Sorec of 1278 ordered friars to preach to Jews, and Jews were increasingly compelled to attend such sermons. Pope Gregory XIII later made attendance at weekly conversion sermons compulsory in Rome in 1584. politics / religion / society ●●

19 March 1279 Fall of the Song Dynasty 0 cit. At the naval Battle of Yamen on 19 March 1279 the Mongols destroyed the last Song fleet, and the boy emperor died. The victory completed the Mongol conquest of China under the Yuan dynasty. politics / war ●●●●

1279 Fall of the Southern Song 0 cit. At the naval Battle of Yamen in 1279, Mongol forces destroyed the last Song resistance. The Yuan now ruled all of China. war ●●●●

c. 1280 to c. 1500 Bruges as northern Europe's money market 0 cit. Italian bank branches and foreign merchant colonies make Bruges the financial hub of northern Europe. Traders meeting at the inn of the Van der Beurse family give the word bourse to the world, and the silting of its harbor helps shift business to Antwerp. economy ●●●

c. 1280 Abraham Abulafia and ecstatic Kabbalah 0 cit. Abraham Abulafia developed a meditative Kabbalah based on the permutation of Hebrew letters and divine names to reach prophetic states. His approach contrasted with the theosophical focus on the sefirot. culture / religion ●●●

c. 1280 The Zohar appears in Spain 0 cit. The Zohar, a mystical commentary on the Torah, began to circulate in Castile through Moses de Leon, who attributed it to the ancient sage Shimon bar Yochai. It became the central text of Kabbalah. culture / religion ●●●●●

March 1282 to 1302 War of the Sicilian Vespers 0 cit. no story A Sicilian uprising against Angevin French rule draws Aragon into a twenty-year Mediterranean war. The peace splits the old Kingdom of Sicily between Naples and Aragonese Sicily. politics / war ●●

1284 The Venetian ducat 0 cit. Venice introduced the gold ducat, which kept its weight and purity for over five centuries. It became one of the most widely accepted trade coins in the Mediterranean and the Levant. economy ●●●

1285 Statute of Winchester establishes the watch and ward 0 cit. The Statute of Winchester codified the watch and ward system, requiring towns to post watchmen at night and obliging able-bodied men to help pursue criminals when the hue and cry was raised. It also revived the ancient obligation of local communities to keep arms and maintain order themselves. This system of unpaid, part-time local policing remained the basis of English law enforcement for over 500 years. politics ●●

c. 1286 The Zohar appears in Castile 0 cit. Moses de Leon circulates the Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah, which tradition attributes to the second-century sage Shimon bar Yochai. Jewish mysticism gains its foundational book. culture / religion ●●●

c. 1286 Eyeglasses 0 cit. Unknown craftsmen near Pisa mounted two convex lenses in a frame to correct failing eyesight. Eyeglasses extended the working lives of scholars and artisans. science / technology ●●●

c. 1288 Founding of Stora Kopparberg 0 cit. A deed from 1288 records the sale of a share in the Falun copper mine, the oldest known share document in any company. The mining enterprise later becomes Stora, an ancestor of today's Stora Enso. economy ●●●

c. 1290 Joseph Gikatilla writes the Gates of Light 0 cit. Gikatilla's Sha'are Orah, or Gates of Light, offered a systematic guide to the ten sefirot and the divine names attached to each. It became one of the most widely used introductions to Kabbalistic symbolism. culture / religion ●●●

July 1290 Expulsion of the Jews from England 0 cit. King Edward I expelled the Jewish community from England in 1290. Jews were not formally readmitted until the 1650s. politics / religion ●●

July 1290 Edward I expels the Jews from England 0 cit. King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, ordering every Jew out of England. Around 2,000 to 3,000 people were forced to leave, and Jews would not be legally readmitted until the 1650s. It was the first permanent expulsion of a Jewish community by a European kingdom, and it set a pattern that other states copied. politics / religion / society ●●

1290 The royal sponge and the expulsion from England 0 cit. For a century English kings taxed and squeezed their Jewish subjects as a private source of cash, a pattern historians call the royal sponge: rulers used Jewish lenders, absorbed their wealth, then wrung them out. In 1290 Edward I expelled the Jews from England entirely, cancelling debts owed to them and keeping their property. The expulsion shows Jews as victims of royal power, not its hidden masters. politics / society ●●●

c. 1290 Why the expulsions: religious zeal and fiscal need 0 cit. Historians see the recurring medieval expulsions of Jews as driven by a mix of religious zeal and fiscal need, the two reinforcing each other. Church teaching, the blood libels, and the pressure to convert supplied the hostility; rulers supplied the motive of profit, taxing their Jewish subjects as a 'royal sponge' and then expelling them to cancel their own debts and seize their property. Piety and plunder ran together. economy / politics / religion / society ●●●

July 1290 England expels its Jews 0 cit. King Edward I ordered every Jew out of England, ending a community that had lived there since the Norman Conquest. Around 2,000 to 3,000 people were forced to leave, and Jews were not legally readmitted until the 1650s. It was the first permanent expulsion of a Jewish community by a European kingdom and set a pattern others copied. politics / religion / society ●●

c. 1 August 1291 Formation of Switzerland 0 cit. no story The cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swear the Federal Charter, the traditional founding of the Swiss Confederation. politics ●●●

May 1291 Fall of Acre and the Crusader Kingdom 0 cit. In May 1291 the Mamluks captured Acre, the last major stronghold of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its fall ended nearly two centuries of Crusader states in the Holy Land. politics / religion / war ●●●

18 May 1291 Fall of Acre 0 cit. Mamluk forces captured Acre, the last major Crusader city in the Holy Land. The Templars lost their main base in the East and relocated their headquarters to Cyprus. religion / war ●●●●

May 1291 Fall of Acre ends Crusader rule in the Holy Land 0 cit. The Mamluks captured Acre, the last major Crusader stronghold, ending nearly two centuries of Christian rule in the Holy Land. The Templars lost their original purpose of defending pilgrims and the Crusader states, and relocated their base to Cyprus. religion / war ●●

c. 1 August 1291 The Federal Charter of the Old Swiss Confederacy 0 cit. The three cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore a defensive pact against outside rule, the document later treated as the founding charter of the Swiss Confederation. It bound the communities to help one another and to settle disputes among themselves rather than submit to foreign lords. The alliance grew over the following centuries into a loose federation of cantons. politics ●●●

1293 Founding of the Majapahit Empire 0 cit. Raden Wijaya founded Majapahit on the island of Java after repelling a Mongol invasion. It became the most powerful maritime empire of the Indonesian archipelago. economy / politics ●●●●

13 November 1295 The Model Parliament sets the pattern for later assemblies 0 cit. Edward I summons a parliament that includes lords, bishops, and elected representatives of the counties and towns, seeking broad consent for taxation to fund his wars. Later parliaments are modeled on its composition, which is why historians call it the Model Parliament. politics ●●

1296 to 1357 Scottish Wars of Independence 0 cit. no story Scotland fights off English attempts at conquest in two long wars, with Robert the Bruce's victory at Bannockburn the turning point. Scotland preserves its independence for another three and a half centuries. politics / war ●●●

c. 8 January 1297 Formation of Monaco 0 cit. no story Francesco Grimaldi seizes the fortress of Monaco, beginning the Grimaldi dynasty's rule over the principality. politics ●●

1298 Host desecration charges spark the Rintfleisch massacres 0 cit. A new accusation claimed Jews stole and stabbed the consecrated communion host to torment Christ, a charge that made little sense even in Christian terms since Jews did not accept the doctrine behind it. In 1298 a nobleman known as Rintfleisch led mobs that destroyed scores of Jewish communities across German lands. The host desecration myth, like the blood libel, was invented and then used to justify slaughter. religion / society / war ●●

c. 1298 Host desecration charges fuel new massacres 0 cit. A second false charge accused Jews of stealing and torturing the consecrated communion wafer, which Catholics believe is the body of Christ. In 1298 a mob led by a knight called Rintfleisch used such a rumor to massacre Jews across Franconia, destroying scores of communities. Like the blood libel, the host desecration charge rested on a belief with no possible factual basis. religion / society / war ●●

c. 1299 Founding of the Ottoman Empire 0 cit. Osman I founded a small state in Anatolia that grew into the Ottoman Empire. Over centuries it came to rule southeastern Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. politics / war ●●●●●